Celebrating 6 Years of The Profile

The biggest lesson I learned over the last year is that serendipity is always lurking.

I’ve been writing this newsletter for six years. If you’ve been with me this entire time, that means that you started reading The Profile when:

• Prince Harry got engaged to Meghan Markle

• The New England Patriots beat the Atlanta Falcons in the Super Bowl

• A 16-year-old used Twitter to ask Wendy's for free chicken nuggets for a year — and it worked.

In spite of all of those remarkable news events grabbing your attention, you may have somehow found your way to my simple, straight-to-the-point tweet, and signed up for my teeny newsletter:

But given the fact that only 47 people liked that tweet, I highly doubt you’re here because of that. In six years, The Profile has grown into a beast of an email that I love writing just as much as I did in the very beginning. (ChatGPT, you’re going to have to pry this newsletter out of my cold, dead hands.)

In the last year, I interviewed Bridgewater co-CEO Mark Bertolini, UFC Champion Francis Ngannou, war photographer Lynsey Addario, author Robert Hoge, and restaurateur Danny Meyer. (You can hear these conversations in podcast form here.)

The month of February is a special one for me, because not only does it mark The Profile’s anniversary, but it also marks the inception of my book Hidden Genius. And in a very real way, if I wasn’t writing The Profile week after week, year after year, this book would never exist.

On February 16 of 2022, an editor named Chris Parker at the publisher Harriman House saw my Profile Dossier on entrepreneur Melanie Perkins and liked my writing, so he sent me a quick message: “I really enjoyed your thread on Canva and Melanie Perkins and am hugely impressed with what you're building at The Profile! If your thoughts ever turn to writing a book, we'd love to chat with you.”

That quick message evolved into a phone call which evolved into a book proposal which evolved into a whole damn book. The first physical copies of the book arrived last week, and I could not be more excited.

(Me & my tiny co-author)

The biggest lesson I learned over the last year is that serendipity is always lurking. Everything that you put out into the world can land in the most unexpected places (or inboxes) and be seen by the most unlikely people.

I’ll leave you again with the words of Ted Mosby in ‘How I Met Your Mother:’

“The great moments of your life won’t necessarily be the things you do, but they’ll also be the things that happen to you. Now, I’m not saying you can’t take action to affect the outcome of your life. You have to take action — and you will. But never forget that on any day, you can step out the front door, and your whole life can change forever.”

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🎉 HELP ME CELEBRATE 🎉

It would mean the world to me if you helped me celebrate The Profile’s six-year anniversary by pre-ordering my book HIDDEN GENIUS:

AND/OR

Becoming a premium member of The Profile to access all the member benefits and join the best community on the planet. (As a thank you, I’m offering 30% to everyone for a limited time)

Again, thank you from the bottom of my heart. I appreciate your support, and I hope I get to do this for the rest of my life.

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