Joël Cox

How #smbtwit is making me better at business: Read about EOS via @girdley Learned from @StrongpointRich to add playbooks for off-track metrics Got real-life examples of leading indicators from @patrickdichter @birchard_tom pushed me to revise.. @pslohmann made me use Notion.

@alexbilbie Sweet product! Congratulations on the launch. Hope you’re doing well, Alex.

We just shipped ZapStack v1.0. 100+ checks across EC2, EBS, S3, RDS, Lambda, NAT Gateway, and more. Every finding has step-by-step fix instructions. Triage as a team on an Issues page. A workflow for AWS cost waste, not another dashboard. Free under $5k/mo AWS spend → app.zapstack.io

@arjenblokzijl @shuding ikr

@shuding looking for cache-components.md 👀

We’ve added 12 new rules to the React Best Practices skill. To install or update it via skills.sh, run: npx skills add vercel-labs/agent-skills --skill vercel-react-best-practices

@adamislucky Awesome. Definitely up there in terms of most gratifying professional activities I get to do!

NGL - hiring A players always feels good. Coaching them along the way feels even better. A story in two acts:

@MikeBotkin_ @EndresenHeather @ClintFiore Those discrepancies are wild. I assume this includes brokered deals? Not expecting brokers to do a full QoE, but would expect they do *some* due diligence on these numbers.

Oh, and I’ll add to this. I’ve had three deals under LOI in 2025 that all ended up dying due to major gaps between reported EBITDA and QoE. 1) Reported EBITDA: $850k Multiple: 8x Actual QoE: $250k 2) Reported EBITDA: $475k Multiple: 3x Actual QoE: $150k 3) Reported EBITDA: $1,650 Multiple: 8x Actual QoE: $1,300 — All three scenarios, the owners were completely caught off guard by the actual EBITDA. (and yes, we tried saving every deal 5 different ways)

@joelgascoigne It very admirable how you’ve turned around the ship. This typically takes a huge amount of focus, so it’s only logical to feel a little lost right now. No need to worry; new challenges will present themselves soon enough. Fixers gonna fix!

Something interesting and rather unexpected has been happening for me. At Buffer, we're very close to reaching a new all-time-high level of revenue. This has been a long journey with many ups and downs. Our previous highest ARR was in February 2020. Following the peak we experienced 4 years of decline. It came from missteps, indecision, and being too reactive. We made significant strategy changes and operational improvements, stalled our decline in 2023, and grew strongly in 2024 (12.56%). We're on track for even greater growth in 2025. But here's the unexpected thing. And let me be a little vulnerable here. Since getting back to strong growth and profitability, I've felt a little lost. I've been feeling lower motivation. I've done a lot of soul-searching, gone on walks, written countless journal entries. I've been trying to understand: why do I feel lost, clouded, lower motivation? Surely now that we're growing and profitable again, I should feel on top of the world? What is going on? I don't have all the answers yet, but I've made progress. Fundamentally, the goal of getting back to growth and profitability was so clear and important. Removing the existential risk to Buffer was critical to our long-term goals. We recently stopped reporting our runway metric because it is now infinite. We are default alive. It's incredible. But achieving this milestone begs the question: what next? We've been chasing this for years, and here we are. Reaching growth and profitability again is something we're celebrating, and yet at the same time for me personally it created a slight void. Of course, we have a deeply meaningful mission at Buffer. To help entrepreneurs, creators and small businesses get off the ground and grow through organic social media, with tools that make their lives easier and save them time. To help people go from nothing to habit and results. To help folks build something meaningful that positively impacts the lives of others. It's this focus that guided us back to growth and profitability. I'm proud of that we got back here by staying true to our mission and values, doing right by the customer, unwinding some of the things we slipped into doing that were not in the best interest of those we set out to serve. At the same time, the imperative loomed strong; to ensure our long-term viability to continue building something impactful. At times it felt like the goal, rather than the outcome. It's now time for that to change, which is invigorating and yet also requires a shift. A new chapter ahead for us. I feel privileged that we have weathered our downturn, and are back to growing strongly again. Now we have the opportunity to serve people more whole-heartedly than we ever have. And our experience, learnings, and scars can guide us to make great choices for customers. Whether you've recently discovered Buffer or have followed us, and me for the past 14 years, thank you for being part of the journey. We're excited to serve you.

What *really* moves the needle? Step back from time to time and consider what the actual bottleneck/constrained resource is. Critical thinking is hard. Box ticking is easy.

"Controlling" is about setting expectations, providing guidance when ambiguity arises and keeping the team accountable, continuously. Any other approach will immediately remove any sense of ownership and prevents original thinking.

Killing initiatives early (but not too early..) is a super power in business. Spending time and resources on the wrong things bogs you down. No need to go full Elon either. Start out with a simple phase/gate process and expanded where necessary.

Some big news: we sold our digital agency! The last few months have been crazy as we ended up doing two separate transactions; we sold our long-term contracts to another agency while being acquired by a large customer. Glad with the result, but still adjusting to new reality.

Glad I got exposed to "Getting Things Done" early in my professional life. It's very comprehensive, but these guiding principles give you 80%: - Write it down immediately. - Have one place for all your tasks. - Minimize WIP. - Complete immediately if it takes less than 2 min.

Bias towards writing. We all have a preferred communication medium, but nothing beats writing when you need to hash out the nitty gritty. It's easy to keep on talking, but writing persists–at least the final edit does.

High performers *want* to be held accountable.

@shawngorham I was kind of impressed when renewing this week. Visited a local photographer without appointment, who directly uploaded pics to DMV system. Received email, paid DMV online and got an email it was ready for pick up two days later at city hall. Total 1h incl. travel + €70.

The California DMV system is a freaking joke. Even with an appointment I’ve been here over 2 hours for a mandatory in person license renewal And wow. The people watching. Mental health crisis on full display

Experience means you can pattern match a situation to previous challenges. No need to get into the nitty gritty detail. If you lack experience, but fail to do a root cause analysis you will often make the wrong assumptions. Be cognizant of your own abilities before you start.

Spending way too much time on endurance sports in my 20s taught me at least one thing: Quitting is an active decision 95% of the time. Don’t let your brains fool you. (Reminding myself, to be honest)

@andrewglynch Fair point. I also like @BetterCeo's suggestion in doing this at the start of the year and copy it to your digital cal.

Also the physical calendar can never and will never replace the digital calendar thanks to infinite meeting invites and teams links but it’s very useful to have a big physical version where you can see the whole month or year at once and plan out broad strokes at a day or week level

Theme I’m thinking about for 2025: what can I move from digital to analog? eg • in-person interactions • physical calendar • paperbacks > ebooks • analog watch > Apple Watch • printing out docs to read them The analog alternatives are almost always better in the long run What else could I add to the list?

@andrewglynch Ah, good distinction.

@joelcox Printing some important docs to read is tremendously beneficial Not everything all of the time, but for important stuff that needs my attention and focus it’s well worth it

Activity does not equate progress, but without activity you are sure to regress.

@Camp4 Thought I was already on your list.. signed up again just to make sure I don’t miss this one!

“You’ve come a long way from bagging groceries at $3.50 an hour." Here's the story of the billion dollar meeting that led to a reboot of my life. My full talk, “How to Build a Kick Ass Life”, is going out to my email list tomorrow. Sign up link in my bio @camp4 I put my heart & soul into this talk, which I gave to The Baby Bathwater Institute in October. I shared 10 powerful ideas for building a great life—I bet one of them will change the way you think about YOUR life. I'd be honored if you'd sign up for my email list (I rarely send emails), give it a watch, and let me know what you think. (Also please like and repost so the algo doesn't ignore this!)