Weekly Dose of Optimism #165

Hi friends 👋,

A quick note from me, Dan. Last week was my last week writing the Weekly Dose of Optimism.

I often think about what my answer would be to Patrick O’Shaughnessy’s traditional closing question in his podcast, “What is the kindest thing anybody’s ever done for you?” I’ve been lucky enough in my life to have a few really solid answers to the question. But if I had to pick one, especially knowing O’Shag’s audience, I’d say: Back in 2022, I was in a weird, low point in my career. The startup I had worked on was starting to flatline and I didn’t really know what I wanted to do next but I knew I had to do something new. Also back in 2022, my older brother Packy was on an all-time career heater having gone from virtually unknown in 2020 to a quasi public intellectual internet celebrity. I was at a low point and Packy was at a high point. And he offered to hire me. There was no JD and frankly no real business need. It was, admittedly, an open and shut case of brotherly love nepotism. The only job outline was “come learn as much as you can, and then go start something.”

About six months into working with Packy two major things happened:

1. I started writing the Weekly Dose of Optimism each week.

2. I started a company called Create.

For the next three years, I took on both duties. The Weekly Dose was my way to make a bit of extra money, stay connected with my brother, and basically provide some commentary on the content I was already consuming. At the same time, Create really started to take off: we raised a bunch of money, built a team of 15+ based in NYC, are nationally distributed at major retailers like Target, and (between us friends) are profitably runrating ~$85M and growing quickly. And I had a ton of fun juggling both.

In recent months, I’ve had a bit less fun with the juggling act. I felt like I couldn’t give my full attention to the Weekly Dose and I also felt like the 3-4 hours each week I dedicated to writing were 3-4 hours I could have spent building my business and supporting my team. In short, it makes the most sense for me right now to dedicate 100% of my time