What’s up everybody,
Two weeks since the last newsletter, so I’ll catch you up real quick:
I’m officially a free agent and have started doing my thing with my data consulting company.
I’ve jerry-rigged a website to start getting clients. It’s not the prettiest, but I figured that getting the copy up was the most important part at this stage.
I had a good time at SXSW, finally sitting down to jot out some thoughts about it.
Friends are starting to reach out about collaborating on projects! Hit me up if anything cool you’re thinking of!
Life in general as an “entrepreneur” has been great! Trying not to be obnoxious about it, but it’s honestly what I’ve always wanted to do.
Time-Freedom: What it’s been like not going to work
It’s so freeing to wake up and be able to follow whatever you feel like doing.
I don’t know if I’ve ever really given myself this type of time-freedom in the past. From the time I was pre-med to the time I ditched the medical school route to go work in tech, everything has always been about trying to “move-up” in my career.
When I reflect on where this psychology comes from for me, I think that a lot of it has to do with wanting to prove myself to the world.
I think what’s different about now is that, over the past year, I’ve gotten the chance to be in the same rooms and same circles as the people that I’ve always looked up to and have started to satiate some of that need for external validation.
It’s kind of one of those situations where you start hanging around with people who you used to believe were at some pinnacle and realize, “wait, I might be able to punch similar weight with these folks…”
I also knew something was different when I would see articles come across my feed about ‘Imposter Syndrome,’ and would think to myself, “wait, I don’t really have imposter syndrome anymore… what’s really holding me back is time…”
I think it was these two epiphanies that really cued me to take the jump and give myself a new challenge.
Quitting before you’re ready and waking up your senses
So what might be interesting about my case is that I chose to take the jump without really setting up an amazing financial runway.
Being semi-transparent, let’s just say that I only have a few months of savings to figure something out.
A lot of people that I talked to before making the jump advised me to build my runway and make sure that I had at least 6 months of savings to survive off of.
But I chose not to listen, and pretty much had my mind made up around New Years Day that I would make the jump by the end of Q1 of this year.
I know it’s only been the first week, but let me tell you…
There is nothing that has lit a fire under my ass like having a short personal runway.
Being in this phase in my life reminds me of Daniel Vassallo’s essay, Variable income makes me smarter, where he writes:
What’s interesting is that the stressor of an income drop seems to activate a part of my brain that’s usually dormant. All my creative and practical ideas about new promotions and new products tend to happen while I’m in this state, and I’m almost incapable of replicating it without the sting of this stressor.
Despite some looming stress about my situation, I feel more alive than ever! Senses are fully heightened.
I can see, feel, and hear things around me better. There’s more mental freedom to toss around ideas in a playful way, my eyes are wide-open to opportunity, and I feel like I have the space to connect the dots and act on intuition like never before.
Time will tell whether this jump was a smart or pre-mature move (I still need to find a source of income before it’s too late), but maybe taking the jump early can have its own strange sort of psychological advantage.
Full-stack engineer and Full-stack influencer
On my recent trip to NYC in February, I turned on the Balaji and Lex Fridman podcast during my flight and picked up where I last left off on their 9-hour episode. Somehow I finished the whole thing.
Towards the end, Lex asks Balaji what advice he would give to a younger person thinking about what they want to do with their life, and Balaji says something like: “I think that younger people should think about being both full-stack engineers and full-stack-influencers.” He elaborated on this by saying that he believes that people should aim to have both some minimum technical ability and some minimum ability to create on different mediums.
This is something that has resonated with me over the past couple months because I think that it’s the general direction that I want to go.
I keep on toiling with the thought that there’s nothing really stopping me from being able to create whatever I want besides the act of actually doing it…
(Okay sure, maybe there’s stuff like market forces, current skillset, time, social repercussions, and personal circumstances all at play here, but you get the point!)
Having newfound free-time has really allowed me to explore different dimensions of what it means to try to be someone who is full-stack-everything. I now know more about sales and marketing than I ever have before, I’m digging my feet more into my technical niche with my data engineering consulting firm, and I’m getting a chance to read and write more both internally and publicly.
All in all, it feels good to know that, you can just… do stuff, as Sam Altman once tweeted.
Learning has become frictionless. And when you become agnostic to what you’re “supposed” to be doing, you let your learning go through the roof.
SXSW Highlights
Been a minute since the event now, but I’ll go ahead and add this section anyway since I wrote it a while back.
I had a really good time at SXSW! Lots of great talks and events. Too many to list. But here’s some highlights and commentary from SXSW:
Hosted a SXSW All-In Podcast Meetup
This had 335 sign-ups in just a few days! Insane! Probably 100 or so people circulated through. These events always draw such a diverse and open-minded crowd. Always have a great time at these and leave with great new connections. It was fun putting this one together.
MFM Meetup
Wow, the energy at a MFM meetup is amazing! So many creative, smart, and talented listeners out there that are taking steps on their entrepreneurial journey. Awesome crowd and cool to see Sam Parr and others at the event.
Cathie Wood and Pomp
This one was a more intimate event at Austin Proper Hotel (a gorgeous hotel). It was crazy. Being around Cathie, she almost has this deity-like presence to her. No matter what you think about ARK Investing, her and her team’s ability to conduct research and sell a strategic narrative might be unmatched.
Mark Cuban
I’ve always knew about Mark Cuban, but not outside of Shark Tank or him being the Dallas Mavericks owner. Didn’t know about his inspiring rags-to-riches story; getting through several times where his back was against the wall and having to learn-it-all as an entrepreneur. Resonated with how I feel about my current situation and was motivating to listen to.
Josh Wolfe, Trae Stephens, David Ulevitch
Really cool discussion on defense innovation and investing. These three are funding some of the wildest and most interesting technologies out there with the American dynamism movement in VC. High octane room and convo.
RZA
Have always been a huge Wu-Tang fan. Loved listening to RZA reflect on his career and his move into film directing. Favorite line: “I’m like an antenna moving through the world following the signal.”
Tokimonsta, Tony Brown, Will Page
It’s cool to see Tokimonsta as a founder of her own label and company! I remember downloading her first EP way back on Bandcamp. Good discussion on payments in music.
Travis Montaque, Everette Taylor, Raja Rajamannar
I did not know how much I enjoy learning about Brand and Marketing! Randomly attended this one and it ended up being a super high-level discussion on the latest innovation in media investing, ownership, and cultural shifts in the creator economy.
Jonathan Hillis, Nico Mars, and Colin O’Donnell
If you want to look into alternative lifestyles to modern-city-life, check out what these three are up to with CabinDAO, CityDAO, and Kift DAO. Very cool ideas that have a legitimate shot at gaining major traction over the next few years.
That’s all for this one!
Looking forward to putting out the next, and thank you all for the support.
Talk soon,
Genesis