PAGE 44 · JUNE 12, 2026

If you had the chance to spend 5 minutes with whoever your dream person is, you wouldn’t ask them questions that Google could answer in a few seconds. You’d go deep. You’d do the homework, find the thing that inspired you to follow them in the first place, and chase down the moment when you think they found that same thing you’ve been looking for… and you’d ask about that. If someone gives you the time, YOU do the work.

That’s all I could think when I received an email from a student who had heard me speak recently. He had the courage to reach out, say he was lost, and ask for advice. So I took the time to respond. And I’m busy as all hell, but I gave him my perspective and a true action plan; one I wish someone had given me when I was 21 and lost. And the email I quickly got back… well, it just made me angry.

In a world with a million paths, if you ask someone how to find the right one, what you don’t do is ask them how to take the first step. You just start walking. And if you really don’t know, if you’re really stuck, go on fucking YouTube or ask ChatGPT. The world’s information is at your fingertips, you just have to the oomph to go and access it.

So this simple email basically ruined my morning. Mostly because I questioned whether I’m teaching my own sons how to be the Chief Problem Solver. How to have both the courage to know theres an issue, and the will to action it without hesitation.

I can measure my success in speed to action. And it bothers me to high hell when I see smart people sitting on their hands, knowing exactly what to do after analyzing the problem, and then waiting for someone else to shoot off the gun to go.

I’m glad you ran the analysis. I’m glad you identified the problem. Now why are you waiting for me to tell you to action the solution. Just do it. Do the next thing.

Because that’s what I do. The other day, I was walking at our beach club and saw a nail sticking out of the floor boards. Some little kid was gonna get stabbed in the foot, so I grabbed another dad, I tried to find a worker, but by the time I was back to tell him everyone had already left, he was gone, the nail was there, and the kids still playing only a few feet away.

I could’ve told the kids to stay away or simply left with my family and hoped someone else did the job.

But I didn’t. I couldn’t. If someone got hurt, it was on me. I saw the problem. So I snagged a cup, placed it over the nail, walked around for 15min checking every unlocked drawer, found a hammer hidden in a utility closet, and I removed the nail, myself.

Maybe thats my greatest fault. I didn’t need to do that. I spent 20minutes of the limited time I get with my family fixing something someone else should’ve had the responsibility to do. Why?

As an entrepreneur, you spend most days going through tasks thinking no one can do this better than you. My way is better, smarter, wittier. I’m the most invested in this company, so it has to be me. But that doesn’t scale, and I clearly won’t be able to solve every problem.

So yes, moving fast solves problems. But knowing which of the problems to solve with your limited time is a skill I’m still trying to learn. But when I do, I’ll dive in and do the work.

Do the work.

MUST KNOW
Tom Brady launched Good Nut coconut water on June 8, exclusive to Gopuff at $3.29 a can. It is the next owned brand in his Gopuff portfolio, not an endorsement.

THE INFRASTRUCTURE PLAY
Accenture bought Whalar in what its co-founder calls the largest creator-economy deal ever. The consultants now own the creator layer.

THE OWNERSHIP LEAGUE
Eli Manning, Emmitt Smith, and Larry Fitzgerald didn't sponsor youth sports. They bought the company behind NFL Flag's million kids.

While CAA & TPG chase the money, the bigger bag is over here.

This is smart, but big money needs big results, and there’s a much bigger opportunity they’re missing. There’s hundreds of millions in cash flow a PE would dream of, sitting out there for the taking and no one is attacking it, yet… Here’s the playbook:

Every day, I talk to creators who have built brands for their audience. Completely organic. No paid media. No digital marketing engine. No retail distribution or infrastructure to scale beyond their “I talk, they buy”. Many are doing $3, $5 sometimes $10 or $15 million in annual sales.

They want to scale. Know they can be much much bigger. But they lack an operator. Their agent isn’t their COO, and they don’t know the next steps to go beyond their one man band.

These are the brands you pour gas on. You take them from a creator brand, to a creator powered brand. You become their partner, buy into the business, not as an investor who roots from the sidelines, but jump in as an operator. Bring them the amplification engine to go from $3 to $30M, from $10M to $200M.

You bring on other anchor creators through a small Creator Stock Option Pool, unleash hundreds if not thousands of UGC creators, micro influencers and affiliates. Shoot long form content and run clipping to push distributed distribution everywhere so the brand equity builds in organic channels. And when you see a hook that’s going viral, driving big sales at low CAC… you tell the rest of the army, and you put as much money into Zucks pockets as possible to boost it until you cross an unacceptable ROAS.

You bring in retail partners with access to the category buyers at Walmart, Target, and Costco; show them the social presence you’ve built, the cultural cache, the new customers you’re gonna walk in the door. You run a test market, prove you can move inventory, and let your channels become the build in public pedestal you speak from about the ups and downs of an entrepreneurial journey. You share the what and the why. Show up IRL. Ask your community to participate.

This is the playbook, and someone should be running it as an at scale fund taking these brands to the next level. What you don’t do, is rip out the V8 that’s purring. Sure, ABG can buy up the biggest IP in the world and use its prowess to expand it globally. And surely CAA + TPG will take the next tier down and expand these creator brands like Disney does with its IP. Licensing will become the at scale play over the next 5 years as creator IP lands on backpacks and lunchboxes and figurines.

But for the tier below that, the millions of million dollar businesses creators are building and will continue to build… I don’t need to bet on 1 or 2 to provide hedge fund like returns.

I can power hundreds of brands, and print hundreds of millions in positive cash flow.

If you want to talk more about this, about launching a fund and giving creator brands the infrastructure they need to scale... I only want to talk if you have the capital. I have everything else.

This will be an untapped goldmine. CAA + TPG just told you the move. Play the same game, just one tier below them.

Must know · 3 min read

Tom Brady launched a coconut water on June 8. It is called Good Nut, it sells exclusively on Gopuff for $3.29 a can, and it comes in three flavors, including a chocolate version Gopuff bills as the first certified organic chocolate coconut water on the market.

The product is not the story. The structure is.

Good Nut is not Brady lending his face to someone else's beverage. It is the next brand in a portfolio he is building on Gopuff's instant-commerce rails, directly after his GOAT Gummies. Gopuff now openly calls itself the launchpad and growth engine for talent-led brands, and the roster proves it: Brady, Selena Gomez's Serendipity ice cream, Giannis Antetokounmpo's FR34K Gummies, and an Alix Earle chocolate bar all live on the platform.

That's not an endorsement. That's a founder stacking owned brands on distribution he controls.

The lane is real. Coconut water sales are up 115% year over year on Gopuff, and the category is projected to reach $11 billion by 2030. Brady is not chasing a trend with his name attached. He is putting an owned product into a network that ships it to the door in 15 minutes, and keeping the brand, the margin, and the customer relationship instead of a one-time fee.

Every athlete and creator in your category can do exactly this now. The infrastructure to build and distribute is sitting right there. We help founders find and partner with them before they go build the competition instead.