The Connection Newsletter 44 - To infinity...

The Connection Newsletter 44 - To infinity...

February 25, 2019

Hello!

This is edition #44 of

The Connection, the weekly email I send family, friends, and future friends (hullo!) Glad you're here.

Last week I had an amazing time seeing so many friendly faces in SF and LA. I took the red-eye back on Wednesday night… and immediately crashed for half the day. Special thanks to Eddie and Mackenzie for their hospitality and years of friendship.

One highlight of the trip:

-- who were instrumental in my Hollywood education.

Speaking of groups: I’ve been having terrific, informal conversations every month with a group of awesome people: Eric, Margo, and Michael. We’ve been talking about online businesses and challenges of hiring and parenting… it’s been inspiring and cathartic. Many thanks to Eric for bringing me on.

This week

-- our growth programs for experienced practitioners. If your company has PMF and you have three years of experience, I strongly recommend you checking it out.

I talked about spending

, and this launch has already been a crash course in so many things: email automation, spreadsheets, QA’ing payment and onboarding flows… it’s a different arena for me but I’m pumped about developing the skillsets.

On the note of practitionership: thanks to

for the lessons in page speed optimization! In 60 minutes, he helped take my blog from a 9-second load (aka an eternity) to 3 seconds… pretty rad 😎

Onto the articles:

Make sure to hit "Display Images" above to see puppy pics. 

Gumroad founder Sahil Lavingia built a company that was helping thousands of artists get paid every month. The company paid out over $2 million dollars to these creators. In May 2018, gross profit was $65,000.

And for a long time, in Mr. Lavingia’s eyes, the business was a complete failure.

This article was especially poignant as I’m only starting to learn about the economics of venture-backed companies, where the demands for “hockey stick growth” far outweigh sensible sustainability.

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This came at a good time. I’ve been thinking about how to make the most out of my

weekdays, so I make the most out of the weekends, which I want to devote to my family.

“In my family of four, weekends had become as gridlocked as weekdays. My husband and I were shuttling the kids to sports and playdates, cleaning and fixing our old, broken house, doing the washing – in short, tackling all the tasks neglected during the time-crunched week of a two-career household. And in between, we were scheduling pockets of work. What my son was mourning wasn’t the end of a great weekend, but the fact that those two days hadn’t seemed like a weekend at all; they were barely distinguishable from the five days before it.”

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Someone asked me recently what was the biggest surprise about parenthood.

One of the big surprises is when I read articles like these and think, “I am now responsible for setting a good example for another human being.” I swear the gravity of this responsibility hits like a fist wrapped ‘round a roll of quarters.

This article reminds me to look at these adolescent years with empathy. When you’re a teenager, you’re still figuring out so much shit. And I don’t think parents can spoon-feed them the answers -- they’re just exposed to too many things, most of which are out of your control.

The best they (we?) can do is steer them in the right direction, and use every moment possible as a teachable moment.

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If Zillow can make the margins of flipping houses work, then real estate agents are in trouble.

As a consumer, I’d gladly pay an extra 4% to cut out all the work of listing and showing my home.

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(H/T Andrew.) This just makes you love Robert Caro even more. And reminds me I still need to finish

The Power Broker.

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You’ll never guess #7! 😮

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Finally:

🎣

Thanks for reading!

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