The average of your 5 closest friends

Oct 8, 2020

Hi Friends and Family,

I have not written in a long time. My heart wasn’t in it and my hands weren’t cooperating. With all the grant writing for my work my hands started to hurt. It got to the point I could barely type anymore. So I cut out any nonessential typing. After Physical Therapy and voice dictation my heart is back and my hands are healthier. The majority of this I typed with my voice. But that's for another story.

Update on Mastermind Group

In February, after inviting you all to start an Entrepreneurs’ Mastermind Group with me, 3 friends emailed me back with something along the lines of what one friend wrote:

Think tank for startups? im in!

So we did it. We started with 1.5 hour meetings once a week, settling on 2 hours eventually. We have different roles and rotate each month. We started with a one-page charter as well. A charter may sound like overkill but I think it was important. It outlined how people could be removed or added to the group. Eventually one member left and we interviewed 4 people to join—we accepted two of them.

Was the Mastermind Group effective? This year I will save $15,000 because of advice from the group and I have not felt alone as an entrepreneur, which is a problem I faced in my last business. I know that the other members of the Mastermind feel similarly. One friend, undecided about whether to start a business at all joined the group. A few short months later she raised capital from the best startup accelerator in the world, YCombinator.

My Mastermind experience inspired my recent FB post:

Peers over mentors.

Not that I think mentors don’t have value but I think peers are under-rated. Mentors know what worked 2-20 years ago. Peers know what’s working now.

I started the Mastermind group because when I looked back at all of the accelerators and business school classes, most of the value came from the peers, not the classes or mentors. Why not skip the classes altogether and just have great peers? You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with. Why not design your life to include the people you want to influence you?

What group of peers can you make this week?

Quaran-team

At the beginning of quarantine a friend asked me, “why don’t we get a group of friends together and live a big house for the next 6 months. It will be like college but better. A quaran-team.”

Why not?

So we organized a video call with 12 friends. In the end most people dropped out. BUT! 4 of us stuck with it. For the first month we lived in Tahoe then near Palo Alto, CA and now we have moved to LA for October. We are thinking of going to Baja California or Sedona, AZ next. Wanna join? Where else should we consider for great outdoors and great weather in November?

If you are in LA let me know :-)

Buying a farm

One year ago, almost to the day, I posted this article about starting a farm community with my friends in Latin America. I thought it would take a while for this to happen. It was a pipedream. Someday, one day…

But now it’s more than a dream.

Here is a picture of a property we are looking at in Colombia. If you're interested in joining to make a permaculture vacation home with a bunch of ambitious Bohemian people (I know, a strange combination) let me know.

A quarantine skill I picked up:

What quarantine skills have you picked up?

Love always,

Kyle

P.S. If you click on this email you can comment on online (or you can just send me a message back). If you found anything interesting or want more details on something let me know.

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