Welcome back to another newsletter. As always, the format is simple:
- The latest from me
- Ideas I’m thinking about
- Resources that are upgrading my quality of life
Let’s get into it.
The latest
I just turned 27. Am I old yet? Of course not. I view 27 as a child in the grand scheme of things. But it’s worth noting that my presence stills feel the exact same as I did at 18, though the knowledge and skills and body are different, and I’ll continue to do until I pass on from this life. This life feels like one big illusion and it’s hilarious to look in the mirror sometimes because I know for a fact I am not my body, but rather I am a soul; an energetic being inhabiting this physical body you know as Josh.
P.S. I’m not mentioning this for happy birthday’s, I don’t even celebrate the day really. I keep birthdays very simple and just more things that I really like doing and don’t do things that I don’t like doing. Being that I’m on my own, this year I tried to finally go an entire birthday without talking to a single soul, only to fail when I saw someone I knew at the gym. L. Better luck next year.
As for recent content, I just posted my Q1 2023 Creator reflection. A bit late, but better now than never. As I’ve mentioned, more content is being cooked right now on the backend, though it is slower than I’d like due to being spread between performance consulting and freelance too.
Ideas
Rejection becomes a non issue when there are more leads. The more leads, the better. Most problems can be solved by creating an abundance of leads in your pipeline. (Thanks, Grant Cardone!)
Deadlines are amazing for clarifying priorities, holding you accountable and gamification, but they also don’t exist. So have fun with them, don’t be crippled, and if you run out of time, just ship whatever you have. The last part is the hardest to put into practice for those who care about quality, however.1It’s me, I’m those lol
Do you need to respond? Or is it okay to let it go? I’m finding a lot of value right now in having less digital conversations (especially in comment sections) with anonymous accounts or people I don’t care to talk to when there’s rebuttal. I don’t need to save everyone. I don’t need to put my 2 cents into everything. I don’t need to spark up a debate that’ll just waste my future self’s time and energy, because my ego wants to show them I’m right now. It’s often a far better idea to not respond.
The best way to help someone is to lead by example. Live and breathe what you want to help them with, and your leadership will impact them more than you words without actions ever could.
Your schedule is what creates your life. It’s quite literally a game in which everyone has the same 24 potential slots, representing an hour each. It’s the blocks you choose to insert that dictate your results and happiness for that day, that added up create your week, month, quarter, year, decade, and someday — your life.
Your ego wants to hide, to protect. But your higher self wants to shine and be transparent. Your current insecurities can be quite literally become your asset if you stop trying to hide them, let go of your resistance, position them differently and wear them on your sleeve.
Marketers who tell the truth are the ones who win. Those who deceive may win in the short term, but karma, reputation and brand catch up shortly thereafter.
Why are people satisfied with being just another person in the crowd? Having briefly clicked into an Ultra set (HI-LO/Oliver Heldens b2b testpilot/deadmau5 TD), I was reminded of my mindset during my raving days: I don’t want to be just another person in the audience, I want to be the equivalent of being on stage; the reason the audience is there. This is true both from an ego standpoint, but also from a creative standpoint in regards to creation vs. consumption. Maybe being just another person in the crowd is fine for most people, but for people like me and you, that is unacceptable long term.
Resources
Tetris. This movie was absolutely incredible. I might be overhyping this due to recency bias, but for me it was one of my favourite films I’ve ever watched. I was on the edge of my seat the whole time — it gave me Social Network vibes. Really great story of the origins of Tetris, it gave insight into how terrible of a system communism is, and had a very cool style of filming, editing and animation. Can’t say enough good about this move. Such a treat.
HI-LO – Kronos. What a track. Even in my post raver days, hard hitting baselines with a subtle buzzing type sound still hit different.
The fall of short form content by Raffiti. Really good video on the downside of short form vertical content across all platforms and how it might not be what it’s hyped up to be. Additionally, the comments on this from creators’ similar experiences were just as valuable as the video itself.
Andrew Tate X Patrick Bet David. Finally got around to watching this behemoth of an interview and it was pure gold. Andrew Tate is such an impressive, intelligent man with amazing communication skills. I encourage anyone who doesn’t understand him or believes the clips to watch this. This will give you way more insight into who he is and allow him to clarify his real thoughts in long form as his trolling wasn’t present here.
Creed III soundtrack. This full album has been on repeat lately, but especially Training Montage and Run It Suite. Powerful songs. Really great work from Joseph Shirley from start to finish.
The Biggest Menace. I’ve never really been one to care about a YouTube series, but this was different. JiDion is one of my favourite YouTubers and Niko Omilana is one of my biggest inspirations on the platform as he has some of the best storytelling + production value on all of YouTube. In this series, these legendary pranksters challenge each other to 4 pranks each to see if the other will “fold” and answer the question — who is the biggest menace? One of the best creations I’ve watched on YouTube in a very long time and massive respect to everyone involved. Absolutely loved watching this as a consumer and a creator, as they set a whole new bar for quality on YouTube.
That’s all for now.
Until next week, be well.
—Josh
