This was the advice given to me before my largest keynote ever.

“No one will notice, no one will care.”

The downward pressure on us to do less than our best is ever-present.

No one will spot the typo. No one will begrudge you for using cue cards. No one’s going to be paying that close attention. Why kill yourself for no reason?

These arguments are dangerous because they are valid. No one will care.

But you.

I memorized every word. Because that’s who I am.

Either you care or you don’t. It’s not about them. It’s about the standard you hold yourself to.

When you trace any artistic movement, you’ll find areas of unlikely convergence.

You’ll find overlap between disparate artists, like The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix, or Steve Jobs and Frank Lloyd Wright.

It’s always amazing to see these intersections, where two people with wildly different ideas converge on the same point, and each independently say “this is good!”

But then, as if departing a busy train station, they head their separate ways possibly never to meet again.

What was it about that sound, about that idea, about that style that they both responded to?

Why didn’t they ever agree again?

For years I battled with insomnia. I couldn’t get my brain to ever stop thinking.

You’d say that the answer should have been slow, ambient sounds (which I also love, by the way).

But what actually helped? Beethoven’s complex, intricate, moody, bombastic music.

Slow music gives us space for our brains to go fast—think productivity music coupled with a pot of coffee.

But fast music? Fast music breaks our brain’s ability to keep up and paradoxically forces it to slow down.

Or maybe I’m just crazy.

I’ll allow that.

Over four years, I’ve talked to hundreds of founders and game-changers building a better future.

Many of them have gone on to raise (hundreds of) millions of dollars and become personally wealthy. Others have shut down their businesses for good.

Do I remember what I talked about 130 episodes ago? What were common themes? What was the stupidest thing I ever said? What was the most prescient?

I’ve always longed for information like this, and now, with RAG models and AI, it’s possible to query every episode I’ve ever done.

“What were the five most common themes that connected everyone I’ve spoken to?”

“What is definitive, concrete proof Ross is a moron?”

We can now query our data in near real time, adding tremendous meaning to the treasure trove of back content each of us has created.

It’s clear our school curricula need to change. Fast. Dramatically.

As the parent of children soon entering the critical schooling years, I know that I want them almost solely focused on three things: Practical use of technology (like AI), business (accounting and corporate structures), and logic.

We spend no time at all teaching our kids about logical fallacies, and yet they are the very center of coding, human machine interfaces, media literacy, and just about every other vital skill in modern society.

“You are stupid, therefore you’re wrong” is a classic fallacy we see every day.

But this does not cohere.

The Wikipedia page alone lists hundreds of such fallacies, but how many children can name even one?