read time: 8 minutes don't feel like reading? listen to the podcast version here Have ya ever thought about the fact that there are only so many ways to be happy, but a near infinite number of ways to be unhappy? Tolstoy probably said it best: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Think about it… Let’s say you’re happy when you’re pain free, but unhappy when you experience pain. That means there is only one state in which you are happy (you feel no...
about 1 month ago • 6 min read
read time: 3 minutes don't feel like reading? listen to the audio version here The best productivity hack I’ve ever stumbled on isn’t a To-Do List. It’s a To-Don’t-Do List. A man asked his gardener: "How do you make your plants grow so beautifully?" The gardener replied: "I don't force them to grow. I simply remove that which stops them." Michelangelo said something similar... When asked how he carved the statue of David, he said: "It's simple. I just remove everything that is NOT David."...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
read time: 7 minutes listen to the audio version here (if ya don't feel like reading) Nine years ago I found myself up a creek, without a paddle, and in a boat I had no clue how to pilot. I blame my buddy Ryan. A couple months before, he'd asked me to help him scale his little manufacturing business that produced polyurethane rock climbing holds and imported hardware from China. Thing is… I’d been a professional rock climber in a past life, so I knew a thing or two about rock climbing holds…...
about 2 months ago • 6 min read
I think I am officially “too old for this shit”. Last week I turned 42. And despite all my best efforts, after all these years circling the sun, I still can’t grow a decent beard. To add salt to injury, the hair I can’t grow on my face seems to be having no problem sprouting in my ears and on my back. Fuck me... Life is hard. And here’s the real kick in the knee: It only ever gets harder. With every year that passes my body seems to collect a new nagging injury like it’s on a Pokemon hunt to...
3 months ago • 3 min read
There is a place that holds more wealth, more brilliance, more potential than all the bank vaults, libraries, and universities on the planet. It’s the cemetery. Every grave is a repository of unwritten books, unlaunched businesses, unspoken words, and unexplored lives. There are two people in each grave, though only one body…The person they were and the person they could’ve been. The sad truth is that the one was certainly buried years before the other. See, more dreams have died than have...
5 months ago • 6 min read
Thinking ain’t easy. Which is why most people don’t actually do it. And yet your decisive advantage as a human over every other human is your ability to think. The quality, depth, and quantity of your thoughts is the single greatest predictor of what your life becomes. Not your intelligence. Not your network. Not your circumstances. Your thinking. The problem is nobody ever taught us how to think. Sure, we had classes that required thinking, but I don’t know about you, but nobody ever sat me...
6 months ago • 8 min read
Hey Legend, There is a room in your mind you never clean. You walk past it every morning. You know it's there. You can feel the weight of it. From that room there's a sound... barely audible. A low, constant hum. You hear it behind every conversation, every meeting, every quiet moment where your brain should be resting but isn't... Because that door is always left slightly open. And inside there's a pile of things that keeps you from entering that room. Not of things you've done wrong. Not of...
6 months ago • 4 min read
Prefer to watch the video? Click here. Hey Legend, I lived in the back of a van for the better part of my twenties. Not the cute #VanLife kind. Dirtbag rock climber. Showering at the gym. Eating peanut butter out of the jar with my fingers because I lost my last spoon somewhere in Bishop. And I was proud of it. I wore my broke-ness like a badge of honor. Money? That's for shallow people. That's for the sell-outs. I didn’t need money. I had sunsets, rad cliffs to climb, and a 1987 Ford...
7 months ago • 4 min read
Hey Legend, So, here's something ya never expect to say: I got robbed in broad daylight last week. The worst part? I actually like the guy who did it. After an 18-month hiatus, I'm back posting on my main YouTube channel. Each video takes ~20 hours of work (research, scripting, editing), so I do serious market research first to stack the odds in my favor before launching. The process is simple: find big creators (1M+ subs), medium (100k-1M), and small (>100k), then scan their libraries for...
7 months ago • 2 min read