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There was once a young man who needed to build a tool shed.
He had a few friends who offered advice, a rough plan for how it should take shape, and a pile of lumber beside him. Then he got to work.
The first task seemed simple. Cut the first board. He took a quick measurement, set it down, and began sawing.
An hour went by. Then another. By the end of the day, the board was barely marked.
The next day, he worked even harder. His hands started to blister and crack, yet the wood would hardly budge.
After a week, his neighbor finally called out from across the fence.
"Would you like a bit of advice?"
"Yes, please," said the young man. "This is brutal."
The old man smiled. "It might help if you turned your saw the right way around."
This might as well have been the story of my first company, DealBuilder.
I remember spending three months building a feature nobody asked for, convinced it would change everything. It did not. We chased every shiny idea, said yes to every partnership, and stayed busy enough to feel productive. You can cut a piece of wood with a backwards saw, but there is no glory in making things harder than they need to be.
When I built Breakwater, I took the opposite approach. Before I made a single hire or, as the kids say, “hard launched,” I spent weeks laying the groundwork. I dialed in our brand and voice, got testimonials from former clients, and built the SOPs and systems that let us scale fast. It was my business version of measure twice, cut once.
It’s been night and day from my time ‘playing office’ with DealBuilder. We’re growing super fast (join our team here) with a clear (optimistic) view of the future.
Personal fitness is no different - you’ll find a lot of backwards saws in the gym. People jump from fitness trend to trend, diet to diet, program to program, thinking that novelty means progress.
What I’ve come to realize is that results come from boring repetition. Training consistently, eating well, and showing up when no one is watching.
Hard work only works when it's focused. But it also helps when your saw isn't backwards.
idea of the week 💡
Credit: IdeaBrowser.com
Problem: the first week on Ozempic, food becomes a stranger. A plate that used to disappear in ten minutes sits there half-eaten. Nothing sounds good. Everything sounds like it might come back up. The nausea fades after a few days, then the injection resets the clock. Thirty million people on GLP-1 medications, all cycling through the same unpredictable appetite with no guidance. The medication came with a prescription, but no eating plan.
Idea: PostDose builds the week around injection day. High-protein, smaller meals when the drug suppresses appetite hardest. Calorie-dense options when it fades. Nausea-friendly dinners on the days that need them. The app learns individual patterns: this person tolerates eggs on injection day but not pasta, that one needs bland carbs for 48 hours post-dose. Every meal rating sharpens the next suggestion.
How it works: GLP-1 side effects aren't random. They follow predictable patterns based on which medication someone takes and how high the dose is. Map those patterns from published clinical data and the meal engine has a foundation before a single user logs in. Seed 50 recipes tagged by symptom compatibility, then add a symptom logger that feeds back into the recipe engine after every meal. The clinical data gets the recommendations close. The user data makes them personal.
How it makes money: the strongest distribution channel is the prescribing clinic. A doctor who hands a patient a prescription and says "download this for your meals" reaches them before they start Googling. Telehealth clinics prescribing millions of doses a year are the scalable version of that same handoff. $12/month is invisible next to the cost of the medication itself. The feedback loop between symptom data, meal outcomes, and medication timing builds a dataset that gets more valuable with every user and doesn't exist anywhere in cl
inical nutrition today.
Why it might work now: the GLP-1 market is set to explode from $10.12 billion in 2026 to $66.57 billion by 2035. The absence of apps synchronizing medication schedules with meal plans means there's a massive gap — and the first tool that fills it wins..
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weekend workouts
give one of these a go before Monday hits
at-home workout
Complete 4 rounds:
12 burpees
16 alternating reverse lunges
12 push-ups
20 bicycle crunches
45-second wall sit
1-minute rest between rounds
gym workout
5 sets of:
Back Squat: 5 reps
Barbell Bench Press: 6 reps
Bent-over Row: 8 reps
Romanian Deadlift: 8 reps
Hanging Leg Raises: 12 reps
Tips:
Rest 2 minutes on squats and deadlifts, 90 seconds on everything else
Focus on controlled tempo — 3 seconds down, 1 second up
If grip fails on the rows, use straps. Don't let ego compromise your back.
outdoor workout
For time:
400m run
40 air squats
30 push-ups
400m run
30 jump lunges
20 burpees
400m run
10 broad jumps
Tips:
Keep your runs at 75–80% effort
Scale burpees to no-push-up if form breaks down
Time it. Write it down. Beat it next week.
tweet of the week
Whenever I look back at what I spent most of my time on 5–10 years ago, I realize it all just comes down to prioritization.
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