First Newsletter!

Getting Back in the Groove

It feels good to be back. Thanks for joining and reading. Before I dive into the big updates, here are my three goals in starting my newsletter back up:

1. Staying in touch with people. I don’t use social media to share updates about my life aside from the occasional post I’m tagged in. I think a lot of people feel similarly. I wish everyone had an email newsletter to keep people up to speed on their lives. But who am I to say that if I don’t have a newsletter of my own?

2. Sharing thoughts about the world. I spend a lot of time reflecting and writing notes to myself about topics like education, entrepreneurship, wellbeing, and more. I’d like to share these ideas and hopefully discuss them too.

3. Building community. I want to reconnect with people and connect people to each other. It’s been over two years of primarily remote work and I miss meeting new people and building connections.

I plan on sending updates every week. I make no promises about what I’ll say. It’s probably clear at this point I’m not writing a newsletter that will include 10 hacks to boost your productivity, or the top 3 stocks that will double in 2022. I don’t have a specific focus here. Just updates, musings, ideas.

With all that out of the way, here’s what I’m up to.

In January of 2022 I transitioned out of full time employment as the executive director of Dual School. We hired a new director and I’m still working about 10 hours per week supporting our staff, programs and strategic growth.

With my additional time I’ve picked up a few other engagements. I spend about 10 hours per week teaching social entrepreneurship to high school students with an organization called Schoolyard Ventures.

I spend another 15 hours each week working with a web3 agency developing an educational initiative to help people exploring new technology.

Lastly, I’m doing a little venture and career coaching.

When not working on the engagements listed above I’ve been focused on learning through books, writing and podcasts. I’ve recently re-read:

• The Art of Possibility by Ben and Roz Zander

• The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz

• Presence by Amy Cuddy

These are all books I read 5+ years ago. I’ve recently spent 2-3 hours going back over them, highlighting quotes and putting them into a notes document so I can easily review the essence of each book. If I read a book and don’t take any notes I find I forget everything very quickly. I’m trying to get more intentional with my learning process which means finding better ways to catalogue knowledge and revisit key ideas.

I’ve found myself sharing this article a lot recently: https://nathanbarry.com/wealth-creation/

Whether I’m talking to students about building their projects one small step at a time, or talking with another entrepreneur who is seeking to scale up, this idea of taking intentional steps toward growth is very resonant. The post is written by Nathan Barry, the founder of ConvertKit, and features a lot of great examples to support each point.

That’s all for this week. It feels good to be back in the groove.

What are you thinking about these days? Let me know what you’re up to!

All the best,

Zack

P.S. I’m still getting the hang of using Substack, so sorry if there are any weird formatting issues here. Feel free to let me know and I will fix for future editions.