Can you believe August is upon us?

This summer went by so quickly, I didn’t anticipate how crazy things would be. One thing that got me through it was having something to always look forward to.

It’s easy to get lost in the ✨ sauce ✨.

Having something you look forward to by the end of the work day or week is the best way to ensure you’re doing your best work, and rewarding yourself for it.

In this week’s newsletter, we’re celebrating how motivation and perseverance need to work together to find growth.

From my browser to yours, Aria

⏰ TL;DR

Starting something new feels amazing, until the dopamine crash hits. It’s easy to lose steam when the high fades and the rollercoaster of wins and setbacks begins. Instead of chasing perfect moments or obsessing over notifications, grounding practices to improve patience and self-confidence is where the money is.

Also: cold outreach doesn’t have to be gross. Skip the spam tactics. Be personal, clear, and respectful of time. It’s not about sending more—it’s about sending better.

Patience and perseverance are your most underrated startup tools.

Upcoming Events I’m Hosting

• Health-Tech Funding Networking & Fireside Chat (finalizing venue, date coming soon): I’m bringing together 1 VC investor, 1 angel investor, and 1 founder who didn’t take either to scale their startup for an intimate fireside chat. The goal is to bring knowledge typically behind locked doors out into the open where attendees feel comfortable asking questions and have more guidance on where to go next in their journey. I’m finalizing the details now — stay tuned for the lu.ma invite soon!

• Founders & Explorers Masquerade Networking (finalizing venue, date incoming): I’m making networking not boring and bringing masquerading and gamification into the mix. The event will bring together people from all facets of the start-up ecosystem and meeting each other in… _n__al masks. We’re working backgrounds, exchanging knowledge and value first, not names and accolades. This will be end of July/early August.

🔖 Bookmarks From Mine to Yours

• Kid gets suspended, went on to raise $1.4M USD within a year

• Easily make your own AI copilot using your favorite LLM

• High level tips after reviewing 50 successful climate tech pitch deck

• A better way to do work, dubbed “Flounder Mode”

• An AI that emails you Zuckerberg’s PR person (perhaps a tool to keep an eye on)

• 250 one-liner hooks to grow your LinkedIn presence

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Cycle of frustration and lack of motivation can be keeled by patience

You get a really good idea and do all the fun stuff for it (make a logo, give it a name, go into a Youtube rabbit hole), and then lose all the motivation for it?

That dopamine crash is super real, and the most common thing aspiring founders feel constantly.

Ups and downs, deals that went through, then canceled because maybe Aunt Sally felt some type of way about it or an account got burned. Then the next day, score you won a grant you applied to 3 months ago!

I think what exacerbates these problems is opening and closing apps on your phone. Constantly waiting & reading the next update. That flash of dopamine when you see bright colors and new updates from your ex because mercury is in retrograde. And then you close it, because crap bro — you have work to do! Cycle perpetuates.

What has worked best for me in these times of rollercoaster conundrums is bringing a meditation practice into my daily life.

I KNOW it sounds so hippie-dippy — I was one of those peeps that thought it was the most overhyped thing in the world.

But for REALSIES, having a space to just calm the mind. To focus on the physical things you can control (like breathing), is beyond freeing.

I’m an incredibly impatient person. So the thought of sitting down, breathing for 5-10 minutes every day sounded awful to me. But after doing it consistently for 2 weeks, I really don’t know how I could ever live without it.

Next week I’m going to go over the neurobiological reasoning for why meditation is so helpful. Including the endogenous DMT (yes the psychedelic!) that we create when we go into this state.

It helps with: SLEAP. PRODUCTIVITY. and most importantly CREATIVITY. Stay tuned for this snippet next week.

Obstacles pave the way for the little wins in cold outreach

I’ve been sending cold emails for B2B partnerships, but before I started, I was so scared of sending an email that wasn’t “perfect.”

There’s so much noise. I think the noisiest though is the cold emails I get from randoms that just have ZERO relevance to what I‘m doing, or use tactics that I’m fully aware of.

For example, this person has been bothering me for a full month, about every week, and not even in the same email thread.

Let’s break it down 👇

• This is the 5th email I’ve gotten from this dude. He didn’t reply in the same email chain, but purposely a different one every time. Is this because he is using an automated email software? If so, it’s annoying. If not, still annoying.

• I don’t want more details, I certainly don’t have the time for 30 minutes with you to talk. I even emailed him the first time he reached out that I am not the right person to be emailing to!!!

• “I’ll make any time work.” is super desperate and icky.

So what has worked for me?

This is how I booked 8 calls out of 10 outbound emails:

I booked 10 calls within a month, and 8 of those folks became paying clients.

How’d I do it 👇

• Build a tid-bit that you know what they’re working on and this isn’t some generic copy & paste

• Explain quickly what you’re seeking AND how you can provide value for them

• Instead of, “what time works best?” or “I can make any time work,” show that both your time AND their time have value. Desperation is a massive ick.

It took MANY iterations for me to figure out what worked for me to grab my clients AND what would work for my clients to find partnerships.

This isn’t to say that THIS template won’t work for you, but you’ll definitely need to play with it to find what clicks. Also, it is a numbers game.

BUT. Qualified leads is a real thing. Sending 10 qualified emails > sending 100 unqualified emails.

All of this to say…

Whether or not you are building a startup, operating a company, or just dabbling in between — people can tell when you’re not being genuine, when you take short cuts, and when you sell something you don’t believe in.

Fail and take the time to learn what works and what doesn’t.

Ignore the hype train because the victors will craft their PR scheme with the juicy tid-bits. Not the obstacles that littered the way to their success.

📰 Random Recommendations

• 3 obvious human skills that make you irreplaceable in the age of AI

• Liquid Death expansion failed in the UK because drinking culture is different

• Stick is an Apple TV comedy series about golfing. I’ve never watched or had an interest in golf before. I now want to PLAY golf.

Powering down, Aria ✌️