Hi, my name is Jarrett and, as Jay-Z said on The Black Album, please “allow me to reintroduce myself”.
I’m a bilingual, dual citizen with a BA in Latin American History from Rhodes College in Memphis, TN and an MA in International Affairs from The New School in Manhattan, NY.
However, I haven’t leveraged much of these diplomas recently, as I’ve been professionally focused on tech. Previously, I ran everything related to the Future Signal podcast, was a Senior Podcast Producer for Blockworks, and also led media for Compass Mining.
Prior to tech media, I’ve worked in stateside for-profits, international and global non-profits, social enterprise start-ups and with government both stateside and beyond. To say I’ve done a little bit of a lot is an understatement.
Over the years, I’ve been a Co-Founder. An employee. A Coach. A colleague. A fellow student. A Volunteer. A Podcaster. A website creator. Someone's direct report. Someone's peer. A guy with a stable job and a retirement account with a calendar full of meetings that could have been emails.
And then, one day, I wasn't any of those things anymore.
I quit and walked away.
I wish I could tell you I had a more developed plan, or some elaborate scheme to exit the corporate world, but I didn’t. I just quit.
In the next newsletter, I dive into Why I Quit My Dream Job, but for now, the thing to know is that from one day to the next, I went from a predictable schedule and salary to the open abyss of unemployment.
That abyss is what’s led me here to reintroduce myself on this newsletter and start again from seemingly 0 at the age of 39.
Today, I have no calendar full of meetings, no unread slack messages, and no salary. I just have the world’s most precious and finite resource: TIME.
This newsletter is a reflection of how I hope to leverage my time to build something on my own from 0.
Every Tuesday morning, I’ll publish a newsletter here about my journey and what it’s like to be at the intersection of money, technology and building a 1 person business with AI. I’ll also explore relevant themes to AI, blockchain, the future of work and all things related to modern money tech.
To complement the newsletter, I’ve also started a YouTube channel where I’ll share a one-take, candid review of the week’s failures, learnings and everything in between to be published on Sunday evenings.
The newsletter will focus on one topic in detail, while the YouTube will be a behind-the-scenes, unscripted lens to understand the minutia behind building a 1 person business.
If you made it this far, I can’t thank you enough.
Creating content on the internet can feel like yelling into the void, so it’s always nice to know that someone’s listening.
With that said, I’m writing this newsletter to document my journey and share it with others, as I know I’m not the only one that’s looking at the current employment landscape today and thinking now is the time to build for myself.
I don’t want this to be “another newsletter” that summarizes the news or quotes McKinsey reports. I want this to be an honest account of someone figuring it out in real-time. Because, honestly, I have no idea what I’m doing, but I have a plan and I’m going to execute on it.
And, if I’ve learned anything from working at or watching tech being built from a far, the best to do it often don’t know what they’re doing but they’re doing it anyway.
As they say, nothing replaces action. Nothing.
Thanks for reading my first newsletter and I’ll see you soon.
If you want me to create content about a certain topic or have a question, as it relates to my journey, please leave a comment – I read everything.
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