Before we dive in to this week’s newsletter: New pod episode is live with Jackson Fall. We talk about his viral “HustleGPT” AI tweet that got 20M+ impressions, 100k+ followers in 7 days and changed his life. It’s a must listen. Listen on Spotify and
2 Years Of Lessons From Running My Own Bookstore - RyanHoliday.net
It is only from doing hard things, the Stoics said, that we learn what we’re capable of. A little over three years ago, my wife and I had the craziest idea we’ve ever had in our lives: to open a bookstore in Bastrop, Texas. Opening a small business is always hard. But opening a small business during a pandemic in a small town in rural Texas? To call it a challenge would be an understatement. We’ve learned a lot…about business, about books, and about what we’re capable of. Last year, I wrote a piece on the lessons we’d learned in our first year of business at The Painted Porch. Now, another year has passed and we have learned a few more…and re-learned some of the ones we thought we’d gotten the first time. I share them here so you can perhaps learn a little from my experiences and hopefully go create something cool of your own out of it. [1] Anything can be a good business if you treat it like a business. Too many indie bookstores are started because people think they’ll be fun…or because they love books. No, you have to be serious. I learned this as a writer: treat it like a job. [2] The bookstore of course is not just a bookstore. It is my office. It is my employee’s office. It is where I record podcasts and film YouTube videos. I rent part of the building to another business (a really cool record store called Astro Records). When you are thinking about taking a big risk, look for little ways to take some risk off the table. Find multiple uses, multiple options so that if one fails, you can still succeed. [3] On the Daily Stoic podcast, Matthew McConaughey gave me a better framework for making big decisions. He told me he’s known in Hollywood as a Quick No, Long Yes. His No’s are quick. But before he says Yes to something, “I give myself about 2 weeks in each frame of mind—Yes I’m in, No I’m out—and then I measure what keeps me up at night.” [4] Keep your eye on the prize. What is success to you? What metrics actually matter to you? Remembering why you did something and how you measure success helps you calibrate your decisions properly. I’m happy enough to be putting books out in the world, making this community better, having a physical space, challenging myself, etc…as long as I don’t lose lots of money, that’s a win. [5] Forget the politics. It’s been interesting to watch people in our small town care a lot about what other people in the small town think. Except this small town isn’t big enough to support a bookstore. When you’re starting out doing things, you get strong opinions from people in your local scene etc. But that’s not who you should be trying to impress, or who matters in the long run. Look outward, onwards. Don’t be stuck thinking small, don’t let the scene you chanced into constrain you. [6] Don’t be afraid to be political though. We delayed opening during the worst days of COVID. We kept up safety protocols even after the state of Texas washed its hands of its responsibilities last year. We did it even though people got mad at us for it, even though it probably cost us business. My conscience is clean and that’s what counts. Keeping your community and your staff safe is good for business in the long run anyway. [7] Beware of mission creep. Our original plan was that we’d have only a couple hundred books, only my absolute favorite books, only the books I put in my Reading List Email. It would only be those books. But the problem is, I’m always reading and discovering new favorite books. So the temptation to add and add and add is always there. In the military, they call this mission creep. It’s hard to predict exactly how things are going to unfold, so there tends to be a gradual broadening of objectives as a mission or battle progresses. If you are setting out on a project, just something to be aware of. [8] For everything you add, take something away. There’s a great story of Mark Parker who, just after he became CEO of Nike, called Steve Jobs for advice. “Just one thing,” Jobs said. “Nike makes some of the best products in the world. Products that you lust after. But you also make a lot of crap. Just get rid of the crappy stuff and focus on the good stuff.” “He was absolutely right,” Parker said. “We had to edit.” Because we’ve always done it this way, is not a good reason. Or in our case, because we’ve always carried this book or because it sold well in the past, is not a good reason. We have to edit. [9] Whenever I am at the store, people are excited to see me and ask a bunch of questions. Whenever my wife is there people ask her, “Where are your kids?” No one has EVER asked me that. It’s just a reminder that entrepreneurship is easier for some than others and the whole idea of just pulling yourselves up by your bootstraps is nonsense. Be aware of your advantages and privileges. [10] Speaking of which…something that’s been hard to navigate is all the people who come to the bookstore to see me. On the one hand, it is awesome. But on the other hand, if I give everyone twenty minutes, my day is gone. This means I sometimes have to be rude…but if I am not, then I am rude to my writing, to my family, to myself. [11] If you’re successful, your people should be successful. Nothing feels better than distributing profits or raises to the team. If you don’t take pleasure in that, you’re doing it wrong, prioritizing the wrong things. [12] A few weeks ago, an employee made a bad call [...]
At most companies, people put together a deck, reserve a room (physical or virtual), and call a meeting to pitch a new idea. If they're lucky, no one interrupts them while they're presenting. When it's over, people react. This is precisely the problem. The person making the pitch has presumably put a lot of time, thought, and energy in...
Kottke.org Is 25 Years Old Today and I'm Going to Write About It
I realize how it sounds, but I'm going to say it anyway because it's the truth. When I first clapped eyes on the World Wide Web, I fell in love. Here's how I described the experience in a 2016 post about Halt and Catch F
How To Become Anti-Fragile (Financially) — Chris Keith
The key to becoming anti-fragile financially is Multiple Income Streams. If you lose one income stream, there are others to make up for it. Most people have 1 (or, in corporate America, a weak 1+2 punch). This leaves a ton of exposure to your cash flow/income statement, as all of your eggs are in on
A Brief History of the Past 10,000 Years of Monetary Policy - Epsilon Theory
What we saw happen in the UK last week is the first shock, not the last, and all the massive pension funds and asset owners who have turned themselves into shadow hedge funds, full of swaps and leverage through the sweet whispers of Wall Street Wormtongue, will be our undoing. Read more
I know, these are weird and trying times. It all makes you wonder what the point of stock-picking is. What is the purpose of kicking the tires, looking under the hood, and doing our jobs?
Not everything can be explained by numbers. In recent times, two eminent academics, one a Nobel laureate – Robert Shiller and the other Aswath Damodaran, both known for their works based on extensive quantitative methods, have published books about the importance of stories in understanding economics and business alike – Shiller’s Narrative Economics and Damodaran’s Narratives and Numbers. […]
There's a lot of talk right now about smaller, slimmer, tighter teams. Economics are forcing companies to cut back, and what they're finding is progress. Trim the overgrown crown, let the sunshine meet the ground, and all sorts of new life blooms on the forest floor. Even Zuck, master of a megacorp, is noticing it: https://twitter.com/...
I preach about the miracle of constraints and their ability to boost creativity in anyone. But I see un-useful constraints being used all the time by creators, so I wanted to make a small list of examples to clarify what a useful constraint looks like.
There’s only two real
Some percentage of you are your own boss, or work from home, or otherwise have a dangerous level of flexibility around when you actually get to work. Some of you also know you're especially prone to procrastination, even on a good day. If you’re both of these things, you know how deadly the combination can be. Severe procrastination isn’t just
Well, you can’t. Right? That’s the received wisdom. You have to post on social media to direct people to your blog because nobody has RSS feeds any more, nobody curates what we used to grudgingly c…
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