Heroes!!

Today I have some REALLY (!) exciting news about our Heroic Blackstone Publishing plans. 

More on that in a moment. 

First, some quick context…

I’m typing this in the parking lot at the Austin Grandmaster Chess Academy. 

It’s Saturday. 1:58pm CT. 

Emerson is 1 hour and 43 minutes into the second game of the day-long tournament. 

In his first game, he played a 1937 rated (40-something year old!) to a draw. It was his best game ever. 

See some pictures below for some highlights. 

Yes. 

We DOMINATED our pre-match protocol. Today started yesterday/last night. He ate great. Went to bed early. Slept great. 

Woke up with a 90 Oura Readiness and 95 Sleep score. Ready to crush it. 

I restructure my AM bookend for tournament days. So I was ready for him when he got up. We got some early morning sunlight and some movement playing monkey 🐒 in the middle with a basketball on the jumbo trampoline in the backyard. Then we hit the trail, had a great breakfast, and hit the road. 

As always (!), the VERY first thing I asked him as we drove out of our property was the same thing I ask him EVERY time. 

Me: “Hey buddy. What do you want?”

Emerson: “To be a good person. And to become a Grandmaster.”

Me: “Amazing. Great order.”

Then I systematically walked him through the next five years and why he wants to hit that target and how he thinks he will. Then we brought it back to THIS year. Then we brought it back to TODAY. 

I absolutely love him and our time together. 

As I tell him every time we start one of our adventures: Although I love what I do and a few things tie for first… NOTHING gives me greater joy than spending time with him and helping him flourish. 

Now…

That’s not quite the point of this email... although it’s close. 

Here’s the exciting news. 

You ever hear of Jocko Willink’s “Way of the Warrior Kid” series of books?

Cal Newport first told me about them years ago. We’ve read them all. They’re awesome. HIGHLY recommend them. 

And…

Michael had a(nother!) GENIUS idea. 

Imagine a book called…

“The Way of the Heroic Kid.”

Featuring a young boy who wants to… become a Chess Grandmaster. 

His name is Emerson. 

That boy ALSO has a twin sister. 

Her name is Eleanor. 

Eleanor loves to run and do Spartan Races and dreams of being in the Olympics one day. 

Emerson and Eleanor have a dad who is a philosopher. They also have a mom who’s a peak performance Boss and all that. 🤓

Mom and dad (and Uncle Michael 😉) help them activate their Heroic potential by teaching them how to win the ultimate game, forge antifragile confidence, master themselves, and dominate the fundamentals so they can tap into their superpowers. 

And…

Bonus…

The kids can ALSO time travel. 🤓 🦸

They get to visit ancient cultures and meet wise teachers and Heroic men and women who changed the world and who teach them how THEY can too. 

Then imagine OUR publishing company, Heroic Blackstone Publishing, releasing the first of those books over the next year and a near-never ending series of them over the course of the years and decades ahead. 

Then…

Imagine that same Heroic Blackstone Publishing company producing a TON of other titles as well. 

Get this…

Michael and Josh (the CEO of Blackstone) are already working on a Heroic Blackstone version of Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations. 

I’ll write the foreword. 

Maybe we’ll invite a philosopher friend to join me for some practical commentary. We’ll include the Philosopher’s Notes. Etc.

Then…

Imagine us repeating that with a bunch of other old school authors from the Stoics to Ralph Waldo Emerson, James Allen, and Wallace D. Wattles. 

And…

Let’s not forget about the little kids books. We’re still polishing those but remain as excited as ever for those picture books to complement the older kids books and all the other ones.

And and and…

Let’s not forget the 50,000+ copies of our flagship book, Areté: Activate Your Heroic Potential, already sold!

I’m already about 20% in to Volume II and we’re excited to launch the official Areté Workbook later this year.

That’s today’s note. 

Note: This is email #8 in our series of Heroic Public Benefit Corporation emails to support our Big Goal of raising the money we need to forge an antifragile business and take the next steps in going fast and far TOGETHER in pursuit of fulfilling our mission. 

Want to invest?

Round closes soon. 

We’d LOVE to welcome you as an Early Stage Heroic Investor. 

As I’ve said 101 times, we have investors from $100 to $1M+. 

Invest $100 to $25,000 on Wefunder: wefunder.com/heroic

Invest $25,000+ via this link (and our team will set up a call with me and get you in!!): heroicpbc.typeform.com/Accredited

Fired up. 

Day 1. All in. 

LET’S GO!

🙌 📕!!

B

P.S. Right after I drafted that Emerson arrived. 

E: “I lost!! He was REALLY GOOD! It was a GREAT GAME!”

Me (smiling as I type this admiring JUST HOW QUICKLY HE WINS OR LEARNS!): “DUDE!! It must have been amazing. Tell me ALL about it!!”

Then we 1-2-3 Win or Learned it.

Me: “What was AWESOME?!”

E: “Well… I played a REALLY good game against a REALLY good player!”

Me: “Amazing. That’s so exciting to know you can hang with great players, eh?! Now… What’s one thing that didn’t quite go the way you wanted that you know you can improve?!”

E: “Well… I moved a little too quickly when I was down to 40 seconds. Then he forked my rook and had me!”

Me: “Ahhhh… He only had 3 seconds on his clock then when you had 40, eh? So maybe next time what do you think you can do?!”

E: “I think I can take JUST a little more time!”

Me: “Anything else you think you can do?”

E: “Yah! I can practice playing some more blitz games (with 3-min time controls) to get better at moving super fast at the end of games like that. He was crazy fast.”

Me (goosebumps typing this): “Wow. That’s awesome. Win or learn baby learning is winning so we’re 2-0 today LET’S GO!!” 

🤓 🙌!!

P.P.S. Imagine that as a scene in our book… 

😳 🤯!!

P.P.P.S. Here are some pics of my beautiful Heroic boy activating his Heroic potential…

P.P.P.P.S. And as always… Since we have our crowdfunding round open right now, our attorneys remind us that we need to include this bit of legalese on emails like this, so here we go…

These materials may contain forward-looking statements and information relating to, among other things, the company, its business plan and strategy, and its industry. These forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs of, assumptions made by, and information currently available to the company’s management. When used in the offering materials, the words “estimate,” “project,” “believe,” “anticipate,” “intend,” “expect” and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. These statements reflect management’s current views with respect to future events and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause the company’s actual results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date on which they are made. The company does not undertake any obligations to revise or update these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after such date or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events.