Let me introduce myself properly. Not through a job title or a company name, but through the life I have actually lived.
I never sat down and wrote a bucket list. Never made a vision board, never journaled my five-year plan. But when I look back at what I have done, there it is — a list that most people would frame on a wall and call it a life's work. For me, it was just Tuesday.
"I didn't plan these things. I just refused to not do them."
THE ACCIDENTAL BUCKET LIST
Live in London for a year.I stayed for three. It just kept getting better.
Go to Israel.Ended up spending a year studying Talmud. Learned what Judaism is actually about, not what anyone told me it was.
Learn a foreign language.Okay, this one is on my parents. French immersion from childhood, ten years of study. But I showed up every day.
Work in the movie industry. As a kid I was obsessed with TV and film. Spent most of my career in cable, negotiating with Hollywood, building entertainment packages. Close enough, and then some.
Move to LA.I'm here now. Still figuring out the traffic.
Get a tattoo.Check.
Learn improv.Two years at Second City. Best decision I ever made for my brain.
Do stand-up comedy.A year of open mics. A real set at a real club in Toronto. I bombed a few times. I kept going.
Push my limits.Self-improvement retreat. Uncomfortable in the best way possible.
Work in big tech.Done.
Innovate.Out Of Phone. TikTok Radio. TikTok Podcast Network. Integrating Netflix into the first cable bundle. The list keeps going, and so do I.
Film my own podcast.Shot, produced, and not yet released. Some things are worth waiting to get right.
Live near a beach.This one was my wife's idea. One of the best calls either of us ever made. When COVID shut the world down, we packed up and spent three months in Costa Rica. While everyone else was doom-scrolling, we had the ocean.
Someone once asked me about Out Of Phone, one of the innovations I am proudest of. They said: what happens if another team swoops in and takes the idea? What do you do then?
My answer was immediate. I would be flattered. I would celebrate. And then I would build the next thing.
"Out Of Phone was one idea. I have many."
That is the thing about people who create. They are not attached to any single creation. They are attached to the act of creating. You cannot steal that.
What I have noticed, and what I want to talk about more in these newsletters, is how many people never get to ask that question. Not because they lack talent. Not because they lack opportunity. But because they got comfortable.
High school to university. University to the family business. Marriage, kids, the same vacation every summer. And then, quietly, a life unlived.
I do not say that with judgment. I say it with urgency. Because there is always a moment when you could go for it. Always a version of yourself that could pick up and move to London, try the open mic, take the stage, build the thing.
The bucket list is not the point. Going for it is the point.
Enough about me. What is yours? The move you made, the city you left, the stage you got on, the thing everyone told you was crazy. Hit reply or comment and send me yours. I am collecting them, and the best ones might just show up in a future issue.
More next week.