Life Dinner

The best advice I heard from a Billionaire Venture Capitalist

Filip Brnadic

Apr 18, 2024

Welcome 👋🏽

I want to share a ritual that my wife and I do every single month.

It’s called a “Life Dinner”, and we first heard about it from Brad Feld; a well-known venture capitalist.

It’s been an absolute game-changer for our relationship and has supercharged our personal goals!

At the end of every month Alina and I treat ourselves to a long slow dinner enjoying each others company.

We talk about what happened in the last month (the good, the bad and the ugly) and what we’re planning for the next month.

Being the Engineer that I am, I made a template, and it's now yours for FREE.

We had our first Life Dinner in 2022 while vacationing in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It was the middle of the bear market, so as you can imagine, it was accompanied by a beer (or three) 👇🏽

What’s the point of a Life Dinner?

Think about it as a monthly ritual where you come together to share a meal and celebrate the triumphs of the last month and reflect on the failures.

It’s an opportunity to open up about your personal, professional, and relationship obstacles and aspirations.

I know it sounds simple, but when was the last time you sat down and spoke to someone special about your goals, dreams and hardships? Or celebrated small wins along the way over a New York style Pizza?

Here’s the three of us celebrating me reaching my goal of $1M AUM on eToro.

⚠️ DISCLAIMER ⚠️

The content provided by PROJECT 10X PTY LTD (Filip Brnadic) is for educational purposes only and is not financial or investment advice. PROJECT 10X PTY LTD is not a licensed financial adviser under Australian law.

Investing involves risk, including the potential loss of all funds. Seek independent advice before making any financial decisions.

Most of all, Life Dinner’s keep me accountable.

In March one of my actions was that I wanted to incorporate mediation into my daily routine. I lead a hectic lifestyle. I always need to be doing something, and that something is usually trading, consulting, market analysis and writing this newsletter!

Meditation helps me clear my head and focus. So far my meditation routine has been sporadic at best. When I reflected back at the end of the month it was clear that the closest I got to meditating regularly was posting photos of this meme.

Why is that?

Is it because I like to talk the talk, but I don’t walk the walk?

It’s because I didn’t make it a priority. What’s more is that if I didn’t have this opportunity to reflect at the end of the month, I may not have considered or actioned this task for months on end.

There’s also months where we get to the “what was I proud of” section and one of us makes a cheeky comment like “get comfortable, we’ll be here a while”. Believe me, these conversations end up being way more fun and inspiring than the day to day chit chat most of us are used to.

Anyway, having gone through a few Life Dinner’s now, the best piece of advice I can give you is to not argue or justify your point – just chat about what happened, and more importantly, how you felt about it (for the fellas, yes we’re talking about feelings).

Use it as an oppportunity to get to know your partner better, and then implement those learnings in your relationship. For example, I’ve since learnt that my girl responds better to positive feedback than negative feedback.

And don’t brush the hard stuff under the rug. Open up about it, but don’t try to solve the problems in real time – focus on empathy. There will be tears. That’s ok - it happens. This photo was taken at one of those Life Dinner’s. It was a low point in our relationship. We still managed to muster up a smile after we had finished with the Life Dinner. Probably because we had ice-cream for dessert 🤤

But seriously, use it as an opportunity to develop a deeper bond and really try to understand the crux of the issue. Stay calm and focus on empathy.

I’ll leave you with some final pointers for your very own “Life Dinner” ritual.

Set a recurring monthly date in you and your partners calendar
Pick a spot every month - you can explore new places, cook a meal at home or head out to one of your favourite hang outs.
Make it a sacred monthly event and make a big deal about it. Get excited. Give each other a present - a box of chocolates, a bouqet of flowers, perhaps surprise your partner with a Shark Cage Diving experience (Alina, if you’re reading this 😇)

If you're in a relationship, I'd encourage you to give the Life Dinner a shot.

At worst, you get a nice meal together - but I'm guessing you'll get much more out of it than that!

That’s all for now.

I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Catch you next week.

✌🏽

Filip Brnadic