Codex Audentia

Codex: An ancient manuscript text in book form.
Audentia: Latin for “audacity”.

This is not a blog. This is my codex — a working notebook with all my notes and rambles in their full glory. It is raw, unpolished and unfiltered. I write these posts mostly for myself and don’t publicize them, so there’s no newsletter or RSS feed for these, sorry.

MiscellanousReflections

Risk vs Uncertainty

I recently read The Dhandho Investor by Mohnish Pabrai. The biggest lesson I took away from his book was this: There's a difference between "risk" and "uncertainty." Risk refers to what you might lose. You are always risking "something" in exchange for the possibility of getting something else. How much does it cost you just to play the game? Uncertainty refers to the number of possible outcomes. Some are more probable than others. What I find fascinating is that you can detach the two and see them as completely separate factors while making a decision. You can have high risk,…
Aman Y. Agarwal
September 9, 2022
RamblesReflections

It’s not about the Eiffel Tower

My take on travel I've traveled to a bunch of places — but interestingly, when I look back on them, I don't remember all that much. I can't recollect most of the "things" I saw – the beautiful nature, the wonderous creations of mankind – they're all somewhat lost in my subconscious. A great example of this is the Eiffel Tower. When I went to Paris, I was excited to see it. And then I saw it. Then the next day, I climbed up to the top. And then I kept seeing it from time to time as I traveled…
Aman Y. Agarwal
September 3, 2022
Reflections

Lessons from my failures (and successes)

I recently had a business failure. Long story short, here's the bullet list of lessons learned. If you're not me, and you're reading this, just know that I wrote this for myself. It may or may not apply to you. FocusIf I had to distill everything into one word, it would be focus. Focus, focus, focus. FOCUS! Ignore the free ice cream van.Keep focusingThis is not a joke. Stop strategizing or changing things. Just STOP! Once you make a decision, don't switch directions until you've burned the fucking tires and they're melting on the tarmac. Finish all your thinking before…
Aman Y. Agarwal
August 25, 2022
MiscellanousRambles

Why I never hired for “Experience”

I never understood the concept of hiring people based on an arbitrary number of how many years they've existed in an industry. Experience is wonderful, but it's only helpful in very specific types of jobs: 1/ When you need someone who has PRACTICED (to achieve a certain level of skill): some things just have to be polished by deep intentional training and repetition. There's no way around it. 2/ You need them to have a huge pre-existing NETWORK (which takes time to build): whether you build those connections one by one, or at scale through a large audience or community.…
Aman Y. Agarwal
August 9, 2022
RamblesReflections

Being Boring

I live a fairly austere lifestyle. I don't drink alcohol. I don't drink tea. I don't drink coffee. I eat 99% vegan – almost never consuming meat, fish, chicken, dairy, or eggs. I don't eat much sugar. I like music, but only in the background. I'm not a big fan, and I'm not an early adopter. I don't like buying new clothes. And of course, I don't smoke. Never used weed or acid or any recreational drugs. I don't go to nightclubs or bars. And I don't watch porn. A lot of people ask me, what do I do? The…
Aman Y. Agarwal
August 3, 2022
RamblesReflections

Death and Time: Living a Life of Home Runs

In recent months, I've been struggling with my mortality, as well as the fact that the universe is too big, vast, and ancient – and permanent – for me to make any significant impact. I live on a tiny speck of dust, floating in an ocean of stars. All our history (and future) is limited to a few thousand years of this little wet particle. Whatever I can build or achieve during my lifetime, is temporary – it will only push this world a tiny bit. The sad thing is that we are too small, insignificant, and doomed to perish…
Aman Y. Agarwal
July 16, 2022
Reflections

The Four Pillars Behind All Achievement

It took me ages to have this epiphany. And now I'm sharing this with you. To accomplish anything great, you must get these four things right. And if you've ever failed to accomplish something, it was probably rooted in one of them going wrong. Mindset Strategy Tactics Discipline of Execution Do whatever you can to diagnose where your issue is. And then fill in the gap. You heard it here first!
Aman Y. Agarwal
June 12, 2022
Miscellanous

Building the Dream Team

Growing up, I always knew I would be an entrepreneur one day, and that I'd have to hire excellent people. And I was always been insecure about it. Would the best people want to work with me? Would ANYONE want to work with me? Would anyone accept me as their "boss"? Would I be able to earn their loyalty? Would I be able to truly sell them on my vision? What if they leave me? What if I have to fire someone? Would they be my friends, or would I have to be detached in order to maintain respect? My…
Aman Y. Agarwal
May 12, 2022
Miscellanous

Is an Ivy League degree worth it?

As someone who went to a fairly established Ivy League school (Cornell), I can say that it's like buying a Chanel bag. Do you need it? No. Is it better than a cheap bag? Not much. Do you like the aesthetic quality and "allure"? Yeah, it's pretty good. Is it worth going into debt to buy one? Up to you. Addendum: I do believe that if you want to be a researcher, a big school can provide many facilities and opportunities you can't get elsewhere. And I, one of the "deviants" who actually visited EVERY SINGLE BUILDING on the Cornell…
Aman Y. Agarwal
May 1, 2022
Reflections

Falling vs. Scaling

There seem to be roughly two approaches to accomplish something great. One is to put yourself in a position where, if you don't succeed, you "die." There is no backup, no plan B. It's what's called "jumping off the cliff and building an airplane on the way down." Doing it this way is more chaotic, more exhilarating, and also automatically makes you more focused. It also makes your team more tight, because nothing bonds people better than trying to overcome a large shared threat. The high stress is accompanied by high euphoria. I'll call this, quite literally, "falling" to succeed.…
Aman Y. Agarwal
April 30, 2022
Reflections

How I Hire: The Heart of a Teacher

Nobody can be the expert on everything. As an entrepreneur, I always have to find people who know more than me, and trust them to do their job. But hiring is tough (and that's probably an understatement). People lie in interviews all the time (from both sides) trying to make the best impression. And often, jobs go to the best salesperson, not the most suitable person (at least for non-technical/managerial roles). When I'm hiring someone – whether it's a freelancer on Upwork or Fiverr, or a consultant – I use one key criterion to filter them out, and it works…
Aman Y. Agarwal
April 29, 2022
Reflections

The Monk Life

It took me a long time to learn that being a HIGH-PERFORMANCE PERSON demands the "monk life." Any great endeavour, personal growth, or massive success is rooted in sacrifice. A balanced life is an average life. Achieving high performance means you can only obsess over 1-2 priorities (maybe 3) in your life — the ones that bring you the most meaning and joy — and everything else usually has to be renounced. When looking for the City of Gold in the rainforest, you must be willing to take a machete in your hands and hack away at the vines in…
Aman Y. Agarwal
April 25, 2022
Rambles

Obsession

In any project, business or organization, the psychology of the leader is the biggest factor towards success or failure. I've realized I have an obsessive personality. By nature, I tend to get obsessed with things. I can forget about food. Sleep. Standing. Moving. All so that I can keep doing whatever I'm doing. But I'm also very easily distracted. My brain is an overly energetic dog. The only way to keep me productive is to put my brain on the track with a big, clear rabbit to chase. I can chase that rabbit all the way to the finish line.…
Aman Y. Agarwal
March 17, 2022
Miscellanous

Book Cover Design Brief (Final)

Hello, awesome designer! You can scroll below to read the brief, or watch this video I made first! https://youtu.be/VTUNXG_3_v8 Before I talk about the book itself, let me share some visual examples. 1) Ideally it should have a kind of "3D" paper style, either for the title OR for the illustration OR the background. As I publish more books after this one, I'd love for this to become a sort of "signature" for all my covers. A few examples: 2) I'm flexible on the STYLE of illustration/background. It can be simple or complex depending on what works best, but it…
Aman Y. Agarwal
March 12, 2022
Reflections

Lethargy, Procrastination, Ambition

I've been reading a lot again. I sometimes wonder, when was the last time I had the urge to jump out of bed in the morning? It certainly has felt like years. I believe the last time it happened was while writing or promoting an essay over several days, or any other project that was incredibly meaningful and important to me, was a lot of fun, was challenging to figure out, had a deadline, and usually involved accountability to other people. I have an obsessive personality — I can, and dare I say need to get obsessed with something to…
Aman Y. Agarwal
February 6, 2022
Rambles

Book Cover Design Brief

Staying true to the idea of documenting my journey in raw, unfiltered fashion. It's time to seriously start looking for a book cover designer for my labour of love over the last 12+ months. If I delay this any longer, my book may never get done.   Quick overview of the book The book is titled "TECH FLUENT CEO." The working subtitle for the book is: The Eccentric Entrepreneur's Guide to Leading and Innovating in the Age of AI (Subtitle could also be: The Ambitious Non-Techie's Guide to Leading and Innovating in the Age of AI) It's target audience is…
Aman Y. Agarwal
December 14, 2021
Reflections

Productivity Systems Review

As I've discussed before in this codex here and here, a routine is the most fundamental infrastructure of any profession. Without a solid customized routine, you're just an amateur. I'm on the right track. Big question in productivity and routines is, what do I optimize for? Depending on the priority, the routine changes. Here are some options: Reduced anxietyClarity on goals and what I need to be doingCreative energy, generating fresh ideasDeep focused energy Another question is, am I choosing priorities from the wrong emotional place? My routine can't be reinforcing impatience and beliefs like "I'm not productive enough," "I'm…
Aman Y. Agarwal
December 7, 2021
Reflections

It could take 50 years

If a daily or weekly habit takes 5 years to show an amazing result, is that worth the effort? It could be building muscle sustainably, stretching to become more flexible, learning an amazing new skill, etc. I'll be 34 in the next 5 years. If at 34 I'm healthier and stronger than I've ever been, more flexible and agile, more mentally clear and happy, and having enough money to retire, that is worth the wait. Then think about 20 years. If it takes me 20 years to build a net worth of almost a hundred million dollars, that's an INCREDIBLE…
Aman Y. Agarwal
December 2, 2021
Reflections

A Teaching Superpower

My unlikely, unplanned journey to becoming a world-class teacher. (This is not a blog. It’s a codex – raw, unpolished and brutally frank) Let's get 3 things out of the way first. I never planned to be a teacher, never thought it would be one of my careers, and wasn't good at it as a child. It was not god's gift nor a hobby.It's surprising to me that I'm now regarded as a world-class teacher. Now only have I personally taught people on 4 continents, many more have read my essays and tutorials, etc.I have however found more success as…
Aman Y. Agarwal
December 2, 2021
Reflections

Revisited: An Entrepreneur’s Routine

The last time I discussed this topic was in August 2020: https://aman-agarwal.com/2020/08/25/getting-into-a-routine-as-a-solo-entrepreneur/ What Happened It seems like stress, productivity, procrastination and discipline are all intensely interconnected. Over the last 13 months, I've been through many stages of crippling stress and procrastination, when I also felt very unproductive. At the same time, I've also made some terrific changes in my life that I can't take for granted: Had a 132 day unbroken streak of Chinese reading on LingQNoFap streak unbroken (and still ongoing) for 148 days straight. I never thought I could have achieved this, without the help of certain friends…
Aman Y. Agarwal
October 12, 2021
Rambles

Age of AI Post Design

This codex post is about how I'll design the webpage for each episode of the Age of AI Podcast. The key thing to understand is that these posts will become (by intention) the biggest source of traffic to the company website, and are therefore a crucial part of the business funnel. How I handle and guide the traffic coming to the page will decide how we find customers as a company, so it makes sense to put some thought into how each page will be setup. Here's what I'm thinking right now: It needs to provide value, while branding us…
Aman Y. Agarwal
October 3, 2021
Rambles

NEW Homepage Design for SANPRAM

It's time to design a new home page. Here's what the old one looks like: Needless to say, it's time for an upgrade. I don't think that the customers I'm trying to attract will find this very legitimate or give off the "world-class" feel I'm looking for. Process comes first How do we go about it? First, it's important to set a goal. What are we trying to accomplish here and how does this fit? The landing page should give an introduction and "anchor" our brand, for anyone who's curious about what the company does. It's not a sales page.How…
Aman Y. Agarwal
May 14, 2021
Rambles

Educational Resources for Employees

I wonder how I could provide my team with the training they need. Major areas: Negotiation and collaborationJob-related skills and knowledgeThings that would accelerate their career in generalPersonal growth and well-being Negotiation Black Swan method by Chris Voss. The most effective I've found yet. Ship a copy of the book to every new team member and see if they learned anything from it. Also the Vimeo uploads by this user: https://vimeo.com/user104273425 Things that accelerate their career in general Writing good emails. Speaking more clearly. Sales and marketing. I can share with them: The 10-day MBAEbooks that changed my life and…
Aman Y. Agarwal
May 3, 2021
Reflections

Hiring Philosophy

It's been a while since I wrote in this codex. I've been interviewing candidates for SANPRAM, and it's a little overwhelming. One of my core principles in recruiting is to root for their success. It has helped me receive consistently good feedback from them that it's the best recruitment process they've ever been through. But on the flip side, rooting for everyone's success means now I have too many candidates I'd love to somehow fit into my team at SANPRAM. I've grown somewhat attached to them! Naturally, it's not fair to them or to me to hire people who aren't…
Aman Y. Agarwal
May 3, 2021
Rambles

Brainstorming Job Descriptions

SANPRAM needs its first recruiting page. Let's chart out what the page will look like. Hiring Philosophy Trust is foremostRoot for their successLook for students of their craft - the very best way to see if someone's really fit for a role or not.Hire happy people - no complainersBe welcoming to everyone Audience People who want to try something unique, adventurousMotivated to learn new things and succeedMay be frustrated with job/internship hunting (not sure what they're good for, ignored/ghosted by recruiters, impostor syndrome, submitting resumes etc)Want to be given a chance, responsibilityWant to do great workHeart of a teacherEnjoys reading?…
Aman Y. Agarwal
February 6, 2021
Rambles

Brainstorming the careers page

Goals Attract people who are students of their tradePeople who want to try new thingsPeople who are nice and honestPeople who want to make a markGood communication skills What we can offer to such people Ownership and freedom to experimentBeing recognized and celebratedSupportive team and clean cultureVariety of workAbility to hone their craft What candidates may be concerned about Not knowing if they're good or notNot knowing if they'll get selectedTired of applying and not hearing back? Structure Build trust, be remarkable, be encouraging What does every internship post do? Show how cool the company isTalk about the competitive naturePromise…
Aman Y. Agarwal
February 1, 2021
Rambles

The Eccentric CEO Page

Goals of the page: Establish the brand of SANPRAM and myselfGet guests excited about being on the podcast/showGet listeners excited about tuning in Don't just make it like an Anchor webpage - give it more personality! The page should have more things than the average podcast page. Like a description and what makes it unique. Without useful stuff, nobody will remember it! Who is the target guest/customer? A true student of businessEnjoys discussing and sharing knowledgeNot very shyHas a good sense of humorWants to learn and get better.Willing to invest in themselves and their company.A "promising" CEO Accusation audit: There…
Aman Y. Agarwal
December 23, 2020
Reflections

Micro Famous?

While researching podcasts, I accidentally came across Matt Johnson of "Pursuing Results". He drove home what Seth Godin has already talked about repeatedly - that the riches are in the niches. He talked about some ideas that had already been taking shape in my head, so it's good to get validation: Using podcasting and content generation as a way to network with ultra influencers.Appearing on podcasts as a way to hack initial growth. What he says is the backbone of such a strategy, however, is to be very clear about your messaging and value proposition, and your target customers. Without…
Aman Y. Agarwal
October 17, 2020
Rambles

Film and TV business Codex Entry

(This is not a blog. It's a codex - raw, unpolished and brutally frank.) A lot of changes happening. Business models are changing, therefore lots of opportunities. The data is pointing towards starting a distribution company that also does production, instead of a production company that also does distribution. Using this codex entry to save all the ideas in my head right now. Free digital distribution has very low margin: Ads are NOT effective for monetizing online. Look at YouTube's monetization:https://onezero.medium.com/this-is-how-much-youtube-paid-me-for-my-1-000-000-viewed-video-1453cad73847$1000 from 3 million viewers. So if you make a movie for a million dollars, ad revenue will not break…
Aman Y. Agarwal
October 17, 2020
Reflections

My thoughts on branding and promotion

This is not a blog. It's a codex - raw, unpolished and brutally frank. I'm using this codex post to document my perspective on all things promotion and branding, for the benefit of Future Me as well as future team members at SANPRAM. In my view, capturing attention for an idea is about three critical things: Being remarkable: It needs to stand out, plain and simple. Something people haven't seen before, or at least not so frequently that they can gloss it over. It needs to disrupt their regular pattern so that they notice, remember and tell others about it.…
Aman Y. Agarwal
October 10, 2020
Rambles

Where should the money go?

(This is not a blog. This is a codex - raw, unpolished and brutally frank.) In this codex entry, I'm exploring my thought process around how my company should spend its money at this particular stage - what I can delegate or outsource, what I can't. For a recap, I'm running a services company with one employee (myself). At this time, I don't even have enough in profits to pay myself a salary. Right now, I'm doing every single thing myself. Here are all the things that need to get done: Accounting / bookkeepingSales and direct outreach (emails, phone)Marketing: content…
Aman Y. Agarwal
October 2, 2020
Reflections

The urge is real. What can I do?

(A splash page that pops up at 10 PM every night, to help me go to sleep early) I want to keep watching the video at night, keep scrolling the social media site, or keep browsing that website. The urge and inertial are too great. I want to indulge because I'm in the mood - after all, what is life without some joy? It's completely fine. I accept these urges. These sensations in my mind and body want me to feel happy, and I am grateful. Think about how you'd feel the next morning. Think about the books you could…
Aman Y. Agarwal
October 1, 2020
Reflections

The Cure for Impatience

(This is not a blog. It’s a codex – raw, unpolished and brutally frank) I try hard to resist comparing my business with others and feeling ashamed of my accomplishments. It still sometimes gets me whenever I'm reminded of someone younger than me doing 100x better - or whatever "doing better" means nowadays. As you can see, this impatience comes tightly packed in a box that also includes envy, low self-esteem and other assorted chocolates. So, how do you deal with it? How do you truly internalize the idea that "it's about the journey, not the destination"? As human beings,…
Aman Y. Agarwal
August 26, 2020
Reflections

Underrated: Getting Into a Routine as a Solo Entrepreneur

(This is not a blog. It's a codex - raw, unpolished and brutally frank) I'm a new, full-time business owner trying to create something that has never existed before. So I get to deal with uncertainty every single day. There is no clearly defined path, no obvious answers and no safety net (I'm all in). It has now been over 45 days since I've been working on my business full-time, and my main struggle so far has been developing a routine, which is the fundamental "infrastructure" on top of which any profession is built ('The Great Work Of Your Life'…
Aman Y. Agarwal
August 25, 2020
Rambles

Website design for SANPRAM

A great online business needs a great website. The goal: NOT to introduce the company, because based on my marketing strategy, most leads would likely know what we do before they know the company's name. Therefore the goal is to build ON TOP of that trust, and further cement the relationship the reader has with us, and leave a remarkable, lasting impression. It's a good way of establishing the overall brand, and what we believe in. Questions to ask myself How do you build trust and rapport?HonestyCredibility/ExpertiseConsistencyHumour, human connectionWho is the audience?Executives, business leaders, entrepreneurs. Or those who aspire to…
Aman Y. Agarwal
August 14, 2020
Rambles

Rambling About World’s Best Technical Fluency Syllabus

Brainstorm Ramble Aug 4 Learning process:1. Visualize desire/motivation2. Learn high-level components3. Learn lower level components So, start with what the person is trying to do, and then go down the levels of abstraction one by one. In the essay, we start at a very low level of abstraction (how a computer works, kitchen etc), and then build the story of how modern technology works. We also built some intuition around the high-level trade offs. Next, since the goal of the program is to empower the imagination, as well as the ability to understand what people are talking about. And then…
Aman Y. Agarwal
August 4, 2020
Miscellanous

Don’t be too rational, be skeptic of the Arithmocracy

Watched some more talks by Rory Sutherland today, and as always they are amazing. Took notes. - People with data and numbers tend to control conversations and win arguments, because most people like certainty. Usually nobody gets fired for being rational, and most people are terrified of looking silly and stupid. - The problem with using "data" to guide every decision with rigorous rationality, is that your models of the world are wrong. You will never have enough information to accurately capture how humans work. - Any metric that becomes a target, ceases to become a useful metric. When companies…
Aman Y. Agarwal
August 2, 2020
Rambles

Landing Page for Tech Fluency Training

In today's Ramble, I will write out my freerunning thoughts on what my new landing page for the technical fluency program should look like. I believe my target learners are busy executives like myself, so I won't have extremely long copy and fluffy marketing speak. I want to communicate the WHY behind the course, then the HOW, and then the WHAT is least important. I also have to limit the number of learners I can take per month to 5, so I need to make sure the process for getting into the training program is not open to all. My…
Aman Y. Agarwal
July 25, 2020
Rambles

“Minimum Successful Product”

This is a term I've just coined, for my personal projects. It's a good way to see if something is worth doing or not. An MSP is the minimum you need to accomplish, to get the project to a state where even if it plateaus and never grows beyond that, you're pretty happy about the result and are willing to leave it running forever. Link to LinkedIn post: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mngrwl_minimum-successful-product-i-like-to-think-activity-6687924119507492864-DHHI Actually, copying the original post here in case LinkedIn shuts down 10 years later and nobody can find it anymore: MSP is the minimum I would have to build and accomplish,…
Aman Y. Agarwal
July 13, 2020
Rambles

Technical Fluency Course for Non-Engineers

This is a new project/business idea about teaching non-technical people about modern computing technologies in a rapid fashion without learning to code, to build systems thinking and technical fluency which is way more valuable than writing your first 5000 lines of code. Inspiration:Was talking to Taylor Kennon in the gym at 1040 about him getting ripped off by a developer, and offered to explain to him the overall tech ecosystem etc. Prepared a talk about it and gave it in the gym itself a few days later - my first talk was terrible because there wasn't enough time, but it…
Aman Y. Agarwal
July 12, 2020
Rambles

What does failure for DenseLayers look like?

Nobody wants to read my essays about papers on Medium.Nobody wants to discuss papers on DenseLayers.DenseLayers gets sued and forced to shut down or escape.Site is never able to scale, and becomes/remains a niche community or fancy blog.Site gets hacked.Becomes community of spammers, haters and bots. Questions Which ones are realistic? All of themWhat can be easily/mostly avoided? 3,5,6What is the Minimum Successful Product? A site that has a new cool paper from DRL every month or so, with my comments. Essentially a community that only includes myself.Am I okay with minimum success? Yes.
Aman Y. Agarwal
July 12, 2020
Rambles

Audiobook Tool Idea

So I had an idea about how a tool that would allow people to easily record voice versions of their Medium articles, and automatically did the noise removal and balancing etc for them using machine learning. I imagined that most people don't really want to spend all their time doing audio editing, which is why a lot of online articles don't have any audio versions on them. I also imagined that a lot of people would enjoy turning their blog posts into "podcast"-like episodes, but are deterred by all the technical mayhem involved. I feel like recording and hitting "publish"…
Aman Y. Agarwal
May 27, 2020
Miscellanous

May 2020 Codex

(Semi-random things I learn or think about in May 2020) May 22 Learning Chinese I've been on a 8-day unbroken streak of using Memrise to learn Traditional Chinese characters. I've discovered the Heisig Method and am using it, and I believe in it. After all it won't be a waste of time in any way! The plan:- Learn to recognize and recall 3000 traditional hanzi, learning 20 per day.- After reaching 1500, start reading and listening to Chinese texts in parallel using LingQ to acquire spoken vocabulary.- After learning Chinese, I'll learn Japanese again. It will be much easier. Learning…
Aman Y. Agarwal
May 3, 2020
Rambles

DenseLayers Pre-Launch Refresh

Using this post to think through all assumptions, strategy and technical decisions made so far about DenseLayers. Deploy date is tomorrow. Today is 01May2020, and DenseLayers is ready to release minus a few last-minute changes that I keep making. I am in a state where I keep adding one more feature to make it easy to maintain the website once it is out, so that I can focus exclusively on content creation and marketing for the next several weeks. It is classic scope creep. But in the midst of all the excitement, I need to recollect my thoughts and ideas…
Aman Y. Agarwal
May 2, 2020
Miscellanous

Listening to Alex Rodriguez

Alex Rodriguez spoke on Ed Mylett's podcast. Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9kKEkA-zvE Takeaways: - Alex is all about process. He believes that if you do the little things and stack the little wins consistently (=work ethic), and see them as the big wins - over time they add up to great skill and achievements. The great achievements are not in your control - the little wins are. Don't think so big, think about the little steps. He says that he is most proud about the fact that in all his 25 years of playing professional baseball, he never once missed his pre-game preparation…
Aman Y. Agarwal
April 16, 2020
Miscellanous

Notes from Shake Shack Owner Danny Meyer

Notes from a Tony Robbins' podcast where he interviews Danny Meyers: https://www.tonyrobbins.com/podcasts/from-hot-dog-cart-to-hospitality-empire/ "Hospitality Quotient": as opposed to simply IQ or EQ1. Kindness and Optimism ('...skeptics and cynics don't usually care how other people feel')2. Intellectual Curiosity3. Work Ethic4. Empathy5. Self Awareness6. Integrity Danny says the above cannot be taught and trained, but can be detected through interviews. Interesting hiring practices at Southwest Airlines and Zappos. Danny says that when he gives a talk about company vision and values etc, usually there are a couple people who fall asleep etc. He makes sure that he adds at the end that "Hey,…
Aman Y. Agarwal
January 26, 2020
Rambles

Decision Process for Key Metrics for DenseLayers

  The first version of DenseLayers is very close to completion (it's past the deadline of Dec 31, which makes me disappointed but at the same time I'm glad I'm making a lot of progress and doing it right. Need to decide what kind of metrics I should be monitoring as the founder, during the crucial initial stage. Using this post to think out loud from first principles and put my ideas on paper, hoping it will help me make sense. What I want to accomplish I want to grow the website into a product that people enjoy using, and…
Aman Y. Agarwal
January 5, 2020
Miscellanous

Lessons from FBI’s top hostage negotiator

I'm a big fan of Masterclass.com, and would be a customer if I had the time commitment. Today I saw that Masterclass.com has a new course by Chris Voss on negotiation: I saw the trailer, and then I watched one sample lesson that talks about the concept of "Tactical Empathy". This only reinforced what I've known before (we call it Emotional Intelligence), but putting it into the perspective like Chris does really helped drill the concept into my head and made it a practically learnable skill. Then I went down the rabbit whole. I watched a TEDx talk by Chris.…
Aman Y. Agarwal
December 18, 2019
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