The Profile: The self-made billionaire who never read an investment book & the actor on the precipice of megastardom

This edition of The Profile features Thomas Peterffy, Thomas Goldstein, Judah Smith, and Josh O’Connor.

Happy New Year, friends!

I published the column below last year, and I wanted to resurface it again. I hope you enjoy it:

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There are few moments in life that genuinely feel like you’re at the starting line of a new chapter. With every passing year, it becomes more and more rare to encounter moments that force you to feel like a novice.

For me, there are only three moments that have had this effect: The first day of first grade, the day we moved to the United States, and the day I became a parent. At one point in life, I was a student for the first time, I moved to a new country for the first time, and I had a baby for the first time. All three were a shock to the system.

But here’s the thing: You don’t need to move countries or have a child in order to feel totally incompetent. There are many ways to create an artificial beginning that creates a “before” and “after” effect in your life.

Every time the calendar flips to January 1, it marks an artificial beginning. Resolutions aren’t effective because they’re usually abandoned and forgotten in a matter of weeks. What’s more effective is setting practical goals that are difficult to weasel out of.

For instance, on January 1, 2015, I signed up for a four-year-long mentorship program. On January 1, 2018, I signed up for a marathon, and I bought flights and paid entry fees. On January 1, 2021, I cut out alcohol and got rid of all the beverages in my home.

Creating artificial beginnings is especially important when you start to feel comfortable and complacent. When I interviewed endurance athlete Amelia Boone, I understood why mastering something new is so crucial to building mental toughness. She was a corporate attorney and had never run a race in her life. At age 28, she signed up for her first Tough Mudder, became obsessed, and went on to become a four-time world champion.

How? She created an artificial beginning that forced her to be the worst before she could become the best.

Here’s how she describes the feeling of starting from scratch, learning a new skill, and mastering the art of suffering. “When you put yourself through situations that are very hard, and you do that on purpose, it helps you to deal with the messiness in life that is not voluntary,” she says.

Anyway, if you’ve been looking for a sign to commit to mastering something new this year, consider this your wake-up call. Remember, being a novice will likely be jarring, terrifying, and horrible at first, but those are all prerequisites to building true and long-lasting confidence.

Today is only January 4 — it’s the perfect time to find a new challenge, start over, and get closer to the person you want to be. As Matthew McConaughey says, “I’m a big fan of creating resistance to keep myself in check to make sure I’m feeling most alive. It’s a daily routine to sober yourself up. Big moments in our life sober us up.”

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PS: I’ve been sharing more short videos and ideas on Instagram lately. If you want more of that in between newsletters, you can find me at @polinampompliano.

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PROFILES.

— The self-made billionaire who never read an investment book [**HIGHLY RECOMMEND**]
— The Supreme Court lawyer living a double life
— Justin Bieber’s priest
— The actor on the precipice of megastardom

PEOPLE TO KNOW.

The self-made billionaire who never read an investment book: Thomas Peterffy automated his way out of postwar Budapest and, in the process, automated Wall Street — building the tools that replaced the trading floor and turned Interactive Brokers into a $100+ billion machine. The profile traces his obsessive commitment to efficiency: from hacking early computers and inventing handheld trading devices to outsmarting exchanges that tried to ban his “thinking.” The punchline is pure Peterffy: he claims it’s just common sense, and then casually checks IBKR and makes $1.7 billion while you’re saying goodbye. (Colossus)

“It’s all common sense. Hard work and common sense. That’s my story.”

The Supreme Court lawyer living a double life: Thomas Goldstein was one of the most formidable Supreme Court advocates of his generation, a self-made legal star whose instincts won Google a landmark victory. Behind the scenes, he was living a parallel life of secret high-stakes gambling and lavish relationships that eventually forced him out of the courtroom. The story is about how the same taste for risk that fueled his brilliance also engineered his downfall. (The New York Times; alternate link)

Justin Bieber’s priest: Judah Smith is the last hypepriest standing: a style-savvy, celebrity-adjacent pastor whose brand of gentle, therapeutic Christianity rose alongside his decades-long spiritual partnership with Justin Bieber. As flashier, more combative strains of Evangelicalism gain ground, Smith finds himself caught between cultural relevance and a shifting religious mood that now sees his grace-first theology as too soft. The question remains: Can the Bieber wave carry him through Christianity’s next turn. (New York Magazine)

The actor on the precipice of megastardom: Josh O’Connor is suddenly everywhere — Challengers turned him into an internet thirst trap, and a packed slate (Knives Out, a Spielberg sci-fi, and two indies) has him teetering on true megastardom. But the profile’s twist is that his ambition isn’t to be larger-than-life; it’s to stay human. His leading-man aura may be inevitable, but his refusal to be consumed by it is the real headline. (GQ)

“I really have this need in my soul to be private and quiet.”

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