Johann Van Tonder
@jvt
20 years in ecommerce, now CEO of a CRO agency. Probably doing analysis in R or building stuff with AI. Or walking on the beach. Yeah, probably that.
Johann Van Tonder
Everyone freaks out, and they interpret the statement, ‘AI will affect my job’ as ‘AI will do my job for me.’
Those two things are not the same, because AI can be a tool or substitute. Just because the job may change doesn’t mean that the job will be eliminated.
Source: Kellogg Insight
Your chances of fixing the company are significantly greater if you take care of yourself first and make sure you’re in the right headspace before making sudden decisions.
Amy Buechler, Founder Coach at YC
Choices like these cause migraine headaches. Tip to aspiring entrepreneurs: If you don’t like choosing between horrible and cataclysmic, don’t become CEO.
Ben Horowitz • The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers
Motivation and Quotes
I don't play zero-sum games.
I noticed that whenever I was faced with a competitive, zero-sum game – a situation in which someone else had to lose in order for me to win, or vice versa I chose to opt out of that game completely.
- Tiago Forte on X
“The skill of actually figuring out what you need is probably as important as what you do after you figure it out.”
Pradeep GanapathyRaj via Matt LeMay
To quote the always-brilliant Philip Kiely: “First you do X, then you make content about doing X, then you make content about that content… One day you realize you haven’t done X for six months. And there is only so much room for content at the highest levels of abstraction.”
Shaun Wang • The Meta-Creator Ceiling
“First the people running the old system don’t notice the change. When they do, they assume it’s minor. Then it’s a niche, then a fad. And by the time they understand that the world has actually changed, they’ve squandered most of the time they had to adapt.”
Daniel Goleman • Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence
Original quote is by Clay Shirky
Focus means head down. Big picture means head up. The more you’re doing of one, the less you’re doing of the other. If you’ve been head-down on a task for too long, lift your head up to make sure you’re going the right way. Don’t do well what you shouldn’t do at all.
Derek Sivers • How to Live: 27 conflicting answers and one weird conclusion
However old you are, whatever your status relative to your peers, life is waiting for you. It is not too late to pursue change, to seek a different life, a better world.