The Elevator: These Rick Rubin Sunglasses, Profit First, + A Sound Healing Prediction
Hey and welcome to The Elevator. Many founders today want to build their companies differently. I partner with CEOs and Founders across Tech, Crypto, E-commerce, and B2B Services to help them navigate business and personal growth.
Here and on Tiktok, X, and Instagram I share transformational products, ideas, and services that help you grow personally and professionally.
The Lobby: Blessed by the Algorithm
I’ve been playing around with Tiktok and having fun with it. Yesterday I got a nice little pop of appreciation from the Algo-gods in one of my latest videos. Encouraging.
I have multiple clients that are incredibly savvy on this channel and have built massive businesses just around Tiktok alone. And of course, the Death to Stock feed is a must-follow for any brand wanting to tap into the zeitgeist.
I’m going to keep exploring different types of video styles until I figure out what I really love to make.
I.
Found Gear: Rick Rubin’s Blue-Light Blockers
After much digging, I finally found the exact pair of blue-light blockers worn by Rick Rubin in all of these podcasts he goes on. On Twitter the founder of Ra Optics reached out after I posted about some other brands I thought they were from. Turns out they were custom.
I’m hoping to interview Matt as their company has made glasses for many of the big healthy influencers, so stay tuned for that on this newsletter.
II.
Read: Profit First
I just reread this book which was gifted years ago by a mentor. The book is amazing for any bootstrapped entrepreneur to read.
There’s a massive trap that all of us can easily fall into related to “bank balance accounting” which basically means you are gauging your spending based on how much is in your accounts. This leads to companies that are large but having no marginal profit. You basically feel like you can never get ahead.
Profiting FIRST works with your psychology rather than against it to force yourself to innovate, widen your profit margin, and make money at every step of your business, not just at some elusive future date.
Putting it into practice forces not only profit-taking, but innovation in your business.
III.
The Difference Between Mentorship, Coaching, and Training.
This comes up from time to time and it can be helpful for people seeking mentorship/coaching/training and for those doing it.
Mentorship is learning from someone with direct experience about where you’re trying to go.
Mentors are typically older than you for this reason, and they bring the wisdom of directly relatable mistakes, scars, and experiences.
Ask mentors for *specific* advice.
Coaching is the collaborative pursuit of getting the best out of your performance at every stage of your growth. Coaches focus all of their attention on you to identify your opportunities for growth.
The more coaches get to know you, the more shared context gets created over time, and the more nuanced opportunities emerge.
Training is time-boxed learning for a particular skill or practice. Training is about creating an improvement on one dimension of your process.
Training helps you understand a discipline and then turn that understanding into practice.
What questions do you have about mentors, coaches, or training?
IV.
Trend Forecast: Sound Healing.
I sent a tweet (‘XEET’) commenting on an underappreciated modality for therapy – Sound. I’m slowly getting deeply interested in sound on a variety of levels, including working with sound beds similar to this one from Tune.
Someone asked me to share a bit more so I wanted to elaborate here.
Think about it simply… have you ever cried listening to music? There are deeper processes going on in your body as to why, and vibro-acoustics can channel and target particular experiences based on opportunities for growth.
Vibration and Sound can re-calibrate your nervous system and even target particular organs or systems in the body. Studies are showing the impact these sounds and frequencies can have on stress however I believe that this goes much deeper than just stress. I think we’ll see physics, health, and sound-healing will all begin to align on how impactful sound can be to our bodies.
“At Google we have TUNE to help people when they get stuck and clear their mind. I personally think it is the future of work.”
Ivy Ross
SVP of Hardware Design at Google
V.
Client Highlight: 100 Builders
Joey and his team are putting together a program for 100 projects building open-source and AI. It’s been amazing to watch Joey’s approach to putting their company right at the intersection of so many areas of their interest and skillset. I’m really excited to see how the program develops.
A friend Jawad taught me that “Every decade, investing returns go to a new category, What worked the last decade isn’t typically what works in the decade ahead.”
So…on a speculative level, if the last decade was about VC investing in SAAS, could the next decade be about open-source?
As Luke Gromen says… “Let’s Watch.”
Rooftop:
In two weeks travel kicks off again. Ohio friends, I’ll be back in Columbus the second week of September.
Also spending a week in Sun Valley, ID so if you have any recs, would love to hear them.
Always reach out if I can help.
Love you all and talk soon,
xx DS
Love Profit First, one of my fave "business" books. I can't recommend it enough.