Phillip Leslie

Read an interesting article from Ted Gioia. Who is doing some nice documentation on the state of culture today. Like a doctor perpetually checking in on a patient who appears to be slowly dying, Gioia updates us all with the bad reports. We all seem to know our culture and our world is in crisis these days. Yet we don't really know what to do about it or how to conceive of what's going on. I started asking myself the question: How did we get 'here'? And I decided to start working backwards,...

When best-selling author Robert Greene suffered a stroke, his comprehension of consciousness and sense of self changed. He experienced the Self not as a cohesive whole, but as a series of multiple, competing selves. The philosopher Rene Girard might see this experience as becoming aware of the presence of one's mimetic models, those whom we copy and imitate, those who we seek to become, comprising our sense of who we are. And how those models compete in a hierarchy for our sense of Self. The...

Our world is so full of distractions. These distractions pull our attention every way. I listened to a Robert Green interview. He said the most powerful skill in the modern digital world is the ability to focus one’s attention. And it's a skill almost no one has. Attention is the currency of the digital world. Your attention can be pulled here and there by social media. (Imagine corporations tapping into your bank account whenever they want and draining your balance.) We reach the end of our...

Many people working 9-5 jobs today would like to earn more money and freedom by starting their own online business, selling a service or digital product. However the same 3 obstacles block people from getting there. No vision: if you don’t see where you want to go, you’ll never get there. Worse, without a clear vision you might end up even farther from where you want to be. If clarifying vision is difficult, start with an anti-vision: What you definitely don’t want. Sometimes its easier to...

On Tuesday, day 2 on the sales floor, I closed my first sale. A $4000 multi-year renewal deal. It felt good. I got to ring the bell on the sales floor. Everyone clapped. Th vp of sales came right up to my desk and got in my face with this huge smile. “This makes me very happy.” As he walked away he remarked back to me, “Its like a drug. You’ll want more and more.” But you see closing a sale isn't the hit for me. Because after the sale high drops. There’s just a list of calls to make....

Our weeks are busy. We work. Commute. Try to workout. Spend time with loved ones. Try to get our 8 hours of sleep. Try to eat right and not just go through the drive thru. Trying to be good is exhausting. It feels like modern society is not built for our thriving. When we try to live right it feels like society starts tearing us down. Good bye progress. Goodbye healthy habits. We feel under attack, and the attack is so unrelenting we usually just give up. That’s the pressure we are under in...

Happy Saturday. You are missing out on the greatest economic opportunity in our generation. But you don't have to. Let's dive in. The creator economy is currently worth $156 billion. It's expected to surpass $500 billion by 2030. That's <6 years from now. Imagine yourself in 2030 and you, -You never started that email list. -You never started posting on X or Linkedin. -You never started that Youtube channel. Look. In late 2017 I heard about Bitcoin. It was on its first breakout tear to $20k....

Jobs provide security. They also take up a lot of our time. A consistent paycheck costs us at least 40 hours of our week. Look. The average life is around 4,000 weeks long. 4,000 weeks. I turn 31 today. 31 years is 1,612 weeks. I’m more than 1/4th through. How far along are you? Life is short. How do we use our limited time to balance work and life? Common solutions include, -Get a day planner. -Schedule your week. -Download a productivity app. -Stick to a rigid schedule. But. We have enough...