My Role Models and Why
Updated as of March 2023
Here’s the raw list of my role models and why I admire them:
Benjamin Franklin: Prolific inventor, founder of America’s postal system, news paper publisher, and diplomat who helped secure French support for the Revolution while building libraries, fire departments, and early civic infrastructure
Kris Jenner: Started a reality show at 52 and turned a family into a multi-generational business empire through relentless deal-making, brand control, and media instinct
Tim Ferriss: Turned self-experimentation into a lifestyle, brand, and business by treating his own body, mind, and career like a living lab
James Cameron: Drove trucks, taught himself filmmaking in libraries, and built three of the biggest movies in history through obsession with technology and world-building
Jesse Itzler: Went from rap jingles to a billion-dollar exit to Warren Buffett, ultramarathons, and constant self-designed stress tests to keep reinventing himself. Also, very intentional about building his family with his wife, who founded Spanx.
George Washington: My favorite fun fact is that at 22, Washington as a British Officer accidentally sparked the 7-Years War with the French in 1754 by firing the first shot. He would take those lessons and many more to become America’s first president.
Arnold Schwarzenegger: Went from broke Austrian immigrant to Mr. Olympia legend, Hollywood icon, Governor of California, and billionaire. My favorite story: he made more money from his role in “Twins” with Danny Devito than every single Terminator movie combined.
Kevin Ryan: Built DoubleClick, then AlleyCorp, then helped create Business Insider, MongoDB, Gilt, and Zola as a repeatable company factory
Jensen Huang: Played a 30-year game turning Nvidia from a graphics chip company into the backbone of modern AI and compute. . His life in 1-sentence: “My will to survive exceeds everybody else’s will to kill me.”
Nolan Bushnell: Helped invent video games, created Atari and Chuck E. Cheese, and turned technology into a physical cultural experience
Bill Campbell: From Columbia’s former head football coach to Silicon Valley’s “Trillion Dollar Coach” that counseled Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Eric Schmidt, Sheryl Sandberg, and leaders who built the modern tech economy.
Lee Kuan Yew: Took a poor island nation and ran it with a disciplined long-term view that built Singapore into what it is today.
Condoleezza Rice: Stanford Provost, National Security Advisor, US Secretary of State, and was even interviewed to be the head coach of the Cleveland Browns.
Steve Jobs: Got fired from Apple, failed for a decade, then used Pixar and NeXT to quietly rebuild the operating system of modern tech and culture
Oprah Winfrey: Turned childhood trauma into empathy, empathy into trust, and trust into one of the most powerful cultural platforms ever built by one person
Charlie Munger: Lost an eye, lost a marriage, lost a child and then turned mental models and discipline to create the intellectual foundation of Berkshire Hathaway with Warren Buffett. An unbelievable, but true fact: if Berkshire Hathaway's stock lost 99% of it's value, it would've still outperformed the S&P 500 since 1965.
Taylor Swift: Started off by writing tens of thousands of personal messages to early fans, turned songwriting into IP ownership, and built one of the strongest direct-to-fan platforms in entertainment history
Leonardo da Vinci: A thinker centuries ahead of his time who fused art, anatomy, engineering, and imagination into a single mind that still feels modern 500 years later
Anne Sullivan: Took a child who couldn’t see, hear, or speak and unlocked language and consciousness through sheer persistence and method
Parents of the Rahm Emanuel Brothers: Raised a Hollywood billionaire (Ari), a top-tier statesman and Chicago mayor (Rahm), and a nationally influential physician and policy architect (Zeke) - who all seem to remain close to this day.
