the other end.
how to go for it without letting one bad month decide the rest.
friday night i had dinner in uptown with a friend just back from southeast asia. uzbek place. we shared manty, beef dumplings neither of us orders in a normal week. the food was good and the conversation was better.
i ate fast.
mr jordan had to get dropped off. my barber had me down for nine that night, and my flight to atlanta was at five the next morning.
in the chair he told me about the warehouse he runs. it takes amazon’s returns. everything people send back gets pulled apart, sorted into materials, and sold for cash.
they had lost the amazon contract.
amazon was their only contract.
the owners had turned down costco, walmart and target on the way up. too small to bother with. a reasonable call every quarter for years. nobody was careless. now the buildings are closing. the volume left and the costs stayed.
i thought about it the whole uber home, and i kept landing on lebron.
the greatest scorer in the history of the league spent five straight years, 2009 through 2013, as one of the best defenders in it. that should be a contradiction. it isn’t.
offense is what you’re going for. defense is what keeps you out there long enough to get it.
that warehouse played great offense. so did leopold aschenbrenner. he started situational awareness in september 2024 with about $225 million. by july it held $45 billion, up 80% on the year. then ai stocks sold off. he lost 67% in a month, traded out of part of his public book in the middle of the night, and wrote his investors a letter. our fund must always be structured such that we can take a loss and fight another day.
his last public filing made the book look protected. it showed billions in put positions. but the protection was on the chipmakers and the book was on the infrastructure around them. both went at once. and because the money was borrowed, he didn’t get to wait for either one to come back.
he was right about ai.
the thesis survived. the structure didn’t.
none of this is an argument for playing it safe. defense costs something every year it isn’t needed. cash that sits there. the client you keep who barely pays. the year you didn’t move. nobody applauds the disaster that doesn’t happen.
this morning i almost missed that flight.
it got cancelled overnight. i booked another and left late for midway. the new one was o’hare, the other side of the city. i got to security five minutes before boarding closed. it takes seven. they pulled my bag. i ran the length of the terminal and the woman at the gate said they were about to shut the door.
the cancellation wasn’t my fault. everything after it was.
miss the flight and i miss what i flew out for. miss that and it’s a conversation with my boss. one thing goes wrong at four in the morning and the rest lines up behind it.
i had no defense that morning. i had luck.
let’s make something.
grab a journal or a piece of paper. draw a line down the middle.
at the top, write one thing you’re going for. the move. the job. the program. the relationship. the house. the client.
fill the left side with offense. everything you’re doing to make it work. the hours. the money going in. the people you’re counting on.
this side usually fills itself.
fill the right side with defense. everything that would still give you choices if it went wrong. savings. a second income. a skill somebody would pay for. people who’d take you in. rent you could still cover.
most people’s left side is full. the right side has two things on it. that’s fine until you see what it costs.
underneath, draw four boxes in a row. the first box is the bad month. the client leaves. the job ends. the move costs more than you thought. things get hard at home.
then what happens. then what.
one client leaves. you cover the gap out of savings. the savings run out in march. you take the first work that calls, at a number you’d have laughed at in january.
keep going until you reach the box that would change your life.
you can say what you’re going for in one sentence. you have probably never drawn this part.
test the right side one line at a time. if the first box happened, would this still be there?
the savings in your company’s stock. the friend at the same firm. the second income from the same industry. those leave when the job leaves. cross them out.
that’s not defense. that’s the same bet twice.
now draw a line from everything left on the right to the box it would stop.
the savings stop the missed payment. the second income stops the rushed job search. the spare room stops the lease from picking your next city.
you’re done when the first box can happen without the last box having to.
if you can’t draw a line, you have offense. you don’t have defense yet.
what made it click.
i. ken griffin, a sunday in 2007 ↗ watch
listen for what citadel had ready before the phone rang. not a view. money he didn’t owe anybody.
ii. the letter leopold sent his investors ↗ read
read the last page first. then find the sentence where the timing stopped being his.
iii. the probability distribution of the future ↗ read
one line from a professor named elroy dimson carries it. risk means more things can happen than will happen.
before you go.
what move am i in the middle of right now, and what’s my defense on it?
where am i one bad week from a problem?
who do i know who plays great defense and never gets credit for it?
— brylan.