⭐ #114: Habits, Life Advice, and Book Recommendations of 5 Climate CEOs and Investors
2-minute read: Climate, startups, productivity, leadership
Good morning, folks.
In today’s 2-minute read, we’ll cover these 4 nuggets below — as delightful as snow sledding with your kids when school gets canceled.
Climate Startups & Investment:
#1 — 🎙️ Habits, Life Advice, and Book Recommendations of 5 Climate CEOs and Investors
#2 — 🌿 Stanford Ph.D. Scaling Carbon Removal with Olivine and Agriculture
Productivity & Leadership:
#3 — 🌌 The Liberation of Cosmic Insignificance Therapy
#4 — 😠 “He who angers you, conquers you”
Onward and upward,
Chris
P.S. Want more? Read 100+ prior newsletter issues here.
#1 — 🎙️ Habits, Life Advice, and Book Recommendations of 5 Climate CEOs and Investors
In this Entrepreneurs for Impact podcast episode, instead of talking about climate startups and impact investing as we usually do, I concentrated on the people side of growing a climate tech business.
You can hear five CEOs and investors talk about advice they'd give their younger selves, recommendations for their favorite books and podcasts, and the habits that keep them healthy and focused on this startup journey.
#2 — 🌿 Stanford Ph.D. Scaling Carbon Removal with Olivine and Agriculture
My guest for this podcast was Dr. Adam Wolf, Founder and CEO of Eion.
Eion is an enhanced rock weathering startup that works with farmers and ranchers to permanently pull carbon out of the air.
They use a rock called olivine, which may be the most abundant mineral on Earth.
By 2026, they will be on track to permanently remove 500,000 tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year.
Their growth got extra support with a Series A from investors such as AgFunder, Trailhead Capital, and Orion Corporation.
#3 — 🌌 The Liberation of Cosmic Insignificance Therapy
This practice of gaining a new perspective on business, life, and relationships comes from the book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman.
I highly recommend it. Several of the members of my climate CEO peer group community at Entrepreneurs for Impact have also enjoyed it.
So what is it?
Here is Burkeman’s summary:
“Cosmic insignificance therapy is an invitation to face the truth about your irrelevance in the grand scheme of things. To embrace it, to whatever extent you can.
(Isn’t it hilarious, in hindsight, that you ever imagined things might be otherwise?)
Truly doing justice to the astonishing gift of a few thousand weeks isn’t a matter of resolving to ‘do something remarkable’ with them.
In fact, it entails precisely the opposite: refusing to hold them to an abstract and overdemanding standard of remarkableness, against which they can only ever be found wanting, and taking them instead on their own terms, dropping back down from godlike fantasies of cosmic significance into the experience of life as it concretely, finitely—and often enough, marvelously—really is.”
Oh, and it can also help to stare into the sky on a dark clear night.
No plant-based medicine is required. 🌵 😄
#4 — 😠 “He who angers you, conquers you.”
These wise words came from Sister Elizabeth Kenny — “a self-trained Australian bush nurse who developed an approach to treating polio” during World War I.
Do you like to be conquered?
Nah, I didn’t think so.
That means we should be like ducks.
Huh?
Gotta let the water roll right off our oily backs.
(Wait, it sounds gross now. Sorry.)
Or study Stoicism.
(My book recommendation: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday.)
Or even better — be a duck that studies Stoicism.
📓 Two final notes
(1) Tell a friend
If you enjoyed this newsletter, I’d really appreciate it if you sent it to a friend or two (or 20). 🙏
—
(2) Fundraising for startups
If you’d like to learn how to raise capital for your climate tech startup, I’m teaching a short course about this in September. It’s taught live, online, with a cohort of peers.
That’s all, y’all.
Make it a great week, because it’s usually a choice.
Cheers,
Chris
The #1 climate CEO peer group in North America
—
(As evidenced by these photos, I’m a real human. Not an AI. 🤫 I promise.)
