About me, Ryan

What you’ll find in this email:

A short, sharp, high-level overview of me

If you don’t know me personally, I’m Ryan.

A small town country boy having a crack in tech and building software companies.

My latest venture is Partnar.io - a venture capital backed SaaS product.

Growing up, I had no idea what I wanted to do, all I knew was I wanted to carry a briefcase… WTF!?

I think that translates to either, I want to be a business man or I want to be important - probably a bit of both.

In my eyes, entrepreneurship is one of, if not, the, most undervalued pursuits for a life worth living.

My definition of an entrepreneur is a person who creates something that did not exist before.

If I didn’t become an entrepreneur I shudder at the thought of who I would have become.

Here’s why…

Entrepreneurship has led me to become an obsessive learner. Something I struggled with at school.

It has forged me into a voracious reader of books.

Turning to ancient philosophy to help me understand myself. To Robert Greene to understand others. To Nassim Taleb to understand the world.

And to many others to answer many other questions.

Luck and chance is the most common theme I will touch one throughout my newsletters.

I’ve made good decisions that delivered bad outcomes.

And I’ve made bad decisions that have delivered good outcomes.

That’s luck - good or bad.

I’m a highly skeptical person. Like most people, I look at life through the lens of my past experiences and how I want to see the world.

A lot of what I read is enabling me to remove those lenses and see things how they are - not how I want them to be.

It’s remarkably hard.

But! It’s a skill that has helped me become a much better entrepreneur.

And hopefully, with this newsletter I can share with you the things that have assisted me.

It won’t be perfect, but it’ll be good enough.

Ryan

2. Interviews and articles that I’m featured in - get to know me more.

3. Thee topics you’ll find in the following newsletters

Entrepreneurship - I mentioned my love of entrepreneurship earlier. The love consumes me to my bones. It’s the one thing I want to be world class at. And being a word class entrepreneur means being extraordinarily great at a lot of things. This will be the core of this newsletter. Because most of what I learn is to help me become a world class entrepreneur - and to do this you need to understand yourself and others, and you need a fair bit of good luck.

Nassim Taleb also said: Entrepreneurs are heroes of our society. They fail for the rest of us. 

Luck: good and bad: I touched on this above. Why do some entrepreneurs strike it big first go and make millions. While others do the exact same things, but fail enormously?

Following a big success, why do highly skilled and competent entrepreneurs fail on their second business?

We need to understand the difference between skill and luck.

I’ll talk about this a lot. Lucks plays enormous roles in our life, whether we’d like to admit it or not.

Philosophy - growing up I thought this was philosophy “to be, or not to be; that is the question” lol!

Turns out it’s actually a lot more practical than most people use it for. Philosophy isn’t for the intellectual, it isn’t for the regurgitator of information (remember the Good Will Hunting scene?) it’s for everyone.

It’s full of tools, strategies and advice to help you regulate your emotions, see things clearer and understand yourself better.

Other interesting topics that will make their way in:

World War II - someone once said “you can learn everything you need to learn about how the world works through WWII.” I thought that was such a bold statement! So I started digging, and from what I can tell, I think you can… more on this as we go.

Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin are two of the most ambitious, strategic, and goal orientated leaders you’ll ever read about. They were the two most evil dictators to have ever walked the earth. These two men alone are responsible for hundreds of millions of deaths and murders. What sparked my curiosity in them is this, the commonalities between those two, and highly successful entrepreneurs - it’s fascinating. More on this as we go.

Humans - to name just a few random things about humans that you’ll appreciate: envy, seduction, politics, greed, ambition, human behaviour, economics, power. We are the most fascinating subject in the entire world! What’s there not to be interested in.

Other notable interests that may get a feature now and then…

Golf - Because golf is cool. Golf is something that is exceptionally hard. One tiny mistake in any part of your swing; driving, iron play, chipping, putting, etc and you’re doomed - your ball sprays in the wrong direction. One book that helped me with golf the most with was: The Book of Five Rings, Miyamoto Musashi - can you guess why?

Red Wine - not that you probably care. But I once hated it. Then I tried Italian red wine. I was hooked. I watched all the docos, read all the articles and found out a few things I think everyone who drinks red wine should know. More on this, if you want it.

Ryan Elliott