Business isn’t something you learn in books. Or posts. Or threads. You can’t read your way to the right hire. You can't consume enough content to produce a product. You have to do. You learn business by doing business. Hiring by hiring. Products by building them. We know this is true in music. Never pick up a guitar? Go read 100 books on guitar. You'll suck just as much. You have to play. You can only learn guitar by playing. Business is music. Some things can be taught. Some are just knowledge. Business isn't that kind of thing. Products aren't those kinds of things. Like music. Like sports. Like anything physical. You have to do the thing to get better at the thing. In that way, business is more physical than mental. It's not a formula you can learn. It's not a series of lessons you can internalize. It's not a list you can complete. Business is muscle memory. It's built by doing. Go do. -Jason

One of the great lessons of nature: Randomness is the most beautiful thing. Every forest, every field, every place untouched by humans is full of randomness. Nothing lines up, a million different shapes, sprouting seeds burst where the winds — or birds — randomly drop them. Stones strewn by water, ice, gravity, and wind, all acting on their own in their own ways. Things that just stop and stay. Until they move somehow, another day. The way the light falls, the dapples that hit the dirt. The shades of shades of shades of green and gold that work no matter what's behind it. The way the wind carries whatever's light enough for liftoff. The negative space between the leaves. Colliding clouds. The random wave that catches light from the predictable sun. The water's surface like a shuffled blanket. Collect the undergrowth in your hand. Lift it up. Drop it on the ground. It's always beautiful. However it comes together, or however it stays apart, you never look at it and say that doesn't line up or those colors don't work or there's simply too much stuff or I don't know where to look. Nature's out of line. Just right. You too. -Jason

In the end, judgment comes first. And that means hiring is a gut decision. As much science as people want to try to pour into the hiring process, art always floats to the top. This is especially true when hiring at the executive level. The people who make the final calls — the ones who are judged on outcome, not effort — are ultimately hired based on experience and judgement. Two traits that are qualities, not quantities. They are tasked with setting direction, evaluating situations, and making decisions with limited information. All day long they are making judgment calls. That's what you hire them to do, and that's how you decide who to hire. Presented with a few finalists, you decide who you *think* will do a better job when they have to *think* about what to do in uncertain situations. This is where their experience and judgment come in. It's the only thing they have that separates them from someone else. Embrace the situation. You don't know, they don't know, everyone's guessing, some guess better than others. You can't measure how well someone's going to guess next time, you can only make assumptions based on other assumptions. Certainty is a mirage. In the art of people, everything is subjective. In the end, it's not about qualifications — it's about who you trust to make the right call when it matters most. Ultimately, the only thing that was objective was your decision. The reasons were not. -Jason

Be curious about what's new, sure. That's expected. But it's more interesting to be curious about what's old. 
What stood the test of time? What worked before and still works now? What survived through all the jabs that you assumed would knock it out, but didn't? That's worth attention. That's worth being curious about. Those are the things that are particularly interesting. There are the lessons. New will always be new. There will always be another new after the previous new. But what made it, what sticks around, what outlasts? What's durable? What's the reason that rare thing is still here? Longevity isn't a fluke. It's an opportunity to get on board when you missed it before. Curiosity about things still here isn’t just nostalgia — it’s a strategic way to filter the noise and find what truly matters, what truly works, and what's truly worth investing in. -Jason