June 13, 2021
We're Hiring Summer Interns At Howdy Interactive
Hey everyone! We're super slammed with work at Howdy, so we're hiring summer interns for the first time. The role would entail traditional analyst work, including: • Completing & Filling Financial Models Based On Deal Data • Conducting Due Diligence On Potential Acquisitions • Monitor Performance Of Existing Portfolio of Micro-Companie...
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May 10, 2021
Building My Second Brain
Inspired by a school paper I had to write on building a digital archive of your brain, I've been using Roam Research for about 30 days on a daily basis. I've found that it's an excellent tool to categorize everything going on in my world, and it remains the only note app that can support my heavy use for work, philanthropy, academics, ...
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April 30, 2021
Howdy Interactive is hiring a Chief of Staff
My firm, Howdy Interactive, is hiring a Chief of Staff to work with me as I begin my college career. Above all, I'm looking for a bright, intelligent, motivated young person to take this position. I prioritize work ethic and an eagerness to learn over people with lots of textbook experience, but you must have a fundamental understandin...
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April 26, 2021
Wrapping up the daily posts
Happy Sunday! I'm writing to you from Orlando, where I leave the day after tomorrow to head back to Bangor to get back to work with my team. That's a wrap on the daily posts! After 50+ continuous days, I'm going to be wrapping up in the next few days. It's not because I've lost enthusiasm for writing - on the contrary, I'm knee-deep in...
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Happy Saturday! Short post while I continue to be on vacation. HEY for Domains just came out, and I'm not a fan. Then HEY decided that they're ending Twitter support, and I'm not a fan of that either. Their last few changes have certainly been customer hostile. I have more than enough faith in the crew there to hold it out for the long...
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April 23, 2021
The End of Signal v. Noise
Happy Friday! Short post today, as I continue to be on vacation. I've been reading Signal v. Noise for many years now. It was one of the first business blogs I've ever regularly checked on a daily basis, and one of the things that sold me on Basecamp years ago. This morning, I received an email from DHH saying that it's been closed. Su...
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April 22, 2021
Hulu's New WeWork Documentary
Happy Thursday! Short post as I continue to be on vacation. I'm a huge fan of WeWork and their global access pass, which gets me into one of 600 offices worldwide for $300/mo. It's awesome - I love the people, I love the refreshments, and I love the fast wifi. Recently, Hulu came out with a very interesting documentary that I'd recomme...
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April 21, 2021
Consumer Confidence & Live Events
Happy Wednesday! Short post today, as I continue to be on vacation. A few days ago, I wrote a short post on the travel resurgence despite the increase of COVID-19 cases, and I've had another topic on the back burner that I've wanted to write about - live events. Believe it or not, people are having live events right now, mainly in Flor...
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April 20, 2021
Will Durant's Fun Quote
Happy Tuesday! Short post today as I'm still on vacation. “The ability of the average man could be doubled if it were demanded, if the situation demanded.” - Will Durant What a neat quote! Your daily reminder that unless you're Elon Musk, you can work twice as hard. It's unsustainable for long periods of time, and I don't recommend it ...
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April 19, 2021
The Post-COVID Travel Resurgence Is Starting
Happy Monday! Short post today as I continue to be on vacation. I’m writing this on a plane, as I’m heading to Orlando for a much needed break. This marks the eighth time in less than 30 days I’m on a plane - I’ve been traveling for work a lot as my team and I are working out the logistics of moving Howdy Interactive to the city where ...
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April 18, 2021
Basecamp 4 Feature Request: Voice Recordings
Happy Sunday! Short post today (there's a lot in a row because I'm on vacation). I'm a big fan of everything Basecamp does - they actually created the platform you're reading this on, HEY World, as a larger part of their new email client. Before I enjoyed HEY, I was a longtime user of their main product, Basecamp! It's a project manage...
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April 17, 2021
Speaking As If I'm An Actor
Happy Saturday! Short post today. I've struggled with stuttering for quite a bit of my life. It used to be worse, but it could be better. I've been attending speech therapy twice a week for half a decade now, with varying degrees of success. Something I've been focusing on that has been helpful quite recently is pretending I'm acting w...
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April 16, 2021
What is Gapingvoid up to?
Happy Friday! Short post today. If you're not familiar, Gapingvoid is a culture design consulting group that has some very interesting ideas about how culture should be created inside of a growing company. They first popped up on my radar in the land of Joe Polish - his office is full of their paintings, all custom commissioned as part...
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April 15, 2021
Todoist’s Interesting FOMO Marketing Play
Happy Thursday! Short post today. My productivity platform of choice is Todoist because of its simplicity. If you're interested in an in-depth walkthrough of how I get shit done, then head over to my April 8 blog post on my productivity workflow using Todoist. At the end of every day, when you're done with all of your tasks, it congrat...
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April 14, 2021
Business Plans Are Stupid
Unless you're trying to actively raise money, business plans are a waste of your time. Let's walk through what the process of a business plan looks like. You spend some time drafting the executive summary, and you start to go nitty gritty into the details. The products you'll offer. The customers you'll target. That's all well and fine...
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April 13, 2021
There's Lots Of Money Sloshing Around
This thing we call finance is quite a beast. $5,100,000,000,000 (that's $5 trillion dollars) is traded between folks each and every single day, according to the Bank of International Settlements. There's so much money sloshing around our systems each and every day, that we've had to create brand new asset classes to handle it all. And ...
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April 12, 2021
The Risk Of Having Big Clients
I read a lot of Jason Fried and DHH's writing, but one article I love in particular is their SvN classic, "Don't let anyone overpay you". It's part of what inspired our acquisition strategy at Howdy Interactive - we do our best to stay away from companies that have a single customer representing 2% or more of their global sales (statis...
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April 11, 2021
Happy birthday
Happy Sunday! Short post today. I turned 18 at 12:00am on April 11th, 2021. I happened to be watching SNL, which was perfect! I've received lots of birthday congrats and wishes, and a big thank you for those. Seth Godin has a great blog post on seths.blog titled "Happy birthday" where he asks his readers to donate to charity. I'm not g...
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April 10, 2021
Digital Continuity Programs
Happy Saturday! Short post today. Recurring revenue is rightfully a huge deal when it comes to eventually selling or buying a company. Something like a SaaS company will fetch a larger price tag because of the cash flow it's producing on a monthly basis. That's why there are entire PE firms that solely exist to buy, manage, and eventua...
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April 9, 2021
Joe Polish's Sabbatical
I've had the pleasure of speaking and being in the company of Joe Polish a handful of times, usually at his mastermind group, Genius Network. I promise the community is better than what the name implies. Joe is an excellent connector, communicator, and host of events that connect high level entrepreneurs. His commitment to also hosting...
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April 8, 2021
My Productivity Workflow With Todoist
I like to keep things simple when it comes to productivity. You can spend so much time trying to "figure out what works best for you" when it comes to productivity and time management, you don't reserve any time to actually do the work! It's a trap lots of folks fall into - just look at r/productivity. A lot of conversations on that su...
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April 7, 2021
My Thoughts On The Ivy League
The results are in! Of the eight Ivy League schools I applied to, I learned last night that none of them would be offering me admission to the Class of 2025. 🥳 (As a side note, I didn't know what to write today until those results are in, so I do apologize for the late post. It'll probably come out closer to 9:00am today, but I'm back ...
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April 6, 2021
Filling Your PE Pipeline Using Acquisition Marketplaces
For private equity firms that actively take on new investors as a part of an ongoing fund, a large part of convincing limited partners (folks who supply the money that PE firms use to buy companies) to park their money with this particular firm is by having as much proprietary deal flow as possible. Proprietary deal flow is basically g...
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April 5, 2021
Adding Leveraged Buyouts To A PE Investment Strategy
I turn 18 in six days. Hooray! I'm super excited for a number of reasons. I'm excited to finally be able to use CLEAR when I travel in airports, find my own therapist who isn't legally obligated to turn over information to parents or guardians, and open a bank account in the United States (I've had to bank in countries that are more fr...
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April 4, 2021
30 Days of HEY World
Happy Easter! Today marks a huge milestone - I've officially posted 30 days in a row on HEY World! It's the first time I've ever been able to successfully post for such a consistent timeframe, and I'm incredibly proud of how my writing is starting to turn out. I'm going to maintain this for as long as possible, but I wanted to share so...
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April 3, 2021
Five Reasons I Wrote A Book
Writing my first book, Retire Before College: The Secrets & Methods Of Teen Entrepreneurs, was probably the most intellectually challenging thing I've ever done. It was super hard! As soon as I had a locked manuscript, I swore to myself I'd never write another. Nine months later, I broke that promise and started putting together the pi...
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April 2, 2021
Estimate The Cost Of Your Meetings
Harvard Business Review has a super useful tool that allows you to estimate the cost of your daily, weekly, and monthly meetings. You pop in the duration, how many folks are attending, and their annual salary, and it spits out a numerical currency that shows exactly how much money you just spent on hosting that meeting. After you recei...
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April 1, 2021
Goldman Sachs Has A People Problem
Goldman Sachs is in some hot water! Did y'all see that survey that leaked a few weeks ago? It describes 'inhumane working conditions' and horrible employee morale among analysts at the company. Among the statistics collected, analysts shared that they work an average of 98 hours per week, and sleep an average of five hours per night. T...
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March 31, 2021
Striking The Balance Between Remote & Not
I like changing up my workspace every week or two. I shift between loving the remote life, working out of a co-working space, working on the road while I'm traveling, to working in-person with a few of my colleagues here at Howdy Interactive (though I'm doing less and less of that now. COVID-19 and all). There are pros and cons to each...
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March 30, 2021
Philosophy 3 of 3: Time's Arrow Marches Forward
This is the final post of our company's philosophy. Yesterday, I realized that our philosophy was not available on our rebranded website, so I wanted to throw it up on HEY World for prosperity. These philosophies are really what help guide us as a company. Above all, it's important for us to understand - it's just money! We're buying a...
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