Things I Love
Not a sponsored list. Not a curated aesthetic. Everything here genuinely shaped how I think, build, or live. Hover any card to flip it for my actual take.
Not just good reads. Books that actually changed how I operate, lead, and build. Hover to flip for my take.
Ferriss rewired how I think about leverage, time, and what work even means. I read it while still in insurance and it never fully left. The reason I build systems instead of grinding hours.
Every role, meeting, and quarterly rock - structured. If you're still winging your ops, this book will embarrass you. I gifted it to two people the month I finished it.
People don't buy what you do - they buy why you do it. That simple frame reshaped every pitch, every brand story, every About page I've ever written. I've read it twice and gift it constantly.
Holiday took 2,000-year-old Stoic philosophy and made it a practical playbook. Every time something breaks in the business, this is the frame I reach for first. The title is the whole lesson.
Newport convinced me that deep focus is the most valuable skill in the modern economy. The hours I protect for deep work are the most productive in my week. Every operator needs to read this.
If something in my business breaks, it's on me. Own it, fix it, move. No blame, no waiting. Once you genuinely believe that, you can fix almost anything. That mental shift is everything.
The ones that stuck. Not because they were popular - because they said something true about will, work, and what matters.
Sleeping in a subway bathroom with his son while studying to become a stock broker. Every time I think the grind is too much, I think about this film and get back to work. No excuses.
Ledger's Joker. A hero forced to become something he never wanted to be. A city held hostage by chaos. Nolan made something that holds up as pure cinema, not just spectacle.
The score. The science. The father-daughter relationship that spans decades and dimensions. Nolan made a film about time and love that I absolutely cannot shake.
Zuckerberg building Facebook from a dorm room is still thrilling 15 years later. Sorkin's dialogue moves like a freight train. The opening scene alone is worth three rewatches.
Maximus loses his family, his freedom, and his name. And still. The arena speech is the most motivating three minutes in cinema. The whole film is about purpose after catastrophic loss.
I watch a lot of TV. These are the ones I've rewatched and still defend to anyone who asks.
Walter White going from chemistry teacher to drug lord isn't a fall - it's a revelation. Gilligan built the most perfectly constructed five seasons of television that exists. Nothing comes close.
Seven full runs. Somehow discovers new layers every time. It captures something true about how people work together, goof off, and accidentally care about each other. Genuinely timeless.
Four seasons of the Roy family tearing each other apart over a media empire. The final season made me sit in silence for ten minutes after the last episode. Nothing like it on television.
Costner as John Dutton is one of the most quietly powerful performances on TV. Sheridan captured something real about the American West that most storytellers completely miss.
Country, hip-hop, pop, and one project that's genuinely mine. This is what's on when I work, drive, and wind down.
Texas living calls for country. Wallen has a voice that sounds exactly right for long drives down backroads. Dangerous: The Double Album is one of the most-played records in my house.
DAMN. and To Pimp a Butterfly are both perfect. His control of craft - production, lyricism, concept - is at a level that makes most rap feel like a different genre entirely. No one touches it.
Post figured out how to make music feel good across every mood - working, driving, or unwinding. He's a fellow Texan too. Always on rotation regardless of what I'm doing.
I generate custom songs for real people using AI. 41 tracks and counting, each one tied to a real community story. More emotionally resonant than I ever expected it to be when I started.
Not just follows. People whose frameworks, content, and thinking genuinely changed how I operate and build.
The book changed how I think about product value. His content is relentless and useful in a way most business educators aren't. I watch his stuff with a notepad. Always a usable takeaway.
Co-founder of My First Million and The Hustle. He saw the value of newsletter media before it was obvious. I've gotten more real business ideas from his content than any other single creator.
The Obstacle Is the Way changed my relationship with hard things. He reads more than anyone I follow and writes with the clarity of someone who's actually tested these ideas in real life.
Proof that one person with a clear niche and a good system can build a massive business without hiring a team. His content is practical and consistent in a way most creators never achieve.
Not entertainment - education. Three channels that consistently earn the time I spend on them.
Long-form breakdowns of real business problems with specific frameworks. He gives away more useful business knowledge per video than most paid courses contain. Watch on 1.25x with a doc open.
His neural network tutorials are the densest and most accurate AI education on the internet. Not beginner-friendly - but if you want to genuinely understand what's happening under the hood, nothing is better.
Covers newsletter growth, monetization, and operations better than anything else on the platform. If you're running a newsletter or thinking about starting one, this is the playbook in video form.
My actual software stack. No sponsorships - everything here earns its monthly fee in spades.
I write, code, research, and build with it daily. Most of my custom agents live inside it. The reasoning quality is in a different class from other models. No hesitation at all.
Built-in ads network, clean analytics, a real API, and a team that ships features. Every one of my 20+ newsletters runs on Beehiiv. I've never seriously considered leaving.
Every newsletter was grown primarily through Meta ads. Spent hundreds of thousands here. At $0.15 per subscriber, there's no faster way to build a newsletter audience at scale.
Built Songs For Your Story entirely on Suno. The quality has jumped multiple times in the past year. It's the tool I show people when I want to make their jaw drop. Gets better every month.
Claude Code writes the code, explains what it's doing, and catches its own mistakes. I build real software products without a dev background because of this tool. Most leveraged thing in my stack.
Runs in the browser, works across devices, and the design-to-handoff workflow is the cleanest in the industry. I use it for everything from quick mockups to full product UI specs.
Three sites that earn regular visits because they consistently publish things worth reading.
The team publishes real platform data about open rates, subscriber growth, and ad revenue. Not speculation - actual numbers. Essential reading if you're building any newsletter business.
Harvard's journalism lab covers digital media, local news, and the business of publishing with more rigor than most trade publications. Essential bookmark for anyone building in digital media.
The safety research sections are worth reading even if you're not technical. Where I go when I want to understand the direction of AI rather than just the latest product announcements.
Three podcasts that have earned permanent spots in my workout playlist and drive time. Each one is worth the full listen.
Two hours of smart people thinking out loud about business models, opportunity, and strategy. Somehow both educational and entertaining in a way that's genuinely rare. Best ambient business education I've found.
Jocko reads military history and extracts the leadership principles buried in the decisions, failures, and unlikely victories. I listen while I work out, which is the only appropriate setting.
Guests go deeper here than they do anywhere else. The format creates space for real insight - not polished talking points. The episodes with Jocko, Naval, and Seth Godin are all worth multiple listens.
Not intellectual exercises. Frameworks that genuinely shape how I make decisions, lead, and live day to day.
Every newsletter crisis, slow month, and bad hire I've handled better because of this framework. The dichotomy of control is the most useful mental model I operate with on a daily basis.
Strip everything down to what's actually true, then build back up from there. Elon uses it. Feynman used it. It's how I approach every new product idea before I let myself get excited about it.
No excuses, no blame, no waiting on others. If something breaks in my business, it's on me. The shift from victim to operator is the most important mental move I've ever made.
Some worked, some didn't. The volume is the strategy. You learn what the market actually wants by doing more, not planning more. Real-world feedback beats internal debate every single time.
I'd rather go deep with a hundred people who really care than broad with a million who sort of noticed. Every meaningful opportunity I have came from genuinely serving a small group first.
The business doesn't get to squeeze the people it's supposed to serve. My family sets the ceiling and the floor. Everything else - every decision, every push - is in service to that. Full stop.
Not collected for the aesthetic. Each one has actually changed how I think or act at a specific moment. Hover for context.
Said before the first arena fight. The whole arc of Gladiator is about finding purpose after catastrophic loss. This one line is the whole philosophy. Shows up in my head on the hardest days.
The full version: "The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way." Ryan Holiday turned this into a whole book. I've used this reframe in the hardest months I've had building.
Full quote: "A person's success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have." Every time I've avoided the hard talk, it's cost me more than the conversation would have.
The more systems and routines I build into my life, the more actual freedom I have. No discipline means reactive and scattered. Discipline means I own my time. Simple, brutal, and completely true.
Full quote: "The only thing that separates the life you have from the life you want is the work you're not doing." No theory, no hacks, no waiting. Just the gap between current and desired, and the work in between.