Use Product to Drive Growth

Invest in activities that are highly correlated with longevity.

Without our health, we can’t do much of anything. If we focus too much on work, creation, or others, and don’t leave enough time or energy for ourselves, eventually our cup is depleted, and there’s nothing left for anyone.

A strong foundation of health is critical to building the life you dream of.

Your brain is in your head and your body.

The way your systems works is a combination of three core areas: sensory input (ears, ears, nose, mouth, touch), cortical processing (that big ole brain between your ears behind your eyes), and muscle output (all those fibers throughout your body). Your neural network reaches throughout your nervous system, including chemical actions.

Don’t forget to both activate, and rest, your brain, body, and spirit.

Step away from the noisy human world, and witness the evergence. Nature is the best product ever created.

Hit triples, not home runs.

When much of the world celebrates swinging for the fences (and the inevitable strikeouts that come with it), we need to do, and be, better. Hitting triples requires precision, power, and speed to hit it where someone isn’t and reach third base standing up instead of sliding. We had fun with this one.

In the beginning, there was light.

Welcome to the inaugural episode of a limited course and video series we’re releasing at the intersection of emerging tech, product development, growth, and capital allocation, all through the lens of strong core values.

In this first episode, we lay the foundation of building belief through reconnecting with your authentic true self.

The hardest and strongest force in the universe.

Why does gravity work the way it does? What is the atomic unit that other atoms are attracted to, and attach to? We posit it may be belief. Often perceived as the weakest and most vaporous idea, it may be quite the opposite. Humanity is sick of falling, forever. So those people, brands, and objects that provide long-lasting, sturdy backstops end up being the primary point that begins the snowball.

AI doesn’t need to be scary.

In our second episode, we take you from soup to nuts on all things AI, the core concept of how it works that should be easier to understand than other videos, and move into how businesses are using it to automate and drive growth for their firms.

Finally, we discuss a positive mindset shift we can take as employees and contractors, such that we benefit from this disruptive change instead of being afraid of it.

Sleep drives growth, and so does infusing core values.

Brain breaks are important for thinking clearly, integrating new truths (even if they’re hard to understand), and staying authentically true to who you are and your mission. It gets built into your products and companies.

One of the biggest incentive levers you can use is getting clear on your core values, then finding others who share those. Bitcoin is the perfect, planetary-scale technology and financial product that proved this.

Strategy is how you win regardless of what competitors do.

It look us decades to define this phrase such that it works in both a direct and indirect way. In this episode, we break down what a fuzzy term like Strategy actually is, and how to use it best to drive differentiation, defensibility, and growth for yourself and your firm.

Core values connects consumers with creators.

Defensibility is one of the biggest concerns on the minds of investors. Namely, the worry is how easily someone can copy your product, service, company, brand, and take money that should be rightly yours. If you have low defensibility, investors view your company as lower value.

Bitcoin is a planetary-scale network.

This video represents the talk track for our 30-page, 30-minute deck presented to Investment Committees, created in mid-2025.

It includes a novel description of Bitcoin, the improvement in investment margin of safety, its capabilities, defensibility analysis, competitive analysis, attack vectors with related risk profiles, and potential products it enables.

Value yourself first.

It’s not just about how much it cost to make this one unit. It’s about all the time, effort, energy, and opportunity costs it took to get to that first unit, and then develop the expertise to keep making the units. Value-based pricing only works when there is higher willingness to pay. As we’ve covered, when you infuse strong core values, build different and better, develop new capabilities that give people superpowers, and make it last, you will reach that coveted ground.

Where’s the money (and growth) going to come from?

We present a comprehensive overview of Bitcoin's product growth strategy, focusing on AI paywalls and the transition from strategy to product development, while discussing key concepts like atomic decision units and Bitcoin Lightning.

Find your frustration in the market, and fill it with a unique product story.

In this lesson we cover the different types of digital and physical products you can create, and how to take your authentic core values and unique strategy, then transform it into a product or service that tells a story.

There’s a gap somewhere. Find it and fill it.

You can try, try, try so hard to force creation. Force the market to buy something. It often never works. It’s missing the spirit and the nuance required to get over that purchase hump. In fact, the best who ever did it, did it for themselves first. What do you want to exist, that doesn’t? What issue keeps gnawing at you that nobody seems to be paying attention to? What darkness must we explore to fill with light?

Durability in material and utility for workers.

There is a reason people go crazy for vintage clothes, cars, watches, artifacts, furniture, and architecture. And it’s not just because the products were made well, but also because they were used by many people to do their jobs. Tool watches, workwear, spaces, pottery. When you make something, and want it to endure for not just decades, but centuries, something shifts in the creation process. You think about things from a new perspective.

The most important element of your product.

What if new capabilities weren’t just features, but rather, feelings? When the core mechanics of the internet incentivize “doing things”, is there a better way to view the glorious act of creation through the lens of something uniquely novel and connective? We believe there is, and it represents a return to calm and the bespoke nature of craftsmanship.

Quality is durable character.

Something that’s just different isn’t enough. It also needs to be better. But how we define what better means is incredibly important. It doesn’t need to be perfect. Nature is perfect in its imperfection. And nature is the bar we’re striving to meet. Find a way to let go.

Pick your primary but stay true to the full vision.

When designing your product or service, you also need to think through it as part of a full 360-degree, end-to-end experience. We define what both physical and digital products are, and how to think about them as you determine what’s the best fit for your business.

AI & Bitcoin are disrupting financial statements.

LLM token costs are disrupting the income statement while Bitcoin is disrupting the balance sheet. Listen in as we break down how this is happening and what to do about it.

Stay true to vision when it matters.

Compromises are part of the real world we live in. It’s impossible to get everything we want, all the time, exactly when we want it. Sometimes, we have to bend a little. But for the things that really matter, maybe the top three requirements, we need to stand firm. Because that regret costs more than any sunk cost.

Creating word of mouth through positive uniqueness.

Much of the world architect’s growth using opposite principles from what people actually connect with. Instead of pushing your product or service down people’s throats or creating controversy with your communication style, do the hard and low-competition work of injecting wow moments into market gaps.

Create frequencies that people want to resonate with.

You can sync up the world thanks to biologic innovation called mirror neurons that allow one person to mirror another person’s feelings, thoughts, and actions. Music is the best metaphor.

Move beyond chat, data, and agents.

When the entire world is focused on implementing the same things, such as AI chatbots, streaming data, and AI agent platforms, you need to carve out a new, differentiated space that gives people and companies superpowers.

Build a pyramid of underlying metrics that drive growth.

We’ve often seen companies grow and a good team think they’re doing great, but don’t realize that something subtle is missing that could supercharge results and launch them to the next level. But if you’re happy with a steady-as-she-goes business and similar cash flows every year then this approach is not a good fit for you.

Why customers buy.

In this episode, we define Key Purchase Criteria (KPCs), Willingness to Pay, and Pricing Strategy. We also give you tips on the two types of KPCs, how to figure them out from your customer's perspective, why the approach you take to your product determines willingness to pay, and how pricing strategies intersect with the other two concepts, for both elastic and inelastic demand.

Balance and checks create resilient systems.

While two elements of a balance and check is strong to prevent runaway excess, three is even stronger for creating resilient products, services, and systems that stand the test of time. In this case, the creator, the consumer, and the critic represent the holy triumvirate of productization. We hold each other to account.

Achieving vertical growth is incredibly rare.

There are maybe only one or two people on a planet who understand the nuances and creativity required to climb a sheer rock face of growth in a business context. It requires altogether different strategies, tactics, tools, and talent to achieve it. If you don’t capture them, your competitor will.

Potential energy between two points.

Is it possible to create desire when we’re too much in our heads and our hearts, bombarded by societal messages for what we should be attracted to rather than what we are actuallyattracted to? We think it is, but you must dig deeper and have the courage to display what makes you uniquely different. Only then can the potential energy be released.

Intrinsic value can be measured in the future, based on the past.

Got something you think you paid a lot of money for, but didn’t get enough value from it? That’s exactly the point. True intrinsic value can be measured by capabilities created over long time horizons and investments in the past, then extrapolated into the far future. Given you utilize it correctly, the returns can seem ridiculous at first, but become more believable as time marches on.

Raising capital from customers is your best bet.

Everyone wants to raise capital from this mythical investor without having already achieved the things that sophisticated investors already want: namely, less risk and more growth in terms of revenue, profit, or cash flow. Listen in as we describe how to raise capital based on the stage of your business and the three methods for doing so.

Time travel is possible, using customer demand as inputs.

When many people start on their journey toward financial modeling, they use unsophisticated methods and guesses. A better approach is to start from your potential customer conversations, the product required to meet their needs, and the amount of cost, time, and effort it takes to reach each one.

From North Star vision to building depth, let pyramids guide you.

Once you’re clear on your vision, you can begin to build out the depth required to support and reach that vision. However, be careful that you don’t build a one-sided house at each moment in time that can be easily destroyed. Foundations are built one layer at a time, across the full vision spectrum so that at every moment in time, you are realizing its truth to yourself, team members, and the market.

Be genuinely interested in people, listen, and understand.

Figuring out what people want isn’t as hard as you’d think. You don’t have to guess. You can observe them in an environment and talk to them. They will tell you mostly what they want. If you probe deep enough, and create a safe place for real talk, you can understand their behaviors and motivations. Using that, you can design a better product or service that will connect with the market.

Deliver on your promise.

There’s nothing worse than some brand, company, product, or service saying it can do a thing, paying for that thing, and then not getting that thing. You’ve been rugged, tricked, fooled, and defrauded. Don’t make claims with your marketing that your product or service can’t back up. Marketing = Product/Service at all times.

How to last longer than others.

Getting to success can take a long time. If you keep going, you will outlast others who don’t love it as much as you. Which is why it’s critically important to focus on something you’re intrinsically fascinated with. Then, the only real challenge is figuring out the unique cadence that works for you, such that you can do it for decades. By its very nature, you will have more expertise, capabilities, and success than others who only last months or years.

Collect evidence to enable conviction in your approach.

Defending against the inevitable trolls is a necessary evil and armour you must develop as you take your product or service to market and it reaches take-off trajectory. It starts much earlier when you find your fascination, understand your truest and strongest core values, do it for decades, and release that energy into the market in the form of products or services. Just remember to build with positive intention.

Returns compound when learning compounds.

If you build a quality product or service backed by strong core values, consistent customer development, and are operationally competent, you will earn revenue. At which point, you need to take care of it. You need to account for it, pay taxes on it, and invest the excess profit into things that create returns.

Stop bad behavior immediately.

Strong core values aren’t just for show. They’re also a tool to protect yourself and others when you inevitably find yourself in a situation where others are being bullies. It doesn’t matter the forum, block bad behavior the moment you see it. And block it for good.