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Welcome to Week 25 of the High Performance Playbook.

In just 6 months we’ve brought together almost 7,000 high performance community members, so huge thank you for reading and continuing to share this newsletter with friends!

If you’re just tuning in to the HPP, these are the strategies and frameworks that separate the 1% from the .01%. We dive deep into: health & fitness + longevity, personal finance & investing, business growth hacks, and how to optimize all areas of your life.

If any of those sound interesting, the High Performance Playbook is for you.

If you enjoy the content and get some value from it, please share this link with a few friends and help me spread the word! There’s no better compliment than a referral.

Ready? Start your engines… Let’s GO:

Mindset & Psychology

Rewire Your Reward System

You can’t hit deep focus if your brain is still chasing cheap dopamine.

Every scroll, ping, and context switch trains your brain to expect constant novelty, and punishes stillness, focus, and discipline.

To perform at a high level consistently, you have to reprogram what your brain sees as “worth it.”

Here’s how to shift from dopamine-chasing to performance-rewarding:

1. Delay your gratification rituals

Do the hard thing first, then reward yourself.

Example: Deep work block on your MIT (most important thing) for 30 minutes first thing in the morning. Then check your IG or TikTok.

Not: scrolling for 15 minutes before opening your laptop.

2. Celebrate consistency, not stimulation

Track streaks. Reward follow-through.

5 days in a row of locked-in work? Treat yourself.

3 focused workouts? Time for a win.

3. Gamify your focus

Turn attention into a game.

• Use a physical tally counter.

• Get a Pomodoro timer with a reward at the end. A Pomodoro timer is a time management tool based on the Pomodoro Technique, a method developed by Francesco Cirillo. It breaks down work into focused 25-minute intervals, called “pomodoros” separated by short 5-minute breaks. After 4 pomodoros, a longer break, typically 30-min, is taken. Give it a try! Here’s a cool one on Amazon.

Your nervous system needs to learn: this is what gets rewarded now.

Not the scroll or the snack.

But real focus, effort, and results.

That’s how you train your brain to work for you, not against you.

🧠 Biggest Story of the Week (Mindset & Psychology)

Big investors are buying this “unlisted” stock

When the founder who sold his last company to Zillow for $120M starts a new venture, people notice. That’s why the same VCs who backed Uber, Venmo, and eBay also invested in Pacaso.

Disrupting the real estate industry once again, Pacaso’s streamlined platform offers co-ownership of premier properties, revamping the $1.3T vacation home market.

And it works. By handing keys to 2,000+ happy homeowners, Pacaso has already made $110M+ in gross profits in their operating history.

Now, after 41% YoY gross profit growth last year alone, they recently reserved the Nasdaq ticker PCSO.

Invest for $2.90/Share

_{Paid advertisement for Pacaso’s Regulation A offering. Read the offering circular at invest.pacaso.com. Reserving a ticker symbol is not a guarantee that the company will go public. Listing on the NASDAQ is subject to approvals.}

Health & Fitness + Longevity

Is Your “Millionaire Morning Routine” Stressing You Out?

There’s a fine line between priming your body… and frying your nervous system before 9am.

The current wave of “optimized” mornings is starting to look more like a full-blown assault:

• Cold plunge

• Fasted workout

• Double espresso

• Journaling

• Meditation

• News scan + email triage

• Podcast at 1.5x

• 14-step biohacker routine before 9am

Sounds productive, right? It might actually be the reason you feel tired all day.

Here’s the problem:

Stacking too many stimulants and stressors first thing pushes your body into fight-or-flight.

It spikes cortisol, raises inflammation, and depletes the reserves you actually need for focused work and creative output later in the day.

Listen, it would be kinda cool to be like Bryan Johnson and just biohack all day and document it (and make money doing it). But that’s not reality for 99.9% of people.

Try this simple framework instead:

Your morning should match your day. Think “ying” and “yang.”

If your day is high-output (calls, strategy, deep work)…

Start slow. Wake the body before you stress it.

If your day is low-stim (admin, rest, movement)…

Then you can go harder in the morning.

I’m not suggesting you skip the cold plunge or the coffee, but be intentional about the timing of it all and make sure you don’t turn your “morning routine” into a cortisol cocktail.

Your morning routine should leave you feeling energized, sharp, motivated, and ready to tackle any challenges or projects you have for the day.

High performance is a nervous system game.

Protect your energy and use it wisely, don’t drain it before you get to the real work.

🚴🏼‍♂️ Biggest Story of The Week (Health & Fitness)

Personal Finance Tip of the Week

Your Net Worth Is a Lagging Indicator, Here’s What I Track Instead

Net worth matters. But it’s not what I use to manage my money in real time.

It’s a snapshot of where you’ve been and what you’ve accumulated, not where you’re headed.

If you want to build serious financial momentum, you need to start tracking your personal leading indicators.

Just like a high-performance business, your money needs a dashboard.

Here’s what I review every month:

1. Savings Rate

How much of your income are you keeping or reinvesting?

If your lifestyle scales with your earnings, your freedom never increases.

Target: 25–50% savings or reinvestment during growth years.

And please, for the love of God, don’t save your money in US DOLLARS. That is one of the only ways in the world to guarantee your money will be worth less in the future than it is today.

Save in Bitcoin. Save in Solana. Save in Gold. Save in Salt for all I care - just please don’t have a savings account at a local bank and keep your money sitting there... We are smarter than that now.

To clarify - you should have an emergency fund in cash. I prefer to keep 2-3 months worth of expenses. You never know when you’ll have a big expense or something that comes out of left field, and you don’t want to have to sell actual assets to pay for it when it does. So yes, keep dollars for this purpose only. But beyond that, your savings will do much better if you park it Bitcoin and let it compound.

2. Recurring Revenue

Whether it’s salary, retainer clients, or MRR, recurring income gives you consistency and predictability.

One-off windfalls are great. But recurring revenue builds confidence and margin.

Years ago, I sold a company for 8-figures and the next year I tried to refinance my house and the bank denied me. Despite me being able to pay for my entire house, multiple times over, I didn’t have “consistent income” at the time so they denied me a loan. Crazy, right?

Recurring income is important for many reasons.

3. Investing Cadence

I don’t just track how much I invest, I track how often.

A consistent investing rhythm (weekly or monthly) outperforms big, emotional bets.

Build it into your system like a non-negotiable bill. Here’s a good example with my favorite investment, Bitcoin:

Assume you started investing in BTC and you put $500 per week in starting in 2017. You never tried to time the market, you never bought more than $500 at a time, and you never sold any.

Today, you’d be sitting on around 19-20 Bitcoins. At current prices, your portfolio is worth $2.4M.

You could be a multi millionaire right now, simply because you set up a recurring investment in a high performing asset and let it ride.

Here’s what’s really cool: there’s nothing stopping you from starting this right now. Today. After you’re done reading this newsletter.

This year is almost over. Next year is going to come and go. 3 years will fly by. 5 years will happen no matter what you do. So start today, and when we celebrate New Year’s Eve in 2030, which we inevitably will, you could be sitting on a 7-figure portfolio and toasting to financial freedom and peace of mind.

4. Liquidity Runway

How many months could you operate without new income?

This is your personal resilience metric. It’s what allows you to take risks without panic.

Target: 6–12 months of lean living expenses saved or accessible. Again, it doesn’t have to be sitting in cash (USD) losing purchasing power, but have it liquid assets that can be turned into cash quickly.

The big idea:

If net worth is the scoreboard, these are a few of the plays that win the game.

Stop reacting to your bank balance.

Start managing your money like a business. Set up the blocking and tackling fundamentals that win championships.

TLDR;

1. Build recurring revenue streams

2. Invest consistently and not emotionally

3. Stay liquid to protect yourself and give you peace of mind

💸 Biggest Story of the Week (Personal Finance)

Business Playbook

The First System Every Business Owner Should Build: Client Onboarding

Someone recently asked me:

“Austin, if you were starting a new business and just starting to land clients… what’s the first system you’d build?”

My answer? Client onboarding.

Some might disagree and say lead gen. But from my view, a great system to get new clients doesn’t matter if you can’t keep them.

Early on, put more energy into making sure you keep the clients you get.

Nothing kills momentum (or trust) faster than a disorganized, reactive first impression with a new client.

The first 7–14 days of a client relationship are everything. I’d even argue the first 30 days are critical.

It’s when buyers decide if they made the right choice.

It’s when emotional reassurance matters just as much as the deliverable. It’s when speed, clarity, and communication build the foundation for long-term retention.

If you don’t show up with a clear, structured onboarding…

You’ll lose clients who could’ve been long-standing, loyal clients who might have referred many others.

🚀 Biggest Story of the Week (Business)

DOPAMINE HIT

Thanks for reading!

If you enjoyed this week’s newsletter, please share it with some friends! And thank you for reading!

🗓️ STAY TUNED:

In next week’s newsletter, I’m unpacking a hard truth: Most of your beliefs weren’t chosen. They were downloaded.

Your assumptions about time, money, stress, and success… they likely came from childhood, culture, or environments you’ve outgrown.

And if you don’t update them, they’ll quietly limit your potential. I’ll walk you through how I audited my own default settings, rewired what wasn’t serving me, and built a more intentional operating system for life and business.

You won’t want to miss this one. Have a great weekend!

Here’s to your success,

Austin L. Wright

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_{Disclaimer: The ideas shared in this newsletter are those of the author, and this is in no way intended to be medical, legal, or financial advice. Always do your own research and consult with licensed professionals.}