🧵Conquistadors of the Useless

People on this site love hacks...

12 ways to get more followers. 8 easy steps for buying a business. 6-pack abs in 5 minutes.

It’s a road to nowhere. Hacks rarely result in lasting value or satisfaction. They’re based on a misguided belief... 👇
...that reaching the goal - winning the trophy - is the reward. So why not take a shortcut?

Because - to use a climbing analogy - when you reach the summit there’s nothing there.

You’re what @patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard calls a *Conquistador of the Useless*.
The only thing that matters is *how* you get there. The journey *is* the reward - it’s a cliche because it’s true.

To build real value & experience true fulfillment, skip the hacks and aim for *mastery*, which is not a destination but a life-long pursuit - an unattainable goal.
There’s a saying in road cycling 🚴 that goes, “It never gets easier, you only get faster".

It's also true of life - it never gets easier, you only grow & learn. So we have to find beauty in the struggle and joy in small increments of growth that compound over time...
👉Because that's all there is.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Kevin Dahlstrom

Kevin Dahlstrom Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @Camp4

22 May
My 14 y.o. & I get ☕️ each Saturday and brainstorm business ideas. For better or worse she’s a chip-off-the-block and it’s a fun way to connect.

The ideas are starting to get pretty solid. Today’s 2 best (80% hers) 👇 Image
1️⃣ The Holy Trinity: An indoor/outdoor 3-in-1 restaurant & hang-out with coffee, ice cream, and pizza (thus the name). The logo is a cartoon Jesus with 3 arms holding, one food in each.
2️⃣ Coffee Cubed (written as Coffee^3): A coffee shop with a science-y vibe that has a selection of flavored ice cubes (mocha, vanilla, etc.) to add to ☕️. Customers can get a discount by solving a math problem.
Read 4 tweets
21 Apr
Having raised 10 rounds of VC & invested in 50+ startups, I endorse this thread & am adding my own thread with fun examples.

Elizabeth is right that the best way to pitch investors is to "pitch the business within the product", but few do this.

2 examples (1 is personal) 👇
Example 1⃣:

Back in the Web 1.0 days I co-founded a company called iChoose. The product was a browser plug-in (this was before mobile was a thing) that automatically compared prices on products and offered coupons while you shopped at any retail site.
It was very similar to @honey, but 20 years ago & in many ways more advanced.

I knew that a killer demo would speak for itself so I re-taught myself to code (I was a teen hacker in the early days of PCs) and spent countless nights building a working prototype.
Read 9 tweets
2 Apr
🧵The Best Athlete You’ve Never Heard Of

As a child Chris Sharma knew he was a good athlete but the usual sports didn’t click with him. Then, at age 12, he stumbled into a climbing gym.

What ensued is the single fastest rise to dominance by any athlete, in any sport, ever.

👇 Image
Faster than Serena, LeBron, and even Tiger.

Within 4 years, the skater boy from Santa Cruz was the best climber in the world, having established some of the hardest outdoor routes & won a World Cup event…

...without training for it.
🤯Let's put this into perspective:

Imagine a 6th grader picking up a golf club for the first time, playing purely for fun, and by their sophomore year in high school winning a PGA Tour event.

Tiger won his first pro tourney at age 20, after 19 years of maniacal practice.
Read 8 tweets
13 Mar
🔥Hot Take: Society celebrates people who are wildly successful in one thing, but the most satisfied people are *multi-dimensional*.

👉This means they strive for success in multiple unrelated pursuits.

Elon Musk has said...

👇
...that being obsessed with your work is the only way to change the world but it’s a tormented existence, not a path to happiness. You see this all the time in the business world. Some of the most “successful” people are unhappy and frankly, uninteresting🥱

A quick story:
Not long ago, I had an unexpected (and awkward) chat with a high profile billionaire - let’s call him Greg. Greg has it all: Private jets, pro sports teams, & connections to society’s elites. I knew that Greg, like me, was a climber 🧗‍♂️ so that was the topic.
Read 15 tweets
31 Jan
I can’t stop thinking about it.

Robinhood’s CEO whiffed on what may have been the *biggest PR opportunity in business history*. He could have become a legend overnight, creating the Tesla of financial services by playing a different game.

Here’s how he should have handled it 👇
1) He should have taken a page from @stoolpresidente’s book and approached this with an “us vs. the suits” attitude, but toned down about 30%.

He should have live streamed constant updates to twitter & WSB, creating a sense that we’re in this together.
2) The first rule of crisis communications is to be brutally honest and provide all the details. Vlad should have taken this to the extreme.

For example, the *instant* RH realized that they were approaching capital or regulatory limits, he should have communicated like this:
Read 9 tweets
27 Jan
Sometimes when I’m not on Twitter I do real work. Lately I’ve been helping a bank in Hawaii transform into a modern, digital-first bank w/ the ultimate goal of taking the mainland by storm (& expanding our market 300X 📈).

Here's the inside story of our journey so far.

👇👇👇 Image
First a quick background.

Central Pacific Bank has one of the *best origin stories* I’ve ever heard:

CPB was founded in 1954 by a group of WWII veterans. The idea was to serve local families & businesses who had been ignored by the banking establishment. Image
Just imagine being Japanese and living in HI after Pearl Harbor.

When the time came to raise capital, local bankers laughed at the idea. But local investors poured in, with many purchasing just $100 worth of stock. Within a week the bank was capitalized.
Read 24 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

:(