Eric Markowitz Is An Intentional Investor

You have to learn how to learn.

You start the process in school, but then you get confused because there are tests about stuff you can’t even imagine ever actually needing.

Slowly you start noticing stuff in real life. The useful stuff. The stuff that jumps out at you. And usually you only realize it’s useful because it helps you out when you’re in some sort of trouble. But, it’s useful because despite the trouble, it helped.

Eventually, there are jobs, with goals and bosses and overtime, and you start to realize, “What am I doing and why am I doing it?”

Beyond the trouble of it all, why?

How you answer that question shapes the rest of your life.

Eric Markowitz was a Jersey kid in a religious school type of upbringing.

By high school, he was sneaking off to concerts in New York City.

The city was his first love, and he made it his mission to land there for college.

The optionality. The excitement of it all. The no longer suburban small-stakes school reality of it all. What he was doing was going to college, but why he was doing it was getting to the city.

The first path out of school led to journalism.

How to be hired to tell a story.

How to interview. How to ask questions. How to be sociable and also defend your logic.

And somewhere in there, it started to click: you have to learn how to learn.

All the good journalists were trained in the art of learning.

Once you see it, in journalism or anywhere, the future starts coming into focus fast.

The New Yorker pieces, the big stuff—his breaks started coming.

A wife, a family—his life started happening.

But life doesn’t always care about why. Life is way more concerned with what and when. How is barely on its radar.

That was when the abscess showed up in his brain and tried to kill him.

No why. Just, “Here I am! Oh, and not an ear infection. So, lucky thing your wife wants a second opinion and you have a friend of a friend who’s a brain surgeon because, tick tock.”

You have to learn how to learn so you can learn how to adapt. You have to surround yourself with people who get it too. You have to keep everybody on your team moving forward.

Eric keeps moving forward.

This conversation will turn how you think about learning on its head.

This conversation will turn how you think about networking and the value of your network on its head.

It will make you turn to your spouse, college friends, and whoever else you care about, and ask if/thank the gods that they have the same commitment to learning and being each other’s social safety net as you do.

Out now on Epsilon Theory YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts, The Intentional Investor, featuring my conversation with Eric Markowitz. Enjoy!