Week 55 “2026”

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For me personally, stepping into the CEO role and into real leadership has been a task in and of itself. One thing I’ve learned is that being a CEO and a knowledge worker is completely different from being a technician.

For a long time, I lived in the grind phase. I was hands-on in the financials, marketing, operations, and management. I’m not exceptional at any one of those disciplines. What I do have is a strong grasp of how they work together and coalesce, enough insight in each area to give direction, and enough humility to listen. But when you’re in that grind state, you do everything.

As the business evolves, your role has to evolve with it, and that detachment is hard. It’s been personally hard for me. On top of that, I was wrestling with another question: how do I stay original while also learning from people who are far ahead of me?

The advice I’ve landed on is simple but uncomfortable: you have to be original, and you have to copy everything.

There’s a massive amount of experience already out there—podcasts, books, LinkedIn, Instagram. You can message people who are far ahead of you and get operational insight simply by asking good questions. It’s a numbers game. Not everyone will respond, but some will. And the right question can give you an answer that shortcuts months or years of trial and error.

So you read books, listen to podcasts, ask people questions—and you take things. When people give you advice, take it. That’s where most people fail. That’s where I’ve failed in the past. From zero to one, from level one to five in personal growth or skill development, most people don’t miss because they’re unintelligent. They miss because they receive fundamental advice and never apply it.

The information just sits there—in their head, in a notebook—unused. The reality is that even partial application of basic principles creates massive ROI. You don’t need mastery. You need movement.

You take ideas, apply them, and iterate immediately. I love iteration. I’ve struggled with it in the past, but this year my focus is iteration over overanalysis. Overanalysis gives you a notebook full of ideas. Iteration gives you direction.

When you act on limited knowledge, you quickly hit a roadblock. That roadblock becomes the most important question you can answer. Then you go back to a book, a mentor, a conversation, or even ChatGPT, answer that question, and iterate again. Over time, iteration filters out low-value questions and surfaces high-value ones. And once you’re asking high-value questions, you start finding high-value answers.

Yes, you’ll look like a copycat. That’s fine. I’m not talking about copying someone’s business. I’m talking about copying best practices. That’s what they exist for.

Where originality matters is in what you discard. Some methods won’t feel natural to you. You’ll notice it immediately, or you’ll feel it over time. When that happens, drop it. Don’t force yourself to adopt a management style or communication style that isn’t you.

That said, even in styles that don’t fit, there are blueprints worth extracting—how someone structures conversations, the questions they ask, how they get leverage in interviews or meetings. You take those elements and execute them in your own way. That execution is where your personality shows up.

Authenticity is not something you force at the beginning. If you obsess over being authentic too early, you stunt your growth. Learn first. Copy best practices. Apply them immediately. Your natural bend will reveal itself through execution.

That’s my focus this year: transitioning fully into knowledge work.

There’s never a perfect time. The indicators are already there—things not being fixed, things not being addressed. When you ask yourself who is responsible and the answer is “nobody,” more often than not, that responsibility belongs to you.

Then you look at your team. Are they operating at your level? Are they better than you? If not, why? Is it poor hiring, or are you getting in the way—either by being physically in the way or by capping their growth through lack of teaching?

What I’ve heard repeatedly—and what has been difficult for me because it’s not natural—is this: 90% of your job is teaching.

That’s where my focus is now. Teaching. Reorienting my time so that when I’m on site, I’m teaching instead of working. As you teach, you sharpen your own understanding. You distill your knowledge. And you build a team that creates real leverage.

Leverage is everything—leverage of capital, leverage of people, and ultimately leverage of media. That’s how businesses and brands are built.