Best of 2025

This is one of the most selfish things I like to do each year. The best part is having a catalogue of things to look back on. It’s a time capsule created as a temporal landmark that allows you to travel through space and time every time you look back. All I’m tryin’ to do is look forward to lookin’ back.

1. Thought Provoking Questions:
2. Lessons Which Stood Out:
3. Favorite Founder Discoveries:
4. Favorite Books:
5. Worth Watching:
6. Best Places to Visit / Travel Memories:

Thought Provoking Questions:

1. What is the lie you’re telling yourself?
2. What has been the singular greatest contributor that has influenced where you are at this point in your life?
3. What is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for you?

Lessons Which Stood Out:

1. “Simplification is the ultimate sophistication.” – Da Vinci – each year this one seems to get a little bit louder. Nearly everyone I speak to on this subject feels similar desires to escape the trappings of Western society–the need to be productive and efficient, the unconscious accumulation of more non-essential things which clutter your physical and non-physical world and increase the surface area of life’s tasks to manage, too much screen time, relentless work demands, etc. etc. etc. I keep hearing Tyler Durden’s whispers, “the things you own, end up owning you.” Clean up your life and your environment.
2. We must choose either the pain of discipline and thinking long-term or the pain of regret and “missing out” on all the short-term comings and goings.
3. More games = more joy, presence, and laughter. Get creative. One thing I like to do is let a set of dice determine what direction to go, who’s in charge of decision making, and what happens next. When the dice decide, and you get lost, that’s when things start to get interesting.
4. Everything in life expands to what is allotted–space, time, budget, _____ (fill in the blank)…bigger house = fill it up with more stuff, bigger travel bag = pack more stuff, more time = add to the to do list.
5. A walkabout can take weeks, months or years. If you keep seeking new avenues for inspiration, the path will always reveal itself.
6. Curiosity is the best compass. What you find interesting is a better predictor of your future success than what you’re good at.
7. Optimism > Pessimism
8. Focus, over everything else, will be the biggest determinant of your progress and success when it comes to your work.

Favorite Founder Discoveries:

1. Dietrich Mateschitz – Founder of Red Bull, incredible story, and a great example of someone who truly lived his life in his own way, my favorite definition of success.
2. Nick Sleep – timeless lessons on conviction, diligence, patience, thinking long-term, and knowing when to pivot.
3. Jimmy Iovine – my favorite quote from Jimmy: “I don’t give a fuck what anyone thinks. When you’re a racehorse, the reason they put blinders on them us because if you look at the horse on the right or the left, you’re going to miss a step. And that’s why the horses have fucking blinders on. And that’s what people should have—fucking blinders. When you’re running after something, you shouldn’t look left or right, “what does this person or that person think. NO. GO.”

Favorite Books:

1. Unreasonable Hospitality – no matter what industry you’re in, there are ideas and principles you can apply from this book to the work you’re during. As the enshittification of everything swallows up our society, taking an approach focus on exceptional service, special experience, and creating true value has never been more important.
2. Zero to One – for the entrepreneurs, mandatory reading. Bottom line, if you’re building a business, don’t build an undifferentiated commodity business.
3. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow – such a fun one. Here’s a description from the NY Times “Sam and Sadie—two college friends, often in love, but never lovers—become creative partners in a dazzling and intricately imagined world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality. It is a love story, but not one you have read before.“

Worth Watching:

1. The Way of the Scorpion – Documentary about Renee Higuita

Best Places to Visit / Travel Memories:

1. Rifugio Halslhütte in Dolomites + Near death experience climbing thru a mountain pass – near death experiences are only cool after you’ve survived them. But there really is something to the effect it has in demanding you to be fully present, it’s like an energy vacuum that permits you to only exist moment to moment, as if nothing and no one else in the world exists.
2. Night time views in Santorini – first, if you haven’t visited Santorini, do it. I have been many times now and every time it is a delectable paradise. Here’s some imagery from one of my favorite lifetime experiences…as we sat in the hot tub on the edge of the cyclades, looking out at the constellations, a full moon, the lighthouse at the tip of the archipelago, a presumably loving couple celebrated their marriage with fireworks in the shape of hearts over the Aegean Sea, and this song playing in the background to create the perfect synesthetic effect– it brought tears to us and was one of those transcendent travel moments that you always strive to recapture – lightning in a bottle.
3. La Casa de Ruby in Medellin – an incredible speakeasy, jazz and salsa bar with 1930’s vibes of a prohibition or lower Manhattan classic underground cocktail and music venue. There’s no research to do – just go see for yourself. Medellin, Colombia remains my second favorite city in the world after Austin, TX.