IN THIS LESSON
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. Stay tuned for a message at the end. We had fun with this one.
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Don’t swing for the fences.
Develop skills along three dimensions: speed, precision, and power.
Then, put them together, hit it where they’re not, and sprint.
Transcript
(0:01 - 3:34)
All right guys, welcome back. We're on the ball diamond here today, kicking it old school. Today I'm going to teach you how to hit triples, and this is obviously a metaphor.
I'm not going to like physically get out here with a baseball bat and a pitcher, although I could because I did hit a lot of triples in high school. But the idea of hitting triples rather than a home run or a double or a single is really important, especially in this thing that we're doing called this world of business. A lot of people, a lot of VCs want to swing for the fences.
They want to hit a home run. So what happens? It's like Babe Ruth. Yeah, he maybe because he was fit in a certain way was able to hit a lot of home runs, but guess what? He struck out a lot.
So you're just wasting swings, wasting effort, wasting money, wasting time. If you're just swinging for like grand slams all the time, like you're just going to get killed. I mean, especially if you're running a real business, you only have so many shots on goal.
You only have so much resource, so much money, so much time, so much patience for team members, yourself, your board, your management team, your investors before they just sort of like give up on you and the whole thing. So swinging for the fences and trying to hit a home run on every shot is not the way to do it. Some people talk about hitting singles.
Oh, I'm just going to, you know, little clinker, little clinker over there, just a drop shot into right center. Like that's not it either. Hitting a triple is interesting because you need a couple of things.
One, you need power because you need to hit it either into, basically you need to hit it over into right center where nobody is and you need speed. You need to be able to book it around these bases faster than these outfielders can run to the ball, grab the ball, crow hop it and throw you out at third base. So I was able to do this a lot and I was able to do it sometimes standing up.
Why? Because I could hit it all the out there. Wasn't swinging for the fences though, so I could do it on more pitches. So if I got something inside, a curve ball, a change up, bam, throw the hands right center field and I book it, right? Because I got speed.
I know what the hell I'm doing. So in, in this world of product development, services development, you, you got to come out here and you got to hit triples. You got to hit it right there where no one else is.
That's that being different and better. And then you got to have the execution skill speed and capability set and experience in order for you to know how to round that base on a curve and hit the inside of that base with your right foot on the tip of the toe. So you push off even more and you get an accelerator that takes time.
That's what 30 years. That's why duration beats everything. Why experience and skill beats everything.
So today what we're going to do is, uh, I'm just going to have you run some foul balls with me because why not? Right? Why the hell, uh, you can do it at school. And then this brings up another key point here. If you're trying to get a workout in, you can't find the motivation.
(3:34 - 4:58)
You can't get out of bed. It's cold. It's 35 degrees outside right now.
You just got to get over this hump. Use something from your past, from your childhood, a memory, something where you like kicked butt, hold onto that energy and use that to get you up and out of the gate. At some point in your life, you did something that was only you where you got you to the next step.
Nobody else did that for you. You did that for you. So what was that? And then you just keep doing it.
And the first 30 days of doing something new, it's going to feel weird, going to feel like a struggle, not going to feel right. Muscle memory won't be there. There won't be a habit formed.
So it's going to take extra energy and effort. But after that month or so after that habit starts forming, like you're off to the races, man, because then it's just this pull from your body. Like, oh, it's that same time of day.
Oh, it's this thing I've been doing. All right, let's just go do it. And you get out of your head and you stop thinking about it and you put it away.
And it's just, all right, now's the time where we just go do this. And then you do it and you're done. So you just got to get in that cadence, right? And that cadence is really important.
So anyways, that's it right now. I got my headphones on. I got my Apple watch, got my shoes ready to go.
So you can turn it off, turn the volume down. I don't know. You might hear me huffing and puffing.
(4:58 - 6:05)
Maybe not. And we're just going to run some foul poles, might run the bases, probably not going to do like crazy sprints, but just get the muscles going, get the blood pumping and just work on those lungs and the heart. It's critical to long term viability.
So yeah, that's it. I'm going to get in here. I'm going to do my thing.
And yeah, you should do your thing too. And I'll see you. I'll see you on the other side.
I'm going to do a few of these. So, you know, you can wait around and make fun of me while I'm huffing and puffing around this damn field. Otherwise, it's getting up.
Shout out, shout out Jetpack Ultra. That's why we built this application. So it can track this stuff for you over time.
The critical ones, we use it. We built it for ourselves. So yeah, got to get your workout going.
(10:02 - 19:47)
Cold out here. Hands freezing. Need my gloves.
Didn't bring my gloves though. Let's get a water. Don't forget to stay hydrated.
Keep those haters hydrated too. You know what I'm saying? Let's go do bases. Hot corner, baby.
On my third basement. Shout out. Let's go.
Only eight minutes in. Shout out. Shout out Sioux City North High Stars.
Class of 99, baby. Let's go. We're going to shout out state of Iowa right now.
All my Hawkeyes. How about the University of Iowa math department. AI actuarial science since the jump.
Computers were created in Iowa. Foundations of AI created in Iowa. Corn that fed and energized the world created in Iowa.
(19:48 - 19:53)
Strong core values created in Iowa. Let's go Hawkeyes. Come on Midwest.
(20:04 - 23:16)
All right, let's take a victory lap. Let's go Hawkeyes. All right, what's next? Should we do one more? Maybe one more.
We'll do one more lap. One more foul ball and then we'll call up some other stuff. Starting from the bottom now we're here.
All right, last message. Don't forget who the fuck you are. You're powerful as fuck.
(23:17 - 24:00)
Are you scared of somebody else? Scared of the world? Fearful of tomorrow? Intimidated by other people? They breathe the same air as you and me. The same oxygen. The same body.
The same blood cells. From minimum to maximum height. It's like plus or minus a foot.
Everyone's all worried about height. Give me a break man. This universe is gigantic and you're worried about a foot? Get out of here.
So don't forget who the fuck you are. Show yourself, not the world. Yourself.
(24:00 - 24:11)
Show you who you are. All right, that's it. Get out there.
Get after it. Keep your values strong and stay true to yourself. Don't lie to yourself anymore.
(24:12 - 24:18)
Get back to it. Let's go. We got this.
All right. 2026. Let's go.
Three wheel motion.
