If you’re interested in the crypto world, then I’m sure you’ve been following along with the FTX collapse, completely frying your dopamine receptors by obsessively refreshing Twitter.

I don’t need to go deep, so I’ll just give an simplified explanation of what we know so far, and how it probably came to be.

First in this story is the code names:

• FTX – Was the 2nd largest exchange
• Binance – Largest exchange
• Alameda – SBF’s trading firm, closely associated to FTX
• SBF – Sam Bankman-Fried (FTX CEO)
• CZ – Changpeng Zhao (Binance CEO)
• FTT – FTX’s made-up token

Action

This saga reads like a hybrid script of if a soap-opera and The Onion had a mutant baby. Eventually, you just stop being surprised by crypto and just accept that it’s a looney house.

So:

1. FTX international has imploded (blown TF up) – The US version claims to be ok
2. FTX seems to have a massive hole in the balance sheet of at least $8 billion+
3. Much of the mess is probably attributed to just a simple little Twitter spat.

How we got here

SBF (FTX CEO) sent a jab to CZ (Binance CEO) via a now deleted Tweet. It’s not the first time that the two have traded jabs, but SBF picked a really bad time to be all passive-aggressive.

Why? Because SBF has the behemoth of a prop shop trading firm called Alameda. We’re talking about something like $15B in assets that traded $billions of shitcoins a day.

Well, supposedly, Alameda’s balance sheet was leaked. Never good for a prop shop, but especially not good when it reveals that huge portions of your equity is made up of a self-invented valueless governance token called $FTT. It was something like 1/3 of all assets, or a staggering 88% of net equity.

This position was also a massive percentage of the entire FTT market cap. It’s not like they could actually liquidate if they needed to.

Well, now back to CZ. This is where it all goes downhill. Binance essentially owned a big ole’ giant position of FTT tokens that it had received from helping initially fund FTX.

CZ simply telegraphed to the world that it didn’t want to be part of the FTT ecosystem anymore, and it was going to sell it all.

They didn’t even get to selling much of it, they just announced it.

That’s basically all it took. $FTT started dropping as traders (and anyone with leveraged exposure) started front-running the selloff.

So What?

Welp, as mentioned, a huge portion of Alameda’s balance sheet was made up of FTT, so they were essentially toast. But why would this matter for FTX?

FTX supposedly had some big ass loans out to Alameda (remember, they’re closely connected) and a lot of exposure to FTT itself, which made up its capital base.

After this realization it was a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Users were scared of FTT going down, so the Alameda-FTX loan would be bad, so FTX might end up insolvent, so people started withdrawing from FTX, which led to FTX having more balance sheet problems, which led to more withdraws, which led to the death spiral we now find ourselves in. An old fashioned bank run.

And so much of this was started just over a stupid little tweet.

CZ is an interesting fella, but he’s not an idiot. He smelled blood, saw the leaked balance sheet, and took his shot. That’s all it took to bring a company valued at $32B last week to being worth zero today.

So to me, the interesting part of the story is the stuff above. Of course, it doesn’t end there though.

Some stuff that happened after the above.

1. FTX knew they were toast
2. They reached out to Binance for help (the only other player big enough to help)
3. SBF announced that Binance was buying FTX (everyone was shooketh)
4. CZ said yeah, we’re buying it, depending on due-diligence.
5. Binance comes back a day later and says “actually nah”, FTX’s books look terrible and there are going to be lawsuits and unhappy people and investigations and all the stuff that just sounds unpleasant. We can’t help.
6. FTX’s legal and compliance team quit
7. FTX is now worth zero. Crypto markets crash like whoa. Lots of people lost a lot of money as their funds on FTX are now probably mostly gone.
8. Everyone everywhere sells and deleverages and curses SBF.

There was some fantastic onchain detective work that possibly shows a clearer picture of what happened. If accurate (I have no idea) then it’s probable that Alameda kind of blew up in Q2 during the crazy Luna/UST/3AC collapse, but FTX’s reserves were able to float it some loans.

The above theory also shows why FTX may have come to the rescue of crypto lender Voyager Digital… as they needed to keep Voyager’s FTT tokens from being dumped.

What a wild house of cards this was.

So what now?

Today SBF tweeted about the situation, but no one believes a word he says anymore. Remember the often-used “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it” quote.

Supposedly FTX International, and I’ll quote “has a total market value of assets/collateral higher than client deposits”. This is kinda believable, as FTX has holdings and investments in a bazillion other things. But those things are hella illiquid, questionable, and grey, and god knows what else.

So maybe, just maybe, FTX will find some financial support and be able to open up some redemptions (or at least partial). We’ll see though, $8 billion is a LOT of money, even in today’s weird funny-money world.

What is known, is that Sam… is toast.

What’s the big risk now?

A friend in my community asked, “so what does this have to do with Bitcoin and Eth”?

My answer: contagion

We have to assume there will be so many damn blowups from this, so much short-selling, and a lot of fear. Everyone saw what happened from the crazy Luna/UST collapse, which led to the insane Three Arrows Capital (3AC) collapse, which led to lenders everywhere going bust, that now everyone is just scared of a lot more of that happening.

USDT has been painted to be a possible target, as FTX supposedly had vast exposure and reserves here, but no one knows anymore. I think it’s a nothing-burger, but if USDT did finally break the consequences would be extreme.

USDT has been the unbreakable black box that everyone knows isn’t full of what it is supposed to be full of (actual USD), but that has just kept kinda working and holding peg anyway. (I finally gave in and stopped shorting it months ago).

* Edit* – looks like the contagion didn’t take long. 
Blockfi is halting withdrawals as a direct result of the FTX debacle.

Expect more to come.

Lessons and Takeaways

1. Trust absolutely no one in crypto. Sounds cynical right? Well it is, but more than that the ethos of crypto is building a trustless financial system. A transparent system where trust isn’t needed, as it can be verified, by all, on-chain.

 

2. Who knows how much in the crypto space is even real? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. So many things are a black box. There is a large and very unknown amount of hidden leverage, balance sheet manipulation, and just outright theft. Liars and frauds are EVERYWHERE in the space (plenty of super-altruistic people too though).

 

3. Not your keys, not your coins. It’s always been true. If someone can’t learn to hold crypto themselves then they probably shouldn’t hold it. It’s not easy at first, but not terribly difficult either. Not having the keys also defeats the purpose of crypto to begin with (and, I might add, why I think the idea that crypto would replace the financial system is silly).

 

4. Financialization infects our modern systems everywhere, it’s just easier to do in centralized crypto because no one checks.

 

5. FOR GODS SAKE STOP USING LEVERAGE PEOPLE. Would ANY of this happened if SBF and Alameda had just traded without leverage? I doubt it. Without it your bankroll can go down, but not negative. I’ve simply been astonished at how many sophisticated-ish billionaires have gone broke this year because they are leveraged to the gills. WTF?

Have thoughts? Reach out and let me know.

– Travis

$SNAP… $META… $AMZN…

So it turns out, that in the end, markets actually do care about valuations and free cash flow.

Who would’ve guessed ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Each of these companies got spanked this week in its own unique way, but it all kinda rhymed. It all came down to profitability, at reasonable prices.

A few things that caught my attention

1. Underwater Options​
Almost all big tech companies have been paying their employees with options (essentially shares). The problem is that a lot of the options are underwater now that the stock prices have sunk so much.
​
Essentially a lot of these employees ended up making far less than they had planned. Expect to see some different forms of compensation in the future, both as employees don’t want to get shafted, and as investors finally revolt (see next point).
​

2. Stock-Based Compensation (SBC)​
It’s been a free-for-all of poor financial stewardship for years now. $SNAP has been one of the worst, and investors are over it.

A huge chunk of this comes down to how the companies are paying for their expenses (employee compensation). It’s not all coming from revenue, that’s for sure. Massive amounts of it are coming from the issuance of new shares.

To put this in perspective, Snap issued over $1billion in new shares in 2021, mostly to pay the insiders. Every new share created dilutes the value to existing shareholders (cutting the same pie into smaller slices).

As a crazy example, in 2017 Snap lost $720M, but Even Spiegel awarded himself $636M in new stock.

​

3. Buybacks
​Buybacks get a bad rep, but the intelligent practice of buybacks can make a lot of sense. It can be a tax-efficient way to return profits to owners. By buying back shares, companies are essentially making the remaining slices of the pie bigger, entitling each remaining shareholder to a greater ownership share of the company.

The problem with buybacks comes when companies simply use them as a way to cover up the SBC mentioned above, OR they do buybacks at too elevated a price. The problem is when CEO’s use them as ways to try and game the markets.

Here is a fantastic thread explaining how META botched this up, and abused shareholder capital.

Capital Allocation, Silicon Valley Style. Myriad reasons for $META's 74% Faceplant, but consider the abuse of the shareholder for capital allocation gone haywire. 2017 was apparently the right time to initiate repos. EVERY share bought, by the firm, or anybody, is underwater. 1/

— Christopher Bloomstran (@ChrisBloomstran) October 27, 2022

It’s worth reading, but the TL;DR is that Facebook used almost 78% of its profits to buyback stock over the last 6 years, but they did buybacks at a significantly higher share price than today (bad investment), AND the total amount of shares barely even went down due to all the SBC being issued.

SNAP tried the same buyback strategy (charade) but the results are even worse, and the share count still grew massively.

​

4. Profitability and Valuations
​For the last little bit of this tirade, we’ll turn to AMZN and META together. Both of these truly are amazing companies that swim in oceans of earnings. The problem right now, and one reason why the market punished them so hard this week, comes down to valuations and profitability.

For Amazon, it’s not that the company suddenly became a big cash suck, it’s simply that its growth slowed down. When something is growing like a weed you can pay a lot more for it. But, when that same thing slows down (as all things eventually do), valuations have to come back to earth.

Add to that all the king-sized capital expenditures the company has and the outlook can change.

Meta is similar. It shits cash, but with Zuck spending insane amounts attempting to build out his metaverse vision, there are a lot less profits available for shareholders. This is despite investors’ pleas to limit Meta’s capital expenditures to reasonable levels, as was demonstrated in this viral open letter to Zuckerberg by Brad Gerstner of Altimeter.

… which Zuckerberg essentially just said “nah” to.

AMZN and META are two of the greatest companies of all time, but just because they are great doesn’t mean that they are great at any price.

Add to that general market nervousness, a slowing economy, and the risk-free rate of treasuries getting close to 5%, and investors have a lot more options to consider.

​

The Last Day for 9.62% iBonds

​

This one is only for Americans (and residents), but the Series I Savings Bonds (inflation-protected government bonds) are getting the interest rate reset next week. It’s currently 9.62%, but is expected to drop to the 6.x% after that.

If you want to lock in the rate, better move quickly. It’s mostly limited to $10k per person per year.

*Note* the TreasuryDirect website is crashing some under demand, so you may have to be patient.

​

What happened in China this week

​
One of my favorite things I read is this weekly Twitter thread on what all is happening in China.

(spoiler: there is always a lot happening in China)

I think it’s wild to see all the crazy shit that goes down, the juggling of the massive debt and economy, the strategy of long-term Chinese values, and a lot more that I never expect.

China is just super fascinating to me. It has such a huge impact on the rest of the world.

Sofia’s boots-on-the-ground (via HK) perspective is worth a read:

​What happened in China this week.
​

One more thing:

I love my AirPods. I have two pairs, and basically live in them.

​This quick little hack made them even better.

I made a 2-second change and now my audio sounds way better than before.

That’s all I’ve got.

Until next weeks newsletter,
​
​– Travis​

If you ever get a chance to go, I recommend it. It’s the lowest-ego conference I’ve ever been to (hard to accomplish in this space).

Most of the talks were pretty good, but a couple resonated with me in particular:

1. “How to actually cultivate calm” by Jonny Miller of Nervous System Mastery. It was the antithesis of the (IMO terrible) “hustle culture” idea, but instead of some woo-woo “find your true purpose” stuff it was rooted in practical and scientific understanding of how the body works for productivity and satisfaction, tips to control its various states, and some techniques for reaching the sweet spot between being too-hyped and sluggish.
   ​
   I’ll probably sign up for the course myself (no kickbacks here for sharing this). Ignoring the life-satisfaction aspects (which are most important), being able to balance the body’s states are key for performance.
   ​
2. A fantastic workshop put on by Ryan Tansom on how to run and view your company as a financial asset. “Intentional Growth” was the title (and the title of his pod). The meaning of this is around intentionally pulling the levers of a company to reach a stated goal, instead of how most of us do just bumbling around just trying to “make more”.
   ​
   Some good concepts here. Balancing revenue growth (which can kill profit), deciding if you’re optimizing for distributions or long-term enterprise value, tax optimization, interesting exit options (like ESOP’s which I’d never heard of), etc.
   ​
   Ryan does have a course, which I have not taken, but it seems to offer a lot of what the workshop was about (they appear to have a few free videos).

​

Lastly, before we get into the meat of the newsletter, sending some love to the Dynamite Circle crew in Bangkok. I’m FOMO’ing on not being able to make it this year.

Aight, let’s do this:

​

The “Mystery” AI Writer

​

A bit overwhelmed by all the positive responses I received to last week’s email, so thank you .

But if you look closely at the screenshot I think over half of y’all just wanted to know the name of the amaze-balls AI writer I mentioned (I don’t blame you). Clearly there is some interest.

The AI writer I mentioned is Content At Scale.

It’s not like the others though (like Jasper, WordHero, etc). Those are useful for short descriptions or rewriting something, but this tool creates full mostly ready-to-publish blog posts almost instantly.

Proof? Here is a post that I made, posted here without any editing or formatting. Just copied and pasted, including title, URL slug, and meta description.

It’s Bananas right? If you’re interested in this, I made a short video showing it in action, as well as talking about some outside-the-box ways to use it that I think are the best of all.

(Just to be clear: that’s an affiliate link, but I was I think the first paying customer, and you get extra article credits by using my link.)

​
​Can you think of any more interesting ways to use this tool other than what I mentioned? If so, hit me up, I wanna play.
​

What was it really like to live through the Great Depression?

​

I’ve been super fascinated by the book The Great Depression: A Diary (Audible)

This book is a firsthand account of a young struggling lawyer in Youngstown, Ohio living through the Great Depression. He kept realtime journal entries for the entire decade writing down his daily struggles, thoughts and impressions of what he saw happening around him throughout this crisis.

What makes it so fascinating to me is that it’s not another typical history book looking back in time on this era as an outsider, forming the narrative afterwards.

It’s a day-by-day journal of what ordinary Americans were actually thinking during all this.

What were they thinking? How did they feel? What were they afraid of? What did they predict would happen next?

And then it’d flash forward to a diary entry six months or three years later and show how all of these predictions actually panned out.

It was enlightening to see how many things were similar to today.

Unease about the currency . The political party in power would kinda cook the books before elections to make progress seem like they did better than they actually did (like the US changing the calculation of inflation this year). Pundits spouting their theories about knowing what is next.

So much of what happened back then you see happening right now when you read the news.

I guess human psychology and politics never change.

​

Takeaway: keeping liquidity is vital

​

For me, a major takeaway from the book is that it’s important to keep a super-healthy cash balance.

Some people would claim that you should be fully invested all the time. That doesn’t work for me. I’ve always kept a higher cash balance than recommended by professionals.

Ya know who else does this? Señor Buffet is who.
​Berkshire Hathaway always keeps a very large cash balance.

Of course doing this allows me to move quickly and take advantage of opportunities when they arise.

But more importantly: it just keeps me sane. It keeps me from making bad decisions. It allows me to be more patient and logical with my moves as I’m never stuck in an awkward, over-exposed, position.

When the world’s going crazy around me I can sleep better at night and not panic.

(And there’s a LOT of value in that.)

4%+ short-term treasury yields make chilling in cash easier than ever too.

​

Some other takeaways that stuck with me:

​

1. In the end, the businesses with solid fundamentals at reasonable prices will do well even in dark times, but it can take a very long time to prove and be taxing on the psyche.
2. A lot of the “smart money” was in cash before the crash. They bought the dip in 1931. Unfortunately they all bought too soon and ended up almost as bad. (lesson: investing is hard.)
3. Margin, debt and lack of liquidity significantly ups the chances of financial death.
4. Diversification, in good assets, is key. In the book you hear story after story of rich successful people who go broke because everything they had was in 1-2 bank stocks paying high dividends.
5. Keeping money in high quality bonds is important (cash-ish). Poor quality bonds will just fail, all stocks can swing. Actual bonds in good companies and governments are much more stable. (Note* I don’t believe bond ETF’s are the same, actual bonds).
6. One benefit of the Great Depression (and downturns in general) is that people return to a more simple life. They start enjoying the simple pleasures in life again, instead of the status items we’re all so obsessed with.
   ​

The book was truly enlightening and I highly recommend reading at least a part of it. I think you’ll probably get the gist of it by just reading ⅓ or so.
​

​Pick it up on Amazon (or get it on Audible)

​

You Might Be Personally Liable For Your DAO’s Decisions

​

A super interesting development in the crypto space.

The CFTC says that if you vote with your tokens in a DAO, you might be personally liable for the actions your DAO takes. (If you’re holding tokens and don’t vote, you’re off the hook.)

That’s a big development. And it actually makes a lot of sense when you think about it.

Parker and Patrick McKenzie explain it far better than I could:

That’s all for this newsletter, until next week.

Take care,
​– Travis

No, the Fed did not actually print 5x as much money in 2020

I see the chart above getting hooted at time and time again, but it’s actually very misleading.

The chart shows the M1 money supply (the amount of liquid USD held by the public, like cash and checking accounts). At first glance, it looks cray-cray.

Even sophisticated people see this graph and think “Holy f’ing shit Bro, in two years, the money supply has 5X-ed”.

But as my big-brained friend Simon Stock points out, that’s not exactly accurate. What really happened in this graph is that the bean-counters reclassified savings account deposits to be part of M1 money supply instead of only M2 – making them more liquid.

It’s all explained in this article:

“Before April 24, 2020, savings accounts were not part of M1. Limitations in the number of transfers from savings deposits made savings accounts less liquid than M1. … But the limitation on the number of these transfers was lifted on April 24 … To reflect this fact, savings deposits are now included in M1.”

Here’s a chart showing a more accurate representation of the overall money supply (notice M2, the green line):

As you can see, the more broader M2 money supply did go up, but not by that much. It’s closer to 25% instead of the 500% you’d think if you’d only glance at the first graph.

Oh and just to be clear I still think there was far too much funny-money happening, but just not exactly as the first chart would lead you to believe.​
​

Google’s Helpful Content Update is probs punishing AI-generated content

AI writers like jasper.ai and copy.ai are pretty neat tools that have been taking the SEO world by storm. You can use them to write, rewrite or even generate whole webpages from scratch in seconds.

These tools are no joke. They can work quite well (when used as an assistant) Frequently, the AI content quality is even BETTER than my almost illiterate ass.
​
(In fact, there’s one AI service so good that I don’t even want to let everyone know about it yet, but I will soon. Feel free to email me if you’d like the name early. Edit* I ended up publishing it. Here it is.)

A lot of SEOs are creating tons of content using these AI writers because they are easier to scale. Instead of writing two articles per day they write thirty.

But – this is not without risk. Certain algos can detect AI-generated content, and there is a legit risk of it getting slapped (remember Penguin and shared PBN networks?). There are some reports that this is already happening.

There’s a clear risk to using these tools. But, I know a lot of savvy SEOs (including this one on Twitter) are already working on ways to get around it. The ones who do, will thrive. (Like the service I don’t want to tell the world about yet)

Here’s one of the AI detection tools if you’d like to play with it:
​https://huggingface.co/openai-detector/​

​

A Brief History of the Past 10,000 Years of Monetary Policy and Why Last Week Was a Big Deal

First off, let’s take a moment to gawk at the URL slug:
​https://www.epsilontheory.com/a-brief-history-of-the-past-10000-years-of-monetary-policy-and-why-last-week-was-a-big-deal/​

Regardless of that horrific URL, the post is one of the simplest explanations I’ve ever read of how money, interest rates, and central banks work. It highlights the dangers of leverage and securitization and how it results in the colossal meltdown happening with UK pension funds right now (and how it could spread).

It’s a little long, very preachy, but definitely worth your time. If you’re lazy, just do the top half.
​

​The title says it all:

​

That’s. Not. How. Inflation. Works, bro.

“If you’re going to build something from scratch, this might be as good a time as you’ve had in a decade.”

I came across this great interview with one of the all-time  VC’s Bill Gurley.

As you know, everything is shit right now in the markets. Many assets are sketchy and may not make sense. Some smart people are saying there will be a “dead decade” ahead in terms of returns on the stock market.

But Gurley makes the point that in terms of BUILDING a startup, it’s one of the better times in recent memory.

Why?

If anything, the environment to launch a startup was crazy the past few years. Now, everything has changed.

It’s easier than ever to attract talent (startups shutting down, big tech laying off). High quality developers and marketers as well as office space are much cheaper than before, making your runway so much longer.

Also IMO it’s probably a really good time to invest in early stage startups. Your portfolio can take advantage of the downturn and cheaper labor, you can invest at a MUCH lower (more sensible) valuations, and exits aren’t for several years so the current macro landscape doesn’t matter.

6 months ago seed rounds could go @ $20m valuations, now they’re crashing back to more reasonable terms. Just make sure your companies have at least 2 years (or more) of runway.
​

Druckenmiller’s thoughts on the markets

​

Here’s another interesting interview with Stan Druckenmiller – probs the greatest macro trader of all time.

He talks about the dangerous game the Fed is playing with inflation, the stock market, upcoming recession, UK pension funds and a whole bunch more.

Really to be honest, I just love listening to anything Druckenmiller says. He has an incredibly broad understanding of how the world works (and where it breaks)/
​

Final thoughts:

That’s it for this week.
Cheers,
​– Travis

My name is Travis and I’m a serial entrepreneur (addict) turned investor. I’m the founder of a bunch of different companies, and I partner/invest in a bunch of others. Here is an overview of who I am, what I do, and where I’m at in my life.

I consider myself a fairly good founder, and a fairly good investor, but I’m pretty much useless at a lot of other things. Common stuff like responding to emails on time, ordering contact lenses before I run out, or getting my taxes completed before the very last hour of the very last day.
 

 
So cliché right?

Knowledge is power though, so I’m now attempting to bring an executive assistant to protect me from myself, provide more mental freedom, and to lower my cortisol levels. A yin to my yang. A ping to my pong. The peanut butter to my jel… I’ll stop.

I’m looking for a long term partner to fill an integral role in Travis Inc. Someone who loves organization, information summaries, and figuring out how to do new things.

This role will be working super closely with me personally. So culture and values fit is crucial for success with this role. So please take some time to do research about me to see if you think we’d be a good fit. I’ve done a bunch of podcasts, my Twitter, etc. Here is a reference doc with some of it.

Let’s get into the meat of it all.

Job Description

Executive Virtual Assistant to the Owner

I’m looking for someone proactive and detail-oriented with excellent written communication skills to be my executive virtual assistant.

Summary

• This is not an entry-level assistant position. You MUST have at least 2 years experience working remotely as a Virtual Assistant for a business owner.
• Expect to get several requests/day from me, many of which include tasks that must be done that day. (note* this is obviously not expected when we are working part-time, but it is at full-time hours)
• You’ll handle both my business and personal details, including scheduling, customer service requests, uploading blog posts, ordering groceries, formatting and sending newsletters, creating digests of information, finding service providers and contractors, and making personal appointments.
• This starts as a part-time role, starting at 40 hours per month. Depending on how we work together, this could increase to a typical full-time contractor role.
• It is remote, so you can work anywhere that provides some solid overlap of hours with the East Coast USA. We communicate via email, chat, Notion, and phone. I will send recorded voice notes on the regular.

Tasks and Responsibilities

• Assist with monitoring of my inbox and emails, including responding to customers, partners, other contractors, and business contacts.
• Help working in a few WordPress websites, including uploading blog posts, updating old blog posts and formatting newsletters. Finding and working with technical staff for anything in-depth.
• Drafting initial rough blog posts based on voice notes that I provide.
• Creating easily readable/actionable digests of information from various sources that I provide.
• Maintain daily calendar, arrange calls, meetings, and conferences while making sure all details are handled in a clear and organized manner.
• Book all travel arrangements, including lodging, transportation, and activities, both within the United States and internationally
• Research and be the point person for service providers for projects such as web design.
• Handle personal details such as shopping, ordering gifts, scheduling personal appointments, and finding/hiring contractors when needed.
• Creating detailed and reusable SOPs for everything we do.

Some training on using some apps will be required (such as with Notion). I will pay for you to take any necessary courses or training.

Knowledge & Skills

• Ability to manage multiple incoming requests, while ensuring they are relayed or handled at the appropriate time, in the necessary order and in the correct manner
• High level of experience with Google Apps, Convertkit (or similar application), and WordPress. Here are the platforms I use.
• Knowledge of Notion.so is an advantage, but it is not expected (yet)
• Ability to quickly learn new software applications
• Capability to set up new systems and process, and to document those in detail.
• Native-level English, both written and verbal

Education and Experience

• At least 2+ years experience as a virtual assistant for a business owner
• Ability to handle several emails and requests per day
• Must be a digitally native person
• Exceptional ability to communicate progress on multiple projects
• Highly organized and efficient
• Trustworthy with strong personal integrity
• Forward-thinker who can proactively handle circumstances and situations to head off any crisis situations
• Fast response time, and reachable during points of our overlapping hours.
• Top notch communication via email and phone, internally and with customers
• Proven ability to prioritize tasks
• Perfectionist, super attention to detail
• Since this is a virtual position, must be a self-starter, self-motivated, and able to work independently with minimal oversight
• Must be comfortable developing and working in a virtual relationship, and having limited amount of face-time
• You must be able to help me learn how to work with an EA.

Other stuff

• I never micromanage. I’m sure you’re a smart and capable person, you don’t need me looking over your shoulder
• Compensation is negotiable for the perfect person
• Non-corporate and casual environment
• The entire team really is made up of great people who are fun to talk to
• All I care about is results, not the fluff surrounding it
• You will be exposed to new things on the regular. Data entry be damned
• I value and respect my staff. You will be treated well

 
If you think that could be you please apply here.
 
Thanks!
 

With markets blowing up, portfolios going south, and the stench of uncertainty in the air, there have been truckloads of action to watch lately. Much of it has not been pretty.

A few recent posts caught my eye and prompted me to share.

1. https://medium.com/@remi.tetot/luna-the-fall-of-a-giant-af0244cce8e5
   An internet-friend of mine talks openly about losing his 8-figure crypto portfolio in the Luna collapse. This is a very hard thing to share publicly, but he gathered his courage and did it.

 

2. https://twitter.com/uvtho/status/1534106179336605697​

   A popular crypto trader talks about his journey from turning $10k into over $1MM over three years, and then down to zero in just 6 months. This person goes way deeper than just “I lost money”, but digs into the psychological pains associated with it.

 
Posts like these are unfortunately becoming a regular occurrence.

Just today, another anon shares going from $10MM to $0. Or one of the bigger ones I’ve seen, a trader going from nothing, to over $100m net worth and $250m worth of positions, to negative $20m in the blink of an eye. He hadn’t paid his taxes, and now will lose his house and any meaningful earnings for the next several years.

So what are the takeaways here?

I think some of it is obvious, and I’ll comment on it below. I’ve shared my thoughts on portfolios for staying sane in market downtimes before, but this isn’t really what I’m trying to get across right now.

For me, I’m looking at this as one of the better ways to learn. It is not from studying success.

As Munger says:
“Invert, always invert”

Most online personalities are fast to share their wins, but few actually share failures. This is unfortunate, as failures, specifically financial ones, are some of the best learning tools we have available. I was never a fan of all the r/WallStreetBets shenanigans, but the one thing they did well was share the failures just as much as the wins. You could see what wiped out a full life of work.

“Success” is a tricky thing to teach. The reason it’s so tough is that there are a million and one ways to be financially successful, and the methods are rarely exactly repeatable.

Even looking at my own career, if I personally tried to replicate it all again it would not work. Even knowing all the same stuff, it can’t be replicated. The timing of businesses, ideas, investments, trades, etc were all relevant to that time and that time only. There are a few lessons there, yeah, but it’s not quite the same.

Failure on the other hand is a different beast.

While the foundations of success are infinite, the foundations of failure are few.

A short story of my own

Many years ago when I was maybe 19 or 20 and in college, I, like many others, got caught up in the online poker craze sweeping the nation. Turns out I was fairly good (at the time). In a relatively short amount of time, I turned a negative net worth into something like $20,000. This was a stupidly huge number for me at that time, as a dead-broke college student. It was more money than anyone in my family had ever had AFAIK.

Then it all went south, fast. I got cocky, loose, and thought I was better than I was (this game is easy, right?). I lost half in just a couple of days. Then I stopped playing poker strategy and just took big gambles, just to try and get back to where I was before.

In just another day or two I was not only broke, but negative. I had to turn to my dad for help, at a time when he also did not have any to spare. It felt shameful. I hid this from most of my friends.

Don’t despair though, the above is actually a positive story. In fact, it was one of the better things to ever happen to me. I am actually insanely thankful for my failures earlier in life. I was at least lucky that I had them when I was still young, and while the stakes were smaller, even if at the moment it didn’t feel that way.

What I learned in that short time helped prepare me for the bigger, more important times down the road. Funnily enough, I will forever be thankful that I messed up.

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A few things I learned from failures

I don’t have any really special takeaways here, as you can figure it out just as easily as I. But, I’ll share a few personal takeaways from financial failures of myself and others like in the links above.

1. Never anchor a portfolio to its all-time high.​
   Whatever paper-wealth you may obtain at any one time, don’t anchor yourself to that number. It’s not a real number, it’s a temporary blip. Trying to “just get back to where I was” is almost always a recipe for disaster. It leads to poor decisions.
   ​
2. Keep the ego in check.
   Don’t think you are better, or smarter, than you actually are. And even if you actually are smarter, always expect the unexpected. Let us never forget Long Term Capital Management. Lots of super-geniuses that missed the obvious, brought their dynastic net worths to zero and about collapsed the financial world.
   ​
3. Making money and keeping money are very different skillsets. ​
   Treat them separately. Just because you are good at one does not make you good at both.
   ​
4. Leverage, irrational concentration, and debt, are frequently the final nail in the coffin for people who play that game.
   It’s just not worth it. For every one that wins (and there are winners) there are 10x as many losers.
   ​
5. Embrace failures. ​
   Almost all of the successful people I know (who have kept it) have had some sort of large failure in their life. They learn from it. The losers in this are only the ones who make the same mistake twice.

 
I personally actually love working with people who have had their asses handed to them at some time in the past. Ego and hubris are minimized.

There is a story that I love. I don’t remember the exact details, nor can I find the quote, but you’ll get the gist.

Back when Thomas Watson was the CEO of IBM, some employee made a major mistake. This one mistake cost the company over $600,000 (Millions in today’s Dollars). When being interviewed, they asked Tom if he was going to fire the employee.

“No, I just spent $600,000 training him. Why would I want somebody to hire his experience?”

We all mess up. Learn from the mistakes, or take the preferred route and learn from the mistakes of others. There aren’t too many paths that can take someone to zero. Master avoiding those few pitfalls, and the chances of long-term success are infinitely higher.

Thanks,
-Travis

I hadn’t planned to write about Crypto today. I had originally planned to write about the collapsing public and private markets, and what that will probably mean for us all for a while.

But then, just like that, the crypto gods just gave me a tidal wave of doom-porn to watch, and now I can think of nothing else. So we’ll just have to wait on the other stuff.

I guess we should chat about Luna and UST first​

You probably know already, but just in case here is a quick overview of what it is and the massive collapse happening as we speak (and the scary unknown consequences coming from it).

UST is an algorithmic “stablecoin” that is supposed to be pegged to $1 using a sort of buy/sell algorithm to maintain its peg. As of just a few days ago there was a mind boggling $18-billion worth of these things in the world. LUNA is its sort of sister coin that supported most of the peg, and it had a market cap of about $30-billion a week ago.

Well, things change fast. As of this writing the UST “stablecoin” is now at $.62 and is rapidly changing by the minute, and LUNAs market cap is down to “only” about $1.5-billion.

I’m not going to fully explain this whole mess, but here is a pretty good Twitter thread on how it works if you’d like to understand the whole mechanism. If your crypto-speak isn’t up to par don’t worry, ignore the lingo, it doesn’t matter. Just focus on the basic explanation.

A simplified TL;DR is that the herd believed that LUNA had some value, and the protocol allowed users to swap their LUNA for its current dollar-value, paid out in UST, so that made UST have value… because it was backed up by Luna… which people believed had value.

Here is a precise diagram of how it all worked

So why did anyone do this? All it took was bribing UST holders a little bitty 20% APR for staking their UST.

Thankfully, I never participated in this giant game-theory contest. It always felt like picking up pennies in front of a steamroller.

However, I can see how so many people found it attractive, especially considering how long it had been around. The longer it’s around, the safer it is… right?

Let us never forget the Turkey Problem.

What was the LUNA/UST endgame?

On one hand (and thanks to hindsight), it seems clear that UST & LUNA could never work over the long term. On the other hand though, I can see what they might have been trying to achieve, hoping to reach a certain size where gravity alone would cement its authenticity.

I’ve called this “meme’ing its way into legitimacy”

This is kinda what Tesla did in my opinion. It was this little company that happened to create a pretty neat first car, but that financially never really made any sense. But Elon is the master of all masters when it comes to rallying loyalists and boosting up stock prices.

He just played the game to perfection. Perfectly timing Tweets, announcements, unveilings, promises, etc to keep the stock price going up. It went up so damn much that Tesla was able to raise more money, build new factories and products and tech, which raised the stock price some more. Rinse, repeat. Eventually they did it enough so that the company became super legit and sells a crap-ton of cars each year on a global scale.

I won’t comment on the current valuation (y’all know) but it’s undeniable that his game worked.

Elon meme’d the company into legitimacy.

$AMC also did this by playing into the r/WallStreetBets crowd. The AMC execs played good games to pump the stock high enough where they could issue hundreds of millions in new stock, thus shoring up their balance sheet actually making them legit again.

As for UST and Luna, in the later stages of the project I have to think that they were trying to do the same. Fake it until they could make it to safety, and then diversify away (and also make themselves filthy rich).

Matt Levine in his always lovely writing had a much better way of saying it than “meme’ing it”.

Even though I find it all a bit foolish, I don’t necessarily hate on the LUNA team for doing this. They were providing the game that the ponzi-players were looking to play. Just like $AMC did with r/WallStreetBets, just like Adam Neumann of WeWork did for Softbank. They provided what the (crazy) market wanted.

Even if it’s not something you particularly like (I actually hate it), it’s hard to deny it.

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How I dodged UST?
​

Back in my early DeFi days I was lucky enough to be a participant in one of the first “seigniorage” algo-stable games called Empty Set Dollar ($ESD).

It was similar in nature to UST, except that instead of paying 20% APR a year, it would pay stakers something like 3% every 8-hours whenever the price of ESD was over $1. Absurd.

And instead of a LUNA token to backstop the $1 peg, it had “bonds”. If the price of ESD dropped below a $1, then users could sacrifice their ESD for bonds that would pay off extra $$ once the peg returned to $1. This would both reduce circulating supply of ESD and create upward buying pressure for the token, both of which would bring the value back to the peg.

In theory.

Only in theory. In reality the peg-mechanism kinda worked once or twice, then everyone got scared and ran for the door. You can see how this experiment worked out.

I was new to these sorts of games and got incredibly lucky thanks to the guidance of friends and a healthy dose of skepticism. It was a wildly profitable venture for me, making multiple 6-figures in only 2 short weeks. BUT, if I had stayed in for only 1 more week, it would have all gone to zero. I repeat, I was very lucky.

I didn’t ignore my close call though. I evaluated it. I watched, I learned, and more specifically, I paid very close attention to those in the space who just always seemed to win.

There are always some new grand crypto projects promising the world, with huge hype, high expectations, and kingly valuations surrounding them. How is it that some people that I knew just consistently seemed to do well time after time. And to invert it (always invert), how is it that some people just always seem to get screwed (the normies)?

I found some answers that work for me. Here are my own personal rules on how not to lose (how to win is another topic). These have served me incredibly well these last few years, especially in DeFi. Note that I only used these in crypto, not for real-world stuff.

​

1. Don’t drink the Kool-Aid

Take advantage of opportunities you may spot, but don’t believe a damn word of it. Just because the market says something has value, doesn’t mean it actually has value. Almost all narratives in the crypto space can be popped if someone thinks about 2nd and 3rd level consequences for even a few minutes (but most people never will). BTC and ETH could be argued for.

2. Always get out earlier than you’d like to

Once you’re doing great and things seem too good to be true, it’s probably because it is. Escape when it still feels like you’re leaving money on the table.

3. Nothing in this space is permanent

”From now on, I’m just going to be an ICO trader”. I heard a friend say this in 2017. We know how that went. Same thing over and over. Blue chips, DeFi yields, L1’s, NFT’s, etc. It’s always the same, the game changes. Don’t try to hold on.

4. Don’t try to value-invest

“It looks cheap here” is a lie. There are no proper valuations in this space. 98% of all projects have zero fundamental value, and only have value based on crowd sentiment. If they don’t pay cash, they don’t have a fundamental value. Trying to figure out if something is “underpriced” if it will never pay cash is silly. You’re just guessing on the mobs narrative. Once there is a crack in a narrative, it’s usually over.

This all might sound a little dark, and I wouldn’t argue that claim, but that doesn’t change it all. Remember, tokens are not stocks that can eventually be based on some sort of cashflow (keyword: eventually). The rules in crypto are different. Traders and insiders rule crypto.

​

So what’s going to happen to UST and LUNA?

I haven’t a clue, but usually once a collapse starts it is really difficult for it to ever come back. Who would trust it again when there are other options? I know where I’d lay my bet.

Although these things really suck for a lot of individuals, who knows if this is even a bad thing for society at the end of the day?

Maybe the ecosystem needs failures like UST and ESD in order to grow, getting the speculative ponzi-mess out of the way so that more legitimate uses for the tech could come to fruition. In theory, LUNA was trying to create a true decentralized stablecoin that didn’t have to be over-collateralized (like $DAI). At least we now clearly know something else that does not work.

Or, perhaps, maybe the masses just want another ponzi to try and get easy money again? Who knows?

Stay safe
–Travis

It’s not just for stock pickers

Last week I went to Omaha.

Joined by thousands of others from every imaginable walk of life, from cowboy hats to 3-piece suits, we all descended upon the small-ish city to join in the often described “Woodstock of capitalism”, all to try to catch a few nuggets of wisdom from a couple of dudes in their 90’s.

Well, that’s not entirely true.

People come for a variety of reasons. Some do come to try and learn from Warren and Charlie, some come to use the crowds to refill their value-investing enthusiasm tank, and some come as a sort of religious-ish annual pilgrimage to pay homage to the man who made them fabulously wealthy.

Many others simply come to enjoy all the meetups surrounding the big event, using it as an eligible tax write-off to hang out with like-minded people.

I personally came for a blend of it all. Facing the facts that Warren and Charlie are both quite ancient, there is always a very real chance that the duo might not be back together next year. I’ve learned more than I can ever possibly express from those two, so there is personal meaning behind the voyage.

I also, most certainly, go for the meetups. There are a fair amount of very peculiar individuals who end up in these halls, but there is also a swarm of people doing fairly interesting things in their professional careers. Fund managers, private equity, entrepreneurs, VC’s, real estate developers, finance professionals, and a hodgepodge of hybrids like myself who do a bit of everything.

Now, frankly speaking, being packed in rooms full of the above people can generally feel a bit… icky, but for some reason the crowds of these particular finance people at Berkshire events always seem to have a bit less ego and a touch more self awareness than the common finance-bro.

(Although there are still WAY too many Patagonia vests flying around)

Some stuff everyone will enjoy, and some will only make sense to the Berkshire nerds like myself.

Stuff I Observed

​

On trying to beat the market

I was a bit amazed at the amount of people I talked to whose stock portfolios were almost 100% index funds. These aren’t your neighborhood plumber, these are Wall Street professionals, successful VC’s, and exotic options traders who all keep most of their net worth in a few index funds, and maybe a little Berkshire.

The kind of people who you would expect to try and beat the market, effectively saying that they can’t, or at the very least it’s not worth their effort to try and do so.

If they don’t try and beat the stock market, why should I?

​

On connecting with people

There are a ton of interesting people at the events and meetups surrounding the big day. But how does one connect with them?

Well I noticed something fascinating.

If you’re interested in making friends, and creating deeper relationships with them, then you might think you should share your investing philosophies or some special opportunity.

Wrong.

That is precisely how not how to do it. Past a certain point, most people in the room are somewhat sophisticated and already doing this every day. Everyone has different focuses, but most can speak the same language investing-wise.

The way to actually connect is by sharing perspectives on things outside of investing. Living an interesting life, being generally curious, and sharing experiences that we can all relate to.

Everyone (myself included) was far more interested in that than some sort of hot tip (no one ever trusts those anyway).

As an example, I just happened to run into William Green, the author of one of my favorite and most frequently gifted books: Richer, Wiser, Happier ( get it).

We had a lovely chat on our shared experiences living in Asia, the mindsets and energy gained from certain locations, and some of the hard to explain wisdom of spouses. I believe that he liked my understanding that his book was less about investing, and more about how to reliably live a rich life filled with meaning and fun challenges. Investing was just a way of expressing it all. “Collecting points”.

Not once did we talk about how to invest in anything in particular, and I believe if I had even tried to, it would have killed the vibe.

​

Value investing is a mindset, not a strict technical style

This means investing in fundamentals of companies, not forecasting prices or trends. Being patient, calm, and rational. It’s business. It’s not speculation. It’s avoiding crowd mentality.

This is why value investing and its teachings can be so useful to someone like myself, who invests in all kinds of stuff, but doesn’t really focus on buying equities in public markets. The mindset transfers to all walks of life.

​

The exhibit hall feels… slimy

The event is not all sunshine and rainbows. The exhibit hall is packed full of Berkshire subsidiary companies, but it feels a bit like an amusement park gift shop trying to lure children in to pitch fits so their parents give in and buy something dumb. Lots of elderly people getting caught up in the hype to be part of the crowd.

Plus side: There were far fewer Patagonia vests clogging up this area.

Ajit Jain is an incredibly impressive individual

Joining Buffett and Munger on the stage this year were the two vice-chairmen of Berkshire, Greg Abel and Ajit Jain. To overly simplify, Jain is basically the head of everything insurance, and Abel is the head of everything else.

Some of the questions were thrown up to the two vice-chairmen. I wasn’t impressed with Abel’s answers at all. He sounded a bit like a politician who uses a lot of words, but with very little real substance.

Jain on the other hand really captivated the audience. Such clear responses that just overflowed with intelligence. No fluff, just patient explanations, and (in typical Berkshire fashion) he was blunt on both the good and the bad.

I loved him.

​

Most of Berkshire’s success boils down to what they don’t do.

Berkshire seems to sit on their hands a lot. They have been criticized for not deploying more capital the last couple of years (and maybe rightfully so). It seems like ages go by without hardly a blip of action.

Then, they strike like lightning.

At the meeting Buffett said [paraphrasing] that during the first half of the quarter Berkshire deployed only tiny bit of capital ($2B) out of its war-chest, then in only the course of three short weeks they were able to deploy a staggering $40 Billion dollars.

Buffett followed up by saying “and now we’re back somewhat in our more lethargic mood”.

They really do just sit around, watch, learn, and wait. They are extremely opportunistic, a trait that I’ve also noticed the best entrepreneurs I know encompass. They move like lightning, bet heavily, and take massive action when an opportunity or idea presents itself.

So what’s going on here?

What Berkshire does not do is play games they aren’t well suited for. Since their investing core mostly revolves around finding good, stable, profitable businesses at decent prices and buying those, they “miss out” on big runs of more speculative companies that can post massive gains for a while, but many times, eventually, fall back to earth.

They are okay looking foolish, hearing that they’ve lost their touch, and that the game has changed. They wait for the pitches that make perfect sense for them, and simply ignore all else.

Munger has famously said

What Berkshire is inverting here?

To begin with they are starting from the first principle of simply avoiding companies that don’t make solid profits (revenue and hope be damned!). They are ok missing some winners, as long as they avoid more losers. They know one of the best ways to lose is to bet heavily on some big potential winners that don’t end up living up to the hype. So they simply avoid those.

In doing this they miss things like the Googles and Amazons, but they make up for it having a stable and nearly bulletproof base.

I’d like to add that their style isn’t always the only strategy out there. Venture Capital for example is the complete opposite, in that it’s a game of requiring you to hit just a few winners in spite of having lots of losses. Berkshire is just playin the game that they know, and know best. And they just chill the rest of the time.

They focus on what they know, and ignore all else.

​

The crowd felt vindicated

It really was fantastic timing for this meeting. With all the market insanity the last couple of years with stuff like meme-stocks ($GME, $AMC, etc) and crazy valuations, it was great for the shareholders to get together for a “home-team win”. With markets everywhere crashing and coming back to reality, Berkshire is standing like a fort.

Berkshire’s performance had just recently eclipsed the once wildly popular (and highly speculative) ARK Innovation ETF, (while the anti-ARKK ETF is booming).

Time after time over the decades this scene has repeated itself. Berkshire refusing to bend its principles, while markets go wild with speculation. And time and time again, after enough time has passed, the speculators always have to eat their words.

Munger in particular ripped into the speculative gambling mania that had taken over so many people. He has long been outspoken against RobinHood, and the options-first gambling parlor it had enabled the last two years.

When the topic of RobinHood, which is down 86% from its high, was brought up on Saturday Munger said:

”It was disgusting. Now it’s unraveling. God is getting just.”

The crowd loved it.

​

Will I go again?

I’m not sure, probably. This was my 2nd pilgrimage, and it was nice, but not anything crazy. I actually enjoyed my solo-Sunday visit seeing the traveling Wicked musical far more than the event itself, so take that however you want to.

If you’ve never been before and you’re a Buffet fan, I do believe it is worth it to go at least once.

If I go again next year, I’d probably try and pack even more private events and meetups into the few days. That really is where most of the value comes from IMO.

Thanks!
​-Travis Jamison

Soooo… needless to say 2020 didn’t exactly go as planned. All of the things I thought I was going to focus on, places I was going to see, completely boring normal-people stuff I was doing to do… all tossed out the window. Oddly enough though, the year was quite beneficial for me. That’s not to say that I liked everything it threw at me, frequently quite the opposite, but it is leaving me as a better version of myself than the year before.

The challenges thrown out helped me learn quite a bit more about myself. How my brain works, what things are truly important to me, and how I’d like to move forward living my life. A lot of things that I thought defined me turned out to not be all that important, and a lot of things that I didn’t care about at all turned out be at the top of my list.

So here’s a little list of the things I’ve learned this year, and how they’ve helped me. If you’re expecting my typical writing style full of memes and lame jokes, my apologies. It’s just not what flowed out this time.

First lesson: Reduce dopamine hits

Based on my admittedly limited understanding, the broscience definition of dopamine is that it creates the little reward feeling when we anticipate receiving something pleasurable. It in turn increases “reward seeking” in humans. Unfortunately though, modern society functions in a way that leaves us always chasing the next “hit” of dopamine. Social media, email, news (especially 2020 news), etc play with our emotions. The goal of most of these apps is literally to get us hooked. To get a little reward response each time we check it (go to Facebook and check your notifications, close it, and come back 5 min later. You’ll have a new notification). We aren’t biologically built to have this onslaught of stimulation.

I’m personally extremely susceptible to this little form of addiction, but at least I’ve learned it now. On top of the traditional list of suspects, I can also (read: do also) get hooked on things like checking metrics, market prices, SEO rankings, analytics, etc. When I get caught up in it all and am lucky enough to realize it, I find myself frequently thinking of Taleb’s story of the dentist turned trader, and its negative impact on his emotions despite being successful.

For me, a huge win has been actively trying to decrease the amount of stimulations that I receive. I’ve had to take extreme measures though, as my addictions are strong. I hide my rank tracker and analytics logins and make them a pain in the butt to retrieve. I remove social media from my phone so I can only use it on desktop. If I want to share the rare post on Instagram for example, I make myself download the app, post, then delete it again. If I don’t, then “just one quick look” snowballs quickly. Just consciously knowing this has made a big difference. When I fail and get caught in the snowball, I feel noticeably worse at the end of the day.

My morning ritual

I have tripled down on my morning ritual, and have seen amazing results. I ebb and flow with this, and admit that sometimes it’s still a struggle, but even if I’m only successful part of the time it still pays massive dividends.

I believe each person should have their own personal ritual tailored to them, but here are some of the things that work well for me.

1. For starters, my phone stays in airplane mode all morning until I complete my routine (this alone can 2x my productivity for the day, as I tend to leave airplane mode on longer).
2. I focus on my mental health first. For me, that is generally reading Stoicism or some old Zen texts while having my morning tea, using a meditation app, and journaling specifically about those topics afterwards. In good weather I sit on my back porch during it all, which is a great peaceful start. I watch the birds and the squirrels play, and realize how good of an old man I’m going to make.
3. After that I generally will head straight to my laptop, but I limit what I work on at first. I try and harvest what is the most productive time of my day, before the distractions roll in. I attempt to just work on “the one thing” that will help my main goal progress. The deep work.

My friend Chris Sparks says something along the lines of (paraphrasing) “once you break your morning attention span, you don’t get it back“. Once I hop into email, check one single message, or anything else in that realm I’m gone. My brain has lost its edge and it won’t come back until tomorrow. So I push back anything besides deep work and my most important tasks at the start of the day, and leave the admin work for after lunch (as an example, I’m writing this post in the morning during airplane mode, otherwise the busy work would keep it from ever going live).

Refining the art of letting bad things happen

I believe I first heard of this idea from Tim Ferriss. Basically the idea is that you consciously ignore some things that you know are going to lead to problems, but that those problems are really a good thing overall. They are unimportant in the grand scheme, and in welcoming them you’re making a tradeoff for something better.

I’ve done this in several ways, but one specific way this has shown itself has been making the somewhat painful decision to just not be as responsive to communication. I rarely check my social media messages and message apps, I let emails go too long, and Slack… yikes. On top of this I’ve been choosing to ignore non-core business projects that aren’t the best use of my time. Maybe I have a great idea for a new affiliate site, does that mean I should work on it? No, it probably won’t move the needle.

The tradeoff to this has been my ability to work on higher leverage tasks that DO move the needle. The ability to push what is more important in the right direction. To ignore the pennies and focus on the dollars.

Having a not-to-do list

One thing that has helped me in my quarterly planning is making a NOT-to-do list

But not like a "avoid sugar" list. Instead, a list of solid potential projects that I'm consciously saying no to for now

If I don't choose what to ignore then I try to do it all and succeed at none

— Travis Jamison (@Travis_Jamison) October 5, 2020

We all have very limited bandwidth. And even less highly productive time. I’ve added a subpage to my quarterly planning Notion document titled “the not to do list”. This is in the same realm as the art of letting bad things happen, but it’s more deliberate.

Basically the gist is that if I don’t make a list of things that I am consciously going to ignore then I just end up spinning my wheels and not making progress on anything. Trying to do everything, leads to succeeding at nothing. Trying to go in every direction leads to me standing still.

So I just list out stuff that I’m consciously deciding not to do. To be clear, these are things that I WANT to do, but I’m choosing not to. This includes websites I own that I will have to ignore, despite having good ideas for them. This includes new projects that I can’t start, etc

I can always pick them up later in the next quarter if it makes sense, but I’ve noticed that if something doesn’t make the cut in one quarter, it most likely won’t in the future either.

Quality sleep insurance

When Covid hit, I went deeper down the rabbit hole of looking at my financial life from different angles. Markets and businesses were obviously crashing at the same time, and I personally was not quite sure how my companies would fare. It was (and still is for many) a frightening time.

I found myself spending an inordinate amount of time thinking about this fantastic post on the Dragon Portfolio. I’ll try and summarize (but excuse me, I’ll butcher it). The basic idea is about how to build a portfolio that can stand the test of time (100 years), and survive and even thrive in most conceivable market events. To do this you build a portfolio that has something for when times are good (stocks), something for when shit hits the fan (tail risk hedges), times when inflation is crazy (gold), and so on. I won’t get into the specifics, but I highly recommend reading it yourself for the full picture.

So the general point is that a portfolio constructed like that has historically performed better over long periods of time, but I actually saw it as something a bit different. To me, it’s a portfolio constructed in a way to provide the best possible sleep no matter what is happening. A-grade sleep insurance.

To me, even if the premise about superior returns didn’t pan out, I would happily give up moderate returns in exchange for increased peace of mind.

So I full-on drank the Dragon Kool-aid. However, the more I thought about it the more I thought that the full portfolio construction doesn’t make sense for me personally. If I had a traditional 9-5, or if my entire livelihood was derived from a retirement portfolio then I would most certainly be all in, but my life and my career is vastly different.

So I took to mentally constructing my own personal version, a “Dragon Portfolio for entrepreneurs”. A major chunk is built around having cash producing assets (businesses) in true non-correlated industries. Who cares about the sticker price of a business if it is paying the bills? Add to that some “oh shit hedges” such as gold and Bitcoin and the picture starts coming together a bit. I might make a bigger post on this in the future, but it’s been a rewarding and calming exercise.

Know when to ignore the plan

Really good opportunities are rare, sometimes it’s really important to just be opportunistic.So with all of that talk above about building in systems and concentrating on important goals, there have been several times this year when I’ve completely ditched what I was working on because something incredible popped up. I believe the world will generally throw awesome opportunities in front of you, but not very often, so you need to cherish them and move fast. I think it’s important to know when you should drop everything else and run with something. Bet heavily (with time or with money) when the odds are in your favor.

A couple of these came my way in the last half of the year. One was buying an investing newsletter from Richard Patey, which we then morphed it into the investing.io community (something I am very bullish on over the long term). I expect this to be both personally and professionally something very fulfilling over time. If I ask myself the question “would I still want to be working on this in 5 years”, the answer is a clear yes.

The other was Defi. I don’t want to get into too many details, as I’m incredibly hesitant to recommend it to anyone (it’s degenerate AF), but it’s been incredibly lucrative (and fun) to be involved in the right projects at the right time and I am very grateful for those awesome people who have helped me.

It’s good to be aware of when you should drop the plan, and swim with the current.

There is no “finished”

Everyone has their own demons and their own strengths. For me, I have always had a fairly easy time pushing through work, being disciplined, and “preparing”. With this in mind, I find it easier to just work harder than to actually enjoy myself. I have fooled myself countless times that “after I accomplish or achieve X, then I’ll start to do Y”. However, those goal-posts of life somehow keep moving further away each time I accomplish something else.

One possible reason with my obsession with doing more is that I keep trying to reach this magical place of where everything is now done, just as it should be. “Ah, now I can relax”. This is a mythical place. Business is messy, there is always something you can do, always something to improve. Lusting after the idea of “finished” is missing reality. Finished is a mirage, it does not exist. This will be an ongoing battle with me, but awareness is the first step.

How (and where) I want to live my life

During some of my weekly reviews I started noticing a pattern. When I would review my schedule, or think about what I did, it became increasingly clear that the time I enjoyed most was that which I shared with other people. I’m introverted by nature, so this was a surprise. My wife and I’s simple weekly date night (at home), my scheduled weekly call with my dear friend David Hehenberger, or literally EVERY time I caught up with a friend who I haven’t talked to enough lately. Without fail every single time these turned out to be the highlights of my week, while I could barely remember any of the other stuff I spent my time on.

This theme also spilled over into a big life move. Fabi and I made the ginormous decision to move to my hometown of Asheville. After a decade of living in massive cities abroad with near endless travel, and with dipping my toe in Charlotte for a bit, I never would’ve guessed I’d end up back home. But here we are. Thanks Covid.

When I was living abroad one of my biggest gripes was the transience of it all. I made great friends who I still love to this day, but with everyone coming and going it was hard to really fully commit. Moving to Asheville will let us focus more on family and close friends, while (post-plague) promoting more casual and repeated interactions in the real world (good overview from Nat Eliason on that). It also doesn’t hurt that the quality of life and food scene in Asheville is world-class. We bought a house that we’d be happy in for decades, and hope to be all moved in by February.

What about my failures?

Everything I’ve listed as a success, has also been a failure. My morning ritual, avoiding dopamine hits, building deeper relationships. I’ve failed miserably at these things more times than I can count, but that’s actually ok. I don’t need to be perfect. Even if I’m successful only 25% of the time, that still is pushing me in the right direction, and it appears to compound. When I “fall off the wagon” with these things I realize it’s okay, life is messy, restart and move forward.

It reminds me of meditation in a way. You will catch your mind wandering a million and one times, but that’s ok, each time you do you just bring yourself back to concentrating on the breathe and you start again. It’s not a failure, it is the process.

A special thanks to everyone that I work with, I’m extremely lucky to be surrounded by world class people that I can depend on at all times. Y’all are rockstars. Also a thanks to Taylor Pearson for the priceless coaching sessions. The clarity you bring will pay life-long dividends.