Welcome to Mindful Monday!
My book, The Price of Becoming, is now a week old. So far, it is a USA Today National Bestseller, an LA Times Bestseller, and a Publishers Weekly Bestseller. Pretty cool. I think you'll enjoy it. I appreciate your support!
Here are some things from this week...
- A fun conversation with Jack Raines about wealth, ambition, careers, and luck
- You should run a book club for The Price of Becoming
- McKinsey Author Talks: Daily Habits
- The 200-day writing streak
- Jason Feifer has a new class on building your personal brand
- Some wise words about persistence and curiosity
#699: Jack Raines - Wealth, Ambition, Careers, Travel, & Writing
Jack Raines is a writer, investor, and proud personality hire; the order of those labels depends on who's asking. After playing football at Mercer University, Jack graduated with degrees in finance and Spanish, spending the next 18 months working in corporate finance. He quit his job, bought a one-way ticket to Barcelona, and spent the next year writing a blog, working for a finance meme page, and visiting 25 countries before moving to New York for business school. While at Columbia, Jack joined Robinhood, helping them build a subsidiary media company, Sherwood News, before leaving to join Slow Ventures, an early-stage venture capital fund. We discuss How to Build Your Career, Increase Your Surface Area For Luck, and Find Your Purpose... And Why Memories Compound Faster Than Money. You can also WATCH our conversation on YouTube.
Book clubs are awesome because they help build community around a set of ideas. They create great dialogue. And there is power in learning useful and entertaining things together. Because of that, we have built a guide to run a The Price of Becoming book club. If you'd like to run a The Price of Becoming book club at your workplace or in your community, let me know, and I'll send you the guide.
McKinsey Author Talks: Daily Habits
In this edition of Author Talks, McKinsey Global Publishing’s Tanushree Baijal speaks with me about The Price of Becoming: The Compounding Practices of High Performance (HarperCollins Publishers, July 2026). Synthesizing insights from nearly 700 conversations with world-class leaders and his own experiences, Hawk offers a practical three-part framework for ambitious readers committed to becoming their very best. He shares a blueprint for how small, consistent behaviors can compound into extraordinary personal and professional results.
The 200 Day Writing Streak
I've struggled to set goals for most of my life. I’ve wondered for a while what they actually do for me. When I was younger, my dad had us write down big, ambitious, long-term goals. I still have some of those handwritten notes. Goals work as fuel for action, but the action is what makes it happen. This is a subtle but important distinction. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve drifted away from setting outcome-based goals and focused more on the process or a system. I began saying things like, “If I focus on the process, the outcome will take care of itself.” This philosophy served me well until a conversation with lacrosse legend Paul Rabil forced me to confront a truth about my own relationship with ambition. Paul talked with me about setting big, ambitious outcome-related goals, and I realized something uncomfortable: maybe I’d stopped setting big goals because I was afraid. CLICK HERE to read more.
Build Your Personal Brand
Jason Feifer is the Editor-in-Chief at Entrepreneur magazine. He's studied how the world's most impressive leaders and entrepreneurs stand out, and used those tactics to build a large audience. You might remember he was on episode #514 of The Learning Leader Show. He's teaching a class about how to build your personal brand. CLICK HERE to see it.
Wise Words
"Persistence and curiosity are the two greatest indicators for future success. That's what we look for when hiring at Google." - Eric Schmidt
Mindful Monday is a reader-supported publication. If it helped you, forward it to your friends. Thank you! -- Ryan