Hi friends 👋,

Happy Sunday. Earlier this week, X announced a $1 million article prize. I don’t normally write the kind of things that could win an X Article Contest - listy things, full of life lessons and advice. And then, wouldn’t you know it, my son Dev learned how to sell yesterday morning, and has he did, he dropped wisdom bombs for me to write down. We ended up with sixteen of them.

Now, they’re on X (go like, comment, and share - we need the $1 million, Dev has a world to build).

I really liked how it came out, so I wanted to share it with you all too. It’s kind of a co-written essay with a 5-year-old, who I hope becomes a more frequent contributor. I think I’m going to write more short things and share them in paid not boring world, so join us if you want the full spectrum of not boring, means to meaning.

Let’s get to it.

16 Lessons on Selling (and Life) from My 5-Year-Old

This morning, my five-year-old son made his first two-dollar sale and dropped sixteen lessons on selling and life that are more practical than any of the slop you’ll find on LinkedIn.

I’ll share them with you, but first, I need to tell you about Dev, about his Donut Hats, and about his world.

One day when Dev was three, he told me that he wanted to build worlds.

Real ones. Big ones. Planets. Like, actual, physical planets.

“Then you’re going to have to study buddy.”

“What do I need to learn?”

Math, physics, engineering, business. No one’s ever built a world before, so you’re going to have to study really hard.

And then he… did.

He asked me for math problems, then harder ones, then harder ones. Kid does 90 minutes of Russian Math every Sunday and loves it.

Physics, he always liked. Gravity was one of his first words, and one of the first concepts he grokked. “Why’d the cup drop bud?” “Gravity.” We read a little bit of Richard Feynman’s lectures, and he stayed with me, but I figured that was probably taking it too far.

Engineering, he loved. Most kids do. Magnetiles in particular, huge structures. Every night, we read a couple of pages from The Way Things Work Now, which my dad always tried to read to me but which I