Hey folks,

Happy Friday! A couple things on my mind...

1. Focus: I was helping a friend with his VC pitch this week. He has a small team launching multiple simultaneous e-comm brands and scaling them lean, powered by AI. So I asked how he'd respond to the Alex Hormozi line that "focus is everything", that running 5 companies at once means you grow none quickly. His response: "That is 100% true for humans." (Great line.) It's got me challenging my assumptions: what startup principles are real laws of business vs. just limitations of having one brain and 24 hours? Focus might be the first domino. A lot of "best practices" start to look like coping mechanisms for being a person. (Building or investing in something like this? Hit reply, I'd love to compare notes.)

2. Summer Playlists: Since 2017, I've made a family summer playlist that drops on Memorial Day: summer favorites from my youth, new stuff I'm digging, radio pop, random fun, loosely held together by some vibe. (The theme degrades steeply as I add songs all summer...) It becomes the default around the house and in the car, and what's interesting is that playing the 2019 one instantly floods back that whole summer for all of us. Highly recommend trying it yourself! Here's the canon:
- 2017 - Hot Summer By the Kiddie Pool
- 2018 - Summer We Lived In Los Angeles
- 2019 - Modern Nostalgia
- 2020 - Hazy Summer
- 2021 - Post COVID Optimism
- 2022 - Summer Rock (Chandler HATES this playlist)
- 2023 - Guardians Of the Galaxy Vibe
- 2024 - No discernible theme (maybe it was something like "songs with a drumset"?)
- 2025 - 90's Summer Bangers
- 2026 (NEW!) - Dusty Upbeat Folk
​(If your kids are in the car, maybe use the explicit filter, I was less sensitive to lyrics in my younger days.)

3. Vacay Mode: We're in a season of calm right now: school's out, we're still grieving some family loss, and we're early for the fall book launch. At our offsite, Chandler and I decided to embrace it. We're calling it "vacay mode" and we say it out loud to signal each other to relax the standards: blow past bedtime 20min, let the kids watch a show while we talk in the kitchen, or take 10min midday for iced coffee on the porch. Doing this, two things have really jumped out at me: I.) man, we run a tight ship. Maybe too tight. II.) Relaxing the standard 10% has had zero productivity cost and a HUGE impact on the joy in our home. That second one is the part I can't shake. If 10% slack costs nothing and buys that much joy, maybe the standard was never calibrated right to begin with.

That's it for this week!

Best,

Blake

P.S. Help Please: My mom is looking to hire a full-time Executive Director after leading a homeschool hybrid school with 6 campuses for 25 years. (I was in the 2nd graduating class!) If you know anyone with classical school, EOS, or ministry leadership experience who is also like-minded, feel free to share this opportunity with them!