Phil Van Treuren

i have proven my dominance & seized the Alpha throne, but more weakness must be culled from the pack if we are to survive the coming winter

Hat tip to my wife for taking this pic! Look close and you'll see me carrying Emma, Stella walking & Will throwing a rock.

Time to update my social accounts with a pic that makes me look my age . . . thank-you to my wonderful wife Sharon for capturing this batch today. I'm happiest when I'm with her, so I figured she would get some good shots. 😊

@Seanfrank Thanks for posting this!

“This is your last shot to escape the permanent underclass” No it’s not. That’s fear bait. The future is going to be awesome and you are awesome and you will have a ton of opportunities. Act with honor. Find where the puck is going. Pick good cofounders. And take the money.

Just got my copy of the latest from @brittanypolat — what a beautiful little book! 😊

@dave_stickland @philwinkle We can sleep when we're dead

@philwinkle after 2AM? yes it is, buddy.

Claude is telling me to go to sleep.

@dave_stickland I needed this, I'm 48!

Louder for the people in the back. For so much of DTC/Ecomm twitter ya'll act like your life is baked at 35.

A video of the meteor that exploded over Cleveland, OH this morning wasn't captured by me or my wife, because we were apparently the only two people in the entire state who didn’t hear it. So I made this fake AI video of what it probably would have looked like if we had, in fact, witnessed it. 💥

The highest form of existence is to have no desire to be understood, admired, pitied, or known.

@WordWeaver2020 Amherst!

@StoicSimple1 I live on the west side of Cleveland, and it sounded like an explosion, like a big gas line blowing up. I could feel a wave of energy under my feet in my kitchen. Where do you live? It was a very loud noise.

apparently a giant meteor exploded over Cleveland this morning and literally made houses shake, but my wife and I were the only two people in northeast Ohio who didn't hear it. We're so ticked off 🤬

Every bankrupt person I know has owned a boat.

You never took it seriously and you joined because you didn't know what else to do and you refused to quit because of spite, not because of duty or honor or some noble purpose. It was the same smart-ass spite you had at five and fourteen and twenty-six; the same spite you humor still at nearly fifty. You were adequate at everything, and spite made life easy; now an old man finds he mastered nothing, because he never let living be hard. Still, you'd change not a tick if you could; not a turn, not a smirk, not a stumble. All the spite and cheek and mediocrity led you here, after all . . . to these people you love so much; these people who love you too, somehow, in spite of all that squandered potential.

If you are between 36 and 45, pay attention. This is the decade where life stops being theoretical and starts becoming so real. In your twenties and early thirties, you could experiment, fail, restart, and people would still call it “figuring life out”. But between 36 and 45, the consequences of your earlier decisions begin to show clearly. Careers either stabilize or stagnate, businesses either mature or quietly collapse, financial discipline either starts paying you back or exposes years of neglect. At this stage, the biggest mistake is trying to look successful instead of becoming stable. Many people feel pressure to prove that they are doing well, so they chase appearances, bigger lifestyles, and unnecessary competition with peers. But this decade is less about impressing people and more about building structures that will carry you into the second half of your life. Your focus should gradually shift toward ownership and long-term security. Ownership of assets, ownership of skills that cannot easily be replaced, ownership of systems that generate income whether you are present or not. This is also the period where wise financial decisions begin to compound. A business that survives this stage often becomes stronger. Investments made carefully during this decade can define the comfort of your fifties and sixties. Another reality many people face during this time is responsibility. Family responsibilities increase. Parents get older. Children grow. The margin for reckless decisions becomes smaller. What once looked like a small mistake can now create long-term consequences. That is why discipline becomes even more important during this stage of life. Not the loud type of discipline people talk about online, but the quiet discipline of consistency, patience, and careful thinking. Because the truth is simple. By the time you approach 50, the world becomes far less forgiving to people who are still experimenting with their lives. The seeds you plant between 36 and 45 will largely determine the stability, respect, and freedom you experience in the decades ahead.

@ryanszrama @mpopv @IMAO_ Random fact: I've actually toured the the nuclear waste repository in Nevada. It's all pelletized and the danger is completely negligible

@mpopv @IMAO_ It’s a new version of the nuclear waste argument, which we could literally store in the New York Jets stadium since they don’t really show up to games there as it is.

It is completely bonkers that so much ink has been spilled attacking this, and a stark indication of how shameless the disregard for truth is at certain reputable media outlets

I fell in love with this sentence: As you grow older, you begin to understand: your father was just a man trying his best with what he knew. Forgive him. He was living life for the first time, too.

A rule that will lower your anxiety: Don’t replay conversations you can’t change, and don’t pre-live ones that haven’t happened. Focus on the next right action. Most stress comes from living everywhere except the present.

@ryanszrama But ryan, can it make you fight a swarm of woodpeckers

@StoicSimple1 Oh! This was Grok Imagine. App lets you create video from images in your camera roll. Hasn’t seemed to worry about who I’m editing, and I only made my wife blush once. (Nothing untoward, but even making a pic of us kiss was a bit much for her. 😂)

I've had enough of these squirrels' bullsh** & i have decided to stand up to them once and for all