About me

• 1994 → Born in the suburbs of Pennsylvania (Paoli) after parents emigrated from England (Sunderland & London)
• 2008 → Started high school at Conestoga High School (2000+ students) and felt like an outsider among future Harvard students, Olympic athletes, and start-up founders
• 2010 → Achieved “Duelist” status (2600+ rated) in World of Warcraft competitive 5v5 arenas (I was obsessed with video games for 3 years)
• 2013 (18 years old) → Rejected from Georgetown University (my dream school), started Biomedical Engineering at GWU instead
• 2017 → Failed at multiple side hustles (drop-shipping, reselling, informational products) while my friends passed me by, and my grades were mediocre
• 2018 → Tried volunteering as an EMT, discovered I wanted to be a doctor to understand the human body and help people, applied and accepted to the University of Pennsylvania to get required courses for medical school (organic chem, biology, etc.)
• 2019 → Accepted to Sidney Kimmel Medical College (MD) in Philadelphia after being told I had “no chance” by guidance counselors due to my undergraduate grades
• 2020 (25 years old) → Felt like I had “made it,” loved medical school, loved my friends, loved Philadelphia, and was scoring in the top 10% of other medical students
• 2020 → COVID-19 hits. Started YouTube during lockdown to share the study strategies that changed me from a “B” to “A+” student—YouTube was the first side-project that energized me and showed some success
• 2022 → YouTube begins to grow rapidly. I hit 100,000 subscribers, made $10,000 in one day from my study course, and realized this internet thing is “real”
• 2023 → Matched to Internal Medicine Residency at Tufts Medical Center in Boston. Loved it for two weeks, but quickly realized clinical medicine was not for me, as I wasn’t sure what impact I was making. Found myself asleep on a hospital floor at 3 AM during a night shift and a patient’s death, and realized I needed to change
• 2024 → Evaluated other options such as consulting, pharma, and being a full-time creator. Completed Intern Year (PGY-1) and then left medicine with a plan to join consulting
• 2025 → Accepted to dream consulting job but had a year off to work on YouTube and travel: published my first book, “SoloTuber,” my SoloTuber PRO course, started surfing, reached 500k+ subscribers, made more money in a month than I ever thought possible, traveled the world, tore my ACL, and started to code and build web apps and services
• 2025, Now (30 Years Old) → Recovering from ACL surgery, learning to code, moving to NYC to start my consulting job with the plan of starting my own company someday soon

1. Trust in Yourself 

Most people follow the standard path because they’ve been told “that’s just how things are.” I did it too – I became an engineer, took an investing job, entered medical school, and residency—I followed the “normal” path.

It took me 29 years, but I eventually realized I was way happier doing what I wanted to do (shocker). While on nights in the hospital, my mind kept running: “Is this the best use of my life? Is this what I’m meant to do with my life?” 

I’ve learned to check in with myself regularly and honestly:

• Is what I’m doing draining me or energizing me?
• Am I doing this because I want to, or because I “should”?
• What’s the worst that would happen if I stopped doing this (usually it’s not that bad).

When your body and mind are sending signals, pay attention. They’re usually right, even when conventional wisdom says otherwise.

2. Systems & Consistency = Superpower

Systems quietly transform your life while you’re not looking.

The boring, consistent work is what wins.

You aren’t “born with it” you “develop it.” This is a growth mindset.

“Most people overestimate what they can do in a year, but underestimate what they can do in 10 years”—Bill Gates

This magic of compounding works everywhere:

• Work: Small regular investments in your projects and self → projects and self explode (in a good way)
• Health: Your daily food and movement → your overall health
• Relationships: Playing long-term games with long-term people → profound connections and outcomes (Naval Ravikant)

Getting 1% better at something each day makes you 37x better in one year. This is the exponential curve of compound growth—invisible at first, then suddenly undeniable.

3. Maintain a Beginner’s Mindset – You Can Do Anything

Steve Jobs said, “Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it.”

This realization changed everything for me.

• The medical system I thought was fixed and unchangeable? People created it.
• The standard career paths everyone follows? Just social constructs.
• What if I looked into this myself? Why do people pick these careers? I could become an astronaut if I wanted to (I don’t want to).

You can learn and do anything. You just need to start. Take the first step. Take action. You’ll be amazed at what you can accomplish. When you hit a stumble, don’t stop; it’s just a sign you are growing.

Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, but saw it as an opportunity to improve his skills and grow. He became the best basketball player of all time.

John McEnroe, one of the best tennis players, was always told he was “naturally gifted,” and often was quoted as saying how he hated tennis. When he lost one doubles match, he decided never to play doubles again, saying it was “inferior” to singles. Imagine if he took that loss as an opportunity to grow? Instead of yelling and screaming (although it is entertaining).

I constantly put myself in situations where I’m a beginner and look dumb – learning how to surf at 30 years old, saying “hi” in the elevator, reading books on topics that scare me (like Economics, Adam Smith, woof).

When you stay humble and curious, you see opportunities that everyone else misses, and, most importantly, you grow.

4. Have Fun

But my biggest game-changer in life? Learning to laugh at myself and not take everything so dang seriously.

Who cares if you “look cool?” I’d much rather be silly and have fun.

No one is paying attention to you anyway.

99.99% of everyone’s thoughts are on themselves, so stop worrying about what other people think. If someone judges you or insults you, that 99.99% rule holds true—they insult you because they actually are unhappy with themselves and pushing their personal burden onto you. They are insulting themself. Laugh them off.

Life is ups and downs. And that’s ok. Sometimes I’m not even productive all day, “OH NO!” Please chill out. I’ve learned to:

• “Write off” entire days without guilt when things aren’t flowing
• Keep most weeks completely blank in my calendar (if I’m working a 9-5, I add one week a quarter of “nothing”) 
• Treat every failure as a learning opportunity

Life is absurdly short. The good times pass, but so do the bad times. None of it lasts forever, so why not enjoy the ride?

*Beginner’s mindset + Grit + Courage. My motto: “When learning, maintain the ego-less and evolving search for truth.”

I like:

• Laughing so much my brain empties out
• Early morning workouts before the world wakes up
• Looking at the sky before my phone (no phone until 2 pm)
• Automatic systems that work while I sleep
• Books that change how I think
• Conversations that go deep quickly
• Travel without itineraries and niche hobbies (like surfing)
• Coffee shops anywhere
• People who do what they say they’ll do
• People who are truthful at cost
• Building things that help others

I dislike:

• Small talk that goes nowhere
• Meetings that should have been emails
• Emails that should have been nothing
• People who complain but never act
• Advice from people who haven’t done it
• Being busy for the sake of being busy
• Energy vampires (people, places, and things)
• Perfectionism disguised as standards
• Living someone else’s definition of success
• The word “should”

Every year, I write myself a list of principles to take into the new year. Here is the most frequent advice I write to myself.  

Inspired by Nabeel S. Qureshi, Kevin Kelly, and Paul Graham

1. Focus only on the day ahead, anything else is astrology. 
2. Say “hi” first.
3. Spend ridiculous amounts of money on your bedding, home office, and exercise classes.
4. Create, don’t consume. The production/consumption balance determines your life’s trajectory.
5. Everything passes—your opinions, possessions, goals, emotions, body, and life. Enjoy the good, notice the bad, realize both will pass.
6. Stop complaining. No one wants to hear it, and it changes your brain permanently.
7. Take all the blame, give all the credit. Leadership is about responsibility upward and recognition downward.
8. When greeting someone, shake their hand firmly, introduce yourself with a downward intonation, and smile.
9. 2-3 hours of uninterrupted time for personal projects daily will change your life. Protect this time fiercely because no one else will.
10. Decide if you are optimizing for one marshmallow now or two marshmallows later. Life should be a 50/50 split of both (in total).
11. Single task. Multitasking is a myth that destroys quality.
12. Ask for help. Pride is expensive and unnecessary—most people want to help.
13. Remove energy vampires from your life. Time is finite; don’t waste it on people, activities, or desires that drain you.
14. Sleep is the ultimate life hack. Cancel and remove anything until you hit 7-9 hours. A cold, quiet, and dark room helps. 
15. Writing and meditation are clichés but magic. Spend at least 10 minutes a day on each.
16. There is nothing more calming and restorative than hard exercise. Push it in the gym, on the track, or outside at least twice a week. Your heart rate likely didn’t get high enough. Your body can handle much more exertion than your brain wants you to think you can.
17. Once a week try and walk somewhere with no directions, just keep your phone in your pocket, and walk. You are allowed to ask (friendly) strangers for directions. 
18. Reading is a superpower. There is no quicker accelerator to success (no matter your definition) after doing the work than reading.
19. Do “the work,” you know what it is.
20. Automate and delegate relentlessly. Your unique value lies in creation, not administration.
21. Think about your personal edge and what makes you ‘different.’ What did you love to do when you were a child?
22. Call customer service instead of googling for hours.
23. Write like a human, not a corporate robot. “Hey John, how can we fix this?” not “The proposed formatting or our introductory piece…” yuck. 
24. Listen actively. Most people hear words but miss meaning, emotion, and body language. The secret to this? Be genuinely interested in other people’s lives. What can you learn from their 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and multiple years of actually living a different life?
25. The squeaky wheel gets the oil. Persistence beats perfection in most scenarios. Annoying people on airplanes are spoken to first. Be squeaky, but don’t be annoying.
26. Your parents are people with dreams, fears, and problems. They, just like you, aren’t perfect.
27. Aim for respect, not likability. Respect lasts; popularity fades. Do this by being honest always.
28. Own who you are or others will own you.
29. It is better to fly your plane into unknown territory than to fly perpetually on autopilot.
30. Anger solves nothing. Wait 24 hours or walk away before making decisions tainted with anger.
31. Mental toughness can be trained like any muscle. Do one thing you are scared of every day.
32. Everything can be learned. The only limits are time and effort, never ability.
33. Lay out your clothes and life equipment the night before. 
34. When you dislike or like art, try and figure out why. Can you put it into words? Saying “it’s bad,” is very different from “I think the artist was trying to represent sadness here, but the image comes off as comical. That’s why it doesn’t resonate with me.”
35. Focus on execution over ideas. 3,000 ideas are worthless. One finished project is monumental.
36. Avoid purposeless debt at all costs. Financial, technical, and emotional—pay off your debts. 
37. Take calculated risks in your teens, 20s, and 30s. After inflation, index funds double every 10+ years.
38. Build something. 
39. Be ready to scale what you build. Your life can change quickly—be ready. Will what you’re doing ever grow? What’s the ceiling? 
40. Fire people life that always cause drama. Life’s too short for manufactured chaos.
41. Alcohol ruins 2-3 days for a few hours of fun. Calculate if it’s worth it.
42. Protect your health. Physical wellness directly impacts effectiveness. If you think it doesn’t, you are wrong.
43. “The Gut” has been developed over about 2 million years. Trust it.
44. Figure out your peak performance hours and guard them fiercely. Figure out your trough performance hours and schedule BS tasks and chats for those times (I nearly listed my weekly time for this, but realized I would quickly offend 10 people).
45. Focus on 3-5 truly important things. Everything else is distraction or delegation material.
46. Spend money on experiences, learning, trying, and books. Save money on material things.
47. Don’t waste time on work that doesn’t matter to you. Start the side project now. Establish 1 year of a financial safety net. Hit 60% of your current salary with the project. Then quit and go all in on the project.
48. From my time as a doctor: ask yourself, “How does this information change my management?” If it doesn’t, ignore it.
49. Junk in, junk out—applies to media, food, daylight, and relationships.
50. Power laws (80/20) rule everything. If you want to be an outlier, you must pick something very specific, that matches your unique genetic abilities, and that matches your environmental upbringing. Choose carefully if you care enough to be in the top .00001%.
51. Coffee chats for networking drain everyone involved. Kill them. Make real friends.
52. Write online regularly. 
53. The phone really does work both ways.
54. Trust everyone initially, life’s too short and mean to not.
55. Sun before screen.
56. Create first, refine later. I love Stephen King’s door shut and door open methodology. Just get it on the page.
57. If you can enjoy life, when everything sucks, nothing will suck.
58. Think in writing. External memory extends your cognitive capacity infinitely.
59. There is likely a way you could do it easier and faster. Figure it out. Then do it that way.
60. Most of life happens in the boring moments. Find the people you crave being with in those boring moments and don’t let them go.
61. Your brain is plastic and will morph into whatever signals hit it the most. Your environment literally rewires your brain. Pick who and it very carefully.
62. Don’t wear shoes inside the house.
63. Wear comfy slippers inside the house.
64. There will always be someone smarter, hotter, faster, stronger, wealthier, richer, [insert attribute here] than you. Never aspire to better than others. Always aspire to be better than you.
65. Walking alone, without a phone, in nature, for 6o minutes has the highest reward/effort ratio of nearly anything on earth.
66. You aren’t reaching out enough. Cold call, email, text, show-up-on-doorstep more and you’ll be amazed at the luck you create.
67. It’s idiots all the way down. Most people have no idea why they are doing what they are doing or what is going on. Don’t ask for permission from the idiots. Just do it. 
68. The best work is the work that you can’t wait to get started on in the morning. The work that makes you love Mondays. This test is ubiquitous.