You know, I was thinking… about what I let into my head every day.
Late in 2019, a few months before the pandemic shutdowns, I changed my content diet. I changed what I called “entertainment.”
I love sports. I love a good TV show. I love movies. I haven’t given any of that up. But about 90 percent of what I take in now has one job: make me better.
A better person, husband, and father. A better business owner and operator. A better interviewer. A better technologist.
So I cut the junk coming in, and I turned up everything that helps me grow. Podcasts. Documentaries. YouTube videos from people who know more than I do.
For the business and the tech it runs on, I listen to All-In, a16z, Founders, Pirate Wires, Moonshots, and Hacked. For the state I love, Wise About Texas. For learning about many of my clients, The Significance of Wealth and The VIP Seat.
And for fun, The History of English Podcast, Strong Songs, and Words Unraveled.
Look at those last three. A show about how our language came to be. A show that takes a song apart piece by piece. A show about words. Even the fun ones are about learning.
It took time. When I started, the tech stuff was boring. The business stuff sounded like a foreign language. I’d hit a term I didn’t know, rewind, look it up, and keep going. Some days I’d switch it off and put a game on.
I kept coming back. The words started to stick. Then the ideas started to connect. A guy on one show would say something that answered a question I’d heard on another show a week earlier. Ya know, that’s when it clicked.
Now it’s fun.
I may not know who’s batting third for the Padres. I know what EBITDA is. I know why a buyer cares about it, and I know what a founder means when he says the business can run without him.
It shows up in our work at Heritage. We sit down with ranchers, surgeons, pilots, and people who built companies from nothing. When they talk about margins, a bad year, or the day they sold, I can follow them. They can tell. People open up to someone who understands their world.
It shows up at home too. I’m a better husband because I spend my alone time getting better instead of zoning out.
I don’t miss the junk.
I don’t even notice it’s gone. What I notice is a man who’s more curious at the end of 2026 than he was at the end of 2019.
Heritage Films produces personal documentary films across the United States. If someone in your family has a story worth keeping, we’d love to hear it.