Monthly roundup: best book, movies, most useful video, the skill I worked on, a hypothesis I tested, a habit, and the month's key insight. July 2025.
1) Best book
“The Muse Won’t Show Up” by David Burkus. A good book for anyone who wants to start creating on a systematic basis.
2) Movies and shows
Nastya and I watched a really great Netflix show, “The Spy,” about an Israeli Mossad operative. I love the atmosphere and the sense of conviction in films about Israel from that era.
I also liked “Ruthless People” from ‘98 and “Number 44,” about the post-war years in the USSR.
Netflix’s “Vikings” turned out to be really interesting too.
3) Most useful video
Discovered YouTube channels like “History on the Map” and “Grounded History.” It’s really useful learning how the world used to work and why we’re living within these particular borders and circumstances today.
4) The skill I worked on
Working in sync with my wife for 20–30 minutes a day. We’re trying a format where we spend up to 5 minutes planning our shared goals and tasks together.
Then we spend about 20 minutes actually working on them together. I really like this format, because it moves us a little further, every day, as a family, toward the vision we share.
5) A hypothesis I tested
We ran a free “lesson zero” ahead of launching our course “X10 Income.”
We tested how many more people would buy the course if they could first see the starting ideas and methodology behind it.
180 people showed up to the open Zoom session. The recording has already been watched by over 2,000 people on YouTube, even though it runs over 2.5 hours. We’ll know exactly how many people buy the course in three days.
This month, my team and I tried email marketing for the first time. We used it to announce both the free lesson and to send out the recording afterward. So far I like that we’re getting new points of contact.
6) The habit I was building
Replying to comments. I’m trying again to at least partly stay in touch with the kind, thoughtful people who leave comments under my videos. It’s not easy, because there are a lot of them. But I’m making the effort.
7) Key insight of the month
This month I was looking for someone who could take on organizing our community and offline events in Kyiv. I haven’t found the right person yet.
But I realized we could try launching this with our existing team. We have staff who are only at 20–40% capacity.
So I’ve confirmed for myself: before looking for new people, you need to assess the team already “on board” — new hires might not even be necessary, or you might not need them until much later.