Good morning, friends!

Last night, I came across an interview I did in May 2020, two months after I had decided to leave my job at Fortune magazine and pursue The Profile full-time.

It’s a remarkable snapshot of my mindset at the time. Here’s how I responded to the question, “How did you make the decision to work on The Profile full-time?“

It took me about three months to finally pull the trigger to leave my job. Before I left Fortune I wrote a pro / con list of reasons to go full-time.

In the pro category, I said:

• I could grow the free and paid list if I focused

• I love it

• I can write profiles (which is what I love to do)

• I’ll meet and learn and work with the best people in the world

 In the con category, I put:

• The uncertainty and lack of a stable monthly income

• Media is hard

• Letting people down

• I don’t have enough experience yet

• What if I can’t grow subscriptions fast enough?

• What if I stand in my own way? 

I really don’t like uncertainty, so this was a tough decision to make for me. But over time I just had this overwhelming feeling of love for it. And I knew I had to do it.

And it turns out, now that I’ve left, the uncertainty isn’t such a huge problem. Who knows what’s going to happen in a month or six months? Who knows what’s going to happen with the economy? There’s so much uncertainty right now in general that I think my brain can’t handle it — so I just don’t worry. I’m calm, you know?

Reading this four years later, I laughed out loud as I read the line: “I’m calm, you know?” I said that after quitting my job into a global pandemic with no visibility into what would happen over the next year. But I was calm, you know? 🤣

What’s cool is that I can confidently say the items in the “con” list never materialized while the ones in “pro” list did.

Sigmund Freud famously said, “When making a decision of minor importance, I have always found it advantageous to consider all the pros and cons.”

With all due respect to Freud, it can work pretty well when making decisions of major importance, too.

— Polina

Read the full Q&A here

PROFILES.

— The son trying to live up to his father’s NBA legacy
— The influencer brothers selling more baseball bats than the pros
— The founder who turned sparkling water into an obsession
— The students (falsely) accused of cheating
— The fentanyl vaccine designed to prevent overdoses [**HIGHLY RECOMMEND**]

PEOPLE TO KNOW.

The son trying to live up to his father’s NBA legacy: Bronny James is LeBron James’s son, and everyone is waiting to see if he is anything remotely close to the once-in-a-generation player that his father is. In interviews with nearly two dozen front office executives, coaches and scouts across the league, those who for years have tracked Bronny’s journey to the NBA, a two-part consensus has emerged: That Bronny James, the most famous second-round pick in league history, not only isn’t ready for the NBA but was also drafted by the one team that presents the most challenging dynamic for him to succeed. That the daily cacophony of noise surrounding him on the Lakers will be both deafening and defeating. And that the feel-good storyline of Bronny James playing alongside his father will soon give way to the reality of Bronny James the NBA player. Is Bronny set up to fail? (ESPN)

“You’re set up for failure. It’s like, what’s the expectation here?”

The influencer brothers selling more baseball bats than the pros: The Baseball Bat Bros have become a singular force in the billion-dollar market for baseball equipment. Part MrBeast, part Consumer Reports, the YouTube channel pumps out a steady stream of slickly edited, high-energy videos in which co-founder Will Taylor reviews the latest bats or attempts stunts with them. How did Taylor, a former third-string college catcher who quit the sport a decade ago because he couldn’t get playing time, emerge as perhaps the biggest baseball bat influencer on the planet? (Bloomberg; alternate link)

“He has the biggest influence on the bat market of anybody in baseball, professionals included.”

The founder who turned sparkling water into an obsession: More than a decade ago, Spindrift started rattling the booming seltzer scene—one awash with Perriers and Poland Springs and LaCroixs—with its recipe of part seltzer, part juice. It quickly won over converts willing to trade up to a more expensive eight-pack of bubbly that didn’t have the artificial taste of a typical flavored seltzer. Creating a cult favorite wasn’t exactly beginner’s luck: This was Spindrift founder Bill Creelman’s third crack at the food industry. (Bloomberg; alternate link)

“To actually do it in a way that keeps that incredible fresh flavor has really become our—my—life’s work.”

The students (falsely) accused of cheating: Since OpenAI’s ChatGPT brought generative AI to the mainstream almost two years ago, schools have raced to adapt to a changed landscape. Educators now rely on a growing crop of detection tools to help spot sentences, paragraphs or entire assignments generated by artificial intelligence. About two-thirds of teachers report using an AI checker regularly. Here’s the problem: The best AI writing detectors are highly accurate, but they’re not foolproof. (Bloomberg; alternate link)

“Artificial intelligence is going to be a part of the future whether we like it or not.”

COMPANIES TO WATCH.

The fentanyl vaccine designed to prevent overdoses: Fentanyl is ridiculously cheap and roughly 100 times more potent than morphine. In slightly larger amounts—the equivalent of 10 to 15 grains of salt—it stops brain functions that regulate breathing. Fatal overdoses from fentanyl-laced drugs in the US and Canada have increased so rapidly over the past five years that some health officials classify it as an epidemic. Almost 75,000 people in the US died last year from fentanyl and other synthetic opioids, according to the CDC. What if there was a vaccine that would prevent an overdose from ever happening? Check out this fascinating new company. (Bloomberg; alternate link)

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