The Most Dangerous Reflex
Dec 17, 2025
WANNA HAVE DINNER WITH GARY VEE AND US?
Before we dive in, we want to invite you to join us for an intimate, high-energy dinner with Gary Vaynerchuk on Thursday, January 8, 2026, at 7:30PM at Gary’s Flyfish Club in NYC.
This is a rare chance to spend quality time over a meal and build deeper relationships with us. We’ll discuss what we’re excited about, your challenges, and anything on your mind. Wanna come and pitch us? Go for it!
If you want a night of sharp insights, real talk, and great company in a truly one-of-a-kind setting, this is it. Space is extremely limited.
Lock up your spot here.
THE MOST DANGEROUS REFLEX
Humans are amazing creatures. Marvels of human ingenuity are everywhere. Just think about what humans needed to invent for you to read this content on your device.
Every one of these inventions started with an idea. And for every person who liked the idea, at least 1000 people hated it.
We are all guilty of the “Knee-Jerk No” reflex.
We are hard-wired to say no. Because for most of human history, “no” kept us alive.
The cost of a bad “yes” was death. Say yes to the wrong cave, the wrong berry or mushroom, the wrong animal, or the wrong stranger, and game over.
The same reflex that kept us alive now keeps us tied to the past in a world trying to get to the future faster than ever.
And it’s only until you reframe from “Here’s why it won’t work” to “What happens if it does work?” that the future starts to come into focus.
The real evolution now isn’t about outrunning predators. It’s about outgrowing our operating system. A system built to run from predators now makes us run from possibility.
Next time you find yourself shooting down an idea, ask yourself a simple question: What happens if the idea is right?
It changes your willingness to think deeply and challenge common wisdom.
When you start asking the question, you start looking for reasons why something can work.
That forces you to think about what it would take to make it work. And you turn into a leader and teammate who brings oxygen to the room, not skepticism.
What’s one idea you’re ready to stop dismissing and start exploring?
INSIGHT
🥊Take the Hit — Being an entrepreneur is essentially signing up to get punched every day. Don't let it get you down.
📈Sales is Success — Learning how to sell, whether you're an entrepreneur or not, can take you far in life.
🧘♀️Focus, Focus, Focus — What you choose to focus on directly determines your outcomes.
CHEAT CODE: CULTURE IS OXYGEN
Culture is invisible until it’s not. It’s everywhere at once. You feel it before you can name it.
So treat culture like the single most important product you will ever ship.
Because without culture, there's no buy-in. No reason for your employees to come back every day and give it their all.
Here are the rules we live by:
1. Hire for fit first
Early on, skill is replaceable. Fit is not. Cultural fit wins because it determines whether someone will stay, learn, and lift everyone around them. Don't just check a box on a resume: make sure the hire fits the team.
2. Celebrate every hire on the way in
Onboarding isn’t paperwork. It’s a ritual. Celebrate the first day. Introduce them to the origin story. Give them a clear path to what winning looks like. Small gestures signal what you value more loudly than any handbook.
3. Define three non-negotiable behaviors
Pick three behaviors that mean everything to how you work. Make them obvious. Interview for them. Measure them. Repeat them until they’re reflexive.
4. Teach the origin story
Write your origin story and tell it often. Stories are how culture travels. They explain why you exist and who belongs here. If you can share the story in under a minute, you can recruit with it, onboard with it, and correct with it.
Culture scales by repetition, not announcements. You don’t create culture by memo. You create it by the habits you keep, the rituals you build. Reward the behavior you want more of.
Culture isn’t warm and fuzzy. It’s a lever. It determines hiring, retention, execution, and the stories customers tell. Invest in it deliberately. Guard it jealously. Make it so obvious that when it’s missing, everyone knows.
What’s the one ritual you'll repeat this quarter until it becomes the air everyone breathes?
Want more of our cheat codes? Follow along on Instagram.
🆘 Access the 49 other cheat codes every entrepreneur needs to know from Shoveling $H!T: A Love Story.
🚜Have you dived into building a business? Jump into the Founders Farm and share some stories.
FOUR FAVORITE FINDS
🏈 Sports merchandiser Fanatics is launching its own prediction market in almost half of U.S. states this week. Does the rise of sports betting say anything about consumer sentiment as a whole?
💾 Google is starting to elbow its way into NVIDIA's chipmaking dominance.
💳 The 'less risky' asset-backed finance market has doubled since 2008, but increasingly exotic assets are now being used as collateral.
💻 At MIT, a new "artificial intelligence and decision-making" major is becoming more and more popular.
AROUND THE FARM
🤩 We're honored that the Goody Business Book Awards rewarded our book Shoveling $h!t: A Love Story as a winner in the Entrepreneurism and Small Business categories!
🎙️ Listen to Mike's takeaways on the difference between being a founder and an investor on the We Live to Build podcast.
👏 Mike sat down with Swagger to discuss how he makes life meaningful.
🤔 We were interviewed by Forbes on how we use the V2MOM framework to make investment decisions.
💸 CNBC shared our story of how we dealt with our company going bankrupt.
💏 Secrets of Happily Ever After interviewed us on the ins and outs of our romance and partnership.
📚 Shoveling $h!t: A Love Story debuted on the New York Times & USA Today bestseller lists! We couldn't have done it without the support of this community—the purchases, the shares, showing up to events, writing reviews and more!
FINALLY, WANNA GET INVOLVED?
📖 Get bulk copies for your team.
⏰ Invite us to speak at your event.
🤯 Share your thoughts on social: #FoundersFarm
⏩ Forward this dispatch to 3 entrepreneurs who should be getting it!
Before we dive in, we want to invite you to join us for an intimate, high-energy dinner with Gary Vaynerchuk on Thursday, January 8, 2026, at 7:30PM at Gary’s Flyfish Club in NYC.
This is a rare chance to spend quality time over a meal and build deeper relationships with us. We’ll discuss what we’re excited about, your challenges, and anything on your mind. Wanna come and pitch us? Go for it!
If you want a night of sharp insights, real talk, and great company in a truly one-of-a-kind setting, this is it. Space is extremely limited.
Lock up your spot here.
THE MOST DANGEROUS REFLEX
Humans are amazing creatures. Marvels of human ingenuity are everywhere. Just think about what humans needed to invent for you to read this content on your device.
Every one of these inventions started with an idea. And for every person who liked the idea, at least 1000 people hated it.
We are all guilty of the “Knee-Jerk No” reflex.
We are hard-wired to say no. Because for most of human history, “no” kept us alive.
The cost of a bad “yes” was death. Say yes to the wrong cave, the wrong berry or mushroom, the wrong animal, or the wrong stranger, and game over.
The same reflex that kept us alive now keeps us tied to the past in a world trying to get to the future faster than ever.
And it’s only until you reframe from “Here’s why it won’t work” to “What happens if it does work?” that the future starts to come into focus.
The real evolution now isn’t about outrunning predators. It’s about outgrowing our operating system. A system built to run from predators now makes us run from possibility.
Next time you find yourself shooting down an idea, ask yourself a simple question: What happens if the idea is right?
It changes your willingness to think deeply and challenge common wisdom.
When you start asking the question, you start looking for reasons why something can work.
That forces you to think about what it would take to make it work. And you turn into a leader and teammate who brings oxygen to the room, not skepticism.
What’s one idea you’re ready to stop dismissing and start exploring?
INSIGHT
🥊Take the Hit — Being an entrepreneur is essentially signing up to get punched every day. Don't let it get you down.
📈Sales is Success — Learning how to sell, whether you're an entrepreneur or not, can take you far in life.
🧘♀️Focus, Focus, Focus — What you choose to focus on directly determines your outcomes.
CHEAT CODE: CULTURE IS OXYGEN
Culture is invisible until it’s not. It’s everywhere at once. You feel it before you can name it.
So treat culture like the single most important product you will ever ship.
Because without culture, there's no buy-in. No reason for your employees to come back every day and give it their all.
Here are the rules we live by:
1. Hire for fit first
Early on, skill is replaceable. Fit is not. Cultural fit wins because it determines whether someone will stay, learn, and lift everyone around them. Don't just check a box on a resume: make sure the hire fits the team.
2. Celebrate every hire on the way in
Onboarding isn’t paperwork. It’s a ritual. Celebrate the first day. Introduce them to the origin story. Give them a clear path to what winning looks like. Small gestures signal what you value more loudly than any handbook.
3. Define three non-negotiable behaviors
Pick three behaviors that mean everything to how you work. Make them obvious. Interview for them. Measure them. Repeat them until they’re reflexive.
4. Teach the origin story
Write your origin story and tell it often. Stories are how culture travels. They explain why you exist and who belongs here. If you can share the story in under a minute, you can recruit with it, onboard with it, and correct with it.
Culture scales by repetition, not announcements. You don’t create culture by memo. You create it by the habits you keep, the rituals you build. Reward the behavior you want more of.
Culture isn’t warm and fuzzy. It’s a lever. It determines hiring, retention, execution, and the stories customers tell. Invest in it deliberately. Guard it jealously. Make it so obvious that when it’s missing, everyone knows.
What’s the one ritual you'll repeat this quarter until it becomes the air everyone breathes?
Want more of our cheat codes? Follow along on Instagram.
🆘 Access the 49 other cheat codes every entrepreneur needs to know from Shoveling $H!T: A Love Story.
🚜Have you dived into building a business? Jump into the Founders Farm and share some stories.
FOUR FAVORITE FINDS
🏈 Sports merchandiser Fanatics is launching its own prediction market in almost half of U.S. states this week. Does the rise of sports betting say anything about consumer sentiment as a whole?
💾 Google is starting to elbow its way into NVIDIA's chipmaking dominance.
💳 The 'less risky' asset-backed finance market has doubled since 2008, but increasingly exotic assets are now being used as collateral.
💻 At MIT, a new "artificial intelligence and decision-making" major is becoming more and more popular.
AROUND THE FARM
🤩 We're honored that the Goody Business Book Awards rewarded our book Shoveling $h!t: A Love Story as a winner in the Entrepreneurism and Small Business categories!
🎙️ Listen to Mike's takeaways on the difference between being a founder and an investor on the We Live to Build podcast.
👏 Mike sat down with Swagger to discuss how he makes life meaningful.
🤔 We were interviewed by Forbes on how we use the V2MOM framework to make investment decisions.
💸 CNBC shared our story of how we dealt with our company going bankrupt.
💏 Secrets of Happily Ever After interviewed us on the ins and outs of our romance and partnership.
📚 Shoveling $h!t: A Love Story debuted on the New York Times & USA Today bestseller lists! We couldn't have done it without the support of this community—the purchases, the shares, showing up to events, writing reviews and more!
FINALLY, WANNA GET INVOLVED?
📖 Get bulk copies for your team.
⏰ Invite us to speak at your event.
🤯 Share your thoughts on social: #FoundersFarm
⏩ Forward this dispatch to 3 entrepreneurs who should be getting it!
Connect with Kass & Mike
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info@kassandmike.com
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© Kass & Mike Lazerow 2026