Get serious
In early 2017, I bet a few bitcoin on the Houston Astros to win the World Series. I watched the final games live at Dodger Stadium behind the Astros' dugout. November 1st was one of the best days of my life.
A week later, I quit my job as a public accountant to pursue sports betting full-time. People around me thought I was living the dream. I remember an Uber driver telling me how awesome it must be to just watch games and wait for money to come in.
If only they knew. Watching games as a fan with no stakes is fun. Consuming 3-5 of them every night for several months straight because your livelihood depends on the outcomes is much less so.
You get the enjoyable matchups, but you also have to endure the shitty blowouts because you need to absorb every detail to stay ahead of the curve and make sure your models reflect reality. How rule changes impact the flow of games, how specific players perform against certain matchups and defensive schemes, how rookies adapt and evolve game after game, etc.
(One of my basketball newsletter readers asked me how I find particular instances of very specific plays from a vast range of games and eras. The answer is that I've watched thousands of hours of basketball, and plays are etched into my memory.)
Over time, you start to detach from reality. Players and teams get reduced to data points. Money loses its tangible value and becomes numbers on a screen.
In those rare moments when you let yourself think about it, the weight of your choices can feel overwhelming. You realize the amount you lost on a single bet could've paid for a new car or a year's rent. And that 75% of your wagers are on unders, so you're actively rooting against the success of athletes you genuinely admire.
These realizations might make you feel guilty and uneasy for a bit, but you learn to push those feelings down. To be successful at betting, you have to be stoic and disciplined. Analyze every process, record every result in a spreadsheet. Emotions just get in the way.
I stopped betting full-time in 2019. Admittedly, my edge and limits were shrinking and it was harder for me to win. But I also definitely started to burn out. The games I used to love became a source of stress.
Don't get me wrong though - I don't regret a thing. Those two years were fun. And they taught me a valuable lesson: the difference between just liking something and being truly serious about it.
Our world is full of unserious people. Look at how many people join gyms in January only to quit by March, how many startups die because their founders give up after a setback, how many short-lived trends people follow because they're popular for a hot minute. The older I get, the more I notice how few people are really serious about anything. Instead, everywhere you look you see people pretending to be serious for social points.
Real seriousness is rare, and the only way to know it is to see it over time. But when you come across a serious person, it's obvious.
Dashrath Manjhi spent 22 years carving a 360-foot-long, 30-foot-wide path through a mountain using only a hammer and a chisel because his wife fell while crossing the mountain and later died because medical help couldn't arrive in time. He reduced the distance between his village and the nearest town from 34 miles to 9 miles.
Jadav Payeng devoted 40 years to planting an entire forest, tree by tree, to save his island from erosion. Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison, never wavering from his vision of a free and equal South Africa. Michelangelo toiled for 4 years to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Kobe Bryant, MrBeast, David Goggins... all examples of serious people.
Being serious matters because it lets us focus, commit, and chase our biggest aspirations with unshakable dedication. It's how we accomplish the seemingly impossible and leave a lasting mark on the world.
After I quit sports betting, I started working with early-stage startups. In 2020, I joined a company called tonebase. Users pay a subscription fee to access a library of masterclasses taught by some of the greatest classical musicians in the world - Grammy award winners, renowned teachers at top conservatories, etc. The company was founded by professional classical guitarists who wanted to democratize elite-level music education and make it accessible to more than the select few.
Working at tonebase was a real eye-opener for me. I'm the kind of person who finds something interesting about almost everything, so I tend to bounce around a lot. Suddenly I was surrounded by musicians, absolute legends in their field, who devoted their entire lives to mastering one specific craft. It completely changed how I saw things.
Seeing that kind of dedication up close was inspiring and humbling. It got me thinking about my own life and what I'm serious about. It also made me realize how important it is to find and work with other people who are serious too.
I'm not sure I've ever straight up told him this, even though we've been friends for years, but a big reason I joined de was because Rohun (Frank DeGods) is one of the most serious people I've ever met.
The first time we met was at his apartment in Westwood, next to the school he'd just dropped out of. In his room, right by his desk, there was this huge poster with the "man in the arena" part of Teddy Roosevelt's "Citizenship in a Republic" speech.
And that's exactly what he's been this whole time. Still dead set on building the best community on the internet, no matter what. Still the same guy who wrote this. Still the man in the arena.
But like I wrote in "Making de antifragile," de is way bigger than "Frank and the team's project" now. For us to thrive, we need serious people to step up from inside the community.
A bunch already have (not an exhaustive list, I'm just naming people off the top of my head): Sunny, Marc, Dougie, Max, JB, Mav, OG, 527, melk, youngjazz, Cirrus, VanG0xT...
These people are the heart and soul of de. They're the go-getters who show up every single day, chase their visions of what they want to create and the legacy they want to leave, while choosing to rep de as their online brand.
We need more serious people in the world. Find something you're willing to pour your heart and soul into, day after day, even when it's hard, even when you feel like giving up. Surround yourself with other people who are just as serious, who will push and support you and hold you accountable. And then get to work.
One day, whether it's in a month or a year or a decade, you'll look back and realize just how far you've come. You'll see the impact you've made, the lives you've touched, and you'll know that it was all worth it.
Get serious.
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Thanks to Alex Hugh Sam for reading a draft of this.