On Christmas Eve 1971, Juliane Diller boarded a flight with her mom. They were to fly from Lima, Peru, on the coast, over the Andes to Pucallpa in the Amazon jungle. The weather was bad. The plane shook and bags fell out of the overhead compartments. From her window seat in the back row, 17-year-old Juliane saw lightning strike the plane’s wing. The plane entered a nosedive and her mother cried, “Now it’s all over.” In moments the aircraft broke apart. Juliane, still belted to her row of three seats, was ejected 10,000 feet above the ground.

I heard a great story about choice on a recent episode of ​The Morgan Housel Podcast​. As a young child, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s days were highly structured and dictated by rules. He hated it. Little FDR shared, “Mom, from the time I wake up to the time I go to bed, there is a strict structure that I have to follow throughout the entire day.” His mother, Sarah Roosevelt, agreed to give him a day of absolute freedom. He could do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. Sarah would later write in her diary that FDR woke up that day and resumed his regular schedule. He did it on his terms and quite happily. What?

The epigraph from Jim Kwik above seems truly apt today. I write this exhausted from weeks of preparing for our annual conference. Tack on the five days of the conference itself and a workweek closing as many open loops as possible before my vacation. I’m currently sitting in an airport lounge in JFK preparing to leave for Spain. R&R commences in T-minus 90 minutes. Yay! But I have one last task to complete.

Our annual convention is always an educational smorgasbord and this year was no exception. Family Reunion 2024 featured a star-studded lineup of speakers, including Tony Robbins, Mel Robbins, Codie Sanchez, Rory Vaden, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, and Phil M. Jones. We also curated over 200 breakout sessions and panels on every topic imaginable.

Imposter syndrome defeats more entrepreneurs than competition. No success arrives without setbacks. Every leap forward is preceded by pratfalls, private and public. 

On the eve of our annual convention next week, I’m revisiting one of our most popular posts on getting the most out of a training event.

The world doesn’t need a new way to set goals. What we need is a way to have a relationship with our goals. Pile up the literature on to-do lists, resolutions, “SMART” goals, and business plans and you could blanket the planet a few times over. Good luck finding guidance on how to keep striving toward those goals. It’s probably simple economics like selling pickaxes to prospectors instead of lockboxes to successful ones. Hoards come searching for gold while few find it.

I was recently listening to Steven Pressfield, one of my favorite authors, on the How I Write podcast with David Parell. Discussing inspiration, Pressfield shared, “There's a thing in Kabbalah that above every blade of grass is an angel saying, grow, grow.” I love that. It’s both beautiful and encouraging. And it got me thinking about the personal and professional relationships that serve as my angels. 

Many years ago, I stumbled upon a PDF of Charlie Munger’s famous 1994 speech at USC. In it, he championed the idea that with 80 to 90 timeless mental models you could better navigate the world. This inspired me to create a list of models I believed mattered in early 2018. I often draw from that document for these articles. Almost six years since I began, I’ve assembled exactly 80 mental models. Many were learned through costly mistakes I’d rather not repeat.

Among the biggest challenges of leading a team is the gap between what you say and what they hear. Somedays the gap feels narrow. Others it can seem like a chasm. You did what? That’s one reason we recommend weekly accountability meetings with staff. Whether you botched the delivery or they fumbled the reception, it’s hard to get too far off course in 7 days. These weekly meetings serve as weekly course corrections, coaching opportunities, and celebrations.