My daily writing.
This is a test post, and I'm writing it from 41,000 feet in the air. I'm gonna start writing on here now, and my one rule is anything I write cannot be written with AI. This is real, this is authentic, and it's gonna be mostly private. But if you're ready this right now, thanks! I know not a lot of people read this anymore! [IMG_7889.JPG]
I always hated this question. And I envied the other kids who always had the answer. They knew exactly what they wanted in life. So much confidence. So much conviction. But me... I always felt like a mutt. I wanted to be many things, but none of them ever really stood out to me. I was always bouncing around... Different hobbies, changing interests, different careers, and more. “Pat, what are you…
So here’s the truth: Building a business is hard as f*ck. And last week, I hit the wall. Well… I’d actually been running head first into the wall for a few weeks. But I was so far up my own ass I didn't even realize. And inevitably... it finally knocked my ass down. After finishing another workshop, I looked up at the clock and realized I had been working for like 12 hours straight. 7am-7pm The…
My mom and dad got divorced right after I graduated from college. If you’re a kid of divorce, you know how hard that is on the family – especially on finances. It was especially tough on my mom. For respect of her privacy, I'm not going to go into all of the details. But what I will say is: My mom grew up with nothing. She worked her ass off to build a family, put food on the table, and put us…
4 years ago, I get a call from my friend Jon. Jon: "Hey man - you want to come out and help out at the ranch?" Me: "What ranch?" Jon: "I'm out here with Kanye and his team and we need some extra hands while he's recording his album." I nearly dropped the phone in disbelief. Kanye is my favorite artist person of all time. Of course I said yes - how could I turn down this opportunity? I get in my…
PSA: You should take a “think week”. 3 years ago, I hit my breaking point. So… I got in my car and drove 3,029 miles. No destination. No plan. Nothing. This drive across the country… it grew my business 6,900%. Here’s the story: -- It’s May 2020 (my 3rd year as a founder). I’m running 2 different businesses + dabbling in dozens of side projects. I’m working 80 hours a week. And I’m living with my…
How I built a $1M business on 2 hours a day. This is the story of how I changed my life from a Starbucks: [Image] POV: It's 2017 and: - I'm 5 years into "working for the man" - I'm $50,000 in debt - I feel like there's no way out Me: "I'm going to start a side project to get myself out of this." -- Months go by. No progress. Same old story... Full of ideas and dreams with no plan on how to execute…
[.] Cringe alert. Nearly 10 years ago I took this embarrassing selfie. It was my first day in corporate America. I woke up at 6AM, put on a very uncomfortable suit and snapped this photo. I was so excited about my big new career. “I made it.” I’d spent over $200K and thousands of hours for this moment (4 year degree). But within 8 hours, I realized I’d made the biggest mistake of my life. Here was…
It’s officially been 5 years since I launched the original Starter Story website: [Starter Story Homepage (2017)][Starter Story Article (2017)] Yep, that’s starterstory.com, when I “launched” the website in 2017. And, of course, nobody visited it. On the surface, it doesn’t look much different than it does now. But behind the scenes, everything has changed. I’ve turned this little side project…
If someone runs into a bug on Starter Story, I always try to send them a personal email that it was fixed. If the user is logged in, my error reporting tool Sentry tells me what user experienced the bug. If someone did that to me, I think it would be pretty cool. Customer service and care goes a long way.
I invest money every single week. 60% into index funds (auto balancing robo investor). 20% into equities. And 20% into Bitcoin. I have it set up so it withdraws and deposits the money automatically every week. I barely even think about it much. But it feels like a nice way to financial independence. 1. Make consistent money from a profitable business (cash flow) 2. Don't spend too much of it on…
It blows my mind how endless the possibilities there are building your own business. It is fulfilling and fun and scary. I'm grateful I get to do this every day. Right now I sit here on my couch building. Building cool shit that makes money. Unbelievable that I do this for a living. That is all.
Just came across this media company called 'Future' today. Never heard of them before, but they are primarily digital media and run lots of smaller sites. They have literally hundreds of "brands" (websites) that they manage. Their revenue is $756M with an operating profit margin of 32%. That's $243M in profit. (source) I've found a few other companies that are doing this well: Dotdash, Red…
I had a shower thought today. Disruption happens a lot differently (and more slowly) than we think. For example, think about disruption in the newspaper industry by the internet: Newspapers didn’t immediately go online once the internet was created. Rather, blogs and websites started cropping up, and slowly people started getting their news from the internet. This adoption took years. Once the…
I want to be a more positive person. More optimistic, less pessimistic. Glass half full, instead of glass half empty. Stop saying sarcastic, clever, or negative skewing things, in my personal and professional life. What I’ve been doing lately is just noticing whenever I have negative thoughts or say negative things. It’s OK to have them. But just noticing them is the first step. I think that with…
I've been working on rebuilding our "databases" at Starter Story. I want them to be way more useful, and have them look a lot more professional. It all started with this database for side hustles. [side hustles database] I modeled this off of the U.S. News Best Universities database and UX. I love how that page looks and feels. And it does very well in Google search. That project took forever, but…
Today, I find myself with a million tasks to do. Last week I was away, and the work piled up… On one hand, it’s kind of depressing to think that the rest of my life is filled with work. Filled with various tasks I need to complete every day, that in the grand scheme, are mostly pointless. 95% of the things I did today will amount to nothing. Will be forgotten in 5 years. The project will fail,…
I spent the last week in Mexico. A few days at a tennis camp during the week, and then a weekend bachelor party with old college friends. Traveling is finally, finally a thing again. And it felt really nice. In 2021 I almost never traveled, and it definitely affected my mental health. Although flying on planes and going through airports are still such a nuisance, it is so very worth it to get out…
More updates on the Starter Story business model transition (to ads). We are finally starting to see some success. Although it’s taken months of thinking and planning and selling, we have officially locked down 3 big advertisers. For a total of $23K recurring ad revenue per month. Our goal is to do everything in our power to make them happy, and keep them on board and get them to renew past their…
Since I started playing tennis, I’ve been documenting every time I’ve played, practiced, or just hit around for fun. I track lots of things, such as type of play, opponent, court type, duration, score, and some notes. [Image] (I didn’t actually start doing this until 1 year in, so I had to make up some of the data based on my old playing habits) I put this all in my “Life” spreadsheet where I also…