After 5 months of being in this community, I finally caught the ICM flu... I didn't catch it the first month--we were just having a good time back then. I didn't catch it the second month, either. Those were the "lego" days, and still long before it would really click. I didn't even catch it when I started a second company 6 weeks ago, that I built after being inspired right here in this community. For 5 months, I was vibe coding. Up late, up early, like a middle schooler with a new video game, like the internet just became a thing for the first time... I thought that was the thick of it. No. Oh no.. No, no, no, no, no, no. There are levels, boys, there are levels... I caught the ICM flu once I made a widget that an actual client used. And then it finally clicked. Software. Agents. Human. You can just build a whole foundation for any company using this method. Which, sure, yes, we know that. But, realizing that once you got it... once you've built that first widget, that first workflow tied to a piece of software you coded and an agent you made, you realize... that's the whole thing. Do it once, do it a thousand times. Recycle, reuse. We're all software developers now, baby! About 2 weeks after it finally clicked, I joined the Lyceum because I understood the value of this finally. It does not matter what you plan to do--these skills transfer to ALL SORTS of things. Software, Agents, Human... just apply it to.... anything! As a side note, I have already received value after the first Lyceum session. I finally can see how I can transform my little house cleaning company into a mega machine and create the dream vision I have for this company. FOR ANYONE THAT SAW MY ANNOUNCEMENT ABOUT STARTING A COMPANY... This is going to sound nuts, I know, but Im shutting down the company I just made despite the fact that it's working. I can now see that the greatest play, and most value I can create, is going to come from the company that I have so much experience in already, and not the one that I have limited experience with. My judgements and tastes are strong where I've spent a ton of time already. Really, I have 3 lanes I've spent the majority of my life in, and I've decided I need to see those through at this point because I have way too much specialized knowledge to not do something with it. *And that's the secret sauce.*

It’s live. Starting today, everyone in Clief Notes has access to the new Clief Notes AI. The easiest way to use it? Don’t overthink it. Ask it the question you would normally ask me. “Where should I start?” “What should I focus on next?” “Where did you talk about [topic]?” It’ll use what’s already inside Clief Notes to help answer you and point you toward the right lesson or resource when there’s something worth going deeper on. The goal isn’t to give you another AI tool to play with. It’s to make everything already inside this community easier to actually use. If you want Access to it Comment "READY" and we'll send you access to it!

EDIT: WE HAD OVER 100 PEOPLE SIGN UP IN TEN MINUTES....GOING TO BE ROLLING OUT ACCESS ON SLOWER BASIS NOW SO I DONT RUIN MY BANK ACCOUNT WITH TOKEN SPEND FOR YALL (im covering ai costs for everyone) but keep applying we are keeping track and will be letting more people in and reaching out about getting you all access one by one especially VIP. Our Platform is here, the thing a lot of you have been asking for and I have been teasing Take your ICM folders and second brains, put them in the cloud, and work on them together in real time. You upload your folders and files. One strong model with a good harness reads the map and becomes the agent you need. No new agents to build, no zip files to pass around. Each workspace runs in its own container. It renders your markdown, edits your files, installs packages, runs Python and Playwright, and multiple people can work in the same space at once. No Mac Mini needed to keep your data separate either. We're opening it to VIP and alpha testers first, and I'm covering the AI cost while we test so cant do a full role out yet. Free AI use which is great for those users, not great for my bank account haha. ✍️ Sign up for access: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdSnToxclxt8EgoB2GizrEvHP7gzOedVcRXdCkpi1SZwR8ZfA/viewform 🔗 Questions, or want to work heavier with this? Email [email protected]

A FEW WEEKS AGO... I posted that I had made a business, spun-off of one of my competition entries. Full disclosure, it's not exactly any of them (if you happen to go look). I just took what I had learned while building and applied it to a business strategy I wanted to try. And you know what!? I got a client. It's the first client I've gotten for another venture, outside of the main business I've been running. Considering I have spent 10's of thousands of dollars on other "tests," over the years, this was a HUGE win to actually make money from something. AND NOW I BUILD... Now I'm using ICM to automate the dumb stuff and enrich the good stuff. I'm constantly asking myself if what I'm building make sense, or if I'm falling into the trap that Jake talks about, where folks overbuild or build something that doesn't matter. I am pretty sure I'm doing it right because newer AI models won't affect what I've made, except to streamline the dumb stuff more... Anyway, I'm looking at the unit-economics of the business I'm building now, based off this one client that I'm trying to give the most amazing experience to, and I am blown away by the potential. It feels like it can't be real. I'm probably putting the cart before the house, so to speak, but I can't help to be optimistic looking at the numbers, of which, I will admit, I'm making a lot of assumptions about. SUCCESS LEAVES CLUES... I have been studying business for a long time now, to try to understand how riches are truly made beyond what the typical small-business owner does (average is like $50K a year or something). I feel I will lose my mind if it takes me 20 years to build wealth because I had tunnel vision and chose a very slow moving vehicle to get me there. And look, I know it's *all* hard, the grass is always greener, yadda yadda yadda (Seinfeld, anyone?), but it's still true that there ARE easier opportunities to make wealth. There just are. I've come back to this fact time and time again while searching for my next business model.... In simple business terms, if your CAC (cost to acquire a customer) is extremely low, 0, or even negative, and your LTGP (lifetime gross profit -- what the client pays you in total, for the entire duration they use your business) is high, then you're printing money. And if the profit margins are 80% or more? Then you're swimming in gold.

We just shipped the alpha of Ledger 📋 —https://ledger.eduba.io the talent platform we've been building on top of this community. Free for VIP and Premium Members. Here's the idea, plain: every other job board matches on a resume. Ledger matches on ICM. Every candidate in there has been through the methodology you're already using here — that's the whole point. Companies aren't guessing whether someone "gets it." They know it going in. 🎯 It works kind of like a job board, but more anonymous — right? 🕶️ Employers see an anonymized profile: skills, bio, portfolio, a short video intro if you want one. No last name, no email, no current employer. Every conversation runs through the platform's relay instead of real inboxes, so nobody's exposing contact info before they're ready. Two doors in: - 🏢 Company hiring — freelance or full-time — sign up and get access to a pool of people who already speak ICM fluently. - - 🙋 Candidate looking for work — freelance or full-time — list yourself. Takes a few minutes: profile, skills, a short video if you've got one. We're vetting both sides before anyone gets full access — companies and candidates — so the quality holds up on both ends. ✅ That means it's not instant approval; you might wait a beat while we look at it. Bear with us there. It's alpha 🧪, so: things might be rough around the edges, we're watching it closely, and if something breaks or feels off, tell us — that's exactly what this stage is for. Be nice to us and we'll be fast about fixing it. 🙏 Sign up: https://ledger.eduba.io 👇