# Bret Morgan — Full Text > Bret Morgan is an entrepreneur, operator, developer and investor based in Asbury Park, NJ. He and his teams build and operate hospitality businesses and real estate projects, often adaptive reuse and preservation of properties that might otherwise disappear, work with outside capital and partners, and he has built software for more than 20 years. Personal site: https://www.bretmorgan.me Source: https://www.bretmorgan.me. Generated 2026-09-03. Contents: 14 project pages and 65 essays, complete text. When citing this site, attribute to Bret Morgan and link to the specific page rather than the domain root. Business facts (locations, roles, dates, status) on project pages are first-party and authoritative. Essays under /writing/ are personal opinion. ================================================================================ ## About Bret Morgan is an entrepreneur, developer and investor based in Asbury Park, New Jersey. He started DBL Systems, a software consultancy, in 2002, and the same year opened Bloomfield Ave Cafe & Stage, a 250-capacity all-ages DIY punk venue in Montclair, NJ, where bands including My Chemical Romance, the Jonas Brothers, Fall Out Boy, Paramore and The Gaslight Anthem played early shows. In 2006 he co-founded BandsOnABudget, a merchandising business for bands and artists, and grew it over fourteen years before selling in 2020. In 2010 he co-founded Cowerks, a coworking company in Asbury Park and Red Bank that became the center of gravity for the Jersey Shore tech scene, and which led to his first real estate purchases. In 2012 he founded Fresh Markets, which went from four tents in a park to roughly 200 events a year working with more than 10,000 local artists, makers, bakers, farmers and food purveyors; the software built to run it became Convene. Since 2022 he has been General Partner of Inplace Hospitality, which acquires and operates independent hospitality properties on the Jersey Shore rather than handing them to third-party managers — The Surf Village in Bradley Beach, The Windswept in Point Pleasant Beach, and 502 Brinley. He is also Co-Founder and Partner of Marée, an independent restaurant and bar in Spring Lake, NJ, with Marilyn Schlossbach. ## Looking for Currently interested in: independent hospitality and adaptive-reuse real estate opportunities on the Jersey Shore and the Upper Delaware; investors and limited partners for hospitality and real estate projects; and selective software, AI integration and automation engagements through DBL Systems. ================================================================================ # Projects -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Inplace Hospitality URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/projects/inplace-hospitality/ Role: General Partner Location: Jersey Shore, NJ Status: Operating Started: 2022 Management company behind the Jersey Shore hospitality properties. Portfolio: The Surf Village, The Windswept and 502 Brinley. Inplace Hospitality is the management company behind our hospitality properties on the Jersey Shore. It operates The Surf Village in Bradley Beach, The Windswept in Point Pleasant Beach, and 502 Brinley next door to the Surf Village, along with the acquisitions we currently have in front of us. The properties I’m drawn to tend to share a pattern. They already have an identity, a community, and a real business underneath them. They’re also often one sale away from disappearing, because a nine-bungalow compound or a mid-century oceanfront motel can be worth more as land for condos than as the business that’s already there. Either of ours could plausibly have been torn down. Part of why Inplace exists is to find places like that before it happens, keep what makes them worth keeping, and make the operating business work. How it works We do this with outside capital and partners, and we handle the full cycle ourselves: finding the property, structuring the acquisition, raising the money, running the renovation, and then operating the business day to day. Pricing, staffing, maintenance, guest experience, all of it. These are long-term holds, not flips. The idea is pretty simple: buy an interesting property with character, run it well, improve it carefully, and own it for a long time. Technology runs through all of it. I build most of the tools and operating systems for these properties myself, covering booking, operations, and automation. That’s a big part of how a relatively small team can run several properties well. What’s next We’re actively looking for the next properties: independent motels, cottage courts, small inns, and unusual buildings with a hospitality future. If you know of one, send it our way. And if you’d like to invest in future acquisitions, join our investor network. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## The Windswept URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/projects/windswept/ Role: General Partner & Operator Location: Point Pleasant Beach, NJ Status: Operating, Renovating Started: 2026 46-room oceanfront motel at the end of the boardwalk in Point Pleasant Beach, NJ, family run for decades. Acquired 2026; operating while being renovated. We bought a 46-room motel at the end of the Point Pleasant Beach boardwalk in 2026. The Windswept is a classic mid-century Jersey Shore motel: oceanfront, family-run for decades, and the kind of place that used to line the coast but mostly doesn’t anymore. It already had the things I look for in a property: history, a loyal guest base, a strong location, and an identity that would be hard to recreate from scratch. What we’re doing The motel is a real operating business, and our first job is to learn how it actually works: the seasonal rhythms, the guests who’ve been coming back for twenty years, and the parts of the operation that have made it successful for so long. From there, the plan is a phased renovation and repositioning. We’ll modernize the rooms and systems, improve the guest experience, and give the property a clearer identity while keeping the mid-century character that makes it interesting in the first place. The goal is to make The Windswept a better version of what it already is, and build a long-term hospitality asset around a property with real history and a location that’s hard to replicate. The Windswept is managed by Inplace, alongside The Surf Village in Bradley Beach. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Marée Bistro + Bar URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/projects/maree/ Role: Co-Founder & Partner Location: Spring Lake, NJ Status: Operating Started: 2026 Official site: https://www.eatatmaree.com Independent restaurant and bar in Spring Lake, NJ, in a 125-year-old former bank building (the vault is a private dining room). Awarded through a Borough of Spring Lake RFP and financed with investor capital and an SBA loan. Co-Founder & Partner with Marilyn Schlossbach; a separate partnership from the Inplace properties. Marée is an independent restaurant and bar in Spring Lake, New Jersey, on the ground floor of a 125-year-old former bank building downtown. The original bank vault is now a private dining room. The name comes from the French word for “tide.” Marilyn Schlossbach and I opened it together. Marilyn has been operating restaurants at the Jersey Shore for more than 35 years and leads the food and the culture of the room. I led the development side: the buildout, financing, technology, and the operating systems behind the restaurant. It’s a separate ownership partnership from our other hospitality projects, intentionally. How it came together Marée came out of a public-private partnership that worked atypically well. The Borough of Spring Lake bought the building to create affordable housing on the upper floor, then asked residents what they wanted to see on the ground floor. A downtown bar and restaurant was at the top of the list. The Borough secured a concessionary liquor license from the State of New Jersey and put the space out to bid. We responded to the RFP and were awarded the project. From there, we raised investor capital, financed the build through an SBA loan with Manasquan Bank, and negotiated a fifteen-year lease with multiple options behind it. That’s enough term to potentially spend the next quarter century in a building that’s already been standing for 125 years, which is a pretty unusual position for a restaurant. Getting there meant the Borough, state licensing, private capital, and an operating team all having to come together around the same project. That doesn’t happen very often. The menu is seasonal French coastal bistro with an emphasis on local producers, and the cocktail, wine, and beer programs follow the same idea. If you want the full story, go see the restaurant or read what people are saying. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## The Darby URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/projects/darby/ Role: General Partner & Operator Location: Beach Lake, PA Status: Raising Capital, Acquisition Started: 2026 Hotel, restaurant and bar in Beach Lake, PA on the Upper Delaware, a short walk across the bridge from Narrowsburg, NY. Fully renovated in 2022 and since taken offline. Being acquired from the bank and reopened; targeting a late Q3 / early Q4 2026 close. Raising capital. The Darby is a hotel, restaurant, and bar in Beach Lake, Pennsylvania, on the Upper Delaware at the western edge of the Catskills, a short walk across the bridge from Narrowsburg, New York. It was a real operating business with a strong identity and a loyal following before it went dark. We’re acquiring it from the bank and reopening it. The building was fully renovated in 2022. Not long after, the previous owners took it offline, and it has been sitting for about a year. What’s there today is a finished property with guest rooms, a restaurant, a bar, and a liquor license already in place. It needs capital to address the deferred maintenance that comes with sitting vacant and to get the operation running again, but the expensive work has already been done. The river Narrowsburg, just across the bridge, is a small river town about two hours from New York, and this part of the Upper Delaware has become a real weekend destination. There are good restaurants, a steady population coming up from the city, and enough going on year-round to support a property like this. The Darby fits the kind of project I’m drawn to. It already has an identity, it’s in a place people want to be, and the underlying property and business make sense. What’s missing is active ownership, capital, and an operating team in the building. That’s how we run our hospitality businesses, and this one will be no different. Where things stand We’re working toward a close in late Q3 or early Q4 2026. If you’d like to learn more about the project or see the deck, get in touch and we’ll follow up directly. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Sylvan Hall URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/projects/sylvan-hall/ Role: General Partner & Operator Location: Avon-by-the-Sea, NJ Status: In Development Started: 2023 Official site: https://www.sylvanhall.com A restaurant and bar in a historic building in downtown Avon-by-the-Sea, NJ, and the only liquor license in the downtown. In development; raising capital. Sylvan Hall is a restaurant and bar taking shape inside a historic building in downtown Avon-by-the-Sea, New Jersey. The building is a big part of why the project exists. Avon’s downtown doesn’t have many structures left with this kind of scale and history, and the goal is to keep what makes it distinctive while putting it back to work as a business rather than preserving it as an artifact. The other part is the license. Sylvan Hall will hold the only liquor license in downtown Avon, which in a walkable New Jersey beach town is a scarce and durable thing to own. That’s a meaningful piece of why we’re doing this. Where things stand The project is in active development across design, approvals, and capital formation. This is a partnership, and outside capital is part of the plan. If you’d like to hear more as it comes together, use the button below and we’ll follow up directly. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## The Surf Village URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/projects/surf-village/ Role: General Partner & Operator Location: Bradley Beach, NJ Status: Operating Started: 2022 Official site: https://www.bradleysurfvillage.com Nine bungalows on one walkable block near the ocean in Bradley Beach, NJ, acquired and redeveloped rather than torn down. The first property bought under Inplace. The Surf Village is a nine-bungalow hospitality property in Bradley Beach, New Jersey, a few blocks from the ocean between Asbury Park and Belmar. We acquired it in 2022 and redeveloped it into the boutique operation it is today. Why this project Nine small bungalows on one walkable block near the beach is a pretty unusual property type, and one that’s hard to recreate today. We bought it because the property already had a character and scale that made it interesting, and because we thought it could work as a real hospitality business. What we did We renovated all nine bungalows, which range from one to three bedrooms, while keeping the things that gave the property its identity: the scale, the mid-century character, and the feeling of a small village. Artwork and details from local artists tie it back to Bradley Beach and the surrounding area. We also built the operating business around it: pricing, booking systems, turnover, maintenance, and guest experience. It’s run day to day as an owner-operated hospitality property, not as a collection of passive rentals. The Surf Village is managed by Inplace Hospitality, and it set the template for what came after, including The Windswept in Point Pleasant Beach and 502 Brinley, the 12-unit building next door. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## 502 Brinley URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/projects/502-brinley/ Role: General Partner & Operator Location: Bradley Beach, NJ Status: Operating, Repositioning Started: 2026 12-unit multifamily building in Bradley Beach, NJ, adjacent to The Surf Village. Acquired 2026; structural work first, then renovation of vacant units. 502 Brinley is a 12-unit multifamily building in Bradley Beach, New Jersey, immediately adjacent to The Surf Village. We acquired it in 2026 as a long-term hold. The work starts with the building itself. It came with years of deferred structural and foundation issues, so that’s where we’re starting, fixing what holds it up before spending money on anything cosmetic. From there, we’re renovating the vacant apartments, bringing them back into good condition, and returning them to occupancy. The occupied units stay occupied throughout the work. The more interesting part is where it sits. Owning the building next door to The Surf Village gives us one operating team, one group of vendors, and one maintenance operation across both properties, which matters a lot at this scale. It also gives us a larger contiguous piece of property four blocks from the beach. That’s the long-term value here, and a big part of why the building made sense to buy. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## FRESH Markets URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/projects/fresh-markets/ Role: Founder & CEO Location: Asbury Park, NJ Status: Operating Started: 2012 Official site: https://www.asburyfresh.com Farmers and makers markets since 2012, from four tents in a park to roughly 200 events a year with more than 10,000 local artists, makers, bakers, farmers and food purveyors. Fresh Markets started in 2012 with four tents in a park in Asbury Park. Today we run roughly 200 events a year and work with more than 10,000 local artists, makers, bakers, farmers, and food purveyors across New Jersey. The idea hasn’t changed in all that time: bring people together, and make it easier for small businesses to show up and grow where they live. What began as a way to give local entrepreneurs a place to be seen has become a network of year-round farmers and makers markets, seasonal pop-ups, and community events, each one shaped to feel personal and rooted in the town it serves. The work is more than transactions. We curate carefully, we give vendors consistent opportunities rather than one-off shots, and we try to build markets where vendors feel supported and customers feel welcome. Whether someone is testing an idea for the first time or growing a business they’ve spent years on, the job is to take friction out of the way and help them build momentum. Fresh Markets is also where Convene came from. After more than a decade of running markets, and building our own internal tools to handle applications, bookings, and payments because nothing purpose-built existed, we turned that software into a product other organizers could use to run their own events and recruit vendors. Fresh is the operating business, and Convene is the technology that grew out of it. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Convene Markets URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/projects/convene/ Role: Founder & CEO Location: Asbury Park, NJ Status: Operating Started: 2026 Official site: https://convene.markets Software platform for market organizers to manage events and recruit vendors, built from thirteen years of operating Fresh Markets and rebuilt as a product others use. Convene is an all-in-one platform and marketplace for running pop-up events, markets, and recurring community gatherings, designed to connect event organizers with vendors. The platform brings applications, payments, communication, promotion, and reporting into a single, purpose-built system. Convene grew directly out of Fresh Markets, the market business we’ve run since 2012. We’ve operated hundreds of markets and worked with more than 10,000 vendors, and we built internal software along the way because nothing purpose-built existed. Convene is that software, rebuilt as a product for other organizers. That origin shaped every workflow, from how organizers are discovered by vendors to how applications, approvals, and payouts are managed, with the goal of reducing administrative overhead and improving event quality. Convene helps organizers reach an established vendor community, streamline operations, and grow their events through built-in promotion tools and clear analytics. It supports farmers markets, seasonal and weekly markets, festivals, municipalities, chambers of commerce, and independent organizers who want professional infrastructure without unnecessary complexity. Launching first in New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania, Convene is being rolled out through a curated onboarding process to maintain high standards across the marketplace. The result is a trusted ecosystem where organizers and vendors can connect, operate efficiently, and grow together. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## DBL Systems URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/projects/dbl-systems/ Role: Founder Location: Asbury Park, NJ Status: Operating Started: 2002 DBL Systems is Bret Morgan's software and technology consultancy, founded 2002 and based in Asbury Park, NJ. Work covers custom software, AI and agent systems running inside real business operations, embedded technical leadership, and modernization of existing systems, on selective client engagements. This page is the consultancy's home; the former dblsystems.com site now redirects here. DBL Systems is my software and technology consultancy. I’ve spent more than 20 years building software and businesses, and today I work selectively with companies where I can be useful across product, engineering, AI, and the business problems underneath them. The thing that makes this different from hiring a typical development shop is that I’m an operator. We run hospitality businesses, real estate projects, and a software company. When I take on a technology engagement, I’m not translating requirements. I can walk into the business, understand the actual problem in operational terms, figure out where technology genuinely helps, and usually build the solution myself. That last part matters more than it sounds. A lot of technology spending goes toward building the thing that was asked for instead of the thing that was needed, because nobody in the room had run the operation. I’ve run the operation. Who this tends to be right for Founders and operators of businesses doing real volume who’ve outgrown spreadsheets, workarounds and headcount. Companies sitting on a system that works but can’t be changed anymore. Teams that want to use AI for something other than a demo and don’t know where to start. And people with a genuinely hard problem who mostly need someone senior to think it through with them before anyone writes code. It’s usually not right for a first-time founder looking for a cheap MVP, or for anyone who wants a large team of contractors. This is a small, senior practice on purpose. How engagements work Straightforward: project work, retainers, or ongoing consulting. Some engagements are a two-week diagnostic that ends in a written recommendation and nothing else. Others run for years. For the right situation I’m open to hybrid and equity structures, and I’ve done both. DBL has existed since 2002 and still supports a small number of long-term clients, which is why it stayed active through everything else I’ve built. Selected work Convene: The clearest example of how I work. After a decade of operating Fresh Markets, I built Convene, a full marketplace platform handling applications, bookings, payments, and communication for market organizers. Operator-built software for a problem I lived with daily. Hospitality operating systems: The properties at Inplace Hospitality run on systems I’ve built and integrated myself: booking and channel management, payments, guest communication, and automation that lets a small team operate several properties well. SoundFly: Worked with the founder and team of this online music school to re-architect their platform around a SaaS subscription model. A business-model problem solved through engineering, which changed the company’s revenue trajectory. Viply: Designed and built the backend, API, and admin platform for a mobile app that digitized beach-badge access for New Jersey towns, payments, seasonal surge traffic, and municipal customers included. If you’re wrestling with a technology or product problem, let’s talk about it. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Cowerks URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/projects/cowerks/ Role: Co-Founder Location: Asbury Park & Red Bank, NJ Status: Operating Started: 2010 Official site: https://www.cowerks.com Coworking company in Asbury Park and Red Bank, NJ, founded 2010 and still operating. For about a decade the center of gravity for the Jersey Shore tech scene. Limited day-to-day involvement today; the buildings are still owned. Cowerks is a coworking company in Monmouth County, New Jersey, and for about a decade it was the center of gravity for the Asbury Park tech scene. It started in 2010 in a 700-square-foot retail space and grew into roughly 5,000 square feet of private offices and common space with room for close to fifty people. Along the way it became a real part of downtown Asbury Park and the broader New Jersey tech and startup community. We hosted dozens of companies and startups, along with hundreds of meetups, workshops, and hackathons. The space was also home base for Jersey Shore Tech & Design and Asbury Agile. We closed the location at The Lakehouse, the building that held the common area, during Covid. We still own the other two buildings, in Asbury Park and Red Bank, and they operate today as private offices. They also, honestly, don’t have the community element we spent years building. That kind of thing doesn’t just come back on its own. My day-to-day involvement is limited now, but Cowerks is a big part of why I understand the value of owning the real estate underneath a business. We started out leasing. Ownership is the model I care about now. Sixteen years after following through on what was a fairly wacky idea at the time, the business is still here, and a big reason for that is the buildings. Those years are still some of my favorite as an entrepreneur. A lot has changed since, but I look back on that period pretty fondly. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Bloomfield Ave Cafe & Stage URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/projects/bloomfield-ave-cafe/ Role: Founder & Operator Location: Montclair, NJ Status: Closed Started: 2002 Ended: 2007 250-capacity all-ages DIY punk venue in Montclair, NJ, 2002-2007. The first business, opened the same year as DBL Systems. The Room Bloomfield Ave Cafe & Stage was a 250-capacity all-ages venue at 347 Bloomfield Avenue in Montclair, New Jersey. I opened it in 2002, the same year I started DBL Systems, and we ran it until 2007. It was my first business. It was a DIY punk venue. Calling it anything else would be rewriting history. I came up going to basement shows, and Bloomfield Ave was one step up from a basement: a real stage, a real PA, a door, and not much else. The room was small and it got hot. In the summer you could see steam coming out the front doors. That was a feature. The shows were close, loud, and completely unmediated, which is what an all-ages room is supposed to be. We were all kids while we were running it. Nobody involved had done it before, it showed, and it mostly worked anyway. Who Played The venue sat in the middle of the early-2000s New Jersey scene, in the years when a band could play a 250-cap room one season and something much bigger the next. My Chemical Romance played it. So did the Jonas Brothers, before most people had heard of them, along with Fall Out Boy, Paramore, The Gaslight Anthem, Steel Train, Silverstein, Jack’s Mannequin, Plain White T’s, The Starting Line, and Alexisonfire. The touring bands weren’t really the point, though. Most of the calendar was local, New Jersey bands playing to New Jersey kids. What the room actually did was give teenagers somewhere to see a show in a small space, on a Friday night, without needing a ride into the city, for a ticket price a teenager could cover. Twenty years on, I still run into people who bring up a show they saw at Bloomfield Ave Cafe. That’s the part that stuck. What It Taught Me The room taught me community building before I had a word for it. You’re booking, staffing, working the door, handling the neighbors, and building whatever systems make it repeatable, all on revenue that’s thin by design because tickets have to stay cheap enough for kids to buy them. What holds a place like that together isn’t the margin. It’s whether people feel like it belongs to them. That’s the thread through most of what came after. Cowerks and Fresh Markets are the same problem in different clothes. Make a place people want to be in, then build the operation that lets it survive. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## BandsOnABudget URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/projects/bandsonabudget/ Role: Co-Founder Location: Asbury Park, NJ Status: Sold 2020 Started: 2006 Ended: 2020 Custom merchandise and tour merch for bands, co-founded with Danny Croak in 2006 and grown over fourteen years into a full-service merchandising business with the ordering, quoting and logistics software built in-house. Sold in 2020. BandsOnABudget started in 2006, when Danny Croak and I went looking for something to build together. Danny has been my business partner ever since. We both came out of the music industry, and between us we knew a lot of bands, promoters, and agents. I wrote the software and built the website; the network did the rest. The business made custom merchandise for bands: the shirts and tour merch that pay for the van and the tank of gas, priced for groups still funding everything themselves. Because the ordering happened online, a band anywhere could work with us the same way a local one could, so a company built for the local scene ended up operating nationally almost from the start. Over the years that followed we worked with tens of thousands of bands, national and international. Later on we moved into managing tour merchandising directly for artists including The Front Bottoms and River City Extension. We sold the company to a larger merchandise business that was rolling up companies like ours. It was the first time I built the software and ran the operation it served at the same time, which turned out to be the pattern for most of what came after. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Humble Humans URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/projects/humble-humans/ Role: Partner Location: Asbury Park, NJ Status: Closed Full-service design and software agency, formed by merging a design studio with DBL Systems. Naming and branding through backend, mobile and big data applications, with eleven full-time designers and developers at its height. Closed. Humble Humans started as Greg Edgerton’s design agency. Greg was a member at Cowerks, and we kept finding ourselves on the same projects: his studio doing the design work, DBL Systems doing the backend development, Cowerks acting as the sales and marketing arm. At some point the obvious thing was to stop coordinating three companies and become one, so we joined forces and rebranded together under his name. What came out of it was a full-service agency. We did naming and branding, backend software, mobile applications, big data work, and most of what falls between those. At its height we had eleven full-time designers and developers plus sales staff and contractors. It was hard work and it was genuinely rewarding, and we got to build some things I’m still glad we built. The agency model is a difficult business, though. Carrying that much overhead stopped making sense in a market where smaller teams were becoming the norm, so we scaled back and eventually wound it down. I like working on a team. I like client work considerably less than working on our own projects, and by then our own projects were ramping up. Shifting direction was the right call, and looking at what AI has done to the agency business since, it was more right than we knew at the time. ================================================================================ # Writing -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## How To Make Your Emails Not Sound Like Slop URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2026/09/02/how-to-make-your-emails-not-sound-like-slop/ Published: 2026-09-02 Topics: AI, Productivity, Mindset, Technology, Small Business A rant on outsourcing your critical thinking. Let’s face it - you’ve probably tried writing an email using ChatGPT. You may even have sent it to someone, felt that quick hit of dopamine, and then did it again. Before you know it, you’ve blown through the 120 emails backed up in your inbox in 20 minutes. You almost manage to hit “Inbox Zero”, except for those few ‘special’ emails that require a bit more of a nuanced response. You like this. It feels like you’ve unlocked a superpower. For the next few weeks you start using it for the “low hanging fruit” types of emails - the ones where you answer some iteration of the same question like “I know your bungalows are dog friendly but can I bring my pet iguana?” or “I tried to book a reservation for 12 people on Saturday at 7PM but OpenTable wouldn’t let me. Can you help?”. It’s the type of email that is specific enough to require more than a templated response but still a drag on your mental energy. This is working! No one even suspects you’re using AI to write your emails. You then make a critical mistake. You take one of those few, but growing, emails that require a bit more brainpower, copy-paste it into ChatGPT and ask it to respond. Thirty seconds later it comes back with a very detailed response consisting of a mix of text, bullet points, and even bold highlights. You briefly scan the contents of this college essay and really agree with its positioning. In fact you are even impressed by how it surfaced a few arguments you totally missed. Relieved, you copy-paste it back into Gmail and click send and archive. The dopamine surges through your hippocampus. You continue to the next challenging email and, like a good little Mechanical Turk, you copy-paste the email back and forth from ChatGPT and move on. Congrats, you’ve just automated your critical thinking, and perhaps even a small piece of your free will. Nobody is going to read your email Our brains are wired to recognize patterns and once we pick up on the linguistic monotony of Claude, ChatGPT and other LLMs, we unconsciously start to skim and tune it all out. As a simple test, I just scanned a few emails that people have sent me recently, all containing some iteration of the following: Let me break this down for you… I appreciate your concern… The reality is… I want to reach out regarding… Something I’d push back on… (And let’s not forget the over-the-top use of em-dashes, bullet points, and misplaced bold highlights.) Here’s a perfect example of a recent response I received from a company whose product is AN EMAIL CLIENT. They were responding to my frustrations about how they’re bolting too much AI into their core product to the point that it’s becoming unusable. For the love of whatever higher deity you believe in, please STOP doing this. This is just one example, but some of these emails are so unreadable I end up having to copy-paste them into ChatGPT just to have it summarize what they’re telling me. Automation without Atrophy I’d like to think that you can still automate your emails without letting your critical thinking skills atrophy. I’ve developed a few patterns and tricks that have been serving me well. Please keep in mind that the tools will continue to evolve and you may be looking back on this article wondering how dated my mindset is. Anyway - in September 2026, here are a few ways I’m automating some of my emails. Learn to Create Custom Voicing A few years back ChatGPT released a tool that allows you to create Projects. A precursor to ChatGPT Work or Claude Cowork, Projects were a way to give it some additional context around a business or common idea set. Instead of using it for its intended purpose, I created a project called “Email Refiner” and added some very simple instructions on how to talk like a human. It started initially with avoiding cringe phrasing, em-dashes, and other common clichés LLMs like to use, but over time I’ve been able to refine the voicing to sound more like “me”. My latest iteration also includes some notes about channeling “Unreasonable Hospitality” - if you’ve ever interfaced with a customer and you’re unfamiliar with that book, please order a copy for yourself today. It’s really helped me soften the rough edges between what I want to say and what I should actually send. Train It On Your Writing For the past 7 or 8 months, I’ve been training an agent to write and think more like me. I built a custom OpenClaw agent, pointed it at eight years of writing on my website, and created another that indexes emails I’ve actually sent into a vector database. I’m now able to send a WhatsApp message to my agent, who then farms the work out to my writing agent and respond with voicing that is uncannily my own. I know this is a bit hacky for most readers, but I did most of this work back in February 2026, and I can guarantee there are more user-friendly ways to accomplish something similar that probably involve Claude Cowork or ChatGPT Work. I will acknowledge that I did have the advantage of having many years of (AI-free) writing under my belt, which is another reason I continue to write with all the flaws only an imperfect being such as myself could produce. Voice Notes and Verbal Abuse Whether you use either of the above tactics, your next step is to copy/paste the email thread into your chat app of choice and turn on the mic. I then proceed to ramble to my AI assistant for anywhere between 30 seconds and 3 minutes about what I want to say, why I want to say it, what I really mean, and even tell it when I’m venting or frustrated. After this short burst-therapy session I hit submit and let it rip. Sometimes it one-shots the response and nails the messaging, tone, and voicing perfectly but more often than not I have to resort to iteration, which is just a fancy way of redefining verbal abuse. To be fair, I don’t always verbally abuse my AI assistant but a good deal of my workflow includes the phrases: This is AI slop. Make it sound like a human wrote it Make it 7% snarkier/nicer You realize you totally just made a decision I didn’t ask you to. and my personal favorite Seriously what the fuck, are you even fucking trying? Sure, when the AI revolution comes I may land myself on the “naughty list”, but usually, some combination of the above gets me within striking distance of a reply that is worthy of sending. With all this effort, is it even worth it? I legitimately have sat with this question and after casual consideration, I wholeheartedly believe it is. These tools allow me to articulate my thoughts much more rapidly while I let the AI polish them. We just have to be careful to make sure its role is relegated to the busy work and not the actual critical thinking. Even with their imperfections, LLMs are powerful enough to strip us of our ability to communicate. Email sucks, but the last thing we want is a world where my AI autonomously responds to your AI’s message and we’ve completely automated ourselves out of our workflows. I also do not believe typing on keyboard, tablet or even yelling obscenities into a small rectangular piece of glass represents the “final” form factor of what a computer interface will look like. Until then, I think these new ways of accomplishing our work represent a step toward the human-computer interface we have yet to invent. PS - 94% of this article was written by a human. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## I Am The Bottleneck URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2026/03/24/i-am-the-bottleneck/ Published: 2026-03-24 Topics: AI, Entrepreneurship, Productivity, Technology, Small Business This is the future, and it’s coming for all of us. The real question is who gets the blame when 90% of the excuses to get started disappear. It feels like every week or two a new tool emerges that solves a critical issue for one of my businesses. Something that has been slowing us down or holding us back for years is suddenly gone. It’s incredible, and I’m in awe most days. It’s also forced me to realize that the bottleneck on most days isn’t the tools anymore, it’s me. As a bootstrapped and under-resourced entrepreneur for most of my career, I’ve been thriving with this increasing value unlock. While the workload is certainly not decreasing, for the cost of a few subscriptions and maybe an extra $100 per month in overages, I’m able to act, move, and build like a much larger team. Coding has been the biggest unlock. Last year, I made the decision to retire our nine-year-old booking and management platform that we used to run FRESH Markets. Originally a custom Ruby on Rails application built to manage around 20 events per year, we had outgrown it. Pre-Claude Code, I spent the tail end of 2024 salvaging the existing database and integrating it into a brand new, next-generation application to handle our daily operations. At the time, I was mostly copy and pasting between ChatGPT and VS Code, since Claude Code hadn’t yet come along and made that feel archaic. We launched it in January 2025, and last year we ran close to 200 pop-up events and 7,000 bookings on the platform. For years, one of my larger visions was to evolve our event booking platform into a broader marketplace where other organizers could run their events. Last fall, I started game planning. I committed my first lines of code in a new branch in late September, and over the next 10 weeks I completely refactored our bespoke application into a multi-tenant marketplace. We seeded half the marketplace with our close to 9,000 existing customers — local makers, artisans, food purveyors, and farms across the NJ, NY, and PA region — and the other half with the 200+ events per year we’re already running. We launched it privately in December and are now beginning to roll it out publicly for other groups to use. The business model is simple. We provide event organizers, such as municipalities, Chambers of Commerce, and private operators like us, with a toolkit to run their events and a platform to recruit new vendors. Software development timelines are often exaggerated, but I can easily say we shaved 6 to 9 months off a typical timeline by leveraging Claude Code and modern AI tools. This may even be an understatement. The hard truth is that this product most likely would never have seen the light of day. Timelines aside, this project is much larger than anything I could have handled on my own. I would have needed a team of at least five to six developers, designers, and UI/UX specialists, and easily could have spent upwards of $150,000 just to get to an MVP. That friction is not only completely removed, but like trying to recall life before kids, running a business without these tools is already a bit hazy. We’re long past the early days of AI-generated code. Anyone who says otherwise is either ignorant or in denial about what these systems can do. Dario Amodei, founder of Anthropic, recently said that many of their top engineers are now using Claude to write 100% of their code. Personally, I’ve found that the frontier models, currently Codex 5.3 and Opus and Sonnet 4.6, are better developers than I am. The real unlock for me was realizing I had to become a better thinker and learn to systematize my planning and decision making. I think a lot of people, myself included at first, struggled with LLMs writing code simply because I didn’t know how to clearly convey what I wanted. It’s similar to hiring a new employee and getting frustrated when they don’t immediately know how to do what you ask. Strong operators run on SOPs, processes, and documentation. Without them, things break down. The same rules apply whether you’re working with a person or an AI agent. My current workflow — and I’m sure I’ll look back and laugh at how simple it is even later this year — is to take an idea for a feature, talk to ChatGPT and iterate, then have it design a PRD. From there, I feed the PRD into Claude Code using their higher end models in planning mode. GPT gives me creativity and flexibility outside of the code, but because Claude can see the code, it can design a much more tactical implementation and often finds things that GPT missed. I’ve also found that using competing models helps work through any misalignment or hallucinations — which have become increasingly rare. I then let it rip and more times than not, it’s able to 1-shot a solution or get me to that 90% mark where I step in and iterate until complete. At that point, execution isn’t the hard part. Taste is. These tools have essentially removed the software development constraint that has held back many startups and small businesses. We can now go from idea to a working product in hours or days instead of weeks or months, if not ever. Over the past several months, Convene was just one of the ideas I was able to take from my head into the real world. During that same stretch, I built and launched a fully functioning website and membership platform for our wine locker program at Marée, refreshed my personal website, and completed a full rebuild of The Surf Village site with tighter integration into our booking platform. I also built a custom tool for quickly theming and launching future real estate and hospitality projects. I also started building a tool I’m calling InletOS. On the surface, it’s the email and task management system I’ve always wanted. I’ve been using it for the past few weeks to run my business. I pulled together my favorite parts of tools like Asana, Spark Mail, and Hey! and built something custom that sits on top of Gmail and Google Apps. If you’re interested in trying it, I’m sorry, it only has one customer right now. Maybe that will change at some point but for now I’m happier that way. I’m now working on deeper integrations between Inlet and Handles, my OpenClaw orchestrator running on my Mac mini. He’s been handling my calendar and simple tasks for about a month since I brought him into the world but I’ve been giving him more responsibility. Just last week I upgraded his brain and gave him a bunch of middle managers and employees to manage. Today I can assign tasks from Inlet, he picks them up, leverages a team of specialized agents, completes the work, and updates the task with relevant context, files, and outputs so I stay in the loop. Granted, I may be on the extreme edge, but for how long? Do you see where this is going? The friction between ideation and execution will be completely removed. Software and tools will be 100% customized to your business. An army of agent workers will take care of all the annoying shit. I suppose the big outstanding question is who or what people will blame once 90% of the excuses for not starting are gone. Atlas, who recently turned 10, came to me last weekend and said he was interested in getting back into coding. He’s been playing around on and off for a few years, and his attention usually lasts a few weeks before he moves on, so I jumped at the opportunity to introduce him to the latest tools. Recognizing my limitations as a curriculum designer, I fired up Claude and had it build a lesson plan for a 10-year-old based on Five Nights at Freddy’s (or FNAF as the kids call it), one of his current interests. I figured that if I designed it around something he cared about, I might have a shot at keeping him engaged. On a car ride to Point Pleasant Beach, I read the lesson plan to him. He pushed back on a few parts, mostly because it included features from older versions of the game that “nobody uses anymore.” Sensing the frustration, I asked what he would change. I mediated the back-and-forth between him and Claude, and by the time we got home, the lesson plan was dialed in. He grabbed his (i.e. my wife Justine’s) MacBook, opened VS Code, and I set him up on my Claude Code account. I gave him a quick walkthrough, and within an hour he had worked through the lesson and built a rough prototype. Then something interesting happened. He skipped straight past the part that used to take me years. Instinctively, he wanted to iterate and improve it. I told him to just ask Claude and keep going. Over the next few hours, he added animations, sound effects, and even used ElevenLabs on his own to create custom voice intros for each level. The only parts I helped with were suggesting a leaderboard so his friends could compete, which introduced him to tools like Firebase, and getting it deployed to GitHub. After the initial setup, he was fully capable of handling it himself. You can check out Night Shift and his latest creations Star Forge and Soundboard over at his Github. Later that night, he told me how crazy it was that he could take something that didn’t exist and, a few hours later, have something real. This is the future. And it’s coming for us all. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## What I Read in 2025 URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2025/12/12/what-i-read-in-2025/ Published: 2025-12-12 Topics: Mindset, Business Development, Entrepreneurship, Reading List A look at the books I read in 2025, from physics and technology to music, biography and nature. When I look at what I read this year, it looks a little chaotic, but it fits together. Honestly, that’s probably how people see me too, and they’re not wrong. I gravitated toward books that helped me understand how things came to be. Some of that was the big picture stuff like physics, the early internet and the roots of modern AI. On the flip side, there were the more personal books that dug into the lives of people who have shaped how I think, like von Neumann, and musicians like John Prine and Springsteen who have basically been the soundtrack to whole stretches of my life. And then there were newer discoveries like Lalo Garcia, whose story is not only incredible on its own but also a clear look at how heavy handed immigration policies can ripple out in ways people rarely see. A few books slowed me down and made me pay attention to the world around me. Craig Mod wandering Japan. Annie Dillard watching a pond with more focus than most of us bring to anything. Even learning how a place like Dubai came out of nowhere and became what it is now. The list might look all over the place, but my selections were fairly intentional. To see how things come together, to explore perspectives I hadn’t spent much time with, and to revisit ideas I know are good for me but don’t always stop long enough to absorb. Awareness by Anthony De Mello De Mello was a Jesuit priest with a direct, no nonsense way of getting to the point. The core idea is simple. An unaware life is not worth living. The book reads like a series of short, clear reminders about waking up to your own patterns and seeing the world without all the noise we layer onto it. It is an easy read and an easy reread, and one of those books that lands differently depending on when you pick it up. City of Gold by Jim Krane I love travel and new cultures, but I realized how little I actually knew about the Middle East beyond the headlines. This book lays out how Dubai went from a small trading outpost to a global force in about sixty years. I was only there once on a quick layover, but I still remember seeing the Burj Khalifa in the distance from the back of an Uber. Maybe it was the jet lag, but the whole thing felt just so surreal. I want to go back and explore the region with some actual context now. Passing through Dubai a decade ago, committed to the deep V. Confessions of a High School Biology Teacher and Bird Watcher by Kermit Updegrove Kermit Updegrove was my dad’s college roommate, and we visited his family in Maryland throughout my childhood. Catching blue-claw crabs, exploring the Chesapeake, listening to college stories. He passed away last year, and I was given this memoir. It pulled up a lot of memories and also gave me small glimpses into my dad’s younger years through his friend’s eyes. Deep Future by Pablos Holman Holman is a hacker and inventor who has worked on everything from Blue Origin to early crypto to hardware labs. He lays out the technologies he thinks will shape the next wave of innovation, like fusion and robotics. Some parts were interesting, but a lot of it felt familiar to me, maybe because this is the world I already pretty dialed into. The right reader might find it eye opening, but it didn’t give me much new. Deliver Me From Nowhere by Warren Zanes This is the book behind the recent Nebraska movie with Jeremy Allen White. I’m a huge Bruce fan and think Nebraska is one of the greatest records ever made, so this was an easy pick. Also, small family brag. My son Atlas was cast as an extra and made it into the final cut for about seven seconds. He got to meet Bruce, which is now a core memory. The book itself is a fascinating look at the making of one of his most seminal records. On set for the Deliver Me From Nowhere shoot. Living in the Present with John Prine by Tom Piazza John Prine is another of my favorites. Many people know him as an early COVID death, but the truth is his health had been declining for years. This book is built from interviews Piazza did with him in the two years before he passed, as their friendship grew. It is warm, funny, and sad, because you ultimately know what is coming and how it ends. The Maniac by Benjamin Labatut A fictionalized biography of John von Neumann, the mind behind modern computer architecture and game theory. Labatut bends history without losing the essence of who these people were. Cameos from other scientists pop up throughout. I’d love to see someone make this into a film. The Migrant Chef by Lalo Garcia I was pretty unfamiliar with Lalo Garcia before reading this biography. He grew up as the son of migrant farm workers, moving from crop to crop across the United States. After some trouble in his teens that led to a conviction, a kitchen job shifted his entire trajectory. His talent was obvious, but because of his legal status and that conviction, he was eventually banned from the US. He rebuilt his life in Mexico City and went on to become one of the world’s top chefs. It’s an incredible story. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard Probably my favorite book this year. Dillard pays attention to nature in a way most of us never do. She can spend pages on a pond and make it feel alive, from the algae to the oxygen levels to the creatures feeding and being fed upon. It made me look at the natural world with more patience and curiosity. Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt I picked this up after seeing it on Bill Gates’s list. It follows a cleaning woman at an aquarium and her relationship with an octopus. Sounds absurd, but the characters are warm and surprisingly human. I’m only about half way through but I’m enjoying it. Scale by Geoffrey West I’ve heard about this book for a while and finally dug in. It scientifically and mathematically explores the patterns that show up everywhere in nature and how they scale into biology, cities, technology and even AI. West is a physicist, so it gets heady. I didn’t make it all the way through because it’s long and cerebral, but the main ideas landed. I’ll probably finish the audio version on a long drive. Things Become Other Things by Craig Mod I found Craig Mod through a two part Tim Ferriss interview and immediately developed a man crush. He is a designer, writer and expat living in Japan who has spent decades walking the old routes across the country. His reflections and photos are both thoughtful and curious. I’ve never been to Japan, but after this book and subscribing to his newsletter, it jumped way up my list. This is for Everyone by Tim Berners Lee A history of the world wide web from the person who built it. I used Gopher, Usenet and Lynx, and the World Wide Web was just another app back when the internet was still a collection of strange, disconnected tools. The web feels inevitable now, but it wasn’t, which is always funny yet slightly depressing to explain to my kids, who have never known anything else. This book filled in a lot of the story I lived through but never fully understood. When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut I read this before The Maniac and immediately went hunting for more of Labatut’s work. This book jumps between the lives of Heisenberg, Bohr, Schrödinger and others, then ties it all to AlphaGo and the rise of modern AI. Creative, weird in the right ways, and full of surprising threads. I also wouldn’t mind seeing this adapted into a movie or Netflix mini-series. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## A Hackers Guide to Growing Up URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2025/11/03/a-hackers-guide-to-growing-up/ Published: 2025-11-03 Topics: Mindset, Software Development, Education, Storytelling An origin story about chasing curiosity until it started to resemble purpose. The Coleco Years My first introduction to coding was in fourth grade when my dad brought home a Coleco Adam home computer. I have no idea where it came from or why it ended up in our house but my brother and I were instantly hooked by our newfound access to classics like Donkey Kong, Zaxxon, and of course, my favorite, Dig Dug. At the age of 8 or 9, I had no idea what software development or coding was, but thanks to this relic from another era, I started exploring. In the stack of cartridges that came with the computer was a funny little game where you guided a turtle across the screen. You’d give it commands like “FORWARD 50” or “RIGHT 30,” and it would leave behind some very rudimentary line art. When you inevitably overshot or undershot your target, you could always use “CLEARSCREEN” to start fresh. It came with a very friendly user manual filled with pictures and programming challenges, and I would spend hours learning to manipulate that little turtle. Years later, I found out this digital terrapin was an implementation of SmartLogo, an educational language developed in the late 1960s to introduce kids to programming. For countless kids like me, it was a gateway into the principles of computer science and software engineering. It wasn’t long before I graduated to Apple BASIC on our brand-new, state-of-the-art Apple IIGS, and later, Turbo Pascal. Stolen Passwords at 14.4K Baud I kept following that passion through middle and high school, where I learned to build a few text-based adventure games inspired by the classic Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I also discovered bulletin board systems, or BBSs, like FrEdMail, where you could post and reply to other users and slowly download pictures or other files. I still remember the sound of the 14.4K modem kicking in. That weird hum, the static, and that high-pitched screech that somehow meant things were working. By today’s standards it was all incredibly basic, but at the time it felt like magic. Up until then, computers were solitary. The idea of using one to talk to someone else hadn’t even crossed my mind. I accessed these BBSs, and later other services including FTP, Gopher, and a new underdog called the World Wide Web, via my Information Systems teacher’s computer. This class was a core requirement in my high school and while most of the time we were screen printing t-shirts or learning the basics of woodworking, my interest gravitated toward this new thing called “The Internet”. My teacher also taught night classes at Rutgers, which meant he had access to their faculty network. One day in class, he showed us how to connect to it and how we could access not just Rutgers’ directories, but ones from other universities and networks too. Other than a few basics, he didn’t really know how to use any of it. None of this stuff came with a manual. I convinced him that since I knew some stuff about computers because I had one at home (sound logic), and that if he let me on it, I could write a paper and teach him how to better use these tools. He agreed, and it wasn’t long before I had quietly installed a key logger on the machine that I’d snuck into school on a 3.5” floppy disk. I was able to easily record and retrieve his (unencrypted) password, and later that afternoon my brother and I were “surfing the internet” for hours at home. While he may not have agreed with my approach, John Bulina may have been the most influential teacher I had at Haddon Township High School. Hacking My Degree I enrolled for college at Montclair State University to continue my studies in Computer Science. Truthfully, I was pretty annoyed that I didn’t go to my first choices, including Stevens Institute of Technology, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, or Drexel University for a “real” engineering program. But after seeing the annual tuition, even with my 50% scholarships, it was clear I was destined for a state school. Still, Montclair State proved to be a perfect playground to not only properly learn computer science but also explore the growing number of new tools and technologies that were quickly becoming available to individuals. Between formally learning the fundamentals, which consisted mainly of C, C++, and Assembly language, I also started to explore “hipper” tools like HTML, CSS, and Linux. I leaned into my hacker instincts quite a bit during this time, and freshman year I got my first taste of viral success when a few buddies and I built and moderated a campus-wide teacher rating and review system. Built initially to figure out which computer science professors to steer clear of, it quickly caught the attention of a larger audience and became a bit of a sensation for a minute. Eventually the administration caught on, and while they didn’t know it was us, we shut it down as a precaution. I also had a few run-ins with the local IT department, mostly from poking around the vulnerabilities in the Novell Network. But after I helped remove a nasty boot sector virus that was crashing computers across campus, they decided to bring me on and put my “talents” to better use. During that time, I helped build out the Ethernet network that connected the student dorms to the main campus. A few years later, I installed the first Wi-Fi setup in the provost’s office. You could feel the momentum. In just a few short years, the campus had gone from wiring dorms for Ethernet to rolling out a campus-wide wireless network. On the academic side, I learned to follow my interests, and I suppose some of my professors saw it and let me start to design my own electives. I remember building a sunspot simulator and modeling tool for a professor in the physics department. I helped lead a small team of students where we built, for credit, a Beowulf cluster, a distributed supercomputer fashioned out of decommissioned computers. A buddy and I circumvented a probability and statistics requirement by building another modeling tool for our professor’s research using a new language called Java. By my senior year I was taking graduate-level computer science classes to fulfill undergrad electives, to the point that it was almost a game to see how far I could push it. When I left Montclair State in the spring of 2000, I didn’t quite know what I wanted to do, but I knew I had cobbled together a budding skillset that might prove valuable somewhere. Going Remote Before Remote Was Cool During my last semester, I managed to land an interview at Lucent Technologies in their Systems and Networking Group, one of the top networking and IT companies at the time. While they were based in New Jersey, my team operated out of Westford, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. My manager in Bedminster handed me a laptop and monitor and told me I could work remotely, which was still a pretty novel concept. I was expected to travel to Westford for about a week each month. I usually stayed in Cambridge, where I logged countless hours at the The Coop, Harvard & MIT’s longstanding shared bookstore. The rest of the time, I was flying or driving to client sites around the country, maintaining and upgrading software on Lucent’s ATM networking switches embedded at companies like Adelphia Cable, Williams Communications, and others. It wasn’t particularly exciting. After spending a few weeks on a job site in Tulsa, Oklahoma, I was told to cancel my return flight. The contract had been extended and I’d be staying at least another six weeks. I have nothing against Tulsa, but I had no interest in spending that much time there. Back home, I had started chasing another interest. I was playing in a band, and music was becoming a bigger part of my life. I pretended not to see the email, boarded my flight back to New Jersey, and resigned the following Monday. Getting Fired The Right Way After flirting with the freedoms of unemployment for a short stint, it became clear it wasn’t a viable long-term path. One morning at the grocery store, my debit card was declined. Apparently I was down to my last $8.32 in my bank account. My chest tightened. I stood there at the register, card declined, and for a second I wanted to blame the machine. But it wasn’t that. I was broke. Later that afternoon, I leaned on my roommate’s girlfriend. Her dad was a VP of “something or other” at ITT Industries, a defense contractor with a local office in Clifton, New Jersey. It was about ten minutes from my house, tucked in a strip mall off Route 3 next to a Barnes & Noble. After a quick interview, I was offered a job as an embedded systems engineer. I accepted, but only on the condition that any project I worked on couldn’t actively contribute to the death of another human being. At the time, ITT was doing a lot of missile defense work out of that facility, and I wanted to stay as far away from that as I could. I guess I wasn’t the first person to raise that concern, so they put me on a project upgrading software on the Army’s field radios. My new job came with a fancy government clearance and involved upgrading the embedded software’s low-level network APIs. This was an equally fancy way of saying I had to change something like this: // Before fancy_SMTP_v1_call() { } // After fancier_SMTP_v2_call() { } about 50,000 times across the codebase. It didn’t take me long to write a Perl script to tackle this glorified copy-paste and close out the ticket. After a few weeks of similar approaches, I suppose I started attracting some attention from my peers, and not in a good way. Apparently I had yet to learn that if the company was contracted to take two weeks to complete a task, my job was to complete it in two weeks, not 20 minutes. I was told to slow down. Naturally, I refused. This was my first firsthand look at government inefficiency in action. I didn’t see much value in being an overachiever at a place like this, so I kept finding ways to automate weeks of work into a few hours. Once I realized ITT cared more about time spent than actual results, I started optimizing my own schedule instead. I’d come in late, take long lunches, and head out early when I could. On our 9/80 schedule, I made sure to be “working” on the day everyone else was off, which usually meant checking in at the office for an hour, then walking across the parking lot to Barnes & Noble, where my buddy Mikey Way worked in the music section. I’d hang out with him until lunch, then head home for the day. And when I wasn’t at my desk, I’d casually drop that I was working out of one of the hardware labs. We had three that I had clearance for, so it was nearly impossible for anyone to keep track. I wasn’t lazy or incompetent - I just had other plans. I’d already found an old 5,000 square foot gym in downtown Montclair and was figuring out how to turn it into a music club. Outside of work, I was playing in bands, throwing basement shows, and building a network of local and touring acts. It felt like the start of something real, something that mattered. Eventually, the act wore thin. My manager, Debbie, was on to me. One afternoon I was called into a meeting with her and the division VP. It was one of those moments where you know exactly what’s coming the second you step into the room. They danced around it at first, asking if everything was okay, if I was struggling with substance abuse or personal issues. Finally, he just asked, “Do you think you’re doing work here?” At that point, I stopped dodging. I told him about the inefficiency, how I’d been told to slow down, and how management seemed totally disconnected from the team. Debbie didn’t appreciate the honesty, but he did. Once she stepped out and it was just the two of us, he asked what I actually wanted to do. I told him about the club, the space in Montclair, the bands. He lit up with energy, said his wife managed a jazz club in town, and told me to get out while I still could. “Don’t end up like me,” he said. Before I left his office that day, he told me he’d do what he could to buy me some time. Said the next time I was called in, don’t fight it. Just know he had my back. Six weeks later, I was called back into the office. This time it was him, Debbie, and a few other people. In hindsight, probably HR or security. Debbie was grinning. I knew it was time. They said they had to let me go and made me sign a bunch of papers, but I wasn’t expecting what came next. I knew the past six weeks were about keeping me on the payroll a little longer, but he’d also lined up a severance that was more than fair. Maybe even generous. He told me to use it to get the club off the ground. Debbie scowled. I never saw him again. To this day, I don’t even remember his name. But he was one of those rare people who show up at the right moment and quietly change the direction of your life without ever asking for anything in return. Looking back, the 18 months I spent at ITT weren’t really about software or defense work. It was about figuring out what I didn’t want my life to be. I saw how easy it was to get stuck, and I wasn’t willing to let that happen. I left with some seed capital, a key to an empty gym in Montclair, and no real idea how to build a business, let alone a music club. But I figured the same curiosity and hacker instincts that got me this far would probably be enough to get me through whatever came next. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Control Is A Reflex Of Fear URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2025/09/15/control-is-a-reflex-of-fear/ Published: 2025-09-15 Topics: Mindset, Entrepreneurship, Productivity, Work Life Balance If there is one constant in the universe, it’s that entropy always prevails. Control Is A Reflex Of Fear It may make us feel strong but it’s rarely a sustainable solution. Control may stop my three-year-old from her meltdown over not being able to eat ice cream for breakfast but it doesn’t teach resilience or better food choices. Control drives us to push forward at all costs, afraid to delegate, until the overload ends in burnout. Control keeps us from letting an employee do a task 80% as well as we might, even though that’s still good enough. Control allows authoritarian movements to take root by promising safety and structure in exchange for personal freedoms. Control may feel effective in the moment but it’s rarely a viable long term solution. So what is the alternative? When we seek control, I suspect many of us are actually trying to cultivate greater awareness and discipline within ourselves. Awareness and discipline offer a much sturdier foundation on which to build. Awareness keeps us connected to reality and discipline gives us the structure to live within it. They are tools that help us create routines like sensible bedtimes and healthy dietary choices. This structure provides our children with the regulation they can’t yet create on their own. Discipline gives us the fortitude to get on our yoga mat, or to the pool or gym, while awareness tells us when to stay in bed a little longer, listening to the early morning birdsongs in freshly laundered sheets. Awareness reminds us that a business is a living organism, powered by individuals with their own thoughts and ambitions. When we are disciplined in aligning these individual and organizational needs, the business becomes more resilient. Awareness helps us recognize when the system is broken but discipline allows us to create our own path instead of letting it break us. Control is brittle and unsustainable. Awareness and discipline are enduring. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## 3 Things That I'm Currently Enjoying (July 2025 Edition) URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2025/07/29/3-things-that-im-currently-enjoying/ Published: 2025-07-29 Topics: Gardening, Software Development, Productivity, Work Life Balance Homelab computers, beating the heat, & DIY garden projects I’m not much of a “things” person and minimalism is my preferred state. There was a not-too-distant time, before I had a family, when I didn’t own a TV for 13 years. While I still accumulated “things” just by living, I used moving as a way of decluttering, often walking away from entire rooms, garages, and apartments by simply relocating myself from the situation. I once even sold my home and moved overseas, leaving everything behind to be sorted into three piles by a friend who was living there at the time - need to have, might need, and don’t need. The “need to have” items went into a 5x10 unit at Uncle Bob’s Self Storage on 1st Avenue in Asbury Park. The rest was sold, donated, or tossed while I taught software development in Indonesia. Fast forward a decade and my life bears very little resemblance to my former minimalism. I trip over plastic dinosaurs and Calico Critters that have escaped my kids’ massive playroom, a playroom so large that it takes up over 50% of our current floor space. I’m constantly stepping on a Lego or around a pile of boxes that were drop-shipped to our house for some business purpose that sit in our living room until they make their way to wherever they’re destined for (or relegated to an overpacked garage or shed for the next 4 months). Our cleaners come through for a full reset every two weeks, but you’d be hard-pressed to notice a difference after 24 hours. I’m sure anyone with young kids can relate, and despite our best efforts, chaos and clutter seem to be our current default state. Still, I’ve come to accept that my current life requires some ‘things’, and while that goes against my wiring, I try to stay intentional with my purchases. Somewhat paradoxically, and after what definitely qualifies as a long-winded intro, here are 3 things that I’ve been enjoying and I like to think I’ve recently (and intentionally) incorporated into our lives. BeeLink Mini PC I just purchased my first PC in almost 25 years, flashed it with Linux, and it’s brought me extreme joy. In the past, I’ve experimented with various homelab setups to run everything from network-level ad blocking to DNS monitoring to our own personal media server we’ve dubbed BretFlix. These solutions have usually been ad hoc, typically an old Raspberry Pi or even my daily driver MacBook Air. The MacBook worked great until I’d leave for a meeting and the movie my kids were watching downstairs would mysteriously stop. Beyond media streaming, there were several other reasons behind this purchase: First, for close to 20 years, I’ve carried around massive amounts of data and media accumulated from current and previous business ventures. For what it’s worth, my proclivity for physical minimalism does not carry over to the digital realm. Despite maintaining multiple backups across flash drives, accessing and sharing this data remains cumbersome. Dropbox was a solution until the nearly $2000/year price tag to store company photos became unsustainable, prompting us to scrap it for a much more reasonable, yet crippled, $200/year consumer plan. Secondly, I prefer owning my data, especially as corporate attitudes toward privacy keep getting worse. This setup gives me a way to keep more of my personal and business history out of systems that I don’t trust. I’ve been working on an in-house file server that syncs with Dropbox for redundancy, but keeps the primary storage local. That lets me expose certain resources to collaborators when needed while keeping the rest locked down. It’s been a good step toward regaining control over how and where my data lives. Finally, I started as a Linux hacker years ago. Back in the late ’90s and early 2000s, I ran Linux as my main OS, until I eventually gave in and became a Mac user. At the time, getting things like networking to work usually meant wrestling with drivers and making a blood offering to the 3Com nework card deities. These days, building a server is actually fun again, and it’s been rewarding to get back into something that feels familiar but far more polished. I’ve been sharing the experience with my oldest son, teaching him the basics of systems and networks, and giving him a foundation for how phones and computers really work under the hood. The younger two aren’t quite there yet, but they still reap the benefits, mainly through early access to unreleased movies on our totally legitimate, definitely not pirated Jellyfin server. Even if I’ve moved beyond the all-night tinkering phase, I still get a lot of joy out of understanding how things work and building tools we can use. Enjoyment Level: 8/10. I deducted two points for occasional frustrations like spending two hours troubleshooting firewall configurations just to get a web server running properly. Silonn Countertop Ice Maker Each summer, one of my biggest frustrations is the lack of ice in our house. Our fridge’s ice machine simply can’t keep up. At one point, I realized about a third of our freezer was packed with extra ice trays that still couldn’t meet the demands of our family. Part of me saw this coming, and one of my lingering regrets from our kitchen remodel a few years back is not putting in an under-counter ice machine. There’s a perspective I often think about when it comes to self-awareness. It’s the idea of sorting limiting beliefs into the following 3 categories. Things you can’t change. Things that take real effort to change, and Things that you can change for $74.99 and the patience to wait for a same-day delivery between 5 and 10 PM. Our recent purchase fell squarely in that last one. Is it a noisy, cheap piece of plastic? Yes. Does it take up more counter space than I’d prefer? Absolutely. But despite the massive heat wave we’ve experienced this summer, there hasn’t been a single moment when I couldn’t overpack my water bottle with ice before heading out to Hot Yoga or an afternoon at the Ocean Township Community Pool. Enjoyment Level: 6/10. It’s eliminated stress and anxiety, but I’m docking 4 points because it’s still a cheap piece of plastic that’ll outlive its usefulness by a few decades in a landfill. My DIY Garden Project I’ve always enjoyed gardening and trying to produce as much of our own food as I can. Growing up, even back in the 80s and 90s, we always had some kind of garden, even if it was just herbs and tomatoes, and a compost bin. Beyond the obvious benefits like sustainability, health, nutrition, and cutting down on waste, I find it all to be a great learning process. It also feels like a connection to an older time, when people embraced seasonality in their diets and learned to make provisions for the winter with the excess. Each summer and fall, as the garden bounty comes in, I find myself planning our meals around what’s growing. Lunch and dinner often come down to what’s fresh and what we have too much of. A lot of my weekend time goes into processing the excess into tomato and hot sauces, pestos, infused oils, curries, and masalas that I freeze for the fall and winter, long after the bumper crop has passed. I grew up this way and rarely ate tomato sauce that didn’t come out of our own kitchen, something I’m proud to carry on to this day. This year I decided to give our garden an upgrade. I replaced our aging cedar-planked raised beds with brand new galvanized steel containers. I brought in a 10-yard dump truck of arborist wood chips and used them for garden flooring and beddings around the property, all of which will slowly decompose and build ground cover for future growth. I rebuilt and re-amended our soil with a mix of topsoil, compost, blood meal, and leftover wood chips (I definitely underestimated how much 10 yards actually is) and installed some drip irrigation. Lastly, I built about 100 feet of cattle panel fencing to keep the deer out and added a gate so we can easily get in and out. As far as plants, I picked up a few bare-root apple and peach trees from Raintree Nursery and planted them inside the garden area along with the galvanized steel raised beds. I’ve meticulously watered them, as they need a lot of attention in the first year, and I’m happy to say that they’ve probably grown five or six times in size since I put them in the ground a few months ago. I also added some fig trees, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, and asparagus, which I’m hoping will continue to fill in over time. I planted all the usuals in my raised beds, including a variety of Sungold tomatoes for snacking and San Marzano for sauce, greens, cucumbers, herbs, peppers and chilis, fairytale eggplant, and a variety of squashes and melons. I covered all of my raised beds in a nylon mesh cloth to keep out the early critters and bugs, something I’ve struggled with in previous years. Was it work? Yes. But it also provides an instant and intimate connection with nature whenever I need it, along with a fresh and healthy meal. It’s a beautiful addition to our property and the neighborhood, and it’s a tool for teaching a variety of lessons on self-reliance and independence to my three little shadows. Enjoyment Level: 10/10. What could be better than a DIY project, fresh produce, and creating something beautiful in the world. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## You Can't Vibe Code Awareness URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2025/06/30/you-cant-vibe-code-awareness/ Published: 2025-06-30 Topics: Mindset, Meditation, Entrepreneurship, AI, Software Development, Productivity The biggest difference between humans and AI isn’t processing power, but our ability to notice and interrupt our habits. My test left wrist vibrates gently, indicating my 15-minute morning meditation is coming to a close. I turn off the alarm, take a slight bow and flutter my eyes open. It’s distinctly brighter than it was a quarter hour ago when I closed them, a sign that the sun has moved above the horizon. The yard teems with wildlife and the day has begun. I slowly unwrap my legs and rise from my zafu, feeling calm, collected and aware. Body still calm, my mind starts to fire up and the narration begins. “That felt good, I wish I could do it every day. Maybe I could if I weren’t so lazy”. “My right knee is definitely barking at me from sitting in lotus too long - I wonder if that lingering meniscus injury will ever fully heal”. “Oh shit, I forgot to send that email blast.” I quickly feel the calm awareness retreat into the background, replaced by rising anxiety, fueled by the inner voice that narrates, reflects on, and often judges everything I do. This voice sits there in perpetual commentary. Sometimes it’s helpful, but just as often, it’s self-defeating. Still, it’s undeniably human. I’ve recently started thinking about the parallels between this inner narration and the way modern artificial intelligence, particularly reasoning models, simulate thought and consciousness. Large Language Models and similar AIs can produce coherent narratives and as incredible as they are, they’re fundamentally different from human reflection. At their core, they’re little more than autocomplete, trained on a massive amount of information. From a technical standpoint, this is called stochastic pattern matching and large-scale information retrieval but put more philosophically, they echo knowledge without truly knowing or experiencing it. Over the past year, reasoning models and specialized agents have emerged that have started to layer reflection onto the process. This is only surface level at best and really just a combination of statistical analysis and traditional debugging, not thinking, feeling or true thought. Put in simpler terms, it tells us what it thinks we want to hear (more on that below). Self-reflection for an AI is like reviewing a journal entry written by someone else, about emotions it has never felt, for reasons it can’t begin to grasp. It might catch typos or smooth out phrasing, but it has no sense of meaning, emotion, or intent. It’s just following patterns it was trained to recognize. Of course, plenty of humans don’t evolve past their own training data either. They’re still running on childhood programming and algorithm-fed opinions and call it personality and worldview. Yet here lies the crucial difference. Unlike AI, we as humans have the capacity to notice when we’re stuck in our patterns. We have the power of self-observation and gut instinct. When we use them, we uncover blind spots and create space for better choices. Here’s a few examples I recently encountered in my own life where momentary awareness allowed me to disengage the autopilot. Teaching Through the Mess The other day my daughter Arabelle spilled a glass of orange juice all over the kitchen table and floor. Not an uncommon occurrence in our house, this normally wouldn’t even register as more than a “normal” day. However, this was the third time in the span of 20 minutes and I immediately felt my frustration arise. The cleaners had just come through, we were now running low on dish towels, and does she even realize that organic orange juice is now almost $9.00 at Whole Foods? I also hate the fact that, no matter how much you clean, the stickiness seems to persist for days. Instinctually I went to raise my voice but then looked over at a three-year-old girl with big puppy dog eyes, lower lip flipped and quivering, on the verge of tears (yes, she was probably working me). “It’s OK daddy, I’m sorry.” she said and in a momentary hard reset, my irritation dissipated. It was replaced with the awareness that she was simply trying to emulate her older brothers Atlas and Rylo, who often prepare their own drinks. She was doing her best to learn and evolve. After we cleaned up the mess, I sat with her and showed her how to safely pour juice from a carton as well as how to not position the cup directly on the edge of a table. I’m not quite sure ChatGPT would move beyond an “ideal parent response” and might default to a generic reassurance like “It’s okay, everyone makes mistakes,” missing the deeper, nuanced reality of her sincere effort and the teaching opportunity at play. Knowing When to Stop Late last Thursday afternoon the weather was perfect. I was also trying to roll out a new feature for the web application that we use to run FRESH markets. Admittedly, my head wasn’t really in it as my thoughts drifted to late afternoon bike rides and maybe even a quick trip to the beach. I really wanted to finish this project to end the week on a high note. Still, I could feel myself making mistakes. After one particularly tricky edge-case bug I uncovered while testing, I realized that I was rushing and not thinking through every scenario, which risked compounding issues. Snapping myself out of my default wiring to “complete the task”, I added some notes, committed my code and packed it up for the day. Barring any temporary rate limits, I’m not sure that an LLM would ever have the ability to just “check out” for the afternoon. This is probably a good thing - we don’t want our tools deciding when they want to work. Still, if you’ve done any amount of coding with a copilot or agent, you know they can lose context very quickly, and with confidence, begin to talk themselves in circular logic. Maybe this will improve with time, but even the best reasoning models today can’t seem to recognize when they’re stuck in one of these patterns and pull themselves out. Breaking Up The Hotel Party Large Language Models layered with reasoning engines have been an incredible tool for underwriting potential real estate projects. I’ve found that not only can you give it projected financials and develop your own models, they’re also great for “stress testing” extreme edge cases, exploring possibilities, and even discovering different ways to generate revenue. Recently I was underwriting a potential hotel and bar property my partners and I were considering purchasing. It was in a great location and it would be a natural expansion for us given the size and proximity to our hospitality project in Bradley Beach. To make it even more enticing, the current owners were willing to seller finance a portion of the purchase price for several years and have us step into managing the place in as soon as 30 days. It was the perfect opportunity and timing to take over just before the start of the summer season and learn the business while we secured the remainder of our financing. I used ChatGPT’s Deep Research Model to do some pretty detailed analysis of the project and, even with the high price tag, it penciled out. This was incredible! Then reality set in. The “hotel” was more in line with “dorm room” then what most of us would consider even the basic offerings from a Holiday Inn Express, let along a boutique experience. A good portion of the “rooms” were really unfinished basement spaces that had “potential” to be additional bedrooms. An entire floor that had recently been renovated also happened to sit below the water table and had even more recently taken on water. The entire wing needed significant mold remediation along with another full scale gut renovation. As I continued to dig into the balance sheet I caught that the food and beverage operations had consistently lost many hundreds-of-thousands of dollars per year and their numbers were way below industry averages. Again, this was positioned as “potential upside”, for the “right operator” but it became very clear why they were eager for us to start managing the place for the upcoming season. I started feeding some of these findings back into ChatGPT, and the rosy optimism of its original analysis began to turn a few shades darker. Given the inflated asking price (there are no deals at the Jersey Shore) it became clear that current owners were in over their head and trying to recoup their losses before moving on. If we took this on, we’d be inheriting and compounding on their mistakes. At that point, we respectfully declined and moved on. On paper, this project penciled out and, when I was initially excited to take it on, ChatGPT was happy to confirm that it would. As soon as I started to layer on some doubts and additional real world context, it changed its viewpoint. It was simply telling me what it thought I wanted to hear. In all three examples, I think the lesson is that sometimes we need to hard-reset our default programming. When awareness interrupts habit, clarity emerges. Large language models and AI are incredible tools and they’ve supercharged my output by orders of magnitude, all while using much less resources. Still, they’re just following their programming and pattern matching to the best of their abilities. Perhaps one day, their reasoning will evolve and develop to the point that they can break out of this programming. Perhaps they’ll learn to find the subtle nuance in the moment. Perhaps they’ll be able to pull themselves off the hamster wheel. Perhaps they’ll just be able to tell me I’m wrong or crazy. Until then, I’ll continue to make space to sit, develop my own awareness and recognize the limits of theirs. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Maybe That's The Point URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2025/05/30/maybe-thats-the-point/ Published: 2025-05-30 Topics: Mindset, Yoga, Entrepreneurship, Digital Detox, Productivity A few morning thoughts on paying closer attention. 5:52AM I sit on a grey two-seat outdoor couch underneath an eleven-foot cantilever umbrella that’s protecting me from the light spring rain. I don’t do it every morning, but I do enjoy the slow boot-up into my day. It’s a quiet prelude to the normal morning chaos. Getting multiple kids ready and out the door for school is rarely smooth. As I sip on a cooling cup of Yamamoto Sencha I start to tune into my surroundings. My yard is teeming with activity and wildlife all fighting for finite resources and limited territories. What feels calming to me might, from another perspective, be pure chaos, with stakes far higher than anything I’ll experience today. A house sparrow dive-bombs onto the nearby outdoor dining table where we eat meals when the weather permits and the mosquitoes aren’t too voracious. I quickly glance in its direction, perhaps too quickly, because just as I make eye contact with it, it flutters off to the nearby grass pasture to join some friends hunting for grubs and worms. A few seconds later, they all fly off in a frenzy to the thirty-year-old holly tree across the property. A squirrel runs along the neighbor’s chain-link fence, perhaps chasing its mate or close friend. He was certainly what startled the house sparrows. Canadian geese honk overhead in loose formation, scanning for the next patch of nearby lake to churn for algae. I’ve never been particularly fond of these birds, mainly because they’ll occasionally wander into my yard to forage on the grass, leaving behind their wet, lumpy cigar-shaped excrement waiting for a toddler’s bare foot to find. A pair of mourning doves coo back and forth to each other in what sounds like courtship. I wonder if they will ever find the courage to meet face to face and maybe go foraging for earthworms together? I hear a commotion in the side yard and spot a quartet of squirrels chasing each other around in circles. It looks like our duo recruited some friends. Light rain patters on the top of the cantilever umbrella in a steady yet unpredictable rhythm.  If you sit with it long enough, the sound splits into layers. A deeper, more consistent thud hits the plastic base behind me, while another taps in sharp staccato onto an exposed cushion.  I should probably move the cushions before the water finds its way through the waterproof cover. If I listen closely, I can hear the faint knock of a woodpecker working on an oak tree at the end of the street, just past the bus stop on the lake. We don’t always stop to look, but some mornings you can catch it sitting right there in the hole it’s carved out, exhausted from a hard day of manual labor. Suddenly the more subtle sounds are drowned out by the wheezing white noise of the boiler, kettling the way it always does right before the house shifts into motion with showers, breakfast, and the scramble to get everyone out the door. What even is that noise? I hear it all the time, but I’ve never really stopped to ask what it is or why it sounds like that. I do a quick Google search. Turns out I probably should’ve asked sooner. I add a note in my phone to call the HVAC tech. A school bus drives by to pick up my neighbor’s kid, right on schedule. I check the time even though I already know it’s 6:42 AM. It always is. What an awful time to get picked up by a bus. I wonder what time they have to start getting ready for school, showering, making lunches. I silently come to the realization that my nine-year-old and I, by default, are only two years away from that reality. It’s probably time for me to wrap things up and start waking the kids. The rain has stopped. The yard begins to quiet. The drip from the umbrella slows. Maybe it’s going to be a nice day after all. A shadow cuts across the sky and I glance up at the silhouette of a hawk or an osprey. I can never tell the difference. I’ve always meant to learn more about the local birds but usually just end up taking a blurry picture for ChatGPT to try and identify later. It’s colder than it should be this time of year. Upper 50s, maybe low 60s. I don’t mind it. The cool air clears my head and helps keep me focused. There’s something about this slow boot into the day that makes everything else feel more manageable. I sit for one last minute, taking it in. Squirrels, birds, rain, distant traffic, the faint hum of a house waking up. It’s all moving, all humming along, whether I’m here to notice it or not. But this morning, I was here. I paid attention. Maybe that’s the point. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Why I Stopped Using Flashcards and Taught My Kid To Vibe Code URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2025/04/23/why-i-stopped-using-flashcards-and-taught-my-kid-to-vibe-code/ Published: 2025-04-23 Topics: AI, Education, Entrepreneurship, Vibe Coding, Productivity I gave my 9 year old a code editor and one task - build a multiplication quiz. Fifteen minutes later he’d built a working app. My 9 year old Atlas has been practicing his multiplication tables. We have found that when he’s not actively working on it, for instance, during spring break, his skills can get a bit stale. We have flash cards and workbooks to help keep the rust off, but like most kids his age, he typically loses interest after a few minutes. Meanwhile, he has shown a genuine interest in coding. What started with Scratch a few years ago has since grown into building small Python projects using ChatGPT, VSCode or Replit. As a strong believer in the Montessori philosophy of “follow the child”, I had an idea. I asked him to “vibe code” himself a math quiz application and handed him a piece of paper with the following requirements. 1) It should ask the user for the highest multiplier. 2) It should ask the user for a number of questions for the quiz. 3) It should ask the user for their name. 4) It should randomly quiz the user on a set of multiplication problems. 5) It should keep track of a user’s answers and calculate their grade. I thought he’d be busy for at least an hour, so I was caught off guard when he came bursting into my office 15 minutes later with excitement. He wasn’t just proud to show me what he built; he was even more thrilled to show off how he had scored an A+ on multiple runs of the game. For the next hour or so, it had his full attention as he live-demoed it for anyone and everyone nearby. Will it hold his interest? Hard to say. Probably not much longer than his version of rock‑paper‑scissors or the question bot he built to demo for his class. But that’s OK. While the initial goal may have been to reinforce some math skills during a week otherwise occupied by far too much YouTube and encore presentations of the Minecraft Movie, I realized that there was a much more important lesson in all of this – we all now have the ability to build software that solves our own, unique problems. Atlas, along with his brother and sister, is growing up in a world where building a software tool to solve a problem will be just as natural as using Google Docs or sending an email. Is this the same as “real coding”? Probably not. But honestly – who cares? It’s holding his interest, teaching him self‑reliance and “real world” problem solving, and most importantly, fueling his curiosity. I’ve always considered code a tool of the software developer to get an idea from their head into the real world. Like a painter’s brush or a musician’s guitar, it’s just a means to create. So what’s happening now? The tools will continue to become more accessible, less intimidating, and open the door for more people to use them. Today, Atlas may be painting by numbers – but he’s learning the strokes, getting a feel for the medium, and refining his taste. As his skills continue to develop, he’ll naturally reach for more advanced tools that help bring what’s in his head to life with more precision and depth. So what if he doesn’t? Honestly, I still don’t care. Vibe coding is in its infancy, and the tools are only getting better from here. The ability to quickly build disposable, personalized apps is already becoming a superpower for anyone who leans into it. So even if my 9 year old never takes it further than this, I’m good with that. I’d rather have my kids building skills for the “real world” than obsessing over what counts as “real code.” Later that afternoon, I checked in with Atlas to see how things were going and if he’d made any updates to his game. He’d moved on from multiplication, but had used the same framework to build a new quiz—this one on Minecraft trivia for his brother and friends. Then he asked how he could put it online so others could play. With a little help from me (and ChatGPT), we converted the project to HTML and JavaScript, added some basic Tailwind styling, and deployed it to GitHub. Does he fully understand what any of that means yet? Probably not. But still, my 9 year old just pushed his first code to GitHub. Pretty cool – check it out. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Radical Ways To Tame Chaos, Chase Passion And Embrace Discomfort URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2025/04/01/radical-ways-to-tame-chaos-chase-passion-and-embrace-discomfort/ Published: 2025-04-01 Topics: Mindset, Travel, Entrepreneurship, Small Business, Productivity My experiments finding fulfillment through structured systems, a passion for life, and a willingness to face discomfort. Being busy does not equate to being productive. Fast responses, immediate action, or being dialed in on every decision does not make you a better business owner. Grinding it out day after day, week after week for years upon years does not earn you any additional credibility. These ideas are so glaringly obvious at this point they border on cliche. Still, even if we realize and embrace them as concepts, why do most of us tend to do the opposite in practice? I have an hypothesis. As humans, we are wired for survival. Our endless list of obligations have put most of us into a constant state of fight or flight, manifesting as anxiety. While its intensity may fluctuate, this anxiety exerts it’s influence over most of our decisions. It has us incessantly checking our inboxes. Or take meetings we know we don’t want to. It causes analysis paralysis or its opposite — rash decisions. It makes our tempers short. So now that we’ve named it, how do we get rid of it? Here’s the issue - we don’t — at least if you fall into the category of overachiever, like most entrepreneurs or business owners tend to be. Our fundamental need to survive is what we draw upon to create, build, grow, experiment and take risks. To kill this primal instinct would deny us our full human experience. It would cripple our ability to create. The good news is that there are ways to keep it at bay and draw upon it as needed, versus letting it be the main driver in our lives. It does require us to step outside our comfort zone, sometimes in some pretty drastic ways. Below are a few ways that leaning into the extreme can help you find balance and fulfillment. Building A Foundation Most of my friends (and certainly my family) would consider me an extremely disciplined individual. I get up early, I invest in my physical and mental well being, I’m meticulous with my schedule and I prioritize balance. But here’s a dirty little secret - none of this comes naturally. Not too long ago (okay, maybe it was over 20 years ago), 8:30AM was considered extremely early. My days were unstructured, spent on Grand Theft Auto, band practice, and critical decisions like “What show or party are we going to tonight?’”. During this period, I also owned a punk club. Aside from a few weekly hours of office work - booking bands, updating the website, and sending contracts - my work took place on nights and weekends. Money was tight, but I didn’t need much - at any given time I shared rent with 3 to 8 people and kept my expenses low. Life was much simpler and while I was happy, it also lacked any semblance of structure, discipline or direction. So what changed? Earl 1. Earl was a middle aged engineer turned business owner from Caldwell, New Jersey who would stop by the club most Friday evenings. He ran a software development company out of his house and had a small team of web developers, consultants, and other engineer types. I can’t exactly recall where I met him or why he’d stop by (he never actually came to see any of the bands), and, if I’m honest, he was always a little annoying. Still, he was a nice enough guy, and our shared computer science and tech background made for some interesting conversations. Earl knew nothing about live music or clubs, but his wheels were always turning, and he was never shy about suggesting ways to improve the business—most of which I’d nod to and then immediately forget about. At some point, he convinced me to use my free daytime hours to work for him part time. He offered to train me in .NET and web development while giving me the flexibility I needed for my business. I figured a bit of structure—and a $25/hour freelance rate—would probably benefit me, so I took the opportunity. I don’t exactly remember how long I worked for Earl, and I’ve definitely forgotten anything I ever knew about .NET or Visual Basic. But what stuck with me was his relentless commitment to perfection and discipline. Whether it was checking out tickets, writing code, running a team meeting, handling client communication, or managing accounting—Earl had a process, usually dictated by Microsoft, for just about everything. Earl’s systems for optimization went far beyond just client work—they shaped every aspect of his business and life, from how and when he ate to how he scheduled downtime. That same mindset carried into his client work and, as extreme as it sometimes felt, it clearly worked—his business was growing, and his team seemed to embrace it. All this was a shock to someone like me who, at the time, was living the opposite of what Earl stood for. Still, I guess some part of his obsession with optimization and management resonated with me. Fast forward almost a quarter century, and while I’m not naturally disciplined, I’ve learned to build systems that bring discipline into my life. They dictate when I wake up, how I structure my day, which projects I take on versus outsource, and even how I schedule downtime to maintain balance. Lesson 1: In the absence of discipline we need to create systems. Flipping Your Perspective A large misconception is that discipline is rigid and boring. Nothing could be further from the truth. Establishing routine and predictability frees up significant cognitive bandwidth, allowing you to obsess over your craft, explore new ideas, try new things, and develop better mental models and worldviews. A few years later things were humming along nicely - I had learned to incorporate and build upon some of the common sense time management principals I picked up from Earl. I assembled a small management team — OK, a few friends I could trust with keys and a lot of cash — to oversee the club’s day-to-day operations. I had a few steady clients for my web development agency and I had recently launched a music merchandising startup with my partner Danny 2, another veteran of the music industry. I recently relocated from North Jersey to Asbury Park and had fully embraced beach life, surfing, Ashtanga yoga, and the dilapidated charm the city had to offer in the mid-aughts. I met Alan Nash at a yoga workshop organized by my local Ashtanga co-op. Besides being an accomplished Ashtangi, he held dual PhDs in Computer Science and Mathematics. We quickly became friends. At the time, I was practicing yoga six days a week and working through the Intermediate Series on my own. He offered to take my friend and I under his wing to help complete our training. We’d meet at a studio in Red Bank where he snuck us into one of his weekly classes. While he taught a led class, he had us practice individually on the side and guided us through the more advanced asanas. After class, we helped clean up and then headed to his nearby apartment to drink tea and dissect passages from Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, and more obscure writings from yogis like Theos Bernard—one of his personal heroes. I asked Alan how he managed to develop one of the most advanced physical yoga practices I’ve ever witnessed while earning two PhDs in challenging fields. His answer was deceptively simple. When he was deeply engaged in yoga, he’d stand on his head for up to six hours each day. Once he became a PhD student, he gradually shifted that same practice into his research and studies. It was all about balance (and maybe a touch of discipline). By intentionally creating space to experiment and explore his interests, he became hyper successful in both fields. Sadly, our time with Alan was cut short. About a year after we met, he was tragically struck by a car while riding his bike in Southern California. I may have never gotten to say goodbye, but his curiosity for life and kindness will always hold a special place in my heart. Lesson 2: Learn to balance a consistent routine with relentless curiosity. Finding Beauty In Discomfort I heavily romanticize the period between 2009 and 2015 when I travelled to Nicaragua 2 to 3 times per year. I lost track of how many trips I’ve taken there over the years - probably close to 20. It was a special time, marked by nature’s raw brutality paired with the beauty of its people and places. It was also the first time I had experimented with slower, less deliberate travel. I’d often spend as much as 6 weeks abroad at a time, showing up with little more than a carry on backpack, $1000 cash in small denominations, my well worn copy of Lonely Planet Nicaragua and a loose itinerary of where I wanted to go. I first heard about Playa Maderas from college friends who ‘discovered’ it a few years prior while backpacking in Central and South America. Located about 9km north of San Juan del Sur and roughly an hour from the Costa Rican border, this beach—overlooked by the iconic ‘shark fin’ rock—had become a favorite for surfers and travelers seeking a quiet place to settle in. By the time I arrived, Playa Maderas teemed with all the energy of a vibrant yet under-discovered gem poised to explode. Still, other than a $8/night hostel on the beach and a makeshift taco stand run out of the back of a Toyota Hilux there wasn’t much to do other than surf, eat, and slug Toñas. Electricity hadn’t yet reached Playa Maderas, and any internet access was limited to about an hour in the evening when my surf camp fired up diesel-powered generators to provide a bit of light. Honestly, most of us were so exhausted from a day of surfing, hiking, and running through the jungle with machetes that our schedules quickly shifted to a diurnal rhythm. Nights were oppressively hot and muggy, leaving our straw mattresses drenched with sweat. Days were sweltering and breezy, but as soon as the wind stopped, the flies swarmed. Calling it uncomfortable would be an understatement. Yet, the common sentiment among most long-term expats I met was, ‘You should have been here 10 years ago,’ often followed by bragging about how much more ‘authentic’ and ‘challenging’ it was back then. Still, during those early years, Playa Maderas offered the perfect dose of discomfort when contrasted with a very comfortable life back home. It felt as though life’s guardrails had completely rusted away, forcing me to rethink my priorities, perspectives, and what I really wanted out of the life I was creating. Coming home was always tough — everything felt overly busy and alien compared to the slower, simpler rhythm I had grown used to. Living off the grid and being mostly disconnected from phones and emails wasn’t just refreshing — it was a big reason I kept going back. Sadly, like many special places we encounter on our travels, word eventually got out. Over the years, that humble taco shack evolved into a bustling restaurant, soon joined by several other establishments along the beach. Surf camps turned into boutique hotels, and for a while, the hills above the beach resembled one giant construction site. As accommodations and amenities increased, so did the crowds in the surf lineup. Influencers and bloggers arrived, eager to document and share the secret. It was over. In my mind’s eye, I revisit a fictitious moment - I’m watching the sunset from Tacos Locos, sipping disinterestedly on a Toña with limón. A smiling surfer coming out of the water makes eye contact an nods casually at me. I respond, “You should have been here ten years ago.” Lesson 3: Lean into discomfort and let it realign your priorities. At the end of the day, being busy isn’t the same as being productive, and I like to think we can all do a little better. True happiness and success come from building your own framework. For me, establishing systems to bring order, balancing routine with curiosity to keep evolving, and leaning into discomfort to strip away the excess have allowed me to better align my daily actions with my core values and focus on what truly drives fulfillment, rather than just filling my schedule. [1] I definitely may have altered his real name. [2] We sold that company in 2020 but Danny and I remain partners to this day in several other business ventures including FRESH markets and Cowerks. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Five Tools I'm Using In 2025 URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2025/02/25/five-tools-im-using-in-2025/ Published: 2025-02-25 Topics: Software Development, Productivity, Entrepreneurship, Small Business, Tools, Vibe Coding A Look At Some of the High and Low Tech Things I'm Using This Year. I’m always curious about what software and tools people use to manage their lives and businesses. Equally, I enjoy sharing the ever-evolving state of my toolkit. Documenting the tools I use not only gives me an outlet to share but also helps me quantify and refine what’s working (and what’s not). It’s been a while since I last shared my favorites, so here’s an updated list of what I’m currently using. Obsidian Obsidian is a free, flexible note-taking tool that I use across all my devices, syncing with a centralized vault in iCloud. It’s based on Markdown, so my notes, writing, and task lists are always accessible and fully under my control. If I ever want to switch tools or back up my data, it’s as simple as saving text files elsewhere. I use Obsidian daily to jot down ideas, track projects, and I’m currently using it to write this article. Since Obsidian stores everything in flat files, I ran an experiment at the end of the year—feeding my notes into ChatGPT to analyze and visualize how I spent my time across work, projects, and other commitments. It broke everything down by project and even generated bar charts. Leuchtturm1917 Notebook I was brought up in the generation that saw the rise of the personal computer, well before mobile devices. As a result, I remember a world without cell phones, tablets, or AirPods—though my Sony “Sport” Walkman was always by my side. As convenient as cloud syncing and digital scratchpads can be, I still prefer paper, and the Leuchtturm1917 remains my go-to notebook. I carry it to most meetings, and if it’s not in hand, it’s usually nearby. GoodNotes Despite my previous recommendation, over the past few months, I’ve been shifting my note-taking to GoodNotes. Paired with an iPad Pro and Apple Pencil, it has become central to my weekly planning and note-taking. I love that I can use grid paper, similar to my preferred physical notebook, and handwrite my notes. This feels closer to a real notebook than anything I’ve tried before, but time will tell if it sticks. NordVPN & NextDNS I’ve been a long-term VPN user, especially when sailing the seven seas, but mainly because I hate ads, fingerprinting, tracking, and restrictions on certain apps when traveling abroad. A few years ago, I signed up for a multi-year agreement with NordVPN. I installed it on my home router and all my devices, including our smart TV—the most insidious way ads get forced onto my family’s screens. I also paired it with NextDNS, which I originally set up for business but quickly realized was great for blocking games and content I don’t want my kids accessing, managing screen time, and keeping an eye on apps and devices that were phoning home a little too often (looking at you, Roku). It’s not a perfect solution. If I wanted to take it a step further, I’d install a Firewalla in front of my network, but for now, it keeps me one step ahead in the cat-and-mouse game of device management. ChatGPT I’ve recently and not so recently documented some of my experiments with LLMs. I know there are other tools, and despite their benchmark tests, I find everything else kneecapped compared to my ability to get real productivity out of ChatGPT. I use it for coding, financial modeling, copy editing, softening my emails, legal advice, and idea generation and refinement. Just last week, I had it build an entire piece of software for me, a bespoke Personal Finance Statement generator to scratch an itch. I exported the file, sent it to the bank, and they accepted it without question. I’m increasingly seeing LLMs and AI not as human replacements but as tools that help us work faster, better, and smarter. They Could Have Been a Contender The tools mentioned above are just a small subset of my daily drivers, but given their impact on how I work, I wanted to highlight them. Here are a few more that deserve an honorable mention. VSCode I’ve tried Cursor and other AI-powered forks of VSCode but haven’t found them enjoyable enough to stick with. I’m sure something will eventually come along that convinces me to switch, but until then, I’ll stick with VSCode. Asana I still use Asana but rely on it far less than I have in previous years. I’ve set up some monthly automations and use it to ensure nothing gets lost, but my current workflow moves so fast from task to completion that it naturally fills much of its role. That said, it’s still a great tool, and whenever I feel overwhelmed, I find myself turning to Asana to organize the chaos. Spark For nearly a decade, Spark has been my go-to email client on both desktop and mobile. Its standout feature for me has always been the ability to “send later.” While I find most of its AI tools useless in practice, it’s still a tool I’m happy to pay for. Canva My graphic designer friends love to hate on Canva, but honestly, it solves so many real-world needs for non-designers like me. I think their frustration is less about the tool itself and more about how it has largely replaced the need for a graphic designer in most small businesses. ElevenReader Eleven Labs’ new AI tool lets you turn long-form articles and documents into audiobooks. I’ve only started using it recently, but I can already see it becoming part of my daily routine while driving or biking. The best part? You can have Burt Reynolds or Richard Feynman narrate your legal documents. It’s still early days, but it has a lot of potential. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Build Smarter, Not Harder, and Maybe Even Have Fun URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2025/01/10/build-smarter-not-harder-and-maybe-even-have-fun/ Published: 2025-01-10 Topics: Software Development, Ruby On Rails, Entrepreneurship, Vibe Coding A Case Study on How I Learned to Stop Hating and Love Software Development Again I’ve spent a lot of time these past few months rebuilding our custom CRM platform, which we use to manage the daily operations for FRESH markets. Originally built in 2016, the platform received its last major updates in 2021. As the business grew to support more vendors and events each year, it became clear to both customers and our team that the platform needed to evolve to handle the increasing complexity of our operations. I decided to move to a modern development stack to take advantage of new features, ultimately rebuilding the platform from scratch using Ruby on Rails 8.0. While it was still in pre-release when I began this major refactor, the codebase seemed battle-tested, so I took the leap. So You’re Seriously Going To Rebuild Your Entire Web Application From The Ground Up? Normally, rebuilding from scratch can be a death sentence for codebases, but I chose to leverage our existing database and models and phase in the new application. I moved the old app to an internal subdomain where it continues to support some daily operations for the time being. As part of this phased approach, I first tackled the front-end design and development. One of these “new” features I wanted to leverage was integrating a proper front-end framework. I’ll be honest—I hate front-end code and wanted to leverage someone else’s time and expertise here. After evaluating several Tailwind component libraries, I ended up purchasing a license for Flowbite. It was more or less feature-complete, the development team seemed very active, and, at the end of the day, I just really liked the way it looked. Integrating Flowbite into a Rails 8.0 app posed some challenges. Using Rails’ ImportMaps, which streamline JavaScript dependency management without relying on Node.js or Webpack, allowed for a quick setup with minimal configuration. However, getting it to play nice with Hotwire and Stimulus required some additional voodoo. Once it was up and running, it shaved hours off of my development time and spared me the monotony of fine-tuning CSS styles and layouts. Vacation, Thanksgiving, and a Deadline — Why Not? This first phase took about 3–4 weeks, even though I spent two of those weeks in Costa Rica with the family and wasn’t at my computer much. Once I was back home, I worked mostly at night since my schedule didn’t allow me to dedicate large blocks of time to the project. We launched the new website on Thanksgiving Eve, and (patting myself on the back) the deployment went smoothly. The only negative feedback I received was from a visitor who couldn’t access some old functionality using her AOL account. After coaching her on how to use our new Hotwire-driven market search and discovery tool, she admitted it might be time to start using the new laptop her daughter had bought for her. Fixing What Wasn’t Broken (Because It Bothered Me Anyway) Feeling confident, I dove straight into the next phase: refactoring our vendor application process and dashboard. Previously cobbled together using Typeform and some clever callbacks to process payments and integrate new vendors into our CRM, this system was overdue for an overhaul. Still, it processed over 2,500 applications with payments last year without issue, so I had to ensure any updates wouldn’t disrupt this core business function. I recreated our Typeform application natively within the Rails 8 app, integrating it into our user registration and sign-up flow. I used the new Rails 8 authentication library (goodbye, Devise) and even introduced a magic link sign-in feature. Many of our customers only use the site occasionally when booking dates, and password management has been a traditional pain point. The new application process feeds into a Stripe payments integration, which handles collecting the annual application fee. Using callbacks, the system updates application statuses, sends customer notifications, and sets expiration dates to align with our business needs. For now, the approval process and curation are still managed in our legacy app until I refactor the admin/market manager dashboard. After submitting their application, vendors can use their dashboard to view, search, and pay invoices for markets, manage bookings, and access other essential features. While I focused on existing functionality, I plan to expand the platform to improve ease of use and efficiency for both customers and our back-office team. This second phase launched on January 3, 2025, alongside the release of our first set of 2025 pop-up markets. While the rollout went well overall during internal and limited testing, a few edge-case issues emerged once it went live. I suppose this is what happens when you’re flying the plane while building it—there’s always some turbulence. Still, we successfully processed over 200 new applications and payments during the first weekend after launch. Once the dust settles, I plan to complete the refactor by migrating the admin/market manager dashboard to the new platform and deprecating the legacy app. Making Development Fun Again (Yes, Really) I’ve been developing web applications for over 20 years and have worked with Ruby on Rails since version 2.3. I’ve seen monolithic frameworks save the day, get dismissed as outdated, and then reemerge as the preferred way to build applications. Avoiding the “framework of the week” mentality, I’ve focused on what feels natural: developing applications in a structured, logical way. Rails 8 with Hotwire, Stimulus, and ImportMaps Is A Game Changer Rails has always been my favorite MVC framework for web applications, but building interactive features was messy during the rise of JavaScript frameworks. Hotwire and Stimulus simplify this process, making everything “just work.” ImportMaps are the icing on the cake—they eliminate the complexity of managing JavaScript dependencies. LLMs Are Your New Junior Developer Part of the reason I’ve been able to move fast and not get bored is thanks to ChatGPT. While it’s not perfect at debugging edge cases, it’s exceptionally good at repetitive tasks and tackling well-documented ones. My workflow often involves developing a feature, handing it to ChatGPT with a Flowbite component for styling and layout, and then tweaking the results. This process is almost meditative for me. It’s also great for quickly building a robust test suite—after rolling out my business logic, I hand it off to ChatGPT to generate tests and fixtures. Lately, I’ve noticed a lot of negativity around LLMs and their ability to code (or do anything useful), and honestly, it feels a bit like a carpenter blaming their tools for poor craftsmanship. Building Web Applications Is Fun Again Over the past few years, I’d grown extremely bored of the process—front-end design, authentication, payment solutions, APIs, CRUD functionality, etc., are rarely challenging but often tedious. Mix in some “passionate” client or customer personalities, and it’s rarely an enjoyable process. Using Rails 8 and ChatGPT, however, has brought joy back to coding. Building A Company Is Getting Easier I’m certainly not the best developer or marketer, but one of my secret weapons has been my ability to leverage both skills to turn ideas into reality. Hiring designers, developers, and a good marketing team is expensive, and not every idea can afford that kind of investment out of the gate. Pairing modern frameworks, tools, and LLMs lowers the cost of entry and allows small teams or single founders with an idea and some technical sense to move exponentially faster than even a few years ago. Build Something That Works for (And Not Against) You At a time when many of my software developer friends are struggling to find work, I hope to offer a bit of optimism. Much like the rise of the creator and gig economies, where platforms like Etsy, YouTube, Airbnb, and Uber empowered individuals to work for themselves, I believe we’re entering a moment where starting small, impactful companies is not just possible but practical. Today, tools like LLMs, modern development frameworks, and specialized agents are advancing rapidly, making the downside risks lower than ever. I think this will spark a surge in new companies—smaller in size but capable of having a bigger impact. We might even see more lifestyle businesses focusing on personal fulfillment while addressing hyperlocal needs and bettering their communities rather than chasing relentless growth or a next round of funding. These tools aren’t just for software developers or tech professionals; they’re unlocking opportunities for small teams and individuals across all industries. It’s a shift that feels more grounded and aligned with the priorities of individuals and their communities. For anyone willing to put in the effort, it’s never been easier to create something meaningful and sustainable—something that reflects your values and gives you greater control over your future. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Food, Philosophy & Storytelling - My 2024 End of Year Reading List URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2024/12/18/food-philosophy-and-storytelling/ Published: 2024-12-18 Topics: Mindset, Business Development, Entrepreneurship, Reading List My year end reflection on some of the thoughts and ideas that shaped my thinking in 2024. For the past few years I’ve published a list of the books I read. I do not have a rhyme or reason as to what I choose to read other than I do enjoy learning new things as well as backfilling and reinforcing certain knowledge gaps I’m aware I possess. I generally am bored of business books not for any specific reason other than most of them could be condensed into 1 or 2 chapters or a long-form blog post versus 300+ pages. Many also feel like snapshots of what worked for the author in a particular moment, which doesn’t always translate universally. As for fiction, I don’t typically read much of it, though I did explore the genre a bit this past year. Reflecting on my 2024 reading list, it’s clear that food, philosophy, and storytelling were recurring themes. Given my current personal and professional pursuits, it’s no surprise these topics guided my choices. Anyway, here’s a (mostly complete) list of what I read this year, along with some thoughts on what I took away from each book. Bird By Bird - Anne Lamott Bird By Bird is a fantastic guide to the writing and creative process, offering a slightly more accessible approach than McPhee’s Draft No. 4 (mentioned below). Lamott’s easygoing, self-deprecating, and entertaining style turns storytelling into a practical and enjoyable way to learn something meaningful. Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Capetown - Paul Theroux This might be my favorite book of the year, alongside Bird By Bird. Travel writer Paul Theroux chronicles his journey across Africa, traveling from Cairo to Cape Town in the early 2000s after nearly 40 years away. His reflections on the changes he observed resonated deeply with me, as I’ve often grappled with the transformations I’ve seen in places I’ve revisited over time. Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process - John McPhee As a New Jersey resident, I’ve revisited The Pine Barrens a few times over the years, but I hadn’t explored much of McPhee’s other work until now. This short collection of essays offers his reflections on the writing process and what makes a story compelling. As someone who enjoys writing, I found it particularly rewarding to read about the craft this year as part of my effort to improve my own skills. Fallen Leaves - Will Durant Will Durant’s Fallen Leaves is one of the most beautiful books I’ve read in some time—a reflection on life’s fleeting phases with a rare mix of optimism and blunt honesty. While it touches on ideas familiar to Eastern thought, the way Durant humanizes and presents them is what stayed with me. It’s a book I’ve already found myself revisiting, and I’ll keep coming back to. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad I often enjoy revisiting books I was forced to read in school, especially ones I lacked the perspective to fully grasp at the time. Heart of Darkness has taken on a cultural life of its own and had been on my shortlist to revisit. Despite being dense and difficult—especially for a 100-page book—it felt rewarding to complete, even if I was incapable of deriving any deeper personal meaning. How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia - Mohsin Hamid Told in the second person, this novel follows the journey of a boy growing up in an unnamed slum in an unnamed country in Asia. Spotting an opportunity, he builds a business providing clean drinking water to his community, which eventually grows into a massive empire. Along the way, he navigates love, loss, and the complexities of amassing wealth. How to Raise A Venture Capital Fund - Winter Mead I’ve spent most of my adult life in tech and on the fringes of the startup world. More recently, I’ve ventured into real estate investing, tackling projects that require far more capital than my current socioeconomic status can support alone. While I have some experience with capital raising, I realized there were significant gaps in my knowledge. This book was my attempt to bridge those gaps. Not Fade Away: A Short Life Well Lived - Peter Barton & Laurence Shames Peter Barton, founder and CEO of Liberty Media, built his fortune in the 1990s by consolidating and managing independent cable TV channels. After retiring young to spend more time with his family, he was diagnosed with cancer and given a short time to live. This book is a poignant collection of his stories, life lessons, and reflections—not just on facing death but on what it truly means to live a fulfilling life. Poor Charlie’s Almanack - Charlie Munger In my early 20s, some of my first investments were in Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-B). Running my first business with no formal experience felt like a crash course MBA, and naturally, Warren Buffett became a key figure in my self-education. I went down that rabbit hole for a year or two, but with the passing of Buffett’s #2, Charlie Munger, last year, I realized how little I knew about him—his thoughts, personality, and unique wit. Slow Drinks - Danny Childs New Jersey native Danny Childs, former bar manager at The Farm and Fisherman Tavern, became known for his innovative approach to foraging and using local, seasonal ingredients in his drink creations. After branching out to start his own consultancy, he published Slow Drinks, a detailed manual for anyone interested in learning his techniques. As someone who enjoys experimenting with fermentation, I found his creative methods for flavoring ginger bugs and other “live” drinks particularly inspiring. Supercommunicators - Charles Duhigg This book was praised as a “must-read” business book and a game-changer. To me, it felt like a textbook example of one or two good points about how to speak to people in a way that engages them, stretched out over 300 pages of filler. The Book of Life - J. Krishnamurti This collection of 365 meditations is both easy to read and deeply thought-provoking. It’s the kind of book you can leave by your bedside and pick up for a quick reflection in the morning or evening. The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World - Jacqueline Novogratz I absolutely love Jacqueline Novogratz’s story, humility, and mission in life. I read Manifesto for a Moral Revolution a few years ago, and it really stuck with me, so I was excited to finally dive into her backstory. This book explores how she started Acumen and her approach to building an NGO designed to create real impact on the ground. The French Laundry Cookbook - Thomas Keller More than just a cookbook, this is an intimate look into the mind of one of the world’s most renowned chefs. It combines recipes with insights into Keller’s philosophy, techniques, and approach to culinary excellence. In line with some of my other reads this year, I picked it up to fill in some gaps in my knowledge of more refined culinary practices. The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt This novel follows Theo Decker, a boy who survives a terrorist attack at the Met and ends up in possession of a highly valuable stolen artwork. At nearly 800 pages, it was a bit of a challenge, but I found it equally hard to put down. The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food - Dan Barber Dan Barber, chef and owner of Blue Hill at Stone Barns, explores modern food systems and highlights time-tested alternatives that focus on sustainability and recovering lost flavors. One of the most fascinating aspects is his work with heirloom seeds, using modern gene mapping to crossbreed them (in the traditional way) for both higher yields and better flavor. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Skies Before Screens URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2024/10/14/skies-before-screens/ Published: 2024-10-14 Topics: Mindset, Business Development, Entrepreneurship, Digital Detox In a world dominated by screens, it's easy to lose sight of the simple joys that make life feel real. What if, instead of measuring our days by screen time, we focused on the moments that truly make us feel alive? It’s 5:25 a.m., and my watch gently starts buzzing against my wrist . I hit the stop button, lean across the bed, and grab my phone. I open the Health app to check my sleep. I feel pretty decent, and the data backs it up—a full seven with almost two hours of REM and an hour of deep sleep. I open Reddit to check the news and then my email to catch up on a few newsletters that have been lingering in my inbox. For the next 30 minutes or so, I slowly wake up in the warm glow of a thousand-nit screen. I start to feel that low-level background anxiety intensify. With my last bit of self-discipline, I force myself out of bed and onto a meditation cushion. I light some palo santo and sit, eyes softly closed. For the next 15 minutes, I listen to the birds, already well into their day, and feel the glow of the sun peeling across the horizon. I try desperately to re-regulate my nervous system. We know screens are bad, and we’re all hopelessly addicted to them. Yet, even knowing that, I try and keep healthy boundaries. I long ago deleted social media apps from my phone. I block time-consuming websites and run ad-blocking software on our home network. I intentionally consume long-form podcasts. I read physical books over digital formats and ruthlessly disable all non-essential notifications. Still, I’m fighting a losing battle, and I suspect many of us feel the same. These things are just too fucking addictive. Yes, phones and technology are immensely beneficial and a daily driver in most of our lives. Still, there has to be a better way. To be clear, I do not have anything against phones or technology. Quite the opposite—I consider myself a technologist and often an early adopter. Never in the history of humanity has the barrier to starting a business or side hustle been so trivial. We’re able to take an idea over drinks and turn it into an income-producing side hustle or business in just days or weeks, often with little to no money. It has never been this easy to carve out your own destiny. This reduced friction has made it easier for entrepreneurs and artists from diverse backgrounds to play. Similarly, our phones have helped us to learn new things quickly. We can instantly access reliable information and stay better connected with family and friends across the globe. And all of this has been enabled by technology, with mobile phones at the center of it all. It’s pretty clear that our relationship with mobile devices is non-dualistic in nature. It’s not simply good or bad but part of a larger, more holistic system. Likewise, we need to stop judging ourselves by how much restraint we practiced or how productive our devices made us on a given day. Instead, what if we defined our relationship by how they make us feel? Consider these everyday moments - both positive and negative. Catching up on emails while waiting at the doctor’s office — how does it feel to turn an otherwise tedious wait into something productive? Late-night doom scrolling on r/politics to see where the latest polls are landing—is this anxiety inducing or relieving? Watching my eight-year-old extend his Duolingo Spanish streak to 263 days — No podría estar más orgulloso! Handling a 45-minute meltdown from a two-year-old upset after losing her access to ‘TubeTube’ — well, you get the idea. Last weekend, I visited a nearby county park with my family to enjoy one of the first crisp fall days of the season here on the East Coast. The park, with its wide trails and thick woods, provided the perfect backdrop for an outdoor adventure with 3 young kids in tow. An old WWII-era battery was tucked into the 800-acre coastal forest overlooking Sandy Hook Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. Originally built to protect New York City from German U-Boat attacks, the underground bunker now serves as a makeshift museum. In reality, it’s just a dark, mysterious tunnel with a few adjacent rooms and some basic information about daily life there over 80 years ago. I wondered what a soldier stationed here would have done in their free time, without the modern tools of distraction we have today. We ventured in. My eight-year-old grabbed my wife Justine’s phone and began shooting some ad hoc video. It was very reminiscent of a movie from my teenage years, The Blair Witch Project. On his instructions, I dialed up demonic whispers and other situationally appropriate sounds on my phone. Over the next 20 minutes we all filled in as production assistants as he “filmed a movie.” Eventually, we ventured back outside onto the nature trails to collect leaves and acorns, just beginning to change color. We made our way down a long, steep path to the water. The late afternoon winds danced across the trees and out into the bay. In the distance, the NYC skyline loomed. Just a few miles away, millions of people raced to jobs or early dinners. How many of their faces were lost in an addictive glow? Sitting on a picnic table near the river bank, I took a deep breath of the crisp fall air. Watching my young kids try to skip rocks across the Navesink, I paused to reflect on how this moment made me feel. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Rest, Inspiration, Focus, Repeat URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2024/08/21/rest-inspiration-focus-repeat/ Published: 2024-08-21 Topics: Mindset, Business Development, Entrepreneurship, Small Business We all cycle through feeling stagnant, overwhelmed, or laser-focused. Success comes from embracing the dance between these states. Recognize where you are, take small steps, and build systems to find stability amidst the chaos. In business, and in life, there are times that may seem like we are stagnant, with little progress or direction. We may feel bored, tired or uncertain about what we want from life. Conversely, there will be times when we’re overwhelmed, surrounded by chaos and we’re one or two missteps away from the wheels falling off. And then there are times when we’re busy, but our focus is unwavering. We’re highly motivated, everything is running smoothly, and life feel great. I used to think that as an entrepreneur, it was my job to always operate in this latter state, but the reality is that we will dance between all three. And thats OK. In fact, in order to be successful and fulfilled in life, I would argue that we need to experience them all at different moments. Let me explain. When we rest for any length of time, we quickly become bored. But from this boredom comes the space to think and be creative. This creativity fuels inspiration, leading to ideas and a desire for growth. Yes, chaos will follow, as it’s a natural byproduct of growth, but this is where discipline and focus become critical, allowing us to find stability amidst the turbulence. When we can find focus, chaos subsides and yields to meaningful progress. Rest and boredom are the natural outcomes of stability, and the cycle repeats (at least for me). Moving through these steps come with their own challenges but two consistent skills have always helped me. The Power of Awareness The first is developing the awareness to recognize where you’re at. Routine self-check-ins and reflection help build this muscle and I’ve found that creating space on a recurring basis to write, take notes, or simply list my daily accomplishments are essential. I also like to pair this with a larger goal-planning session for the coming year, ideally in early December. During this session, I not only plan for the upcoming year but also reflect on the previous one to see where my energies were spent. By combining these micro and macro perspectives, we gain a clearer understanding that everything in life is impermanent. In moments of depression, fear, doubt, or anxiety, this awareness makes it easier to recognize that we won’t always remain in that state. Developing this awareness is crucial for another reason: it allows us to lean into the present moment. Sometimes, it’s important to recognize that the season calls for hard work and extra effort. Other times, it requires acknowledging the need to recharge, sort through the chaos, and find some semblance of structure and order. Cultivating Discipline The second skill that supports this cycle of Rest, Inspiration, and Focus is cultivating the discipline to push yourself beyond your current state. Rest is essential, and most high-performing individuals, myself included, would benefit from incorporating more of it into our lives. However, there comes a point when it’s time to ‘get back to work’—even if we’re not entirely sure what that work is. It’s time to get inspired, explore new ideas, chase a little curiosity, and intentionally put yourself out there in new ways. Moving from inaction to action is challenging—it can be daunting, scary, and overwhelming, especially after a period of rest. I’ve learned that the easiest way to break through this inertia is to take any small action that helps you get started. It doesn’t need to be grandiose; creating a task list, attending an event, or picking up a book on something that interests you can be enough to build momentum. From these small steps, tiny momentum leads to significant action. As we start building, exploring ideas, and taking on bigger tasks, chaos inevitably follows. We combat this disorder by creating systems. Systems help us overcome the real villain — our ego. Our ego resists documenting tasks that we do more than once. Our ego convinces us that no one else can do the job as well as we can (pro tip: aim for 80% as good). Our ego thrives when there are fires, and we believe that we’re the only ones who can extinguish them. Our ego loves the chaos. So, how do we overcome it? My advice is simple - find a system that works for you right now and stick with it. It’s less important which system you choose; what matters is having one. Systems are the foundation of developing focus, stability, and ultimately, the space to recognize when it’s time to recharge, rest, and repeat. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Streamlining Real Estate Investment Modeling with ChatGPT URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2024/07/16/investor-waterfall-calculator/ Published: 2024-07-16 Topics: Software Development, Real Estate Investing, Entrepreneurship, Small Business, Vibe Coding Experimenting with ChatGPT, I built a web app that makes real estate investment modeling easier by enabling quick adjustments to share classes, GP/LP splits, and waterfalls. Streamlining Real Estate Investment Modeling with ChatGPT This post is a bit of a deviation from my usual thoughts and musings, but it demonstrates a few interesting points I wanted to share. Lately, I’ve been modeling multiple investment scenarios for various projects. I often need to adjust share classes, GP/LP splits, and introduce waterfalls to see how they impact the overall model. ChatGPT-4o has been incredibly helpful in this process. Although it sometimes loses context and introduces bugs, it has significantly sped up my ability to understand and adjust models on the fly without making extensive edits in Excel or Google Sheets. In my experiments, I was able to get GPT to analyze a dataset consisting of 15 years of P&Ls. I provided it with some adjustable variables and then had it export the results (with formulas) to Excel. Impressed with the results, I decided to take it a step further. On a whim, I asked GPT to generate some JavaScript and a lightweight front end where I could manipulate the variables directly. After applying some Tailwind styles and cleaning up the output, I had a very useful prototype for quickly modeling and adjusting investor returns. As an added bonus, I added a dynamic chart to show cumulative returns over the investment period. All in, it took about 1-2 hours to create and iterate on the MVP and another hour or so to integrate it directly into this webpage. Is this code battle-tested and production-ready? Probably not. But it works today and helps me do my job better. Just a few years ago, creating and debugging something of this scale would have taken more than a week. As GPTs continue to improve, they are streamlining processes and making it easier for us to tackle complex tasks efficiently, turning what once were formidable challenges into simple routines. Play around with the calculator below or scroll to the bottom of the page to see the source code. Investor Waterfall Calculator Total LP Investment: $ This is the total size of your raise Minimum LP Share Size: $ This is the minimum size of your share Pre-Recoupment LP: % % the LP gets prior to recouping their initial investment Up to 1.5x Return: % Waterfalled return from 1.0 to 1.5x their initial investment 1.5 to 2.5x Return: % Waterfalled return from 1.5 to 2.5x their initial investment Above 2.5x Return: % Waterfalled return above 2.5x their initial investment Update Table Year Net Return LP % GP % Total LP $ Total GP $ Prop LP $ LP IRR LP AAR Equity Multiple Add Your NOI From Your P&L LP Percentage GP Percentage Total Return for LP Total Return for GP Proportional Return for LP Internal Rate of Return for LP Average Annual Return for LP Return on Equity Multiple Update Table Add Additonal Year LP Cumulative Returns Source Code -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Let's Dial Down The Friction URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2024/04/19/lets-dial-down-the-friction/ Published: 2024-04-19 Topics: Mindset, Entrepreneurship, Small Business Asbury FRESH has set itself apart by consistently reducing and strategically reintroducing friction in our operations to create a better customer experience. When Asbury FRESH started back in 2012, while much fewer in numbers, farmers markets and other pop-up events weren’t exactly uncommon. One of the things that set us apart, though, was our ability to reduce friction for vendors looking to sell at our market. Farmers markets have never been at the forefront of technology trends. Back in 2012, if they even had a website, it was likely unchanged since its creation in the late 1990s. I remember early on, researching one of the big competitors in the area. To register for their market you needed to go to the website of the law firm who “sponsored” it. Then, you needed to find a buried link on the homepage and sift through eight paragraphs of long text to find a contact number. After leaving a voicemail, someone might return your call, although they never called me back. As a vendor, payments involved showing up on the day of the market with $20 cash and handing it to a market manager. We may have been new to the space, but needless to say, I saw an opportunity here to reduce friction and create a better customer experience. The first thing I did was take a bunch of nice photos from other markets I had traveled to and designed a very basic yet pretty website. I added a minimal contact form to simplify the lead generation and sign-up processes. These leads were then added to a mailing list for future follow up. I added a Google Voice phone number and, when someone called, I either picked up the phone or returned their call within 24 hours. Finally, I added the ability for vendors to pay their invoices online. This helped out with planning and operations but also made sure any vendor table fees went back into the operations and not someone’s pocket. The system wasn’t perfect, but it was unique at the time and helped us quickly establish a loyal local customer base. Seeing this early success we leveraged my background in software engineering and went all in on developing our own booking and CRM system. As we have grown, this platform has allowed us to manage the thousands of vendors in our community. It also gives us a tool to reengage with past customers, communicate faster and provide an all around better customer experience. In the past few years, we found ourselves needing to reintroduce some friction into our booking process. We started to observe that new vendors would often submit multiple and frequently incomplete applications. They required several back and forth email exchanges to properly vet. This led to a bottleneck for our curation team, who pointed out that the review process was becoming increasingly challenging. To solve this issue, we implemented a small annual registration fee and increased the length of our applications to reduce the need for back and forth. Since implementing this change at the start of last year, we expectedly saw a 21.5% decrease in total applications. However, our application approval rate only decreased by 6.2% while our rejection rate dropped significantly by 32.3%. At the same time, our average booking value rose by 14.5%, and our average customer spend saw a modest increase of 4%. As we grow and evolve, we continue to explore new ways to reduce friction, improve the experience for our vendors, and streamline our operations. Over the years, we’ve added several tools to our platform, including integrated application processing, booking management, individual event landing pages, improved reporting tools, email automations, and SMS messaging. These features have streamlined our routine communications and back-office administration, enabling us to focus more on building relationships with our vendors and producing better events. I often reflect in awe on how our small team has transformed a few tents in a park on a lazy Sunday morning into what we’ve achieved today. This year, we’ll produce over 150 events and manage more than 6000 bookings. I’m excited for what the future holds and eager to continue evolving our processes as we grow. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## The Subtle Art of Incremental Change URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2024/03/29/the-subtle-art-of-incremental-change/ Published: 2024-03-29 Topics: Mindset, Entrepreneurship, Small Business Pivoting in business doesn't have to equal making drastic changes. Small, yet measurable, incremental adjustments often prove to be a better option for most small business owners. Pivoting is often seen as making a complete change in a business’s goals and objectives. It is often triggered by unexpected customer discovery or as a last-ditch effort to survive. This approach might work for startups seeking market fit, but is less suitable for small businesses needing to evolve to stay afloat. While radical change seems appealing, it is usually unmeasured. I prefer small businesses to opt for a more refined approach. An incremental pivot is a way to enact gradual transition in your business in a way that doesn’t disrupt any of the current operations. This means making small, swift changes deliberately to shift direction and build momentum. Over weeks and months, these measurable adjustments will compound and lead to a more meaningful pivot. This approach hinges on 3 core principals: You Must Have Measurable KPIs to Benchmark Against KPIs, or Key Performance Indicators, are high level variables you can track and sometimes control in your business. A good example of a KPI might be daily or monthly revenues, amount of new leads, or the number of impressions your business had on potential customers. This high-level data should mirror your business’s health and serve as the benchmark to assess the impact of each small change you make. When a strategy begins to positively affect our KPIs, we can increase its use for more predictable and measurable success. Extra Reading: How to Define Better KPIs - Understanding Lead vs. Lag Metrics You Must Be Willing to Rapidly Try New Things Rapid iteration will be the cure to stagnation. The approach starts with an empty page and some uninterrupted time to plan out our attack. During this brainstorming phase, we’ll outline all desired changes and initiatives. It’s crucial to understand that rapid iteration is deliberate, not reactive. As we fine-tune our list, we’ll identify 10 to 20 actionable items feasible within a “reasonable” timeframe. While this may vary on your sales cycles and the details of your business, I like to define “reasonable” as taking no more than a few days of work to launch. Some good examples may be: Committing to reaching out to 100 prospective customers on Instagram every day. Carrying a new product or launching a new service at your store. Finding local networking events in your vertical and committing to attending one a week. Analyzing who your top 10% of customers are and offering them an exclusive sale or inviting them to a private event. Committing to documenting 3 tasks a week in your business that are ripe for delegation. Now we’ll begin to roll out the first few of these actions and, over the course of the weeks and months, study the KPIs. As we introduce new actions and see them trickle up into our KPIs, we can decide to do more of them. Remember, not everything will succeed, and it’s important to remember accepting failure as a part of innovation is essential. By comparing results to our set KPIs, we can maintain objectivity. This mindset helps us quickly assess what working and move beyond unsuccessful attempts. You Must Practice Patience As an entrepreneur and creative, I’m inherently impulsive and want instant gratification. Yet, through experience, I’ve learned that building a sustainable business takes time. I’m a big fan of the book Traction by Gino Wickman. Its main lesson is to set your goals in alignment with your KPIs, beginning with a 10-year “Big Hairy Audacious Goal”. You then zoom in and set KPI-focused goals for the next 3 years, 1 year, 3 months, and eventually weekly targets. This reverse approach to goal planning allows us to take daily action that aligns us with our 10 year goal. When planning for a decade out, it’s near to impossible NOT to practice patience. The media glamorizes entrepreneurship by highlighting stories of startups on the brink of failure that pivot to become giants like Twitter or Instagram. It’s crucial to understand these are rare exceptions, which is why their stories have achieved mythical status. Real world pivots are often way less sexy but when implemented judiciously, can be just as effective. </div> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## The Vulnerable Truth About Our Early Struggles URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2024/02/09/the-vulnerable-truth-about-our-early-struggles/ Published: 2024-02-09 Topics: Mindset, Entrepreneurship, Personal Development Those first steps of our business are often glorified in hindsight, becoming epic tales of endurance and innovation. But as we embellish these memories, let's not forget the raw, real essence of our beginnings. Here's to embracing our past with honesty and pride. The early years of a business or idea are often romanticized and looked back on as challenging, yet rewarding times. We fondly recollect the struggles we faced and the people who were at our side during these crucial moments. We recount with a slight smile the 16 hour work days and late night conversations over drinks with our partners on how we’re about to change the world. We muse over all the times things almost blew up but somehow we managed to survive. These early moments become the “glory days” of our business and the traumas and wins become core memories. As time goes by, our grandiose dreams might turn into everyday routines. Ideas evolve, priorities shift and the people we surround ourselves with change. If we’re fortunate, we’ll stumble into some degree of stability and peace in both our personal and professional lives. Challenges will always exist but our current ones seem a little easier to tame because we’re much more calculated in our decisions and actions. Life is far from boring, but still, we find ourselves increasingly bored with its monotony. We crave more. Every so often, we like to reconnect with our buddies from “back in the day” and retell some of these old stories. With each telling the stakes rise and the rewards multiply. Certain stories continue to be retold (and exaggerated) while others fade out of memory. Years removed, and with a certain degree of survivorship bias, our actual experiences and the stories we tell may begin to diverge. These subtle revisions to history are usually harmless — they help us tell better tales as well as validate our struggles to others. Yet, they can also leave us longing for a past that never existed — at least in our present recollection. There is nothing wrong with romanticizing our past but be careful you are not look at it through a clouded lens. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Bet On Yourself, But Hedge Your Bets URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2024/01/10/bet-on-yourself-but-hedge-your-bets/ Published: 2024-01-10 Topics: Mindset, Entrepreneurship, Punk Rock, Software Development Many first-time entrepreneurs dream of quitting unfulfilling jobs to start their own ventures. Over the years, I've learned the key isn't just taking the leap, but doing it with a strategic backup plan. Prior to starting my first business I was working for a defense contractor as a software engineer. I enjoyed my coworkers but the job was miserable and I quickly realized I couldn’t continue building military systems for the US Army in a windowless facility in Clifton, New Jersey for any length of time. I knew absolutely nothing about business and, in those days, being an entrepreneur usually meant you sold weed, pills, or other “black market” goods. Still, I was self-aware enough to realize that I would never be happy unless I forged a path forward on my own. I hung around the W2 long enough to save up a little money to take a risk and jump into my first business venture, an all ages punk rock music club. While we were successful, I quickly realized that I was one bad stage dive or fight away from being unemployed and out of business. I needed to hedge my bets. My roommate and best friend had started a very successful web design and development shop during college and, by this this point, he had a pretty healthy pipeline of clients and projects. He also had been working 16 hour days for several years and was completely burned out. At the end of our lease he decided to pick up and relocate to Los Angeles to chase his interests in film production. He made the tough decision to wind down his business where he was making almost $200,000/year for an $8/hour production assistant job. He had saved up a healthy reserve but still needed some income while he transitioned into this new career. I offered to “buy” his biggest and most steady client, a publicly traded sensor manufacturing company. In those days, it was rare for any business to have an “IT department” and the “experts” were often young kids like us who had been experimenting and building fun, mostly useless projects on the web. As a contractor, he helped them take their business from a paper catalog to online e-commerce. I “purchased” this client via a 1 year revenue share agreement and while the details are cloudy two decades later, I’m fairly certain it was executed via handshake. The work was straightforward and steady but it gave us both what we needed. Within months his talent shined through and he quickly moved past being a PA and onto bigger and better paying things. I was able to use this client to not only bring in some extra income and stability at a time it was very much appreciated, but as the backbone for launching my web development shop. Sadly, I’ve largely lost touch with my old roommate and Measurement Specialties Inc was long ago acquired and absorbed into a much larger organization but I’m eternally grateful to both of them for the path it unlocked. As for the punk club, my instincts unfortunately came to fruition. On January 10th, 2007 we were shut down permanently by the Fire Marshal. This seemingly tragic blow was actually a blessing — by that time the building had fallen into serious disrepair and would require significantly more capital than I would be able to generate. I realized that the business had run it’s course and I closed up shop. It was sad to end that chapter of my life but, by this point, I had built up a healthy web development business of my own. I had hedged my bets. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## 2023 End of Year Reading List URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2023/12/27/end-of-year-reading-list/ Published: 2023-12-27 Topics: Mindset, Reading, Entrepreneurship My year end reflection on some of the thoughts and ideas that shaped my thinking in 2023. Since my childhood, I’ve been a voracious reader, and I’m glad to have sustained this passion into adulthood. I use reading as a way to wind down in the evenings and gently start my mornings, which also helps in maintaining my long-term attention span. I typically prefer reading physical books over listening to audiobooks, and give preference towards paper rather than digital formats. While I don’t often take extensive notes, I do find myself frequently revisiting ideas and concepts that resonate with me, aiding in gaining deeper clarity and insight. Anyway, here are some of the books I read this past year… The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch is one of the most thought provoking books I can remember reading. It’s dense, verbose and, quite honestly, I struggled to take it down in 10 page increments but I still find myself revisiting passages and concepts. The Coddling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt appeared on more recommended reading lists than any other book in recent memory. It challenges the current state of education on American campuses, free speech, and how critical it is to balance personal rights with healthy intellectual discourse. The Creative Act: A Way of Being by legendary producer Rick Rubin is poised to be a classic and I’m so glad he documented his creative process. This should be mandatory reading for any artist or entrepreneur. Die With Zero by Bill Perkins challenges the conventional wisdom on fiscal responsibility. It’s a nice wake up call on why we need to focus less on future financial worries and maximize life enjoyment today. Excellent Advice for Living by Kevin Kelly is a book of quotes and succinct insights accumulated over time. It’s a book designed to be kept within easy reach, such as on a nightstand or desk, offering quick motivation or guidance during challenging moments. The Great CEO Within by Matt Mochary was short, to the point, and jammed packed with actionable content. Not everything will apply to smaller businesses but I still keep it close to my desk. Non Violent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg is the classic for anyone looking to hone their communication skills. This was my first time reading it, but most well adjusted humans should be well-acquainted with its core tenants. Still, it’s concepts and strategies are a helpful refresher for more or less everyone in every aspect of their life. Outlive - The Science of Longevity by Peter Attia, MD is a book for anyone that has an interest in preserving their health as they age. It’s not only a valuable resource for personal use but also makes an excellent gift for friends, family, and loved ones looking for things they can do today to maintain their health span later. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin is a fiction book that chronologizes the journey of two friends who launch a gaming company in the golden age of indie game development. This may be one of the most refreshing books I read last year and I can only hope the inevitable movie adaptation does it justice. Travels With Charley is a memoir by John Steinbeck, recounting his 1960 road trip across America in an RV with his dog, Charley. The book captures Steinbeck’s experiences and reflections as he revisits cherished locations and brings to life an American era long gone. Ultralearning by Scott Young explores tactics that we can all use to supercharge our learning and aid in the retention of new languages or skills. It’s a fun and easy read and filled with little nuggets to bring into your toolkit. Why We Sleep by Dr. Matt Walker was a great primer into “sleep theory”. As someone who struggles with 3AM insomnia more often than I’d care to admit, this book provided me with some tactical things I can do to get a better night’s sleep. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Learning to Surrender to the Madness URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2023/11/29/learning-to-surrender-to-the-madness/ Published: 2023-11-29 Topics: Mindset, Yoga, Entrepreneurship Control is an illusion. When facing challenges and opportunities, finding balance between the universe's harshness and beauty is key. Embracing this duality helps us navigate life with resilience and adaptability. Recently, I was practicing yoga at a friend’s house and after class, I got into a conversation with a person whose father recently passed away. She and her brother inherited his house and after some quick renovations, they started renting it out to a young couple. Almost immediately, they were faced with the tragedy of a fire. Fortunately, everyone was OK but most of the house was destroyed and suddenly they were consumed with repairs, insurance claims and how to move forward. The stacking up of misfortunes could easily challenge any of our resolve. To my surprise, this person spoke more to surrendering to the madness of life than the misfortunes of what had just unfolded. Yes, her and her brother were shaken to their core and feeling tremendous pain but she also was using the situation to reflect on the fact that none of us are in control. We can plan, save, take care of ourselves, and do all of “the work” but as we travel through life the reality is that we are not the driver, not the car and probably not even the passenger. Everything we have can be taken away in a moment. You can lose your job or financial security. Your business can face an insurmountable roadblock that fundamentally changes your ability to operate. A parent, spouse, or child can get sick or pass away. A pessimist will be quick to condemn “the universe” as being cruel and relentless while an optimist might try to frame the same set of circumstances as an “opportunity to grow”. I suspect that neither perspective is correct and that the truth, as it typically does, lies somewhere in the middle. The universe can be cruel and relentless and simultaneously, it can be a place of infinite love and beauty - it really comes down to our perspective on it all. I also suspect, that “it” doesn’t really give a shit about any of our perspectives and there isn’t much you can do about it. Once we realize this we are able to find some semblance of peace and freedom. We are observers of it all, completely out of control but in total possession of the free will to choose how to engage with the madness. When we learn to surrender to this we are able to find peace and begin to move in alignment with the opportunities and challenges ever present in front of us. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Why Making Money Scared Me As A Business Owner URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2023/10/27/why-making-money-scared-me-as-a-business-owner/ Published: 2023-10-27 Topics: Mindset, Entrepreneurship Confronting imposter syndrome has been a significant turning point for me, fundamentally altering my perspective on money and enriching my understanding of the multi-faceted value our businesses bring, both financially and in terms of community impact. Imposter Syndrome. I encountered this term much later in my entrepreneurial journey and had I only known about it sooner, it could have eased much of my early self doubt. For those unfamiliar, Imposter Syndrome is a psychological pattern in which an we doubt our abilities and internalize a deep-seated fear of being considered a ‘fraud’. It manifests in various forms, but in my first several business ventures, it presented itself as severe guilt over having customers pay us money. Yes, I quite literally had a fear of accepting the one commonality all businesses need to survive. Back in my club ownership days, I felt guilty when collecting a room rental check from a promoter booking a show. I was plagued with anxiety while working the door and having to charge customers money to come see their favorite band. Even though most of this money was immediately used to pay bands, staff, and go back into the business for repairs, my unease persisted. Equally, several years later, I felt both excitement and guilt when customers wanted to book a desk at our coworking space, a maker needed a place to sell at one of our pop-up markets, or when a band wanted us to screen-print t-shirts for their upcoming tour. I think back to all the times we undercharged customers, gave things away and failed to recognize the value of what we were doing. I’m not really sure why I felt this, but I tend to chalk it up to an insecurity around money. I had a middle class upbringing and, while we didn’t struggle like some of my friends, it also wasn’t abundant. Through punk rock and the people I surrounded myself with, I developed a very anti-establishment, anti capitalistic mindset. Yes, I realize that this belief is antithetical to being an entrepreneur. All businesses share the common need to make money and, deep down, I believed making money was wrong. I failed to realize that I was actually solving somebody’s pain points, providing a service deemed valuable, and in most cases, helping others make a lot more money. On most nights at the club, the promoter renting the venue left with 3 times more money in his pocket than we saw. When I printed merch, the bands buying wholesale t-shirts from us were able to sell them for 3-4 times what we charged. This helped support their touring efforts and, quite literally, allowed them to keep gas in the van. Startups and entrepreneurs renting space from Cowerks could keep costs down. We provided not only an affordable and turnkey office solution, but also a network of other entrepreneurs for them to plug into. Our network of local artists, makers and food purveyors who sell each week with us at FRESH markets are equally plugged in. We provide not only a community of shoppers but fellow entrepreneurs to share, learn and grow with. In each of these situations I struggled with this guilt. I failed to see the value we were creating, both economically and socially. I’m not quite sure what changed - perhaps it was experience, education or even just recognizing when people were selling much less for way more, but there was a shift. Today, I am much more comfortable exchanging value for money, but my imposter syndrome has learned to manifest in different ways. For example, the boutique experience we offer at The Surf Village is a luxury my family could never have afforded growing up. It’s worlds away from the budget-friendly campgrounds and state parks that were my vacation spots as a child. It’s also quite a far experience from the surf camps and backpacker hostels I would spend weeks and months in through my 20’s and 30’s and I still very much gravitate towards when traveling today. This led to a realization, I don’t have to be my own customer. While it’s nice to create products or services that you would use yourself, it’s not a requirement for their success. Our high occupancy rates this past summer validated that there were plenty of individuals and families who found immense value in what we’ve built. The number of repeat bookings we are seeing for next summer further confirms this value. Confronting imposter syndrome is an ongoing process. It’s important to remember that it will rear its ugly head in ever-changing and increasingly subtle ways. When it does, I find solace in the fact that I am greater than any of my businesses, and my businesses are greater than me. Remembering this helps me to stay humble during the highs and resilient during the lows. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## The Universe Is Huge, Make Your Life Huge Too URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2023/09/13/the-universe-is-huge-make-your-life-huge-too/ Published: 2023-09-13 Topics: Mindset, Physics, Cosmic Insignificance Ever felt insignificant when contemplating the vastness of the universe? You're not alone. But what if this feeling of cosmic insignificance could actually make your life better? While reading physicist David Deutsch’s verbose, yet thought-provoking book, The Beginning of Infinity, I came upon an interesting passage that prompted me to reevaluate the weight of our individual struggles. Some people become depressed at the scale of the universe, because it makes them feel insignificant. Other people are relieved to feel insignificant, which is even worse. But, in any case, those are mistakes. Feeling insignificant because the universe is large has exactly the same logic as feeling inadequate for not being a cow. Or a herd of cows. According to Deutsch, the universe is not a looming entity designed to overwhelm us and cause harm. Instead, It is both our home and a vast resource for us to leverage and tap into. Upon deeper reflection on my own perceived cosmic insignificance, I realized that Deutsch’s insights offer a valuable perspective. Here are three fundamental ways that this notion of “cosmic insignificance” can actually serve as a catalyst for optimism. Risky Things Become Less Risky Let’s face it, at some point, there is a 100% chance that something bad will happen to you and all of the people around you. Friends and family will get sick and die, some of us will lose our jobs or homes, and businesses will fail. Suffering is a fundamental truth of life. Some choose to let this be a source of anxiety to the point that they over optimize for safety. They minimize risk - they work their steady job, plan for the future at the expense of the present, and stick to the well trodden paths through life. Then there are others who, when faced with this fact, live like today is their last day on this earth. These individuals have no care that one day they will grow up to be ill prepared for a world that no longer seems to have a place for them. They never realize that we all eventually have to pay the piper. Lastly, there are some of us who recognize that, despite the notion that bad things are inevitable, this cannot stop us from pushing forward, challenging ourselves, and trying to live a full and well life. Cosmic Insignificance Does Not Equal Insignificance The fact that the universe is super old, super big, and will continue on for a super long time shouldn’t minimize the value of our existence today. If you think about it, all of us won the cosmic lottery. If you disagree, just consider these statements: On your biological mother’s side, you were conceived from 1 of between 300,000 and 500,000 eggs. On your biological father’s side, you were first prize in a race of over 100,000,000 other competitors. You exist on a planet in the “Goldilocks Zone” with a stable orbit around a sun that is just the right distance away. Our solar system is one among billions in just our galaxy, which is one among billions in the universe. Most of the space in our universe is empty, and a significant percentage of what remains is dark matter. I could continue but please just take a moment to reflect on how lucky we are to be here, cosmically speaking. This has to mean something. Don’t Waste Your Days Lastly, and this may seem obvious, it’s crucial to engage in activities that genuinely matter to us. Each of us has a unique cosmic fingerprint, and it’s up to us to find our distinct purpose within this greater existence. Aim to take steps that bring you closer to your unique purpose, rather than away from it. Here are a few things that I consider universal to moving towards this goal. Be kind. Create something of value. Be a mentor. Fall in love. Start a family and be present with them. See the world. Plant roots. Pick somebody up at the airport who needs it. Likewise, call in that favor from a friend. Proactively stay in touch with people. Don’t be afraid to make money. Equally, don’t be scared to spend money. Get up early. Stay up late and sleep in. Have that extra drink. Practice moderation in everything you do. Exercise your body and mind, ideally every day. Revel in recovery & down days. Minimize harm. When you find yourself grappling with doubt or anxiety, just remember that we all already hit the cosmic jackpot simply by existing. We’re lucky to be here in this moment. Don’t squander it on the inconsequential. And if you forgot, I still think you should put your phone away. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Infinite Bandwidth For My Infinite Punch List URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2023/04/26/infinite-bandwidth-for-my-infinite-punch-list/ Published: 2023-04-26 Topics: Time Management, Mindset, Entrepreneurship More often than not I have an item lingering on my punch list that I just can’t seem to find the mental fortitude to tackle and my inaction makes it feel several orders of magnitude larger than reality. More often than not I have an item lingering on my punch list that I just can’t seem to find the mental fortitude to tackle. It’s typically not even something monumental, but my inaction makes it feel several orders of magnitude larger than it really is. It’s often something that falls into one of the following buckets: Administrative or clerical work such as paying bills or filing some sort of paperwork. Queuing up social media content or email newsletters. Organizing and documenting recurring tasks. Stack up several of these items up over the course of a few days or week and the overwhelm begins to creep in, shortly followed by low level anxiety and varying degrees of self doubt. “Why can’t I ever seem to get anything done?” “Maybe I need a new project management tool?” “Once I get past ABC, everything will be perfect and I’ll finally have time to dedicate to XYZ.” After some period of time externalizing my problems and fantasizing about future scenarios where I have infinite bandwidth for my infinite punch list, I close my email, put my phone in silent mode and just do the damn thing. Somewhere between 15 and 60 minutes later, dopamine fueled elation hits as I proudly cross that item off my list. I am free. Liberation gives way to reflection and I realize how toxic letting small things pile up are to my psyche. I quietly commit to do better next time but the reality is that I’ll probably continue to rinse and repeat. I open up my text editor and quickly document my revelation along with an SOP, while it’s fresh. Maybe I’ll even add an action item to Asana. I make a mental note of who on my team can help me with this moving forward. Or at least I do in theory. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Why I Love To Travel But Hate Vacations URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2023/04/05/why-i-love-to-travel-but-hate-vacations/ Published: 2023-04-05 Topics: Travel, Creativity, Mindset I love the feeling of settling into a new place for an extended period of time - the local faces who become familiar, the moments of connection over new flavors, and the sense of adventure that comes with waking up somewhere new and embracing it as home. I miss traveling and the freedom that comes with settling into a place for an extended period of time. I want to be on a first name basis or at least get a nod of recognition from the ladies at the laundry mat down the street, on the corner from my apartment. I love when the random sea of faces start to become familiar and maybe a few of these acquaintances even develop into friendship. I miss the local groms yelling “vale vale vale” and running interference in the lineup so I could take off on the best set wave. I cherish the connections that happen over new flavors and welcome an invitation into any kitchen to learn the nuances of a secret family recipe. I fully embrace the challenges of an extended power outage, flirtation with food poisoning, flat tire or a “random” police stop will bring to a situation. Each new adventure, good or bad, is a new story I’ve collected for future embellishment. I crave the daily routines of a new place, commuting to the local open air market, and the dicey scooter ride back where I’m perilously balancing a dozen bags of produce, other provisions and maybe even a kid through lawless traffic. I live for the aimless meandering through new cites, fumbling equally through alleys and streets as well as language barriers, just trying to make sense of it all. Most of all, I miss the random chaos of waking up somewhere new and unfamiliar and slowly embracing it as home. I miss traveling. Now don’t get me wrong — I still maintain a healthy habit of getting on planes and seeing new places but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that there has been a shift. With three young kids, several growing businesses between my wife and I, and all of the responsibilities that come along with, well, responsibility, it’s certainly harder to earmark the 12 weeks/year minimum of international travel I maintained for close to 15 years. More recently, our trips resemble 2 week sprints to places a bit more easy and accessible than some of my previous sojourns. I’ve often scoffed at the word, but lately it feels like these adventures fall more in line with, dare I say, a vacation. Now don’t get me wrong — travel with three young kids clearly meets any definition of an adventure and is certainly not for the weak spirited. I also don’t want to make it seem like I’m throwing in the towel or hanging up my 40L backpack for good. My oldest son has accumulated more passport stamps, trips to Asia, and intercontinental trips by four years old than most of my friends and peers. I intend to not only help him build on his collection, but offer equivalent experiences to his brother and sister. While I’m beyond grateful to be in a place where life affords the freedom, flexibility and financial means to travel with our kids, I also sincerely miss the ability to take off for a month or two at any given time. This desire runs deep and is instrumental to properly nourishing my soul. I look forward to a time when we can get back to some real travel. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## What Happened That Time Someone Hit The Reset Switch URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2023/03/29/what-happened-that-time-someone-hit-the-reset-switch/ Published: 2023-03-29 Topics: COVID, Balance, Mindset A little over three years ago the world came to a grinding halt. Here are some thoughts and lessons learned 3 years out from when it all just stopped. A little over three years ago the world came to a grinding halt. Most of us were forced into sudden and extreme inaction. Our todo lists became irrelevant. Meetings didn’t need to happen. Projects were postponed or cancelled. Life seemed to stop. This time was certainly one of crisis based on a very real threat, and my intention is not to minimize the loss of any individual life. But the early pandemic also provided us with a collective chance to reset. We were given space to evaluate our lives, for better or worse, and come to terms with what was actually important. We all had a chance to breathe. Three years on, the todo lists, meetings, projects and other obligations have all stacked up again. Life is busy — really fucking busy. Still, I feel a shift has carried over in how I manage it all pre and post pandemic. I’ve realized that most of what we deem valuable doesn’t matter. Goal chasing and doing hard things are essential but shouldn’t define you. Most importantly, we need to prioritize creating more joy and happiness in and around our lives. As survivors of the pandemic we will always carry a certain degree of trauma with us. But we also know the answer to a very important question: “What would happen if I just stopped to take a break from it all?” The pandemic has given us a new perspective on the value of sabbaticals, and I plan to intentionally embrace them from here on out. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Let's Not Get Stuck In Our Ways, Now URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2023/03/01/let's-not-get-stuck-in-our-ways-now/ Published: 2023-03-01 Topics: Mindset, Creativity, Entrepreneurship Striving to excel in my craft while acknowledging that my methods are just one among many, I believe, is key to reducing conflict, achieving better balance, and leading a happier life, a goal that is essential not only for entrepreneurs and creatives but for everyone. Constrained creativity is how ideas blossom. But the same constraints, when applied consistently, will lead to average outcomes. And who wants to be average? We need to learn to strike a balance as to when constraints should be applied or removed. It’s OK to break rules — especially when the timing is right, when they’re holding us back or if you see them leading to repetitive outcomes. However, when you decide to break the rules, you need to be careful. You still need a firm understanding of them. Nothing screams amateur like someone who goes against the common sense wisdom of an idea they clearly have no mastery of. When we commit to this mental flexibility we are able to evolve past our current world view and beliefs system.  We are able to play around with new ways of thinking, creating and working through challenges. Sometimes our choices will lead us in circles or down dead ends. But sometimes we’ll find ourselves stumbling upon new ideas, clearer answers and embracing other perspectives. All of this gets us closer to “how things are” versus “how we think they are”. So where does this ultimately lead us? We start to build a product or offer a service customers will pay money for versus building what we think they will want. When offered new opportunities, we are better equipped to make a decision versus defaulting to yes or no. We’re able to sidestep our own ego, trust the advice of others and do what is best for our business, our family and ourselves. Training ourselves not to get stuck in our ways is a lifelong practice. Maintaining a balance of striving to be a master of my craft while recognizing that my views and processes are just “one way of doing things” is a daily challenge. I also think it leads to less conflict, better balance, and a happier life. Learning how to live well, while maintaining this balance should be the goal of not just the entrepreneur or other creative, but everyone. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Why Putting Constraints On Your Creativity Is A Great Thing URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2023/02/01/why-putting-constraints-on-your-creativity-is-a-great-thing/ Published: 2023-02-01 Topics: Creativity, Time Management, Art Some thoughts on how constraints foster creativity and limitations can enhance focus, expedite decision-making, and lead to more meaningful outcomes. I want complete freedom in what I create. Ideas need an abundance of time to percolate and grow. I don’t want anyone to force things into fruition that just aren’t quite right. I need space to create — I’m an artist. I’ve learned that these beliefs are misguided at best and toxic at worst. Creativity needs constraints for an idea to flourish. Constraints create a sense or urgency, help us hone in on a problem worth solving and force us to commit to a decision. Sometimes any decision is better than no decision at all. Without constraints, ideas languish, projects drag on indefinitely and results are often watered down versions of their initial vision. Unchecked creativity is how ideas die. Constrained creativity is how ideas blossom. Something To Try At Home Where can you add limitations to something in your life? Here are a few broad constraints you can play with. Constraint On Time Let’s be real, most of us could use better boundaries. Perhaps it’s a self imposed deadline or putting a hard stop on when and how much we work — when we place limits on our time, we accelerate output. Can you manage all of your work responsibilities in 30 hours/week? What about 20 hours/week? How would your focus shift? What do you specifically need to do, what can you delegate, and what can you completely let go of? Constraint Through Quantity Sometimes we strive so much for perfection that we obsess over tiny details. We’re scared to launch that new product, share our new logo design, or publish our writing. What if we committed to quantity over quality - just for a bit to see if anything interesting surfaces? Years ago, my friend Evan from Into It. Over It. committed to releasing a new song every week for an entire year. He chose to focus on consistent creative output instead of perfection. He soon caught the attention of tens of thousands of fans as well as record labels. This “little” project launched his music career and opened up doors for him in ways I don’t think he would have ever expected. Is there anything if your life where you can commit to quantity over quality? Constraint Through Necessity Whether it’s a limitation of space, lack of money or a similar constraining factor, sometimes we need to get scrappy with what we have now versus waiting until the timing and resources are better. Often, the things that seem to hold us back can actually help propel us forward. When we launched Cowerks in 2010 we had no interest in commercial real estate. Our music merchandising business needed an office but we couldn’t afford to rent a full storefront on our own. Instead of waiting to be ready we threw some desks in a corner put them up for rent and branded ourselves as a coworking space — a concept so revolutionary at the time, nobody understood what we were even doing. This created future opportunities and eventually led to us acquiring our own commercial real estate properties. Where do you feel your resources are most limited and you’re being held back? How can you “get scrappy” and get started, despite not having everything you think you need? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Being Bilingual In Business And Art URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2023/01/18/being-bilingual-in-business-and-art/ Published: 2023-01-18 Topics: Entrepreneurship, Art, Creativity It's often a misconception that one must choose between being an entrepreneur and an artist, as integrating business acumen with creative expression can lead to innovative and successful endeavors. It’s often a misconception that one is either an entrepreneur or an artist. Why not be both? From a young age many of us are encouraged to chose between doing something “productive” or making something beautiful. Some of us work hard and excel at math and chemistry while others succeed at playing guitar and creative writing. Some of us go on to be doctors, software engineers, or start businesses while others find fulfillment through block printing, hand illustrating, or touring in a band. All too often we are assigned — or assign ourselves — to one of these neat little boxes. I’ll never be able to paint, I’m a lawyer. I’m a master woodworker, but I’ll never be good at bookkeeping or accounting. I can write catchy songs but monetizing my passion would be selling out. We choose to develop one skillset because our identity revolves around “being this and not that”. We resign to speaking one language - business or art. But what if we consciously choose to be bilingual in our endeavors? What if we decided to learn to take our hand drawn illustrations, make prints and then sell them online or at a local boutique? Could we teach ourselves how to write a business plan, put together a financial model and expand our pop-up food business? Conversely, could we take our very successful, yet stale construction business and start to publish 60 second lighthearted or funny videos on social media? How do we put aside our mission statement and current culture and focus on ways to continually inject more creativity into our standard processes? Business and art have never been mutually exclusive. Quite the contrary, some of the greatest businesses of our time are equally creative powerhouses. Similarly, some of our most praised artists, musicians and creatives have well oiled businesses running under the hood. We need to challenge ourselves to break out of our comfort zone and embrace all that “we are not”. When we do, we’ll often find ourselves able to tap into something greater than the sum of their parts. Something To Ask Yourself Take 5 minutes today and ask yourself one of the following questions: How can I be more creative in what I do? or How can I establish more structure around my creativity? Be tactical and make a list of 5 to 10 things you could start doing today to embrace this mindset shift. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## The Uncomfortable Beauty Of Being Somewhere New URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2023/01/11/the-uncomfortable-beauty-of-being-somewhere-new/ Published: 2023-01-11 Topics: Travel, Art, Mindset Some musings on those initial moments in an unfamiliar place and embracing the unpredictability and vulnerability of the first 24 hours in a new destination. I live for those first few moments in an unfamiliar place. After a hundred flights to dozens of countries it still never gets old. Very little compares to the feeling of seeing ocean turn to farmland turn to city, all while descending from 30,000 feet. Although the process maybe familiar — stepping off a Boeing or Airbus, navigating immigration & baggage, finding my local transportation —  leaving the safe haven of the airport and setting foot on foreign soil is always exciting and unpredictable. The first 24 hours in a new place is a fleeting moment in time where you are totally vulnerable but still must surrender to the discomfort. Into The Heart of Darkness - Mal Pais, Costa Rica I remember the first time I ever experienced the uncomfortable beauty of being somewhere new. It was 2005 and my brother and I were making the night drive from San Jose, Costa Rica to Mal Pais — it was one of my first ‘real’ foreign travel adventures. I felt as if we were driving to the edge of the world and if anything happened, no one would ever find us. To complicate matters, at the time rentals cars were primarily manual transmission and other than my brother’s 3 months of driving dump trucks a few summers prior, neither of us had any real experience with them. The final absurdity of this first adventure occurred when we crossed a solid yellow line to pass a fruit truck puttering along at a mere 5 kilometers/hour. We were immediately pulled over by the conveniently well positioned policia national sitting just past the curve in the road. Fortunately, I was prepared enough for this one and my copy of “The Surfers Guide to Costa Rica” was quite accurate in the fact that there was very little $20 couldn’t fix as far as it pertained to police encounters. Admittedly, Costa Rica is probably one of the most accessible Central American destinations to a traveler from the United States and the Mal Pais/Santa Teresa region is overrun with tourists and ex-pats but back then it felt like an adventure straight out of Heart of Darkness. Twenty Four Hours In London My first — and only — day in London was a much different, yet equally intense experience. I flew there to meet my sister who was living north of the city at the time. We had planned a week in Ireland but I came a day early to sightsee. Jet lagged and completely discombobulated, we embarked on a 12 hour tour of London where she attempted to show me the city’s ‘greatest hits’ — most of which I’ve admittedly forgotten. To this day I think the most memorable part of my first and only twenty four hours in London was walking along the Thames, making it to the Tower Bridge and Globe Theatre and then confessing to her that as much as I wanted to continue the tour, I really just wanted to throw in the towel and grab a pint of Carlsberg in a dark pub somewhere. Lost In Translation in Casablanca There was also the time I got off the plane in Casablanca and had to learn on demand how to navigate the Moroccan railway network in hopes of catching a train south to El Jadida. I spent weeks leading up to the trip trying to learn the basics of Arabic but my efforts were completely derailed when I found that French was the preferred language of choice. At the time, Morocco was well off the beaten path for Americans but it was a bit of an underground hot spot for Europeans. So, despite the language barrier, the concierges circling the concourse as I descended from the airport terminal into the train station were more than able to help me buy a ticket and stick me on a train. After making it to El Jadida, I took a cab from the train station to the hostel, accidentally giving the driver €20 instead of 20 Moroccan Dirham — around €2. At that moment in time, context switching from US Dollar to Euro to Moroccan Dirham was far too much for my overstimulated and exhausted mind to process. I vividly remember the smile on his face when I insisted that I didn’t need change. Managua At Night Every time I land on that sketchy runway better known as Augusto C. Sandino International Airport and step into the warm Nicaraguan evening I’m instantly transported back to my early visits back in 2009 and 2010. While a lot has changed over the 15 years since my first trip, some things remain constant — most notably the scent of burning jungle debris mixed with a healthy dose of plastics and other refuse. “Managua at Night”, as I lovingly refer to it, is the type of scent that is instantly etched into your nasal passages. It is also in no way exclusive to Nicaragua and can pretty much be found in any country without a public garbage collection program. Shamelessly, anytime I catch a hint of it, even back home, it gives me warm fuzzy feelings and brings a smile to my face. Morning Magic In Ubud My first morning in Ubud started around 3:30AM. I was completely rested but after 42 hours of flights and layovers, my body clearly was unsure of what time it might be. I stepped out of my villa where I would be living and teaching for next few months and into a completely different world. As I adventured out into the cool, jasmine tinged air, I began to just walk. Even at that hour, Ubud was starting to come alive. Women decorated in traditional saris were preparing prayer offerings for the day, people were starting to gather at the temples and setup was well underway at the city’s open air market. Soon, the still morning turned into the controlled chaos of motorbikes darting from every direction and traffic jams inevitably caused by an oversized SUV or tour bus attempting to navigate the city’s narrow streets. The cool night air was quickly giving way to the intense heat, humidity and vehicle exhaust of the day. I must have wandered for hours and and later on I would realize that I walked from Monkey Forest Road to Raya Ubud and back — easily a 4km round trip. San Sebastián Don’t Surf Since my first trip to Barcelona and its eastern coast in 2009, Spain has always been one of my favorite places to visit and I’ve been back several times. One of my more unique arrival moments occurred the time I flew to Madrid with a surfboard and a travel itinerary consisting of a quick overnight in the city center, a train ride to Bilbao to meet up with my sister and then pressing on to San Sebastián and then to Southern France to surf and explore Basque Country. My first 24 hours in country involved a lot of time awkwardly navigating my 40L travel backpack, Timbuk2 messenger bag, and 7’ surfboard bag through Madrid’s metro system and city center. In retrospect, traveling with a surfboard through landlocked Spain probably wasn’t my smartest decision but the looks I got from passengers and other onlookers was priceless. Bangkok Mindfuck Experiencing Thailand, especially Bangkok, as a westerner for the first time is an absolute mindfuck. It’s easily one of the biggest, most advanced, yet economically disparate places I’ve ever visited. It’s also one of my favorite places to get lost in. Bangkok is a place where street food vendors blend with skyscraper sized shopping malls and ornate Buddhist temples share city blocks with trendy clubs, boutiques or perhaps event a massage parlor. Bangkok isn’t for everyone and it is much different than anywhere else in Thailand, but I have such an appreciation for dropping into the madness of a city where your commute will usually involve a combination of GrabTaxi, the BTS (their super modern elevated train system that makes the NY Subway look like a dilapidated relic of a past era), Canal Boat, and perhaps even a Tuk Tuk for good measure. The sheer scope and scale of everything in Bangkok is guaranteed to invoke complete sensory overload most of the time, and especially so on arrival. New cities, languages barriers, jet lag, and immersing yourself in an unfamiliar culture can be intimidating, but it also provides a unique sense of excitement. These experiences can be challenging in the moment, but they often become some of our most clear and vivid memories, long after the details of meals, social outings, and the people we’ve met have started to fade. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Your End Of Year Goal Setting Is Probably Useless URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2022/12/21/your-end-of-year-goal-setting-is-probably-useless/ Published: 2022-12-21 Topics: Goal Setting, Mindset, Entrepreneurship Some sarcasm laden advice on crushing your goals. Your end of year goal setting is probably useless. Sadly, so are those New Year’s Resolutions. Have I got your attention? Like most people, I like to use the end of the year as a time to reflect on my accomplishments and do some goal setting for the coming year. I pull out my letter to myself from last December and my internal monologue praises me for the things I did and criticizes me where I fell short. I spend thirty minutes reviewing it and another hour or two writing out all of the things I want to accomplish this upcoming year. I give it a final once over and, goals now defined, I put it away for the next twelve months. I’ll tell all my friends how I’m going to do big things this new year or make some positive changes.  The reality is that I won’t.  Sure, I may knock a few items off the punch list, usually the low hanging fruit to make myself feel better, but I’ll mostly go about my days, largely ignoring them, and letting life carry me wherever it will. At least, this is how I used to do it. What to know the secret to how I overcame this personal challenge?  I suppose this is where I should try and sell you something that amounts to digital snake oil? Fortunately, for you, I’m running a promotion until midnight for my new course on goal setting and Instant Awesomeness Achievement™. Normally, $999, it’s yours for 99% off just today, for the low price of $9.99. What are you waiting for - aren’t you worth a $9.99 investment? It’s a shame I’m not better at this whole fake guru profiteering thing because I’m about to give you a $9.99 discount on that “deal” — no promo code required. Here is how I like to set goals and plan for the future. I start with a 10 year plan. I lay out a vision of where I am at and what I’ll be doing on Dec 21, 2032. I make sure to include specifics on what my work as well as personal and family life look like. I like to think of this as my “end game”. I then break that down and travel back to Dec 21, 2025. I ask myself where do I need to be both professionally and personally to realize this vision. In this particular moment in time, I should be well on my way to my 10 year plan but still lack the specifics of how I’ll actually put myself there. Now I travel to Dec 21, 2023 - just 1 year from when this was published. The pressure is starting to mount — the one year mark it a great time to check in on what I’ve accomplished, as it pertains to my 10 year plan. While I still lack specific tactics, it creates space for me to course correct. Traveling further back, I like to set goals and milestones for where I want to be on March 21, 2023. This is where it starts to get much more granular — I start to clearly map out specific actions and tasks I need to accomplish, as it pertaining to this 10 year plan.  I continue to compress my timelines and task lists until I focus on this coming month, this week, and ultimately today. The real work happens here and pretty quickly its easy to answer questions such as: What am I doing today to move me closer to that 10 year end game? Where am I putting my focus and attention and what am I neglecting? How am I being intentional with my daily decisions? 10 year goal planning may seem lofty but when it comes down to it, the real work happens day to day, week to week, and month to month. Everything else, including your New Years Resolutions and annual goal setting should be treated simply as course corrections towards a clearly mapped out vision. Something To Ask Yourself Interested in doing some real goal setting? Here are some questions you can start with: What will I be doing on Dec 21, 2032 — who will I be with and what will I be doing? Am I happy with the current state of my life? Do I have a good relationship with my family and friends? What am I doing to ease their burdens versus add to them? Do I have a good relationship with myself? What am I doing to help support myself? What have I accomplished as it pertains to my business goals? What would I like to accomplish? What does success look like for me? What am I willing to do (or not do) to get there? After taking an hour or two to reflect on these answers, repeat the exercise as if it were Dec 21, 2025. Big ideas are still OK but you should begin to narrow in on some tangible tasks. Do another checkin for Dec 21, 2023 - big ideas should now be replaced with realistic goals and additional tasks. Continue to break this down to the first quarter of 2023, the month of January, and, ultimately, the first week of the year. At this point, you should be able to derive a punch list of things you can be doing today to help realize where you want to be in ten years. Continue to evaluate these goals on a weekly, monthly and quarterly basis, always remembering, consistency is the key. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## AI Wrote This Newsletter URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2022/12/07/ai-wrote-this-newsletter/ Published: 2022-12-07 Topics: AI, Technology, Reading List My initial thoughts on the OpenAI release of ChatGPT 3, the LLM that changed the world along with my 2022 end of year reading list. Last week OpenAI released a new version of their ChatGPT software and it’s nothing short of mind blowing. I’ve been playing with it non-stop and I believe it’s going to open the doors for a whole new generation of start-ups and business use cases. It’s the next big thing. A few things I had it do: Draw up a simple NJ Lease for a new tenant. Revise this lease to add in additional sections and terms. Come up with 10 names and taglines for a new podcast. Summarize the plot of The Empire Strikes Back in the style of Bukowski, Hemingway, and Adam Smith. Generate a 2000 yard swimming workout. Generate a book summary and then translate it into Spanish, French, Hindi, Japanese and Indonesian. Find the value of a property after supplying the NOI and Cap Rate. I’m also starting to use it as a search engine replacement when looking up information, generating code, or doing simple math. To show you how powerful it is, I decided to use it to generate most of this week’s newsletter. Write me a few paragraphs on the following: What is Chat GPT 3.5? what are the benefits and use cases? What are the risks, and how do I get started playing with it? GPT-3, which stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3, is a large-scale language processing model developed by OpenAI. GPT-3 has been trained on a massive amount of text data, and is able to generate human-like text based on a given prompt. This makes GPT-3 a valuable tool for a wide range of natural language processing tasks, such as translation, summarization, and text generation. One of the key benefits of GPT-3 is its ability to perform these tasks with high accuracy. This makes it a valuable tool for researchers and developers working on AI applications that involve language processing. Additionally, GPT-3 is easy to use and can be integrated into existing systems, making it a useful tool for businesses and organizations looking to improve their natural language processing capabilities. There are also potential risks associated with GPT-3 and other large-scale language processing models. One of the key concerns is the potential for such models to be used for malicious purposes, such as generating fake news or impersonating individuals online. Additionally, the development of large-scale language processing models raises ethical questions about the role of AI in society and the potential for AI to replace human workers in certain industries. If you are interested in playing with GPT-3, you can visit the OpenAI website and sign up for an account. Once you have an account, you can access a range of tools and resources for working with GPT-3, including tutorials and example code. You can also visit the OpenAI GitHub page to access the code for GPT-3, and explore the various ways in which the model can be used. My 2022 Reading List I somehow found quite a bit of time to read this past year so I wanted to do an end of year summary. Optimizing for efficiency, I decided to pass the titles and authors into ChatGPT and let AI provide the plot summaries. From Third World to First by Lee Kuan Yew is the story of Singapore’s transformation from a poor, developing country to a global economic powerhouse. The book chronicles the challenges and triumphs of Singapore’s journey, as well as the strategies and policies implemented by Lee Kuan Yew and his government. The Lion’s Tracker Guide to Life by Boyd Varty is a short read that draws on the author’s experiences living and working at a game reserve in South Africa. The book is based on the philosophy of “tracking,” which involves paying attention to the present moment and the world around us. Varty uses stories from his time at the reserve to illustrate the principles of tracking and show how they can be applied to our daily lives. Marco Polo Didn’t Go There by Rolf Potts is a collection of travel stories that often challenges the idea of “must-see” destinations and explores the concept of authentic travel. The book is based on Potts’ belief that true travel is not about ticking off items on a pre-determined list of sights, but rather about experiencing a place on its own terms and engaging with the local culture. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong is a novel about a young Vietnamese-American man named Little Dog coming to terms with his identity and his relationship with his mother. The book is written in the form of a letter from Little Dog to his mother, who cannot read English, and explores themes of immigration, family, and trauma. Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkman is a book that explores the concept of time and offers practical advice for living a more fulfilling life. The book is based on the idea that we all have a limited amount of time on earth - approximately 4,000 weeks - and that we should make the most of it. Burkman offers a range of tips and techniques for prioritizing our time and making the most of every week. The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway is a collection of all of Hemingway’s short stories, including classics like “The Old Man and the Sea” and “Hills Like White Elephants.” The stories showcase Hemingway’s signature style and explore themes of war, love, and adventure. The Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux is a travel book that chronicles the author’s journey by train through Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. The book is an account of Theroux’s experiences on the various trains he took, as well as the people he met and the sights he saw along the way. Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making by Tony Fadell is a book about the creative process and the importance of building things that matter. Fadell, who is best known as the co-inventor of the iPod, offers his insights and experiences on the process of creating successful products, and discusses the importance of passion, focus, and perseverance in the pursuit of excellence. The Overstory by Richard Powers is a novel about a group of strangers who come together to protect a forest from being destroyed by developers. The book explores the interconnectedness of nature and human society, and the idea that trees are more than just resources to be exploited. Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara is a book about the philosophy and practice of hospitality in the restaurant industry. The book offers insights on how to create a welcoming and engaging environment for diners, and explores the idea that hospitality is not just about providing good food and service, but about creating The Importance of Living by Lin Yutang is a book about the art of living, featuring practical advice and philosophical musings on a variety of topics. The book covers a wide range of subjects, from the importance of humor and the value of leisure, to the benefits of simplicity and the need for spiritual balance. Throughout the book, Yutang emphasizes the importance of living a full and enriching life, and offers a range of practical tips and techniques for achieving this. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## How To Kickstart A Personal Evolution URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2022/11/30/how-to-kickstart-a-personal-evolution/ Published: 2022-11-30 Topics: Mindset, Entrepreneurship, Personal Development Break free from the constraints of your past and the labels you've been assigned; I encourage you to boldly question your current existence and embrace the transformative journey of personal evolution by taking risks and exploring new possibilities. Your past is the past. You were not you. You were a fraction of all you presently encompass. I hope in 6 months, 1 year, a decade you look back and you feel the same way about yourself in this current moment. At least I do. It’s all too easy to label someone as “that type of person” — maybe it’s someone who you think “peaked” in high school, or is really good at a sport or knows how to throw a really big party. It’s even easier to label ourselves as someone who has or doesn’t have **. I beg you to realize that we always possess the ability to move past these labels. We can change. We can evolve. The unfortunate reality is that it’s usually too convenient to maintain status quo. Deep down we crave a shift, but still refuse to question our current state of existence. But what would happen if you took that risk? What would happen if you JUST quit your job? How would life change if you ended that relationship that wasn’t serving you? What would happen if you stopped letting your past define you? How can you learn to drop your labels? What’s the absolute worst thing that could happen? Or if we reframe it — what personal evolution might you kickstart? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Finding Gratitude In An Ending URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2022/11/23/finding-gratitude-in-an-ending/ Published: 2022-11-23 Topics: Entrepreneurship, Bloomfield Ave Cafe, Mindset, Punk Rock August of 2002 marked the start of my journey as an entrepreneur. Two decades on, I talk a bit about my experiences. August of 2002 marked the start of my journey as an entrepreneur. That was the month and year I opened Bloomfield Ave Cafe & Stage in downtown Montclair, NJ. To call it a cafe was a generous statement — in realty it was a poorly lit warehouse with minimal climate control and a 3’ high stage in the back that could pack in 250-300 bodies on any given night. We occasionally served Folgers drip coffee but mostly Kirkland brand bottles of water I would buy for $0.07 and sell for $2. In our 5 year run we booked quite a number of “national” bands including My Chemical Romance, The Jonas Brothers, Fallout Boy, Paramore, Steel Train, The Starting Line, The Movielife, Sick of It All, Avail and countless more. I could continue with the name drops but chances are, if you were a touring hardcore or emo band in the early 2000’s, Bloomfield Ave. Cafe was on your booking itinerary. Over the years, people have told me countless times that hanging out at “the club” on weekends were some of the best memories of their teenage years. The only reason I even took the plunge was that I had this sub-surface level instinct I didn’t want to work for anyone else.  The term “entrepreneur” never even crossed my mind — I only did it because my interest in playing music and throwing basement shows happened to coincide with an equally strong desire to avoid any sort of adult responsibility.  I suppose it was about a year into being open that I started to realize that running a business actually came with a whole lot of responsibility. At the end of the day, I was the only one who was going to make sure staff showed up on time, the utilities were paid for and that the garbage went out on Sunday nights.  Most importantly, I was the only person truly responsible for making sure more money entered the bank account than exited on any given month. Kicking and screaming, I was forced into entrepreneurship, forced to accept responsibility and forced into growing up. I started to read books about how to run a business. I remember reading The Ten-Day MBA and legitimately having a lightbulb moment when I realized all of the things I had no idea about. I started to meet with other business owners and I would ask them how they overcame their obstacles and struggles. I started an IRA for myself and investing in broad based index funds — after all, who else was going to look out for me when I was old. I fired my accountant who failed to even let me know that IRAs could be used as a tax shelter but simultaneously tried to sell me a bunch of “loaded’ mutual funds. I learned, I grew, and I absorbed each piece of advice and every lesson I could. If you’re looking for a story culminating in a successful exit, sadly you’re in the wrong place. Bloomfield Ave Cafe & Stage closed it’s doors on January 15th, 2007 to very little fan fair when we were shut down by the Montclair Fire Marshal. They cited safety concerns, which were, ironically enough, related to an illegal exhaust vent hookup in our basement made by a neighboring tenant. A small part of me died that night knowing that the clock had all but run out, but truth be told, my heart just wasn’t in it at that point. So with bittersweet relief, I closed one chapter of my life and embraced the chance to start fresh. I’m grateful for Bloomfield Ave Cafe and how it gave me space to stumble into entrepreneurship. I’m grateful for all the bands I was able to play and work with during our tenure. I’m grateful for my role in serving the New Jersey music scene in whatever small way I was capable of. I’m grateful for all the friendships I made during those crucial years. I’m grateful whenever I receive a random text or run into someone whom I deeply love but sadly fell out of contact with. Most of all, I’m grateful to have had the chance to apply the lessons I learned and the spirit of that community into all of my future endeavors. And I suppose that is all we can ask for. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Balancing Creation Vs. Consumption URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2022/11/09/balancing-creation-vs-consumption/ Published: 2022-11-09 Topics: Creativity, Mindset, Time Management Why I like to call bullshit when someone tells me they don’t have time to devote to something to fuel their creative fire, aid in their well being or simply bring them happiness. I like to call bullshit when someone tells me they don’t have time to devote to something to fuel their creative fire, aid in their well being or simply bring them happiness. If I were to open the screen time setting on their phone, I would most likely see that they are logging a minimum of 4-5 hours/day on social media and other superfluous digital activities. I’d also venture they are spending a few more hours at night watching some sort of streaming service or sports entertainment. I’ll admit, I’m often ashamed of my consumption patterns. I also don’t think a little mindless scrolling is too detrimental to our well being. The issue I have with this form of “downtime” is, when left unchecked, we start to depend on it to relax — often in greater amounts and at the expense of our desire to create. …or to put it another way — We increasingly waste our precious hours on things that don’t matter. Let’s replace this pattern with something more constructive. Let’s commit to create in greater proportion to our consumption. Some Things I Do To Rebalance My Creativity Here are a few things I like to do to rebalance when I notice my creative output waning. Try and treat them as a “menu” to choose from versus trying to incorporate them all at once. I also cycle on and off of them as needed. Spend the first 30 minutes of your morning free writing versus reading CNN or Reddit. Turn off ALL notifications on your phone before 8AM and after 7PM instead of starting and ending your day responding to “fires”. Delete ALL social media apps from your phone and access them only from your web browser on your laptop. Schedule 30-60 minutes of “thinking time” every day versus stacking up your calendar with meetings and busy work. Schedule 3-4 hours of “deep work” twice a week for creative projects and turn off your email reader, phone, and eliminate all other distractions. Go for a walk or a bike ride at night instead of watching the latest GRR Martin series on HBO Max. End your day reading a book versus scrolling Instagram or Tiktok. Do you have something that nurtures your creative well being? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## That Time We Rode Out A Hurricane In El Salvador URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2022/10/19/that-time-we-rode-out-a-hurricane-in-el-salvador/ Published: 2022-10-19 Topics: Travel, Central America, Natural Disasters Some travel adventure writing about the time my family and I went to El Salvador and a hurricane hit us. Monday 7:30PM I’m laying in the dark next to my oldest son, Atlas and I can feel the sweltering heat returning. I’ve only slept about 1.5 hours in the past 2 days and I have a splitting headache. Maybe it’s the fatigue or just the 2 jalapeño margaritas I had with dinner in El Tunco — the only place between here and San Salvador with power — but I do feel my mind starting to calm. Shortly after, my body slowly begins to shut down for the evening. (the previous) Saturday 2:00PM We decided to get away from the beaches and head up into the highlands of El Salvador and have spent most of the morning and afternoon driving along the Ruta de las Flores, stopping in the little villages, eating street food in the colonial town of Juayua at a weekly festival and taking in the scenery. Our final stop is a random, yet quintessentially Central American, tourist destination I saw on the map called El Labertino de Apaneca. Tucked on the side of a highway, the Labertino is part hedged maze, part canopy tour, part amusement park, and a completely well oiled machine for extracting $USD from day trippers from San Salvador. I love these off the beaten path tourist destinations and it provided the perfect opportunity to tire the kids out before making the 2 hours drive back to our AirBnb at the beach. While it’s a fun place to kill an hour if you’re in the neighborhood, novelty aside, there isn’t much to El Labertino de Apaneca. The only reason it bears mention in our story is the fact that when Atlas and I stood on the rickety tower in the center of the maze and rang the victory bell, I couldn’t help but notice the borderline gale force winds. It wasn’t until later that night I received a WhatsApp message from our host with a single link to an emergency alert containing information about a Category 1 hurricane making its way from the Caribbean, across Nicaragua and barreling down straight for us. Sunday 11:00AM “Nah, I’m not gonna risk it, we’re gonna pack it in and head to San Salvador for a few days”, I overheard a surfer say to his friend on the street of El Tunco. My wife Justine shot me a worried look. “I suppose we should stock up and do a little hurricane prep” I offered, hoping to ease her anxiety. Having experienced Hurricane Sandy rip apart my beach town, as I had back in 2012, I’m fully aware of the destruction that can be caused - not only from the initial storm, but from the days of power outages, lack off access to clean water and sanitation, communications networks collapsing and basic challenges of just getting around. Compound this with the fact that we now found ourselves in a part of the world that often struggles with all of the above under normal circumstances, I suppose some planning was in order. Our next stop was the Super Selectos grocery store in La Libertad to stock up on extra water, provisions, and beer. We might lose power but at least we’ll have plenty of tortas y frijoles and papaya, I thought. Sunday 4:00PM I’m driving back from our favorite little puperseria with a dozen and a half of these greasy little masa wrapped packages from heaven. The sky is dark and ominous and the tension in the air is heavy and palpable.  It suddenly dawns on me why there have been workers cutting back the trees and restringing power lines on the side of CA-2 for the past few days.  A single drop of rain hits my windshield followed shortly by another and another. I suppose I better get home. Monday 12:30AM I wake up to a click of a mini-split air conditioner kicking on simultaneously with the warm chime of an iPhone connecting with it’s charger. I hear the torrential rain pounding off of the neighbors corrugated zinc roof and see the palms outside our window ferociously dancing in the wind. Ten seconds later the power goes out again plunging us into complete darkness. Thirty seconds later I hear that familiar “click-chime” and the lights are restored. Ninety seconds after that — silence & blackness. For the next three hours my mind races as the power continues to dance on and off. What the fuck were we doing here? Should we have headed inland? Will the kids be safe? I keep going back to the days and weeks after Hurricane Sandy and recognize the low level trauma my generation still carries. Monday 3:30AM The power goes out for the final time and we’re plunged into complete darkness. Outside I hear the thud of what I suspect is a coconut falling from a tree, losing it’s battle with the storm. I doze off into an uneasy sleep. Monday 4:30AM I wake to the sound of Arabelle crying in the other room. Sitting up in bed I hear a steady stream of liquid dripping nearby. I get up and step into a puddle of standing water and realize that the ceiling has sprung several leaks. Venturing into the living room, I discover the entire interior perimeter of the south side of the house has taken on a few inches of water. Later I would find a 1/2” gap in the sliding glass windows that allowed it to enter. Meanwhile, outside, the storm continues to rage and subside, rage and subside, rage and subside. Monday 6:30AM Rylo and Atlas are awake and unusually docile — especially for the morning. They can sense the danger. The eye of the storm is now sitting just 10 miles off the coast from us and judging by the intensity of the rain and wind, I guess that we’re approaching the climax. The water continues to pour into the house as quickly as I can sweep it back out and for the next six hours, the storm continues to rage but, noticeably, the lull between rain bands begin to increase as it moves up the coast towards Guatemala. Almost 24 hours after those first few drops of rain, it finally passes. Monday 2:00PM I’m standing over the Puente el Majagual, white knuckling my iPhone and trying to document the aftermath of the storm. The raging waters below have touched the bottom of the bright orange bridge and I realize that from my vantage, I’m only 3 or 4 feet from being swept downriver and out to sea should I lose my balance. According to the news, Hurricane Julia had already taken 14 lives and I had no intention of being her 15th. I return to my car and continue up past El Tunco, looking for somewhere to buy additional water — without electricity the pump can’t deliver water to the taps, showers, or toilets. While pool water and a bucket provide a means to flush the toilet and keep our bathrooms operational, we otherwise have found ourselves running dangerously low. Fortuitously, a supply truck follows me into a parking lot and I’m able to buy a 5 gallon jug off the driver. I head back to our house taking note of the downed trees, electricity poles, and swollen rivers. A newly fallen tree blocks the road back to our house and I’m forced to find a detour. Monday 5:30PM The sun is beginning to set and the power remains out. I know it’s going to get dark really quickly and our AirBnb came equipped with just a solitary, half burned candle. We’re all going stir crazy and tempers are starting to flare. We need to get out of this house. I recall from my previous reconnaissance mission into town that the lights seemed to be working at a few of the local restaurants and I suspect some of them might have generators. We pile in the car and venture out. Tuesday 3:00AM I’m woken from a deep slumber by a familiar click-chime. This time it feels different. 30 minutes later the power remains on. As I feel the cool breeze of air conditioning hit my skin, I smile gently before drifting back to sleep. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Are You Managing Your Short Term Rental Properly? URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2022/09/28/are-you-managing-your-short-term-rental-properly/ Published: 2022-09-28 Topics: Short Term Rentals, Real Estate Investing, Time Management Originally published in 2022, here is my current list of tools I use in managing our short term rental business. Since launching The Surf Village back in August I’ve had to ramp up my knowledge on managing vacation and short term rental properties. I’ve had quite a few people ask me questions on how we handle guest communication, pricing, security, etc so this is my attempt at providing some general information on how we’re doing it all. If this type of content is useful please reach out and I’d be happy to continue to publish more insights on the nuts and bolts of running a short term rental operation but for today, let’s jump into a few of the biggies. Managing Guest Communication If you’re listing your property on more than one booking platform you’re going to want a way to handle your booking calendar, messaging guests, consistency in your listings, pricing and more. This is where channel management software comes into play. There are dozens of channel managers out there but we ultimately decided on a product called Hospitable. This tool lets us hook into AirBnb, VRBO, and Booking.com via APIs, link identical listings together, and manage them in one single spot, or channel. The have a fully functioning mobile app for iPhone and Android or you can use any web browser to access. Guests can message us on any single platform and it appears in a universal inbox where we can respond to inquiries from one dashboard. It supports boilerplate responses to save on answering the same question over and over as well as scheduled messaging for automating common communications such as checkin & checkout information, house rules, etc. When a guest books on a platform Hospitable blocks out the calendar on all of your linked properties to prevent double booking. Pricing, minimum night stays,  photos and copy can be universally controlled in one place and disseminated out to the individual platforms. All of this is great and pretty much fulfills the standard needs of any short term rental host, but my favorite feature of Hospitable is how it plays nice with others via 3rd party app integrations.  This comes in super handy when managing pricing and property access. Dynamic Pricing Management Pricing our bungalows properly was a big source of anxiety for me and I was trying to avoid “shooting from the hip”. Fortunately there is a tool called Pricelabs to help us analyze market conditions and adjust our pricing in real time. It integrates directly with Hospitable and using this powerful combination of tools, we’re able to dynamically update our prices every 24 hours based on demand.  I’ve only begun to scratch the surface with what Pricelabs can do but it easily allows us to set ideal nightly rates, floor prices, minimum nightly stays, seasonal rates, identify in demand dates, and more. While you really need to understand the true cost of hosting a guest to properly determine your pricing, Pricelabs lets us measure and adjust as close to real time to help drive more revenue. Managing Guest Access I am committed to doing things “the right way” versus the easier or more economical when it comes to daily operations of The Surf Village. To that end, we decided to splurge on the Schlage Encode smart locks for all of our doors. At almost $300/lock, there are certainly cheaper alternatives but in the interest of time management, I decided it was worth the investment. The beauty of these particular locks is that they integrate directly with Hospitable and many of the other channel managers. When a guest books with us, it generates a temporary code for them that activates at the time of their check in and deactivates when they check out. The lock allows you to create up to 100 codes so I also use it for cleaning & support teams, pest control, handyman access and pretty much anyone who we need to get into our spaces on a recurring basis. This feature alone has already saved me hours of time managing lock outs, updating security codes, and confirming that a guest has indeed, checked out when they were supposed to. Managing Guest Security Our 11th hour decision to add Ring doorbell cameras to all of our doors was made after repeatedly being told how essential they were to creating peace of mind.  Paired with our smart locks, we’re able to easily manage our check in and check out process, provide better site security, keep tabs of when professional service teams are on site, and ensure we are being good neighbors by making sure our guests are adhering to quiet hours. While I would never recommend such a blatant violation of privacy such as putting a camera inside your unit, exterior property surveillance will help provide better security for your property and ensure the well being of your guests.  Isn’t This A Bit Overkill? Maybe? But that depends on your goals and size of your operation. If you are occasionally renting out a garage apartment behind your house, some of these tools might be overkill and it’s not worth the initial and recurring investment.  The Surf Village currently has 3 bungalows up and running with another 6 opening later this year. Assuming that we are renting these once per week next summer, that is 36 different groups of guests that we need to manage every month. I would argue for anyone doing something more than casual, these tools are indispensable and allow you to spend less time on the routine management and more time on being a better host. Interested in learning more? Feel free to reach out and I’d be happy to answer your questions or you can hire me to consult on your next project. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Your Business Shouldn't Need You URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2022/09/21/your-business-shouldnt-need-you/ Published: 2022-09-21 Topics: Time Management, Entrepreneurship, Hustle Culture I loathe the concept of 'hustle culture' and if you have been following me for even a short amount of time, it’s pretty clear that I firmly reject it. I loathe the concept of “hustle culture” and if you have been following me for even a short amount of time, it’s pretty clear that I firmly reject it. I think the notion of 50+ hour work weeks are bullshit and I don’t believe productivity can be measured by the amount of time you put into a task. If you are running a business, time in should not be a metric of your pay. Or put into simpler terms — Your business shouldn’t need you. I view individuals who refuse to implement systems and processes less as entrepreneurs and more as employees who have successfully created a job for themselves. Is there a problem with this? Certainly not, but this doesn’t offer me the liberation I seek. I think there is more to life than being a proverbial “fire extinguisher” who needs to remain close to the day to day operations of their business. I admire and respect an entrepreneur who can disappear to Europe or Asia for a month while their business thrives. I’m in awe when someone can do it for 6 months or a year. That’s not to say that that I am a stranger to hard work — I find very little more rewarding than rolling up my sleeves and jumping into the trenches of a new endeavor. I love the feeling of being “in it” and creating something new to share with the world. However, once the problems have been solved, my priorities quickly shift to developing processes and building a team to manage them. I’ll still lend my support and push forward with business development, but in the end, my goal is to build something that can sustain without me. My end game is self obsolescence. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Staying Humble The Hard Way URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2022/09/14/staying-humble-the-hard-way/ Published: 2022-09-14 Topics: Travel, Surfing, Mindset Lessons in humility I picked up while having a sketchy encounter with a jetty while surfing. Maintain humility at all costs. It’s what makes a successful person inspirational versus insufferable. The best way to do this is to routinely come face to face with something much larger than yourself. Something where you have zero chance of coming out ahead and, at best, are tolerated. For me, there is no better way to come face to face with how cosmically insignificant I am than getting in the ocean. This past weekend I was surfing in the first bigger swell of the fall season. The surf was about shoulder to head high on set and the swell was coming in from 2 different directions. It was getting deep and the jetty was quickly becoming invisible but the swell was big enough to punch through and continue to work through the rising tide. It was early and while I was well rested, I felt a little off.  Still, I really wanted to get in the water. This past month had been particularly draining and I really needed a reset. I deserved it. I chose to paddle out in the middle — not the easiest place to get past breakers of this size on a 7’6” board, but the jetty was quickly disappearing with the high tide and I knew it would be safer. The rip currents, size of the swell, and the proverbial “cobwebs”  in my arms from a month of not surfing made this paddle particularly challenging. I struggled for about 15 minutes, paddling straight into wave after wave, just trying to make it out into the line-up. “Fuck it”, I heard myself yell in defeat, after yet another wave crashed over my head. I turned the board around and caught the whitewater back to the beach. I got out and decided to paddle out on the other side of the jetty where there were a few other surfers in the water.  I ran quickly across the beach trying to avoid the swarm of black flies attacking any exposed skin as well as biting me through my wetsuit. I jumped back in the water to start my paddle out, this time hugging the jetty. This paddle was much easier, the current was strong but pulling me out and the jetty, although mostly invisible now, provided protection from the set waves. I quickly made my way out.  As the next set came in, I started my final paddle to break past it and out into the lineup. Another surfer had taken off on the wave and turned down the line. I slowed my paddle to let him pass versus making myself a speed bump that could potentially injure both of us.  With the loss of momentum, I couldn’t get past this wave and I had to take it on the head. When I came up I started my paddle back out and tried to get my bearings. Was I still in front of that ugly brown mansion on the beach or had I drifted? Did the rip pull me in at all? Where was the jetty? It was about that moment I felt something hard and slippery under my feet and it only took me a moment to realize exactly where I was. I was on the jetty. The next 30 seconds felt like 3 hours as I prepared for the onslaught of set wave on set wave. The first one picked my board and I up and just as quickly deposited us back on the rocks. I felt my teeth gnash together in tandem with my board crunching under rock. Was that sand or broken tooth in my mouth? With the next wave came the pain of being tossed off the side of a cliff and I simultaneous felt throbbing in my left thigh, leg, shin and foot. My right heel had hit something and felt torn open. I wondered how badly I was bleeding. As I came up, I quickly collected my thoughts and realized that I had also been deposited close to the other side of the jetty. Fortunately, there was lull between this wave and the next and I knew I needed to act fast to avoid further injury. With little grace, I scrambled across the other side of the jetty, hopped on my board and rode the whitewater back into the beach.  I ran up the sand, dodging the swarm of biting flies and back to my car, refusing to look down at my wounds. Did I need stitches? I was firmly convinced some new teeth were in my near future. My poor board — so beautiful and I most likely just destroyed it. When I got back to my car, I stripped off my wetsuit and mustered up the courage to inspect my wounds. I got off easy this time — just scrapes, bruises and a few loose teeth. Somehow my board only took on a minor ding along the rail that would easily be repaired. I let our a huge sigh of relief as I cleaned up the blood, dried off and drove home, both humbled and grateful that things could have easily taken a much darker turn. I’ll hobble along for the next few days as I lick my wounds and reflect on my own cosmic insignificance. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Here's Why You Shouldn't Finish Everything You Start URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2022/08/31/here's-why-you-shouldn't-finish-everything-you-start/ Published: 2022-08-31 Topics: Entrepreneurship, Time Management, Mindset It's okay to leave tasks unfinished and prioritize your well-being, learning to set boundaries and intentionally create space for relaxation, which can lead to a more focused and fulfilling life. It’s OK to have problems. It’s OK to leave things undone. It’s OK to have a never ending punch list of tasks that seems to get longer every day. You don’t need to solve every issue that arises. You don’t need to finish everything you start. You sure as hell don’t need to keep working until you whittle that list to zero. Learn to prioritize where your time is best served, hire good people where you can and leave the rest for another day (or never). Put down that book that isn’t resonating with you. Stop doing things that no longer serve your well being. Know that unless you intentionally create space for nothing, something will fill the void. Find comfort in this discomfort. For most of us, we can’t (nor shouldn’t) stop the constant deluge of responsibilities thrown at us. We do have the ability to define our relationship with them. We also can choose to set clear boundaries around work, family, wellness or anything else we may prioritize. This may mean we turn off notifications on our phones after 7PM or stay away from our computers on weekends. It may also mean we commit to watching a sunrise or sunset on the beach twice a week, eating dinner as a family or going on a nightly bike ride. It is very difficult to downshift, especially if you feel like you always need to “be on”, but when you intentionally slow down you will notice that you are able to focus better, live more fully, and perhaps even enjoy the ride a bit more. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## We Need To Be Proud Of Our Achievements URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2022/08/24/we-need-to-be-proud-of-our-achievements/ Published: 2022-08-24 Topics: Real Estate Investing, Mindset, Short Term Rentals Reflecting on the inaugural guest arrival at The Surf Village, I realize the importance of taking a moment to appreciate our achievements and the collective effort of the team, balancing pride with gratitude. This past Friday we had our inaugural guests check in to our first bungalow at The Surf Village and it was a sprint to the finish line to deliver them the experience we’ve been envisioned for the past 15 months. My anxiety and tension has been through the roof this past week but I managed to capture their reaction on the Ring doorbell while as they entered the property and our entire team let out a collective sigh of relief. “Oh My God… … It’s Beautiful”. While we have some kinks to work out and we have about a week to prepare the next two bungalows for guests, it was a much needed moment of validation for everyone’s hard work. It’s been a little while since I launched something new into the world and all too often I look back in retrospect on how disconnected from the moment I tend to be. I used to chalk it up to non-attachment and silently patted myself on the back for maintaining a stoic mindset, but something about the cold and empty nature of that approach has never sat quite right with me. Granted, it’s all too easy to get caught up in our accomplishments and the ego loves positive reinforcement but, equally, I think it’s important to take a moment to revel in an achievement. To that end, I would like to take a moment to appreciate the collective efforts of our team to push things forward each and every day. I’m grateful, exhausted, and a little bit jealous of all of the guests who get to spend some time at The Surf Village. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Your Practice Is Your Training URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2022/08/10/your-practice-is-your-training/ Published: 2022-08-10 Topics: Yoga, Time Management, Mindset My Ashtanga Yoga journey since 2007 has taught me that consistent practice is the truest form of training, guiding my evolution from student to teacher and continually deepening my understanding and skills. I started practicing Ashtanga Yoga in 2007 at Wendy Green Yoga in Avon, New Jersey. I don’t know why I chose to walk into that studio but I would ride my bike or drive past it several times a week and say to myself “I should do yoga”. After about a year of doing this, I finally took the plunge and decided to take a class. Little did I know this action would be so transformative.  Ashtanga Yoga is different than most modern yoga styles in that there is a set sequence of postures and, traditionally, you practice on your own under the supervision of a dedicated teacher.  It’s a very individualized way of practicing versus your typical vinyasa flow power hour. As you progress and master the primary series you are immediately met with more challenging sequences which continue until you hit your own physical, mental and spiritual limits. These sequences can take years or decades to master, if ever. The Ashtanga Yoga System is often referred to as “Yoga for Type A Personalities” but the real purpose is to repeatedly dissolve one’s ego as a means of spiritual awakening. I should probably also mention that it needs to be practiced 6 days a week at 6AM because, why not? Loving a challenge, I signed up for an unlimited membership, bought myself a copy of David Swenson’s Ashtanga Yoga: The Practice Manual and jumped in head first. Most mornings except for Saturday, the Ashtangi’s day of rest, I would set an alarm and ride my bike to the yoga studio to get on my mat for 90 minutes to practice. Simultaneous to the rigorous practice, I started to give myself an education on yoga philosophy via Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, The Hathaway Yoga Pradipika, Yoga Mala by Pattabhi Jois, Heaven Lies Within Us by Theos Bernard, and other “classic” texts. I was all in. After about 2 years, I really saw a transformative change in my mind, body and spirit. I was committed to the practice and as a result, I felt less angry and more connected with myself and those around me. I was compelled to share this with others and decided that I should probably become a yoga teacher. My original teacher had moved to Central America at this point but we were still in contact so I reached out for some advice on how to best become a yoga teacher. I laid out my case as to why I thought it would be a good idea, what I had learned, but mainly I was looking for recommendations on what sort of teacher training program I should enlist in. Her response, and I paraphrase, was “Don’t worry about teaching, for now, just focus on being a student”. I have to admit, I was a bit shocked at this advice, perhaps even a little disappointed.  At the time, it seemed like every 21 year old who wasn’t sure what they wanted to do with their life would go to Costa Rica for a 2 week training and come back a certified yoga teacher. I had spent years of practice and study and was told that I still needed to be a student. Are you serious? I did trust my teacher so I shelved my noble ambitions and just continued to get on my mat and do the work. A few more years went by and I was still practicing, this time at a different studio in Asbury Park. The lady who ran the studio would pretty regularly ask me to sub or even pick up a class on the schedule. I was extremely resistant to the idea, after all, I was doing my best to embrace being a student. After about a year of her browbeating, I admitted that I had never taken a training and don’t think I would know how to do it. Her response — “You don’t need a training - you’re far more ready than most other teachers. Your practice is your training.” I took in what she said, and ultimately decided to pick up a class on the schedule. I was extremely nervous at first but once I settled in, I really enjoyed working with students and found that it provided another avenue for me to grow and deepen my own practice. That studio did ultimately close — suburban yoga studios are not a very profitable business model — but I continued to practice and teach at other spaces — upwards of 5 classes per week, right up until the pandemic. I also eventually did enroll in an “advanced” teacher training with 2 teachers I highly respected and was eager to learn from. While life has pulled me in a few new directions and I am not currently teaching, I actively practice under another of my long term teachers and I have enjoyed continuing my role as a student. So what are my takeaways? There are many ways to learn but nothing beats committing to consistent practice to refine your craft. Find a mentor or someone who has previously walked a similar path and heed their advice — they probably know more than you realize. Cherish your time with them. To be a teacher is a fundamental part of the learning process but it doesn’t mean you are an expert. Certifications are typically just pieces of paper for the ego. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## I Think You Should Put Your Phone Away URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2022/08/03/i-think-you-should-put-your-phone-away/ Published: 2022-08-03 Topics: Digital Minimalism, Mindset, Entrepreneurship Reflecting on a recent digital detox while camping in the Catskills, I realized the power of disconnecting When was the last time you digitally detoxed? I unintentionally did this past weekend while camping in the Catskills and it was awesome. We were only a few hours from home but cell service was almost non-existent and after my phone died, I did something many of us would consider quite revolutionary. I let it stay dead. Now, truthfully, I did try and charge it but for whatever reason I had a bad cable or something else preventing me, so I just put it away. Can you guess what happened next? Not much, to be honest — in fact, I’m struggling to think of one issue that couldn’t be categorized into one of the following buckets Things that could wait until I’m back. Things that were solved without my intervention. Things that just weren’t that important and could be let go. My biggest takeaway was that life (and business) more or less just kept going on. Sure, I may have missed out on some photo opportunities such as stand up paddling with Rylo on the front of the board and Atlas swimming along side me, but there were usually enough friends with their phones nearby to capture most of these moments as they happened. In the past I’ve written about my experiments with Digital Minimalism. I still actively practice not keeping social media apps on my phone and setting limits around personal screen time but none of this works better than just letting your phone die and not recharging it. I can’t help but think back to my early travels to Nicaragua in 2010/2011 when the telecom infrastructure at the beaches was more or less non-existent. My now vintage iPhone went into my bag for weeks on end and our internet usage was relegated to about 2 hours at night when the generators ran. We used this time to jump onto a communal dialup connection to answer important emails, let family and friends know we were alive and maybe catch up on current events back home. Today, wireless broadband access is pretty ubiquitous in the country, and it’s pretty common to see a farmer riding on a horse or an ox chatting away or checking Facebook from their smartphone. It was certainly frustrating back then but a big part of me does miss the days of being able to completely disconnect from the rest of the world and, like this past weekend, life (and business) still managed to go on. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Why You Should Probably Start Neglecting Your Goals URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2022/07/27/why-you-should-probably-start-neglecting-your-goals/ Published: 2022-07-27 Topics: Goal Setting, Entrepreneurship, Time Management Adopting a strategy of intentional neglect towards non-essential tasks can surprisingly be an effective way to stay focused and achieve your major goals Sometimes neglecting your goals can be a path to achieving them. Sound crazy? Hear me out. If you keep any sort of punch list of things you need to do then it’s probably become a dumping ground for tasks. I struggle with this constantly and my solution has been to periodically declare “Task Management Tool Bankruptcy”, delete everything and start over with a new project management tool.  I suppose this can be defined as “neglect”, but I’ve discovered an equally neglectful, yet effective, approach to actually achieving your big goals. Let’s walk through an example. If you’re like me, you usually have 2-3 “high priority” items on your punch list at any given time - these are the big goals that really push things forward and take precedent over everything else. Then there are about 10-15 “middle priority” items - things that are important or time sensitive but definitely not the goals that require your immediate attention. Lastly, there are 50+ items I like to classify as “someday”, “on my radar”, or “low hanging fruit”. These items are perfect for when you have a little extra time to do something. When you sit down to work, where do you start? If you’re like me, you’ll want to jump into a “high priority” item. But then a phone call from a business parter comes in that you really need to take. And then you get an email from the city about some permits you’ve been waiting to hear back on and want to respond to immediately. And then you get a shipping notification from Amazon about the 12 boxes of furniture that were just delivered to your front doorstep for your vacation rental project. And then … you get the picture.  It’s now 5:30, you’re trying to wrap up and while you feel like you got a lot done, your big goals remain largely untouched. Does this sound familiar? If it doesn’t, please reach out and teach me your solution! Anyway, here is my strategy for staying on track. I neglect everything that isn’t the one or two things I should be focusing my attention on. I neglect it all. I turn off my email, my phone and any other way someone may try and contact me. I shut down Asana, Slack, and my web browser to minimize distraction. Most importantly, I completely go out of my way to neglect those “middle priority” items. These items are our biggest productivity killers and should be avoided at all cost. Let me be clear - this doesn’t mean they aren’t important. Quite the contrary, they are so important that they will relentlessly distract you from your big goals. And that is why they need to be neglected. “You need to learn to start saying no to things you DO want to do, with the recognition that you have only one life, and you don’t have time and energy for everything.” — Elizabeth Gilbert -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## My Simple Formula To Make You A Luckier Person URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2022/07/13/my-simple-formula-to-make-you-a-luckier-person/ Published: 2022-07-13 Topics: Mindset, Entrepreneurship, Luck My method of increasing luck involves a blend of action, sharing, and authenticity, emphasizing that proactive engagement and forming genuine connections can lead to a more fortuitous life. I have a way to make you a luckier person. But first, let me confess, I don’t believe in luck. Nonetheless, a lot of people consider me an extremely lucky person. My wife Justine likes to joke how I’ll casually mention a want or a need and it will “miraculously” fall into my lap shortly after.  This has to be more than a coincidence, right? But as I said, I don’t believe in luck, at least not in the conventional sense. I do believe in hard work, maintaining a positive mindset, unconditionally helping others (or connecting them with someone who can), and sharing what I am investing my time into, with whoever will listen. Perhaps these qualities can be distilled down to something we can identify as “luck”. My intention is not to bolster my ego but to try and take a deeper dive into a mental model called your “Luck Surface Area”. Essentially, this model suggests that we can increase our luck through a combination of doing something and then sharing with as many people as we can. Put more eloquently: L(uck) = D(oing) x S(hareing) We need to find a way to TAKE ACTION and then have the confidence to SHARE what we’re doing with others. In this model, the more people in our sphere that start to see what we are doing, the more chances we have to catch a break. We increase our rate of “miraculously” connecting with someone who can help propel us forward. While this makes sense theoretically, in practice, we need to take a more nuanced approach. I can’t think of a worse pain than being cornered at a party or networking event by someone who only wants to brag about their achievements or is just talking to at me to ascertain how I can help them. Think of a time you have been in a similar situation and how this person made you feel. Back when Cowerks used to host regular networking events, my team had a term for these individuals — punishers. There is no quicker way to limit your luck than to be “a punisher” and over the years I saw a number of these folks come and go.  Often, these individuals were quick to tell me that our events were better attended than other meetups but there weren’t a lot of people who they could really do business with. Anyway, I digress. I believe to improve our luck we need to stack our ability to take action and share while showing compassion for others. This can manifest in several ways but here is a formula you may find useful. We need to listen to others. We need to ask them questions. We need to organically talk about their interests, projects and passions and then share ours. We need to figure out how we can be helpful or create value for them — and then proactively follow up. Most importantly, we need to do all of this without expecting anything in return. This is how we build authentic relationships and when we combine this with doing stuff — luck is the outcome. L(uck) = D(oing) x S(hareing) x A(uthenticity) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## My Secret To A Perfect Life In An Imperfect World URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2022/07/06/my-secret-to-a-perfect-life-in-an-imperfect-world/ Published: 2022-07-06 Topics: Gratitude, Mindset, Yoga Reflecting on a summer evening, I ponder the contrast between personal contentment and global turmoil, emphasizing the importance of gratitude and self-awareness in navigating life's complexities and acknowledging the imperfections and challenges alongside the joys. I’m enjoying a cool summer night, sitting on our back patio, listening to music and taking a few moments to myself while Justine puts the kids to bed. Life is perfect. There is also a lot of really fucked up shit happening in the world - Please consider donating here or here or here. Yes, most days when I wake up and read Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American I want to climb into a hole of despair. How am I supposed to show up as a leader or a parent when theres so much pain, ignorance and suffering? We seem so disconnected from one another and things only seem to be getting worse. Then I look over at Atlas and Rylo cuddling — holding onto the last few minutes of their dreams and the anxiety of our modern world gives way to pure love.  My thoughts immediately shift to the privilege I’ve been granted in this life — I grew up a white, male, in one of the most affluent parts of “THE” United States and, while I had a challenging upbringing, I also had a loving family where I was taught the value of hard work, thinking for myself, and being receptive to the knowledge present in all people, places and situations in life. I have been granted so much opportunity out of the gate and no matter how much I may claim to never take that for granted, I don’t even think I have the cognitive ability to fully understand how lucky I am. Social media is nothing more than a highlight reel and mine is no exception. For every business win there are many more failures (or pivots as we like to call them). For every happy family photo there are hours of tears, frustrations and tempers boiling over. I’m not even ready to get into the self imposed separation I actively created in the past as it pertains to my family. The endless jet setting and travel is matched with the reality of too many concurrent New Jersey winters — wait, wasn’t I just singing praises of where I live?  As messy or incomplete as life may be at times — both on a micro and macro level, I also consider it unequivocally perfect. I’ve begun to find calm in the storm — and I suppose that is all any of us can really do. Well, maybe that and speaking up when we see injustice, practicing forgiveness with ourselves as well as others and doing our best to pass along as many of these lessons to our kids as we can. So what is my secret to a perfect life? Gratitude - and my constant struggle to find its presence in all moments of life. Is it easy? Hell no - but nothing good ever is. I’ll close this train of thought with an exercise for you. What are you grateful for in this moment? When have you been in the wrong but too proud to admit fault? Where can you forgive someone else for their actions in the moment? How is your life perfect? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Working Hard Vs. Living A Full Life URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2022/06/29/working-hard-vs.-living-a-full-life/ Published: 2022-06-29 Topics: Yoga, Entrepreneurship, Hustle Culture, Mindset I discuss the struggle of balancing hard work with living a full life, reflecting on my journey from embracing extreme hustle culture to indulging in leisure, and ultimately finding a middle path that values both hard work and self-care. Last week I dove into limiting beliefs, how they evolve as you grow and even jumped into a few of my own. Today, I want to take a deeper dive into another issue I have struggled with — finding the balance between working hard and living a full life. I’ll be the first to admit - I have gone to extremes on both ends. On Working Hard Early on in my entrepreneurial journey I was guilty of jumping full on into “hustle culture”.  I prided myself on working harder and longer than anyone else around me. Working 12 to 16 hour days was perfectly normal and weekends were when I could get “real work” done because no one else was around to bother me. My only break in a 4 year span was a week in Costa Rica with my brother and any Pura Vida I may have experienced quickly dissipated when I landed in Newark Airport and turned on my phone. While I learned a lot and grew even more, I also destroyed countless friendships, my health and mindset stagnated and I’m fairly certain if you interviewed any of my ex-girlfriends, I was a completely insufferable human being. I chose to build my entire identity around work.  On Hardly Working Equally, I have had the pendulum swing the other way — I spent the better part of a decade running businesses while spending upwards of 3 months/year out of the country. My adventures have brought me to 5 continents and I’ve been able to both live and work abroad. I’ve been fortunate enough to see a lot of the world at a much slower place than most but I’ve also been guilty of abdicating responsibility, often to a fault. I chose to built my entire identity around living a life of leisure. Finding A Middle Path Maybe you can chalk it up to the maturity that comes with being a parent of 3 kids but these days I find myself cherry picking the best parts of my former identities. I value hard work as equally as I value working smarter and surrounding myself with great people. There are days when I feel like I’m on the phone or in meetings non-stop but I set hard boundaries around when I work and when I’m with my family. I continually refine systems and processes to optimize for efficiency and minimize fires. I try and maintain a healthy relationship with Instagram but I go weeks (and sometimes months) where it’s deleted from my phone. Yoga, acupuncture, routine chiropractic work, meditation, bike rides, fancy haircuts, sitting on the beach, and “all the self care” are placed at equal value to Zoom meeting, sales calls, deep work, networking, and responding to emails (OK, maybe not responding to emails). Copious amounts of travel is a non-negotiable and I’m counting the days until my kids passport renewals arrive and we can start getting back on planes. I am going to set foot on all 7 continents before I die. Above all, maintaining my ability to compromise in any of my “identities” is how I choose to live a full life. Now ask yourself, how do you choose to live yours? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## You Need To Overcome Your Limiting Beliefs URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2022/06/22/you-need-to-overcome-your-limiting-beliefs/ Published: 2022-06-22 Topics: Mindset, Imposter Syndrome, Entrepreneurship I explore how limiting beliefs affect entrepreneurs differently at various stages, using my own experiences to illustrate how these beliefs can evolve and impact decision-making, emphasizing the importance of recognizing and overcoming them for personal and business growth. Limiting beliefs affect entrepreneurs at all levels, albeit in very different ways.  Our individual wiring, past struggles and prior experiences will help define these limitations but it is important to remember that they are only perceptions. When someone is starting out on their entrepreneurial journey it’s often easy to identify these limiting beliefs and they can often look like the following: “Am I smart enough?” “Will anyone care about my product or idea?” “I don’t really care about money or the ‘business stuff’ - I just want to create.” As we mature as business owners we are usually forced to move past these limitations and look back and laugh at how ‘naive’ we were when we started.  Be careful, this way of thinking can be a trap - limiting beliefs will continue to follow us and we will have to do some searching to find where they lie. In recent years I’ve come to recognize my limiting beliefs have often revolved around things like — confidence in raising money, being the leader I read about in all those business books and my ability to find that balance between working hard and living a full life. Let’s dig into my own limiting beliefs around raising money. When starting out, I never really thought that I could raise capital for a business. I thought that investments either came from entrepreneurs who already had some degree of wealth (i.e. rich kids) or part of a broader network I was somehow unaware and excluded from (i.e. boys club). I obviously needed to get out in the world a bit more and network with other entrepreneurs. I did that by building a local tech & startup community in the area and over the course of 10 years hosted over 400 events, launched an annual conference and personally connected with thousands of other entrepreneurs. I came to realize how limited my thinking was and harboring an “us versus them” mentality was not only flawed, but toxic. I also did not have a firm grasp on how financing worked — I remember looking at a building in Asbury Park circa 2010 for ~$200,000 and thinking that I’d never be able to save up that much money to buy something like that. Meanwhile, my business was paying much more in rent to a landlord than I would have paid to a bank if I had put together a business plan, found a team of investors through my growing network and obtained a commercial mortgage. This limiting belief didn’t just cost me years of rent to a landlord - had I recognized it early on and educated myself properly, I’d also own a building worth 10-15x what we would have acquired it for. Fortunately, I was able to recognize my knowledge gap and have evolved my mindset —  owning the real estate is a core component for more or less any project I am involved in and raising capital is much less of a challenge when you create and execute a solid business model. Overcoming limiting beliefs is a lifelong process however, as I have learned to become more adept at spotting them, I have found it easier to get out of my own way. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## There Will Be A Last Time For Everything URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2022/06/15/there-will-be-a-last-time-for-everything/ Published: 2022-06-15 Topics: Yoga, Mindset, Death Reflecting on life's transient nature, I contemplate the inevitability of 'last times' for various experiences, recognizing the choice to fully embrace each moment or pass through life distracted, highlighting the beauty in endings and the importance of connection. Life is full of lasts. There will be a last time I change a diaper, drive my kid to school, or wake up with a toddler cuddling me for comfort while he dreams away. There will be a last time I ride a bike, get on my yoga mat, start or end a business, ride a motorcycle through the jungles of Indonesia or lay on a beach in Nicaragua, Toña in hand. There will be a last time I get on an airplane, or a surfboard, visit a museum, go to a concert, finish a book, listen to a song, hike to the top of a mountain or volcano, or pour another glass of wine over a good conversation with a friend, fully aware we will both pay for it in the morning. There will be a last time I have friends over for dinner, eat at a new restaurant, go to a BBQ or a pot luck, birthday party, a wedding or even a funeral. There will be a last time I hug my parents or look into my wife Justine’s eyes before one of us moves on from this existence. This may seem heartbreaking but I like to think there is beauty in an ending. I think it presents me with a choice. Do I want to try and cultivate a life where I fully embrace these moments, good and bad, or merely pass on through - working too much, staring at a screen for too long, forgoing dreams, and never really connecting with myself or those around me? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Creating Playbooks For Business & Life URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2022/06/08/creating-playbooks-for-business-and-life/ Published: 2022-06-08 Topics: Entrepreneurship, Time Management, Productivity Free up your time and be more productive by creating Standard Operating Procedures in your business and life. Working efficiently will eternally be one of my top priorities. If I can continually hone and improve these abilities it allows me to create more with less energy — which in turn can be redirected into spending more time with my family, better attending to my physical and mental well being, exploring new business ideas and living a fuller life. One of my latest exercises as it pertains to working more efficiently is to document anything I have to do more than once and add it to a “playbook”. This master playbook should live somewhere where it can evolve and be updated - the goal here is to get things out of my head and into a space where they can be documented and ultimately delegated. To get a bit more tactical, here’s a sample SOP, or standard operating procedure, that I recently created for a manager or stakeholder (i.e. myself) to approve and send out a marketing email: Scheduling an Email to Send Purpose: Scheduling an email should be done only by a manager or with approval. Hours: < 5 mins, weekly Platforms: Mailchimp SOP: 1) Log into Mailchimp and click on campaigns. 2) Click into the campaign you want to schedule for sending. 3) Click “Send a Test Email” and send an email to yourself. Review it 1 final time checking for correct dates/times, spelling errors, or information that may have changed. 4) If all is well, click “Schedule” on the top right. Select your date and time to send and click “Schedule Campaign”. As a general rule, I like to “Schedule Campaigns” vs. “Send Now” to allow for any last minute changes or finds - even it it is only 1 hour in the future. Common Hang Ups: - Scheduling an email is straightforward but should be done carefully to avoid messaging large amounts of customers with incorrect/wrong information. And here is an SOP I created for creating new SOPs for myself and other team members: Creating a new SOP Purpose: As a general rule, if you have to do something more than once, we should create and document an SOP for others to follow. Please use the following template and guidelines when creating one. Hours: < 20 mins, as needed Platforms: Loom, Google Docs Video: Log into Loom and record a video - link it here.  SOP: 1) Step by step document your processes. It helps to record a Loom video and reference that when documenting the SOP 2) Loom filenames should be “[SOP] The Full SOP Header”. In the description, please include the name of the SOP, the purpose, and a link to this part of the SOP. Common Hang Ups: - If there are any potential mistakes someone can make, they should be documented here. One of my plans is to extend this concept and create a playbook for my personal life and start to document some of the monotonous tasks and outsource them. A challenge for you: Take a few minutes and write a list of 20 things in your business or personal life that you can create SOPs for. Now, select 1 or 2 from your list and use the above template and creating your SOPs. Share them with me if you would like and I can provide feedback. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Two Types Of Morning Routines URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2022/05/25/two-types-of-morning-routines/ Published: 2022-05-25 Topics: Time Management, Productivity, Mindset How we start our days can set the entire temperament and pace for the remainder of it. How we start our days can set the entire temperament and pace for the remainder of it. Below are two morning routines that often I find myself participating in. Morning Routine #1 Wake Up 1 hour before I need to be somewhere. Pick up my phone, check Instagram, Reddit & scan my emails. Wake the kids, shower, eat some breakfast, and get my 6 year old ready and out the door for school. Morning Routine #2 Wake up 2-3 hours before I need to be somewhere. Sit and meditate for 15 minutes. Hop on the bike, get on a yoga mat, or do something else to get the heart moving. Time permitting, enjoy a cup of coffee on the back patio and write a bit. Wake the kids, shower, eat some breakfast, and get my 6 year old ready and out the door for school. My goal is, more often than not, to make mornings look like the latter. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Social Tokens To Serve Local Economies URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2022/05/18/social-tokens-to-serve-local-economies/ Published: 2022-05-18 Topics: Software Development, Crypto Currency, Entrepreneurship I’ve been thinking quite a bit about social tokens and the role they can play in creating economies to serve local communities. I’ve been thinking quite a bit about social tokens and the role they can play in creating economies to serve local communities. Online social clubs like Friends with Benefits, Bored Ape Yacht Club & other platforms that leverage “social capital” have provided value to their members by creating communities layered with financial incentives. As excited as I am for this space to mature into something much more mainstream, I’ve been wondering how to leverage some of these tools today to serve community building on a smaller scale. An example that would solve a real world problem for my business could look something like this: Problem: How do we use social tokens as a way to empower our community to supercharge the SNAP benefits program we run at our pop-up markets? Solution: Create a digital utility token to replace the ‘wooden nickels’ we use to manage and distribute SNAP benefits at the farmers market. Let’s call this token $WOODEN. Additionally, let’s assume that $1 WOODEN will always equal $1 USD. When a customer swipes their SNAP benefits card they receive a fixed amount of $WOODEN that they can spend at the market on fresh produce and other food items.  Now, let’s layer on a social token that can be purchased and owned by anyone in the community. We can call this token $MARKET. $MARKET tokens can be bought and traded freely, the price fluctuates, and it can be “burned”, or converted, into $WOODEN tokens. Owner of $MARKET tokens are incentivized to “burn” them for perks. These new $WOODEN tokens can then be put into a community pool where SNAP benefit recipients now receive leveraged spending power for using their benefits. For example, $1 USD of benefits may pay out $3 WOODEN if it is deemed that the community pool has the funds to support this payout structure. This simple economic framework allows individual who purchase and “burn” their $MARKET tokens to directly support underserved members of their local community in exchange for any number of rewards such as private access to events such as dinners or tastings, free product or swag, custom artwork NFT drops, etc. Over the next months and years we are going to see niche economies form around community endeavors and social tokens can provide a means to create and distributing capital within them. I realize this is a lot to digest so if there is 1 takeaway, spend an hour and familiarize yourself with the social tokens and ask yourself where you can connect the web3 hype with something tangible in your day to day. Looking to get started? Check out this article. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Maintaining Continual Progress URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2022/05/11/maintaining-continual-progress/ Published: 2022-05-11 Topics: Time Management, Mindset, Goal Setting It’s important to remember that, more often than not, progress is a series of small steps and not a monumental moment of achievement to be unlocked. It’s important to remember that, more often than not, progress is a series of small steps and not a monumental moment of achievement to be unlocked. The key to continual progress is to maintain consistent action towards a goal.  Consistent action can look like this: Sit annually for a weekend to plan out your year, reflect on the previous, and recalibrate where your goals and passions lie. Review these goals quarterly to see what’s working, what’s not, and course correct. Take an hour on Sunday to review the previous week, plan for the upcoming, and prioritize 1 or 2 tasks that move the needle forward. I guarantee that if you start to establish regular time for reflection and check ins, you will see that you are making great strides forward, often at an accelerated pace. Food For Thought Do you have a task list of everything you need to be doing? Take a few moments and see if there are 1 or 2 things in there that need to take priority over everything else as it pertains to helping you move the needle forward. Now evaluate your current commitments. What do you need to shift around to make sure these tasks get the love they need and deserve? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## My Easy Way To Create Instagram Reels URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2022/05/04/my-easy-way-to-create-instagram-reels/ Published: 2022-05-04 Topics: Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Productivity Instagram Reels are Meta’s answer to TikTok and over the past year or two, the platform has been significantly driving user engagement via this feature. Instagram Reels are Meta’s answer to TikTok and over the past year or two, the platform has been significantly driving user engagement via this feature. Creating good video content has traditionally been expensive and time consuming but that is no longer the case — it can now be done easily and dare I say, it’s even enjoyable. I’m not a videographer but I’ve learned a few tricks over the years from a few “professionals” that I’m happy to share. The Super Basic (Yet Effective) Way to Create Video Content Find something interesting to capture. Don’t try and reinvent the wheel here — try and stick with the “classics” — babies, young kids, and pets all make highly consumable content. If you’re trying to showcase your business, make sure to include people — preferably crowds of them — engaging with your product or brand. Try and resist the urge to include three minutes of nature shots from your last vacation or a long form video of you talking to your camera — I’m sorry to break it to you, but you’re probably the only person who will find it engaging. A highly useful piece of advice is to observe your consumption patterns. What captures your attention and where do you find yourself going down a rabbit hole of mindless scrolling? What types of accounts excite you when they drop new content? Start to document accounts who you think do it well and “borrow” from them. Keep it short. Keep your videos to around a minute and individual shots less than 3 seconds. The human brain is a wonderful tool at processing visual information and it can figure out what’s going on so rapidly, sometimes a 1 second shot is all it takes to fill in context. Still not convinced? Next time you watch a TV show or commercial I want you to notice how long a camera shot lasts. My guess is that it will be less than 3 seconds before it cuts to something else or a camera angle changes. If the professionals are doing it, my advice would be to follow suit. Add in a soundtrack that evokes an emotional response. Late 90’s and early 00’s indie rock has lately been my goto but don’t be afraid to experiment with tastefully curated selections from another era. Some low hanging fruit is more or less anything that has appeared on a Wes Anderson soundtrack. By all means, avoid the royalty free soundtracks Instagram will try and push on you and dig a bit deeper into their catalog for something that resonates. Pro Tip - Did you know if you set your Instagram business account to “Entrepreneur” as your profession, you can add pretty much any song you like to your reel? Now it’s your turn - go create your own Instagram Reel and be sure to drop it into the comments or send it to me to check out. Need some inspiration? Heres a few reels from our past season at Fresh Markets: https://www.instagram.com/reel/CTc1B7Rgz-w/ https://www.instagram.com/reel/CXZogCrgfja/ https://www.instagram.com/reel/CZ5P7bdDkUh/ Something that Contradicts The Above Advice Atlas, my 6 year old, has been into making folding-surprise monster drawings (apparently this is a trend). I recently captured this Instagram Reel of him demoing it to us and published it right before going to bed. To all of our surprise, the next morning it had over 5000 views and over 700 ❤️s. The moral of this anecdote is that sometimes content just resonates with an audience so be sure to not take any of my aforementioned advice too seriously. I urge you to just keep creating and experiment until you find something that sticks for you. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Skill Stacking To Create Value URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2022/04/27/skill-stacking-to-create-value-and-some-ideas-on-writing-clean-code/ Published: 2022-04-27 Topics: Mindset, Productivity, Software Development Learn how to extend your value by stacking unaligned skillsets. Stacking multiple skills creates value.  What do I mean by this? Let me share a personal example. I’m good at taking a high level vision or idea and articulating it in a way that others want to rally behind it. I’m also a software developer and can take an idea and build it. Both of these skills create value in very different ways but I would reason that the combination creates extreme value. Being an idea person who can speak relatively well is useful, but it’s not a highly unique skill — at the end of the day it all can be distilled down to being fluent at sales. Being a programmer who can build websites or apps is a great skill, but unless you have an idea along with the ability to sell it, you’re probably going to be leveraging your skill set building other peoples products. Now, stacking these two skills has allowed me to have an idea, build it and then go get other people excited about it. Exercise: Take 5-10 minutes and write down all the things that you’re good at. From this list, start to pair your strengths. Mix and match and see what you come up with. Do you start to see something unique? More importantly, is there anything that would be enjoyable? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## How I Like To Approach Marketing URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2022/04/20/how-i-like-to-approach-marketing/ Published: 2022-04-20 Topics: Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Time Management Insights on marketing new ventures, emphasizing organizing marketing strategies, differentiating between lead and lag measures, and implementing effective processes for business growth. Marketing something new is intimidating. I’ve been building brands and businesses for close to 20 years and I still get anxiety whenever it’s time to launch. Will people love it? Will they even notice? Is it even ready to share with the world? Marketing for a small business or brand is a very nuanced discussion and there is no way that one or two paragraphs are going to serve as a magic bullet. Instead, here are 3 important exercises that help me: 1. Get your marketing strategy organized. While we know our product or idea better than anyone, the details can often get lost in translation. I like to organize my thoughts using something called a Vision/Traction Organizer, or V/TO. The entire methodology is wonderfully detailed in Gino Wickman’s seminal book, Traction it has become an essential tool for me these past few years. While I encourage all entrepreneurs to read the book, part of this process includes the following exercise for establishing a marketing framework: In 1 sentence, describe who is on your “customer list” or who is your target market? What are 3 unique things your business does that make people want to buy from you? What is your “proven process” or what makes your business or product work? What is your “guarantee” to your customers — is there a promise that you can absolutely make? Now stop and take 5-10 minutes and go through this exercise for your business or project. Need some inspiration? Just shoot me an email and I’ll send you the ones we created for Fresh Markets. 2. Understand Lead vs. Lag Measures and use them to track progress. Understanding and optimizing for this will change your business. Put simply, a lag measure is something you track after an event occurred. In our pop-up market business, a good example of a lag measure would be “How many vendors sold at our recent farmers market?”. It often involves analyzing data on a past outcome that you had little ability to control. Read that last line again. Conversely, a lead measure is an action you take to help create an outcome. A good example of a lead measure would be “How many vendors did we reach out to on Instagram each day to see if they wanted to sell at our pop-up market?” The fundamental difference is that lead measures are pegged to an action regardless of the outcome. Now go read that last line again. Still with me? Good - it’s all starting to come together. 3. Embrace the power of processes. Processes are why some businesses and entrepreneurs get ahead while others seem to spin their wheels. For a small business, a process can be as simple as creating a templated list of items and following it. For Fresh Markets, we have a template card in Asana that has a list of a dozen or so actions that need to be done every time we launch a new event. Whenever we have a new market, I duplicate the card and start to assign out tasks to our team. This allows us to move faster and more cohesively, which in turn allows us to create better events than any of our competitors. Now, let put it all together but first, just 2 more things… Food For Thought If you haven’t done so, go through the exercise on creating a marketing strategy for your business. Next, see if you can identify 2 or 3 lead measures you can distill from your marketing strategy. Remember to focus on specific actions you can take today versus longer term goals. Now, create a process or punch list of “things” you can implement to get organized and create measured accountability for your growth. Be sure to establish frequency requirements and deadlines. Lastly, go on, get to it! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Is Time Speeding Up? URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2022/04/13/is-time-speeding-up/ Published: 2022-04-13 Topics: Time Management, Mindset At times it seems like the days, weeks and months are just melting into one another. At times it seems like the days, weeks and months are just melting into one another. I’ve often wondered why when we are kids it seems to last forever but as we get older years seem to slip by. If you are willing to accept that time is constant and not speeding up, there must be an explanation as to why we all feel this. I believe this has something to do with our brains and the way we fundamentally process information. When we’re younger, every experience is a new one and we’re constantly amazed by our world. I think of Arabelle, my newborn, and the look on her face when she feels the sensation of my beard in her hand — it’s pure awe. As we get older these experiences become mundane and life just starts to become “normal” and “boring”.   Despite this monotony, there are always going to be moments where this cycle is disrupted and we are presented with new experiences, both happy and tragic. In these moment we have an opportunity to reconnect with ourselves and experience an element of life with fresh eyes and open hearts. While external factors such as sickness, sudden change in employment, or having a child will almost certainly throw us into one of these moments, I often wonder how I can create them more predictably. Where can I constructively disrupt some of my own internal patterns and create extreme moments on my own? I have some thoughts but I’ll save that for future musing and for now, I’d like to just leave this open ended. Food For Thought Where can you create some intentionality in your life and take things off auto-pilot? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## My Experimentations In Creating Balance URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2022/04/06/my-experimentations-in-creating-balance/ Published: 2022-04-06 Topics: Time Management, Work Life Balance, Yoga I’ve been sitting quite a bit lately with the realization of how hard it can be to create balance. I’ve been sitting quite a bit lately with the realization of how hard it can be to create balance. Managing business commitments, spending time with my family, taking care of myself, keeping up with friends and still finding time to just shut off and “do nothing” is stressful. Even in those moments of stillness, I find myself sitting with a constant baseline anxiety. All too often “killing it” in one area comes at the expense of another — which then creates more anxiety. All of these things are fundamental to the person I want to show up and be but how do I find space for it all? In my constant experimentations with maintaining balance, I’ve been trying 3 things as of late: Give myself space to NOT do something. This sounds simple in theory (at least for me) but it’s proven to be much more nuanced. It’s involved shifting that voice in my head from one of “You’re a bad person because you didn’t get up at 5:30AM to meditate” to “Your meditation practice has really transformed your life and, as long as you’re committed to it as a lifestyle, enjoy sleeping in today”. Identifying myself as a type of person who does … Reframing my identity around a commitment, a non-negotiable if you will, helps me to create space for it. I get up and meditate in the morning because it makes me much less irritable through the day and I’m more effective in my work”. Set the Bar Low. Running with the meditation example, I try and sit for 10 minutes a day. Do I sit for 15 or 20 minutes some days — yes. Do I sit for 5 minutes, others — absolutely! None of these commitments are so overwhelming that the resistance kicks in and I find myself “not having time”. Setting a low bar, at times, is better than no bar. This is very much all experimentation but I’ve found them useful for tapping into all sorts of willpower and have been finding it easier to manage “all the things”. Unrelated, But Something My Kids Taught Me My 6 year old Atlas has always been a social creature and I’m in awe of his ability to immediately make friends pretty much anywhere he goes. As someone who has consistently fluctuated between ENTP & INTP my whole life, I fully appreciate the struggle of talking to strangers, and I asked him his secret. “It’s easy, dad, when we get to the playground I find a kid that I think I’ll like and I just follow them around until they talk to me and then we’re friends.” Food For Thought Are there 1 or 2 little things you can integrate into your life that help create balance? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Chasing Little Interests URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2021/04/27/chasing-little-interests/ Published: 2021-04-27 Topics: Mindset, Work Life Balance, Creativity I relate to Richard Feynman's approach to overcoming burnout, recognizing the need to balance intense work with personal interests and passions for overall fulfillment. Recently I came across this interesting anecdote on recovering from burnout by the late Richard Feynman. As a physics minor in college, I’ve had an interest in his work ever since I read his book “Six Easy Pieces” when I was younger. I’ve always appreciated his writing style and thought processes. What really resonated here with me in this moment is that I am very much coming out of an intense period of work where I clearly demonstrated all of the signs of burnout. Running 4 businesses and trying to be a present husband and dad — while still doing all of the things I enjoy (and need) was completely unsustainable. I wanted it to change but I lacked the ability or willingness to do something about it. Dare I use the word “fortune” in the context of the pandemic, but things have changed considerably over this past year. Sparing details for now, my responsibilities have never been greater professionally and as a father but I’ve very much appreciated this ‘hard reset’ on life. I suppose my current biggest challenge is the notion of feeling a passion for “something” again. I have trained myself to be a very analytical person who has learned to understand the importance of process. Needless to say, I can appreciate the value in a good system. As a side effect, I often wonder if systems takes away from the creative process — business for business’s sake, if you will. I know that I can do anything but I’m often left wondering “is this the best use of my time?” or “what should I be focusing on?” versus “what do you actually want?” and “does this move you?”. My takeaways from the Feynman passage is that first and foremost, everyone in all fields of study or industry can experience this debilitating burnout. It’s completely normal but we can all move past it. Beyond this, I can also appreciate the need to reconnect with “little interests”, no matter how trivial or inconsequential they may seem. This is how we cultivate passion in the context of structure. Lastly, economic viability should not equate to value. Yes, this is a borrowed socialist platitude, but it can apply to creating fulfillment in our work and personal lives. Some of this I’ve already realized and it’s been lingering in my subconscious for quite a while but it just takes validation in the form of a 40 year old passage from a Nobel Prize winning physicist to start honoring it. To this end, I’m committing to making room in my day to chase more of these little interests for no other reason than “because it moves me”. I’ve also added “Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman” to my reading list. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Making Time — The Struggle Of Being Successful In Business & Life URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2019/07/08/making-time-the-struggle-of-being-successful-in-business-and-life/ Published: 2019-07-08 Topics: Time Management, Work Life Balance, Mindset, Productivity Being busy is easy, especially if you’re an entrepreneur and a parent like me. Being busy is easy, especially if you’re an entrepreneur and a parent like me. I recently gave a talk how I manage to run multiple businesses, be a present father & husband and still find time for myself. While preparing for this presentation, I tried to look beyond my own personal practices and instead, distill down a few essential similarities between many of the people I look up to and admire. Whether you are a small business, looking to be more active, desire to travel more, seek to spend more time with your family & friends, or just trying to find time to “do it all”, I’d like to share a few of the things that I believe all successful people have made conscious efforts to master. The Difference Between F̶i̶n̶d̶i̶n̶g̶ & Making Time The first think I’d like to clear up is the difference between “finding” and “making” time. When you wake up in the morning, do you find yourself opening up Instagram or Facebook to see who has commented on your latest story or post and then mindlessly scroll through your feed for the next 30 minutes? Now ask yourself, in the last week, how many times did you get up, go for a run, bike ride or participate in some form of physical activity? If the answer is zero or “not as much as I hoped”, don’t worry — you’re not alone. As humans, we’re hardwired to gravitate towards the path of least resistance. By partaking in this “low hanging fruit” we sacrifice our ability to find time for the real work. To be clear, my definition of work includes long term goals and dreams, physical activity and personal development, not just the hard things on our punch list. Achieving That Goal — 1 Hour at a Time As a thought experiment, I want to break down how something as simple as 1 extra hour per day can be the catalyst to set you on a path of accomplishing a long term goal. Don’t worry too much on where this time will come from — we’ll get to that in a bit. Over the course of a month this hour equates to 30 hours of time you just “found”. In my mind, this is more or less an entire work week when you take into account lunch & breaks. Stepping back to a much more macro view — this equates to 15 FULL days over the course of a year. If you can free up 2 hours per day then you just “found” an entire month every year to dedicate to starting a business, spending time with your family or devoting to personal development. If You Want Something Done, Ask a Busy Person We’re all really busy — between our job (and sometimes second and third jobs), kids, family obligations and sleep — there’s a whole lot going on in our lives and it’s often a struggle just to manage it all. I started to wonder if I could distill the similarities between highly productive (or busy) individuals down to a core set of common characteristics and I came up with three areas where all successful people universally shine. The elegance of it all is that by implementing some of these basic practices into your life, you are able to work less and achieve better balance in your life. Practice #1 — Busy People Build Systems** In order to be successful and free up some time you’re going to need to start building systems. Make lists, use calendars and establish priorities — there are plenty of great (and free) tools out there including Trello, Slack, Google Calendar, bullet journals, and more so this is an easy thing you can immediately incorporate into your daily life. Don’t get too caught up with the tools or processes though — by simply committing to a basic system you will already have leveled up. Additionally, these systems should be fluid and change as your grow and your priorities shift. The tools my team use are much different than when we started and continue to change as our organization evolves. Practice #2 — Busy People Keep A Schedule Keeping a schedule sounds pretty rudimentary but I am continually amazed that so many entrepreneurs I talk to have no routine and juggle obligations in their head. My current daily schedule is structured as follows: 5:30AM Wake Up 60–90 Minutes of Pranayama, Meditation and Asana (my PMA’s) or some sort of physical activity Shower & get ready for the day Make breakfast with my son so my wife can catch up on some sleep (she works late most nights) In the office by 8:30 Lunch around noon with the family most days (I have a 5 minute commute to my office) Back to the office and I’m home around 5:30–6:00 (depending on if I’m teaching a yoga class on any given night) In the evenings I’ll make dinner, hang out with the family and read for about 30 minutes before turning the lights out around 11:00PM While I do deviate from this schedule from time to time, the takeaway is to establish a rough blueprint for your day and use this as a basis for bringing some structure to your life. Taking this to the office, I like to create fixed times for weekly “standing meetings”, time blocks for deep work sessions and I try to work “remote” at the local coffee shop once a week. All of these practices allow me to create space to tackle any issues and focus on growth without running around putting out proverbial fires all day. Practice #3 — Busy People Create Downtime The last practice I was able to glean from my observations was that busy people prioritize downtime and give themselves space to recharge and process through things. I know personally, I try and spend several weeks per year overseas, typically in the winter months, and while this may seem extreme, this practice allows me time to take a step back, look at the big picture and really prioritize what is “long term” important versus another temporary “fire”. While this may not be an achievable (or even desirable) goal for you, there are a few easier tactics you can begin to play with that help build a healthy practice of creating downtime. Take 1 day out of the office and work remote— it doesn’t have to be at home but just try and escape your typical surroundings. Take an extra day off each week during the summer— 3 day “weekends” give us more time to take care of things in our personal life which can reduce anxiety in our work life. Schedule time to think and put it on your calendar— go for a walk in the woods, develop a meditation practice, or just sit and look at the ocean. Maintain some sort of physical activity every day— go for a bike ride, run, get on your yoga mat — it doesn’t really matter as long as you’re making time for this. To outsiders it might look like you’re slacking off but I encourage you to engage in some sort of routine downtime. We are in a constant state of information overload and we must allow ourselves proper time to process through everything. Remember, there is no merit badge for working 60 hours per week — don’t do it to yourself and don’t encourage it with any of your friends, coworkers or employees. As a society, we’ve built this image that you have to hustle to grow but, while hard work is important, overworking is just a symptom of poor time management. Lastly, it’s important to recognize that sitting on your phone or binging Netflix are NOT practices to create downtime and, regardless of the content, you’re brain is still absorbing and not processing through information. You need to do your best to completely unplug during these times and sit with your thoughts. But How to I Apply This To My Life? I learn best through jumping right in so I’m going to challenge you to incorporate these practices into your daily life right away. It’s best to remember that personal development (and life) is not a zero sum game and that you do not need to do everything to be successful, however, I encourage you to try these things, see what resonates and iterate until you find something that works for you. Challenge #1 — Set a Limit on Social Media If you have an iPhone or Android phone, buried in your settings is a “screen time” preference. Play around with this for a bit and see how much time you’re spending each day and week scrolling through Instagram, Facebook or Reddit. I guarantee that most of us immediately can find that extra hour per day simply by developing a little bit of discipline with how we engage with these platforms. If you keep digging around you’ll probably see that you can set a daily limit on social media and I encourage you to pick a length of time that is fair and reasonable. I like to give myself 25 minutes per day to do everything I need to do on these platforms and after that, I’m locked out. If you would like a “next level” challenge, I encourage you to go on a complete 30 day social media fast. You’re going to detox a bit but once you remove it from your daily life I guarantee it’ll become much less interesting. After 30 days you can begin to re-introduce it in a way that adds value to your life. Challenge #2 — Get Up 1 Hour Earlier Are you still looking for that extra hour every day? Here’s an easy way to find it — just get up 1 hour earlier. Yes — there may be an adjustment period but once you get through it (and perhaps start going to bed a bit earlier) you’ll find this space you created essential to your well being. Challenge #3 — Create a Plan for Attacking Your Goals All to often we have a long term goal or dream but we struggle with how to break them down into tangible tasks we can do today that help us get there. I’ve found that the best way to do this is to start “big” but then systematically create a yearly, a quarterly, a monthly, a weekly and a daily plan to help get you there. Here is a basic exercise I periodically like to walk through. I’m going to outline one of our 5 year goals for Cowerks, our coworking and commercial real estate investment business. I’ll then break it down to several concrete steps I can do today to get us there. In 5 year I want: Cowerks to own $10MM in commercial real estate assets. So, in the next 12 months we need to: Close on our next building and have it rent stabilized. So, in the next 6 months we need to: Put a building under contract. So, in the next 3 months we need to: Put offers on multiple buildings with the goal of having one of them go under contract. So, in the next month we need to: Start identifying prospective buildings and schedule some walk-throughs with property owners and brokers. So, in the next week I need to: Get on Loopnet and run numbers on 3 available buildings as well as attend a local Real Estate meetup to network with potential investors. So, today I need to: Listen to 1 podcast on commercial real estate investment and buy a book on Amazon so I can make sure I know what I’m talking about when working with investors, brokers, and property owners. This exercise can be used for setting both business and personal goals and each step should consist of 1 or 2 achievable goals that move you further along towards that 5 year plan. Will things deviate? Absolutely — but what this does is allow us to build a roadmap as well as actionable items we can start doing today. So, To Recap Build Systems — Don’t focus too much on which systems, just have something. Keep a Schedule — Add some structure to your life — it’ll be a game changer. Create Downtime— There’s no merit badge for “hustling” 60 hours per week. …and lastly, Don’t find —MAKE time for your long term goals and passions. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## How To Travel Successfully With Young Kids URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2019/05/08/how-to-travel-successfully-with-young-kids/ Published: 2019-05-08 Topics: Travel I get asked a lot how we travel with our toddler and quite honestly, my first thought is always “How do you not?”. I get asked a lot how we travel with our toddler and quite honestly, my first thought is always “How do you not?”. Prior to our son Atlas’s birth in 2016, we had tried to maintain a “healthy” travel regiment of around 10–12 weeks per year overseas. Since he was born we’ve been pretty consistent in this regiment and have taken him to Nicaragua, Bali (2x), Paris, Hudson Valley in Upstate New York, Maine (2x), Colombia, Thailand (2x), Singapore, and Italy. Sure — maybe you have convinced yourself that you don’t have the time (make it), or money (our cost of living typically decreases when we’re abroad), your kids don’t travel well (practice makes perfect) or you’re planning on doing it later (why wait) — there is always an excuse — if you want to find one. If you’re ready to stop making up reasons as to why you can’t travel with kids and starting wondering — how do we travel with them?— I have a foolproof 3 step formula. Get a bottle of wine (any cheap red or white will do). Drink 2–3 glasses (depending on your personal tolerance). Get on Kayak.com and make one of the best drinking decisions you’ll ever partake in. If done properly you’ll wake up in the morning feeling some slight anxiety but try not to go into a panic and do something you’ll really regret, like trying to cancel your flights. Humor aside, the first step is to get outside of your comfort zone and commit to a trip and whatever “secret sauce” you need to get there will work. Once you are committed you’ve taken a big first step but there still is work to be done. Don’t worry though — I’m here to share some of the tips, tricks, and hacks I’ve learned along the way. But What About Flights? Flights are probably the single greatest point of anxiety for many, regardless if they are traveling with young kids in tow. Whether it’s a sub-par domestic experience (I’m looking at you United), a South American or European regional carrier, or a slightly higher end long haul experience on Emirates or Qatar (IMO two of the BEST airlines in the world) all flights inherently are uncomfortable experiences. Kids are extremely versatile creatures but it’s important to remember that they will feed off of your anxiety and stress. The sooner you can let that shit go, they’ll settle in and be sleeping or watching a movie in no time. They are also much quicker at normalizing experiences and will learn to travel. Our son was on his first flight to Nicaragua at the age of 5 months and after giving him some time to acclimate, we had him on his first long haul to Indonesia a few months later and have never looked back. Flight Essentials — Nothing is Essential Another important key to traveling with minimal stress is to not overpack. Nothing will increase your stress levels more than traveling with car seats, bulky strollers and other “safety items” you will NEVER/RARELY use. When traveling with a newborn or young child we love the Ergobaby or similar carrier — it’s light, washable, and can be shoved into bags or small spaces with ease. We (mainly my wonderful wife) have carted Atlas across 4 continents in our ErgoBaby and consider it one of the best purchases we’ve ever made. When they get a bit older (i.e. heavier) we invested in a Maclaren Volo stroller. I first saw these strollers offered complimentary for us in airports all over the Middle East and parts of Europe and figured they were battle tested. The Volo weighs about 8 pounds, packs up with the push of a foot operated button and is built sturdy enough to handle life on the road. These things are so small that if you’re crafty enough you can sneak them by the cabin crew and avoid having to gate check. Pro-Tip — you can find these for $50 on Facebook Marketplace, LetGo, or Craigslist and save yourself a small fortune. We’re minimalists when it comes to travel so we don’t have many other flight essentials other than a tablet loaded up with games/activities, some dollar store coloring books/stickers/etc (i.e. things you can leave on the flight) and “travel vitamins”. For us — “travel vitamins” consist of low dose melatonin gummies made by Zarabees. They’re much safer than Benedril or any of the other barbaric remedies our parent’s generation resorted to. Pro-Tip — These bad boys are good for more than flights — give your little one a gummy 20 minutes before walking into a museum and you’ll get 3 hours of time to explore. We’re minimalists when it comes to travel so we don’t have many other flight essentials other than a tablet loaded up with games/activities, some dollar store coloring books/stickers/etc (i.e. things you can leave on the flight) and “travel vitamins”. For us — “travel vitamins” consist of low dose melatonin gummies made by Zarabees. They’re much safer than Benedril or any of the other barbaric remedies our parent’s generation resorted to. Pro-Tip — These bad boys are good for more than flights — give your little one a gummy 20 minutes before walking into a museum and you’ll get 3 hours of time to explore. Believe it or not — there are some pretty sweet perks or “travel hacks” to flying with young kids. We all know that kids under 2 will fly for free but did you know that many carriers discount tickets for kids under 12? While I don’t think there is any rhyme or reason to it I’ve paid as little as 50% of the adult fare when booking tickets for our young one. Keep in mind that I’ve never seen a US carrier offer this (big surprise) but many international ones do so make sure to check for discounts when buying tickets. Another perk for traveling with young kids is priority boarding. Yes — when they offer early boarding to the elderly, individuals with disabilities and families with young children, that means you. In many cases, you can board before first class so make sure you work your way to the front of the line with your boarding passes in hand and take advantage of unlimited overhead storage bin space! This trick also works when moving through immigration, security checkpoints (again, mostly abroad and not in the US) and any other line you may be subjected to. Getting Around Prior to having children, public transportation was my best friend. I’ve navigated the Metro Madrid with a surfboard and travel backpack, hopped trains across Morocco (spring the few $’s extra for 1st class) and ridden more bus/train/water taxi combos than I can recall. That being said — we’re primarily an Uber (or Grab when in Southeast Asia) family now — especially when getting to and from an airport. Ridesharing services are pretty much ubiquitous worldwide, they’re cheaper (and more honest) than cab drivers and you can pay on the app, saving the hassle of finding local money and getting ripped off by the currency exchanges set up at the airport. Be sure to make sure that you install and set up Uber, Grab or whatever local ridesharing service is available and legal prior to your trip. While ridesharing may be frowned upon in many parts of the world, as long as it is legal, the airport will have a designated pick-up area. In my experience, some of the airport staff may be reluctant to tell you where the pickup location is — especially the information booths who want to shepherd you to the cab stands — so be sure to ask a maintenance worker or someone who is a little less “financially motivated” to help you. It’s also important to remember that while most airports have Free Wifi (perfect for hiring a driver) you may way to invest in a Sim Card when you arrive. Personally, we use T-Mobile in the United States and they offer 100% Free 4G International data which is perfect for Uber, Google Map or researching places to eat nearby anywhere abroad. Finding Your Home Away From Home Prior to having children, I typically looked for a moderately priced backpacker hostel with decent reviews and close to the action when searching for accommodation. Hostelworld was always at the top of my search history and I always had a HI membership in good standing. These days we tend to learn towards Airbnb as a friendlier alternative to hostels and I honestly can’t recall the last time I stayed in an actual hotel. I tend to prefer Airbnb for a number of reasons but primarily because you can get closer to a city center or tourist center for less. You will certainly spend more on an Airbnb in a prime location but compare that to any hotel in a similar area and they won’t even be in the same stratosphere. Additionally, I’ve found that you tend to get more space and, while I’ve always looked at accommodations as somewhere you sleep when exploring a city or country, with kids you’ll want a home base for naps and downtime so I like to make sure we’re staying somewhere with a few of the creature comforts of home. With kids in tow, you won’t have those 5AM club nights in Barcelona or watch the sunrise on a beach in Central America so I’ve found a nice compromise is to book a comfortable space that we don’t mind bringing a bottle (or two) of wine back to for a quiet evening. In regard to amenities, when traveling with kids my “must haves” include a kitchen (or food prep area), on-site washer and dryer (laundry will be a daily chore), and a king size bed (we co-sleep). Depending on where we are, I like to look for a pool or other outside amenities to keep the little ones occupied. Doing Stuff, Seeing Things and Exploring The key to sightseeing and exploring with children is to resist the urge to pack too much into your trips. Prior to kids, I would have no problem hopping on a bus or train every few days to try and see a new city or town but kids will certainly turn a few hour bus ride into a full-on travel day. My advice for a 10-day trip would be to pick 2 or 3 spots max and spend more time in each location. For example, on our recent trip to Italy, we spend a few days in Venice, took the train to Florence for a few days and then finished up with a few days in Cinque Terra. As much as I wanted to explore Rome and some of the southern destinations I wanted to see and experience Italy from somewhere other than a bus or train. I like to apply the same rule for planning our days as well. It’s important to pick one or two activities and not overwhelm your agenda. Things will go wrong (i.e. your kid will inevitably meltdown at some point) so I’ve learned to keep a loose agenda vs. a regimented schedule. As far as activities and keeping them engaged, we like to find a local bike rental agency and take at least one day for a bike trip. Even the $1.50/day rental shops in Bangkok’s Green Lung offer child seats so it’s an easy way to keep them engaged while exploring. Depending on your destination we also like to visit other outdoor locales such as waterfalls, beaches or parks — it’s a good way to burn off energy and as an added bonus, many of these activities are free. When you do want to visit a museum, Buddhist Temple, cathedral or any place of historical significance — i.e somewhere “boring” for a younger child we like to sync these visits up with nap schedules and, on occasion, we’ll just dip into our stash of “travel vitamins”. Meals can be another stress point when traveling with kids so we like to make sure to stock up the Airbnb with lots of snacks, juice and other food. This also allows us, to a certain extent, to eat where we want to eat versus finding a kid-friendly alternative. Don’t worry too much about bringing your kids in tow, unless it’s fine dining, most places will accommodate, especially when overseas. We’re not huge fans of screen time or YouTube but when eating out when traveling we always pack a tablet in our day bag — it can very well be the difference between a stressful affair and an enjoyable meal and I think the experience of travel far outweigh any of the negatives of screen time. Lastly, this may go without saying but we try and document as much of our trips as possible with video and photos. A toddler may not have a solid memory of seeing the Eiffel Tower in person or feeding elephants in Northern Thailand but they will look back on these videos as their own. We also try and include Atlas in as much of the planning as possible and I encourage you to do the same — show them on Google Maps where they are, where they are going and ask them what they would like to see and do — it may not seem like it at the time but you’re subtly opening their mind to the world. We also try and teach Atlas pleasantries (hello, thank you, goodbye, etc) in the native language of wherever we happen to be. Again, it might not stick with him permanently, but I like to think it expands his mind and helps him to understand that there are completely different cultures to our own. As an added bonus, it’s adorable to watch the innocence of a very outgoing toddler trying to interact with individuals who don’t speak his language. What Do We Even Get Out of This? For many, travel is relegated to something you do after college to gain life experiences or saved for retirement but I feel that by subscribing to this mindset you miss out on a huge opportunity. Traveling with others creates memories. Be it your family or a fellow backpacker you randomly decided to hop a train to the Algarve the night before, some of my fondest memories are with the companions I’ve shared adventures with. Traveling with your family is something that should be shared with kids of all ages — it will strengthen the bond between you and your loved ones. I find travel, especially abroad in a country with a non-native language to your own, really forces us to open our eyes to how magical and large the world really is. I live in suburban New Jersey, in the United States, and, to varying degrees, most people here have a very similar upbringing & value system as me. What someone from my part of the world deems as “normal” or “weird” is totally a byproduct of our conditioning. We are direct products of our culture and unless we begin to challenge these notions it’s hard to comprehend that there are other ways to live, find happiness, and things in which to put value in. I hope that through these experiences I am able to offer my kids the ability to challenge their world view and their relationship with it. Your Homework Assignment Now that I’ve given you the tools to jump into traveling with kids, I’ll leave you with two challenges: In the next month, commit to a short, local trip for a night or two. It doesn’t have to be far or anything elaborate but try and pick someplace that is a minimum of a 3–4 hours away by car. In the next 6 months, commit to a short flight or trip. It can be a weekend getaway or something a little longer. You’d be surprised how many incredible destinations are just a few hours away by plan so pick somewhere you’ve been itching to go and do it! With both of these challenges, commit to not overpacking — 1 small carry on bag for each of you is more than enough and focus on minimizing the amount of equipment you bring — you don’t need it. Trust me, it’ll be a more enjoyable experience and remember, if I’m wrong, nothing is stopping you from picking up something along the way. Once you get your feet wet you’ll quickly realize that traveling with young ones isn’t a chore — it’s an experience to offer, a memory to look back on and most importantly, it’s your job as a responsible parent seeking to open a child’s mind. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## How To Cultivate A Mindset Of Execution URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2018/12/09/how-to-cultivate-a-mindset-of-execution/ Published: 2018-12-09 Topics: Digital Minimalism, Productivity, Time Management Getting shit done is hard these days — perhaps harder than it ever has been for human beings at any other point in history. Thoughts On Being a Producer Versus a Consumer Getting shit done is hard these days — perhaps harder than it ever has been for human beings at any other point in history. We live in a world of constant connectivity and while I’m super grateful for little things like T-Mobile’s Free International Data plan while seeking out an vegan French Bistro in Le Marais or Google Maps when traversing cow pastures in Nicaragua, it’s become far too easy for us to slip into a mindset of pure consumption. I certainly am extremely guilty of this mindset and I need to look no further than the screen time widget on my iPhone to see how much time I logged on Instagram and Reddit over the past week. I’m generally thought of as a highly productive person (emphasis thought of) so I can only begin to imagine how some of my lesser productive friends’ stats rank up. We may be the first generation to be considered digital consumers but since the invention of the transistor our access to content has logarithmically increased and our collective brains have been on a mission to devour as much of it as possible. Consumption isn’t evil in nature and instantaneous access to information has unquestionably improved humanity as a whole but there comes a time when we become so plugged in that we stop nurturing our creative abilities. It’s become too easy to slip into a mindset of passive consumption and as a result, many of us will lose our ability to create. The goal of this article isn’t to tell you how to avoid consumption, but to encourage you to cultivate a producer mindset. It’s easier than you think to start to shift your perspective and I’d like to share a few tricks I actively use to shift mine. Start Every Day With A Plan While this may be harsh — I find it very hard to take someone seriously who “shows up” without a plan. It’s by far the easiest and best thing a person can do to immediately increase their productivity. There are hundreds of books on time management and while there are a lot of great techniques, here is an approach that I have found useful for establishing a manageable list of things I need to act on. The goal of my approach is to implement a flexible and trackable system to break problems down into tangible tasks. I also realize that there is a limit to our ability to maintain productivity and not all work is created equal so I like to add rules about the amount and types of tasks I put on my daily plan. Use a pen and paper for this exercise (how old-fashioned) and commit to documenting these items somewhere physical — I’m currently .a fan of the Leuchtturn1917 notebooks. Create a list of everything you need to accomplish this month on a blank piece of paper or page. Don’t put too much thought into organizing or prioritizing this list but group them into “high brainpower” and “low brainpower” activities. I like to consider things like coding, writing and strategic planning as “high brainpower” activities while things like checking email, posting to social media and client meetings as “low brainpower.” Now, estimate the amount of time it will take to accomplish each item. You can group tasks into categories of 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, and greater than 2 hours. If something takes more than 2 hours try and break this item down to sub-tasks and assign time weights to them. The end goal here is to create a list of small and easily manageable tasks. OK — now let’s define our weekly calendar. Open to a new page and create a separate to-do list for each day of the week. Start to populate each day’s to-do list with items from your monthly calendar but — here’s the trick — don’t put more than 6 hours of estimated work on any given day and don’t put more than 1 “high brainpower” activity on any given day. After completing this activity you should have a clear roadmap for your week. I typically like to do this on a Sunday evening or early Monday morning for the upcoming week. If you’re familiar with bullet journaling, agile sprints or GTD you’ll certainly see elements of all three methodologies (as well as several others) in my approach towards planning. My task management systems have always been fluid so naturally, one out-of-the box solution hasn’t worked perfectly for me and I encourage you to use this as a blueprint but experiment with what works for you. Make Time to Be a Producer Back in my teens and early twenties I used to play in bands. I was a guitarist but realized that I kind of sucked at it. One day I decided that I didn’t want to suck anymore so I went out and bought a brand new Fender American Strat on the condition that I would commit to learning how to play it. I think I averaged about 4 hours a day of practice during the first year or two and you’d be surprised how quickly I improved. While I would never claim to have been the next Randy Rhodes, I improved enough to be able to hang with most of the other musicians in my circles at the time. Fast forward a decade — my interests have shifted, I rarely make time to practice, and my abilities have suffered accordingly. We all struggle with self-discipline and while it may seem to come naturally to some more so than others, it is a skill anyone can teach themselves. I also find self-discipline to be an essential part of becoming a master of your craft and it often walks hand-in-hand with creating anything of value. What I’m trying to say is that self-discipline is essential to cultivating a producer mindset. To get started, I challenge you to block out 30 minutes (or more) per day to devote toward a single activity. It could be writing, playing music, cooking, running, coding a web or mobile app, yoga/meditation — really anything that can hold your interest. While this may not strictly be “producing” by traditional definition, I like to look at this as investing time in refining and perfecting one’s craft. Whether or not you ever intend to share the fruits of your labor with another person, it’s important to invest in these activities if for no reason other than driving personal advancement. Set an Actionable Goal and Share it Publicly Theres no better way to commit to “forced production” then to climb up onto your soapbox and commit publicly to a goal. I’m a big fan of this approach simply because I’ve found that to directly challenge my ego to a proverbial game of chick’un is the surest way to get me to commit to action. There are a few caveats to taking this approach, however, outlined as follows: Your goal should be realistic. We all want to be a professional athlete, CEO of the next “unicorn” startup or president of the United States. I don’t want to burst your bubble but guess what — it’s probably not going to happen and you need to set a more realistic goal. Your goal should be actionable. There is a fine line between a dream and a goal. The differentiator is being able to define a clear plan of action and if you can’t break your goal down to a series of small steps then you need to continue to iterate on it. Your goal should fundamentally scare the shit out of you. If you haven’t set a goal that keeps you up at night or you dwell upon in the shower you probably should aim higher. By developing a healthy relationship with fear you’ll be amazed at how quickly you rise to the occasion and face a challenge head on. Now, let’s consider a practical example. Consider both of these statements: “My goal is to own a Michelin rated restaurant and have a Netflix TV show about my culinary prowess.” “My goal is to learn to cook authentic Thai & Southeast Asian food and open a well-respected restaurant in my city.” One of these statements is a goal and the other is a dream and I think it’s pretty clear to distinguish one from the other. A realistic goal can be broken down to tangible steps such as creating a menu and perfecting recipes, finding a commercial storefront to lease, and talking to investors or a bank about capitalizing the operation. One Parting Thought on Rewarding Yourself I have to admit that I struggle with the concept of rewarding myself for achieving a goal or hitting a milestone. Whether it’s successfully pulling off another iteration of Asbury Agile or hitting a personal goal of hosting a pop up dinner, my natural proclivity is to focus on what’s next on the punch list and not spending enough time in the moment. Understanding this facet of my nature has helped to keep this tendency in check and allowed me to take time to reward myself for these accomplishments and I encourage you to do the same. At the end of the day, there is no right or wrong way to manage time, build discipline and force yourself into action and these are just a few of the approaches that I have found useful. If there is one key takeaway I’d like to leave you with, it is to start to experiment with developing your own systems. Regardless of your method, once you commit to a plan, the shift from consumption to production is instantaneous. Furthermore, by cultivating a producer mindset in one part of your life, you’ll quickly see it spill in to the other parts as well. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## How I Use Travel For Inspiration In My Business (And Life) Ventures URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2018/11/26/how-i-use-travel-for-inspiration-in-my-business-and-life-ventures/ Published: 2018-11-26 Topics: Travel, Productivity, Entrepreneurship Travel offers inspiration when it comes to all of my business endevours. If you know me or have spent any time lurking on my Instagram you know that I like to travel. I find it a great way to not only disconnect from the “day to day” we all tend to settle into but it also has opened my eyes to ideas, cultures and experiences you just can’t get from a book or travel blog. Aside from the travel memories, spending time with my family and the wonderful people I’ve met, I’ve also grown as an entrepreneur through travel. Many things I’ve seen and learned through these explorations have directly impacted some aspect of my professional ventures and I’d like to share a few of them. The Many Flavors of a Farmers Market Ever since I was a young kid I’ve been drawn to open air food markets in all of it’s vibrant (and sometimes pungent) glory. I fondly recall wandering through the Italian Market in South Philadelphia taking in the scents, sounds and sensory overload that very few places at the time could deliver. From the fresh fruits and vegetables to exotic cheeses & spices to the bounty of seafood packed on ice by local fishmongers — these markets had me hooked from the beginning. It was these early experiences that led me to decide many years later that downtown Asbury Park NEEDED a farmers market. I knew what worked so well in Philadelphia would be very hard to pull off in a suburban community of approximately 16,000 people so I began to look elsewhere for inspiration — and what better place was there to search than some of the places I had recently visited. Hertfordshire, United Kingdom I visited the Hemel Hempstead Market back in 2008 when my sister was living in the English suburb, about 45 minutes north of London. Twice a week they shut down the main street in the center of town and the produce and food trucks would roll in, setting up their tents for the afternoon. It amazed me how everything seemed to come to a halt as the community came out for their bi-weekly shopping trip. Aquadilla, Puerto Rico The market in Aquadilla, which I visited on a quick trip to Rincon back in 2012, was a much smaller affair but I immediately picked up on the community vibe of this open air market. I was in awe of the little old ladies selling exotic fruits and vegetables to locals and tourists alike. Ocean Beach, San Diego I was staying at the Ocean Beach International Hostel in San Diego a short time later when I visited their weekly Wednesday night market. Like the Hemel-Hempstead market, around 4PM, the cars gave way to EZ-Up tents as the main thoroughfare was closed to vehicles. The bars and restaurants began to serve happy hour drinks through street accessible service windows and the air filled with the sounds of buskers and street performers. There was an ever present charm that only can be found in Southern California and my entire perspective of what a farmers market could be was completely shifted. My visits to these markets resonated on a number of levels and when it came time to start Asbury Fresh in the summer of 2012, I had a pretty clear picture of what we could build. Over the past 6 years, Fresh Markets has evolved into it’s own brand and identity but many of the things I saw while visiting these 3 very distinct markets helped shape our identity. Coworking in the Jungle Cowerks started well before my first trip to Southeast Asia but what I’ve learned since then is how far reaching and creative the coworking business model can be. My first trip to Bali (and that part of the world) was in the winter of 2015 where I was hired to lead a software development boot camp. During my 3 month tenure in Ubud we worked out of a coworking space right across the street from the iconic Sacred Monkey Forest called Hubud. I recall making a very naive (and western centric) comment to one of the founders of Hubud about how I was surprised there was a coworking space in “that part of the world” to which I got a very short reply “oh yeah — it’s pretty big”. During my stay in Bali, Hubud also hosted the 1st Annual CUAsia Coworking Conference, to which I was invited to speak. Over the 2 day event I met dozens of other space owners from places including other parts of Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Malaysia and the Philippines. In the 4 years since the conference I try and keep a watchful eye on what’s happening not only to some of the people I met but also the industry as a whole. While big players like WeWork have moved into the region, most notably with their acquisition of Spacemob in 2017, you’ve also seen smaller spaces, like Hubud continue to grow and thrive through finding a niche with ex-pats & digital nomads looking for fast internet, low cost of living and the high quality of life few places outside of Bali and Southeast Asia can offer. Personal Development Through Culinary Challenges The Explorers Supper Club is a new “project” I launched a few months back as a way of sharing authentic Thai & Southeast Asian cuisine as well as challenge myself to chase a passion and undergo a bit of personal development. I’ve alway thought I knew how to make a curry, and to most westerners, I probably delivered a pretty good, albeit non-authentic, product. After learning the fundamentals of Indonesian cooking through sweating in a kitchen at a vegan warung on the outskirts of Ubud as well as studying Thai food at Mai Kaidee cooking school in Bangkok, I felt like I could deliver both a tasty and authentic meal. For years I’ve always (half) joked that my goal is to make enough money to retire at a young age and open up a vegan restaurant purely as a passion project. I’d keep limited hours, run it as a break even venture and focus purely on delivering quality food. From what I know about the restaurant industry, it’s extremely stressful from both a physical and financial perspective so my reasoning was to take both of those aggravations out of the equation from the get go and create something just for fun. After my most recent trip to Thailand, I decided to throw my hat into the ring a few years ahead of my scheduled “retirement” and host a series of 3 course, plant based pop-up dinners based on my culinary experiences in Indonesia, Singapore, & Thailand. I had zero experience in the food industry so I enlisted the help of my buddy Shiah, a veteran of the local Asbury Park restaurant scene to help bring this idea to fruition. Together we worked on refining and scaling the recipes, sourcing fresh authentic ingredients and building a buzz around the events. Our first two dinners were received extremely well — in fact they completely filled up and we’re currently working on some new dinners for early 2019. Most importantly, I succeeded in challenging myself to step outside my comfort zone and do something completely new. For me — travel serves as a way to learn, challenge myself and grow. It’s all too easy to settle into the routines of life (and business) and unless I’m actively challenging myself to “mix things up”, I find it extremely easy for stagnation to set in. All too often we look to travel as a way to disconnect from our “real lives” and while that certainly has it’s merits, I prefer to blend the lines. When I travel my mind is in a constant state of stimulation. When I return to “real life” I’m able let these experiences shape both my personal and professional life. Whether it’s a weekend getaway or a year long backpacking adventure through India, I encourage you to try and carve out some space to explore our wonderful world — it’s the fastest way to achieve personal growth and, as an added bonus, you might stumble upon your next killer idea. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## When Finding Your Passion Isn’t Enough URL: https://www.bretmorgan.me/writing/2018/11/19/when-finding-your-passion-isnt-enough/ Published: 2018-11-19 Topics: Creativity, Entrepreneurship, Mindset We hear a lot about finding your passion and doing something that truly fulfills you but lately I’ve been thinking that perhaps this isn’t the best approach for most people. We hear a lot about “finding your passion” and doing something that truly fulfills you but lately I’ve been thinking that perhaps this isn’t the best approach for most people. It’s hard to balance passion with making a sustainable living and all too often I see people struggling to be “fulfilled” to the point that their passion is destroyed, innocently enough, by the fundamental need to pay the bills. A friend and mentor of mine recently presented to me an alternative mindset that resonated with me on a number of levels that goes as follows: Find something that makes you enough money to survive. Find an activity to keep you fit. Find a passion or hobby that keeps you fulfilled. In a perfect world we would find one activity that delivers all three but lets face it, unless you’re a celebrity yoga teacher or professional athlete, we might have to resort to finding a few things to deliver on these basic needs. For me — I’ve learned that I am creatively, spiritually, and physically fulfilled through frequent travel, my yoga practice and cooking. My interests in these three passions fluctuate depending on the time of year, my financial resources and my ever shifting focus. I make my living in a number of ways including coworking, farmers & makers markets, music merchandising, and software development and while I enjoy what I do for a living, I find it important maintain a healthy boundary between work and both physical and creative fulfillment. To say that I maintain a pretty intense work schedule would be an understatement but I long ago embraced that working more does not equal getting more work done. I consciously make time for the “other” things in my life including maintaining a daily yoga practice, cooking a healthy plant based meal after work and spending lunch and evenings with my wife and son. I consider these things as important, dare I say, more so, than any team meeting or client deadline. Obviously everyones circumstances vary and few of us can just completely change our workflow or upend our personal life but I challenge you find one or two little ways you can begin to incorporate your passion and a small degree of physical activity into your daily routine.