Welcome back to The Austin Business Review! I’m fresh back from a month-long vacation, and have a bunch to share with you.

The time away was cool. I wrote more about it at the bottom of this email. But one of the best parts was that, as soon as I unplugged for a bit, new ideas for this newsletter started flooding in.

So over the coming weeks, we’ll be trying some cool new stuff in here.

Starting with the Review Crew Q&A…

It seems wild. This time last year, this email only had a couple hundred readers around town. Now, it reaches thousands of people every week.

Business owners. Execs. Investors. The group here is wild, and I’m always surprised by what I see when I scroll through recent signups.

At this point, it’s growing too fast for me to personally interview and write about everyone I want to, so while I continue doing that, I created this Review Crew Q&A to get even more cool stories & insights to share with everyone.

It’s a pick-five question format that includes:

Fill it out for a chance to get your business published here. You can do it in writing, OR record a loom and send me access to that.

Either way, I’ll review and start publishing the best ones soon.

Elsewhere: There’s some great stuff in this email. Everything from a founder pickleball league, to beer in space, and Dan Carlin, host of Hardcore History is coming to town; All proof that even in the dead of summer, Austin is one of the best towns in the country to build an interesting life in.

It’s great to be back,

-Ethan

Upcoming Events

Events are still a little light as we power through the dog days of summer. But there are a few great options, including…

🗓️ TONIGHT: The Robotic Revolution: The Austin Forum on Tech & Society is hosting multi-time founder and chief scientist at Sony AI, Peter Stone

🗓️ Aug. 9: The Board Walks: Led by Julia Grant, most community leaders in town are frequent attendees, so this is one of the best places to get connected

🗓️ Aug 12: Wildsam Book Release: Not exactly a business event, but hosted by one of my favorite companies – Taylor Bruce’s publishing company, Wildsam, is releaseing a new field guide to Texas. The launch event is at First Light, the book shop owned by he and his wife

🗓️ Aug. 12: Young Men’s Business League: The league is hosting Terry Lickona, executive producer of Austin City Limits since 1979.

🗓️ Aug. 13: Leading Ladies Brunch: Affiliated with the West Austin Chamber, Michelle Hagli is hosting a combo cooking class / networking brunch

🗓️ Aug. 13: Starbase Brewing Founder Story: I’m highlighting this one because I’ve heard the Cliff Notes version of this story, and it’s one of the wildest I’ve heard in all my years reporting on startups.

Founder Nate Agroves literally just sent barley plants to space on NASA’s Crew-11 mission last week, to help test how crops might grow on Mars, and that’s the least interesting thing about him. I’ll be there too, so come say hey

🗓️ Aug. 13: Founder Institute Alumni Panel: Gabriel Rucker is moderating this discussion, designed for founders thinking of joining an accelerator

🗓️ Aug. 14: Founder Coffee Tasting: Another one from Chris Taylor down at The Red Fridge Society. This one’s highlighting Cold Cycle, an innovative Austin hardware startup that developed a way to brew cold brew 20x faster with 50% of the beans

🗓️ Aug. 15: Female Founders & Friends: Hosted the third Friday every month by Juliette Richert of the Artemis Fund, and Angie Neas of JustWorks

One More Thing… Next Friday, I’m hosting something for anyone who geeks out on copywriting. Thanks to people like Neville Medhora and Sam Parr, a lot of people are familiar with the benefits of Copywork to improve your sales writing. But we don’t always make time for it.

So this event’s a fun way to get some practice while meeting other cool founders and making progress on your own most important sales writing (e.g., emails, landing pages, – whatever you’re working on). Come on out!

Other Fun Stuff Coming Up…

One of the weird things I love about Austin – we’re big on floating movie theaters. Over the next few days, there are water screenings at The Rowing Docks, Mozart’s, Swim Club, and Deep Eddy. Elsewhere, we’ve got…

One Last Thing… If you’re a fan of Hardcore History, Dan Carlin is coming to the Paramount Theatre August 15th. The event description doesn’t say much about what he’ll discuss, but if you want a taste of what his stage shows are typically like, this video seems like a good example.

Reflections On A Month-Long Vacation

I made it about two and a half weeks.

For two and a half weeks, I was a different person. I didn’t see a news feed, hardly read an email, or even listened to a podcast. And I was surprised by how little any of those things mattered to me.

Into that space, for the first time in years, appeared reading. Lots of reading. I read novels, history books, and even one historic novel. I read two books on accounting and gave myself a much-needed refresher on high school math (Edit: I’m looking at the book now. It’s “basic” math).

My mind was working better. Sharper. I started remembering things I’d forgotten I knew. As though time spent purposefully learning – as opposed to “learning” just enough to solve a current problem – was waking up parts of my brain I hadn’t used in years.

I also spent lots of time with family. And for the first time in a long time, showed up for them the way I wanted to.

Typically, when I visit, I’m still working remotely. And when I’m working, I’m… well… intense. I’m sure you get it. But there was none of that this time, and it was wonderful.

And then, suddenly, I was done.

With almost half the trip left to go, I found myself dipping a toe (or perhaps cannon-balling) right back into work whenever I was alone. Sometimes productively – I started tinkering with event ideas for this community – and sometimes not (I started binge-scrolling Twitter like an absolute fiend).

Tim Ferriss has this question I love – he asks authors what chapter of their book they wish people paid more attention to.

His own answer for The 4-Hour Workweek is chapter 15, “Filling The Void.” About what to do once you’ve finally freed your time.

Too often, he says, when faced with freedom, people double back down on work because it’s familiar. They literally don’t know what else to do with their time.

I’ve felt this now, in a way that’s quite visceral.

Have you?

That’s all for this week!

Email me here if you want to share any feedback, or let me know about an event you’re hosting.

Until next week,

-Ethan