Josh Cadorette

Why I'd Be a Great Fit as Ambrook's Partnership's Lead

Wed, 17 Sep 2025 18:23:54 GMT

Howdy!

Thanks for opening this note. I know your time is valuable, so I'll get right to it.

My Ask

Would you consider a six week work trial for the partnerships role? I can jump in right away.

You can find the materials from my application below!

"Tell us about the most ambitious project you’ve led in a previous role! Please include links to examples, if available."

Two projects come to mind: 1 professional and 1 personal.

1. Professional. I led growth/partnerships/marketing at a data science startup. My CEO tasked me with getting us featured on a Gartner Magic Quadrant. This was a daunting task. How was I supposed to get a Series A startup featured alongside Google and Microsoft?

Simple: I'd build partnerships with the major companies first in order to legitimize our status alongside them to the broader market. Only then would I go to Gartner to introduce ourselves. I landed partnerships with IBM, Databricks, AWS and Microsoft. I even helped us land in Microsoft’s exclusive accelerator, Microsoft Pegasus.

The combined number of partnerships led to a meeting with Gartner's head of AI research. That resulted in Howso, the small 20-person startup from Raleigh, NC, being featured in Gartner's Generative AI Engineering Magic Quadrant. We were placed on the map with Microsoft, Databricks, Palantir, Scale AI, AWS, and more.

See Magic Quadrant here .

List of partnerships that led up to Gartner:
IBM
Databricks
AWS
Azure
Microsoft Pegasus

2. Personal. I love the outdoors. I love working with my hands. I love people. After consuming 100s of hours of YouTube content, I decided to do something I had always dreamed of - converting a van and traveling across the US. From the east coast, to America's heartland, to the PNW. From the mountains of Montana to the deserts of New Mexico and everywhere in-between, I made lifelong friendships and went on adventures so outrageous that you wouldn’t believe me.

There were mechanical breakdowns (5, to be exact), but each challenge made for even better stories.

Van build thread (shorter)

Full case study on building the van with videos (longer)

"What excites you about Ambrook?"

Hurricane Helene devastated Western North Carolina, particularly its farmers. In the immediate aftermath of the destruction, I drove my van to the Western NC Livestock Exchange to help stand up the supply chain of donated goods for farmers.

Initially, I didn't know anyone. I was just there to help. I didn't want to overstep my bounds. I just wanted to love on people who were hurting and be the hands and feet that could help serve.

Something that folks don't think about in the aftermath of a natural disaster is the devastation that occurs to the animals. Fencing gets thrashed. Animals who are anxious from the danger they are in make a run for it. Horses, cattle, pigs, chickens, and goats all make a run for it. The farmers who care so deeply about their animals begin to want to take action, but it’s hard to corral animals when you have no way of securing them in an enclosed space.

The NC Department of Agriculture did its best to help its farmers, but they were overwhelmed.

The good news: farmers help farmers. Private citizens from hundreds of miles away - farmers from New York, Maine, South Dakota, Ohio, and more - loaded up semi-trucks full of supplies and drove them to the WNC Livestock Exchange. We worked around the clock to organize the goods, process inbound requests for assistance, and schedule pick-up/delivery. Those that could drive to us came and picked their supplies up. Those that were not reachable by roads received delivery via helicopter and ATV.

I hadn't known any of these folks prior to my volunteer efforts. I simply heard there was a need, hopped in my car, and hit the road. After 2 days of volunteering, the Director of the Livestock Exchange trusted me to run the fencing operation. He needed someone he could trust to verify the integrity of the fencing requests so that all donations got to their proper place. At the end of our efforts, he came to me and said "you're one of us. You don't belong in the city. You belong here." I've felt that statement in my bones ever since.

Serving farmers was the most fulfilled I've ever felt in my life. I have a heart for farmers, and I work in startups. I need a home to help me catalyze those two things. I don’t know if I can do that anywhere but Ambrook. My heart is with these people. I’ll do a 6 week work trial for free. The money doesn’t matter. I have a deep sense that building partnerships with farms is what I’m supposed to be doing, and I think you’ll feel the same way after seeing what I can do.

Closing with My Ask Again

Would you consider a six week work trial for the partnerships role? I can jump in right away.

Let me know what you think!

2024 Annual Review

Tue, 07 Jan 2025 05:22:31 GMT

Reflecting on the year that I lived in an urban environment, continued to build startup experience, and celebrated dear friends.

Outline

I. Introduction

II. Quick Hits
III. 2024 Goals Assessment
IV. 2025 Goal Setting
V. 2024 Photos of The Year
Appendix: How I Prepared The Review

I. Introduction

This is the story of who I was in 2024, who I am seeking to become in 2025, and a continuation of my pursuit of a life well-lived.

In 2022, I built, explored, executed, and had a handful of van break downs.

In 2023, I settled, failed, succeeded, celebrated, served, and refined.

In 2024, I developed confidence in my intuition through failure, celebrated, and served.

In 2025, I will alter my goal structure to Quests. These are 3 month - 5 year goals that I'm in pursuit of.

By writing these Quests down here, I make it known that others can and should hold me accountable to my word. It is also my hope that, in some way, these words, goal structures, and feedback mechanisms are of use to you in your own pursuit of a life well-lived.

If so, or if I can be of any help to you for your 2025 goals, drop me a note at hello@joshcadorette.com

Cheers.

II. Quick Hits

Newsletters published: 0

Twitter growth: took a hiatus from twitter

Live Show of the Year: Glass Animals

Newsletter growth: stopped sending newsletters

Essays published: 0

Top habit formed: meditation

Top habit removed: continued to stay off of Facebook/IG and didn't drink.

Coolest piece of tech I used: HitTrax

Content I consumed the most of: Andrew Huberman

Proudest achievement: trying to be adaptable

Most profound concept I learned: You Might Be a Late Bloomer

My top podcasts: John Mark Comer Teachings , Timothy Keller Sermons

Most fun piece of writing I produced: N/A

Biggest challenge: startup grind

Top 3 Artists: Odesza, Kendrick Lamar, The 1975

Most grateful for: failing at building a sustainable business

Top Reading Materials: Axios Raleigh

Favorite interaction with a stranger: stumbled across a guy doing a DJ set with a saxophone in Salida, Colorado for my buddy Mike's bachelor party. It was a blast.

Most joyous moment: giving a woman a hug and loading her car with essentials in WNC in the days following the hurricane.

Most meaningful piece of writing I produced: N/A

Most serendipitous moment: met a guy named Will at church one evening. He invited me to his Tuesday night men's Bible study. I've been going ever since, and the guys have become dear friends.

Top 3 questions I kept asking myself this year:

Am I in the right place?
Am I surrounded by the right people?
Am I pursuing the right mission?

My 2024 headline: “Guy continues to weather the storm of startup volatility. No one is forcing him to be exposed to the elements of entrepreneurship. He's making the choice himself despite continued trial and tribulation."

IV. 2024 Goals Assessment

Key
(✅) - accomplished

(❌) - failed

Bottom line up front:

5/10 goals are marked as accomplished and 5/10 goals are marked as failed.

50% hit rate means that I spread myself too thin this year. I'll be moving towards a more focused and less rigid structure for my 2025 goals.

❌ - 1. �� Read The Bible Cover to Cover

Original plan of attack: 1. Consume The Bible Project overviews before jumping into a new book 2. Read the book and take notes in a study bible (ESV) 3. Recap that day's reading alongside The Bible Study recap.

What I predicted would happen: this first time that I study the Bible will allow me to build a foundation of knowledge that I will build upon for years to come in future Bible studies.

What actually happened: I didn't start on this until August. So, I didn't get this done in 2024. This did, however, lead to a daily scripture reading habit moving into 2025.

❌ - 2. ��‍♂️ Do Yoga Nidra Meditation 1x Daily

Original Plan of attack: 1. Do yoga nidra 1x per day, every day in 2024. 2. Read Breath by James Nestor, Dopamine Nation by Anna Lembke, and How Emotions are Made by Lisa Feldman Barrett.

What I predicted would happen: this will help me be more present, regulate my dopamine, and increase motivation. The supplemental reading will also help empower me with the knowledge to increase my emotional health score, which was a bit low this year.

What actually happened: I didn't do yoga nidra every single day, but I did do it more consistently moved away from my desire to read

✅ - 3. ��️ Eliminate Uptalk, Except for When I'm Asking Questions

Original P lan of attack: pay more attention to the intonation and tone in my voice (especially when I am explaining things), and invite people in my life to provide feedback.

My prediction: I'm going to be annoyed with myself at first as I battle this, but I'll eventually be able to hear myself do it and stop it.

What actually happened: I got rid of it.

✅ - 4. ��️ Get Stronger, Leaner, and Improve Endurance

Original p lan of attack: 1. Track my VO2 max, body composition (via DEXA scan), and bloodwork 2x a year. 2. Purchase a Garmin watch to track my steps, sleep, and HRV. 3. Read Peter Attia's Outlive , The Circadian Code by Satchin Panda, and Spark by John J. Ratey.

My prediction: I'm going to build a more holistic picture of my health and will continue to gain the knowledge to improve my health on this front.

What actually happened: I purchased a Garmin watch (love it), read Outlive, and skimmed Circadian Code + Spark.

✅ - 5. ⛔ No Alcohol, Instagram, or Facebook

Original p lan of attack: no scrolling on FB or IG and no drinking.

My prediction: I'll get it done and be better for it.

What actually happened: I got it done.

❌ - 6. ��️ Publish 2 Written Pieces a Month

Original p lan of attack: 1. Maintain weekly cadence on Beehiiv until work/travel slows down in Q1 so that I don't kill my momentum 2. Switch to Substack for professional writing but keep Beehiiv for personal updates (such as quarterly reviews) 3. Publish 2 pieces a month with greater depth on Substack

My prediction: I'll be sad to ease off of Beehiiv when the day comes, but I'll build more connections on Substack.

What actually happened: I stopped publishing online completely.

✅ - 7. �� Study Psychology, Technology, and Theology + Build Network in This Space

Original Plan of Attack: 1. Take an online master's degree course in psychology in the spring to uncover if this is truly a route that I want to pursue (and also if I'm ready to jump back into structured learning). 2. Find out which researchers in the space are working on the most interesting topics. Start with Gloria Mark and Nita Faraheny. I'm also going to monitor the Center for Humane Technology's social feeds to identify any new research that is published which I might fight interesting.

My prediction: I think that I'll enjoy this work and conversations will naturally flow with new connections because I enjoy the convergence of these topics so much.

What actually happened: I took a data science course in late 2024 and a psych course in early 2025.

✅ - 8. ⚾ Coach and Play Baseball

Original Plan of attack: coach Little League with Chris Breslin and pitch/play shortstop for the Durham Dirtbags.

My prediction: I'm going to make good memories, great friends, and consume a lot of sunflower seeds.

What actually happened: I spent a lot of time on the diamond both coaching and playing.

❌ - 9. �� Perform Monthly Audits on My Budget

Original Plan of attack: 1. Set-up a budgeting system. 2. Review it by the end of the first week the following month and make any necessary adjustments.

My prediction: this will allow me to be more confident in my purchases and the way in which I am generous with my money. This will also help me get my financial well-being score up from last year.

What actually happened: I did my monthly audits roughly half of the time.

❌ - 10. �� Go on a Week-Long Backpacking Trip

Original Plan of attack: 1. Sign-up for a NOLS course to go backpacking for a week somewhere in the US in 2024.

My prediction: I will be grateful that I made the time to do this. Physical health is a gift. We've got to challenge ourselves and explore while we've got it.

What actually happened: I went on one backpacking trip for 3 days and did one week in Brevard, NC in a cabin.

V. 2025 Quests

TBD

VI. 2024 Photos of the Year

Appendix: How I Prepared The Review

I read every piece of writing that I produced in 2024. This included 100+ pages in a handwritten journal that I recorded privately.

Thanks for reading until the end.

Wishing good health and happiness.

Please let me know if I can be of any help to you with your Quests in '25 (hello@joshcadorette.com).

2023 Annual Review

Thu, 04 Jan 2024 05:47:39 GMT

Reflecting on the year that I failed at entrepreneurship, celebrated friends and family, and refined what I want my craft to become.

Outline

I. Introduction

II. Quick Hits
III. 2023 Goals Assessment
IV. 2024 Goal Setting
V. 2023 Photos of The Year
Appendix: How I Prepared The Review

I. Introduction

This is the story of who I was in 2023, who I am seeking to become in 2024, and a continuation of my pursuit of a life well-lived (see last year's annual review here ).

In 2022, I built, explored, executed, and had a handful of van break downs.

In 2023, I settled, failed, succeeded, celebrated, served, and refined.

In 2024, I will rest, develop, learn, and continue to fail, succeed, celebrate, and serve.

By writing these goals down here, I make it known that others can and should hold me accountable to my word. It is also my hope that, in some way, these words, goal structures, and feedback mechanisms are of use to you in your own pursuit of a life well-lived.

If so, or if I can be of any help to you for your 2024 goals, drop me a note at hello@joshcadorette.com

Cheers.

II. Quick Hits

Newsletters published: 52

Twitter growth: 1,100 -> 1,300

Live Show of the Year: Gregory Alan Isakov

Newsletter growth: 241 -> 333

Essays published: 2 - Shooting Star Startup + this one

Top habit formed: daily reading

Top habit removed: Instagram + Facebook

Coolest piece of tech I used: ChatGPT

Content I consumed the most of: Andrew Huberman

Proudest achievement: building a minimum viable product that got 2500 users

Most profound concept I learned: "Esse quam videri" - to be rather than to seem

My top podcasts: Huberman Lab , John Mark Comer Teachings , Timothy Keller Sermons

Most fun piece of writing I produced: Emerging Tech & Theology

Biggest challenge: building community in a new place

Top 3 Artists: Odesza , Zach Bryan , Rufus Du Sol

Most grateful for: failing at building a sustainable business

Top Reading Materials: Axios Raleigh , INDY Week

Favorite interaction with a stranger: meeting Andy, a local farmer, at my church's potluck who I've since become friends with. I'm hopeful to do some work with him in 2024 as staring at screens all the time can be taxing.

Most joyous moment: coaching a 9 year old little league team to a championship

Most meaningful piece of writing I produced: Craft First, Ambition Second

Most serendipitous moment: going on a run near Historic Durham Athletic Park and stumbling across a wooden bat, adult baseball league (which subsequently led me to pitch and play shortstop for the Durham Dirtbags).

Top 3 questions I kept asking myself this year:

I want to have a craft, something that I diligently and consistently work at becoming uniquely qualified to do. What are the interests that make up my craft?
What skills do I need to develop to make my craft world class?
Who are my internet mentors from afar that can teach me about my interests and the skills which make up my craft?

My 2023 headline: “Guy who has made it a priority to seek joy through novelty the past few years discovers that the things that used to give him joy still do, namely playing baseball, reading, and journaling.”

III. 2023 Goals Assessment

Key
(✅) - accomplished

(❌) - failed

Bottom line up front:

7/10 goals are marked as accomplished and 3/10 goals are marked as failed.

I'm comfortable with a 70% hit rate. It indicates that I'm not being unrealistic to the point where things are out of reach, but I'm still striving to challenge myself.

1. �� Build Self-Sustaining Income Independent of a Corporation (✅)

Original Plan of attack: build 2 companies - 1. Feather AI: the premier speech-to-text summary service 2. DAO Town: the central place for DAO news. See what sticks.

What I predicted would happen: I will make money building AI products/writing about DAOs and fail (a lot). This will accelerate my learning and deepen new/existing relationships - making it rewarding intellectually and socially no matter what happens financially.

What actually happened : Feather failed and I didn't pursue DAO Town. The original plan didn’t work, but it was a huge stepping stone towards the one that did.

Frankly, I didn’t quite frame this goal properly. I phrased the goal as if success meant working for myself, but the truth is that I just didn’t want to work for a large corporation. I wanted experience with a much smaller team that could move fast, and I accomplished that with my new role at Howso . Goal accomplished.

2. �� Publish Newsletter Every Thursday & Grow Subscriber List to 1k (❌)

Original plan of attack: collaborate with other newsletter writers, cross-promote each other's work, and gain new subscribers by marketing long-form essays (more on this below.)

What I predicted would happen: there are 1,000 wacky people out there who will be willing to sign-up for my newsletter ◡̈

What actually happened: I hit publish every Thursday, but I was stagnant on the audience growth component. I simply did not make the time to pursue cross-promotion in 2023.

3. �� Take a 1-Year Break from Facebook and Instagram (✅)

Original plan of attack: store the log-in info far away (off my laptop), delete mobile apps, log out from browser, and don't access FB/IG for 2023. Keep in touch with folks via text, phone calls, and the newsletter. Build meaningful relationships on Twitter by helping other people with their businesses, writing, and other projects.

What I predicted would happen: I'll sometimes miss news from folks in the periphery of my life, but I'll be able to remain in contact with the real folks that matter the most to me. If 2022's best habit removed was to stop drinking, I think taking a break from FB/IG will be 2023's best habit removed.

What actually happened: this was indeed the best habit removed in 2023. I'll be carrying this momentum into 2024.

4. ��️ Publish 1 Essay Per Quarter (❌)

Original plan of attack: write one essay per quarter in 2023, market these pieces through channels of distribution such as Product Hunt and Hacker News.

What I predicted would happen: I'm going to have a freakin' blast remixing some seemingly unrelated writing of mine from 2022 and working them into wacky and fun pieces in 2023.

What actually happened: I published a post-mortem on Feather here and this annual review, meaning I came up 2 short. I know that, by combining my short-form pieces in a fluid manner, I could easily put together a few essays. I simply didn't make time for it. I also failed to post any of my writing on Product Hunt or Hacker News.

5. �� Build Endurance, Balance, Flexibility, and Better Nutrition (✅)

Original Plan of attack: go on two backpacking trips, participate in 1 F3 workout per week, walk to co-working space each day, do stretching sessions 2 times per week, buy local produce, get 8hrs of sleep, sleep with your phone in the other room, and drink 16oz of water when you wake.

What I predicted would happen: The key to success on this one lies in making the time in my calendar for each of these activities. I know me. I am a gosh darn pain in my own neck. I'll put work over this stuff if I don't schedule it out.

What actually happened: I completed 75 Hard and 75 Hard Phase 1. Both got me into great shape and helped me learn more about nutrition. My focus on endurance was lacking, and I plan on addressing this with a VO2 Max goal that I can measure in 2024.

I also failed to go backpacking (which is ridiculous because few things give me a greater sense of joy, adventure, or peace). Still marking this as complete, but I need to address this in 2024.

6. �� Improve Information Caption System (✅)

Original plan of attack: review Tiago Forte's content on Building a Second Brain, link instapaper + Readwise to Notion, decommission your broken Evernote/Apple Notes systems, and make time to read what's timeless (not just timely).

What I predicted would happen: This will be the highest leverage habit I build in 2023 with ripple effects across my ability to produce high quality work as a product builder and writer.

What actually happened: I set up a well-functioning system that allows me to retain insight from what I consume. I get e-books from my local library via the Libby app and take notes on them via Kindle. These notes automatically sync with my Readwise/Notion integration. It’s so cool. Goal accomplished.

7. ☀️ Rest fully on Sundays (✅)

Original plan of attack: Go to church, spend time with friends, get outside, get off your phone, meditate, read, and write. Just be still.

What I predicted would happen: I'm going to be at war with myself on this one lol.

What actually happened: I reserved Sundays for church and baseball practice, two things that give me life and allow me to rest. It was phenomenal.

8. �� Build a 2x Daily Meditation Practice (❌)

Original plan of attack: 20min of transcendental meditation before the day starts, 20min of transcendental meditation in the late afternoon/early evening - mix in Wim Hof when in need of a more active meditation.

What I predicted would happen: just as weekly writing was the top habit I formed in 2022, I think this daily meditation will be the top habit I form in 2023.

What actually happened: I meditated 1x every darn day for 75 straight days during Q2. This habit fell off a cliff in Q3. Shooting for 2x per day was likely too much, but I really would like to get to 1x in 2024.

One good thing - I learned about yoga nidra. I prefer this type of meditation to Transcendental Meditation, and I'll be practicing this in 2024.

Reading, not meditating, ended up being the top habit formed in 2023.

9. �� Participate in a Local Service Opportunity 1x/week (✅)

Original plan of attack: meet with my local Pastor, identify a need I can help play a part in, and schedule a weekly cadence to participate in the service opportunity.

What I predicted would happen: this habit will be the most life-giving of out of the 10 goals I'm setting forth for 2023.

What actually happened: I coached little league with my Pastor and friend, Chris. We went 14-2 and won the championship. It was the most joyous, life-giving thing that I did in 2023.

10. ⛷️ Try Things That Are Completely New & Do Things That Bring You Joy (✅)

Original plan of attack: go skiing, do some two-stepping, go in with an open mind to whatever other adventures come your way this year, and just have some freakin' fun you nerd.

What I predicted would happen: this goal's success will depend less on a plan of action and more on me setting this intention.

What actually happened: I didn't try a whole lot that was completely new this year. Instead, I leaned into what previously has given me joy - playing baseball, reading, and journaling.

I still need to get on a pair of skis, so I've scheduled a ski trip for late January 2024 with my cousin. I also need to dance more. I simply did not two-step nearly enough in 2023.

Despite being one month late on the ski portion, I did things that brought me joy and am marking this as complete.

IV. 2024 Goal Setting

1. �� Read The Bible Cover to Cover

Overview: My intake of theology increased dramatically in 2023, primarily through the lens of John Mark Comer, Tim Keller, and my friend/pastor Chris Breslin.

I continually run into the same issue when consuming the work of these three. I do not have a strong enough baseline knowledge of the Bible. When folks quickly reference a verse or a parable, my mind is working overtime to try to figure out which story they're referring to, what the context is, and what the meaning is.

By the time I resurface from a deep inquisition into my lack of biblical knowledge, two minutes have passed and I have lost track of the sermon.

It is time that I read the Bible cover to cover.

Plan of attack: 1. Consume The Bible Project overviews before jumping into a new book 2. Read the book and take notes in a study bible (ESV) 3. Recap that day's reading alongside The Bible Study recap.

My prediction: this first time that I study the Bible will allow me to build a foundation of knowledge that I will build upon for years to come in future Bible studies.

2. ��‍♂️ Do Yoga Nidra Meditation 1x Daily

Overview: Andrew Huberman is a Stanford neurobiologist and ophthalmologist. Through his podcast, Huberman Labs, I was introduced to the benefits of Non-Sleep Deep Rest (NSDR).

A form of NSDR is yoga nidra, which is essentially a guided body scan. A narrator walks you through deep breathing as you check-in with how you're feeling throughout your body.

Ally Boothroyd is a yoga nidra teacher with plenty of recordings of varying lengths on YouTube. I recommend starting with a 15min one here , if you're interested.

The primary benefits:

Psychological Benefits : Recommended for sleep and anxiety issues, NSDR also helps anyone needing restorative practice for focused work.

Neurochemical Benefits: NSDR restores dopamine levels, aiding motivation, cognition, and motor control, especially useful for sleep-deprived individuals.

Physical Benefits: NSDR teaches real-time relaxation and aids in compensating for lost sleep, enhancing physical well-being.

Restoring Cognitive Ability and Performance: NSDR boosts cognitive task performance and confidence, replenishing dopamine and balancing motivation levels.

Plan of attack: 1. Do yoga nidra 1x per day, every day in 2024. 2. Read Breath by James Nestor, Dopamine Nation by Anna Lembke, and How Emotions are Made by Lisa Feldman Barrett.

My prediction: this will help me be more present, regulate my dopamine, and increase motivation. The supplemental reading will also help empower me with the knowledge to increase my emotional health score, which was a bit low this year.

3. ��️ Eliminate Uptalk, Except for When I'm Asking Questions

Overview: About a year ago, my mom introduced me to the concept of " Uptalk ." It's when the intonation in your voice rises towards the end of the sentence. We often do it when we're asking a question. It signals that we're inviting someone to speak.

When I'm explaining a concept to someone, I often uptalk. I'm doing it because I'm inviting them to stop me, provide comments, or ask questions since I want to make sure they understand what I'm saying. When you explain something and it sounds as if you're asking a question, you don't project confidence.

Once you're aware of it, you can't help but hear it everywhere.

Plan of attack: pay more attention to the intonation and tone in my voice (especially when I am explaining things), and invite people in my life to provide feedback.

My prediction: I'm going to be annoyed with myself at first as I battle this, but I'll eventually be able to hear myself do it and stop it.

4. ��️ Get Stronger, Leaner, and Improve Endurance

Overview: Last year was a good year for education about my body, but I need to get more specific about what I'm tracking in order to achieve my goals of becoming stronger/leaner and improving endurance.

Plan of attack: 1. Track my VO2 max, body composition (via DEXA scan), and bloodwork 2x a year. 2. Purchase a Garmin watch to track my steps, sleep, and HRV. 3. Read Peter Attia's Outlive , The Circadian Code by Satchin Panda, and Spark by John J. Ratey.

My prediction: I'm going to build a more holistic picture of my health and will continue to gain the knowledge to improve my health on this front.

5. ⛔ No Alcohol, Instagram, or Facebook

Overview: These three things do not have a positive impact upon my life. Full stop.

Spending quality time with my people, having energy to accomplish my goals, and mitigating anxious thoughts is at the top of my priorities. Each of these 3 things go directly against these priorities.

For that reason, I'm cutting them out. I cut drinking for all of 2022 and FB/IG for all of 2023, so this goal feels attainable. If you are interested in doing something similar, I recommend cutting one of these things out for a month. Then, scale from there and go for 3 months, 6 months, 12 months, etc.

Plan of attack: no scrolling on FB or IG and no drinking.

My prediction: I'll get it done and be better for it.

6. ��️ Publish 2 Written Pieces a Month

Overview: Beehiiv, the platform where I host my newsletter, has been good to me. I'm friends with a couple of their staff members and have watched as Tyler Denk & co. went from idea to MVP to scale. As the newsletter landscape has evolved, Beehiiv has been the go-to option for folks seeking to monetize their newsletter while Substack has become the go-to option for academics.

My interests are trending away from newsletter monetization and more towards wanting to jam with folks in academia. On top of that, Substack's social features are more active. Learning is meant to be a social activity. I've been doing it somewhat isolated. For that reason, I intend to make the switch from Beehiiv to Substack at some point in Q1. Then, my plan is to write less frequently but with more depth.

This feels somewhat like the end of an era. I have published every week on Beehiiv for 2 straight years. That's 100+ newsletters without missing a single week. It's been awesome, but there have been times when I'm eeking out a newsletter and it's a bit of a disservice to writing as a craft and to my readers. I'd like to go challenge myself more in my writing. I think it's especially important to do so in the age of ChatGPT. That's why I'm going to decrease my cadence in exchange for more meaningful work.

Plan of attack: 1. Maintain weekly cadence on Beehiiv until work/travel slows down in Q1 so that I don't kill my momentum 2. Switch to Substack for professional writing but keep Beehiiv for personal updates (such as quarterly reviews) 3. Publish 2 pieces a month with greater depth on Substack

My prediction: I'll be sad to ease off of Beehiiv when the day comes, but I'll build more connections on Substack.

7. �� Study Psychology, Technology, and Theology + Build Network in This Space

Overview: The more specific I get about what I think I want my craft to be, the easier it is for me to identify pockets of research and people who I think it'd be fun to work with.

Plan of attack: 1. Take an online master's degree course in psychology in the spring to uncover if this is truly a route that I want to pursue (and also if I'm ready to jump back into structured learning). 2. Find out which researchers in the space are working on the most interesting topics. Start with Gloria Mark and Nita Faraheny. I'm also going to monitor the Center for Humane Technology's social feeds to identify any new research that is published which I might fight interesting.

My prediction: I think that I'll enjoy this work and conversations will naturally flow with new connections because I enjoy the convergence of these topics so much.

8. ⚾ Coach and Play Baseball

Overview: Baseball gives me joy. When I'm in the field, all other thoughts melt away. I focus on the beauty of the game and the camaraderie in the dugout. I want to continue to be a part of that as a player and a coach.

Plan of attack: coach Little League with Chris Breslin and pitch/play shortstop for the Durham Dirtbags.

My prediction: I'm going to make good memories, great friends, and consume a lot of sunflower seeds.

9. �� Perform Monthly Audits on My Budget

Overview: I kept my expenses lean in 2023 as I tried to start a company, but I wasn't consistent about taking the monthly temperature of my financial situation. I've got to get back on track in that regard.

Plan of attack: 1. Set-up a budgeting system. 2. Review it by the end of the first week the following month and make any necessary adjustments.

My prediction: this will allow me to be more confident in my purchases and the way in which I am generous with my money.

10. �� Go on a Week-Long Backpacking Trip

Overview: It's pretty absurd that I didn't go backpacking in 2023. I love it too much to let this slip again.

Plan of attack: 1. Sign-up for a NOLS course to go backpacking for a week somewhere in the US in 2024.

My prediction: I will be grateful that I made the time to do this. Physical health is a gift. We've got to challenge ourselves and explore while we've got it.

V. 2023 Photos of the Year

Appendix: How I Prepared The Review

I read every piece of writing that I produced in 2023. This included all 52 newsletters that I published publicly and 107 pages in a handwritten journal that I recorded privately.

I then duplicated the 2022 annual review to copy over the formatting. The 2023 goals were largely already updated because I've been sending out quarterly updates on them all year. I also included my “2023 Photos of The Year” at the end of the piece as a way to ease the reader out of the review.

Just as it was in 2022, this process was exhausting but essential.

Last year, I set the system up with my first annual review. This year, I ran the system and did only minor formatting upgrades with spacing. As a result, I decreased the amount of hours it took to put this together. My first annual review last year took over 50 hours. This one took ~30 hours, and I'm pleased with how it shaped up.

Thanks for reading until the end.

Wishing good health and happiness for you in the new year.

Please let me know if I can be of any help to you with your goals in 2024 - hello@joshcadorette.com

The Shooting Star Startup

Thu, 13 Jul 2023 03:19:34 GMT

We built a speech-to-text summary startup that went viral, but our success didn't last for long.

See Tweet that kicked things off here

Introduction

Shooting Star Startup: a small enterprise that experiences the peak of it's success upon launch, then begins to fade away.

This is the story of my own Shooting Star Startup, as told in 4 parts:

I. Feather's Origin

II. MVP to v1.0
III. Shutting Feather AI Down

IV. Why Shooting Stars Aren't All That Bad

My objective for this piece is two-fold:

1. Help folks learn from my experience.

2. Encourage folks to feel more comfortable with failure.

Bonus: Entertain you along the way with some details on just how whacky this journey was.

Hope you enjoy!

I. Feather's Origin

It started with Ben's Bites Hackathon. Ben Tossell is an entrepreneur and the creator of Ben's Bites , a daily newsletter on all things AI.

In December 2022, Ben announced that he would host a hackathon. Teams had 1 week to put an AI solution together. Judges would then pick the top 3 projects and hand out cash prizes to the teams.

I immediately reached out to my former colleague, Dave, to collaborate. How come?

Dave and I had built successful AI products in the past, we knew each other's skill sets, and we knew how to effectively work with one another asynchronously.

Dave did the engineering. I do the product/design. We're both creative in different, complimentary ways.

I went to Dave with an idea that solves a problem I myself have as a podcaster - writing the show notes.

Enter Feather AI - an audio-to-text summarizer.

The biggest pain when producing a podcast is trying to type up a summary of everything that happened in the episode.

I thought to myself, "What if you could summarize a conversation so that it could serve as the 1st draft of your show notes?"

That way, you could decrease production time and become a more prolific creator.

Suddenly, more use cases past podcasting emerged:

What if you were a government consultant who wanted to summarize congressional hearings so that you could stay on top of legislative affairs?
What if you were an investor who wanted to summarize earnings calls/fed meetings so that you could stay on top of earnings/interest rates?
What if you missed a zoom call but wanted to read a quick summary of what was said so that you didn't have to rewatch the entire recording?
What if you missed a webinar but you wanted to read a quick summary so that you could still extract value from the speaker's session?

Time to take Feather AI to Twitter.

We didn't place in the Hackathon, but we wanted to share Feather AI with more folks than just our family, friends, and fellow Hackathon members.

I thought back to the whacky thing I did this past November: I published a thread on twitter every single day.

This exercise taught me how to write engaging tweets that tell a good story, so I applied this skill to Feather AI and published a Twitter thread on our nifty little product.

The thread went viral. 600k+ saw it, 125k+ watched our demo video, 1k+ signed up for our beta.

The product kept breaking due to high usage. We kept fixing it. It was awesome.

First, the servers were overwhelmed (so we upgraded them.) Then, one of the components of the AI model gave out (so we rebooted it.) In comes the server again with another issue (so we performed another upgrade.) Then, gmail capped our account for sending too many emails (time to make a new email address.) Up. Down. Up. Down. Up. Down. Up. Down. Up.

At it's peak, we were processing 4 summaries per minute. It was so dang cool to see people across the world engaging with a product that was just an idea a week prior, and the feedback was incredibly positive too.

We even did our best to contact everyone who made a summary request when Feather AI was temporarily down so that we could: 1. Thank them for giving us a try. 2. Apologize for our lackluster performance and 3. Invite them to give us another shot.

Biggest takeaway from those 24 hours - ready-fire-aim.

Ready, aim, fire? No - "ready, fire, aim," according to Michael Masterson.

Masterson is a successful entrepreneur who argues that balancing calculated risks/quick decision making skills + careful planning/intentional strategy is the key to business success - not one or the other but both.

We had planned, strategized, and prototyped all week long, but this product wasn't going to improve itself from the sidelines.

Did we stress test our product? Yes. Did we think it'd get this much traffic? No. Is having "too much traffic" a great problem to have? Yes, and we met the moment.

David and I had to fire in order to uncover the server issues, API problem, and gmail cap so we could then aim in on them quickly. The result? We captured 1k+ beta users in our first week.

I didn't know where Feather would end up, but I knew that building, adapting, and surviving was fun and insane in all of the right ways.

We didn't know it at the time, but this was Feather's peak.

II. MVP to v1.0

Fast forward a month later into January 2023. It's time to turn the MVP into v1.0.

Now, I’ve gone from minimum viable product (MVP) to v1.0 a few times in a corporate role, but this is my first time doing it as a bootstrapped founder.

Here are the differences.

MVP to v1.0 in a corporate role:

Pros : resources to lean on (financial, intellectual) means that neither cost nor lack of knowledge stand in your way

Cons : access to resources makes you more comfortable and less creative in finding ways to make things work, decisions require layers of approval which means that you won’t be able to move fast

MVP to v1.0 in a bootstrapped startup:

Pros : decisions that take weeks in a corporate role take just minutes in a startup, you can accelerate feedback loops much faster, and you can change direction much quicker. Plus, having a user find value in the product you willed into existence is 100x more fulfilling than pushing a product you don’t care about.

Cons: resources are tight, so you’ll need to teach yourself more than just your domain. You have to become a generalist (legal, accounting, marketing, etc.) Things are also much more volatile. It’s a rollercoaster of emotions. One minute, you love what you created. The next, you think it’ll never work.

Yeah, but those things above aren’t actually cons: I’m here to learn about entrepreneurship. In fact, documenting how to build cool things was the impetus of my podcast and this newsletter. So, shoot, I’m not complaining that I have to teach myself new things on the fly. It’s fun (this includes learning how to manage the rollercoaster of emotions - lol).

Just right doesn't exist.

Whereas a corporate entity would want to fine tune things until they’re *just right* for launch, a startup puts stuff out there as soon as possible (before it’s fully ready tbh).

There are no rules for a startup (other than build a product that users love). The only way to do that is iterate.

Take the newsletter I sent on 1/26/23 titled “We Need Your Help.” Technically, this was a soft launch. We needed family and friends to test what we had.

We had centered the entire Feather experience around a Chrome Extension - great for avid Chrome users, not so great for folks who aren’t.

Our family/friends launch taught us that we needed to take a step back and bring the "Paste a YouTube Link” functionality from our MVP back into our v1.0.

Basically, relying solely on the Chrome Extension prevented users from getting to an “Aha” moment quickly (when folks recognize value in the product).

Solution : we built My Feather - the one stop shop to generate summaries. When you registered, you received a personal page to generate summaries by pasting a YouTube URL, uploading an mp3, or downloading the Chrome Extension.

We launched My Feather on Tuesday, 2/21/23 to our Beta email list (see “Feather AI Is Here” ). I wouldn’t call it a hard launch as folks sorta/kinda new about us - more of a warm launch, if you will.

The point? Launch. Learn more about what the user needs. Build what’s needed. Get ready for the next launch. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Yet, as we uncovered user needs, we discovered a hard truth - Feather wouldn't be needed for much longer.

III. Shutting Feather AI Down

We proved that podcast summarization was a service that the market wanted, but we quickly realized that we wouldn't be the ones to deliver this service.

The message we sent to our users breaks down why we closed our doors...

"Here’s the bottom line up front:

AI products moved so quickly that Feather AI was no longer needed.

More on all of this below, but before all of that we want to say this - thank you.

We deeply appreciate your willingness to give us a shot, and we’re going to steer you towards the proper tools below to ensure that your summarization needs are met.

What happens next.

To our monthly paid users: your last month of billing will be June 2023.

To our annual paid users: we’re sending you a prorated refund for the remainder of your 12 month plan that won’t be active.

To folks still in need of audio/video summarization services:

Sign-up for Google Bard (it’s free)
Prompt it to summarize any YouTube URL
Ask Bard follow-up questions on your summary in real-time

More info. on why we’re shutting down.

AI is getting commoditized, and we can’t keep up.

Here was our process at Feather:

Create a transcript of your audio/video file
Summarize the transcript with a Feather-specific template
Send you this summary via an email service provider or via Notion. The automated process took 2-10min (depending on our system’s usage/the size of the audio file).

We uncovered that users primarily used Feather to summarize YouTube videos. So, when LLMs like Google Bard got access to the open internet, our main use case had been solved for.

Now, you can use an LLM to access YouTube, pull transcripts, and generate summaries of videos in real-time.

Are the summaries that LLMs generate perfect? No, but here’s why summarizing audio/video with Bard is better than Feather:

Faster processing time
You can ask the chatbot follow-up questions about the summary
And the most important point - it’s currently free (and will likely be low cost if they decide to charge in the future)

The commoditization of AI is a good thing. It means that the capabilities at your fingertips are going to continue to increase, and the costs are going to get driven down.

This also means that Feather is no longer needed ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Our goal was to build a product that users loved, and we achieved that.

150k+ watched our demo video. 2.5k+ of you became Feather users. We proved that the world needs audio/video summarization. Plus, we learned a whole bunch too.

So, thanks for giving us a shot. We had a lot of fun, and we’re grateful to have had the opportunity to serve you.

�� Wishing you the best in your summarization journey,

Dave & Josh "

IV. Why Shooting Stars Aren't All That Bad

When we first set out, my co-founder and I thought this was a 12-18 month window of opportunity. We knew that additional many more major players - dare I say "Big AI" - were coming.

We just thought it would be a little while until they arrived.

We were wrong.

LLMs are moving faster and faster. They don't solve perfectly for our use case. Bard still has some hallucinations when you provide it with a YouTube URL to summarize.

Regardless, I trust that Google's team of talented engineers paired with their full/complete access to the YouTube libraries will make for a strong YouTube summarizer.

In fact, I would expect that YouTube will soon have Bard capabilities that are native to the platform. Features like "Auto-generate a description for my video" for creators and "Auto-generate a guide to the video" for consumers could be commonplace.

Yet, for a moment in time, we had the momentum and the confidence that this could become a sustainable business. Sure, it was fleeting. Even still, that shooting star moment in and of itself is an incredible experience.

Our shooting star taught me a few things about building something from scratch:

You have to be consistently vigilant and resilient to remain in the game.
#1 is exhausting, so folks who aren't committed get washed out.
The market is impartial. If just wants what it needs as conveniently and affordably as possible.
Your first hypothesis is rarely (if ever) right. The same is likely true for your next 50.

In all, our shooting star lasted from December 2022-July 2023 (with it's peak in December).

Wins:

- 2500+ beta users

- Turned MVP into a *barely* profitable product

- New B2C marketing experience for digital products

- Gained the support of strangers from across the internet

Losses:

- Didn't turn it into a sustainable business

When folks would ask, "How's the startup going?", I'd say the following with a smile: "This turned out to be a 4-6 month opportunity, and we're in month 7."

My words didn't quite matter when I informed folks it wasn't going to work out. My attitude did.

If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

"Sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose. Sometimes it rains." - Bull Durham

"Sometimes a shooting star rips across the sky and flares out fantastically despite your best efforts to keep it alive." - Me

Win. Lose. Rain. Shooting star.

You'll experience each of these at some point if you're living a life well lived, and the losses will teach you more about your character than the wins. That alone makes it well worth it.

2022 Annual Review

joshua.cadorette@gmail.com (Josh Cadorette) — Thu, 05 Jan 2023 04:31:09 GMT

Reflecting on the year that I built a van, a consistent writing habit, and a better understanding of my place in the world.

Outline

I. Introduction
II. Interactive VanLife Map

III. Quick Hits
IV. 2022 Goals Assessment
V. 2023 Goal Setting
VI. 2022 Photos of The Year
Appendix: How I Prepared The Review

I. Introduction

Your habits become who you are.

So, who am I today? And, who am I trying to become tomorrow?

I laid it out earlier this year in a piece called "Starting with The End in Mind."

I'm striving to become a man who is caring, empathetic, and bold.

This essay is the roadmap to my continued journey in becoming that man.

That is to say, no plan that I make, no static moment in time, and nothing that I do will ever be perfect.

I will stumble repeatedly. This review is not some sort of mirage to pretend otherwise.

Rather, this is the documentation of someone who errs often but routinely tries to choose love, service, and exploration over malice, self-centeredness, and closed mindedness.

In other words, this is my public pursuit of a life well-lived.

II. Interactive VanLife Map

Zoom in using the + and - sign in the bottom left corner.

Click the button top left to see a full list of all of my stops broken down by month.

Click the button top right to open the map in a separate tab for a larger map.

III. Quick Hits

Newsletters published: 51

# of podcasts published: 2

Twitter growth: 555 -> 1,100

Miles driven in the van : 20,217

Live Show of the Year: Odesza

# of states traveled to: 28 + D.C

Newsletter growth: 0 -> 241 subs

Essays published: 1 (just this one)

Top habit formed: weekly writing

Top habit removed: drinking alcohol

Coolest piece of tech I used: Starlink

Content I consumed the most of: Mav

Proudest achievement: building the van

Most profound concept I learned: Moore’s Law

My top podcasts: The All-in Pod , My First Million

Most fun piece of writing I produced: Outlaw Logic

Biggest challenge: 5 van breakdowns - 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5

Top 3 Artists: Odesza , Tyler Childers, Judah & The Lion

Most grateful for: 5 van breakdowns - increased resiliency

Top Reading Materials: WSJ , TechCrunch , Hacker News , PH

Favorite interaction with a stranger: McCoy the Shoeshiner

Most heartbreaking moment: Uvalde, TX shooting that took 21 lives

Most joyous moment: Game 3 of the World Series in Philly with my dad

Most meaningful piece of writing I produced: Starting with The End in Mind

Most serendipitous moment: meeting a van builder in the woods (right when I needed one)

Top 3 questions I kept asking myself this year:

Is what I’m doing the highest leverage use of my time?
What things should I be intentionally doing that aren’t high leverage?
What’s the difference between the man I am today/the man I need to become tomorrow, and how do I best close that gap?

My 2022 headline: “Man in a van who has trouble asking for help and depending on others is forced to ask for help and depend on others.”

2022 Goals Assessment

Key
✅ - accomplished

➖ - descoped

❌ - failed

1. �� Build the Van (✅)

From the design to the build to the documentation, I could not be more pleased with how the van turned out.

My woodworking skills were limited when I took this project on. The van was certainly a stretch goal, but I made it happen.

Additionally, I was intentional about recording the entire build process.

I published a case study which includes 5 videos that detail what it took to make this idea a reality.

More than 6k+ folks on YouTube have now seen the design of my van, and I’m paying it forward by helping them avoid mistakes I made through these videos.

Bottom line: I’m pleased with the woodworking skills that I learned, the stories that I gained, and the relationships that I strengthened through the build process.

2. ✍️ Build a Writing Habit (✅)

I went from a sporadic writer online to a consistent, steady writer. Come hell or high water, I publish at 8am on Thursday.

To some folks, adding a deadline like this into their life sounds daunting. It's not.

This weekly deadline is simply to hold me accountable to doing what I love - clarify my thoughts.

I let myself publish sporadically online for roughly 2 years before locking in, but I brought an end to this hot and cold behavior this year.

Bottom line: I have become more comfortable putting my ideas into the world, I've improved my clarity of thought, and I've built a growing community along the way.

3. �� Travel the Country/Live in the Van (✅)

This goal wasn’t achieved because of my success but because of my repeated failures - 5 freaking breakdowns, but I stuck with it.

I also knew that this type of goal had an expiration date on it. I won’t be ripping across the country in a van in future seasons of life. Now was the time to strike (and strike I did.)

In all, I did 9 months living in the van for a total of 20k+ miles and 28 states (+ D.C.)

The road is not easy. It’s volatile. The highs are high. The lows are low.

One day you’re managing a mechanical breakdown which is taking a toll on your mind, body, and spirit. The next day, you meet a group of people while watching a beautiful sunset and your energy reserves are filled right back up.

That's just the way it goes.

Bottom line: I challenged myself and became more resilient, saw/experienced incredible places, and reignited existing friendships while making new, lifelong friends along the way.

4. �� Build a Lifting Habit (✅)

One of the reasons a lifting habit was important to me was so that I could manage stress while on the road.

I've done a few different power lifting programs before, so the key here wasn't to get fancy. I just wanted to improve upon what I knew.

I spent a number of nights sleeping in Planet Fitness parking lots, so I was able to take care of this goal.

I hit PRs in power lifts such as bench press/squat as well as body weight exercises such as pull-ups and dips.

Bottom line: A man whose days were all different in 2022 sought routine in the beacon of hope that is the 24/7 Planet Fitness business model.

5. �� Read on the Road (✅)

This goal was accomplished in one word - Instapaper. Instapaper is an app where you can download online essays and articles to a single place for you to highlight, mark up, and take notes.

As I'd go about my day, I'd download pieces of writing for me to sit down and consume later on in the Instapaper app.

This helped me differentiate mindless scrolling as opposed to deep reading.

Additionally, I added a "What I'm Paying Attention To" section of my newsletter. It's easy. I go into Instapaper, pick the top pieces I read that week, and link them in the newsletter.

Bottom Line: the integration of Instapaper and my consistent writing habit helped me hone in on my reading habits.

6. �� Mentor a UIF Cohort (✅)

The University Innovation Fellows (UIF) is a program that I participated in during college.

UIF has been the best way for me to volunteer while moving around on the road the past three years.

I've guided a number of different cohorts through design thinking training and gotten to know awesome undergraduate students along the way.

Now that I've landed in one spot, I'd like to return to in-person service opportunities.

Bottom Line: Volunteering for UIF has been fun/rewarding, but this will be my last year as a mentor. That way, I can free up time for Durham-based service opportunities.

7. �� Build a Business (❌)

Two things caused me to fail on this front: 1. A lack of clarity on what success would've looked like for this goal. 2. Thinking I can both travel the country, leave my job, and start a business at the same time.

As Jim, my academic advisor in college, used to say, "you're trying to fit 10lbs of flour into a 5lb bag."

I knew life on the road was temporary and that my time to fully lean into VanLife was in 2022, so I intentionally relinquished my expectations on this goal.

With that said, I did build an essential skill sets curriculum and drove 1,000 people to the landing page here .

I also competed in a hackathon and built a pretty nifty tool that my teammate David and I will be working on in 2023.

Bottom Line: I need to be more clear about what success looks like occupationally to prevent failure, but I'm proud that I sprinted through the end of 2022 with the hackathon.

8. ��️ Podcast from the Road (➖)

I descoped this mid-way through the year. It was not practical to think that I could guarantee a strong enough wifi connection or quiet enough environments to facilitate interviews.

I freakin’ miss podcasting too, but as I look to 2023 I know that something has to give. I have intentionally left this out of my goals in the new year because I feel as though it is not the highest leverage thing I can be doing right now.

I'm also a bit burned out on the 1-on-1 interview format that I did with Building Out Loud .

My secret hope is that I make a close friend (or group of friends) so that I can be a part of a podcast like All-In or My First Million years from now.

Yet, those 2 podcasts are successful because you learn from industry veterans with deep expertise and awesome stories. For me to get to a point where I can co-host a great pod, I need to earn my stripes.

Bottom Line: I descoped podcasting from '22 and am focused on building AI products/writing in hopes that this makes me a better co-host of a podcast one day.

9. �� Take a 1-Year Break from Drinking - (✅)

In previous years I’ve done 1-month, 3-month, and 8-month breaks in drinking. In 2022, I wanted to see if I could go the whole year. Why? I’m constantly trying to uncover who I am when I can’t depend on things. I apply this logic in multiple areas (i.e. I don’t do caffeine or nicotine.)

But drinking is different. It’s so embedded in our culture that some folks thought I was crazy to do this (which, as a result, only wanted to make me do it more.)

"Who am I without a social lubricant? Who am I without a few beers to take the edge off?" I thought.

I also wanted to know what I could accomplish without alcohol. A lot of my goals are accomplished on nights and weekends. I found that my energy levels tanked the next morning after drinking, and I couldn't get stuff done.

I didn’t have a “drinking problem.” I had a “not achieving what I’m setting out to do” problem.

Aligning my actions with my words was paramount this year, so alcohol bit the dust.

Also, from a safety standpoint, I was sleeping in parking lots and forest roads across the US in my van. Should something have happened, my first line of defense was always to drive away. So, going sober for the year helped me stay safe.

Did this mean I stopped going out? Heck no. I particularly wanted to uncover who I was in social settings without alcohol - weddings, line dancing saloons, dive bars, and more. I had some of the funnest, wackiest nights out in my life without a sip of alcohol.

This isn’t to say all drinking is bad. It's simply that I wanted to revaluate my relationship with it and see what I was made of without it.

Important Note: I did have a beer with my dad at the World Series in November and a glass of champagne when my sister got engaged in December.

Outside of that, I truly had no alcohol. I wanted to be disciplined, but I didn't want to let those two specific moments of raising a glass (or can) pass me by.

Bottom line: I know who I am without a social lubricant, and I'll be reintroducing red wine this coming Jan. to find out what my relationship with alcohol should be moving forward.

10. �� Use the Van to Choose a Spot to Settle - (✅)

I knew that full-time VanLife would come to an end at some point, and I wanted to find a spot to settle in the southeast.

I used the van to live in a number of different cities to see how I'd like them - Raleigh, NC, Durham, NC, Greenville, SC, Asheville, NC, and Richmond, VA.

This is something I wrote a few times about last year in my pieces "Where's the best place to build?" and "Where can I best serve & build equity?"

Bottom line: The van enabled me to get a feel for the pace of each city, and I decided on Durham for it's start-up scene, emerging tech sector, history, diversity, art, and food.

2023 Goal Setting

1. �� Build Self-Sustaining Income Independent of a Corporation

This is my top goal for a reason. I want to work with awesome people, build cool things, serve others, and control my time. I'm not saying it will be easy to get there, but I think it will be worth it.

Additionally, I think I find myself at the perfect window to execute this occupational goal.

I am 25 with 3 years of product management experience. I know enough where I can find ways to produce value for others, but I'm young enough where I can fall flat on my face and be okay (because I don't have a family or kids to support.)

Plan of attack: build 2 companies - 1. Feather AI: the premier speech-to-text summary service 2. DAO Town: the central place for DAO news. See what sticks.

My prediction: I will make money building AI products/writing about DAOs and fail (a lot). This will accelerate my learning and deepen new/existing relationships - making it rewarding intellectually and socially no matter what happens financially.

2. �� Publish Newsletter Every Thursday & Grow Subscriber List to 1k

Last year my goal was simply to write consistently. I got the job done. Now, I want to scale to grow the community of folks I interact with on a weekly basis.

I'm currently at 241 subscribers, just short of my goal of 250 for 2022.

I'm proud of the progress I've made thus far building an audience, and I look forward to continuing to grow it.

Plan of attack: collaborate with other newsletter writers, cross-promote each other's work, and gain new subscribers by marketing long-form essays (more on this below.)

My prediction: there are 1,000 wacky people out there who will be willing to sign-up for my newsletter ◡̈

3. �� Take a 1-Year Break from Facebook and Instagram

Nick Gray is the author of a book called "The 2-Hour Cocktail Party." He's basically the go-to guy for how to make friends as an adult. He has a quote that I freakin' love:

"Facebook is for friends that are now strangers. But Twitter is for strangers that should be your friends."

For my age group, this is incredibly true. We largely do not produce content on Facebook, so I'm mostly looking at "suggested content" from people I've never met.

Instagram's algorithm has shifted towards reels (which most of my friends don't produce), so I'm largely looking at people I've never met on there too.

Twitter, for my goals, is where I want to be. I am able to develop authentic relationships with writers, podcasters, product builders, and investors around the world.

Basically, 3% of my time on FB/IG is spent actually consuming content from people in my life. The other 97% is me mindlessly scrolling, casting judgment, strategizing how I can post a dope 24hr story rather than being present in the moment, and overall burning time/energy.

I'm not denying the value in that 3% - hearing about engagements, seeing wedding photos, or sharing my own valuable moments from my life with others. It's on me to proactively reach out and ensure I retain as much of that 3% of meaningful information exchange.

Plan of attack: store the log-in info far away (off my laptop), delete mobile apps, log out from browser, and don't access FB/IG for 2023. Keep in touch with folks via text, phone calls, and the newsletter. Build meaningful relationships on Twitter by helping other people with their businesses, writing, and other projects.

My prediction: I'll sometimes miss news from folks in the periphery of my life, but I'll be able to remain in contact with the real folks that matter the most to me. If 2022's best habit removed was to stop drinking, I think taking a break from FB/IG will be 2023's best habit removed.

4. ��️ Publish 1 Essay Per Quarter

Twitter is where I churn out half-baked ideas. Then, if folks engage with said ideas, I write a newsletter on the topic to expand my thinking. I'm going to take this a step further.

I'm going to combine multiple newsletters that I've previously written and turn them into essays.

Why? I'm taking the best ideas that have made it through 2 cycles of iteration (twitter, newsletter) and packaging them into evergreen content - stuff that is timeless, not timely.

Plan of attack: write one essay per quarter in 2023, market these pieces through channels of distribution such as Product Hunt and Hacker News.

My prediction: I'm going to have a freakin' blast remixing some seemingly unrelated writing of mine from 2022 and working them into wacky and fun pieces in 2023.

5. �� Build Endurance, Balance, Flexibility, and Better Nutrition

In 2022, I reached PRs in power lifts, but I want to center my health goals around longevity. I'm more focused on feeling good than looking good.

Fellow writer Joe Wells has encouraged me to check out ROMWOD which is a daily routine to improve range of motion. I need something like this.

I'd love to commit to a daily yoga practice, or stretching practice in theory, but I think daily would be too much given goals #1-4 I have above.

Plan of attack: go on two backpacking trips, participate in 1 F3 workout per week, walk to co-working space each day, do stretching sessions 2 times per week, buy local produce, get 8hrs of sleep, sleep with your phone in the other room, and drink 16oz of water when you wake.

My prediction: The key to success on this one lies in making the time in my calendar for each of these activities. I know me. I am a gosh darn pain in my own neck. I'll put work over this stuff if I don't schedule it out.

6. �� Improve Information Caption System

If 2022 was about refining my information diet, then 2023 is about refining my information capture. Though, my information diet could still be improve by adding timeless works and subtracting the amount of timely pieces I read.

My diet looks like: fiction before bed (please send me historical fiction recs), podcasts on my walking commute into town (All-In, My First Million, Founders), and weekly time for Instapaper review.

I need to do a better job of routing all of this information into one single capture system in Notion.

Plan of attack: review Tiago Forte's content on Building a Second Brain, link instapaper + Readwise to Notion, decommission your broken Evernote/Apple Notes systems, and make time to read what's timeless (not just timely)

My prediction: This will be the highest leverage habit I build in 2023 with ripple effects across my ability to produce high quality work as a product builder and writer.

7. ☀️ Rest fully on Sundays

My mind is constantly running. If I don't actively build in off-days, I'll burn myself to a crisp (speaking from experience.)

This one may be the simplest but the hardest for me - don't do work one day each week.

Plan of attack: Go to church, spend time with friends, get outside, get off your phone, meditate, read, and write. Just be still.

My prediction: I'm going to be at war with myself on this one lol.

8. �� Build a 2x Daily Meditation Practice

It's insane how poor breathing contributes to bad habits and bad attitudes throughout our day.

My goal is to ease into the day and ease out of it through mindful breathing.

Plan of attack: 20min of transcendental meditation before the day starts, 20min of transcendental meditation in the late afternoon/early evening - mix in Wim Hof when in need of a more active meditation.

My prediction: just as weekly writing was the top habit I formed in 2022, I think this daily meditation will be the top habit I form in 2023.

9. �� Participate in a Local Service Opportunity 1x/week

Online writing, building AI products, and pontificating upon the future of DAOs is fun and all, but staying so focussed on the future has the capacity to disassociate me from the reality that folks just down the road from me may be struggling in the present moment.

I want to get to know my neighbor in Durham, become their friend, and serve them as best as I can.

Plan of attack: meet with my local Pastor, identify a need I can help play a part in, and schedule a weekly cadence to participate in the service opportunity.

My prediction: this habit will be the most life-giving of out of the 10 goals I'm setting forth for 2023.

10. ⛷️ Try Things That Are Completely New & Do Things That Bring You Joy

Novel experiences wash over you like a wave when you live in a van. Despite now being in one place, I want to ensure I'm still making time to try new things.

Here's a wacky one: I've never been skiing. All of my friends ski, but I don't. It's time to remedy that.

Also, all this goal setting and review stuff is great, but don't forget to be a human, Josh. You freakin' love to throw on some boots and two-step, so go do some of that.

Live intentionally and be present in joyful moments, but be prepared for stuff to go awry and to smile through it.

Plan of attack: go skiing, do some two-stepping, go in with an open mind to whatever other adventures come your way this year, and just have some freakin' fun you nerd.

My prediction: this goal's success will depend less on a plan of action and more on me setting this intention.

2022 Photos of the Year

Appendix: How I Prepared The Review

This was the most difficult piece that I have ever written.

While this took 50+ hours to read, write, and reflect, it wasn’t the amount of time that made this difficult. It was that I reviewed and analyzed myself - both the good and the bad - unlike I’ve ever done before.

There was no hiding from myself in this essay.

How did I do this? I read every piece of writing that I produced in 2022. This included all 51 newsletters that I published publicly and 90+ pages in a handwritten journal that I recorded privately.

While reading all of my writing, I followed Tim Ferris’ lead. I sorted out what things were positive and negative influences in my life into a simple t-chart. This helped inspire the "Quick Hits" section (which you can think of as the superlatives of the year.)

Then, I jumped into St eve S chlafman’s Ultimate Annual Review Guide and Dickie Bush/Nicholas Cole's Yearly Review Guide to help me reflect on what I did and didn't accomplish this year. This information became the materials for my "2022 Goals Assessment" section of the review.

Finally, I reviewed Sahil Bloom's annual review guide which influenced my plans of action under the "2023 Goal Setting" section of the review.

Tim, Steve, Dickie/Nick, and Sahil's exercises allowed me to narrow down my inputs for this review. Many thanks to each of them for passing their wisdom onto others.

After these exercises, I placed my "Interactive VanLife Map" and “Quick Hits” at the top of the review as a way to ease the reader into this lengthy piece.

I also included my “2022 Photos of The Year” at the end of the piece as a way to ease the reader out of the review.

This process was exhausting but essential.

My mental clarity is paramount to who I am seeking to become in 2023, and my intention in setting this annual review system up is to run it for the next decade.

So while this is my first annual review, it's not my last.

Thanks for reading this far. Drop me a note on who you are becoming in 2023 - hello@joshcadorette.com.

Mental Models

Mon, 09 May 2022 16:38:13 GMT

Running list of simple frameworks I use to guide my life.

1. P/PC Balance - (P) = production of desired results. (PC) = production capability. Focus too much on (P) and you'll gain short-term results at the expense of long-term, sustainable growth. Focus too much on (PC) and you'll have a great long-term plan without the short-term resources to execute that plan. The key is to find the balance between (P) and (PC). Credit - 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Steven Covey.

2. Flowers Budgeting - It's a privilege to express appreciation, so make room in your monthly budget for high-impact actions of kindness, such as buying someone flowers. This is especially true when it's spontaneous (not a birthday, valentine's day, mother's day, etc.) Plus, people take note if they're not from the grocery store, so find a local florist or trusted online florist who delivers quality product. This model also applies to picking up a stranger's meal or purchasing stationary to write notes of gratitude.

3. Group Chat Accountability - Systems of accountability with metrics you can measure and check-ins with people who will hold your feet to the fire are essential to achieving your goals. Do not complicate the system. Make a group chat of friends who are interested in your goal (and ideally share similar goals). Clearly state your goal, define metrics of success, and determine a time each week to text the group chat with updates. You don't need a fancy app or planner. You need low barriers to operating your system of accountability, like sending a simple, weekly text update.

4. 1% Better Everyday - .99^(365) = .03 -but- 1.01^(365) = 37.78. This math breaks down the compound growth you stand to gain by getting 1% better everyday vs. getting 1% worse everyday. We often think small, steady habits won't amount to much. This couldn't be further from the truth. You don't need to tackle everything today. Just get 1% better. Credit - Atomic Habits by James Clear

5. Time, Timing, & Regret - Time = how many hours can you allocate to the objective? Timing = does the objective align with this season of your life? Regret = will I regret not taking action when I look back on my life at age 80? Find the answer to 2 of these variables, and the answer to the third becomes clear.

6. Luck Surface Area - There are two variables - doing (D) and telling (T) - that can increase your luck. If you do (D) great work but don't tell (T) people about it, then it is hard for your work to gain traction. If you tell (T) people about something but haven't done (D) the work to back it up, then it is also hard for your work to gain traction. You most efficiently allocate your effort to both D and T for your work to gain traction. More on this here .

7. Mental Cigarettes - No, I don't smoke and this has nothing to do with tobacco. This is something I learned as a ropes course instructor in Montana . If there was a crisis on the ropes, we'd give ourselves 1-2min to breathe and think through the appropriate action to resolve the issue - about the time it takes to smoke a cig. Acting immediately when your body is filling up with cortisol (stress hormone) may cause you to take a wrong step that could further endanger yourself or others. Breathing will help you lower cortisol levels, think more clearly, and take the appropriate next step. You'll lose 1-2min but immediately gain that time back + more by making the correct first move.

#23: Lionel Nichols on Breaking Into the Fashion Industry

joshua.cadorette@gmail.com (Josh Cadorette) — Mon, 28 Feb 2022 15:32:54 GMT

Also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts

Lionel Nichols is the founder of Mario & Lee where he designs exclusive 1 of 1 garments from the highest quality hand sourced fabrics, trims and notions. He has dressed celebrities such as Gunna and Mark John Jeffries and offers pieces for purchase at marioandlee.com.

Hearing Lionel tell his story in audio format is inspiring, but I highly recommend you check out his instagram below to visually grasp the unique pieces he has designed.

In our conversation, Lionel and I discuss how modeling led him to fashion, his process of designing with the end in mind, and how he plans for long-term success in his craft.

Lionel's Links

Lionel's TikTok

Lionel's Instagram

Mario & Lee Website

Mario & Lee Instagram

Perfect Look Beauty Bar's Instagram

#22: Alicia DeCastro on Coffee Grounds & Grounding Experiences

joshua.cadorette@gmail.com (Josh Cadorette) — Wed, 02 Feb 2022 00:01:07 GMT

Also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts

Alicia DeCastro is the owner of Fundati coffee shop & roastery in Lincoln, Rhode Island. She's on a mission to help you to find your Fundati or find ways to ground yourself through in-person at the coffee shop and experiences online through social media

When she's not running the coffee shop, Alicia serves as an Integrative Nutrition Health Coach where she helps clients achieve sustainable habits around nutrition, sleep, relationships, and movement. She offers these services remotely. You can reach out to Alicia via the links in the show notes if you want to get in contact with her about her coaching services.

In our conversation, Alicia and I discuss the importance of mindfulness, the ethical considerations of sourcing coffee beans, and how she knew she would pursue entrepreneurship.

Alicia's Links

Fundati's Website

Fundati's Facebook

Fundati's Instagram

#21: Avyay Chaganty on Helping Others Tell Their Story

joshua.cadorette@gmail.com (Josh Cadorette) — Thu, 02 Dec 2021 18:26:08 GMT

Also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts

Avyay Chaganty is co-founder and CEO of ACCL Marketing, a creative marketing agency focused on surpassing your business goals and KPI's through the art of digital storytelling. From creating logos to executing campaigns, ACCL brings the full marketing package.

When he's not helping businesses, academic institutions, and non-profits tell their story, Avyay enjoys spending his time creating hand-made clothing his side hustle Synapse.

In our conversation, Avyay and I discuss the art of storytelling, the importance of diverse perspectives, and how fashion design creates opportunity.

Avyay's Links

Synapse

ACCL Marketing

Personal Instagram

JPCO

Advancing Holistic Well-being for Emerging Generations

website@sitemodify.com (Website Editor) — Sun, 28 Nov 2021 21:20:33 GMT

Empowering communities with curriculum and analytics on how to live a healthier, happier life.

Organization

Essential Skill Sets

Role

Founder (September 2020 - December 2022)

*putting on pause with the intention of circling back to this idea (as outlined here )

Skills

Product, Data, Design & Facilitation

Overview

Emerging generations are reporting higher levels of loneliness and stress. This was an emerging trend before COVID. The pandemic only accelerated it's slope. I have seen it in my friends and have experienced it myself, so I made it my mission to do something about it.

MVP 1 (Sep. 2020 - Sep. 2021) - “How might we empower others with the knowledge of holistic well-being?” - I created an education platform for students and young professionals that teaches them about the 8 elements of holistic wellness through microlearning - bite-sized interactions that keep Gen Z engaged on mobile platforms. There were high levels of engagement from users. I also received helpful feedback for MVP2 - users felt the curriculum could create positive impact for individuals but not for their communities.

MVP 2 (Sep. 2021 - Feb. 2022) - “How might we create more in-depth conversations around well-being for both individuals and communities?” - mobile-first education platform that incentivizes users to routinely provide insight on their wellbeing to the communities (universities or companies) that they are apart of. The data will provide community stakeholders (university administration or HR in a company) a high-level view on the well-being of their community members. Incorporating analytics for community leaders into this iteration is a direct result of user research from MVP2.

MVP3 (Feb. 2022 - December 2022) - "How might we create a robust curriculum of essential skills for young adults ages 18-24?" - email based curriculum that meets students where they are. Focus on microlearning and engaging content as opposed to long-form, video content with low participation rates. ( See landing page .)

Screenshots of the text message course that I built for MVP1.

Challenges

Increased Stress & Loneliness for Gen Z
Gen Z has reported the highest levels of stress, the highest levels of loneliness, and the highest need for emotional support in the past year than all other generations. ( Source )

Decreased Insight for Leaders
Remote work and school has distanced universities and employers from their students and employees. There are less elevator conversations and in-person events where colleagues can check-in on one another, leaving community leaders with less insight on how their people are.

Screenshots of the wireframe I'm building for MVP2.

Solutions

Increased Stress & Loneliness for Gen Z -> Engaging Curriculum
BeeWell is for Gen Z students and young professionals who want to take charge of their well-being. It is a platform that provides engaging curriculum that empowers users with the knowledge of holistic well-being.

Decreased Insight for Leaders -> Powerful Analytics
The curriculum will also incentivize users to provide updates on their wellbeing. This will allow university and company leaders to identify ways in which they can support their students and employees.

Screenshot of the landing page for MVP3.

Impact

Stopped work on this initiative after MVP3, but this project directly influenced how I prepare my annual reviews. See " Essays " for more on my annual reviews.

MVP2 Hypotheses

Helping Government Respond to Citizens Faster with AI

website@sitemodify.com (Website Editor) — Fri, 26 Nov 2021 16:02:05 GMT

Using text analytics & intelligent extraction to make govt. more effective/efficient.

All assets referenced here are the intellectual property of Deloitte Consulting LLP ("Deloitte").

Organization

CortexAI for Government - Deloitte Consulting LLP ("Deloitte")

Role

Product Manager (May 2021-January 2023)
Product Development Analyst (September 2019-May 2021)

Overview

CortexAI™ for Government (CfG), Deloitte’s proprietary platform, is an AI/ML blueprint, workshop, and set of solutions for enhancing decision-making and improving mission outcomes for government and public sector agencies.

I've worked in product roles across 2 CfG AI Engines. The first utilizes Natural Language Processing (NLP) to provide analytics on large volumes of text. The second asset uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to extract critical information from mass quantities of documents.

Both products began as ideas on a slide deck in January 2021. We have since built each of the products from 0 to 1 and continue to iterate upon them today. Throughout the process, I helped lead an agile transformation, developed/executed product roadmaps, and led product demos for internal stakeholders and prospective clients.

Challenge

Large Volumes of Text

Case workers have to sift through a large volume of text in order to gain an understanding of what is happening within a specific case.

Mass Quantities of Documents

Workers have to process mass quantities of documents (IDs, wage documents, etc.) in order to properly administer benefits to citizens.

Solution

Large Volumes of Text -> Case Comment Explorer (NLP)

Our team built a dashboard that allows case workers to quickly find critical information, get a holistic view of the case, and explore across cases.

I led the initial user research gathering efforts. After uncovering the need to process cases more efficiently, I then researched 10 different NLP functions that could be applicable. We developed and deployed 4 of these 10 features - summarization, classification, named entity recognition, and sentiment analysis - and packaged them into the dashboard

Mass Quantities of Documents -> Intelligent Document Processing (OCR)

Our team built a model that extracts critical information from documents, then stores it away in databases for government workers to leverage during the benefits application process.

AI helps us do this by automatically classifying/sorting the type of document that has been uploaded, accurately identifying important fields, and quickly extracting those fields from the document.

I led the functional design of the model. After implementing the design in MVP1, I was promoted to Product Manager where I have planned and executed each of the last 5 product roadmaps with a scrum team made up of 5 developers.

Impact

Large Volume of Text -> Case Comment Explorer (NLP) -> Increased Efficiency & Proactive Intervention

Case workers are able to be caught up to speed much quicker utilizing the dashboard as opposed to sifting through the individual case comments. They can identify themes, keywords, people, places, and time events.

This allows case workers to identify trends and patterns within a case which could lead to proactive intervention.

Mass Quantities of Documents -> Intelligent Document Processing (OCR) -> Faster Execution in Government

Workers are able to process applications for benefits much quicker utilizing the extraction model as opposed to manually reviewing individual documents. They can verify information and uncover, escalate, and eliminate common barriers during application review.

This speeds up the application process and ultimately ensures faster distribution of benefits to citizens.

Hacking Higher-Ed as a Student & Alum

website@sitemodify.com (Website Editor) — Fri, 19 Nov 2021 23:55:56 GMT

Empowering college students to apply design thinking to higher education & beyond.

Organization

University Innovation Fellows (UIF)

Roles

UIGuide (May 2019 - December 2022)

Fellow (September 2016 - May 2019)

Skills

Design & Facilitation

Overview

The University Innovation Fellows program is a global movement to ensure that all students gain the attitudes, skills and knowledge required to navigate a complex world.

After going through a 6-week design thinking training, I became a fellow in the fall 2017 during my sophomore year of college.

I became the Fellows Director at Elon University where I drafted a membership agreement for fellows at Elon, recruited 8 new fellows, and helped create a business + STEM speaker series.

After graduating in spring 2019, I became a UIGuide. I facilitate the 6-week design thinking training that I went through for new cohorts. I've guided 5 cohorts of UIF candidates over the past 3 years.

This program gives me life. It is energizing to walk back through the curriculum in a teacher/mentor capacity each year as I am able to see design in a new light from the perspective of those learning the concepts for the first time. It's equally energizing to connect with current undergrads who are eager to build a better future. I continue to mentor them after training to ensure that they are best suited to succeed as fellows long past their time as college students.

Intro to Design Thinking presented by UIF.

Challenges Faced as a Fellow (September 2016-May 2019)

Lost Momentum
At Elon, UIF would have a lot of energy coming off of training, but then we would lose it and not apply our new skillsets on-campus.

There were 2 factors specific to our university's culture that lead to lost momentum amongst UIF cohorts:

Most fellows train in their sophomore year.
Most Elon students study abroad in the fall semester of their junior year.

The energy and momentum generated would come to a halt because, after leaving campus in May of their sophomore year, they would not return to campus for 8 months until January of their junior year.

Gap Between Business + STEM
Elon announced it's mission to facilitate cross-collaboration between STEM and business students through a new innovation quad.

Elon's business school is well-established and houses the largest number of students compared to the other schools on-campus. Most STEM programs at Elon are new and relationships between business/STEM have not been established.

Elon's rendering of a future innovation quad on-campus where business and STEM will meet (targeted completion July 2022).

Solutions Implemented as a Fellow (September 2016-May 2019)

Lost Momentum -> Membership Agreement
I facilitated the creation of a membership agreement for UIF at Elon. All Elon fellows met bi-weekly over the course of 2 months, designing a new iteration each time until we had something that everyone had a hand in writing and everyone agreed upon.

The agreement established a common set of values that defined us, set the expectations of all fellows, and established new leadership roles.

All members of UIF at Elon had a hand in writing the document and all members signed the agreement.

Gap Between Business + STEM -> Business + STEM Speaker Series
We performed user research by talking to students across campus about what they wanted to learn about business + STEM. Students said that they wanted to hear from industry leaders who were working within business + STEM.

As a result of our research, we designed a speaker series where students from all disciplines across campus could come and hear from industry leaders working at the intersection of business/STEM.

We facilitated a communal environment where students could come hang out and enjoy s'mores. That way, students not only learned from the industry leader but also connected with one another.

Excerpt from the Elon UIF Membership Agreement.

Full document attached below.

Impact Delivered as a Fellow (September 2016-May 2019)

Lost Momentum -> Membership Agreement -> Enhanced Accountability
The result of the agreement was enhanced ownership and accountability. We knew when folks intended to study abroad and adapted around their academic schedules.

Fellows on-campus knew what their role was, what was expected of them, and how they could rely on others to accomplish a common goal. This directly lead to the execution of our Business & STEM speaker series.

The agreement I led in May 2018 has resulted in sustainable change. Fellows at Elon continue to operate using the values, leadership roles, and standards laid out in the membership agreement.

Gap Between Business & STEM -> Business + STEM Speaker Series -> Interdisciplinary Relationships
The speaker series allows for cross-discipline relationship building amongst students/faculty, increased connection between the university/industry leaders, and serves as a great recruiting opportunity for potential new fellows.

This initiative resulted in sustainable change. Fellows at Elon continue to facilitate the Business + STEM speakers series once a semester.

Photos from the Business + Stem Speaker Series. We had roughly 50 people attend the event.
Full write-up of the event attached below.

Serving UIF as a Guide (May 2019-Present)

Since graduating from Elon in May 2019, I have guided 5 cohorts of fellows from 3 different universities through the same design thinking training that I went through.

I continue to serve UIF because it allows me to help guide servant leaders who can envision, organize, and execute a plan of action by collaborating with members of their community - lessons fundamental to solving the world's biggest issues.

I challenge students to think critically, act intentionally, and fail fast. I make myself available for each member of the cohort long after training to continue to mentor and guide them in any way that I can.

Photo with the Fall 2019 Elon cohort that I guided in a pre-COVID world.

Impact Delivered as a Guide (May 2019-December 2022)

The cohorts I've helped guide have executed the following projects:

Fall 2019 Elon University Cohort - interview-style podcasts where students speak with local I&E leaders in their community

Fall 2020 Elon University Cohort - new student organization called "Link Coordinators" where upperclassmen connect underclassmen to extracurricular activities and peer-to-peer mentorship opportunities

Fall 2020 James Madison University Cohort - student developed tutorials of online tools (i.e. Discord, Slack, Mural) that professors can learn from/implement in-class to make remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic more engaging

Fall 2021 Hollins University Cohort - design thinking curriculum for first-year student seminars to expose students across all disciplines to innovation & entrepreneurship

Fall 2021 James Madison University Cohort - new maker/creative space on campus for students to come build community and break things

Zoom selfie with the Fall 2021 James Madison cohort.

Full UIF Wiki Bio

Recap of the Inaugural Business + STEM Speaker Series Event

Full Membership Agreement

Building a Location Independent Home for Creativity

website@sitemodify.com (Website Editor) — Fri, 19 Nov 2021 16:21:54 GMT

Converting a van into a space for reading, writing, podcasting, and building a business.

Organization

No organization - just a dream of mine

Role

Part-time Van Dweller (December 2022-Present)

Full-time Van Dweller (April 2022-November 2022)

Designer, Builder (October 2021-April 2022)

Skills

Product & Design

Overview

I am interested in how the design of the space we inhabit affects our creativity. That's why I slimmed down my physical possessions, hit the road in my car, and began Airbnb hopping to tiny homes in early 2021.

Airbnb hopping provided fresh perspective and helped inspire creativity, but I found that I desired a bit of stability in the form of a familiar place.

The guiding question became "How might I maximize the benefits of fresh perspective and minimize the drawbacks of completely new surroundings every few weeks?"

This led me to design and build a vehicle that allowed me to live and create on the road.

Before jumping into the design/build updates on the vehicle below, I want to make a couple of things clear:

Not all folks who live in their vehicles full-time are doing so by choice. It's a privilege that I am able to choose to live in a vehicle.
This lifestyle will not be easy or glamorous. I am actively seeking out the challenges of this lifestyle to cultivate new learning opportunities and increased creativity.

A picture of the 2011 Ford Econoline that I purchased in October 2021.

Challenge

Limited Space
The van does not have a great deal of space and has to be able to function as a bedroom, living room, office, and kitchen.

Solution

Limited Space -> Multi-functional Design
There will be multiple configurations within the van. This will allow me to alter the space depending on what is needed from it.

Photos of the 3D schematic that I put together to plan the build.

Impact

Limited Space -> Multi-functional Design -> Digital Nomad Lifestyle
The van now allows me to travel throughout North America to see old friends/old places as well as meet new people/experience new places. I'm able to support myself financially wherever there is wifi.
I've also gained new carpentry skills and a newfound confidence to solve problems myself with my hands. I look forward to applying these skills to a future tiny home or barndominum .

Full Van Build from Start to Finish

What the Van Looked Like When I Bought It

Van Videos

It took 4 months to convert the van in PA this past winter.

I recorded the van build and broke it into 5 videos:

Design & Demolition
Vertical Framing & Sound Insulation
Building the Bed Frame
Wool Insulation & Walls
Cabinets & Countertops

You can find each of those videos below.

1. Design and Demolition

2. Vertical Framing and Sound Insulation

3. Building the Bed Frame

4. Wool Insulation and Walls

5. Cabinets and Counterop

Photos of the Completed Van

Interactive Map of Where I Went

Zoom in using the + and - sign in the bottom left corner.

Click the button top left to see a full list of all of my stops broken down by month.

Click the button top right to open the map in a separate tab for a larger map.

Updates from The Road

I send weekly newsletters on Thursday mornings. Topics include business, technology, and life, but I've written about the van a few times when the going has gotten tough.

I broke down 4x across 3 states all related to the same issue - the fuel pump.

While we've finally resolved the issue (faulty ground wire towards the back of the van), these digital postcards from the road provide insight into the challenges one faces when combining their living quarters with their transportation.

Again, the sole issue that caused each breakdown has been resolved. I'm grateful to have gone down near friends in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Colorado. Without their support, this adventure would've gone a whole lot different.

I wrote that paragraph above, then I went down for the *count it* 5th time (!!!) in northern California 6+ hours from anyone I know lol. We still made it through though! It was all a part of the journey.

VanLife 2022 Video Recap

Honoring the Memory of My Late Grandparents

website@sitemodify.com (Website Editor) — Mon, 01 Nov 2021 20:45:46 GMT

Digitizing and documenting the stories, values, and principles of my grandmother and grandfather.

Organization

No organization - just my crazy family

Role

Designer (August 2020 - June 2021)

Skills

Product & Design

Overview

Storytelling is one of the most important aspects of the human experience. It allows us to express who we are and what we believe.

Stories are fragile and easily lost to time. The way in which we overcome the extinction of a good story is documentation. That's exactly what my aunt and I did here. With my grandparents gone, we feared that their stories would soon be gone with them if we did not capture them. We put our heads together to design a database and digital scrapbook so that their memory would live on.

I love this project because it enabled me to put my skills to work in a way that preserves the life of my late grandparents and ensures future generations will be able to learn from them. I was able to trace some of the lessons that my father has tried to instill in me to the stories in the scrapbook. For this reason, it is one of the most meaningful pieces of work that I have designed.

A selection of the digital scrapbook. I won't share the full 117pg scrapbook as it is for my family's consumption, but these pages give you a look into the design.

Challenge

Boxes of Unorganized Artifacts
My aunt had a bunch of boxes of family artifacts that seem too important to get rid of, but you're not quite sure how to make sense of - photos, birth certificates, newspaper clippings, and more.

The artifacts themselves are not as impactful without the context behind them. My aunt knew most of the backstory behind each item, but someone like me would not.

We began to ask "how we might capture the story behind the artifacts in order to retain the memory of my grandparents?"

I was also concerned with compatibility. I needed to ensure all members of the family could open the finished document and that future generations could edit the document.

A few of my favorite photo transformations.

Solution

Boxes of Unorganized Artifacts -> Digital Library & Scrapbook
The first step was to organize and digitize everything. We laid all of the artifacts out on a large dining room table and sectioned them by category.

We then worked to scan all of these images and upload them to a shared library so that there was one high quality digital copy of each artifact. I also colorized each of the black and white photos, so this required multiple copies of each artifact (original and digitally altered).

The second step was to design a digital scrapbook that told the story behind these artifacts. I wanted to ensure the design of the scrapbook didn't make the people in the photos seem too distant, so I designed framed layouts so the reader could walk the digital halls of our grandparents.

I went with PowerPoint, a widely used tool, in order to ensure compatibility and accessibility. The content, not the intricacy of the tool, was paramount here.

A selection of the templates I designed. I left a bit of space on the left for a hole punch. This enabled us to print physical copies of the scrapbook and organize them into binders.

Impact

Boxes of Unorganized Artifacts -> Digital Library & Scrapbook -> Stories for Generations to Come
The physical artifacts have been captured digitally - both their original and edited versions.

While my aunt still hangs onto the physical artifacts, there is not as much worry about what will happen to them in the future because they've been documented.

Each member of my family was able to learn something new or see an artifact for the first time because we were able to disseminate the stories of the physical artifacts to family members far and wide.

This has encouraged follow-up conversations and storytelling amongst family members, further perpetuating the memory of my grandparents now and into the future for my kids, my grandkids, and future generations to come.

A selection of the digital scrapbook. I won't share the full 117pg scrapbook as it is for my family's consumption, but these pages give you a look into the design.

Scrapbook Headquarters

My aunt Sherry and me in the midst of some of the artifacts!

Understanding and International Economics

joshua.cadorette@gmail.com (Josh Cadorette) — Sun, 31 Oct 2021 17:10:48 GMT

Reflecting upon a semester abroad studying political and economic systems in Shanghai, China.

Unknown Adventure Awaits

“Why are you going?” they asked. Friends and family peppered me incessantly with questions regarding the purpose of my expedition. I failed to give them a straight answer, and they knew it. At the time, it was a feeling that I could not explain to myself - let alone the outside world. Something drew me in towards China, but I struggled to put this captivation into words. In hindsight, it is clear why I went. I was enamored by the intersection of economics and politics. Forget that I didn’t know a lick of Chinese when I first arrived. I needed to be there; to experience the everyday life of what it meant to be a Chinese citizen; to better understand government’s role in people’s everyday life; to understand how this new become powerhouse economy has and has not benefited her people. I elected to study abroad in Shanghai, China for four months in Fall 2017, and what I learned from my macroeconomics professor about the political economy of China has been nothing short of remarkable.

In the late 1970’s, the Chinese government implemented reforms that transitioned the country from a planned economy towards a free-market. It was as if someone had stored decades worth of economic potential behind the gates of a dam. Bit by bit, politicians experimented with poking holes within the dam’s walls to see where the water would flow and at what speeds. Slowly, not all at once, the dam began to be deconstructed. Money has flown fervently to certain areas of the country; so much so that, according to The Guardian, the country has lifted half of a billion people out of poverty in the past decade. Yet, not all of the valley beneath the dam has received its fair share of prosperity. Coupled with mass poverty alleviation are questions of morals and ethics.

China has reaped the benefits of capitalism such as massive GDP growth and increased economic efficiency, but symptoms of capitalism such as increasing income inequality and unequal wealth distribution have followed suit. The government now finds itself facing the issue of balancing economic efficiency while maintaining equality. Upon further examination of current income and wealth gaps among the Chinese citizenry, we will diagnose root causes of these disparities such as the outdated hukuo system, corrupt privatization of land, and unfair rural land ownership laws in an effort to better understand potential solutions.

Sunset captured from the Shanghai tower. At 2,073ft, the building is the 2nd tallest in the world.

A Brief History of China’s Economic Reform/Resurgence

Since the inception of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 and up until the late 1970’s, China had a command economy - a system where the central government made all of the decisions. During this period of time, Chairman Mao Zedong and the Communist Party of China (CPC) implemented economic practices based upon self-sufficiency by limiting the number of trading partners that the country did business with. After the passing of Chairman Mao, this policy changed under the leadership of General Secretary Deng Xiaoping in 1978. Deng Xiaoping introduced characteristics of a free-market - a system that lets the laws of supply and demand determine production and price with little government control – under what became known as the “open door policy” in China. Free market reform began with the decentralization of agricultural commune systems in the rural countryside under the household responsibility system.

My macroeconomics professor grew up on one of these communes. His personal anecdotes were what I had unknowingly longed for when I made the decision to study in China. With a PhD in economics, he advises the Shanghai government on policy measures and taught on the side to supplement his income. Under the commune system, he served on a production team to produce shoe laces. He had to hit quotas to ensure that his commune leader would not reprimand him. There was an unspoken rule among his family members. His parents and cousins all knew that they had to give middle-of-the-road effort – neither minimal nor maximum. Minimum effort resulted in a failure to meet quotas. It showed that you were lazy, and you could face harsh consequences to be made an example of. Maximum efforts were rarely rewarded. They simply raised the expectations of the commune leader. If you produced more shoe laces one week, you would be expected to sustain this output. There was not an incentive to work hard. There was an incentive to be mediocre.

Open-door policy reformed communes. Production teams now allowed farmers to share a portion of the outputs. After incentivizing work, production teams began to see farmers put in more effort thus increasing the efficiency of the agricultural economy. A study featured in the academic journal Economic Development and Cultural Change found that grain output increased from 305 million to 407 million tons in just six years from 1978-1984. The impressive growth resulting from the free market soon became undeniable, and government officials began to ramp up their reform measures. Legislative efforts to create a free market economy spread across nearly every industry and region of the country.

My professor stood by and watched his loved ones become more prosperous on the farm. The affluence he and others experienced only made them more ambitious. Granted, he wasn’t a man that fancied the glamor or business of a city. He instead had an appreciation for the countryside – where he had gained his roots. Yet, the reason he moved to Shanghai was one of the initial inequalities I came to identify when I was in China – the urban-rural divide. If you wanted a better life, you made your way to the city. With the reform of the commune system, Chinese citizens were now free to move about the country freely for the first time under the CPC’s rule. They were free to travel towards the best opportunity that they could fine. The biggest migration in all of man’s history was soon underway; Chinese citizens completed a mass exodus from the countryside to the city in search of work.

The bulk of the economic potential that had been released was in manufacturing industries. The wages that Chinese urban-dwellers now received due to reform was a vast pay raise relative to what little they had received previously. Yet, in comparison to the rest of the world, China’s labor costs were dirt cheap. With wages low, manufacturers could diminish their input costs immensely by producing goods in China. China quickly became an industrial powerhouse of export goods for buyers across the globe. According to an analysis performed by China & World Economy, exports grew at an average of 16.7 percent year-over-year from 1978-1997. As exports left the country, foreign investment and new technologies began to flood in resulting in a surge of the nation’s gross domestic product – a figure representing the total services and goods produced by a country in a given year. The GDP growth rate – a measure of how quickly economic output was flowing – doubled overnight after reform. Today, according to the World Bank, China possesses the world’s second largest economy worth 11.2 trillion USD. China has emerged from an underprivileged and underrepresented nation to a developing country that holds a major stake in the world economy today. Yet, not everyone in China has received his or her share of the economic success.

The Shanghai Tower looming in the background offers an interesting contrast in architecture to this traditionally designed building.

Income Disparity Rising Due to “Hukuo” System

As China’s economy has grown, so has its income inequality. Peking University completed a survey on household incomes in 2010 called the China Family Panel Studies or CFPS. The CFPS spanned 25 provinces and 14,798 families in Mainland China (excluding Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Tibet, Hainan, Ningxia, and Qinghai). The university utilized the data on household income to calculate a nationwide Gini coefficient – a measure of income disparity with 0 representing perfect equality and 1.00 representing perfect inequality. The CFPS 2010 survey yielded one raw Gini coefficient and one adjusted coefficient with consideration to Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) – a method of evaluating expenses based upon the regional cost of a common basket of goods. PPP allows for more accurate cross-referencing in urban and rural regions with respect to cost of living. Peking University then followed the exact same procedures they had implemented in CFPS 2010 and conducted this same survey again in 2012. The results of both of these studies along with a government study from the National Bureau of Statistics of China (NBS) can be seen in Table 1.

Table 1. Mini-Census 2005, CFPS 2010, CFPS 2012 Data. The National Bureau of Statistics of China did not provide a Gini coefficient adjusted for PPP; therefore, this data is unavailable.

Δ%2005-2012 shows that inequality grew by 10.12% in seven years – a clear indicator of an upward trend in income inequality. Δ%2010-2012 has been adjusted for PPP and corroborates the fact that the Gini coefficient continues to grow, but the growth was much smaller. This could be potentially an indicator that the rate of inequality growth is beginning to slow down. Due to the information in Table 1, modern economists contend that China is nearing a turning point where inequality will begin to decline based upon the Kuznets Curve. My professor is unsure of this hypothesis. He’s a man whose pride for his nation is neither resounding nor absent. It’s careful. In a country without the right to speak freely, he quietly challenges what he hears. He yearns for the prosperity of all people in his country, but he does not believe the path to success is wishful thinking. Instead, he relies on empirical data. To him, politicians lie but numbers do not. Then again, what can he make of numbers when the politicians control them? Here lies the tricky balance of being a Chinese economist. You must always be sensitive to whom you are talking to and what you are talking about. Should you have a dissenting opinion from the CCP’s political machine, move forward with caution.

Our class reviewed the Kuznet’s curve. Continued growth will reach a turning point in which income will fall. This hypothesis follows an inverted U curve as seen in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Kuznets Curve. Countries grow simultaneously grow income and inequality until a “turning point” is reached; at this point, income growth will continue while inequality will fall.

Rudimentary economies begin on the left and progress up the curve through industrialization - producing basic materials, commodities, and basic manufacturing. At a certain point known as the “turning point income,” inequality begins to taper and a developed economy emerges made up of advanced manufacturing, consumer goods, and consumer services. Some Chinese economists believe China’s “turning point” will be, in part, the completion of the mass-urbanization of rural immigrants. According to Yale Insights, 1950, just 13% of the Chinese population lived in cities; by 2010, 45% of Chinese citizens lived in urban areas, and this figure is expected to grow to 60% by 2030. The theory is that, at a certain point, enough Chinese citizens will live in areas of higher opportunity that the scales of income inequality will begin to fall.

Provinces on the Eastern Coast of China such as Fujian, Zhejiang, Shanghai, and Jiangsu each possess a GDP per capita of 10,000 USD or higher while western, rural provinces like Tibet, Sichuan, Gansu, and Yunnan each possess a GDP per capita under 6,000 USD. Chinese citizens residing in the countryside have seen their earning power continue to falter relative to their counterparts living in cities. According to an article in The Economist, the average urban income was 3.3 times higher than the average rural income in 2009; this figure fell to 2.7 in 2015. On the surface, this seems to indicate progress towards more equitable geographic earning potential.

My professor believes otherwise. According to him, a more in-depth look indicates that this data is skewed due to the “hukuo” system. The hukuo system is similar to an urban passport; it was implemented in 1954 as a way of restricting travel for China’s large rural population and preventing citizens from challenging Chairman Mao. This system was designed as a method of control to stop rural citizens from changing their legal residence. Today, a high volume of people from the countryside continue to flock to urban areas for better paying jobs. While they may reside in cities for long periods of time, rural citizens are incapable of changing their hukuo. Thus, rural immigrants who live and work in cities with better paying salaries are skewing average rural income data upward because they are still legally classified as rural residents.

In addition to skewing data, hukuo has contributed to the increase and perpetuity of inequality among rural citizens. Those with an urban hukuo have access to better public goods – better healthcare, education, housing, and pensions - than those with a rural hukuo. These public goods are segregated between rural and urban peoples. For instance, rural citizens who immigrate with their children to urban areas have to send their children to special immigrant schools. There are 500,000 immigrant students in Shanghai alone but only 145 eligible schools for these students to attend. These schools are largely overwhelmed, underfunded, understaffed, and generally have less resources than urban schools.

When I left the Shanghai city-limits, the urban-rural divide became tangible. I no longer watched the teenage sons and daughter of overnight Chinese billionaires race their foreign cars through the streets of Shanghai. Instead, I saw modest school structures and humble beginnings – a lack of resources but not a lack of hope. The teachers’ kindness and sincerity radiated a warm light towards their students, but this light was seemingly outshined by the glamor of the big city. It was a town and school propped up within the past decade to care for the immigrant children of working class people. Their parents worked in the city but could not afford to live there. They simply wanted to give their children a better life – a sort of Chinese take on what I had come to know as the American dream.

Yet, the conditions of education in China are the exact opposite of America. Schools in urban, American cities often struggle the most in sustaining the necessary resources to deliver a valuable education while suburban schools thrive. In China, students in urban school systems receive a much higher quality education than their suburban or rural counterparts. This disparity in education accelerates the pervasive cycle of income inequality and the urban-rural divide.

Plus, due to hukuo, rural immigrants often have to travel back to their home village for healthcare services. In the event of a medical emergency, individuals may have to travel across the country to receive proper medical attention. Along with the cost of tickets, the patient’s maladies may become worse as they wait to receive medical attention. This prolonged delay to see a doctor can translate into an increase in medical costs if the problem gets worse. Hukuo also leaves rural immigrants without a pension like their urban counterparts. Urban citizens utilize pensions to guarantee their financial security, enjoy a better lifestyle during retirement, and even pass along wealth to their family. Rural citizens are left without these luxuries.

Folks enjoy the remaining pieces of dusk on East China Normal University's campus as a statue of Chairman Mao looks on.

Wealth Gap Increasing Based Upon Proximity to Power

Privatization of the Chinese economy has also resulted in vast increases in wealth depending on individuals’ proximity to power – both in geography and relationships. According to a journal published by the Australian National University Press, individuals in urban areas experienced an average of 18.9 percent growth from 1995-2002. Individuals in rural areas during the same time period experienced an average of 1.9 percent growth in their wealth, per annum. This can largely be attributed to the privatization of land. As a part of their economic reforms, the Chinese government began to sell public land to private individuals for amounts well under market value. Individuals who possessed “guanxi” - connections or relationships - with those in the public sector, such as provincial leaders, were more likely to gain access to the sale of the land. So, while public lands were being privatized, it was not done so in a truly free market because not all buyers possessed the powerful connections to gain access to the sale.

My professor didn’t have access to the sales of Shanghai real estate back in the 1990’s, but his brother did. His brother was an art curator in downtown Shanghai. He also occasionally served as a dealer of high value pieces of work. Politicians would come to him to purchase sculptures and paintings, but they never paid in cash. They’d use their guanxi to look out for my professor's brother when an opportunity for financial gain presented itself. For instance, when a Shanghai high-rise that was previously owned by the government went on the market, my professor's brother gained admittance to the sale. Politicians formed a buying group made up of the people whom they owed favors. The high-rise was sold well below market-value and transformed into apartments for urban city dwellers. The curator gained access to more than just the sale of the high rise. He soon held stakes in old office buildings, manufacturing facilities, and restaurants. Suddenly, an art curator with no background in real estate, rose to the level of the Shanghai elite as a real estate mogul.

At this time, China had not yet developed a de jure real estate market because land belonged to everyone in the country and could not be bought or sold. In reality, a de facto real estate market run on guanxi and graft was illegally functioning during this time. The result of these measures is that high performing real estate assets, particularly in urban areas, have been concentrated in the hands of the wealthy and the well connected. It is also important to note that government officials who sold public lands under market value sacrificed potential government revenues that could have become investments in future public goods. Public goods such as pension coverage, infrastructure, education, housing, or health care could help alleviate large gaps in wealth. Instead, government officials have robbed their own people of the chance to redistribute wealth at the expense of increasing their own.

The real estate market is also dysfunctional in rural areas but for different reasons. China’s massive population requires a high number of farmers to remain within rural areas. Yet, farmers want to flock to sell their land and flock to cities for better opportunities. To prevent farmers from moving, modern real estate barriers in rural areas have been built up to inhibit citizens in the countryside from building their wealth. Rural peasants can’t sell their land at market prices which has made many hesitant to leave their plots of land. In towns such as Xiaogang, families were given plots of land to farm as a part of the household responsibility system. The families are accountable for the output of the land, and they’ve lived on it all of their life. Yet, they were never given legal ownership of the land even after the household responsibility system was reformed. For instance, in 2014, a group of Xiaogang farmers tried to purchase a small plot of land to rebuild a shrine dedicated to the earth god that was destroyed by the communists in the 1950s. This land purchase would have been the first in 67 years in Xiogang. Instead, the local government denied the transaction and the potential buyers were fined for trying to operate within the real estate market. Rural citizens feel trapped in an endless cycle. They cannot access the equity within the land that they farm, nor do they feel that they can abandon their land for better opportunity in urban areas. These peasants are left to watch others’ fortunes grow while they suffer. This is an intentional trap implemented by local governments to ensure there are farmers producing food.

Two luxury car companies - Mclaren and Lamorghini - had dealerships at the base of the office building where I completed an internship.

The Political Implications of China’s Growing Inequalities

A 1993 New York Times article stated that China’s de facto real estate market “says less about market economies and more about corruption.” Within this description of the shady tactics used in land deals lies a complex problem that China still faces today. The Chinese government describes its economy as a socialist system “with Chinese characteristics,” but the disproportion in wealth and income coupled with inequitable, corruptive tactics hardly display efforts of becoming a socialist society - nor is this reminiscent of an open, fair market. This is where the government officials find themselves at a crossroads; their political and economic ideologies clash with one another. The CCP is interested in continuing open market policies and scaling the economy, but they want to maintain the image of a socialist government that is for the masses in order to preserve their own power and legitimacy.

My professor is at the crossroads himself. As an economist, he knows that capitalism results in more output. Yet, he’s worried that the rising tide of money will not lift all boats due to the Chinese nature of business. Chinese business practices and standards are not based upon morals and ethics. They’re based upon shame, and what you can get away with. If you can exploit an opportunity without getting caught, you are fool not to. My professor is both related to and acquainted with people who have implemented his policy recommendations but found loopholes within them to game the system. His friends and family have gotten wealthy, but he hasn’t. His moral compass has steered him away from playing politics, but will other Chinese businessmen adopt similar ethical standards? Frankly, I doubt it. The only way Chinese business culture will transform is if the CPC is pressured to implement such changes.

Consider General Secretary Deng Xiaoping’s aforementioned decision in 1978 to experiment with free-market measures in the agricultural industry. During the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), incentives to produce agricultural goods were removed entirely and the economy became increasingly inefficient. China struggled to pay farmers and, worse yet, feed their own people. Per capita income in 1978 was 285 Yuan – below the poverty line standards of both the Chinese government and the World Bank. General Secretary Deng Xiaoping knew that reform was not only necessary for the people but also necessary for the survival of the party. History is often our best teacher, and I think this case is no different. The modern-day CPC will not seek drastic reform measures until inequality becomes an issue of social stability and party survival.

The head of the NBS, Ma Jiantang, was the first central government official to declare income inequality as a problem when speaking to the press in 2013. He stated that the “curve of Gini coefficient demonstrates the urgency for our country to speed up reform of the income distribution system to narrow the poor-rich gap.” Though this was encouraging, no serious legislative measures followed suit. This was perhaps an indication that the political pressures were not yet large enough for the government to take action. Four years later, General Secretary Xi Jinping of the CPC acknowledged the problem at the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. On October 24th, 2017, Xi Jinping stated the following: “The principal contradiction facing Chinese society has evolved and is now that between the people’s ever-growing needs for a better life and unbalanced and inadequate development; it reflects the realities of the development of Chinese society.” Xi Jinping, the head of state, speaking before his legislative body is a much more promising indication that reforms are on the way.

A guard standing post outside of Tiananmen Square in Beijing.

Potential Solutions for Reducing Income & Wealth Inequality

The party can no longer ignore the imbalances that exist within their society because, similar to 1978, the current economic practices represent a threat to the party’s legitimacy. Given the need for reform, I propose the following solutions that can alleviate income inequality and political pressure while encouraging economic efficiency:

Income inequality is being propped up by the remnants of the outdated hukuo system. The concept of an urban passport was supposed to maintain political stability during Chairman Mao Zedong’s time in power. Today, the system is contributing to the increase of inequality and instability. A country that adopts free-market practices and seeks to develop a modern economy cannot restrict their own people from moving freely within the country – especially with consideration to modern-day technology. Chinese citizens can connect virtually and communicate with other parts of the country. There is not a firewall that can prevent rural citizens from seeing or hearing accounts of the urban success. A refusal to end the inequitable hukuo system could result in political instability. Plus, China should see be able to identify the massive opportunity cost of refusing to unleash the economic potential of rural populations. If citizens were allowed to resettle within their own country freely, they could uncover better opportunities matched to their skillsets. This could result in better paying jobs and a more efficient economy. The country introduced hukuo reform measures in 2013, but the measures did not necessarily solve issues of stability in rural regions. Instead, reform called for increased mass urbanization of 400 million people at the cost of 40 trillion Yuan or 6.4 trillion USD. The legislation seeks to alleviate the hukuo problem by continuing to bolster opportunity in urban areas, but it still does not remove barriers for rural immigrants to gain urban hukuo permits. Hukuo needs to be reformed and replaced on a much wider scale. To do this, the government would need to invest in the infrastructure within their cities. No longer should students be segregated by school – no longer should patients be segregated by hospital; instead, the government must invest money into the infrastructure found in cities so that all Chinese citizens, no matter their background, can access quality public goods. By investing resources and improving this infrastructure, the government can temporarily employ more people to complete these projects. This can benefit the economy in the short term, but the long-term implications would be substantial. Rural citizens could more freely move throughout the country based upon opportunity thus creating a more adept workforce. The result would be a more efficient skills-based economy with better paying jobs, decreased income inequalities, less regionally based discrimination, and less political pressure on the CPC.

In addition to easing income inequalities, China must also begin to redistribute wealth. Bureaucrats from the 1990’s in China unfairly benefited from the privatization of land. To alleviate the disparity in wealth, China should implement a property tax. A property tax is calculated according to the value of the land after an appraisal is performed. The tax is then levied as a portion of the land value. This type of tax is paid to the government yearly in an escrow account. Developed countries around the globe utilize the property tax as a mechanism to pay for public goods such as healthcare and education. Currently in China, there is no holding cost for owning property. This means that wealthy individuals who were granted access to the illegal real estate market in the 90’s have been able to sit on the land at no expense while their wealth accumulates. Properties have been untaxed and therefore underutilized. In fact, according to a CNBC article, there were 1.33 million square meters of vacant residential space in Beijing’s Chaoyang district in 2013. While urban area property prices have surged, some buildings have remained completely unoccupied. Implementing a property tax could ensure a more equitable and efficient real estate market and help solve wealth inequality. Property owners would either sell the land to get out of paying the tax or begin to utilize it to generate a revenue stream to pay for the tax. Either way, it would level the real estate playing field. Not to mention, comprehensive tax reform such as this could help pay for the public infrastructure investment that I proposed when previously discussing hukuo reform.

China must also pursue rural land ownership reform. Under the household responsibility system, plots of land were divided and given to families. The families were accountable for the output of the land – much like capitalism – but the families are unable to claim ownership of this land even today. This is an old method of control from the days of Chairman Mao Zedong. The CPC must recognize that such tactics cannot function in a free-market. As mentioned previously, it is a contradiction of ideologies and could result in social upheaval. Plus, the absence of a functioning real estate market in these countryside provinces inhibits rural residents’ ability to invest money and build wealth. The country must privatize the land in the west in a fair and equitable fashion – unlike that of urban properties in the 1990’s. By doing so, the government will be allowing people the means to provide for themselves thus alleviating some of the burden of government’s responsibility to provide public goods.

The Shanghai skyline at night.

Factors of Consideration Regarding the NBS & Poverty Alleviation

The government is aware of increasing inequalities among their citizenry, but they do not release reliable data on the issue. China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) stopped releasing the Gini coefficient after it reached .483 in 2005 due to “gray income.” Gray income is the underreporting of income on tax forms and government surveys. This leaves the NBS without reliable data to calculate the real Gini coefficient. The practice of underreporting gray income has reportedly increased since Xi Jinping has taken office. There are no clear statistics to back this up given the illegal nature of the matter, but many rich Chinese people have refrained from flashing their wealth ostentatiously since Xi Jinping declared that he would go after both the “tigers and flies” that plague the government with corruption. Due to gray income, the data for Gini coefficients utilized in this paper is derived from Peking University as seen in Table 1.

While most metrics do indicate rising inequalities in Chinese society, it is also important to note the data that indicates the progress China has made. Since the 1980’s, has alleviated more people out of poverty than anywhere else in the world. Yes, inequality has increased, but the fact remains that China has pulled nearly half of a billion people above the World Bank’s poverty line in only three decades. The mass alleviation of poverty can be attributed to free-market measures that have improved China’s economic efficiency.

Shot of the Chinese countryside from the highway.

Approaching Inequality with Empathy

So, the question becomes, have the ends justified the means? Have the CPC’s reform measures to create a more efficient economy paid off? It’s too early to tell. Certainly, raising nearly half of a billion people out of poverty is no easy feat; however, the inequalities that have resulted from the matter could produce political instability. Then again, the CPC has historically chosen to take necessary legislative actions just before a threat escalates to the level of political instability. Perhaps inequality does have to continue to increase for the party to take notice and, henceforth, take firm action against the issue. The most recent comments from General Secretary Xi Jinping certainly indicate an acknowledgement of the problem, but the lack of decisive reform shows that he is merely wading the waters of reform and not yet diving in.

Moving forward, I believe that my three proposed solutions - hukuo reform, property tax implementation, and rural land ownership reform – could appeal to the CPC because they can mitigate inequality while raising economic efficiency. One cannot ignore the political implications, however, as this would require the CPC to give up two of their effective methods of control in hukuo and rural land ownership. In addition, implementing a property tax would negatively impact bureaucrats who engaged in the corrupt real estate market in the 1990’s. The reality is that many of these corrupt officials are still in office today, so support may be hard to come by for this reform. Looking forward to the future, I do predict that the continuation of mass-urbanization will push China along the Kuznets’ curve but that the turning point will not be reached until policy is implemented to ease the urban-rural divide. However, it is up to the CPC and the amount of political pressure they feel to decide whether or not they will take legislative action in helping China reach the turning point faster.

There is another key factor of consideration that has not yet been addressed in this paper - inequality in my home country, the United States of America. I used this piece solely as an opportunity to analyze the 5 months that I spent in the People's Republic of China. This is not to say that America does not currently face it's own economic challenges. While the prescribed legislative action to each individual country may differ, the two world powers are united in that they both are increasingly experiencing the symptoms of rising inequality. The culture, languages, and traditions are different, but one thing is the same - people are just trying to get by. Most citizens in the US are focused not on pontificating upon broad macroeconomic policy but rather providing for their families and serving their local communities. The same is true in China. Most folks are just trying to get by. Domestic and international media has us incessantly searching for reasons why the two world powers should be at odds, when in reality the folks making decisions in DC and Beijing are just a fraction of each country's representative populations. There are more people just trying to get by than there are actively fighting economic and cyber skirmishes. I do not seek to gloss over the well documented geopolitical conflict between the two nations. Rather, I am just saying that if you put an American citizen and a Chinese citizen in a room and remove the language barrier, the two people would find more similarities than differences, more humanity than politics, and more empathy than disdain.

It is easy to get lost in the ramifications for individuals when discussing broad policy measures - easy to forget that the goal of said policy is to serve the citizen. Perspectives from people like my professor are necessary to bring humanity to generalized systems, policies, and practices. At the time, my decision to study abroad in Shanghai was unclear to me. I now know that my professor's story is the reason I went to China. Granted, I didn’t know that I would meet my professor specifically, but I knew that I would have the opportunity to hear someone’s story. The textbook ideas, concepts, theories, and perspectives that I have learned throughout my college career have been educational but distant. There was nothing tangible about the lessons. I could not grab hold of what I was learning. My professor’s story was different. He taught me the history of policies, then discussed his personal interaction with them. Our one-on-one conversations are forever cemented in my mind. He taught me about more than just Chinese economic reforms. He taught me how to empathize with a person who has experienced circumstances nearly incomprehensible to that of which I had ever known. The ability to empathize is a skill that I will take forward throughout the rest of my professional career, and I hope it’s a skill that both the United States' and China’s wealthy/connected elite will take into consideration when seeking a solution to rising income and wealth inequalities in their individual countries.

Enjoying tea with some friends.

More Photos from My Time in China

Works Cited

“About Migrant Schools.” Stepping Stones, steppingstoneschina.net/shanghai-volunteer-english-

teaching-program/about-migrant-schools.

Auffhammer, Maximilian, and Catherine D. Wolfram. “Powering up China: Income Distributions

and Residential Electricity Consumption.” The American Economic Review , vol. 104, no. 5,

2014, pp. 575–580. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/42921001 .

Forsythe, Michael. “Database Tracks ‘Tigers and Flies’ Caught in Xi Jinping’s Corruption

Crackdown.” The New York Times Online , The New York Times, 21 Jan. 2016,

www.nytimes.com/2016/01/22/world/asia/china-database-tigers-and-flies-xi-jinping.html.

Fulda, Andreas. Outdated ‘Urban Passports’ Still Rule the Lives of China’s Rural Citizens .

Independent, 13 Jan. 2017, www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/outdated-urban-

passports-still-rule-the-lives-of-china-s-rural-citizens-a7517181.html.

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parliament-urbanisation/china-eyes-residence-permits-to-replace-divisive-hukou-system-

idUSBRE92509020130306.

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18 Jan. 2013, www.reuters.com/article/us-china-economy-income-gap/china-lets-gini-out-of- the-bottle-wide-wealth-gap-idUSBRE90H06L20130118.

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Designing Boundary Breaking Experiences in the Outdoors

website@sitemodify.com (Website Editor) — Sat, 30 Oct 2021 23:51:09 GMT

Utilizing outdoor elements to enhance trust and facilitate team bonding.

Organization

Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation Challenge Course at Mountain Sky Guest Ranch (Emigrant, Montana)

Role

Challenge Course Facilitator (Summer 2018)

Skills

Design & Facilitation

Overview

I ditched the conventional idea of an internship between my junior and senior year of college and began cold calling ranches in the American west. Mountain Sky Guest Ranch in Emigrant, Montana picked up.

The ranch had filled their traditional roles for the season, but they were looking to staff a new "hybrid" position - part ranch-hand & part ropes course facilitator for non-profits. There was just one problem. I had no ropes experience. They said, "We're willing to teach you and get you certified. Are you willing to learn?" Darn right I was. This was exactly what I was looking for.

Arthur Blank, owner of Mountain Sky Guest Ranch, provides challenge course experiences to non-profits free of charge to help them build better teams. We facilitated over 25+ sessions over the course of the summer.

To best depict what a normal day looked like, I'll highlight the design and facilitation work that went into planning one of these sessions.

My manager (go Whitney!) detailing the impact of the challenge course on the non-profits we work with.

Challenge

Early in Forming Stage
The group leader of the participants let us know in advance that, by the time they had arrived at the challenge course, the group would have only met each other 24 hours prior.

The pre-assessment completed by the group highlighted the need to address "clear and precise verbal communication," creating community, and establishing trust.

A portion of the pre-assessment filled out by the non-profit we were working with on this day.

Solution

Early in Forming Stage -> Team Building Elements
I designed the following afternoon using a challenge by choice philosophy - if team members didn't want to participate directly in the activity then they could take on spotting or coaching roles.
Icebreaker - "Rescue the Animals" - group is given random materials to rescue a bucket of stuffed animals out of the middle of a roped-off area - requires problem solving and enhanced decision making
Low Ropes Element - "Craig's Crater" - group has a rope that they can use to swing over a "crater" - requires effective communication and an understanding of the value of conflict
High Ropes Element - "Dynamic Duo" - group splits into pairs to tackle a ~50ft high ladder with rungs each spread ~6ft apart - requires increased trust and goal setting
Debrief - "Campfire" - group sits in a circle to discuss how they get out of their comfort zone - requires enhanced leadership skills and creation of community

A participant up on a high ropes element at the challenge course.

Impact

Early in Forming Stage -> Team Building Elements -> Increased Trust & Communication
A few hours of pushing past your comfort zone with your team members can equate to days, weeks, or even months of forming.

After returning to their office, group members reported strengthened relationships, increased trust, and new channels of communication amongst their team - all goals that we set out to accomplish in the pre-assessment.

Here you can see me belaying a participant off of a high ropes course element. She excitedly greets my colleague Erin because she's fired up after completing a challenge!

Side Project in Design!

Building Relationships Between the Ranch and the Challenge Course Teams
The challenge course staff and the ranch staff rarely interacted because they were on opposite sides of the ranch.

Given my hybrid role as both challenge course facilitator/ranch hand + my love for design, Whitney asked me to help put together a new bulletin board where other ranch hands could see it and learn about the challenge course!

Before and after of the bulletin board.

Full PDF of the Bulletin Board Design

The Challenge Course Team

End of the season celebration with a mischievous team that surprised me with a pie!

Challenge Course Featured in an Article

#20: Sujude Dalieh on Making Career Paths More Accessible

joshua.cadorette@gmail.com (Josh Cadorette) — Thu, 07 Oct 2021 19:39:41 GMT

Also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts

Sujude Dalieh is a co-founder of Gajo, an application that allows young people to create the life they want to live by redesigning career exploration and engagement. She also hosts/produces Don't Stay in Your Lane, a podcast about the unconventional and unchartered career paths that people have taken (available on Spotify).

She is also an associate at Lux Capital and is pursuing a MS in Engineering, Design Impact at Stanford University.

In our conversation, Sujude and I discuss the future of career exploration and balancing her time between VC, a masters degree, and a startup.

Sujude's Links

Gajo

Twitter

Personal Site

Don't Stay in Your Lane

#19: L.D. Russell on Spirituality, Religion, & Finding Your Tribe

joshua.cadorette@gmail.com (Josh Cadorette) — Sat, 05 Jun 2021 12:32:58 GMT

Also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts

L.D. Russell is a Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies at Elon University, where he has taught in the areas of world religions and religion and culture since 1993.

I had the opportunity to engage with L.D. in the classroom during my time at Elon University. His willingness to be vulnerable about spirituality, religion, and community (or a "tribe" as L.D. calls it), allows for students to explore difficult questions with great depth.

In our conversation, L.D. and I discuss finding your tribe in a remote environment and creating a legacy that will outlast you.

I hope that our conversation emulates the core tenants of LD’s classroom: have compassion for your neighbor and serve one another.

L.D.'s Links

L.D. and me at Elon's senior picnic, May 2019.

#18: Nate Kadlac on Making Design Approachable for All

joshua.cadorette@gmail.com (Josh Cadorette) — Fri, 21 May 2021 16:21:40 GMT

Also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts

Nate Kadlac is a digital product designer based in Los Angeles, California. He leads user experience and product design at HomeSpotter (acquired in May '21 by Lone Wolf Technologies.)

Nate co-founded the first mobile public transit app for Metro Transit (without permission), designed the first news app for Minnesota Public Radio, as well as the first mobile checkout experience for Best Buy.

Nate has also been a part of a number of failed startup ideas like Keep or Burn, Rifr, and Deals.by.

Nate also co-hosts a weekly podcast called It's Gotta Be the Mic and hosts a live monthly workshop where he teaches the fundamentals of design to non-designers. You can view some of Nate's projects here , or on Dribbble .

In our conversation, Nate and I discuss design for non-designers, why minimalism is boring, and making time for creative work.

Nate's Links

Twitter

YouTube

Newsletter

It's Gotta Be the Mic Podcast

Approachable Design Course

#17: Greg Pellegrino on a Personal Philosophy of Leadership

joshua.cadorette@gmail.com (Josh Cadorette) — Fri, 14 May 2021 16:53:39 GMT

Also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts

Honoring the memory of a husband, father, brother, son, friend, and colleague by hearing his own words on leadership.

This episode was recorded on April 14th. On April 25th, Greg passed away unexpectedly at the age of 55.

In our conversation, Greg and I discuss memories he had with his late father, the time he shared with his kids, and the stories that shaped his leadership philosophy.

May we carry Greg's memory forward by living out the principles and values that he depicts in this recording.

Thank you to Bill Eggers and Nora Ellison for helping me complete this episode.

Thank you to Greg's family for allowing me to share this conversation with others. It is one of the most meaningful pieces of work that I've ever had the privilege of being a part of.

Greg's Legacy

Greg is survived by his wife, Kristiane, his three children, John, Roman, and Mia, his mother, Annette Pellegrino Fontaine and her husband, Mel Fontaine, and his brothers Jeff and Chris. You can find his full obituary here .

Greg's Background

Greg served as a Customer Strategy & Applied Design Principal at Deloitte Consulting, LLP and as the Lead Client Service Principal responsible for Deloitte’s relationships with the Department of Veterans Affairs and The White House.

He led large-scale, system-wide transformation efforts in critical areas such as public safety, cyber-security, transportation, and counter-terrorism. Greg helped to redesign and consolidate the civil aviation security systems for the U.S. government after 9/11, and his team was also tasked with leading the creation of the web portal for the newly created Dept. of Homeland Security.

Note

Views expressed in this podcast do not express the views or opinions of Deloitte Consulting, LLP.

#16: Nick O'Brien on Productizing Copper's Anti-Microbial Properties

joshua.cadorette@gmail.com (Josh Cadorette) — Tue, 04 May 2021 15:37:04 GMT

Also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts

Nick O'Brien serves as co-founder/CMO/CFO of Alloi, a consumer products company that brings elegant design and anti-microbial properties together.

In the recording, you will hear Nick and I speak about Aeris (different from Arist, a separate digital product startup featured on this podcast). Nick and his co-founders have since rebranded and Aeris is now Alloi.

Here's the co-founders' statement on the rebrand:

"We’re becoming more than Aeris — an homage to copper — and introducing a new range of products and metals. Our new identity as Alloi encompasses everything we are as Aeris Copper, and a whole lot more." ( Full Statement Here ).

In our conversation, Nick and I discuss combatting germs amidst the pandemic, being featured on Good Morning America, and building physical products in a digital world.

Nick's Links

Alloi

Twitter

Digital Commute Newsletter

#15: Ryan Laverty on The Future of Training and Learning

joshua.cadorette@gmail.com (Josh Cadorette) — Tue, 27 Apr 2021 14:30:59 GMT

Also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts

Ryan Laverty serves as co-founder/President of Arist, a text message learning platform working with organizations to create & deploy text message courses.

One of Ryan's co-founders, Maxine Anderson, was featured on Episode #8 of Building Out Loud.

This conversation is an interesting follow-up to Maxine's episode because it offers a new perspective on a familiar startup.

In our conversation, Ryan and I discuss helping organizations create engaging, accessible learning materials and the impact that Y Combinator had on Arist's business model.

Ryan's Links

Arist

Twitter

#14: Christina Lampert on Business & Envrionmental Sustainability

joshua.cadorette@gmail.com (Josh Cadorette) — Mon, 19 Apr 2021 19:52:01 GMT

Also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts

Christina Lampert is the founder of the Sustennial Network - a social channel that celebrates sustainable lifestyles & b usinesses that are integrating sustainability into their practices.

She is also a masters student at Columbia University where she is currently studying Sustainability Management.

In our conversation, Christina and I discuss promoting sustainable practices through the Sustennial Network, macro vs. micro environmental change, and why businesses have a responsibility to make sustainable products that are convenient + affordable.

Christina's Links

The Sustennial Network

YouTube

Instagram

#13: Turning the Tables - Creating with Consistency

joshua.cadorette@gmail.com (Josh Cadorette) — Mon, 12 Apr 2021 21:41:17 GMT

Also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts

Guest host! Thomas Waschenfelder is the founder of Wealest. He was featured on Episode #4.

True to form, I want to be transparent about what it's like to build a podcast. For that reason, I brought Thomas back on.

Why Thomas? The challenge with content so far has been consistency. Thomas is the king of consistency. He's on a 2+ year streak of shipping an article and a newsletter every single week.

In our conversation, Thomas and I discuss my original goals with creating online, challenges I've faced along the way, and setting new goals moving forward to become more consistent with Building Out Loud.

I committed to 1 episode per week for the rest of 2021 in this episode. That's a heck of a goal, but with your continued support we will get it done. Let's rock and roll, folks.

Thomas' Links

Twitter

Wealest

#12: Alec Coughlin on The Guiding Principles of Growth

joshua.cadorette@gmail.com (Josh Cadorette) — Tue, 06 Apr 2021 11:00:02 GMT

Also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts

Alec Coughlin is the founder of Ludlow Growth where he helps increase the velocity of results for businesses.

In our conversation, Alec and I discuss the values & beliefs that he leans on to implement sustainable growth within emerging businesses.

Alec's Links

Twitter

Ludlow Growth

#11: Danny Miranda on The Power of Showing Up Every Day

joshua.cadorette@gmail.com (Josh Cadorette) — Tue, 30 Mar 2021 02:51:29 GMT

Also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts

Danny Miranda is the host of The Danny Miranda Podcast where he helps listeners pursue the highest versions of themselves.

In our conversation, Danny and I discuss showing up every day, the 75 Hard challenge + meditation, and how he almost landed Matthew McConaughey on his podcast.

Danny's Links

Twitter

Youtube

Personal Site

The Danny Miranda Podcast

#10: Rahul Rana on The Importance of Making Moonshots

joshua.cadorette@gmail.com (Josh Cadorette) — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 20:11:48 GMT

Also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts

Rahul Rana is the author of Making Moonshots and an associate at Lux Capital.

In our conversation, Rahul and I discuss why it is a moral imperative that we make moonshots, the future of deep tech, and the value of learning from our failures to achieve success.

Rahul's Links

Making Moonshots on Amazon

Twitter

LinkedIn

#9: Sean McDonald on Clubhouse & The Future of Digital Media

joshua.cadorette@gmail.com (Josh Cadorette) — Sun, 07 Mar 2021 18:35:29 GMT

Also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts

Sean McDonald is a Media Guru, specializing in building, growing, and maintaining radio and broadcast video programs.

He's the director of Neumann Media, Neumann University's largest student organization on-campus consisting of over 115 students. The organization includes award winning FM licensed radio station 98.5 WNUW-LP.

In our conversation, Sean and I discuss how to get the most out of Clubhouse, communicating in a remote environment, and quality vs. quantity in content.

Neumann Media's Social Info.

Tools Discussed in the Episode

Clubhouse

Riverside.fm

Discord

#8: Maxine Anderson on Empowering Women Innovators

joshua.cadorette@gmail.com (Josh Cadorette) — Tue, 22 Dec 2020 16:45:37 GMT

Also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts

Maxine Anderson is a co-founder of Project W and co-founder/VP of Operations of Arist.

Project W is a student-led group dedicated to fostering collaboration amongst women innovators and entrepreneurs at Babson, Olin, and Wellesley (BOW) Colleges.

Arist, is a text message learning platform which went through Y-combinator this past summer.

In our conversation, Maxine and I discuss building connection and curriculum for women innovators and making education more accessible via text message. I hope that you enjoy the conversation.

Maxine's Contact Info

Twitter - @maxrosea

Email - maxine@arist.co

#7: Gregg Vanourek on Discover Mode vs. Climbing Mode

joshua.cadorette@gmail.com (Josh Cadorette) — Thu, 17 Dec 2020 02:25:04 GMT

Also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts

Gregg Vanourek is the co-author of Life Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives. I published an essay on this book a few months back and shared it with Gregg.

He took the time to read it which meant the world to me. I subsequently found more of his material online, including his TEDtalk on Life Entrepreneurship .

During this talk, Gregg contrasted discover mode against climbing mode.

Climbing mode is going up the ladder in your life and career as fast as you can. Discover mode means figuring out which ladder to climb.

In our conversation, Gregg and I discuss how taking the time to individually define discover mode vs. climbing mode leads to a happier, more fulfilling life for each of us.

Gregg's Contact Info

Personal Site - www.greggvanourek.com

Twitter - @gvanourek

Triple Crown Leadership - www.triplecrownleadership.com

Life Entrepreneurs - www.lifeentrepreneurs.com

Highlights

#6: Ethan Jaffe on Persevering Through a Pandemic

joshua.cadorette@gmail.com (Josh Cadorette) — Tue, 15 Dec 2020 12:55:10 GMT

Also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts

Ethan Jaffe is a co-founder and co-owner of Saje Kitchen, a restaurant focussing on Southern Style cuisine in Providence, Rhode Island.

Saje Kitchen was scheduled to open in March 2020 when COVID-19 changed our way of life in the US. The Saje team adapted, prepared a safe environment for patrons, and persevered by opening to the public in August 2020.

In our conversation, Ethan and I discuss navigating uncertainty, the power of food, and the importance of the customer experience.

Connect with Saje Kitchen

Saje Kitchen's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sajekitchen/?hl=en

Saje Kitchen's Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/SajeKitchen/

Saje Kitchen's Website/Newsletter: https://www.sajekitchen.com/

Ethan's Social

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ethanjaffe/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ethanjklmnop/?hl=en

#5: Wes Woodson on Embracing Who You Are As An Entrepreneur

joshua.cadorette@gmail.com (Josh Cadorette) — Tue, 08 Dec 2020 20:33:30 GMT

Also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts

Wes is the founder and Chief Storyteller of thehidden, a streetwear brand designed to empower outsiders to never hide who they truly are.

Wes is also in the fundraising stage of publishing a book called “The Anxiety Advantage” - a perspective on anxiety and how to manage anxiety as a Gen Z-er.

In our conversation, Wes and I discuss embracing who you are on your entrepreneurial journey, the importance of mental health education, and the creation of his own podcast to be released in 2021.

Support Wes in his fundraising efforts for his upcoming book The Anxiety Advantage -

Link to fundraising page

Purchase merchandise from thehidden co - thehiddenco.com

Wes' article referenced in the podcast - "I Am Leopard Boy"

Wes' Social

Twitter: @weswoodson_

Insta: @weswoodson

LinkedIn: Wes Woodson

Shoot Wes a text

+1 (781) 917-3554 

#4: Thomas Waschenfelder on Building Wealth & Leverage

joshua.cadorette@gmail.com (Josh Cadorette) — Tue, 17 Nov 2020 22:04:42 GMT

Also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts

Thomas Waschenfelder is the founder of Wealest, a platform that simplifies the ideas of wealth creators.

We discuss creating a personal definition of wealth, learning from mental models, and building leverage online.

It should be noted that the content of this podcast is for informational purposes only and is not intended to replace or substitute for professional financial advice.

Thomas' Twitter - @TWaschenfelder

Wealest - wealest.com

Wealest Quick Reads - wealest.com/newsletter

#3: Jamie Russo on Cultivating Sustainable Change

joshua.cadorette@gmail.com (Josh Cadorette) — Mon, 16 Nov 2020 22:36:09 GMT

Also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts .

Jamie Russo is the founder of Goodnote, a newsletter that details the world’s most impactful brands using “business as a force for good.”

We discuss creating valuable community online, building in public, and developing sustainable change through kindness.

Jamie's Contact Info

Goodnote Newsletter - jamierusso.me/newsletter

Twitter - @jamierusso

Junub Games Website

#2: Ari Lewis on Succeeding in the Attention Economy

website@sitemodify.com (Website Editor) — Tue, 27 Oct 2020 16:57:23 GMT

Also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts .

Ari Lewis is an Attention Economy Expert and co-founder/partner of The Greenblock Group.

We discuss capturing consumer’s attention, creating a new “Chief Social Officer” position in today’s digital media environment, and whether or not a newsletter bubble exists.

Ari's Contact Info

Personal Site - www.arilewis.com

Twitter - @arilewis4

Creating an Extraordinary Life Through Entrepreneurship

Fri, 16 Oct 2020 14:03:40 GMT

Discovering your core identity, awakening to opportunity, and envisioning the future as a Life Entrepreneur.

Introduction

The practices of an entrepreneur are not just a roadmap to success for founders of startups or non-profits. These are practices that every leader should embody, according to the book Life Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives . The book details seven steps for all leaders – no matter their background, age, or title - to challenge themselves and further develop their skills and talents. While I enjoyed reading the 180-page book because of my love for the topic, the book could be a bit repetitive at times. It is plausible that the authors Christopher Gergen and Gregg Vanourek intended to repeat certain concepts to emphasize their significance, but the entire book’s theory upon how leaders can best serve themselves and their followers can be summarized into three steps.

1. Discover Your Core Identity

2. Awaken to Opportunities that Best Fit You

3. Envision the Future

1. Discover Your Core Identity

Self-awareness begins with introspection. Gergen and Vanourek argue that introspection into how we interact with internal and external elements is how we evaluate our core identity.

External elements in our lives are made up of three things:

our personal history
current circumstances
relationships

Let’s break these 3 elements down further.

Personal History

Our personal history is something that we should value but not let ourselves get hung up on. We must gather lessons from our previous experiences to properly determine how we should move forward. By looking honestly into the past - something that we cannot change - we can better discover ourselves today and focus on what we can change moving forward into the future.

Current Circumstances

Current circumstances are what surround us presently. These are factors such as “community, age, health, marital status, occupation, and income” (43). Life entrepreneurs do not compare their circumstances to others. They take what they have, leverage their “opportunities into something even greater,” and create more value within their lives (44).

Relationships

Relationships are the third and last external factor. Your life and everything about it lies in interactions with others. The book references Aristotle’s three types of friendship to encourage the reader to become more aware of the value that we give/receive from our friends.

Aristotle’s three types of friendship:

Utility - friends who are useful
Pleasure - friends whose company we enjoy
Virtue- friends that “lift us to strive and become better people” (45)

The friendship of virtue is reminiscent of authentic leadership. Authentic leadership emphasizes building the leader’s legitimacy through honest relationships with the followers. This type of relationship helps spark a communicative atmosphere for both parties, and the two sides will have a shared sense of purpose – helping to improve each other grow. The authors make it clear that life entrepreneurs value friendships of virtue.

Internal elements are a fusion between the previously mentioned external elements and our needs, strengths, and passions. To drive this point home, the book examines “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.”

When our basic and psychological needs are satisfied, we crave an opportunity that helps us grow. We call this the need for self-fulfillment. Addressing these needs requires a great deal of internal reflection including realizing our skills, talents, and knowledge in a specific area that represent our strongest assets. In addition to identifying strengths, we must recognize what our weaknesses are and attract people with strengths which we do not possess. We must be able to ask ourselves, "Am I satisfied with what I am doing?" in order to reach our full potential. Why? Happiness is not created from success - titles, promotions, etc.. Instead, success comes from the happiness we receive from what we build - drawing upon our creative instincts to maximize our strengths and ability to impact others.

Identify ways to sustainably engage with creative activities that maximize your strengths. Success will follow.

By assessing what lies at our core we are being entrepreneurs by creating something “physical” – our everyday actions – “out of something internal” (40). That’s right. Even if you don’t operate a business, non-profit, or any organization you are still an entrepreneur because of the actions you produce everyday.

When we reach a point that our core identity – who we say we are – is in “total congruence” with our actions – what we do – we begin to reach a point of “authentic integrity” (60). This is the purpose behind the core identity of each and every life entrepreneur. They are constantly reflecting upon their internal and external elements and assessing if their actions are in line with their values. Striving to live with authentic integrity is unsurprisingly similar to authentic leadership. To be an authentic leader is to build relationships based upon an ethical foundation or core identity. An authentic leader must often times guide their followers by leading by example. This type of leader understands their purpose and operates with a sound values system.

2. Awaken to Opportunity that Best Fits You

After finding their core identity, the life entrepreneur is now ready to move onto the second step and seek out opportunity within their lives to engage in meaningful work.

There are three steps to awakening to opportunity:

possessing a beginner’s mind
breakthrough innovation
assessing opportunity

Possessing a Beginner’s Mind

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands, but in seeing them with new eyes” (67). The first step in realizing the potential around you is to rid of all of your assumptions about a certain concept. Peter Guber, chairman of Mandalay Entertainment, tells a story of a young intern on a movie set who saved the movie because of their beginner’s mind. While planning Gorillas in the Mist, a 1988 movie that documented rare mountain gorillas in Africa, the team ran into serious trouble. They were trying to script the actions of the gorillas, but it was quite difficult to direct the actions of two hundred wild animals at an altitude of eleven thousand feet. With the project on the verge of collapsing due to budget concerns, a young intern voiced a novel idea at an emergency budget meeting. “What if we let the gorillas write the story?” (70) At first, the experienced filmmakers laughed. Then, they worked to see the intern’s idea from a different perspective. It turned out to be a “brilliant idea” (70). They would gather a bunch of film on the gorillas and script the entire movie after they shot the film based upon what the gorillas did on camera. The team shot the movie for half of the original budget and the movie raked in $61 million across the globe. Guber went onto say “her [the intern's] inexperience enabled her to see opportunities where we saw only boundaries” (70).

Breakthrough Innovation

The second stage in awakening to opportunity is breakthrough innovation. Innovation is often improperly linked to creativity. Gergen and Vanourek define creativity is “the act of producing new ideas, approaches, or actions” (73). Innovation, on the other hand, is the act of “generating and applying such creativity in a specific context” (73). The act of taking creativity and putting it to the test is something that requires commitment and it typically requires a team. Innovation reminds me of one of the two types of behavioral leadership known as process behaviors. Process behaviors deal with helping the team collaborate, making people feel comfortable, building commitment, and modeling principles that you want to see. The breakthrough innovator has to lead by exemplifying their core identity. By setting the tone, they create environments conducive to collaboration and innovation. Innovation implies change and it is “not uncommon for a leader to experience resistance” to change. This is why it is so important that the leader incorporates process behaviors and makes their team members feel comfortable in their workspace. By doing so, the group’s efforts will be greater than the sum of the individual contributions.

Assessing Opportunity

The last component to awakening to opportunity is assessing opportunity. Some leaders rely entirely on their gut, some rely on the advice of close friends/mentors, and some leaders look at the objective potential of a certain project. Gergen and Vanourek state that it does not matter how you choose the different options available to you. The point is that you are selective in the opportunities you take on and do not “get stuck, awash in options and awaiting that ever-elusive sign from above” (77). There will be times when you will have to “walk through some doors and forgo others” and we must learn to accept to prioritize what we allocate our resources to (77). If we try to accept every opportunity that we come in contact with, the result will be an inhibited ability to align all of them with our core identity. This is a fundamental breakdown of what it means to be a life entrepreneur because your actions will be different from what you say you stand for.

3. Envisioning the Future

Once the life entrepreneur has an understanding of their core identity and is capable of awakening to opportunity that aligns with their identity, they are ready for the third step - envisioning the future.

This is made up of three parts:

creating a vision
connecting the vision
sharing the vision

Creating the Vision

Peter Northouse defines a vision as “a mental model of an ideal future state." The vision brings your core identity and opportunity awakening to life. Life Entrepreneurs define it as a statement that reflects the future of your personal, professional, and relational goals. It should be “unbounded by the status quo, vivid in its description” but broad enough to still be directional and not tactical (83). The vision statement should not include calculated future moves that you will make. Instead, it should only be a paragraph or two long shaping the direction of the horizon that you are headed towards.

Connecting the Vision

The second step in articulating your vision is connecting it to who you are. The vision statement should be continuously revisited by its author to ensure that it properly articulates their core identity. It is not unusual that life entrepreneurs must frequently update their vision statement based upon new “experiences and ongoing personal development” (88). These changes in internal and external elements that make up our core identity are only natural as we progress through life. In fact, failure does not lie with the life entrepreneur who constantly has to edit their vision statement because of rapid personal growth. Failure lies with the life entrepreneur who does not edit their vision statement amidst changing internal/external factors and a changing core identity.

Sharing the Vision

The third and final aspect to vision is sharing it. The life entrepreneur recognizes that their vision cannot be accomplished by themselves alone. They need to “recognize the power of a vision shared with the people in our lives: our spouses, friends, colleagues, and crew” (90). By holding virtuous relationships with the people around us, we can support them in their growth while they support our growth as well as our vision. How the leader forms their relationships with teammates, mentors, and partners is crucial to the execution of the vision. That is why, according to Peter Northouse, we must describe our vision to others “using inclusive language that links people to the vision and makes them part of the process."

My Thoughts on The Leadership Model

The life entrepreneur model incorporates pieces of authentic and behavioral leadership, but it most closely aligns with the transformational leadership model. In this model, the leader encourages their followers to change the status quo which is exactly what life entrepreneurs are challenged to do. The four I’s of transformational leadership - Individualized Consideration, Intellectual Stimulation, Inspirational Motivation, Idealized Influence - nearly mirror the three steps in being a life entrepreneur. The individual is mentored, challenged to be creative, called upon to cast their vision, and seen as a role model for the standard of the group. The transformational leadership model places a high value on the evolution of the leader but not as much of an emphasis on the follower. This is true for the life entrepreneur model as well. One recommendation I would make to the authors Gergen and Vanourek would be to place more of a focus on servant leadership and what the leader can do for the follower. Business success occurs when the user's feedback is seriously considered when building a product or service. This concept also applies to the life entrepreneur. Life entrepreneurial success occurs when friends, family, and team members' feedback is seriously considered when building relationships.

Case Study: Howard Schultz and Starbucks

To best recapitulate all three facets of being a life entrepreneur – seeking core identity, awakening to opportunity, and envisioning a future – I will tell the story of a famous life entrepreneur, Howard Schultz. Schultz grew up in a blue-collar family. One day, his father slipped on an ice patch at his job and broke his leg. His father lost his job and his health benefits. His parents decided at that moment that he would be the first one to go to college. After graduating from college, Schultz worked for Xerox. He was a cog in the corporate machine. He then got to a point and said, “This is not me” (90). He found a company that was selling more coffee in Seattle than anyone had ever seen before. It took him a year and a half to finally convince the founders of Starbucks to hire him. Schultz had a vision for Starbucks and shared it with the founders, but they didn’t have the same vision. Instead, he left Starbucks to realize his own vision with others. He started Il Giornale, a coffee shop that incorporated Italian espresso bars and re-created the barista magic in the United States. His newly started business wasn’t making money, his wife was pregnant, and his father in law sat him down and told him “you need to give up this hobby and get a job” (91). He almost folded right then and there, but his wife (who was eight months pregnant!) said, “no way, we’re going to do this” (91).

After rebounding and having a few successful years, Il Giornale bought out Starbucks and took on their name. Schultz states that the “culture and values of the company are its signature and its competitive difference…because people are hungry for authenticity…and something larger than themselves. But only if what [the customers] are looking at has a set of values and guiding principles that is compatible with their own” (92).

Schultz's story incorporates each of the three steps in what it means to become a life entrepreneur. He discovered his core identity and recognized that his job at Xerox didn’t align with it. He awakened to opportunity by seeing how successful barista bars were in Italy, but the original founders of Starbucks were not willing to share his vision. Instead, he started his own company with people who did share his vision and put himself in a position to align Starbucks' vision with his a few years later. The creation of Il Giornale allowed Schultz to hone in on what would become Starbucks’ competitive difference - social connections between customers and baristas + a strong values system. Schultz purchased Starbucks for $3.8 million in 1987. Today, in 2020, Starbucks has a company valuation of over $100 billion – talk about a return on investment for finding your core identity, awakening to opportunity, and envisioning the future.

#1: Kenny Hanson on Mentorship, Minimalism, & Mental Health

joshua.cadorette@gmail.com (Josh Cadorette) — Wed, 14 Oct 2020 00:28:29 GMT

Also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts .

Kenny Hanson is the founder and CEO of MentorPass.
We discuss the power of mentors that guide us, what it's like being a digital nomad, and how authenticity has made him who he is today.

Mentorpass

Site - www.mentorpass.co

Instagram - @mentorpass

Twitter - @mentorpass

Kenny's Social Media

Instagram - @kenny_hanson

Twitter - @NoCodeKenny

Believe Gear Referenced in the Episode

Choose Your I.D. - Sweatshirts

Year 2030: When Soft Skills Are More Unique than Tech Skills

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 15:04:37 GMT

Predicting an emerging generation’s increased comfortability with technology but decreased emotional intelligence.

Introduction

The only category placed ahead of “Technical Skills” on my resume in 2020 is “Education," but this is just a formality. The place where you got your degree (or even if you got your degree) is becoming less important. This is increasingly true with shifts towards remote education forced by COVID-19 and remote alternatives such as Lambda School looking increasingly attractive. There is a high degree of value placed on technical skills in the current environment. A job applicant's answer to “What are your technical skills?” can set themselves apart. Soft skills are still important in 2020, but technical skills are where job applicants gain an edge. This will continue for the next 10 years.

And then, this change will reverse itself. “What are your technical skills?” will be replaced by “What are your soft skills?” as the question to separate oneself in an interview. Technical skills will become less of an x-factor due to 3 emerging trends.

Trend #1. Technical skill education will become more affordable and accessible between 2020-2030 - meaning that the supply of technically skilled professionals will go up.

Trend #2. The rise of Generation Alpha as true digital natives from 2020-2030 will increase the supply of adaptable professionals.

Trend #3. Opportunities to teach soft skills will go down and cause a decrease in the supply of workers with soft skills.

If not through their technical skills, how will future entry-level workers separate themselves apart from their peers? Soft skills - the ability to listen, empathize, facilitate group discussion without technology - will be the x-factor that sets entry-level workers in 2030 apart from their peers.

Trend #1 - Technical skill education will become more affordable & accessible from 2020-2030

The first half of the 2020’s will be a continuous game of catch-up for K-12 and higher education systems. In an ideal world, we would already have implemented robust, accessible STEM skill based curriculum in the US education system. Spoiler : we didn’t. That’s going to change.

To adjust to the effects of COVID-19, many school districts and higher education institutions have turned to remote learning modules to teach in a safe manner. The pandemic won’t last forever. At some point, the “new normal” will include both college and K-12 students returning to a form of in-person classes. The “new normal” will also include remote learning modules in some capacity. Remote technologies have shown their immense power. There’s no getting rid of it now.

Rapidly updated, off-the-shelf curriculum modules will provide students with access to a wider range of up-to-date curriculum than they have ever had before. These benefits cannot be ignored, and the likely scenario post-COVID is a hybrid system where students work through remote curriculum modules in their classrooms. The STEM skills that our education system so desperately need will soon be delivered through remote modules.

Not only will it be more accessible through K-12 and higher-ed systems. It will be readily available to anyone with a wifi connection. Globally, people will no longer need to rely on institutions to be a student. Anyone will be able to get world class technical training from anywhere. This curriculum is already on it's way (see Lambda School , Data Camp ). It is set to only improve.

The increased dissemination of technical skill education will increase the availability of technical skillsets from K-12 to higher education to anyone with access to the internet.

Trend #2 - Generation Alpha emerges as true digital natives from 2020-2030

The first generation of true digital natives will be Generation Alpha. These are people born after 2010 - the same year that the iPad debuted. What are digital natives? People who can comfortably teach themselves a digital experience. It’s intuitive for them - no instructions or guidance needed. Alpha is not the first generation that has been introduced to technology. They are the first generation whose lives are a holistic, end-to-end digital experience.

Entertainment, financial services, smart home capabilities, remote education, video conference capabilities, and food delivery can all be facilitated on a single device in their pocket that they have access to 24/7. No generation has had so much power at this much speed at their fingertips at such a young age. Their expectation of fast services will extend to education.

The idea of learning out of a physical textbook that is 5 years old will seem archaic to Generation Alpha. Their digital curriculum will be updated rapidly to stay current. The idea of a standard set of curriculum for each student will be incomprehensible. Their digital modules will assess areas where each student needs to become stronger in, and the digital curriculum platforms will tailor unique modules for each student to address areas where improvement is needed.

Their learning style will be fast. They’ll expect to need to constantly train and retrain their skills. They will be comfortable with the fast pace of a changing world. Why? It is all that they know. Their intuition will guide them to not only understand digital experiences but create new ones. They will automate tasks that they see as mundane to provide more time for them to express their creativity. This will all come naturally to them.

Technical skills will become commonplace with the emergence of Generation Alpha because they will no longer be a pre-requisite for what they learn but for how they learn.

Trend #3 - Opportunities to teach soft-skills will go down from 2020-2030

Remote education, the same thing that will make technical skills more accessible and affordable, fails to form experiential learning opportunities. Human elements crucial to the long term success of a team - the ability to listen, empathize, facilitate group discussion without technology - cannot be facilitated online. How much do these experiences matter, and what’s the difference in social development between a generation that grows up with remote learning tools vs. a generation that interacts with these tools for the first time as a young adult?

Generation Z (born 1997-2010) will experience remote learning at the high school/college level. Remote learning will be an adaptation for them. They have enough technical skills to navigate the remote tools, but they will not be fully comfortable with the adjustment.

Generation Alpha will experience remote learning at the K-12 level. Remote learning will become engrained in them. They will grow up seeing education through a digital lens. They will be comfortable with remote education and remote meetings. They will become increasingly comfortable with less in-person interaction and more remote work. It is what they saw their parents do during COVID-19. It is how they attended class during the pandemic. It is how class carried on even after the pandemic. This extends outside of the classroom.

Generation Alpha will be more comfortable ordering takeout through a mobile app than picking up a phone. They’ll be more comfortable talking to customer service via chatbot than facilitating a conversation in-person. These interpersonal interactions may seem small and insignificant, but compound 1000’s of them over the course of a lifetime and they become fundamental to our development.

Generation Alpha’s opportunities for both formal soft skill development in the classroom and informal development outside of it will decrease.

Conclusion

A change is rumbling in the subtle yet mighty undercurrents of our institutional + cultural fabric. The good news: entry level professionals in 2030 will be equipped to take technical challenges on. The bad news: these same professionals will not not be prepared to take on the human element of serving on a team.

2030 entry-level job applicants who are prepared with the ability to listen, empathize, and facilitate group discussion without technology will set themselves apart from their peers. But we - the current leaders who shape the institutional and cultural fabric - need to take action now to ensure that Generation Alpha has opportunities to hone their soft skills.

Take the time to ask yourself - "How will you be a part of empowering our future leaders with the skills that they need to succeed?"

Restructuring Physical Education & Health Class as Holistic Well-being

joshua.cadorette@gmail.com (Josh Cadorette) — Tue, 18 Aug 2020 02:42:00 GMT

Our well-being is tied to more than just our physical health, and it’s time that our education system reflects that.

Introduction

Health & Physical Education curriculum is outdated. If we were to take our country’s Physical Education (PE) standards as a means of defining what it means to be well, then the definition would lie somewhere between games of kickball and the dreaded annual timed-mile run. Similarly, if we were to examine our country’s Health Class standards and attempt to define wellness, the definition would lie somewhere between explanations of the effects of puberty and the ability to differentiate tendons vs. ligaments.

I’m certainly not making the case that the aforementioned lessons are trivial or unneeded. Organized sports nurtures teamwork, measurable fitness goals demonstrate progress, a study of how the human body changes during teen years leads to a better understanding of growth and development, and a basic knowledge of how our bodies works helps prevent injury. Undoubtedly, these lessons are good for our physical health, but the reality is that our well-being is tied to much more than simply our physical body. To be well means to be healthy overall - not just physically, but also socially, emotionally, intellectually, financially, occupationally, spiritually, and environmentally.

We’re all expected to navigate holistic wellness on our own, but we don’t properly train students how to do so. Students are trained to flip through flash cards of terms that they won’t remember after the test, but they’re expected to manage stress, emotions, and relationships without any guidance. It’s only after graduating that we begin to ask ourselves why we learned how to memorize and unload 100 terms onto a piece of paper but we didn’t learn how to take care of ourselves. We can't keep asking “Why didn’t we learn about that in school?” We need to take action to transform American high schools, both public and private, to empower students with the knowledge and skills needed to balance all eight of these components of wellness.

In the following essay, I ask eight "what if?" questions followed by curriculum ideas for a new class, Holistic Wellness, which can empower our students to live happier, more fulfilling lives.

I. Social Wellness – What if we empowered students to communicate effectively and build strong support systems?

Beginning to manage complex relationships for the first time as a student presents its own set of challenges. The introduction of social media platforms makes these barriers even harder to overcome. This is particularly concerning for high school students who spend 1-3 hours a day on social media , on average. Technology can be a powerful tool to keep us connected, but it should not be used at the expense of our ability to communicate with one another.

Let’s teach our students that in-person communication is a two-way street; the ability to express one’s thoughts and ideas is certainly important, but the ability to actively listen is just as essential. Anyone can talk endlessly. Not everyone can practice active listening endlessly. Why? Active listening is hard work. It requires a neutral or nonjudgmental stance surrounding what is being said. The ability to be patient and not rush to fill silence allows the person who is speaking to collect their thoughts and continue to share. Non-verbal affirmations such as nodding our head and maintaining eye contact show that we are engaged. Instead of analyzing what the person has said, the active listener summarizes what they have heard, thereby confirming their understanding of the speaker’s thoughts; this give and take lays the foundation for mutual understanding and harmony within relationships – the foundation of a sound support system.

What are support systems? They are comprised of people who truly know who we are; they accept us for who we are, and they have faith in us. This requires that we reveal who we are to others. Showing who we are to others can be daunting and may instill feelings of vulnerability, but unveiling our true selves helps us determine who should and should not be included in our support systems. Again – we want that system to be comprised of people who accept us and encourage us, so those who demonstrate positive feelings toward us and do not make us feel guarded or exposed are more likely to be a part of our support system. The reality is that support systems may change over time, and that’s okay. Someone can still be in your life without being a part of our support system or inner circle. We should focus on elevating positive influences to positions of support in our lives. This makes us more resilient and more prepared to reciprocate positivity and support to others during both good and bad times.

Social Wellness Curriculum Ideas:

Introduce the concept of a dopamine detox (outlined here by Brandon Zhang) to students to decrease the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) and the constant craving of likes produced by social media
Facilitate an in-class exercise to build active listening skills by practicing non-verbal affirmations
Facilitate individual class-work where students map out their support systems visually on a piece of paper and ask them to highlight positive/negative influences (assignment not to be turned in and can be completed outside of class for privacy; provide school counseling resources if student would like to follow-up on navigating their support system in private)

II. Emotional Wellness – What if we empowered students to be self-aware of their emotions and have a positive approach to dealing with them?

Self-awareness is key to identifying how we feel. By cultivating the ability to identify what emotions we are experiencing in the moment, we are then better able to identify what incited those emotions. This awareness allows us to better convey not only how we feel but also why we feel a certain way. Oftentimes, the ability to verbalize the “how” and the “why” can mitigate (or even possibly avoid) conflict.

There are many practices that strengthen self-awareness and continuously allow us to check in with our emotions. In my own life, I find that journaling is the best practice. Writing down my daily thoughts allows me to be intentional about bettering myself each and every day. It also encourages me to be honest – to celebrate my strengths, to confront my insecurities, and to develop strategies to address my weaknesses. This practice allows me to bring who I truly am into my relationships – thus making them stronger.

A vicious cycle can ensue if, upon recognizing our own emotions, we become upset that we feel a certain way – thus creating more emotion. In order to prevent this vicious cycle, we must have a positive mindset to dealing with our emotions. This requires us to recognize that we are all human. At some point in time, we have all felt sad, angry, scared, happy, and strong. The emotion themselves are not bad - how we act if the emotions go unchecked is.

Emotional Wellness Curriculum Ideas:

Facilitate journaling exercises in the classroom to introduce practices of self-awareness
Develop a lesson plan on the importance of acknowledging emotions with a positive approach instead of trying to suppress them

III. Intellectual Wellness – What if we empowered students to break out of the “beat the test” culture and become lifelong learners driven by curiosity?

Most high school students do not care if they learn. They care if the grade at the end of the class boosts their GPA. According to Paul Graham, learning to get good grades is “ The Lesson to Unlearn .” A student who gets a B- in class can learn much more than a student who gets an A+. Grades do not measure growth. Grades are hackable. Grades stop at the walls of an institution. Growth boundlessly flows into all areas of the world.

So what leads to growth? Learning driven by curiosity. Too many of us believe that learning is “finished” once we leave an educational institution or we receive that piece of parchment. However, if that institution has done its job properly, students will have received more than just a credential. In the best-case scenario, students leave inspired to never stop learning. Rather than being driven to learn because of a reward system consisting of inputs and outputs, they learn for the sake of the process, and they learn for the love of learning itself. The love of the journey will outpace any collection of credentials, no matter how hackable they are.

Intellectual Wellness Curriculum Ideas:

Facilitate exercise where students fill out a Venn Diagram per David Perell’s “ Personal Monopoly ” – a combination of personal skills and what people consider valuable – in order for students to identify areas that they are curious about, want to grow in, and can become unique and known for
Have each individual student complete a mini-independent research project. Before performing any research, each student submits a 1-page paper on one single question: “What do you want to learn about in school but have not yet had the chance to?” Have teachers help each student brainstorm a topic. The key to this idea is letting the student be in the driver's seat (idea developed after reading “ What are We Trying to Measure After All? ” by Ana Lorena Fabrega )

IV. Financial Wellness – What if we empowered students to responsibly manage their resources?

When they reach the age of 18, students across America are encouraged to jump headfirst into a pile of debt without giving them the proper education about what this debt truly means. We should provide the information and tools necessary for each student to perform a cost/benefit analysis of their options after high school – go to college vs. get a job out of high school, attend a state school vs. attend a private school, obtain a loan vs. pay full tuition.

We have a responsibility to educate them at an early age about saving money and about the power of compounding interest. Small investments at the end of your teenage years lead to HUGE gains if you leave your money in the market until retirement.

I kept one single paper from my high school career (in addition to my diploma). My former accounting teacher and golf coach, Mr. Matthews, gave us each this paper to encourage us to understand the immense power of compounding interest. A total investment of $20,000 from ages 18-27 at $2,000 per year out performs a total investment of $70,000 at $2,000 per year from ages 31-65. The power of compounding interest is mind boggling. The example above assumes an annualized return of 7% is achieved. The S&P 500 averages a 7.2% annualized return since 1960. Park your money in a basic S&P 500 index and let it grow. (*Obligatory: I am not a financial advisor and you should consult a licensed professional for investment advice).

Financial Wellness Curriculum Ideas:

Perform cost-benefit analysis of different paths available to students after high school (college, trade school, full-time job, etc.)
EVERY student in America should have to review the chart above before graduating high school

V. Occupational Wellness – What if we empowered students to manage a work-life balance and to recognize their civic engagement duties as citizens of the United States?

Whether they are college-bound, trade-school bound, or workforce-bound directly out of high school, students need to know that taking pride in the work they do can be a huge source of happiness. Each student should be equipped with this set of questions:

Does your job (or program of study) allow you to grow professionally and personally?
Do you feel as though you are being challenged?
If not, what can you do to lay out a strategy and build towards where you want to be?

The answers to these questions will look differently based upon individual paths, duties, financial situations, and goals, but that’s okay. At some point in each of our lives our answers to questions #1 and #2 is “No.” When this occurs, it is our responsibility to utilize the resources around us (educational resources at a local library, online courses, relationships with mentors) to build a path towards a more fulfilling role.

We also have a responsibility to reshape career day. While some students may go on to serve their communities as firefighters or policeman, the majority of students will not. Let's bring in software developers, data scientists, and solo entrepreneurs to paint an accurate picture of the different types of occupational lifestyles in the modern day workforce.

While there are endless career paths available, there is one duty that we all share and one that we should recognize as a part of our collective occupation; we must all recognize our duty to be an engaged citizen in an effort to continuously improve our democracy. We need to empower students to embrace and exercise their own voice in the local, state, and federal governments which serve them. It is not only our right to participate in democracy – it is our responsibility. The importance of voting, volunteering in the community, and staying engaged and informed about important issues should be instilled at an early age and nurtured throughout the education continuum.

Occupational Wellness Curriculum Ideas:

Provide students with a self-questionnaire with questions #1-3 to be referenced any time after graduation
Develop lesson plan on the importance of students using their voice in the local, state, and federal governments throughout their life no matter their background or where they are headed

VI. Spiritual Wellness – What if we empowered students to explore their own beliefs and discover a sense of purpose?

The phrase “spiritual wellness” may initially invoke some hesitancy, especially within the public-school system. Rather than focusing on religion, we should focus on teaching students practices of mindfulness. This component can entail guiding students to explore their own sense of self and provide them with methods to effectively manage stress, exhibit compassion, and live in the present moment. This may include practices such as meditation, breathing techniques, and yoga. This can help reduce anxiety, improve attention and focus, and can bolster a sense of calm as well as compassion.

Spiritual Wellness Curriculum Ideas:

Perform guided meditation in-class (can be done via meditation recording on YouTube or in-person by the teacher)
Facilitate a yoga class (can also be done via recording on YouTube or in-person by the teacher)
Practice 5-second and 10-second breathing techniques that can be used to decrease stress and refocus attention anytime, any place

VII. Environmental Wellness – What if we empowered students to practice sustainable habits and seek refuge from daily stress in the outdoors?

The destruction of our collective home has become a political issue. Allow me to reframe the issue here. In this essay, up to this point, we have determined that self-accountability in all other facets of our lives leads to increased levels of well-being. If we own and are aware of our relationships, our emotions, our intellectual journey, our occupational journey, our finances, and our spiritual well-being, then it leads to better outcomes. Why would the benefits of accountability not apply to the planet which we all call home? A lack of ownership for our own actions affects the home of those who came before us and those who will come after; it is a disservice to both past and future generations, but it is also a disservice to ourselves in the present moment.

Mass consumption, which we oftentimes use as a poor substitute to avoid confronting and becoming aware of our own eight components of wellness, is not an excuse to create a world where we do not all have access to clean air and clean water. Not to mention, given the digital media environment, we can all benefit from spending quality time outdoors, and embracing the opportunity to “unplug” for a while. Experiencing the great outdoors and taking time to appreciate our natural world can nurture the courage, self-accountability, and silence needed to reflect upon our collective well-being.

Environmental Wellness Curriculum Ideas:

Facilitate an Envirothon to emphasize hands-on, team-oriented problem solving (see Massachusetts example here ) as a group project exercise in the classroom
Present the impact that 2hrs/week (study here ) in the outdoors can have on well-being

VIII. Physical Wellness – What if we empowered students to feel good and full of energy?

I know what you’re thinking – “I thought you said we already focus too much on physical health too much under current education standards.” We do, but even the existing physical wellness needs to adapt. We need to hone our focus on what we teach about physical health.

In the age of Instagram, let's show our children what healthy fitness looks like. Let’s teach them how to properly care for and be proud of our bodies – not worse because we’re comparing ourselves to someone else.

Let’s talk to students about getting quality sleep. When we are sleeping, our bodies have the opportunity to recover from the stress that we have endured throughout the day. If we are not well-rested, we are more prone to carry over the stress from yesterday into tomorrow. Among the worst effects of poor sleep is the inability to be present during the day. I know that I wasn’t always present during my time in high school. If I didn’t have a meeting after school, I went straight home to nap. Unfortunately, taking that nap meant I would not fall asleep until late that night. This in turn caused me to be tired the next day and in need of yet another nap. Repeat this cycle over and over again, and you’ve got a student who may be in the classroom physically but is just not there mentally.

Staying hydrated and fueling our bodies with good nutrients also has profound effects on our physical health. Simple tips such as drinking 16 oz of water right as we get out of bed can help us wake up. Learning how to cook a few quick, nutrient-rich meals as a teenager is a huge asset. Let’s teach our students that they can make great tasting, nutritious food on their own.

Physical Wellness Curriculum Ideas:

Develop a lesson plan on the difference between looking good (how filters, posing, and photoshop on social media can manipulate images) and feeling good (eating healthy, working out, promoting positive body image)
Develop a lesson plan on the importance of good sleep with tips on how to get better sleep
If a home economics classroom with an accessible kitchen is available, facilitate an exercise where groups cook a nutritious meal together
Develop a lesson plan on the importance of proper hydration

Conclusion

We have a responsibility to empower students with the language and the courage to have conversations that will set them on a path towards well-being in any environment. COVID-19 only makes the issue more pressing. As we work to beat the virus, students in isolation need to be empowered with the courage and the language to have important conversations about their well-being. Coronavirus is not the only threat to our holistic wellness when we are in isolation, and we are not keeping our kids safe if they think that they’re alone in this struggle. These are not changes that we need to make in some far off future. These are changes that need to happen now. The ability to have these conversations can lead to increases in happiness, stronger relationships, increased levels of empathy/compassion, deeper curiosities, less anxiety, a cleaner world, and increases in financial stability – just to name a few benefits. It is a journey, not a destination, that requires continuous improvement, but our students can learn to enjoy their journey no matter where life takes them if we choose to empower them with an understanding of holistic wellness.

Prioritizing What Matters Most in The Attention Economy

Thu, 23 Apr 2020 19:25:31 GMT

Attention : we don’t get to choose if we pay it, but we do get to choose where we pay it. Let’s pay attention to privacy, well-being, creativity, relationships, and civil discourse.

Scenario :

You get in your car. You notice that you’re hovering near “E." You need to make a stop at a gas station. You insert your debit card at the pump. The screen asks if you have a rewards credit card at the gas station. You select “no." The screen asks if you’d like to apply for one - still “no." Now you’re pumping your gas. A TV host appears on the LCD screen where you just entered your payment information. She’s talking about a recent viral video. It’s hysterical. You need to find the link to this video to share with your group chat. You find the link and send it. That’s going to get love in the chat, for sure. You look back at the LCD screen. Granola bars are buy one, get one. Best head inside the store to grab a snack.

You enter the store. They’re playing your song. You’re jamming out in the snack aisle. Your song is cut off for a pre-recorded announcement. Rewards credit cards now get you a discount of five cents/gallon on your gas purchases. Well, you didn’t know that before. You do come to this gas station a lot. You make the snack purchase, fill out the necessary information for the credit card application, and you back to your car. Weird - you didn’t take the pump out of your car when you were finished filling up the tank. Must not have been paying attention.

I. Your Attention is Valuable

There are competing forces constantly vying for our attention because it is valuable . With hundreds of signals overwhelming our senses, it can become quite difficult to determine which ones matter and which ones don’t. Not all attention transactions are as clear-cut as the relatable gas station example. “Free” digital services have made sifting through the noise a much more difficult task at immense costs - our personal privacy and psychological well-being. Worse yet, there are immeasurable opportunity costs in the form of damaged relationships, poor communication, and lost creativity as a result of misplaced attention. It is our own responsibility to identify the total costs associated with missing signals which matter in order to recognize the value of our attention.

When you “pay” attention, you are either directly or indirectly paying someone or something. In the first gas station example, the attention paid to the ad for granola bars directly led to the purchase of a granola bar. The sales conversion in Example 1 is simple:

Example 2 with the credit card is a bit more complex. The signals were both visual and auditory. It took a bit of easing into the subconscious and exposure to two different senses for the sale to be made:

The end result is a discount of 5 cents/per gallon when the customer uses the card, so is the customer really “paying" for it? Yes. Co-branded credit cards almost always include an agreement to discount interchange fees between the credit card company and the brand on the card. The gas station passes you the discount in exchange for the following: your plastic is now a billboard for the gas station, you are more prone to be loyal to that brand, and your personal/purchase data will be collected, sliced, and diced in order to build a digital profile that knows you better than you know yourself. Matthew B. Crawford, author of The World Beyond Your Head - On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction, best describes this new age of business in an excerpt from his NYT Op-Ed below:

“Our self-appointed disrupters have opened up a new frontier of capitalism, complete with its own frontier ethic: to boldly dig up and monetize every bit of private head space by appropriating our collective attention.” - Matthew B. Crawford

If your attention weren’t valuable, companies wouldn’t be working so hard to mine it.

II. The Real Cost of Attention is Your Privacy and Psychology in the “Free” Digital World

The complexity doesn’t stop there. Let’s take this discussion outside of the gas station example and into social media platforms – particularly, Facebook. We crave digital experiences that facilitate community. The ability to access information from family and loved ones near and far in one place is what draws us in. What keeps us actively engaged on the platform is the notification button.

Come for the sense of community. Stay for the instant validation.

This phenomenon is known as classical conditioning - when a biological stimulus (belonging, self-esteem) is paired with a previously neutral stimulus (seeing the notification button light up). Belonging and esteem are part of our psychological needs, according to Maslow. Facebook was built with this psychology in mind to provide addictive hits of dopamine and thus retain users. The colors themselves are meant to adjust our psychology. Red, the color of the notifications that you see, creates a blood-rush and sense of urgency which screams "Click me!" Blue, the primary color of Facebook's brand, creates a sense of calmness and trust.

Facebook makes conscious efforts to affect our subconscious. They want us to trust them with our data and remain dependent on them for feelings of belonging and esteem.

Here’s what Facebook’s first president, Sean Parker , said about Facebook’s objective: “How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?” Parker went on to answer his own question by saying Facebook gives users “a little dopamine hit” in order to create “a social feedback validation loop… exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.”

Why does Facebook use our own psychology to keep our attention? Our privacy is wildly profitable. The social media giant builds digital profiles of us based on every like, comment, and friend request - information of such wide depth and breadth that they know what you want before you want it. You pay Facebook your attention, Facebook churns this attention into data, sells data to advertisers at incredible margins, and then advertisers come for more of your attention by targeting you - your location, your interests, your social norms, your tastes, your closest friends - down to the smallest of details.

I've created the model below to synthesize "Free" Digital Platform Revenue Models. Platforms have three goals: get you on the cycle (step 1), get you to move around the cycle fast (repeat steps 2-6), and never get you to slow or even stop the cycle (step 7). Why? Every time you pass step 4, the platform profits.

The “free” digital platform strategy is incredibly profitable, and it's not going away anytime soon.

While it is certainly the most well-known and the easiest example, Facebook is not the only platform using our own psychology to keep our attention and shift our behavior. There are a plethora of digital media businesses built on the this same model, and the results are dystopian, according to Tristian Thompson , the President of the Center for Humane Technology:

"Why did this happen in the first place? Because of the advertising business model. Free is the most expensive business model we've ever created. We're getting “free” destruction of our shared truth, “free” outrage-ification of politics, “free” social isolation, “free” downgrading of critical thinking. Instead of paying professional journalists, the “free” advertising model incentivizes platforms to extract “free labor” from users by addicting them to getting attention from others and to generate content for free. Instead of paying human editors to choose what gets published to whom, it’s cheaper to use automated algorithms that match salacious content to responsive audiences -- replacing newsrooms with amoral server farms. This has debased trust and the entire information ecology.” - Tristian Thompson

The platforms that consume our attention aren’t free. They’re actually quite expensive because they manipulate our psychology and harvest our private information.

III. The Opportunity Costs are Immense

Where there are immense, unnecessary expenses, there are great opportunity costs - losses from the potential gain if we paid our attention elsewhere. Consider the gap in potential knowledge gained between paying 20 minutes of your attention on social media vs. 20 minutes of your attention on a book. How about the disparity in stress levels between paying 20 minutes of your attention on social media vs. 20 minutes of meditation?

Now let’s consider differences even more abstract than that. What is the opportunity cost of a significant other who is physically present with their spouse at dinner but chooses to pay attention to their phone instead? Is this hypothetical scenario all that far-fetched in today’s society? You cannot measure a fractured relationship, but you can feel its cost. Whether it’s partner-partner, parent-child, sibling-sibling, friend-friend, we must not lose sight of creating meaningful experiences in the present moment.

In addition to relationships and well-being, our own creativity could suffer as a result of the attention we pay to social media. People are much more likely to consume than create. Consumption is easy. You sit. You scroll. You passively consume. While it is passive, it is not relaxing. We’ve all scrolled for longer than we should. I personally have never felt energized or excited after scrolling for too long. By consuming so much, we drain ourselves of energy and we leave little room for creativity.

Creation for creation’s sake or learning for learning’s sake is no longer as prominent. Social media users spend an average of 2 hours and 23 minutes per day on social media, but there’s no more time for hobbies. If you have a talent, or if you want to cultivate a talent, it must be monetizable. It must be scalable. It must be related to a trending topic. We're too busy consuming what's trending for us to engage with anything else that's more long-lasting.

Our ability to be present and sit with ourselves is gone. We reach for our phones without realizing it in the midst of any sort of downtime. Let's turn back to Crawford for the effects of silence on our creativity.

"And just as clean air makes it possible to breathe, silence makes it possible to think. The benefits of silence are off the books. They are not measured in the gross domestic product, yet the availability of silence surely contributes to creativity and innovation.” - Matthew B. Crawford

To build on what Crawford said, silence doesn't just contribute to creativity and innovation, but also to civil discourse. We are simultaneously more connected and further apart than ever because of our intolerance for opposing views and our inability to facilitate in-person communication. We don't generate our own views anymore. We merely consume them. What makes our thoughts "ours" is critical thinking - something absent in the age of salacious headlines written to trigger emotion and retain user engagement. When in-person disagreements occur, we don't have deep reserves to think through a respectful response or an open mind to consider the other side. We only have a shallow reserve of anger which we consumed online. Our inputs become our outputs, so we angrily regurgitate headlines and quick-hit pieces of information.

As I write this, most of the world remains in quarantine. With endless consumption at our finger-tips and more time than usual on our hands, it’s time to ask this question: am I capable of being with myself – with no digital distractions - for a day?

IV. Value Your Attention as a Currency

Make the decision to prioritize which signals you will listen to and which ones you will ignore. Take the gas station example - amidst all of the auditory and visual signals, there was only one that mattered - the fuel gauge. Responding to this signal made total sense. The cost of spending time/money to fill up the tank is much smaller than the cost of spending time waiting for a pickup truck and the money required to have your car towed.

Treat social media like the gas station, and only respond to the signals that matter. If you’re on Facebook or another platform because the group pages, event pages, and messaging platforms allow you to stay in touch with people who matter, then that is great! If you find yourself spending hours scrolling through a news feed of content that does not matter, please know that you are paying for it and that someone else is profiting from it.

If over-usage of social media is an expense for you, then consider the following investments which you can reallocate your attention towards:

• Meditation – increase silence, sharpen focus, reduce stress, & inspire creativity

• Hobbies – create for creativity’s sake

• Actively engage on no more than two social media platforms – keep up with what’s important, but don’t drown yourself in consumption

• Write - refine your ideas

• Journal - refine yourself

• Read or listen to podcasts - gain knowledge

• Call loved ones and ask them to tell you lessons that were crucial to their growth - gain wisdom

• Workout - challenge yourself and feel good

• Cook - learn how to nourish the body without sacrificing flavor

Attention is a limited resource for all of us. We know to budget our money. It’s time to budget our attention. It’s okay to take on a few attention expenses, but we cannot fall into debt and ignore the fact that paying too much to the wrong things puts us underwater.

Let's invest in protecting our privacy. Let's invest in our well-being and psychological needs offline. Let’s allow our creativity to flourish and empower others’ creativity to do the same. Let’s invest in the relationships that matter. Let’s invest in having hard conversations with one another in a respectful manner, despite our differences.

Start investing. Limit the expenses. This is your signal - pay attention to what matters.

Creating a New Luck Surface Area Model

Sun, 01 Mar 2020 17:59:54 GMT

Creating a visualization to better understand two variables - doing and telling - that allow people to create their own luck.

We cannot control all of the things that influence our lives. Millions of variables affect what happens to us and when it happens. These variables make the concept of controlling our own luck elusive. Yet, just because something cannot be controlled does not mean that it cannot be facilitated. Doing and telling are two variables that allow us to create our own luck, not control it, in order to increase our chances of success.

The variables doing and telling were created by Jason Roberts who coined the phrase “Luck Surface Area” and created the first Luck Surface Area model . Jason breaks down the concept with a visual representation and a linear function (L=D*T) where L is luck, D is doing, and T is telling. Folks in the comment section of Roberts' original blog post note that his argument would be stronger if the function were hyperbolic, not linear. I agree with these comments, so I took a set of hyperbolas, plotted example points, added a luck level scale, and created a constraint in the form of “effort points” to further break down the concept of a Luck Surface Area through an economic lens.

The units by which we will be measuring levels on the x-axis doing (D) and the y-axis telling (T) will be "effort points" - a mechanism of calculating effort. The plotted points on the graph land in a luck level as indicated by the different shades of color. The red region is the least amount of luck (1) while each lighter shade moving up and to the right represents a larger level of luck until we reach maximum luck in the upper right-hand corner represented by the lightest shade of yellow (10). The goal is to reach the maximum level of luck given the number of effort points that are invested.

Under this specific circumstance, the sum of each plot point (D,T) equals 90 in order to represent the same level of effort across each individual case. In point A, we allocate a mere 10 effort points to doing (D) but 80 effort points to telling (T). In point B, we allocate 80 effort points to doing (D) but a mere 10 effort points to telling (T). In point C, we allocate 45 effort points to doing (D) and 45 effort points to telling (T).

We are left with three different points plotted on the graph with the exact same level of effort invested, but there are two distinctly different outcomes of luck. Points A and B are shaded in the lowest level of luck (Level 1) because too many effort points were allocated to one variable and not the other. Point C is the most efficient allocation of effort because it achieves the maximum level of luck (Level 3) when a total of 90 effort points are invested.

There are two key takeaways from the Luck Surface Area:

1. To do and not tell or to tell and not do is an inefficient allocation of our resources as it does not yield the maximum utility we can create under the circumstances. We must balance taking action (doing) as well as sharing our stories (telling) in order to maximize our luck.

2. The hypothetical example above shows C as the most efficient allocation under the constraint of 90 effort points, but if you increase the number of total effort points invested and continue to allocate them efficiently then you can reach into even higher levels of luck. In other words, it’s not just the efficient allocation of effort but also the increased level of effort that allows us to push into higher levels of luck.

Recently, I have focussed on doing but have been negligent to the telling portion - particularly on digital platforms. I've created this website to change just that. After all, if I'm going to think critically about a 2-variable function about creating one's own luck, shouldn't I try and put both variables into practice? With that said, I'd like to hear from you:

What variables/constraints would you introduce into your rendition of the Luck Surface Area? Tweet at me here .

---The following add-on was published in the 6/2/2022 edition of my newsletter --

2 years ago, I wrote about 2 variables that allow people to create their own luck.

Doing = (D)

Telling = (T)

D * T = Luck

This linear equation to manufacture luck was the thesis of a piece from Jason Roberts of Codus Operandi .

The basis of the equation is that you have to efficiently allocate effort to both doing (D) and telling (T) in order to be lucky.

I took Jason's model and expanded upon it in the first piece I published online (mainly adding parabolas to his original image + the idea of allocating effort points).

Now that 2 years have passed, here's my assessment of the Luck Surface Model:

1 thing I didn't expect from the Luck Surface Model:

Storytelling = Chance for Schools to Improve - this is backed by anecdote, not by data, but my gut feeling is that the majority of people focus on doing (D) and not telling (T) because of the "beat the test" culture in school. Doing (D) the work in school = memorizing answers, regurgitating them onto a page, and moving on. The absolute value of D in "beat the test culture" is low. In the workforce, we are required to do (D) the work with critical thinking, detail, and intention because we need to be able to defend - tell (T) the story - behind the work to clients, bosses, team members, prospective clients, etc. The absolute value of doing (D) is much higher when you're expected to tell (T) the story behind your work, leading to higher levels of luck. As a result, I think we need to do a better job of teaching the telling (T) aspect in school.

2 pros of operating the Luck Surface Model:

Improved Thinking - nothing will make you improve your thinking around any given subject like having the guts to publish your writing on it. Building the courage to put your ideas out there is healthy because it requires you to challenge your own thinking, cite your sources, and invite other people to critique your perspective. The caveat here is that you have a responsibility to engage with people who intentionally engage with your work - even if they disagree with you; especially if they disagree with you.
Friends with Shared Interests - you're at a cocktail party. You're deeply interested in a subject. You're pontificating upon said subject. The listener is trying not to fall asleep as you pontificate. This doesn't count as a friend with shared interests. I'm talking about people who want to jam with you about what you're talking about because they're also deeply invested in the subject. The Luck Surface Model helps address this because chances are, people who have your niche interests don't live in close proximity to you. You may only be able to find your whacky people through the internet.

3 variables that need to be included in a future Luck Surface Model:

Passion (P) - do you care about what you work on? If so, it'll yield higher levels of luck.
Consistency (C) - a routine cadence with which you do (D) and tell (T) leads to higher levels of luck.
Empathy (E) - the ability to relate to people. This results in higher levels of trust amongst team members/supporters, leading to higher levels of luck.

I haven't found a way to incorporate these 3 new variables mathematically or visually into a new model, but I'll keep workin' on it and circle back with you down the line.

Josh Cadorette

Why I'd Be a Great Fit as Ambrook's Partnership's Lead

Howdy!

My Ask

"Tell us about the most ambitious project you’ve led in a previous role! Please include links to examples, if available."

"What excites you about Ambrook?"

Closing with My Ask Again

2024 Annual Review

Reflecting on the year that I lived in an urban environment, continued to build startup experience, and celebrated dear friends.

Outline

I. Introduction

II. Quick Hits

IV. 2024 Goals Assessment

❌ - 1. �� Read The Bible Cover to Cover

❌ - 2. ��‍♂️ Do Yoga Nidra Meditation 1x Daily

✅ - 3. ��️ Eliminate Uptalk, Except for When I'm Asking Questions

✅ - 4. ��️ Get Stronger, Leaner, and Improve Endurance

✅ - 5. ⛔ No Alcohol, Instagram, or Facebook

❌ - 6. ��️ Publish 2 Written Pieces a Month

✅ - 7. �� Study Psychology, Technology, and Theology + Build Network in This Space

✅ - 8. ⚾ Coach and Play Baseball

❌ - 9. �� Perform Monthly Audits on My Budget

❌ - 10. �� Go on a Week-Long Backpacking Trip

V. 2025 Quests

VI. 2024 Photos of the Year

Appendix: How I Prepared The Review

2023 Annual Review

Reflecting on the year that I failed at entrepreneurship, celebrated friends and family, and refined what I want my craft to become.

Outline

I. Introduction

II. Quick Hits

III. 2023 Goals Assessment

1. �� Build Self-Sustaining Income Independent of a Corporation (✅)

2. �� Publish Newsletter Every Thursday & Grow Subscriber List to 1k (❌)

3. �� Take a 1-Year Break from Facebook and Instagram (✅)

4. ��️ Publish 1 Essay Per Quarter (❌)

5. �� Build Endurance, Balance, Flexibility, and Better Nutrition (✅)

6. �� Improve Information Caption System (✅)

7. ☀️ Rest fully on Sundays (✅)

8. �� Build a 2x Daily Meditation Practice (❌)

9. �� Participate in a Local Service Opportunity 1x/week (✅)

10. ⛷️ Try Things That Are Completely New & Do Things That Bring You Joy (✅)

IV. 2024 Goal Setting

1. �� Read The Bible Cover to Cover

2. ��‍♂️ Do Yoga Nidra Meditation 1x Daily

3. ��️ Eliminate Uptalk, Except for When I'm Asking Questions

4. ��️ Get Stronger, Leaner, and Improve Endurance

5. ⛔ No Alcohol, Instagram, or Facebook

6. ��️ Publish 2 Written Pieces a Month

7. �� Study Psychology, Technology, and Theology + Build Network in This Space

8. ⚾ Coach and Play Baseball

9. �� Perform Monthly Audits on My Budget

10. �� Go on a Week-Long Backpacking Trip

V. 2023 Photos of the Year

Appendix: How I Prepared The Review

The Shooting Star Startup

We built a speech-to-text summary startup that went viral, but our success didn't last for long.

See Tweet that kicked things off here

Introduction

I. Feather's Origin

Enter Feather AI - an audio-to-text summarizer.

Time to take Feather AI to Twitter.

Biggest takeaway from those 24 hours - ready-fire-aim.

II. MVP to v1.0

*Just right* doesn't exist.

III. Shutting Feather AI Down

"Here’s the bottom line up front:

What happens next.

More info. on why we’re shutting down.

IV. Why Shooting Stars Aren't All That Bad

Our shooting star taught me a few things about building something from scratch:

2022 Annual Review

Reflecting on the year that I built a van, a consistent writing habit, and a better understanding of my place in the world.

Outline

I. Introduction

II. Interactive VanLife Map

III. Quick Hits

2022 Goals Assessment

1. �� Build the Van (✅)

2. ✍️ Build a Writing Habit (✅)

Just right doesn't exist.