My sister in law is a flight attendant and had one of the flights of Scottish World Cup fans to Boston a few weeks ago 200+ fans for 6 hours from Dublin to Boston They consumed every drop of alcohol on board within 90 minutes of departure and were playing the bagpipes in the galley Also said they were well mannered and never seemed very drunk Said the white wine was the last to go (but it went)

Chang Robotics is simultaneously having the time of our lives and drowning (in work). Every industry decided to turn on manufacturing CAPEX at the same exact time. And I’m here for it. Every second of it. We’ve added ~15 headcount this year, which is remarkable considering we only hire A+++ caliber candidates, who haven’t job hopped. Culture and integrity are everything. We have built the only prime engineering company that can design the ENTIRE factory. We’ve built the only deployment company that can build and install ALL OF THE automation in any factory. Robotics is sexy, but honestly it’s starting to feel like the easy part. Here’s how you know we’re having fun: the professional engineer founder is 100% billable, and has been since May 1. The peanut gallery would say “you shouldn’t be doing engineering, you should be working on the business”. To which I say “there are more than 40 hrs in a week”. Plus, if you hire Chang Robotics for your most important factory, don’t you want to know I was involved in the engineering and strategy? Life is good right now. 5 healthy companies, 4 healthy kids. How will we manage the growth? You’ll see by year end. I refuse to let a potential customer go unserved and we are taking dramatic steps to ensure we never have to turn a client away. Also, it takes me to amazing places. Small towns across America, big cities, foreign nations, and most recently, the islands of Greece (pictured below). Most importantly, my family and faith are fully intertwined into my business. I seriously don’t know how people did it in prior generations. Simple little things like FaceTime, zoom meetings, and AI searches dramatically expand my productivity and connectivity. Thank you God, for blessing me with the talent to design, the resolve to build, good health, great family, amazing friends, and the faith to take absurd levels of risk. Most importantly, thank you for creating me for this moment in history, when we restore our birthright as the world’s greatest manufacturing country. Finally, thank you for letting me use my (God given) talents to build just one more advanced manufacturing facility. May we always have one more in these United States. 🙏🇺🇸

Capitalism: Market forces and smart decision-making help a company generate record profits. The company’s rank-and-file workers, via profit-sharing agreements secured during labor negotiations, earn sizable bonuses, which they then spend in their communities, invest back into the economy, and pay taxes on to the government. The company’s investors, meanwhile, reinvest in the business, receive dividends (which are, in turn, invested in other companies), and provide the government with additional tax revenue. This process of economic value creation, in which workers and capital providers alike participate, creates a cycle of growth, mutual benefit, and shared prosperity across all of society, even for those who are not direct stakeholders in the company. Socialism: Regardless of supply and demand in the economy, the company earns no profit, because profit is inherently exploitative. The business never grows, as there are neither the price signals needed to indicate that demand for its output has grown nor the reservoir of historical profits that would serve as the capital stock for investment in additional capacity. The company’s workers—who, in theory, own the business, though in reality the company is controlled by a committee of politically connected bureaucrats far removed from the company’s operations—are not financially incentivized to innovate or to work harder, and they therefore perform the bare minimum amount of labor necessary to avoid derogatory marks on their social credit scores or forfeiture of their state-controlled housing. The company limps along, sustained only by its government-enforced monopoly; the economy stagnates; workers suffer; and life is miserable for all but the rarified elites upon whom political favor rests.

I am on the board of a small PE backed business. It is literally a case study in the value private equity can add. Bought when it was about $2M of EBITDA, but it felt smaller. The business had been family owned and then managed by a couple local investors who bought it from the founder. They did nothing with it, really just harvested cash flows. In steps this new PE group… They saw the opportunity to add more services and sophistication. First they had to replace existing management. Really two leaders- a president and a COO. The president was a nice guy, but just wasn’t really capable of taking the business to the next level. The COO was a tyrant. In the absence of the president’s strong leadership, he had filled the void. He was a brute, disrespectful, and keeping the business from progressing. Everyone was scared of what would happen if he left. And, they were scared of him. The PE guys decided to bring in a CEO first. He had a pedigree in growing a business and interviewed well. Now the decision was ostensibly his to make. For my part (advisory), I was adamant from the start that we should replace the COO. People are always worried about what’s going to fall apart when you let someone go, especially in small businesses. While there is some prudence in that, with a PE firm behind the company and a CEO/team in place, these decisions should very often be made faster. To be fair, I never relish letting people go. It’s terrible. Very good to be prudent but also, when you know, you know. Anyway, they eventually made the change. Let the COO go. Then replaced the CFO again. Major upgrade. Like the biggest upgrade I’ve ever seen. Then they hired a division president. And the business just takes off organically. Finally the firm is free to do what they do best, deals. So they get after it. Four add-ons, two more in the hopper, all at multiples lower than what they originally paid. That’s in about an 18-month span. The business gets a lot bigger… About 3x EBITDA from where it started. But on top of that, they invested well and pivoted masterfully. The business they bought was in a recurring revenue space, not really considered / just outside of TICC (testing, inspection, certification, compliance). Since then, they have pivoted, organically and inorganically, more toward that definition. Now it’s a true TICC business (that’s growing) with high recurring revenues and tons of upside. A demonstrated platform that still is small enough to have tons of room to run. As a result, the multiple they paid for the business has nearly doubled. 3x EBITDA and 2x multiple… not too shabby. But importantly, the business is stronger in every way. There is a real organic growth engine. The CFO has the back office dialed in (scalable). They have a proven track record on integration. And they have an acquisition engine and pipeline that supports further growth. Customers are happier, employees are happier, and shareholders are more than satisfied. When it works, it can be a beautiful thing to behold.

Much of the research my husband did for his last book was accomplished in a Carnegie library! These libraries have served readers across three centuries and they’re still producing fruit today. Major philanthropy needs to relearn what true service to one’s country and people looks like.

If you are looking for a reputable charity to help with the situation in Venezuela, this is one I recommend. I’ve volunteered with them and their set up is very efficient. They use local pastors and workers already based in countries around the world when disaster strikes. They were extremely helpful and first on the scene when the earthquakes and tidal wave hit Chile a few years ago and I remember helping my parents distribute supplies when I was a little girl and we had floods and mud slides. Because they use people already in each country the response time is exceptionally fast and their overhead costs are lowest of any similar non profits I’ve seen.

People get self-actualization wrong, and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs pyramid bears much of the blame. By placing self-actualization as a discrete, separate section at the top of the hierarchy, the rest of the pyramid—everything from food and shelter to financial security, loving relationships, community, and self-confidence—is subordinated. The work, efforts, and activities that comprise and define our daily lives—succeeding in our careers to provide the money we exchange for physical shelter and daily necessities; finding a partner to love, support, and build a life and a family together; serving one’s community—become mere prerequisites on the path to self-actualization, boxes to check before we embark on the real quest for meaning, purpose, and contentment. What all too many of us (myself among them) take far too long to realize, though, is that self-actualization isn’t something we pursue after we’ve addressed every lower section of needs in the hierarchy. It’s not a distinct facet of life we work toward after we have liberated ourselves from life’s baser needs. Self-actualization is found, rather, in the satisfaction of those needs themselves. Self-actualization permeates all levels of the pyramid, rather than sitting atop them. It suffuses all that we do as we climb toward the summit. We self-actualize—we find meaning, develop purpose, express creativity, experience life’s fullness—while we perform life’s routine, daily activities, not after we get them out of the way. We self-actualize when we work hard at our jobs and take pride in both the processes and the fruits of our labor. We self-actualize when we provide shelter for our families, a pantry full of food, a hearty meal, a warm bed. We self-actualize when we save funds for future days and watch as yesterday’s financial sacrifices pay tomorrow’s dividends, compounding across the years. We self-actualize when we serve our communities, express kindness to strangers with no expectation of gain for ourselves in return, make new friends, invest our time and our energy in stronger relationships. We self-actualize when we labor in the gym, like what we see in the mirror, and hold ourselves with more confidence. When we view the great bulk of the pyramid, comprising the vast majority of how we spend our time and efforts in this life, as separate from self-actualization, we inevitably set ourselves up for disappointment. Rather than finding meaning, purpose, and joy in life’s daily efforts and activities, we view them as mere obstacles to check off, surmount, or even avoid. We think of self-actualization as something that “comes later,” or is reserved for after work-hours, or requires an elaborate, “Eat Pray Love” trek across the globe. But it doesn’t have to be that way. In fact, treating it that way is a recipe for failure and disappointment. Find meaning in your work, purpose in life’s routine tasks, joy in your relationships. Do it today and do it all days, regardless of what the day’s most pressing needs on the hierarchy are. That’s where you’ll find the self-actualization you’ve been seeking.

The blatant lying I'm seeing from a bunch of media organizations about those anti-fa convictions is insane. Here is what actually happened in that case. 1. People are claiming "Oh, only one guy fired shots, so this means you can now be sentenced to decades in prison if someone else at a protest gets violent." Wrong. They all knew each other, were part of the same group, arrived at the scene together, and all brought guns. There was not a single person at the "protest" who was outside of their friend group. If you're at a protest and someone else shoots a cop that is substantively different from you and 7 of your friends getting rifles, committing a bunch of felonies, and THEN one of you shooting a cop who responds to all the felonies you just committed. Yeah, in that second instance you might wind up on the hook for the shooting. Sorry you're an idiot. Have fun in prison. 2. "Antifa can't be a terrorist movement because it's a decentralized idea." Yeah, so is 21st century Al-Qaeda, but if you shoot cops after getting motivated by reading Inspire Magazine, you're still a terrorist. That's the same fact pattern as what happened here. The people involved were in a group chat together where they self-identified as a coordinated political movement seeking to change policy through violence. If you self-ID as a terrorist behind closed doors, don't be surprised when a jury decides you're a terrorist and you get hit with terrorist enhancements and spend the rest of your life behind bars. 3. "OMG, one guy got a huge amount of prison time for moving boxes." "Moving boxes" in this case refers to one of the accused getting a call from his wife when she was in prison where she asked him if there was anything at the house he needed to move. He then LOADED UP HIS TRUCK with documents and magazines containing far-left terrorist ideology and tried to drive them to another house so the feds wouldn't find the proof of his wife's connection to extremist organizations. He tried to conceal evidence from federal agents in a case involving the attempted assassination of a police officer. That means he was both an accessory after the fact and provided material support to convicted terrorists. Meanwhile fucking PBS News is talking about this like he got convicted for moving a box of items from the living room to the kitchen. The far-left and their useful idiots in the mainstream media and Democratic establishment have spent years lying about antifa not being a movement predicated upon terrorist violence, when any rational person could tell that's exactly what it was. It turns out the second you put the question in front of a jury none of your low-IQ, echo chamber reddit propaganda means a goddamn thing because normal humans who actually touch grass are going to send you on a one-way trip to a federal penitentiary What's that phrase again? When you're used to being privileged equality seems like oppression?

Total pre-IPO investment in Tesla (debt and equity) was something like $700 million. With an m, not a b. For SpaceX, it was ~$12 billion. Look at what those investments did to the world. You can see the results all around you, in every city in America, and in space. Over 9 million electric cars on the road. Breakthroughs in battery design. Internet access in every remote corner of the planet. Cost of launch dropped by more than an order of magnitude. What has her $26 billion done?

People get self-actualization wrong, and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs pyramid bears much of the blame. By placing self-actualization as a discrete, separate section at the top of the hierarchy, the rest of the pyramid—everything from food and shelter to financial security, loving relationships, community, and self-confidence—is subordinated. The work, efforts, and activities that comprise and define our daily lives—succeeding in our careers to provide the money we exchange for physical shelter and daily necessities; finding a partner to love, support, and build a life and a family together; serving one’s community—become mere prerequisites on the path to self-actualization, boxes to check before we embark on the real quest for meaning, purpose, and contentment. What all too many of us (myself among them) take far too long to realize, though, is that self-actualization isn’t something we pursue after we’ve addressed every lower section of needs in the hierarchy. It’s not a distinct facet of life we work toward after we have liberated ourselves from life’s baser needs. Self-actualization is found, rather, in the satisfaction of those needs themselves. Self-actualization permeates all levels of the pyramid, rather than sitting atop them. It suffuses all that we do as we climb toward the summit. We self-actualize—we find meaning, develop purpose, express creativity, experience life’s fullness—while we perform life’s routine, daily activities, not after we get them out of the way. We self-actualize when we work hard at our jobs and take pride in both the processes and the fruits of our labor. We self-actualize when we provide shelter for our families, a pantry full of food, a hearty meal, a warm bed. We self-actualize when we save funds for future days and watch as yesterday’s financial sacrifices pay tomorrow’s dividends, compounding across the years. We self-actualize when we serve our communities, express kindness to strangers with no expectation of gain for ourselves in return, make new friends, invest our time and our energy in stronger relationships. We self-actualize when we labor in the gym, like what we see in the mirror, and hold ourselves with more confidence. When we view the great bulk of the pyramid, comprising the vast majority of how we spend our time and efforts in this life, as separate from self-actualization, we inevitably set ourselves up for disappointment. Rather than finding meaning, purpose, and joy in life’s daily efforts and activities, we view them as mere obstacles to check off, surmount, or even avoid. We think of self-actualization as something that “comes later,” or is reserved for after work-hours, or requires an elaborate, “Eat Pray Love” trek across the globe. But it doesn’t have to be that way. In fact, treating it that way is a recipe for failure and disappointment. Find meaning in your work, purpose in life’s routine tasks, joy in your relationships. Do it today and do it all days, regardless of what the day’s most pressing needs on the hierarchy are. That’s where you’ll find the self-actualization you’ve been seeking.