Rahul Batra @rabatra

the most dangerous thing you can do in this life is mean it - to actually mean the thing you say when you say it. but the world was not built for the people who mean it. the world was built for the people who mean it on monday and forget by wednesday and the forgetting is so normal it has its own schedule. and into this world walks a person who means it - fully, bodily, with their whole chest - and the world does not know what to do with them. the world will try to soften them. the world will call their sincerity intense. the world will offer them a more reasonable version of their own devotion and they will have to refuse it and the refusal will make them lonely and the loneliness will be correct. because a person who means it will always be lonely among people who almost do. and the almost is so close to the real thing that most people cannot tell the difference. but they can. they can feel it. the way you can feel the difference between a room that is warm and a room that is heated. both are warm. only one is alive.

Artists don’t talk about art. They talk about where to buy cheap paint.

i'm building a better body wash... follow along for more of the journey.

@wordisbonz fire so nice i had to play it thrice

Most of your sense of reality is all in your head. To get out of your head, you must get back into reality.

This above all: to thine own self be true.

The earlier you internalize this, the better: as a founder -- especially at pre-seed/ seed -- you are in a state of accelerated senescence. The expected outcome of thousands of pre-seed investments made in a year is *instant death.* The second you quit your job and the wire hits your newco bank account, you are on a 100-mile-per-hour free fall, straight down. Nothing before that matters; not where you went to school or who your investors are or where you woked before. Jesus Christ can be on your cap table, and it will change exactly nothing about this very brutal truth. That's why URGENCY in product iteration, early signs of PMF, and, finally, monetization is so key. Urgency in yourself, in your team, in your partners, in your investors -- in everyone that plays the slightest role in changing the inevitable destiny of that free fall. When I look back at the past three months of building our new co -- and our "early success" metrics (still a long way to go) -- 99% of it is attributed to internalizing extreme urgency in the team, and chasing people down when they don't share it. So be URGENT -- or fall.

Most people have no idea what it actually takes to be a founder. They talk about vision, grit, or passion. Those words are props. What you really sign up for is a life where every decision feels like it costs something real. You will spend years being misunderstood. By your team, your family, even the people you hire to help you. You will fail in public and still need to keep the energy up in private. Every founder lives with the weight of knowing that you can do everything right and still get crushed by luck, timing, or somebody else’s mistake. Founders aren’t braver than anyone else. They just get used to uncertainty, then stop waiting for clarity. Most of your wins won’t feel like wins at all. The first revenue will be too small. The first team will outgrow you or leave. The first product that feels right will barely matter to the market. You will doubt yourself in private, sometimes every week. The founders who last figure out how to keep moving while the ground shifts underneath them. Most outsiders want the founder badge but none of the scars. They want the upside, not the drag. The hardest part is sticking around after every plan gets blown up and you have to rebuild with less optimism and more scar tissue. What makes it work isn’t relentless hustle or some mythical trait. It’s learning to make peace with constant discomfort, and then making decisions anyway. If you need constant reassurance, you’ll give up before the real work begins. If you want everyone to like you, you’ll never make the calls that matter. If you can’t handle months where nothing feels certain, this life will eat you alive. But if you can hold your own in chaos, get better at being wrong, and still want to show up and try again, you just might have a shot at building something that matters. That’s what it actually takes. And nobody cares until you make it work.

Being in a good mood is the most courageous thing you can do. Because when you sulk, you brand yourself as a victim. You tell everyone around you to no longer expect greatness out of you. Without those expectations, you're free to continue blaming the world for your shortcomings But if you choose positivity, you suddenly become a source of safety, inspiration, and optimism for everyone around you. You can't hide anymore. You have to actually believe in yourself now and finally take on the responsibility of a person who's capable of changing lives

@super8n too good

Girls: men have no fear The fear:

@tomasmas @augmentaltech LFG

@tomasmas @augmentaltech LFG

all men secretly believe there is non zero chance they will run a diversified HoldCo with highly profitable and cash flowing assets one day

DTC brand owners are used to a work life behind a laptop. Once you enter retail with a CPG brand, life changes. The retail game is very physical. The sales team needs to be logging miles in the car, wearing out shoes, pounding the pavement. Visiting stores, building relationships, setting up displays (like the one below), arranging promotions, ensuring stores have enough stock, resolving product issues or delivery complaints. This activity, if executed correctly and consistently, will be directly visible in sales results. Just like performance marketing in DTC. But unlike performance marketing, retail sales execution builds and compounds on itself over time. Imagine if META saw that you had been consistently advertising with them for months or years and started running ads on your behalf for free. This is what retail can be like. Service the retailer well, drive sales for them and they will give you more space, more displays, more opportunities. And one day you might even come into the store to find they had set a display of your product of their own accord. This is the unlock in retail that rewards those who understand. It takes investment, commitment, consistency, perseverance, and endurance. Not everyone has it. But those who do will reap the rewards.

If you are insecure, guess what? The rest of the world is, too. Do not overestimate the competition and underestimate yourself. You are better than you think.

run directly at fear. everything you want in life is on the otherside of that imaginary self built wall. getting made fun of and criticized by people who don't have the balls to run thru their own fear is just part of the journey. who gives a fuck. do your shit and pray for them.

Finally understanding the lyrics to this song after so many years of singing it wrong

Absolute fuckin banger 🔊🔊🔥🔥

@wordisbonz such good content, bro - you're a legend!