When you’re an entrepreneur, you learn to love problems because a problem is just an opportunity disguised in work clothes.

An opportunity to get better, to develop your skills, to make money or to open new doors.

So when someone I love comes and tells me about a problem, I can’t help but want to solve it for them.

I want to get involved.

I want to enter their inner world and impose what I think is the right solution instead of allowing them to make their own choices, even if I know what they’re about to do is going to lead to a huge mistake.

I like to believe this urge to help others comes from a place of love. I don’t like to see the people I love hurt, so I want to do all I can to lessen their pain, share their burdens and solve their problems.

I finally see why my mother was so overbearing. She simply didn’t want me to hurt or suffer. She wanted to solve my problems for me.

But what we think is the best choice for others isn’t necessarily the choice that is best for them.

We have to let others make their own mistakes, even if it means them hurting more later on.

By trying to intervene in another person’s life, we rob them of the opportunity to become wiser.

I’ve made this mistake enough times to know that by trying to intervene, the result is that the other person resents you.

It’s in our nature to push back when things are imposed on us (even if it is good) because the power to choose has been taken away from us.

It is why in behavioural science, if we want to influence someone we don’t nag them to death. Instead, we architect their choice. We present options:

“Burgers or pizza?” “Still or sparkling?” “Asian food or western?”

By presenting options, the choice architect creates an illusion for the recipient that they’re in control while controlling the context.

It has taken me a long time to realise this, but trying to save people from their own pain most often causes them more pain.

There’s a term for this in medicine: Iatrogenics. Iatrogenics is when there is more (unintentional) harm caused by intervention from a doctor.

I’m not yet a father, but I can understand how hard it must be for a parent to want to intervene and protect their children. Everything I do now is because I want my kids to grow up without pain and to be safe and secure.

Yet, one of my biggest wishes is for my future children to be self-sufficient, able to think for themselves, and resilient when facing the vicissitudes of life.

For that to happen, I need to learn to let others be, to hold space and reserve judgment so that they can think, act and learn for themselves.

A heuristic I’ve picked up from business and marketing is that there is no objective right or wrong. What may have worked for me may not work for a competitor, and vice versa.

So, what seemed right for me may be wrong for someone else. Only they can know what is the best answer.

By letting them make their own choices, fucking up and taking responsibility for it, they have the opportunity to build their sense of self-trust.

Intervening would rob them of that privilege.

I was recently catching up with a friend when he asked me, “How have you found so much faith in yourself? Why are you so optimistic about the future?”

It’s precisely because for the last three years, I’ve been failing and making mistakes but telling myself no one can get me out of this mess but me.

Gradually, after seeing myself survive and somehow shaping my life to be what I want, I learned to trust myself. Had anyone intervened, developing my sense of self-trust would’ve taken longer.

So why does self-trust matter so much?

Well, about a year ago, these charts of time spent with loved ones went viral:

While it highlights the time spent with loved ones declining over time, only one increased: the time spent with yourself. This is the most important relationship you have in this life because you’re stuck with yourself until the very end.

That requires you to own your decisions, develop self-trust and treat yourself like someone you’re responsible for helping.

Paradoxically, when you take care of yourself, you take care of the world. Or as my friend Trung puts it, “To be selfless, you must first be selfish.”

I’ve often thought about why this is, and I think when we choose to see ourselves as Kings and Queens of our inner kingdoms, we no longer hide from who we truly are.

We take stock of what is inside of us, and we serve, protect, govern, and take care of our inner pastures.

And when our inner kingdom thrives, only then do we serve the outside world from a place of abundance.

What Have I Been Up To Lately?

• Bloomstory has made some strategic changes over the last quarter. We’ve been shifting more to be at the intersection of marketing, behavioural science and AI/ML.

  • I’ve been exploring Markov processes and how they work in predicting human behaviour. I understand how a Markov process works in practice, mainly from poker, but I wanted to learn the theory behind it. This has led me to learn Python and some statistics.

  • We’re trying to figure out how to get AI to analyse videos. It requires learning coding to get implement this.

• I’ve caught the running bug, and I’ve signed myself up for The Big Half in London and the Race for Life 10k. Cardio just makes me feel better than lifting, especially on a beautiful summer day.

  • Also entered the 2025 London Marathon ballot.

• I sold my soul and started writing on LinkedIn more. This is mainly work-related stuff. If you want to hear me talk more about marketing, behavioural science and AI, you can find me here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonvunguyen/

• RIP to two legends: Daniel Kahneman and Jim Simons

• Hiked Snowdonia in the wind and rain.

That’s all for now.

Speak soon.

— Jason Vu Nguyen

Almost two months, to be more precise.

It’s been a weird one. After my last newsletter, I sat down to write Bloomstory’s codex. It’s a writing project that compiled all of my knowledge and experience on human behaviour, philosophy, evolutionary biology, AI and how it aids the marketing process.

I was writing, on average, 2500 words a day. So, when it came to writing this newsletter, I had nothing left in the tank.

I finished writing the first draft of the codex almost a month ago and am letting the piece ‘breathe’ before I attempt draft 2.

A few friends have messaged me asking when I’d return to this newsletter, but weirdly, I have struggled to hit publish. I have 3 newsletters — the first on Michelangelo’s David, the second on Are We Living in a Brave New World, and the third on The Importance of Deciding Where to Live — sitting in my drafts.

Something has held me back from publishing, and I don’t know what it is. So I figured I’d open a new draft, write, and hit publish on whatever comes out.

I don’t really know what this newsletter is going to be about, so I’m just going to write and ramble until I wind up where I need to be.

For the last two months, I’ve been spending more and more time in London. My girlfriend, my co-founder, and all of Bloomstory’s business action are there.

Whilst I love London, the constant travelling back and forth from Birmingham to London zaps a lot of my time.

I often think about the adage, “You can have anything, but you can’t have everything.” I suppose by writing unfiltered, I am (finally?) admitting to myself that I can’t do everything.

I arrogantly thought I could run a business, spend time with my girlfriend, hang out with friends and family, publish weekly, climb, and read for at least an hour a day.

The areas with the most significant cuts are publishing weekly, climbing and hanging out with friends, or more specifically, my friends in Birmingham.

‘Cuts’ feels like the wrong word but I guess it’s the part of my life that has changed the most or been substituted for something else. I still write daily, I just don’t publish. I still exercise; I just don’t climb as much. I still meet other people, I just don’t see my Birmingham friends as much.

These aren’t exactly complaints, but I guess I am acknowledging the changing seasons in my life.

I can’t believe we’re 3 months in 2024 already. I remember when I was 16 years old, I hated how time moved so slowly. I couldn’t wait to grow up and move out of the house. Now that I’m 32 years old, I hate how time moves so quickly. I just want to be able to sit, take it all in and enjoy the moment. I’ve always been too soon old, too late smart.

This is all for now.

Apart from the Bloomstory codex project, here’s what I’ve also been up to:

• I started working with a fairly big poker name on video and newsletter strategy.

• I’ve been thinking a lot about how optimising productivity in a creative profession is actually unproductive. A lot of the things you do requires serendipity.

• My friend Q informed me about the Founders Runner’s Club in London, and I joined it.

  • Running with a group makes it so much more pleasant.

  • So much of running feels like writing. There’s a saying, “I hate to write, but I love having written.” The same goes for running: “I hate to run, but I love the feeling after running.”

  • Anyone is welcome to join. The London one starts at 9:30 AM on Saturday at Regent’s Park. There’s a 5km and 10km group.

• Bloomstory dropped the “premium” and “video” niche and has decided to reposition as a “creative performance marketing agency.”

  • We also started a podcast, which has been so much fun to do.

• We ended things with a nightmare client. It was a good lesson in how to handle someone who wanted to pay so little and demand so much.

Speak soon,

Jason.

This has taken a while, but Happy New Year, and welcome to the first newsletter of 2024!

I’ve been procrastinating this 2023 year in review for a while because I knew this would take a while to write.

Anyway, I’m back and will resume the semi-weekly newsletters on everything I’m curious about.

Thank you for reading!

Jason.

When I look back at 2023, it was not a year that I expected.

It was a year of darkness and doubt, a year of light and love, and a year of further self-discovery and faith.

2023 started with great uncertainty. It felt reminiscent of the downswing periods in poker — deep in the hole, not knowing how long it would take to claw out and see profit again.

I didn’t know what I was doing career-wise. Everything seemed so messy and so confusing. Anything I tried, I kept on screwing up on. The worst of which was fumbling two inbound leads because I lacked clarity in my offering.

I’ve dealt with this kind of failure and uncertainty so many times in poker. You’d think I would be used to it by now, but failure will never not suck. Every setback is a punch to my ego and a humbling reminder that I’m not as competent as I thought.

But what matters most is your attitude towards it.

If you stop trying to pursue your goals, your world shrinks. The opportunities begin to whither away. Your curiosity dims, and with it, your ambition. Dreams fade into a distant memory.

Yet the paradox of success (in anything) is that it’s more about allowing mistakes than knowing answers.

2023 reminded me to have faith, keep taking action and trust the process. Eventually, things will unfold and bloom when they’re ready.

Professional Development

I’ll start with the most significant professional development change.

2023 began with so many questions:

• What was my offering to the market?

• Did I want to be a content writer or a copywriter? (Both are a form of marketing. In essence, content writing informs and copywriting sells)

• Was writing for a living something I actually wanted to do?

• Should I become a content creator and build a newsletter business?

I’ve been down this road before. I used to love photography and decided to monetise my passion. But doing photography as a side gig killed all my love for it. Was I making the same mistake with writing?

It sounds like semantics, but how you define something determines how you behave. There is a difference between a content creator and a writer. As a content creator, you’re trying to capture an audience for fame, status or money. The act of creation becomes a means to another end. Whereas for writers, writing is the end in itself.

There’s nothing wrong with being a content creator. But to me, I can’t not write. Writing is a sacred act. Writing is how I clarify my thoughts, illuminate the hidden truths I dare not to speak so loudly and express my feelings. I know the moment I start caring about email lists and follower counts, I begin to betray my craft.

I love writing, but I don’t particularly enjoy writing for others. After much reflection, I realised my gift to the world lay at the intersection of strategy, communications and psychology.

In July, at the MADFest conference, a chief marketing officer of a large beverage brand openly admitted they couldn’t figure out short-form content.

At the time, my friend Vanessa was doing a lot of short-form video content as a side hustle, so I sent her a message asking her to meet. We met the next day, and I proposed a 6 week project together to see if we could figure this out — She said yes.

We naively thought how hard could it be? However, the project quickly morphed into something bigger. So, I suggested a pact: we don’t quit on each other until we land the first client and deliver the project.

She thought I was crazy but took the leap of faith in building Bloomstory — a video marketing agency driven by memetics, behavioural science and AI.

I know AI is the biggest buzzword of the past year. However, I’ve been careful about mentioning it. We’re constantly testing at Bloomstory to see where we can effectively apply it to solve real business problems and have recently had some breakthrough results.

If you’d like to read more about it, as well as video marketing and advertising, please join me over at the Bloomstory newsletter: https://bloomstory.ck.page/ig.

A discovery I’ve made whilst building Bloomstory is how much easier it is to build with someone else than alone.

It reminds me of the old African proverb:

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together”

Goodbye PhinPhin

My friend Beccy told me, “A business doesn’t fail when it runs out of cash. It fails when the founder runs out of steam.”

PhinPhin was starting to feel more of a burden than a problem I enjoyed solving. Increase in shipping costs, roaster burning down, loss of high-grade Vietnamese Robusta beans. All this made it hard to adhere to the values I had set for the business.

So, in March, knowing that my heart was no longer in it, I decided to shut down PhinPhin for good.

Personal Development and Life

Turning a little wiser at 32?

When I found personal development and self-improvement (PD/SI) back in mid-2020, it was liberating and exciting. It felt as though I could now see life clearly.

But there’s an insidious side to it.

PD/SI convinces you that there is something lacking in who you are and that you cannot enjoy life until you become the finished version. Don’t get me wrong, PD/SI is useful. It teaches you to do hard things first before the fun stuff. It’s better to go to the gym before you watch Netflix.

But if you’re ambitious, PD/SI can quickly descend into this arbitrary madness of continuous self-improvement before you let yourself enjoy anything. You feel that your life has not begun until you reach a particular milestone.

I felt a lot of that from 2021-2022. Quitting poker for a new career and moving back to Birmingham made me feel behind in life. Everyone was moving forward — getting married, buying houses, having kids, progressing in their careers, etc — and I was taking 10 steps backwards.

However, something happened in 2023. Call it maturing, gaining a deeper understanding of who I am, or replacing self-help books with philosophy, but I stopped comparing myself so much to others and realised I’m exactly where I need to be.

That’s the thing with life; it’s just this perennial dichotomy between being and becoming. Between feeling enough and wanting to be better. Between a desire for more and gratitude for what you already have. Neither is better than the other, but are dichotomies to be managed depending on the context you are in.

Finding Love

I started dating again this year.

All because my friend Harry said to me, “You don’t need your finances in order to experience love.”

It had been 2 years since my last relationship, and whenever someone asked me if I was dating or seeing somebody, I would always give them a list of excuses as to why I wasn’t. “I’m not financially ready.” “I need to sort out my career.” “I need to figure out what I’m doing with my business.”

The truth was that I didn’t want to have my heart broken again, and it was easier to hide this insecurity behind aspirational career and financial goals.

But when Harry pointed out the flaw in my rationale, I knew I had to stop lying to myself about the whole situation.

In June, I met F, my girlfriend. We found each other the modern way — through the dating app Hinge.

F softens the rough edges and magnifies the shine of life. She reminds me not to take myself so seriously and to stop and laugh.

Getting out of my comfort zone

I’m terrified of public speaking.

So, instead of continuing to avoid these fears, I did the opposite and ran towards them.

The first I did was come on as a guest for my Twitter/X friend Andrew Lynch’s podcast. We discussed Rory Sutherland’s book Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don’t Make Sense.

You can listen here:

The second thing I did was guest lecture at Birmingham City University (BCU) on business management and Bloomstory.

I’ve always fantasised about becoming a professor later on in my life, so this was a great low-commitment opportunity to test whether I would like it or not.

My friend Harry, a phonetics and English teacher in Macau, has told me on multiple occasions how rewarding teaching is. I never understood what he meant until I stood in front of that class, delivered a 45-minute lecture and received this email from one of the students a few days later:

Fitness Development

I completed my second triathlon in August.

I made a bet with my friend Chee that the slowest time out of us two would have to get a tattoo of the other’s choosing.

Unfortunately, I lost, but the tattoo design is still pending…

The plan for 2024 was to do my third triathlon. However, I want to officiate my half-marathon and also train for the Walt Disney World Marathon in January 2025. (Who wants to join me?!)

I had a mediocre year for climbing, largely plateauing because of other commitments. However, I did have my first outdoor bouldering experience:

I’ve yet to try ropes, but I would love to give it a go when it’s not so cold and dull here in the UK.

2024: Focus

I don’t set New Year’s resolutions.

If a change is important enough for me to make, I don’t need to wait for an arbitrary date like Jan 1st just to get started.

However, I love this concept of having a theme for the year, and for 2024, I’d like it to be: focus.

I see life as an oscillation between convergence and divergence.

When you’re in divergence, you’re open to exploring new careers, hobbies, sports, lovers, etc. When you’re in convergence you’re saying no and focusing on what currently matters to you.

2020 to 2023 was a season of divergence and exploration, but that time has ended. It’s impossible to do everything, so in 2024, I want to converge and focus.

I want to work on Bloomstory, write more essays, read fewer but good books, lift, run and climb, and spend time with my friends, family and girlfriend.

Everything outside of this is noise.

Thank you for reading and I wish you all a Happy New Year!

— Jason Vu Nguyen

This will be the last issue of Writemas ‘23.

It’s been tough juggling this, Bloomstory and other projects, but it’s been a lot of fun producing these short emails.

As we enter the last week of the year, I’m trying to let the dust of 2023 settle so that I can regain perspective.

Forcing myself to write almost every day has aided in finding some stillness in the chaos.

Since October, I’ve slammed my foot on the accelerator and gone full speed in my personal and professional life.

I’ve watched Bloomstory go from seed to…

…still seed.

Unfortunately, we’ve had a string of setbacks — Getting ghosted by clients (again) is not fun. But hey, that’s business life. As they say, roll with the punches.

Vanessa and I are doing all we can to provide Bloomstory with the right amount of oxygen, temperature, light and water for it to germinate.

However, it’s important to slow down and do nothing.

Scheduling time to think allows your true inner voice to emerge and speak your genuine desires.

You begin to see the image of yourself and the things you want inside your head have possibly become outdated.

When I partially reflect over the last 2 years, I see so much of myself has changed.

In 2021, all I wanted was PhinPhin to do well. But I was so naive about who I was and who I thought I wanted to be — a hotshot rising entrepreneur taking the coffee industry by storm and disrupting it.

But running a coffee business and being an aspiring coffee mogul was never suited to my temperament — strategy, creativity, and thinking are.

I used to think life was like a big project with stages, jumps and levels. But now I see it’s an endless unfolding of continuous change. I had to start with PhinPhin to accidentally discover my love for behavioural science and eventually co-found Bloomstory.

However, the only way to adapt with change is to reflect more often and not be afraid to let go of past plans and ambitions.

Change is the natural order of life. We are all changing every second — even at the molecular level — so I feel no obligation to be who I was 5 minutes ago.

December is a wonderful time of the year. I love the sparkly lights, the cold, crisp chill and the festivities. But it does bring in the mood of reflection.

Lots has happened this year. I need to go away and digest it all, so the next time I write to you, it’ll be my 2023 reflections.

Have a wonderful Christmas! Eat lots and be merry with your friends and family.

Jason.

There’s a quote by Jorge Luis Borges I came across that I think about a lot.

It goes like this:

“I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.”

I will always look presentable because Mom taught me that how we present ourselves to the world is how it will receive us.

I will always cook my food with love because Dad taught me the secret ingredient to excellent food is care.

My clothes are minimalistic because my childhood friend taught me that fashion doesn’t need to be loud and trendy but timeless and elegant.

My most listened-to playlist on Spotify is Dark Academia Classical because a few years ago, my friend sent me the playlist, and I found it soothing to write to.

Every time I go to wash spring onions, I make sure to clean them thoroughly because my ex’s mom once said that you can tell a lot about a person’s character in how they attend to the small things.

How beautiful is it that even people we’ve not spoken to for years, or even at all, we unknowingly carry with us the way we present ourselves, cook our food, the fashion choices we make, the songs we listen to or the way we prepare our veggies?

It shows how our individuality is not only created but curated.

Nothing of me is original. I am the mosaic of everyone I have ever known, loved and touched.

Speak to you tomorrow,

Jason.

I had two main reading goals for 2023:

a) Slow down my reading

b) Try to read books that are at least 100 years old.

Here’s the full list of my completed books this year, in case you were wondering…

1. Ed Thorpe, A Man for All Markets (2017)

2. Kahill Gibran, The Prophet (1923)

3. Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence (1920)

4. Raine Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet (1929)

5. Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych (1886)

6. Ryan Holiday, Trust Me I’m Lying: Confessions of A Media Manipulator (2012) and Conspiracy: A True Story of Power, Sex, and a Billionaire’s Secret Plot to Destroy a Media Empire (2018)

7. David Clark, The Tao of Charlie Munger: A Compilation of Quotes from Berkshire Hathaway’s Vice Chairman on Life, Business, and the Pursuit of Wealth (2017)

8. Alain De Botton, Essays in Love (1993) and The Course of Love (2016)

9. Lee Kuan Yew, The Singapore Story (1998)

10. Sam Zell, Am I Being Too Subtle? (2017)

11. Drayton Bird, You Did What? (2019)

12. Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (1791) and Poor Richard’s Almanack (1732)

13. Yvon Chouinard, Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman (2005)

14. Nicholas Nassim Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes (2016)

15. Jim Paul & Brendan Moynihan, What I Learned Losing A Million Dollars (1994)

16. Gabriel García Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967)

17. Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Gambler (1866)

18. Steven Pressfield, Gates of Fire (1998)

19. Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (1932)

20. Kenneth Roman, The King of Madison Avenue (2009)

21. Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs (2011)

22. David Ogilvy, The Unpublished David Ogilvy (1986) and Confessions of an Advertising Man (1963)

23. Claude Hopkins, My Life in Advertising (1927) and Scientific Advertising (1923)

24. Michel De Montaigne, The Essays (1580)

25. Charles T Munger, Poor Charlie’s Almanack (2005)

In 2021 and 2022, I read, on average, a book a week. I suspect that when you read a lot of non-fiction, you train your eyes to start scanning because many of the sentences or paragraphs are just fluff.

After reading over a hundred non-fiction books, most can be distilled down to a blog post or, perhaps if you’re creative enough, down to 1 sentence.

I love books. However, there are too many for me to read in this lifetime, so instead of trying to consume as many as I can, I’m trying to find the books that force me to slow down and savour every word.

Here are my top 3 favourite books this year:

1. The Death of Ivan Illych by Leo Tolstoy (1886)

Ivan Illych, a highly regarded official of the Court of Justice, succumbs to a fatal illness after a freak accident. On his deathbed, he realises that he has wasted his entire life chasing prestige and status.

His unsympathetic wife, Praskovya, is too busy spending Ivan’s dying moments extracting as much money out of his life insurance. Meanwhile, his daughter, Lisa, is more concerned about how the funeral will affect her wedding.

Ivan attended law school because it seemed like the “right path”. He married not because of love but to tick off a milestone in his twenties.

He went through the motions of life because that’s what society told him was the ‘right path’.

As he lies on his deathbed, Ivan ponders the value of love and forgiveness and realises all he wants is for his friends and family to cry over him.

I think about this book at least once a week. One of my biggest fears is that I will reach the end of my life and become like Ivan Illych. While it’s easy to say don’t chase prestige and status, the harsh truth is that we’re all playing the status game, whether we like it or not.

The Death of Ivan Illych serves as a good reminder to play life by your own rules.

“Can it be that I have not lived as one ought?" suddenly came into his head. "But how not so, when I've done everything as it should be done?”

2. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932)

Brave New World presents a futuristic London society engineered perfectly around capitalism and scientific efficiency.

Unlike George Orwell’s 1984 of mass surveillance and oppression, the ruling class in Brave New World gain mass compliance through psychological innovation, consumerism and drugs.

The writer, Aldous Huxley, painted a future in which everyone is ‘happy’, mostly thanks to a drug called ‘Soma’ and frequent, non-committal sex. People are produced in factories, grouped into social classes, and conditioned to love their existence — and spend as much money as they can.

On the surface, everything seems to run smoothly.

Part satire, part prophecy, this book highlights how if the world were perfect and everything was easy, nothing would have any meaning.

Like The Death of Ivan Illych, I think about Brave New World weekly.

Written in 1932, this book was way ahead of its time — I think it accurately reflects today’s society.

Expect a future essay on this.

“But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”  

3. Conspiracy: A True Story of Power, Sex, and a Billionaire’s Secret Plot to Destroy a Media Empire by Ryan Holiday (2018)

In 2007, a short post published on Vallewag, a subsidiary of Gawker Media, outed PayPal founder Peter Thiel as gay.

Peter Thiel, a semi-public figure, wanted to keep his private life away from the prying eyes of the media.

The post would plant the seeds of a meticulous and well-plotted conspiracy that would end nearly a decade later with a successful $140 million lawsuit filed against Gawker Media — resulting in its bankruptcy.

Only later would the world learn that Gawker’s demise was not incidental but was masterminded and funded by Peter Thiel.

Some will cheer Gawker’s destruction, and others will lament, but I love a good story on power, strategy and secret plotting.

No one will deny that Peter Thiel is some sort of brilliant, ruthlessly efficient and hyper-competent genius.

“It is always revealing to see how a person responds to those situations where he’s told: “There’s nothing you can do about it. This is the way of the world.” Peter Thiel’s friend, the mathematician and economist Eric Weinstein, has a category of individual he defines as a “high-agency person.” How do you respond when told something is impossible? Is that the end of the conversation or the start of one? What’s the reaction to being told you can’t—that no one can? One type accepts it, wallows in it even. The other questions it, fights it, rejects it.”

Speak to you tomorrow,

Jason.

I’ve met many people in my adult life who are so much more intelligent than I am.

But most of them have ended up in well-paid corporate roles.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with doing a 9 to 5. These corporate companies are needed, but whenever I walk away from conversations with these people, I always imagine what these people could achieve if they had the conviction to bet on their ideas.

I’m gearing up to hire at Bloomstory and mentioned to my girlfriend last night that I thought the world has a lot of talented people, but what it lacks is high agency talent.

She asked me what I meant by high agency, so I’m writing this in an attempt to define it.

A person who has the high agency trait essentially has a “Fuck it. I’m going to figure it out” attitude.

High-agency people question everything, take control of their destiny and bend reality to their will.

George Mack wrote a fantastic Twitter/X thread explaining the different examples of high-agency people and how to identify them.

My favourite example is this one:

Jeff Bezos has a framework for identifying high-agency friends/romantic partners.

Answer this question:

“If you were stuck in a third-world prison and had to call one person to try and bust you out of there – who would you call?”

The first person who comes to my mind is my mum.

While we have a contentious relationship, she is a formidable woman and the first person people call when shit is going down.

She was able to have life the way she wanted it. By Naval Ravikant’s metric, that is true intelligence.

“The only true test of intelligence is if you get what you wanted out of life.” — Naval Ravikant

Speak to you tomorrow,

Jason.

I had a call with an old poker friend earlier.

We both have similar backgrounds; we are reasonably well educated, started poker around the same time, and never felt like we were enough.

Both of our poker careers were driven by insecurity.

We both had this desire to prove ourselves to the world, and we thought the best way to do that was to play one of the most competitive games in the world, where the results were measured by how much money you won. We equated our self-worth to our net worth.

That insecurity drove us to push ourselves to the top.

However, my friend admitted that when he was playing high-stakes, he was always on the verge of a shit-in-your-hand-and-clap breakdown.

I expressed similar sentiments.

The call got me thinking about why we’ve both had similar experiences.

And I think it’s this:

When the insecurity of never feeling enough drives your ambition, each failure feels like evidence that you’re still flawed.

It’s taken a few years of therapy, journalling and meditating to uncover all of this.

So every few months, I always check in with myself and ask, “Am I doing this thing because I want to, or is it driven by insecurity?”

My contrarian take is that it’s okay to be driven by insecurity.

Sometimes you have to use what you’ve got — fear, insecurity, anger — in order to drive towards the future version of you.

Conditions can’t always be perfect. It’s going to take me a long time to resolve my issues.

I started my coffee business because I wanted to prove someone wrong.

It’s obviously not ideal, but it showed me that I could do something that I previously thought wasn’t achievable.

Has starting Bloomstory come from insecurity or a place of genuine want?

I like to think it’s finally coming from a place of genuine want.

Speak to you tomorrow,

Jason.

Last week, I finished Steve Jobs’ biography by Walter Isaacson.

Isaacson portrays Jobs as a complex character with many paradoxes and personal contradictions.

For example, he was adopted and struggled with ‘rejection’, yet rejected his own daughter, Lisa Jobs.

Rejection plays an important role in Jobs’ life, making him intensely loyal but at the same time distrustful of people.

And for the first half of the book, the initial years he spent at Apple before he was ousted, he sounded like a petulant brat.

While there are many of Jobs’ traits I don’t want to emulate, here are 3 key lessons I took away from the book as I build Bloomstory.

Innovation and greatness are at the intersection of two fields

It is extremely difficult to be great at one thing.

It requires a lot of luck and extreme performance.

However, an easier way to be great is to be good at two things and work on the intersection.

Jobs created Apple and Pixar to lay at the intersection of art and technology, and his focus on that sweet spot led to their meteoric rise.

Never compromise on hiring

Jobs insisted on hiring only A-players. He knew, as well as many other great founders, that A-players only want to play with other A-players.

He explains it best in this video.

Know what you want and stick to it

Jobs’ focus was crystal clear on how he wanted things to look and be.

“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of the things we haven't done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.” — Steve Jobs

He was very clear on wanting two things: build great products and enduring companies.

Everything else was secondary.

Speak to you tomorrow,

Jason.

Someone once called me intense.

At first, I thought, is there something wrong with me? But I snapped out of things and realised it’s what makes me me.

No one is making it out alive; death knocks at everyone’s door, so why not be obsessed about the things I enjoy?

I have a hard time reining in my interests: literature, biographies, philosophy, psychology, cognitive misjudgments, human nature, marketing, advertising, behavioural science, business, investing, climbing, triathlon and so on.

I’ve been thinking about who I’m most drawn to, and it seems to be those who exude maniacal obsession.

People who are intense.

I love the obsessive energy of Steve Jobs, Sam Zell, Anna Wintour, Estée Lauder, David Ogilvy, Charlie Munger, Leonardo Da Vinci, and so on.

Because every outlier is obsessive.

Those who are obsessed do more. They think different. They work harder, push limits and fall into deep flow states.

They don’t struggle with discipline. They struggle to stop.

Is it healthy? Definitely not.

But there’s something so intoxicating about obsession.

It’s scary but seductive.

Anyone who has felt obsession knows that when you and the object of your focus are all that exists, it becomes dangerously mesmerising, addictive, and thrilling.

You just feel joy in a way most people will never understand.

Speak to you tomorrow,

Jason.

My mother used to say to me, “Go work for a good company and build your career within it.”

Her advice came from a good place. She didn’t want me to struggle and have the safety of a salary.

As many of you know, I didn’t do that. However, when I look back and reflect on that advice, I see that she was right but also wrong.

Right in the sense that it’s important to build something and try to compound it. Wrong in the sense that it had to be your career.

My mother’s advice made contextual sense for her growing up. Job security was practically guaranteed.

However, in today’s fast-paced technological society, putting your eggs in one job basket is risky. Companies are changing, evolving and dying faster than ever.

In Berkshire Hathaway’s 2021 annual shareholder’s meeting, Warren Buffett shared a list of 20 stocks with the largest market capitalization as of March 2021, including Apple, Saudi Aramco, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet and Facebook.

He asked the audience which of those stocks they predicted would remain in the top 20 in the next 30 years.

Buffett then shared the top 20 companies by market cap in 1989; it included Japanese firms, Exxon, General Electric, Merck and IBM.

None of those remain in the top 20 today.

If I were to update my mother’s advice, it’d be to focus on building skills.

The skills you pick to build don’t have to be related.

In fact, I think the more disparate, the better. Because your unique skills and obsessions, when stacked and applied, make you become the only.

When Steve Jobs dropped out of Reed College, he was now free to follow his curiosity. This led to him taking a calligraphy class. He learned about typography, the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible and appealing when displayed.

Although he didn’t know it then, but this experience would later inspire him to incorporate beautiful typography into the Macintosh.

Jobs wanted the Macintosh to be more than just a functional computer. He wanted it to be an intuitive and user-friendly device that anyone, not just computer experts, could use.

To achieve this goal, Jobs turned to his love of calligraphy and typography.

He insisted that the Macintosh display fonts with variable widths and proportional spacing, which was a departure from the standard monospaced fonts used in early computers. This allowed for a more natural and aesthetically pleasing reading experience, and it set the Macintosh apart from its competitors.

It’s the reason why we have different font choices on our screens today.

Jobs and Apple is an example of how extraordinary new concepts and ideas can emerge when skills from various backgrounds step into the intersection of differing fields. 

“To develop a complete mind: Study the art of science; study the science of art. Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.” — Leonardo Da Vinci

Speak to you on Monday,

Jason.

If you had asked me 5 years ago, “Would you do sales?” I would’ve looked at you with disgust.

I’m introverted, typically quiet and observant.

But as Bloomstory’s co-founder, it’s one of my roles within the business.

In fact, I volunteered for it. Most of my responsibilities involve writing pitch decks and presenting them to clients.

It’s fun. There’s something thrilling about talking to a prospect, handling their objections and negotiating the price.

The sensation I get is similar to playing for a huge poker pot, where the adrenaline kicks in and surges through you.

So why sales? What has changed?

Well, asides from being an adrenaline junkie, it’s because I’ve always understood that how you frame something or the order you present information can have a significant impact on the outcome.

There’s a joke that explains what I mean:

A Dominican and a Jesuit were chain smokers.

Both were eager to be allowed to smoke while performing their devotions, but needed to gain permission from a higher authority.

‘I tried asking the Prior, but he was dead against it,’ said the Dominican.

‘What did you ask, precisely?’ enquired the Jesuit.

‘Well, I asked him whether it was acceptable to smoke while I was praying.’

‘Wrong question,’ replied the Jesuit. ‘I asked my Abbot whether I could pray while I was smoking. Permission granted.’

In behavioural science, this is known as the framing effect and is one of the best universal findings to have come out of the field.

It shows how important it is to think about how to present information. Done correctly, it can be potent.

I believe Night Nurse’s origin story started like this.

Someone had developed the medicinal syrup to relieve cold and flu symptoms but found it caused severe drowsiness.

A marketer took a look and said, “Why don’t you sell it as nighttime medicine instead?”

And thus, Night Nurse was born.

For daytime medicine, it’s useless because no one wants to fall asleep.

But marketed as a nighttime medicine, it suddenly sounds like a sensible idea.

Speak to you tomorrow,

Jason.

Dear Ladies,

I wish you could see inside a man’s head when he falls in love with a woman.

It’s so surreal and stunning that you’ve got to experience it to believe it.

First, it starts small.

He begins to notice things about her appearance.

Like the curve of her small nose, the shape of her eyes, the sweet softness of her lips, her curves, her soft Italian-English accent and her milk and honey scent.

He can’t explain why, but he just knows that looking and being with her makes him feel good.

He then notices more things. How her eyes scrunch together when she laughs or the little crease between her brows as she frowns.

Every time he sees this, he gets a little flutter in his heart.

He wakes up one day and realises he can’t stop thinking about her. He misses her so much that it hurts. He develops mental movies of her.

He plays over and over in his head how her face lit up when she saw him after a long day at work. Or the gratitude she exhibits when he brings her Kinder Bueno. Or when she pretends to be a cat and knocks all his stuff off the bed.

It’s like she turned from a black-and-white photo to a 3D IMAX movie with Dolby Atmos surround sound.

He starts thinking about what else he can do to keep her around, to make her happy, and to take care of her.

He realises that he likes being with her more than any other human being in this world.

To him, she is perfect.

A man falling in love with a woman isn’t rational or objective.

He does not see who you see in the mirror.

He sees someone that is beautiful, perfect and divine.

I forgot what it’s called, but there’s an Instagram account that stops old couples on the streets of London and asks them how they met and how long they’ve been together.

If you look carefully, there’s something in the husband’s eyes when he looks at his wife whilst re-telling their love story. His eyes light up. There’s a sparkle to it.

He doesn’t see the same woman you or I see.

He’s seeing something wonderful.

If I hadn’t lived this experience, I wouldn’t believe it either.

But it’s true.

Speak to you tomorrow,

Jason.

Last week, on a Bloomstory team day out to the Design Museum in London, I said to my friend Myles, “Given we’re in a creative field, it’s important we develop taste.”

I know it’s subjective, but I’ve often wondered about how universal ‘good’ taste is. However, instead of driving myself mad with these impossible existential answers, I’ve settled for this meaning:

Having good taste means you are decisive about what you like and don’t like.

Yes, I pride myself on having excellent taste in food and coffee, which definitely borders on snobbery.

What can I say? My dad is a chef, and I inherited a palette for what great food tastes like.

It’s a bit of a side tangent, but most fine-dining restaurants aren’t as amazing as people make them out to be. I suspect people praise it because it’s an easy way to signal ‘taste’.

I’ve been to my fair share and only ever had 2 memorable experiences. The first was a Japanese place in Sydney. The whole experience was amazing. The second was in Vegas; the bread was phenomenal.

Great food and coffee should 1) change your world so much that life doesn’t feel the same again and 2) make you want to cry tears of joy.

Developing good taste is important, particularly in creative fields.

I see having good taste as a signal of good judgment because it requires you to say ‘no’ a lot.

In Steve Jobs’ biography, he says this:

Focus means saying no to the hundred other good ideas. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying ‘no’ to 1,000 things. You have to pick carefully. — Steve Jobs

We all know that Apple products have impeccable design. Even the inside, which we don’t see, is beautifully organised and welded together.

While open-mindedness is generally seen as a good thing, too much of it can be counterproductive.

Developing taste is learning to be discriminatory in one’s judgment, in other words, being picky.

This is why asking someone what their favourite book or music is can feel weirdly intimate because it says a lot about who they are as a person.

Developing good taste applies to dating, too. In fact, I believe dating is where good judgment and decision-making need to be at the highest calibre.

It’s taken me many tries to realise this, but the first date isn’t about impressing the other person. It’s about asking yourself whether you actually like them enough to see them again.

Because knowing how to decide well leads to good taste, which in turn shapes who you are.

Sir Winston Churchill once said, “We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.”

I’m going to modify this slightly:

“We develop our taste; thereafter they develop us.”

Speak to you tomorrow,

Jason.

A few weeks ago, my girlfriend said to me, “A lot of adulthood is unlearning the things you learned as a teenager, like trying to fit in so you don’t feel left out.”

I added to her point that I suspected adult fulfilment is rediscovering your childlike wonder again.

Let me explain.

Last year, I re-read one of my favourite books growing up: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

The whole re-read with adult eyes was such a soothing experience.

It reminded me we were all once children. I know that sounds so bloody obvious, but along the way of going to school, graduating, getting our first job, renting our first apartment, meeting our partners, saving for a mortgage, trying to get a promotion, looking for a new job, getting engaged and so on, we forget about the playfulness and innocence of being a child.

I remember at 16 years-old, I was always in such a rush to grow up. I couldn’t wait to move out, start a job and do adulting things.

Yet, I spent most of my twenties thinking about the future. As a result, I experienced neither the present nor the future.

It’s why I’ve always loved the Christmas season so much. It reminds me to be childlike again. Let’s not get it confused with being childish. Childish means silly or immature. Childlike means trusting or innocent.

Walking away from my poker life and starting over again meant being a beginner. A beginner writer. A beginner at business. A beginner climber. But through the terror of not knowing what the hell I was doing, it helped me fully rediscover the childlike wonder I had lost so long ago.

It meant letting go of all my beliefs, living in the moment and seeing what reality for what actually is, not what I wanted it to be.

It unshackled me from any preconceived ideas and limitations of what I thought was previously possible.

But it also importantly taught me so much about love and life again.

“Don’t dwell in the past and live in the present”, “Happiness will never come to those who fail to appreciate what they already have”, and “If anything is worth doing, do it with all your heart,” all don’t truly register until you realise how much of your childlike wonder has been lost growing up.

Speak to you tomorrow,

Jason.

Yesterday afternoon, I sat down with my co-founder, Vanessa, to brainstorm some ideas for a potential new client.

I had spent the week trying to come up with different ideas but could only muster up one.

You see, I suck at switching context quickly. Over the last few months of building Bloomstory, I’ve been in sales and business development mode. So, it’s been hard for me to switch back to creative mode when I’ve been putting all my energy into strategising, creating leads, and selling.

I told Vanessa this and suspected the lack of creative ideas was because I had not scheduled any time to think and write. It’s been go go go in the last 6 weeks.

Vanessa said she felt similar and that she had not been able to find the time to create videos either.

It’s funny because I recently gave a lecture to undergraduate students at Birmingham City University on how I cultivate and nurture creativity at Bloomstory.

One way I do that is by encouraging the team to carve out time to create videos, music, poetry and so on outside of their work. It seems as though I struggle to take my own advice.

In the Bloomstory meeting yesterday, someone mentioned vlogmas. Around this time of the year, video creators publish a vlog, either every day or every other day, up until Christmas.

Given that I have a video presence of an awkward teenage boy trying to ask a girl out, I’m not going to film myself. I am, however, going to write to you guys every weekday until Christmas.

Call it writemas?

I can’t believe we’re in December already. This year has passed by too quickly, but a lot has happened. I’ll give you the full update at the end of the year, in that weird purgatory period between Christmas and New Year’s.

It feels like it was only last week I left London to start PhinPhin.

I remember the terror I felt leaving everything behind and not knowing if I could figure things out.

But here I am, over 2 years later, still terrified but fucking excited to wake up and work on Bloomstory every day.

Even with the setbacks, which we’ve had a string of this week, I have faith that the future version of me can figure it out.

Fingers crossed, I can share a big win with you guys by the end of the year.

Speak to you tomorrow,

Jason.

P.S. Writemas will be close to raw stream-of-consciousness writing with minimal editing. So, I apologise in advance for the typos, half-baked thoughts and messy nature of things.

In 2015, I was walking along Southbank in London when a man stopped me outside the National Theatre.

He asked if he could interview me on who my heroes were and why I look up to them.

I couldn’t really answer his question, hero-worshipping had never been my thing.

My rationale was that I didn’t really know these famous people, so why would I give them any praise?

However, over the last few years, my hero-worshipping views have changed, and I have found myself inspired by a few people.

I’ve not met most of them; some are even dead, but they’ve made a significant impact on my personal and professional life over the last few years.

In 2001, Warren Buffett gave a talk at the University of Georgia.

He asked the students, “If you could invest in a friend and get 10% of their income for life – who would you pick?”

Once the students answered the question, he asked, “Why would you invest in that person? What character traits do they have?”

Now, they have a list of character traits to adopt.
​
If I had to apply this question to the list of people who inspire me the most, it’d be, without a doubt, Warren Buffett’s business partner and the Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, Charlie Munger.

Last night, on the 28th of November 2023, Charlie Munger passed away peacefully in hospital at the age of 99 and 11 months.

I’ve never met him. He doesn’t even know who I am, but to say he’s impacted my personal and professional life in the last two years would be an understatement.

I consider him to be the greatest thinker of the 21st century.

Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up. Discharge your duties faithfully and well. Systematically you get ahead, but not necessarily in fast spurts. Nevertheless, you build discipline by preparing for fast spurts. Slug it out one inch at a time, day by day. At the end of the day – if you live long enough – most people get what they deserve. — Charlie Munger

He trained as a meteorologist during World War II and then went on to attend law School at Harvard. He started his own law firm, but eventually quit and moved into the world of business and investing.

Aside from law school, Munger has never taken a single course in economics, business, marketing, finance, psychology or accounting.

Yet he has managed to become known for his multidisciplinary mind and is particularly renowned for his insights on business and human behaviour — two topics close to my own heart.

I’ve always been curious about many disciplines, but learning about Charlie Munger’s life finally made me feel comfortable pursuing a multidisciplinary path.

Here are some of my favourite Munger-isms on business, learning, wisdom, life and love.

On Life:

“Assume life will be really tough, and then ask if you can handle it. If the answer is yes, you’ve won.”

“Whenever you think that some situation or some person is ruining your life, it’s actually you who are ruining your life. It’s such a simple idea. Feeling like a victim is a perfectly disastrous way to make go through life. If you just take the attitude that however bad it is in anyway, it’s always your fault and you just fix it as best you can – the so-called “iron prescription” – I think that really works.”

“Life, in part, is like a poker game, wherein you have to learn to quit sometimes when holding a much-loved hand—you must learn to handle mistakes and new facts that change the odds.”

“To get what you want, you have to deserve what you want. The world is not yet a crazy enough place to reward a whole bunch of people.”

“All I want to know is where I’m going to die, so I’ll never go there.”

On Learning:

“If you skillfully follow the multidisciplinary path, you will never wish to come back. It would be like cutting off your hands.”

“I paid no attention to the territorial boundaries of academic disciplines and I just grabbed all the big ideas that I could.”

“It’s not supposed to be easy. Anyone who finds it easy is stupid.”

On Human Behaviour

“I try to get rid of people who always confidently answer questions about which they don’t have any real knowledge.”

“Never, ever, think about something else when you should be thinking about the power of incentives.”

“It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.”

“Show me the incentives, and I will show you the outcome.”

“It’s waiting that helps you as an investor, and a lot of people just can’t stand to wait. If you didn’t get the deferred gratification gene, you’ve got to work very hard to overcome that.”

“We recognised early on that smart people do very dumb things, and we wanted to know why and who, so that we could avoid them.”

On Wisdom & Thinking

“Knowing what you don’t know is more useful than being brilliant.”

“Acknowledging what you don’t know is the dawning of wisdom.”

“You don’t have to be brilliant, only a little bit wiser than the other guys, on average, for a long, long time.”

“Take a simple idea, and take it seriously.”

“You must force yourself to consider opposing arguments. Especially when they challenge your best-loved ideas.”

“I spent a lifetime trying to avoid my own mental biases. A.) I rub my own nose into my own mistakes. B.) I try and keep it simple and fundamental as much as I can. And, I like the engineering concept of a margin of safety. I’m a very blocking and tackling kind of thinker. I just try to avoid being stupid. I have a way of handling a lot of problems — I put them in what I call my ‘too hard pile,’ and just leave them there. I’m not trying to succeed in my ‘too hard pile.’”

On Business

“Remember that reputation and integrity are your most valuable assets and can be lost in a heartbeat.”

“Just because you like it does not mean that the world will necessarily give it to you.”

“Everywhere there is a large commission, there is a high probability of a rip-off.”

“The liabilities are always 100 per cent good. It’s the assets you have to worry about.”

“The three things that ruin people: drugs, liquor and leverage.”

On Marriage

“The best way to get a good spouse is to deserve a good spouse.”

“If you want to be happy in marriage, try to improve yourself as a spouse, not change your spouse.”

Even til the end, you were as sharp and witty as ever with your takes on crypto, venture capital and investment banking.

Rest In Peace, Charlie Munger.

— Jason Vu Nguyen

This is Lindy’s Restaurant.

It first opened in 1921, and for almost 100 years, Lindy’s was a deli in New York City that became renowned for its cheesecake.

However, cheesecake and NYC restaurants are not what I want to talk to you about today.

Instead, what I want to tell you about is the ‘Lindy Effect’ and how it’s come to shape my perspective.

But for me to get there, I need to continue with Lindy’s Restaurant.

You see, back in the 1960s, local NYC comedians used to gather every night at Lindy’s to review the recent show business action and speculate on how long each other’s careers would last.

The group of comedians developed a theory:

“... the life expectancy of a television comedian is [inversely] proportional to the total amount of his exposure on the medium. If, pathetically deluded by hubris, he undertakes a regular weekly or even monthly program, his chances of survival beyond the first season are slight; but if he adopts the conservation of resources policy favored by these senescent philosophers of "the Business," and confines himself to "specials" and "guest shots," he may last to the age of Ed Wynn [d. age 79 in 1966 while still acting in movies]”

In other words, comedians have a fixed amount of comedic material, which they can either use up in specials and shows or sparingly to make their careers last a lifetime.

One of the comedians, Albert Gouldman, called it ‘Lindy’s Law’ and went as far as writing an article about the law in The New Republic magazine.

However, in 1982, along came a mathematician named Benoit Mandelbrot, who came to the opposite conclusion as Gouldman.

In his book The Fractal Geometry of Nature, under the same Lindy Law name, Mandelbrot stated that the longevity of a comedian’s career in fact increased the more shows the comedian had done in the past.

“However long a person's past collected works, it will on the average continue for an equal additional amount. When it eventually stops, it breaks off at precisely half of its promise.” — Benoit Mandelbrot

Some ideas and technologies become less perishable as time goes on.

This became known as the Lindy Effect: The longer something has existed, the longer it will continue to exist.

The Lindy Effect only works on non-perishable ideas, and it makes almost perfect sense as to why things continue to stick around.

Let’s take books, for example. A book that has been in print for 100 years will still be in print 100 years from now.

However, most of the books that have come out this year in 2023, even the best sellers, will not.

Here are some more examples of the Lindy Effect in play

• The best way to eat your food is to sit around a table with friends and family, telling stories and cracking jokes.

• The best way to cook your food is with fire and not with a microwave.

• The best way to learn and retain information is with pen and paper and not with a keyboard.

I like the Lindy effect because it helps me find the signal in a noisy, misinforming and disinforming world.

Jeff Bezos puts it nicely:

“I very frequently get the question: 'What's going to change in the next 10 years?' And that is a very interesting question; it's a very common one. I almost never get the question: 'What's NOT going to change in the next 10 years?' And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two — because you can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time.”

This reminds me a lot about marketing.

Marketers have become obsessed with what’s trending and fashionable.

A few years ago it was NFTs, Web 3.0, AR, VR and Sustainability. Today it’s ChatGPT and AI.

I understand the hype. As someone who runs a marketing & advertising agency and is currently experimenting with how AI sits in our workflow, it’s exciting and unchartered territory, where there are unknowns. It’s a creative’s wet dream.

However, I’m reluctant to use AI in client’s briefs. I know a lot of it is just noise. As a strategist, it’s my job to build my client’s brand, so I’m not going to technology for the sake of technology-ing.

So when I approach marketing strategy using the Lindy Effect, I think about what’s NOT going to change: Human nature.

“It took millions of years for man’s instincts to develop. It will take millions more for them to even vary. It is fashionable to talk about changing man. A communicator must be concerned with unchanging man, with his obsessive drive to survive, to be admired, to succeed, to love, to take care of his own.” — Bill Bernbach

The Lindy Effect helps me filter our information that is robust — what matters over long periods of time — from what doesn’t matter. Time reveals all.

For me to predict the future, I’m in essence, looking for knowledge that will still be relevant and applicable 10, 20, and 50 years from now.

I do this by looking for knowledge that has been around for a long time; it means it’s still important in some way, and those are the kinds of information worth knowing.

The Lindy Effect also influences the content I consume.

I avoid daily news. If something is important and newsworthy, it’ll find its way to me somehow. The news cycle is 24 hours. Its purpose is to keep your eyeballs glued to the headlines. Because of this, it becomes impossible to filter the signal from the noise if you’re always consuming the news.

When it comes to books, I tend to read books that are older than 100 years old. These are the ideas of the best thinkers, and if what was true for them then still holds true today, it will continue to hold true in the future.

— Jason Vu Nguyen

Every great founder's story pragmatically resembles the Ancient Greek epic poem The Odyssey by Homer.

The story is about the mortal king Odysseus and his 10-year journey home to the island of Ithaca after the Trojan War.

Along the way, he blinds Poseidon’s son, Polyphemus the Cyclops. Poseidon curses Odysseus not to be able to return home until he loses all his crew. Odysseus almost reaches Ithaca, but his crew opens the bag of winds, which blows the ship far away from to the land of Laestrygonians. They try to sail back and discover the island of Ogygia, home to the beautiful nymph Calypso, who turns Odysseus’s crew into pigs.

Calypso falls for Odysseus and tempts him into becoming her husband by promising him immortality and eternal youth. But Odysseus, who deeply yearns for his wife Penelope, refuses her offer.

She eventually makes him her lover, and they live together for 7 years.

Tired of seeing Odysseus suffer, the Greek Goddess Athena pleads with Zeus to intervene and force Calypso to let Odysseus go and allow him to return home to Ithaca (I’m not doing the summary of this poem any justice).

Every great founder, like Odysseus, starts off excited and hopeful. They have a vision, a roadmap, in their heads of what they want to execute. Despite the initial optimistic outlook founders may have, they’re ignorant of how truly tough and long the journey that lies ahead: An odyssey filled with cyclops', bad luck, distractions, resilience, determination, and faith.

The actual outcome of what transpires always differs from what founders initially foresaw. In Odysseus’ case, he never expected a 2-3 month journey home to take 10 gruelling years.

I bring this story up because I made an active effort to read fewer non-fiction books and more fiction this year. Reading fiction has helped me gain a better understanding of the world around me and its symbolic truth. Let me explain.

Stories and storytelling are wired into our nature. Narratives are how we make sense of the world. The physical material world becomes meaningful when we know what we’re doing with it. Math, logic and science tell me what there is. Fairy tales, mythology and literature tell me what to do with what there is.

Although I love how non-fiction teaches me about objective reality, fiction teaches me pragmatic reality.

Neuroscience teaches me optimal human performance just as much as Odysseus teaches me how to stay adaptable, resilient and faithful in the face of adversity.

— Jason Vu Nguyen

For the first 16 years of my life, I grew up in a Catholic household, attended church every Sunday, and even did a brief 1-year stint as an altar server.

I can’t remember what triggered it, but I began questioning my faith.

From there, I went on an atheistic crusade, rolling my eyes at anyone who started talking about their faith and religion. At the peak of my atheist beliefs, I thought religious faith was for delusional idiots who lacked any grasp on reality.

At 26 years old, I went on an LSD trip, which I still struggle to describe because the experience transcends words, but it softened up my atheist beliefs.

Skip forward to today, at 32 years old, I still don’t believe in a particular God or religion, but I do consider myself spiritual; there is something greater than myself, something more to being human than sensory experience, and the greater whole of which we are part is divine in nature.

Over the last two years, and particularly more so in the last 6 months, my belief in faith has increased.

Why has this happened? Well, I suspect it has to do with entrepreneurship. Let me explain.

Entrepreneurs are big dreamers. In essence, they have to have the ability to see what others cannot. They pursue a vision knowing it might not come true, and that thought alone is enough to scare many of us into a pacifying life of quiet obedience. Yet, entrepreneurs feel compelled to overcome this and place their faith in building a better future.

After 16 years as an apostate, I finally understand faith. I understand the value of placing your heart on an uncertain future and can see now how religion helps put the vicissitudes of life into perspective.

Don’t get me wrong, faith is not the absence of doubt — in fact, faith requires doubt because it is the act of moving forward even when you don’t see the next step with absolute clarity.

No Gamble, No Future

When I say faith, I mean the Buddhist definition. It comes from Pali, the language of the original Buddhist texts. Faith, in Pali, is saddhā, which means “to place the heart upon.”

Just over 2 years ago, I placed my heart upon a better future and left my professional poker career behind to start a Vietnamese coffee business. It was pretty scary at the time. I had no idea how to sell, no experience in the coffee industry, and no clue how to run a business.

But what I did have was some money, a Kindle reader and a broken heart; a powerful motivator to change. I turned myself into a learning machine. Through reading books, it allowed me to figure things out and level up my skills.

I also couldn’t help but notice in most business biographies, there is a moment where the founder’s faith outstrips proof.

In Shoe Dog, Phil Knight gave up Blue Ribbon Sports and put his faith in developing his own shoe. Knight’s new business went on to become one of the world’s most recognised brands in the world: Nike.

In 1948, David Ogilvy went to New York and, despite never having written an ad in his life, put his faith in starting an advertising agency.

In poker, you learn how to be rational and think probabilistically. Investors have the same mental model too. So, when you think probabilistically and evaluate David Ogilvy’s situation, you’d think he was a madman. Why the hell would you want to go to New York City and compete with the likes of Leo Burnett, Young&Rubicam or J. Walter Thompson? These were major advertising agencies with established pedigrees.

Compared to Ogilvy’s agency — then called Hewitt, Ogilvy, Benson & Mather (HOBM) — which had a handful of tiny accounts, minimal funding, an unproven president and a director who had no practical experience in advertising. As an investor, this is not exactly the best bet.

But less than a decade later, Ogilvy would produce a succession of advertising campaigns that put him on the map as a creative force and built his agency into a powerhouse that attracted the biggest advertisers in America.

As someone who is a former high-stakes poker player, dabbled in investing and started businesses, I’ve noticed this: You want to be a probabilistic thinker as an investor and poker player, but a deterministic thinker as an entrepreneur. Because if the world were full of probabilistic thinkers, no one would build the next Ogilvy&Mather, SpaceX, or Nike.

Your Beliefs Control Your Reality

In the recent Acquired podcast, Jensen Huang, the founder and CEO of NVIDIA, talks about how truly difficult it is to build a company. It’s so difficult that if he could re-visit his 30-year-old self, he would tell himself not to do it.

Jensen goes on to talk about the the superpower an entrepreneur possesses: tricking their brain into thinking how hard can it be?

What Jensen is talking about is psychological conditioning. It’s essentially turning confirmation bias into a superpower.

Your brain is always looking for evidence to confirm what you’ve told it. So, if the story in your mind is My life is shit and it never works out, your brain is going to cherry-pick everything in your life to reinforce that belief.

There is a reason why good things tend to happen to people who believe they deserve it. They go around thinking, “How hard can it be? How can I solve this and get myself out of this situation?” Their brain will cherry-pick the things that show life has the capacity to be better.

Your mind is merely doing its job. It’s just looking for proof to reinforce the reality you have created for yourself in your mind. Be intentional about what you say to yourself. Pay attention to your thoughts.

I don’t think people take the space inside of their heads seriously enough. Beliefs are powerful because your beliefs are the starting point of what you do and who you become.

Will Anyone Hire This Agency?

I can’t begin to tell you how many times I laid awake at night in the last 2 years, questioning all my life choices — Should I have quit poker? Can I even sell my first bag of coffee before I turn 30 years old? Can I land my first copywriting client with no portfolio or experience?

Yet through all the anxiety and rumination, I did the only thing I could: keep following my curiosity and my intuition.

It was seeing myself come through time and time again that made me begin to develop faith in myself and the universe.

Once more, I’m betting it all again.

In August, my friend and I decided to leave each of our previous businesses behind and join forces to start a short-form video marketing agency — Bloomstory. It’s a new agency struggling for its life. We’re competing against major players; FlightStory, Verb and FanBytes. We’re also operating on a shoestring budget. Not exactly the best bet.

But there’s something in this business that I’ve placed my heart upon. It’s the combination of everything I love: advertising, behavioural science, technology, creativity and media.

I know the adventure ahead is going to be long, tough and gruelling. I can’t exactly see what the next steps with clarity are.

The only thing I can do is wake up every day and take one step forward in faith.

— Jason Vu Nguyen