Some reflections this month…

💪🏼 Health

Huberman Lab is my go-to health related podcast. The January 8th episode was How to Prevent & Treat Cold & Flu and it was over 2 hours long.

I listened to the whole thing, so you don’t have to. Here are the main takeaways:

• Vitamin C, the supplement we’ve always heard we should be taking during cold & flu season, likely has little or no effect.
• Studies show Vitamin D in higher doses can be helpful, especially for people who are deficient in Vitamin D. I’ve been taking 5,000 IU of Vitamin D for the past six months for muscle and bone health. Anecdotal, but Ava and Sarah both got sick this month and I didn’t.
• NAC (N-acetylcysteine) – If you’re going to take one preventative during cold/flu season, take this. It also works to shorten the duration of your symptoms if you take it when you start feeling sick. All three of us took 600 mg twice per day when Sarah and Ava started getting sick and they both bounced back pretty quick. I trust Jarrow Formulas, so that’s the brand we went with.

📚 Reading

I’m currently finishing up three books that I started reading this month.

• How to Keep Your Cool by Seneca. I found myself having a short temper recently and read this book because someone mentioned it on a podcast. If you want philosophical reasons why it doesn’t make sense to lose your cool, this book works. But I found Letting Go by David Hawkins to be more helpful by providing specific techniques to utilize in the moment.
• American Gods by Neil Gaiman. I’ve read 12-24 books every year for the past 20 years, but they’re almost always about business or personal growth, rarely fiction. Last year, on a whim, I read Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid and loved it. I followed that up with another one of her books, Daisy Jones & The Six, and found myself looking for more fiction. We have a bunch of Neil Gaiman books because Sarah’s been reading them and I picked up Anansi Boys in December. I find myself enjoying the worlds that Gaiman builds and I’m excited to read more of his work.
• Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi. I heard about this book years ago, but I was turned off by the title. I thought the premise was “always be networking,” which feels slimy. In reality, the book is about connecting with people and looking for opportunities to help.

🙌🏼 Helping

It’s funny… when you sell your business, you get rid of a bunch of problems. But you also get rid of the satisfaction that comes from solving those problems.

I got the chance to help some people this month and some people helped me.

• I talked to Addie, the founder of Delphina Pools. I shared some ideas that I thought would be helpful for the current stage of her business. And I recommended that she join the Accelerator program in Entrepreneur’s Organization.
• TaxValet was a company I worked with to help 420 Science navigate the maze of sales tax filings in 33 states. They were amazing and I would love to own a similar service business, so I reached out to the founder Alex. Although he’s not ready to sell, we had a great brainstorming session around other possibilities. I’ll also be recording a video testimonial for him this week, sharing my experience of how TaxValet took a situation that felt overwhelming and created peace of mind for us.
• During my EO forum, I mentioned how searching for a business is a lonely process that feels like a slog. Andrew, who’s been through the search before, understood and offered to connect with me on a weekly call. We talked on Friday and the conversation gave me some new paths to explore for my search.

I enjoyed these collaborations and I’m looking for more ways to help where I can.

👏🏼 Tony Robbins

I’ve experienced two Tony Robbins events: Unleash the Power Within in 2011 and Business Mastery in 2012. They’re energizing, immersive experiences that help people create breakthroughs in their lives and businesses.

During Covid, since Tony was unable to host live events, his team built a $20M studio and technology platform to deliver his events in a virtual setting.

And once per year, he hosts a free 3-day online seminar called the Time to Rise Summit.

Unlike the in-person events I attended that were 12-16 hours per day for 4 days straight, this summit was 3 hours per day for 3 days.

I did the first day live and I’m going to watch the replays of days 2 & 3 this week.

A couple notes I made for myself:

• The path of least resistance will never make you proud.
• To create a breakthrough, there are three things you can change. In order of impact, they are:
  1. Change your state
  2. Change your story
  3. Change your strategy

And if you get a chance to attend Unleash the Power Within in person, I highly recommend it. Tony does a great job of keeping the energy up virtually, but you can’t replace the fire walk.

🎬 General Magic

The iPhone came out in 2007, but it was envisioned in 1989 and the first version, called Personal Crystal, was launched in 1994 from a company spun out of Apple, named General Magic.

The product was a flop. They were too early for the technology to be as good as it needed to be and consumers weren’t ready (or willing to pay) for it.

General Magic folded, but their people went on to create the iPhone, Android, iPad, Apple Watch, and numerous other tech products and companies.

Sarah and I loved this documentary. It was mind-blowing to see what we all take for granted today being created 30 years ago.

You can rent General Magic on Apple TV or Amazon.