Most people don't avoid the classics because they're boring. They avoid them because they tried once, alone, and it went badly. Here's what actually works — I've been running a classics book club for a few weeks now and this is the advice I keep repeating. 1️⃣ Pick short over famous. Everyone starts with War and Peace and quits. Start with something you can finish in two weeks. Meditations is 130 pages with no plot to follow. The Art of War has chapters you can read in a minute. A 130-page win beats a 700-page guilt trip, and momentum matters more than prestige. 2️⃣ Get a modern translation. This is the one nobody tells you and it matters enormously. The free version you'll find online is almost always a Victorian translation from the 1800s that reads like a legal document. People read it, feel stupid, and conclude they hate the book. They don't hate the book — they hate a 160-year-old translation. Spend the $10. 3️⃣ Read the context first, not the footnotes. Five minutes on who wrote this, when, and why will do more than an hour of annotations. Knowing that Meditations was a private journal the emperor never meant anyone to read changes every single page of it. Don't decode every line. Skim the parts that don't land. Great writers repeat their important ideas five different ways — you'll catch the next version. You're not being tested. 4️⃣ Read it with someone. This is the real one. A deadline and a few other people is the difference between a book you finished and a book on your shelf. It's why book clubs have existed for two hundred years. That last one is why I started The Canon Club — one classic a month, read together, with a guide up front so the old language stops being the barrier. It's free to join and we're mid-way through Meditations right now. But honestly, even if you never join anything: pick a short one, get a good translation, and find one person to read it with. That's the whole method.

This one's different. It's not about trademarks. It's not about testimonials. It's not about email lists. It's about the one mistake that causes all of them. Today I'm wrapping up the series with the biggest legal lesson every founder should learn: Don't treat legal as an afterthought. Read the full post inside CounselLab, where I'll tie together everything we've covered this week—and show you how to start thinking like an in-house attorney.

Your customers already wrote it, in public, under somebody else's content! Name your industry and I'll go and find the questions your audience keeps asking that nobody's answered. I built a tool that does this for any topic people are interested in. Comment your topic and i'll find your next post idea!

Have you ever thought: "If Skool allows it, it must be OK." Unfortunately, that's not the way it works. Skool provides the platform. You are responsible for what you post, what your members post, and how you run your business. Head over to CounselLab, and check out day 4 of the biggest legal mistakes I see in Skool Communities. I dive deeper into this topic.

Testimonials. The "receipts". Here on Skool, we're all told social proof is critical to growing membership, converting free to paid members, and making our Skool dreams come true. But what if I told you that YOU could be responsible for what your biggest fans say about your business, product, or service? And what if the most glowing testimonial (even if it's true) could cause major risk to your business? In day three of our legal risks series, I do a deep dive into the use of testimonials over on CounselLab. Check out out. And I'd love to hear your questions/comments regarding testimonials.