Hey everyone!! 

Hope you’re having a great week. I am so excited to be in NYC for the next month straight.

I spend about ~8 hours/day on my phone and computer working. I’m definitely known to slack and text about work late at night, too.

When I’m not glued to my desk, I like to mix up my life with recreational intellectual stimulation + aggressive chilling. This looks like:

I also travel a ton for work, whether it’s to lecture in Wisconsin or take meetings in Florida or Austin. Here’s what I’ve been up to over the last month: 

I went to Austin the first week in March to visit my brother and best friend, Becca, and catch a few early SXSW people. 

Day 1: Playing backgammon and working with my brother Josh. My brother is a genius AI software engineer working on some awesome stuff at the Dell headquarters in Austin, TX. 

As most of my work friends noticed from my Zoom background, I spent most of my days in my hotel room in Austin working. We let in some incredible new clients at Knight Vision & our team was locked in:

Because my brother and I both work so late, we ended up going to a late-night concert in San Antonio. I fell asleep on the car ride home, but he woke me up at my favorite place in the world 👇👇👇 BUCEE’S!!!

What is Becee’s: An impressive AF family-owned business with 54 locations throughout Texas + some southern states.

Think: gas station, convenience store on steroids, so clean and nice. Everything inside this store is Bucee’s branded: burritos, snacks of any kind, fudge — and it all tastes AMAZING.

I am obsessed with Bucee’s because it’s incredible, but also the fact that it’s a family business makes it 10x cooler. What an incredibly successful operation!!!

The next day I woke up and didn’t move from my computer until I got so hungry. You can tell how hungry I was going into this Texas breakfast by the amount I ordered:

I got to hang out with Becca’s dog, Salem! She is a black pure-bred German Shepard and the sweetest thing ever. She definitely thinks we are best friends (we are).

Fun fact: Becca is a top UGC creator for B2B tech brands. Her creative riiiiips and literally is top performing on the brands she works with.

And eventually it was time to go back to NYC for some in-person meetings, including with a new SICK fintech KV client that we’re onboarding in a few weeks.

If you didn’t know, I used to live in Atx before NYC, so going back feels like going home in a sense. All the best food spots, friends, weather, and hiking trails are in Austin!

! Go visit and lmk if you need any recs !

I spend 99% of my time in NYC working.

That’s the reality.

That’s also why I’m living here.

I have incredibly quick access to people in NYC that I work with (clients, founders, investors) and meet with them in person regularly. This proximity is super helpful for Knight Vision because we build really strong relationships IRL.

People will also always come to NYC if they don’t live here, so it 10x’s the amount of in-person meetings I get to have with out-of-town work friends.

So, I don’t have any pictures of me running downtown to meet clients (usually taking pics isn’t on my mind during the work day lol)

BUT — here’s the best new find of the week. Please tell the owner, Zura, that I sent you!

Oda House on the Upper East Side. It’s incredible Georgian food that will blow your mind.

My friends and I require ourselves to try 1 new restaurant/wee,k and we’ve always seen this place packed. It 100% lived up to the allure of all the people coming and going.

Plus, the owner is so nice, cool, in his 40s, from Georgia.

The rest of my time in NYC was spent….working!! 🏃‍♀️💻

Every semester, I lecture to students at the Wisconsin School of Business.

I went to school at UW-Madison and feel an obligation to educate students on choosing the “startup path” in life.

More young people need to be taught that joining a startup, building something, and taking smart risks early is a real path.

The default route for many students is still a low-paying corporate job, slow growth, and limited ownership over their own future.

We need to stop pretending in education that that’s the only responsible choice.

The world needs more builders, more operators, and more people who know how to create value from scratch.

Students deserve to see that path early.

I ask students every lecture WHY they would consider a $35K-40K/year corporate job where they get a 10% raise for the next 5 years (if they are lucky), they could go and join a startup.

I believe this will lead to a lower quality of life than if you take a risk early on.

Learn how to build something and take control of your future.

If you think you live in an AI bubble, you’re not wrong. Students in this lecture had not heard of these companies:

They had heard of and, in some cases, used:

What does this mean: We all need to get better at marketing AI to college students. There’s a whole untapped market here.

I gave 2 back-to-back lectures, each ~1 hour 45 mins long. Thank you to all the students and faculty for having me back!

After startup life, I will likely pursue a second career as a professor.

On Thursday, I finally got back to NYC.

I’m so excited to be here for the next few months straight. My calendar is packed. Here are a couple cool things that are happening just this week:

….etc. We’re always building the most incredible stuff for our companies, and I’m in love with it all.

My dad came into the city this morning, and we grabbed breakfast at Oda House. He loved the Georgian food because it was what his grandmother made!

Yes, this is a totally different newsletter than what we usually talk about.

I wanted to try something new, ok!? I wrote this in a games store on the UWS near Columbia University. The vibe is highly nerdy, cool, and fun.

Looking at your life outside of work is important because it makes whatever you build that much more special. You are the inputs of whatever life you live.

Let’s make sure you fill it with people and hobbies you love. These are some of mine.

Next week, we will be back to our regularly scheduled programming on how to build killer marketing engines at startups.

I can’t wait to talk to you then.

Julia

P.S.👇LISTEN TO THIS 👇