Ian Fitzpatrick

Executive Director @ Mendocino County Sports Academy | Coach | Father | Builder | Community + youth development | Local is the way forward |

[Ian Fitzpatrick @IanFitz]

We’re living through transformational change. AI makes everything faster, efficient.

Yet people crave: friction, effort, eye contact, grass, laughter, belonging.

We build kids and community the old-fashioned way - together, slowly.

Efficiency wins.

Humanity endures.

[Ian Fitzpatrick @IanFitz]

@TomFarrey We run a rural youth sports program in rural in NorCalbuilt on the opposite premise: no sorting little kids, a $150 rec season, 25 volunteer coaches, select as one option instead of the only door. Your Project Play research shaped how we built it.

[Ian Fitzpatrick @IanFitz]

@mviser Classic late-stage Fourth Turning, the institutions are burning down and the journalists are still writing about 2019.

[Jeff Park @dgt10011]

The future favors intuition over intelligence, precision over perfection, taste over talent.

Train all you want. You cannot backtest instinct.

[Ian Fitzpatrick @IanFitz]

@jiahanjimliu @danroberts0101 @grok What specifically from the call gives you confidence this isn’t overreach?

[Kyledoops @kyledoops]

The most recent currency was attention, IMO given the rapid growth of A.I. and the ease of distribution for A.I. the next currency will be authenticity & credibility.

[The Wolf Of All Streets @scottmelker]

I want to die completely broke.

When I tell people this, I usually get one of two reactions. Either they assume I’m joking, or they assume I’ve lost my mind. Sometimes both. So let me clarify before anyone forwards this to a financial planner in panic. I don’t mean reckless. I don’t mean irresponsible. And I definitely don’t mean unprepared. What I mean is that I don’t want to die having optimized my entire life around a number that only matters when my ability to actually use it is gone.

We talk constantly about the time value of money. A dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow because it can be invested, compounded, and put to work. Time increases its potential. Life, however, works in the opposite direction. Time doesn’t increase the value of experiences – it usually decreases it. Certain experiences are simply more accessible, more enjoyable, and more meaningful at specific stages of life, and no amount of money later can fully replicate them.

When you’re younger, you’re sitting on an asset that quietly depreciates every year: health, energy, physical capability, curiosity, and a tolerance for discomfort. A dollar at 35 buys a fundamentally different life than a dollar at 75. Pretending otherwise is comforting, but it’s not honest. Life has a time value too, and it doesn’t compound.

When people hear “die broke,” they often picture irresponsibility or excess. That’s not what I’m describing. I’m talking about intentional depletion – using money as a tool to maximize life while you’re able to live it, rather than stockpiling it indefinitely for a future version of yourself that may not exist in the way you imagine. Saving matters. Security matters. Optionality matters. But past a certain point, additional saving delivers diminishing returns while the cost of waiting keeps rising.

Saving for retirement makes sense. Over-saving at the expense of living doesn’t. We’re taught to treat retirement as the main event – sacrifice now so you can enjoy later. Delay life so you can eventually live it. But that framework assumes a lot: that your health cooperates, that your energy remains, that your relationships are intact, and that your interests don’t change. Most of all, it assumes experiences are interchangeable across time. They aren’t.

The trip you take at 35 is not the same trip at 70, even if it’s first class. Skiing with your kids, traveling with friends, pushing your body, starting something new – these things are perishable. They don’t age gracefully, and postponing them doesn’t preserve value. It destroys it.

There’s also a strange moral judgment baked into personal finance culture that equates delayed gratification with virtue and present enjoyment with failure. I don’t buy that. There’s a meaningful difference between consumption that disappears and spending that compounds in memory, perspective, relationships, and confidence. Experiences don’t show up on a balance sheet, but they pay dividends in ways that money never can.

Your memories are what matter in the end, not your net worth.

This way of thinking has also changed how I view legacy and what I want to give my kids. I don’t care about leaving behind generational wealth the way I once did, especially not as a lump sum that shows up only after I’m gone. If I’m going to give them anything meaningful, I’d rather do it while I’m alive – when it can actually shape who they become.

I want to use my resources earlier to give them experiences, exposure, and tools that help them build confidence, curiosity, and resilience. Travel that broadens perspective. Opportunities that stretch them. Lessons about money, risk, work, and independence learned through experience, not inheritance. I want them to understand how to create value, how to adapt, and how to rebuild if things fall apart.

I still want to leave them with enough. But “enough” isn’t a massive number waiting at the end of my life. Enough is a foundation, plus the skills to stand on their own. Unlimited money can become a crutch. Capability is freedom. I’d rather they inherit confidence than comfort – and I’d rather be around to help them learn it than hope they figure it out after I’m gone.

Everyone talks about the risk of running out of money. Almost no one talks about the risk of running out of time. And even less people talk about the tragedy of wasting valuable hours of your youth working for money that will never get spent.

What a waste of your valuable time.

We’re very good at smoothing consumption – using money, planning, and credit to keep life stable while quietly deferring the things that actually make it meaningful. From the outside, everything looks fine. Under the hood, life is being postponed.

The biggest gamble isn’t that you won’t have enough someday. It’s that someday arrives and you’re no longer capable of the life you spent decades planning for.

I want to die broke not because I don’t value money, but because I value life more. I want to use my resources to create memories while they’re available, not just affordable. To save enough to be secure, but not so much that I defer living indefinitely. To leave my kids with a foundation, not a cage.

I don’t pretend this is the right answer for everyone. I don’t even pretend it’s my final answer. But if the time value of money matters, then the time value of life matters more.

[Chaotic Good @_ChaoticGood42]

@david_parker This week we’ll know who

[Kaushik Subramanian @TheHolyKau]

Incredible read, beautifully written

[Dr. Nirav Pandya, M.D. @DrNiravPandya]

Two of the most important things for youth athletes to succeed.....sleep and nutrition!

[Chris Camillo @ChrisCamillo]

Find the balance. Grind hard, travel, party, all while investing like the entirety of your future life depends on it.

[Hunter Beast 🕯️ @cryptoquick]

One of the biggest red flags is a lack of curiosity, or boredom.

Fellow traveler, do you not realize how amazing everything is? How miraculous that there are hard problems and unsolved questions and things our brightest minds admit to not knowing the answer to? And that we have the privilege of consciousness to marvel at the stars and their mysteries?

If you are not seeking wisdom, I don't know what to tell you, but there's a possibility you are wasting our limited opportunity to experience this time.

Certainly; things can be miserable and stressful and insufficient. Without a doubt. But such is life. Best we can do is do our best to get through the day, and spend lots of time reading and asking the hard questions if you can.

Incredibly grateful to have the opportunity to seek wisdom in this time! 😸🙏

[Lawrence Lepard, "fix the money, fix the world" @LawrenceLepard]

I miss Rod

[Ian Fitzpatrick @IanFitz]

Didn’t expect to coach my daughter again…but life brought us back.

First high school game tomorrow.

[Bradley Duke @BradleyDuke_]

Don't let market volatility distract you from the facts that make Bitcoin so powerful.

This secure, neutral, censorship-resistant, store of value is truly scarce - no more than 21 million Bitcoin can ever be produced and 19.95 million are already in circulation.

Bitcoin is the true hard currency.

[Ian Fitzpatrick @IanFitz]

Season of Becoming:  Episode 24.

This fall showed me who we’re becoming as a community: committed, gritty, and willing to grow.

The culture is already here.

Now we build the infrastructure to match it.

https://t.co/KdvqMYoeKD

[Fred Krueger @dotkrueger]

The entire next decade in two sentences:

1. AI will rule the world.
2. Wealth will be denominated in Bitcoin.

[Brandon Guyer - Major League Mindset @BrandonGuyer]

When I asked USC baseball commit @JamesVenick what he would tell a younger player or a younger version of himself…

He said this: Gratitude. Sleep. Limit screen time.

Because elite performance is about the things most people overlook.

You want to play loose? Be present? Show up at your best?

🙏 Practice gratitude daily. It shifts your mindset.
😴 Protect your sleep. It’s the #1 performance enhancer.
📵 Control your phone instead of letting it control you.

It’s not always the big things. Oftentimes it’s the simplest things done with intention that separate the good from the GREAT.

The younger you understand this, the faster you grow into the best version of you.

*Check out the full episode with James on the Major League Mindset podcast on Apple or Spotify now!

[Julian Figueroa @kinetic_finance]

Last week, I interviewed 100 university students about Bitcoin and investing.

About 12 interviews in... I realized there is a SERIOUS challenge ahead of this generation that isn't being talked about enough.

Here’s what they told me. 🧵

[Ian Fitzpatrick @IanFitz]

A rare piece of writing that actually explains the gap between the story we’re told and the life we’re living.

[The Wolf Of All Streets @scottmelker]

This may be the best read of the year from @profplum99

https://t.co/Gj463tYL9c

[Ian Fitzpatrick @IanFitz]

Walked into the hotel for my 5th straight California Cup… front desk guy recognized me from last year because of my @oaklandrootssc hat.

Soccer community is smaller than people think. ⚽️🤝