The price of leadership, the perfect meeting, & Warren Buffet's life advice

Welcome back to the Z Fellows newsletter! Every Monday we share 3 ideas - to help you build companies, ship products, and create your life's work.

1: Michael Jordan on The Price of Leadership

“I pulled people along when they didn't want to be pulled. I challenged people when they didn't want to be challenged. And I earned that right because my teammates who came after me didn't endure all the things that I endured.

Once you joined the team, you lived at a certain standard that I played the game, and I wasn't gonna take anything less. Now if that meant I had to go in there and get in your ass a little bit, then I did that.

You ask all my teammates, "The one thing about Michael Jordan was he never asked me to do something that he didn't fucking do.”

When people see this, they're gonna say, "Well, he wasn't really a nice guy, he may have been a tyrant."

Well, that's you. Because you never won anything. I wanted to win, but I wanted them to win and be a part of that as well.

Look, I don't have to do this. I'm only doing it because it is who I am. That's how I played the game. That was my mentality. If you don't wanna play that way, don't play that way.”

Source: Last Dance

2: Jeff Bezos on The Perfect Meeting

“My meetings often go longer than I plan for them to because I believe in wandering. My perfect meeting starts with a crisp document.

So the document should be written with such clarity that it's like angels singing from on high. I like a crisp document and a messy meeting. And so the meeting is about asking questions that nobody knows the answer to and trying to wander your way to a solution.

When that happens just right, it makes all the other meetings worthwhile. It feels good. It has a kind of beauty to it, it has an aesthetic beauty to it. And you get real breakthroughs in meetings like that."

Source: Jeff Bezos & Lex Fridman

3: Warren Buffet’s Life Advice

When asked, “If you had one more day with Charlie, what would you do with him?” Buffett’s response was poignant.

Don’t wait until the last day.

He said, “…calling him was fun back when long-distance rates were high and we didn’t talk as often as the years in recent years as we used to be on daily for long periods…What you should probably ask yourself is:

Who do you feel that you’d want to start spending the last day of your life with?

And then figure out a way to start meeting them… and meet them as often as you can, because why wait a little last day and don’t bother with the others.“

Source: Berkshire Hathaway 2024 Annual Meeting

Best of The Week

See you next Monday,

- Jay + The Z Fellows Team

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