Good morning, friends!

I can’t stop thinking about something, and I wanted to share it with you all.

A few weeks ago, I listened to this podcast with author Ryan Holiday. In it, he talks about the economics of selling books, his writing process, and why he owns a bookstore. All of that is interesting, but there’s one part that I can’t get out of my head.

In the conversation, Ryan says he’s gotten to meet many successful people over the years thanks to the popularity of his books. And there’s one thing they all want to talk about: Becoming authors.

“As a rule, they all want to write books or want to talk about whether they should write a book,” he says. “It was a reminder to me that doing stuff that’s cool, that you like, that means something to you is what people do with their money when they have it.”

Ryan recounts the story of meeting someone who had written several books, and then he raised a $100-million venture fund. He had to put writing aside in order to focus on raising the money. Ryan asked him what he would do if his fund was successful and he walked away with $20 million.

He would write books and start his own school ... which leaves you wondering, “Well, why not just do it now?”

Then, he alludes to the story of the fisherman and the businessman, in which the businessman tells a fisherman that he can scale his operation by building a fleet of fishing boats, hiring employees to catch the fish for him, and selling the fish for a ton of money.

The fisherman asks him, “And then what will my reward be?”

The businessman replies, “Don’t you understand that you can become so rich that you will never have to work for your living again? You can spend all the rest of your days sitting on this beach, looking at the sunset. You won’t have a care in the world!”

To which the fisherman replies with a smile: “And what do you think I’m doing right now?”

Ryan says, “There’s this kind of weirdness where people think financial freedom is this kind of abstract good, and then you meet people who have it, and they still have to wake up and figure out what they’re going to do all day.”

This was a passing point in the interview, but I had to pause it because it blew my mind. Whenever someone asks me, “Why don’t you just scale The Profile, make it a large media operation, and hire a bunch of writers while you oversee it all?”

And the answer is, "Because I am the fisherman, and I like catching the fish."

Yes, success could be measured as revenue, status, or scale, but that’s not what success looks like to me. Suddenly, I’d have to transform from a writer to a manager, and that’s not at all what gives me pleasure in this life.

Yes, success could be measured as revenue, status, or scale, but that’s not what success looks like to me. Suddenly, I’d have to transform from a writer to a manager, and that’s not at all what gives me pleasure in this life.

So I urge you to ask yourself the question: What are you working so hard for right now? What does your ultimate happiness look like? If you look at your trajectory, are you just filling the time until you reach that destination — or can you find a more direct route to the destination by making it your life’s work today?

Remember, we’re all investors in this life. No, I’m not talking about money. I’m talking about time. As the quote goes: “Time is a currency you can only spend once, so be careful how you spend it.”

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THE PROFILE DOSSIER: On Wednesday, premium members received The Profile Dossier, a comprehensive deep-dive on a prominent individual. It featured John Douglas, the FBI agent who profiled the world’s most dangerous serial killers. Become a premium member, and read it below.

The Profile

The Profile Dossier: John Douglas, the FBI Agent Who Profiled the World’s Most Dangerous Serial Killers

John Douglas spent 25 years interviewing and studying the world’s most violent criminals. As the FBI’s chief criminal profiler for two decades, he’s interviewed the most famous and notorious serial killers, including Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy, David Berkowitz, and Edmund Kemper…

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4 days ago · 4 likes · Polina Pompliano

PROFILES.

— Hollywood’s reluctant king [**HIGHLY RECOMMEND**]
— The man with the 500 winning lottery tickets
— The star of Wakanda
— The man who built a true crime hit factory
— Kanye West’s private academy

PEOPLE TO KNOW.

Hollywood’s reluctant king: Somehow, Christian Bale found himself shooting three different movies last year, but he hasn’t been on a film set in months, and this makes him happy. “I could just go forever not working,” he says. Bale resists self-reflection, but in this interview you’ll see why he’s drawn to extremes, transfixed by reinvention, motivated by fixing what happened to his family, and ambivalent about what he had to do and what he had to sacrifice in order to take care of the people he loved. (GQ)

“There is value in storytelling, you know? The way I like to do it is, you try to destroy yourself in order to build up another character.”

The man with the 500 winning lottery tickets: Twice a day since 1981, the Michigan Lottery has drawn four numbered Ping-Pong balls from a plastic tank and paid up to $5,000 to any player with the same four digits on their pink ticket. But real estate broker Viktor Gjonaj did not have one winning ticket. He had 500. Here’s how Gjonaj became convinced he had cracked the lottery—and how he tricked his investors into financing his scheme. (The Atlantic)

“I knew deep down inside that I was going to figure it out. And I was going to eventually be successful.”

The star of Wakanda: In November, Michaela Coel will appear in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, the second in Marvel’s wildly popular Afrofuturist series. News of her role immediately lit up the internet, energizing Coel fans and comic book aficionados alike. For the actor, joining the ensemble cast was a wish fulfilled. “I think for a lot of people it was the first time we’d seen some sort of representation on a very mainstream platform about the magic of Africa, the magic of the people, our ancestors,” she says. “Coming here, you do feel something magical.” (Vogue)

“’No’ is the only power you really have in this industry, that’s the only way to carve a path.”

The man who built a true crime hit factory: True crime is by far the most-watched in documentary programming on streaming services. At the moment, most users looking for a taste of spooky season are bound to see autoplay trailers for at least one of two new productions about Dahmer, who murdered at least 17 people from 1978 to 1991 and ate parts of many of his later victims. Enter ‘Mr. True Crime:’ Joe Berlinger helped redefine crime documentaries as a vehicle for social justice. Now, he’s found wild commercial success as Netflix’s serial killer house band. (Bloomberg)

“I think of myself as a social justice filmmaker, particularly in the criminal justice space.”

COMPANIES TO WATCH.

Kanye West’s private academy: Kanye West opened a private Christian school in a Los Angeles suburb in November 2021. The unaccredited pre-K through 12th-grade school, Donda Academy, costs $15,000 per year to attend. In addition to daily worship services, the choir and sports-focused school offers parkour classes. Here’s what’s going on inside. (Business Insider)

“People choose to bring their kids to Donda Academy for a sense of privacy.”

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