Back to Building

Thank you for reading this newsletter. It means a lot. Many of you have followed me since 2018 or 2019 when I ran for President.

Back in 2020, I said to Zach on the presidential trail, “If after all of this I become a talking head, come smack me in the face.” My point was that I set out to make big changes happen, and while being a media commentator sometimes can lead to those changes, a lot of the time it doesn’t.

Not to say that I don’t engage in talking headness some of the time. I do media interviews, maintain social media accounts, and write this weekly newsletter/Substack. I like to think that I’ve been ‘out there’ doing things quite publicly pretty much since my presidential run.

But I also see myself as more of a builder than a talker/communicator. As I said at a conference last month, “I like to do shit.” I was an anonymous private company CEO during my formative years coming up, and the path to success was to do a good job for customers while not really seeking press.

You know, essentially the opposite of being a political figure.

I enjoy writing. I’m grateful that people actually read what I write – thank you! I have seen books change the world – “The Anxious Generation” comes to mind.

But at heart, I’m a builder and problem-solver. And it’s time to build again.

A few weeks ago I wrote about how Humanity Forward lobbied to make the child tax credit higher, permanent and adjusted for inflation. The total benefit is now about $80 billion annually to over 60 million American children. That took five years, most of which couldn’t be celebrated in real time, because it involved dozens of meetings that were best left off the record.

While that was happening, I thought to myself, “Is there another way I can improve the lives of American families, outside of legislation or policy?” I consider myself resourceful, after all. I’m supposed to be a slick multi-hyphenate entrepreneur who can make things happen. I wrote a book over a decade ago called “Smart People Should Build Things.”

In my career, I’ve been the CEO of a private company that grew to become #1 in the country. I was the founder and head of an entrepreneurship non-profit that operated in a dozen cities around the country. I’ve been a presidential candidate and movement founder. Also, more than twenty years ago I was a party promoter, which I’ve recently been doing again.

I’ve been working on something for over a year. I think it has the potential to be very big and impactful.

It will be announced here next week. I hope you like it.