Watch us burn

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Excuse me in advance, but I am absolutely gassed.

I'm writing this on my flight back to LA. With the time change and all, I've been awake about 24 hours straight, with a few more hours to go. And despite being a bit delirious, I'm oddly energized af.

Three weeks ago I was at Cannes Lions — one of the most exhausting professional weeks of my life. I wrote a full recap in a recent newsletter, but here's the quick version:

"Exhausting" barely does it justice. You're up around 7am to head down to the Croisette for breakfast meetings. You jump around in the 97° heat from panel to meeting to podcast recording all day long. If you're lucky, you have time for dinner before heading out to the after parties.

You finally get back to the villa after midnight and open your laptop for the first time all day. You try to catch up as fast as you can before passing out to do it all again.

Repeat that x4.

The following week, I took my first real vacation in four years. I've traveled a ton for work, and taken time off during the winter holidays when the entire company is off. But this was my first legit vacation during the year since Oktoberfest 2022.

The verdict: I'm not great at it.

At least not right now. It was much harder to step away than I expected. As a founder, there's no such thing as truly unplugging. There's just trying to enjoy more time than usual away from your computer.

It's not that I don't trust the team or can't delegate. It's that I care way too much. There are just too many projects in flight, too many problems to solve, and too much momentum to risk letting it all slip away.

On the final Friday of Cannes, we took a yacht down to St. Tropez with a VIP guest list and partied at Bagatelle. It was an awesome outing, and we built a lot of great relationships.

The yacht headed back to Cannes while I stayed behind to meet up with my friends and kick off the vacation.

We spent the first weekend partying in St. Tropez (unreal place), the week "relaxing" in Mallorca, then the final weekend partying in Ibiza (also unreal place).

I'm not asking for sympathy. I get it — partying in the Mediterranean with my absolute boys was a blast and honestly some of the most fun I've ever had.

But the timing sucked. I booked this trip back in February. Well before I knew we'd be hosting our biggest event of the year on July 16th. Before I knew we'd launch 3 massive product updates in the span of 4 weeks (MCP, Group Subscriptions, Recommendation Network). And before I knew we'd be in the middle of a major strategy shift for two of our teams.

We're in the thick of it, and it's never been so stressful and intoxicating to build this company. Stepping away for a week (or really two, given how hectic Cannes Lions was) was nearly impossible.

People will tell you that "there's never a perfect time to take off" and that you need to make time for yourself. It sounds wise. But we're all playing different games here — I don't want to be good, I want to be great.

I genuinely could not wait to get to seat 10A on this 12-hour flight and crank through all the work that piled up over the week. Yeah, I guess I'm sort of a sick fuck, but I love the game.

It was hard to (mostly) step away for the week. But let's not get it twisted — we enjoyed (a lot).

On Saturday, we closed down the club and partied 'til 11am in Ibiza. I woke up at 6pm, laid out by the pool at this beautiful Spanish Mediterranean house, and felt at peace. Not an ounce of stress or anxiety.

Perhaps it was because it was July 4th and the entire company was off. Perhaps because I knew the trip was ending and I was just a few days from catching up on everything. Or maybe I didn't have enough brain cells left to feel those emotions. But I felt at peace for the first time in a long while.

As you can see, my mind can be a bit psychotic at times. Sometimes I can't get out of my own way and rob myself of the joy that most people crave. Other times I feel totally detached from reality. The persistent peaks and valleys of this startup journey have rewired how I approach and experience everything, from weekends to vacations.

Sometimes I wish, just for a moment, that I'd taken the simpler path. That those elusive moments of tranquility weren't so rare.

But it's the climb and uncertainty of life that make it worth living. At least, that's what I tell myself.

If I knew beehiiv would IPO one day, and that I'd be able to take care of my parents, maybe I wouldn't be so stressed all the time. But it's the stress that fuels my intensity to build something worth building.

Holy shit, this is a long flight.

Anyway, I'm almost back in LA after 3 weeks away from home, and I couldn't be more excited to get back into my routine and grind it out. My top priority: the beehiiv Summer Release Event.

For the past four months, the entire company has been sprinting toward this moment. This Thursday we'll be announcing the biggest news in company history, and it means the world to me.

I've poured everything into building this company. It's been the most challenging and rewarding experience of my life. I couldn't be more proud of the product we've built and the lives we've changed along the way.

But it's not just about me. The entire company has been on an absolute tear, working around the clock to make this event possible. Although, "event" is underselling it.

It's not just a 30-minute livestream — it's a step-function transformation for the business, and an entire reshuffling of the creator economy.

It's also the project I'm most proud of in my entire career: the final product, the broader significance, the work the team put in, and the whole journey we've been on. New products and features come and go, but it's the people along the way that make it matter.

Making this day possible meant dreaming of a future that didn't exist and deciding to build it ourselves. It took convincing people to leave their safe, well-paying jobs to join us way before they probably should have. It required everyone to rally together after the tragic loss of our cofounder and CTO to make sure the company didn't fall apart. It took an entire team believing that what we're building is so much bigger than any one of us.

One of my favorite quotes I've heard recently:

Well, fortunately for you, the event is virtual and you can join from the comfort of your own home or office (no mileage required). But we're gonna burn baby.

There have been a few times when I've written a newsletter as a pure stream of consciousness. Super unpolished, just raw thoughts on paper to capture how I'm feeling.

As you could probably tell by now, this is one of them.

But that's how we do it. There's no polished press release. No dress code, no fluff, no elaborate scheme behind it all.

It's just me and a hundred-some incredible people building something we want to exist in the world. And we're damn proud to show you what we've been working on.

RSVP and join us for 30 minutes at 1pm ET on Thursday.

Come watch us burn 🔥.

If you enjoyed this post or know someone who may find it useful, please share it with them and encourage them to subscribe: mail.bigdeskenergy.com/p/watch-us-burn

“Enjoy the sunrise from a rural midwest fire lookout tower.”

TIL what a fire lookout tower was, and now can visualize what a home office would look like in one of those. Shoutout Ben for the reader submission 🫡.

Think you can generate a better office? Reply with your submissions 📨.

Some of my favorite content I found on the internet this week…

Chat with DenkBot — my AI clone. It’s trained on everything I’ve ever published and the entire beehiiv knowledge base 🧠.

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