The Propeller - I now speak fluent French, Italian, and Mandarin/Chinese - 5-17-2025

Entrepreneurship: Smiling Through Chaos: An Entrepreneur’s Secret Weapon

As an entrepreneur, the ability to stay calm and positive in the middle of chaos isn’t just a personality trait, it’s a competitive advantage.

I’ve seen this across all the domains I live in: tech, finance, and even aviation. As a pilot, you learn early on that panic never fixes a problem. In turbulence, whether it’s airspace or server space, composure is everything. One time during a brutal system outage, I smiled while triaging the crisis. One of the techs I was working with misread it and thought I was mocking the situation. Truth is, that smile wasn’t about minimizing the problem, it was my way of staying locked in and keeping the mood steady.

Entrepreneurship is a constant storm of uncertainty: launches don’t go as planned, funding dries up, key team members quit, clients ghost you, and tech breaks at the worst possible moment. If you let the chaos control your emotions, you lose perspective and leadership.

But when you smile, breathe, and say, “We’ve got this,” you project confidence. And confidence is contagious. It calms your team. It builds trust with investors. It helps clients believe in you. Most importantly, it keeps you centered.

Smiling through the mess doesn’t mean you’re naive. It means you’ve been here before, and you know the way out.

So, whether you’re rebooting a server, pivoting your business model, or flying through literal turbulence, smile. Not because everything’s perfect, but because you’re grounded, focused, and ready to lead through it.

Memorial Day Sale - Up to 70% off Amazon Outlet - Shop now

Travel: Point Nemo: The Ocean’s Most Remote Location

If you’re looking to truly get away from it all, there’s no place on Earth more isolated than Point Nemo.

Located in the South Pacific Ocean, Point Nemo (Latin for “no one”) is the oceanic pole of inaccessibility and is the spot farthest from any landmass. It’s situated approximately 1,670 miles from the nearest islands: Ducie Island (Pitcairn Islands), Motu Nui (Easter Island), and Maher Island (off the coast of Antarctica). In fact, the closest people to Point Nemo are often not on land at all, but orbiting above it aboard the International Space Station.

Discovered in 1992 by Croatian-Canadian survey engineer Hrvoje Lukatela, this remote coordinate is so far from human civilization that it’s been used as a spacecraft graveyard, where decommissioned satellites and space stations like Mir are guided to crash harmlessly into the ocean.

Despite its poetic desolation, Point Nemo is a reminder of just how vast and unexplored our planet remains. It sits in the South Pacific Gyre, a swirling zone of currents so isolated that even marine life is scarce due to a lack of nutrients.

In a world increasingly interconnected, Point Nemo stands as a quiet testament to Earth’s untouched corners and is a true nowhere in the middle of everywhere.

Fun Fact: Author H.P. Lovecraft described an eerily similar location in his 1926 story The Call of Cthulhu, placing the sunken city of R’lyeh near the coordinates of Point Nemo many decades before its actual discovery. Coincidence… or something more?

Tech: Microsoft Teams Helps Me Speak in a Foreign Language During Meetings

I Heard Myself Speak French in a Meeting… and I Don’t Even Know French

So the other day, I was in a Microsoft Teams meeting, talking like I normally do… and then I heard myself speaking French. Not broken, awkward French like the kind I could maybe scrape together with Google Translate. No, this was smooth, confident, native-level French. The kicker? I wasn’t actually speaking French.

Enter: Teams’ new AI-powered Interpreter feature.

This thing is wild. It’s not just real-time translation. It recreates your own voice – same cadence, same tone – but in a completely different language. You speak English, the person across the globe hears you speaking Mandarin, German, or Spanish. Like a multilingual ventriloquist act powered by AI.

As someone who spends a lot of time in international meetings and works closely with people across borders, this is a game-changer. I’ve been using it regularly, and every time it kicks in, I get this weird, sci-fi thrill. Imagine hearing your own voice deliver fluent Italian with zero effort, it’s like watching a dubbed version of yourself in real time. It’s equal parts amazing and mildly freaky.

Right now, the preview supports nine languages for voice interpretation. But when it comes to meeting transcripts, Teams handles over 31 languages which is great for documentation and catching up on what you missed (or what you pretended to understand at the time). The transcription engine picks up multilingual discussions like it’s been to language school for a decade.

But Microsoft isn’t stopping there. They’re previewing a tool where Teams can actually understand visual content that was shared onscreen – think PowerPoint slides or websites – and summarize it alongside the transcript and chat. No more scrambling to take screenshots or notes. If someone drops a file in chat, Copilot can summarize it instantly, so you don’t even have to open it. (Yes, this feature is already saving me from PDF doom.)

And for those of us battling sketchy internet while traveling or working remotely, Teams is rolling out Super Resolution, which uses the fancy new NPUs in Copilot+ PCs to make you look like you’re in 4K, even if your Wi-Fi thinks it’s 2006.

As someone who lives and breathes productivity tools, I can honestly say: this is one of the most impressive leaps forward I’ve seen. Real-time voice cloning + translation? Visual understanding in meetings? File summaries on demand? It’s like Teams decided to hire a sci-fi translator, a court reporter, and a personal assistant all at once – and now they’re just hanging out in my meetings with me.

And yes, I now regularly attend meetings where I sound like an international diplomat. It’s glorious.

Finance/Investing: The High-Yield Savings Account Trap (And What to Do Instead)

Let’s talk about HYSA hopping – you know, bouncing from one high-yield savings account to another in search of the “best” rate. It feels productive, like you’re wringing every penny of interest out of your cash. But here’s the truth:

It’s the extreme couponing of personal finance.

You spend time opening accounts, tracking rates, transferring money… all for a tiny bump in yield that often doesn’t even beat what a good money market fund at your brokerage could earn you automatically. Many times, these small bumps might only make you $10-$15/year for hours and hours of work.

Instead of chasing fleeting promotions or teaser rates, just park your cash in a money market account – the kind connected to your brokerage. These typically offer competitive yields (often better than HYSA), are incredibly easy to access, and don’t require account juggling every few months.

And here’s a bigger point: If you’re spending this much effort optimizing your cash, it might be a signal you’re holding too much cash. Yes, emergency funds are essential. But cash beyond that could be working harder for you in the market – not sitting in an account collecting slightly shinier dust.

Bottom line? Stop HYSA hopping.

Get off the merry-go-round, use a brokerage money market account, and consider whether it’s time to put more of that idle cash to work.

Quote of the Week

“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.”
— Arthur Ashe

This quote is a powerful reminder for entrepreneurs, creators, and anyone facing a mountain that feels too tall. You don’t need perfect conditions, fancy tools, or a master plan to begin. You just need to start – right here, right now, with whatever is in your hands.

Progress isn’t about having everything. It’s about doing something with what you’ve got.

Keep moving forward.

Veni, Vedi, Vici!

This is re-published from the weekly email sent by Leonard Mack entitled The Propeller. To subscribe, visit https://www.LeonardMack.com/subscribe and read it every Sunday evening.

This intellectual nourishment is intended for informational purposes only. One should not construe anything herein as being legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

My rule is this – I have no advice to give, only experience to share. I have no interest in being a guru or telling people what they should do. Rather, I share my own experience because there is no right or wrong. Your mileage may vary.

Related Posts