Ratlinks: July 2019 - Issue #7
Summer Recommendations | CEO Power Breakfast | The Science of Success
Welcome back readers.
A few quick housekeeping notes
Readership is up - good
More people complaining about the length of RatLinks - bad
Opinions differ between too long, too short and just right.
The total read time for this issue should be roughly 15-20 minutes but according to an online tool fast readers can get through it in 8 minutes 16 seconds.
BBQ Story - read time 2 minutes
Beach recommendations - 5 minutes
Science of Success - 5 minutes
Other highlights - 3 minutes
Surprise BBQ Guest
As we head into the July 4th weekend, the official middle of summer, I felt it was apropos to share this story.
In the backyard of a tony suburb, a group of friends gather for a barbecue. The host stands ready to welcome the intimate crowd. After the standard pleasantries the host declares that a special guest has yet to arrive.
The host states that, while we all have different reactions around celebrities, you should treat him no differently than anyone else, as he is just a normal guy. The only thing I ask, the host says, is that you respect his privacy – don’t ask for pictures or post about him on social media.
Not wanting to reveal his identity, the host says the guest started from the bottom, but is now a major music star. He is also tangentially related to the NBA.
Everyone continues about their business, all the while, wondering the identity of this guest of a guest. Starting as a hushed whisper, a buzz slowly builds across the entire party that the guest is most likely a rap star from Toronto. Twenty minutes later the host walks over and says: I’d like to introduce you to my friend, composer and piano virtuoso John Tesh.
Summer Time Recommendations:
The official Ratlinks guide to the summer.
Whether at the beach, the lake or where ever your summer road trip takes you. #BeBest
Listen to this podcast
Naval Ravikant on The Joe Rogan Experience | Any podcast app
I rarely listen to Joe Rogan, who is described as the “meathead” Tim Ferris. However, the episode with Naval Ravikant, came highly recommend. Naval is a big thinker and founder of AngelList.
Be forewarned the podcast is long, but the first 45 minutes are worthy of your time. This pod is full of conceptual stuff like - AI and universal basic income - which sound obvious, but can be difficult to conceptualize.
You’re not going to get rich renting out your time. You must own equity - a piece of a business - to gain your financial freedom.
You will get rich by giving society what it wants but does not yet know how to get. At scale.
Naval Ravikant « Joe Rogan (Podcast Site)PODCASTS.JOEROGAN.NET – Share
Download this app
Oak Mantra Based Mediation App | iTunes App Store
I previously recommend Oak in last year’s “November to Remember” edition of RatLinks. This month I took the recently launched mantra based meditation course.
The 10 day course consists of a daily 20 minute guided practice, and is structured as a more approachable version of transcendental meditation (TM).
The practice involves the use of a Sanskrit word — that doesn’t have any true meaning — to gently sink into a relaxed state of quiet and inner stillness.
If you are interested in starting a meditation practice or trying transcendental meditation. I highly recommend this course.
Remember, there is no need to do the course consecutively – go at your own pace.
Oak - Meditation and Breathing Exercises WWW.OAKMEDITATION.COM –
Guided meditation and breathing exercises. Learn mindful and loving-kindness meditation today. Available for iOS.
Watch this TV Show
I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson | Netflix Official
A six episode irreverent comedy show on Netflix where each episode is about 15 minutes long.In particular, I recommend episode 3, the final sketch with the hipster boyfriend playing party games is solid gold.
There is no such thing as an ordinary interaction in this offbeat sketch comedy series that features a deep roster of guest stars.
Bring this to your next party
Bottle of Cocchi Rosa or Americano | Wherever you buy alcohol
While the Aperol Spritz remains the “it” drink of the summer. you can be a little more interesante and bring a bottle of Cocchi (Coke-EE).
You can’t go wrong with either flavor: the red Rosa or white Americano, an apertif made from muscato grapes.
Suggested Cocktails:
A more refined spritz
Grapefruit soda (cocchi + your favorite seltzer)
Mix with rose and some fresh cut fruit to make a sangria.
Cocchi Vermouths and other aromatized wines are made with selected wines and spices following the original formulas by Giulio Cocchi.
Produced according to Giulio Cocchi original recipe, Cocchi Americano is recognized in Asti as the aperitif par excellence – a real piece of history of our town.
Be the grill master
When you are a guest at someone’s home, never man the grill unannounced. Men can be very temperamental about someone else touching their grill.Asking to help out is a nicety that can go a long way, which allowing the host to free up for other tasks or to take a much appreciated break.If you are asked to step in, make sure you know what you are doing, because some men are obsessed with their meat.
Why Are American Men So Obsessed with Steak? - LITHUB.COM
There’s an old army joke about steak. A young captain, like all ambitious men, wants a porterhouse steak. But his butcher is all out. Apparently, “all the Porterhouse goes to Colonel so-and-so.
The Food Lab's Definitive Guide to Grilled Steak - WWW.SERIOUSEATS.COM
Summer’s here and I’ve got a brand-new backyard to grill in, so now seems like as good a time as any to reexamine some of the things we know (or think we know) about grilling beef.
Breakfast with David Rubenstein and Lloyd Blankfein
I recently attended a breakfast with David Rubenstein, the billionaire founder of private equity firm Carlyle and Lloyd Blankfein, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs.
David Rubenstein also hosts an interview show on Bloomberg. Expectations were for Rubenstein to interview Blankfein. Instead, the roles were reversed.
For those unaware of David Rubenstein, he famously helped renovate the Washington Monument, owns a copy of the Magna Carta and endowed the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library at Duke University.
When asked “what advice David would tell his younger self,” he responded:
Learn how to write effectively
Learn to speak effectively to persuade people
Lead by example
Act with humility and share the credit
Return your calls, it takes a lifetime to build a reputation but 5 minutes to ruin it.
Divide life into thirds
What that really means:
Sometimes, people who excel during the first third of life, expect things to continue and don’t work as hard in the second third of life. This leads to a stream of failures, which if you refuse to learn from, do not allow you to enjoy the final third of life.
The Science of Success
This month I read “The Formula” by Albert-László Barabási, a theoretical physicists scientific approach to understanding success.
I would recommend this approachable, easy read, written in the same vein as a Malcolm Gladwell book.
The book defines success as a formula:
Success = Ability x Idea
Performance drives success, but when performance can’t be measured, networks drive success; or, to put it simply, your success is not about you - it’s about us.
Your success isn’t about you and your performance; it’s about all of us and how we perceive your performance.
The most successful among us have mastered our networks, using them to achieve a place in the collective consciousness, snapping up valuable real estate in the brains of unlikely people.
Below are some choice selections:
With persistence success can come at any time.
It’s amazing how much can be accomplished if no one cares who gets the credit.
If you want to win over the long term, performance is unavoidable. Your product needs to be highly fit and competitive.
Ideas are cheap, a truism often parroted by venture capitalists. Your ability to take that idea and turn it into a useful product determines the size of the check an investor is willing to cut for you.
Your ability to turn an idea into a discovery is equally important, and that varies dramatically from person to person. We call this ability a person’s Q-factor
The as-yet-unknown merit of the idea, defined as “r”, and one’s “Q-factor"—work in tandem to determine a project’s ultimate success, or S. The simplest model we could think of also ended up being the most accurate.
Multiply your Q-factor by the value of your next idea, r, and you get a formula to predict its success (S).
Written as a formula: S=Qr
The Formula: The Universal Laws of Success by Albert-László Barabási
As always, you can see all the books I am reading here.
Other monthly highlights
Planned a lunch with an old friend. At the last minute a work colleague joined. Neither had met the other before. Lunch was at 12:15. I arrived at restaurant 5 minutes late. Only to find both got there at noon, met and ate lunch without me.
Spent a lovely weekend in Cleveland. While there, my wife’s cousin was gifted a truffle. Upon arriving at his house he showed me said truffle and asked what to do with it. I responded there is only one thing to do.
Quoting Sean Puffy Comb’s fine dining maxim as said to Daniel Boulud’s truffle man: ‘shave this bitch’
On the flight back from Cleveland, I was seated in the aisle. The woman seated next to me leaned over to talk to her boyfriend seated in the other aisle. I offered to switch seats. Upon moving my new neighbor turned to me and said that was a really nice gesture. More importantly, it is great that you switched, since you are smaller giving me more room. I responded “you know I don’t see size.” The guy laughed and said “I do.” He then further proved his point by proceeding to watch highlights of world’s strongest man.
