Welcome to Week 4 of I’m the Product, where I cover what I’m reading, learning, and thinking.

What I’m Reading

If you’re wondering why this email’s late, it’s because I’ve been busy and haven’t been reading as much as usual.

There’s one thing I’ve been reading in abundance though: Credit Suisse.

News of the UBS x CS merger or acquisition, depending on who you ask. It’s happening incredibly quickly and for me, the details don’t actually matter as much as the context of the situation.

Over the last three years, the Fed and government have poured capital into the system. Between low interest rates and stimulus, there was an abundance of capital that flowed into banks. When banks have excess capital, they invest it in treasuries. The Fed then began raising rates, which reduced treasury prices (higher yield = lower prices). While treasuries are considered the safest asset in existence, you have to hold them to maturity to receive 100% of your money back. This put banks in a precarious situation where given time, they’ll be whole, but in the short term they’re susceptible to bank runs.

This is incredibly interesting and relevant for the next few weeks and months. I don’t make predictions about the future, but this could be a blip for 2023 or it could be the beginning of a recession. We’ll see.

What I’m Learning

This week I’m kicking off Visualize Value’s Compound Content course.

I haven’t gotten far, so I’m wary of sharing thoughts too early. My preliminary thought is that like last month’s course, Copy That, the act of doing it is a leading indicator of success.

What I’m Thinking

I’ve started doing an excellent 80/20 weekly exercise. It takes about 10-15 minutes and I’ve found it helps frame what I should be doing for the next week.

In short, list out 1-3 bullets for each point below:

• What 20% is causing 80% of my stress?

• What 20% is causing 80% of my happiness?

• What 20% is causing 80% of my success?

• What am I putting off that will immediately make my anxiety levels go down?

Here are my answers for this week (slightly edited for privacy & brevity):

• What 20% is causing 80% of my stress?

  • Overwhelmed on a specific project. I need to diagram it better and break it down into smaller pieces.

• What 20% is causing 80% of my happiness?

  • Reading

  • Time out side

  • Optimize this summer for more time with friends

• What 20% is causing 80% of my success?

  • Compounding teamwork

• What am I putting off that will immediately make my anxiety levels go down?

  • Schedule dinner and workouts in advance instead of expecting them to happen

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About Erik

Erik’s the founder of Flywheel Studio, a software development agency. He’s also the founder of Thyme Real Estate, a partner in a real estate investment firm, and an angel investor.