Why Showing Up in Person Might Be the Ultimate Career Hack

Picture this. Two ambitious grads, same credentials, same drive. One works remotely, camera on, Wi-Fi steady, hustling solo. The other walks into an office every morning collaborating, debating, learning the rhythm of human dynamics firsthand. Fast-forward two years? They look evenly matched. But give it six or seven years, and one of them, guess which has transformed from contributor to leader.

What changed? Proximity.

See, when you’re in the room, you don’t just hear ideas, you feel how trust forms in real time, how tension sparks innovation, how a quick hallway chat becomes a million-dollar concept. That’s not just “soft skills.” It’s emotional intelligence, influence, and the kind of social agility that every entrepreneur needs to thrive.

I’ve seen this play out across continents, from tech hubs in Singapore to creative startups in Berlin. Cultures differ, but one truth is universal: business is built on connection. And connection can’t be fully downloaded. So if you are a founder, build in person, if you are starting your career, get out, meet people.

Now here’s where it gets serious. We’re heading into a generation shaped by screens, not shared spaces. The next wave of entrepreneurs will need to relearn what eye contact, presence, and rapport actually mean. Digital fluency is table stakes, Im not against that, but human fluency is the differentiator.

Data backs it up. Studies consistently show in-person interaction accelerates professional growth and idea generation. Remote employees are 31% less likely to be promoted, according to The Wall Street Journal, often because visibility breeds opportunity. A Stanford study found teams brainstorming face to face produced up to 20% more ideas than those meeting virtually. Even across five countries, Nature researchers confirmed: screens narrow creative thinking, while shared physical space sparks it.

And the networking edge? It’s massive. Being surrounded by top performers raises your own output by roughly 15%, per Northwestern research. The casual hallway chat isn’t small talk, it’s the social glue that builds trust, partnerships, and eventually ventures.

So yes, flexibility matters. Hybrid work is here to stay. But if you’re a young entrepreneur or anyone hungry to accelerate their game, don’t underestimate the compounding value of being in the room. Whilst remote is an equalizer it will soon not be.

Show up. Listen deeply. Observe how leaders handle friction and pressure. Because the ability to connect really connect will be the superpower that separates the successful from the simply online.

The screen may be the new workplace, but presence will always be the real power move.

The Power of Selective Opportunities: Why the Wealthy Create Better Outcome

I once watched a man turn down a deal that would’ve made him a few million dollars a year and he didn’t even blink.

At the time, I couldn’t wrap my head around it. For me, that kind of money was life changing. For him, it was a distraction.

That moment revealed something I’d never understood before: the people who stay at the top aren’t just smarter or luckier they’re radically selective. They know that saying no is often the most powerful move they can make.

We tend to think success comes from grinding harder, seizing every opportunity, stacking wins one after another. But for those who’ve already built wealth, the game shifts completely. The goal isn’t more it’s magnitude. They ignore almost everything that doesn’t scale exponentially.

As fortunes grow, so does the threshold for what counts as “worth it.” Only a handful of ideas those capable of bending their trajectory deserve real attention. Everything else, no matter how tempting, becomes noise.

I learned this firsthand during a coffee chat in New York with a seasoned entrepreneur, a man who’d built and sold several tech firms and comfortably sat in the nine-figure net-worth club. He was fresh off an exit and brainstorming his next venture.

“I’m thinking about launching an elite coaching firm for second generation $B family offices,” he said, brain storming the idea. “Small cohort, ultra exclusive, maybe $500,000 per client annually.”

My eyes widened. The math was simple: a few clients, and he’d be pulling in millions. “That’s a goldmine,” I told him.

He smiled, ran some quick mental numbers, then leaned back. “After costs and profit sharing and a support team, maybe a few million a year,” he said. “Not enough to bother.”

I froze. Not Enough To Bother. NETB

That’s when it clicked: the wealthy don’t chase opportunities, they filter for leverage. What looks like a jackpot to most people barely registers if it doesn’t significantly move the needle. Their advantage compounds because they reserve their energy, capital, and focus for the few bets that can multiply not merely add to their wealth.

I’m nowhere near his level, but as I’ve grown in my own journey, I’m starting to feel this shift too. The better you get, the more brutal your filters must become. What once felt like a dream project now feels like a detour.

If you want to level up, adopt that lens early. Think and act like the person you’re becoming not the one you are now. The power isn’t just in finding opportunities it’s in choosing fewer, better ones. Your outcomes depend on you knowing your NETB.

The $700 Beginning: What Paul Mitchell Teaches About Building When You Have Nothing

In 1980, two men were broke in every sense of the word. John Paul DeJoria had been sleeping in his car. Paul Mitchell, a Scottish born hairstylist with a reputation in Beverly Hills salons, had just gone through a brutal business failure. They had $700 between them, a few samples of shampoo, and a stubborn belief that they could build something meaningful.

That’s how John Paul Mitchell Systems was born a brand that would go on to become a global icon in hair care, with products sold in more than 100 countries.

But the power of their story isn’t in the eventual success. It’s in the sheer audacity of starting anyway.

A Rebellion Against the Odds

The late 1970s beauty industry was dominated by massive conglomerates. Starting an independent salon brand with no investors, no credit, and no distribution network was almost laughable. Banks wouldn’t even take their meetings.

So they improvised. They designed their first product line around what they could afford to produce: three products shampoo, conditioner, and styling lotion packaged in simple black-and-white bottles because color printing was too expensive.

Then DeJoria hit the road. He went door to door to salons, pitching the line personally. Some days he made no sales. Other days, he made just enough to afford gas and a sandwich.

Their early customers weren’t drawn by flashy marketing they were drawn by authenticity. Mitchell and DeJoria genuinely believed in creating high quality, crueltyfree products made for professionals, not corporations. That conviction built a community long before it built a company.

The Turning Point

Within a few years, the product started gaining traction. Salons began calling back. Stylists talked. Word spread. By the late 1980s, Paul Mitchell had become a household name but the founders never took outside money.

Their reason? Independence. They wanted to build on their own terms, even if it meant slower growth at first.

That decision to stay private and keep control turned out to be their competitive advantage. When the brand exploded, the rewards and the mission stayed in the same hands that took the risk.

Why It Still Matters

We love stories of billion dollar exits and venture funding rounds. But the Paul Mitchell story reminds us that the most enduring empires often start from pure necessity not privilege.

It’s easy to romanticize the beginning in hindsight, but imagine this: two grown men, out of cash, trying to sell salon products from the trunk of a beat-up car, telling each other, “We’ll figure it out.”

That’s entrepreneurship stripped to its essence resilience over resources.

The irony? That same brand, once dismissed as a desperate side hustle, now generates over a billion dollars in annual revenue.

Nothing to loose…

When you have nothing to lose, you gain one priceless advantage: clarity. Every move matters. Every “no” sharpens your next pitch. Every small win compounds because it’s all built on grit.

DeJoria once said, “Success unshared is failure.” That’s the energy that sustained them not just chasing wealth, but creating something that gave others a way to grow, too.

The next time you find yourself waiting for better timing, more capital, or the “right” conditions remember: two guys with $700 built a legacy because they stopped waiting.

Read this tweet to re align your brain with abundance vs scarcity

If you read any thing leading up to 2026. Business Adventures by John Brooks: 12 gripping tales of Wall St. triumphs & flops, salad oil scams to Edsel’s crash. A 1969 gem. Must-read for founders dodging chaos & building smart.

Easy reading for the swipe right generation covering:

• Timeless Patterns: Stories like the soybean oil fraud (a $175M scam , $1.5B in 2025 dollars) mirror today’s pump-and-dump schemes, teaching founders to spot fraud signals early.

• Crisis Navigation: The 1962 stock market crash piece shows how panic spreads and stabilizes, offering playbook tactics for managing volatility in startups.

• Innovation’s Edge: Xerox’s 914 copier story reveals how bold R&D bets can birth industries but risk complacency, crucial for tech entrepreneurs balancing disruption and scale.

• Human Factors: Brooks highlights how ego (e.g., Edsel’s overconfident marketing) or miscommunication (GE’s price-fixing scandal) can tank empires, urging founders to prioritize trust and clarity.

November 4th: 58 Days to Change Everything

Today is November 4th. That means you have exactly 58 days left in 2025.

58 days. 1,392 hours. 83,520 minutes.

The perfect amount of time to shift your trajectory if you’re willing to do what most won’t.

I’ve interacted with many people who crush it, the founders who built empires from nothing, the athletes who dominate championships, the artists whose work resonates decades later. Here’s what they all had in common:

They treated time like it was precious, because it was.
They didn’t wait for motivation; they made it.
They didn’t drift; they decided.

The next 58 days are your lab. Your battlefield. Your canvas. But it can also be your nothing.

You have two choices:

1. Water the seeds : invest your energy, your focus, your hours in what matters. Grow habits. Ship work. Connect. Finish. Elevate.

2. Pour acid : procrastinate, complain, avoid, and let your days rot away. Same 58 days, different results.

Your choice. No excuses. No one is coming to save you. Also no one owes you shit!

I don’t care where you are today. You can be behind, overworked, or exhausted and still flip the script. The people I respect most did more in two months than most do in two years, because they treated time like gold and acted like it was all that mattered.

So here’s the call:

Start today. Decide what matters most. Attack it with focus. Make the next 58 days count.

Because what you do now directly shapes your 2026.

Let’s go. Let’s fkn crush this.

58 days. Your choice. Make it legendary. Its your time Monetize it well. If you cry in 2026, you are yourself to blame.

197 Editions, 1,379 Days, and Your Shot to Stack Wins

Alright, data-driven hustlers, let’s break this down: Issue #197 means I’ve shipped this newsletter for 197 weeks, across 1,379 days doubting, and delivering. That’s not just a streak; it’s a damn dataset proving one thing: showing up, even imperfectly, compounds like a 10x growth stock. But here’s the raw truth, I cheated. I missed some consistency goals across 3-6 weeks over the years, delayed or merged newsletters when life hit hard.

Still, I showed up 95% of the time. And that’s the real stat: consistency isn’t perfection; it’s the courage to keep shipping through the noise.

You’re staring down Q4, maybe with a spreadsheet screaming “pivot” or a revenue chart flatter than a bug in prod. I’ve been there, 2 AM, staring at a blank doc, wondering if one more “no” from a client or investor would break me.

Spoiler: it didn’t. Why? Because every edition, every cold email, every “flop” is a data point in your growth curve. The numbers don’t lie: 197 weeks of showing up turned a side hustle into a mission.

Your next 1,379 days? They’re your runway to rewrite the game. So, here’s your experiment: Pick one metric to move this week. One outreach (5 DMs to mentors), one ship (a scrappy MVP), or one reflection (track 3 wins you ignored).

Log it. Measure it. Watch it compound.

The data’s clear: 90% effort outpaces 100% hesitation every time. You’re not chasing perfection, you’re stacking wins, one row at a time.

What’s your one metric this week? Hit reply, and let’s talk if you need support or just say hello. If you’ve benefited in any way from this and we’ve never interacted, do reach out!

Keep going faster…

Bonus! Thought of the week

When you decide to change nothing can stop you.

Contrarian Take: