Brandon DonnellyCanada must become a global superpower
The silver lining to the US starting a trade war with Canada and regularly threatening annexation is that it has forced this country out of complacency. Indeed, I'm hard pressed to remember a time, at least in my lifetime, when patriotism and nationalism has united so much of Canada. According to a recent survey by Angus Reid, the percentage of Canadians expressing a "deep emotional attachment" to the country jumped from 49% in December 2024 to 59% in February 2025. And as further evidence of...
Brandon DonnellyThe bank robbery capital of the world
Between 1985 and 1995, Los Angeles' retail bank branches were robbed some 17,106 times. In 1992, which was the the city's worst year for robberies, the number was 2,641. This roughly translated into about one bank robbery every 45 minutes of each banking day. All of this, according to this CrimeReads piece by Peter Houlahan, gave Los Angeles the dubious title of "The Bank Robbery Capital of the World" during this time period. So what caused this? Well according to Peter it was facil...
Brandon DonnellyThe story behind those pixelated video game mosaics in Paris
If you've ever been to Paris, you've probably noticed the small pixelated art pieces that are scattered all around the city on buildings and various other hard surfaces. Or maybe you haven't seen or noticed them in Paris, but you've seen similarly pixelated mosaics in one of the other 79 cities around the world where they can be found. Or maybe you have no idea what I'm talking about right now. Huh? Here's an example from Bolivia (click here if you can't see...
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Brandon DonnellyCanada must become a global superpower
The silver lining to the US starting a trade war with Canada and regularly threatening annexation is that it has forced this country out of complacency. Indeed, I'm hard pressed to remember a time, at least in my lifetime, when patriotism and nationalism has united so much of Canada. According to a recent survey by Angus Reid, the percentage of Canadians expressing a "deep emotional attachment" to the country jumped from 49% in December 2024 to 59% in February 2025. And as further evidence of...
Brandon DonnellyThe bank robbery capital of the world
Between 1985 and 1995, Los Angeles' retail bank branches were robbed some 17,106 times. In 1992, which was the the city's worst year for robberies, the number was 2,641. This roughly translated into about one bank robbery every 45 minutes of each banking day. All of this, according to this CrimeReads piece by Peter Houlahan, gave Los Angeles the dubious title of "The Bank Robbery Capital of the World" during this time period. So what caused this? Well according to Peter it was facil...
Brandon DonnellyThe story behind those pixelated video game mosaics in Paris
If you've ever been to Paris, you've probably noticed the small pixelated art pieces that are scattered all around the city on buildings and various other hard surfaces. Or maybe you haven't seen or noticed them in Paris, but you've seen similarly pixelated mosaics in one of the other 79 cities around the world where they can be found. Or maybe you have no idea what I'm talking about right now. Huh? Here's an example from Bolivia (click here if you can't see...
Subscribe to Brandon Donnelly
>4.2K subscribers
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Brandon DonnellyYes, just do it
Support Brandon Donnelly
Brandon DonnellyYes, just do it
I have started to meet with developers for my new book – becoming a real estate developer – and I can’t begin to tell you how impressive and inspiring it is to learn about their stories.
It’s easy to look at someone who is successful and feel overwhelmed by everything they’ve accomplished. But nobody starts at the top of their game (unless maybe they were born with a silver spoon in their mouth). Usually there’s a backstory of sweat and struggle that rarely gets told. As the saying goes: success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan.
But those are exactly the kinds of things I hope to uncover with this little project. I am less interested in the successes and more interested in the early decisions, struggles, and thoughts that went into making those successes even possible.
And one thing I’ve noticed is a tendency to just go for it. In fact, when I asked one developer if he had any advice for young aspiring developers, he said: just fucking do it.
As soon as he said this I couldn’t help but think of my elementary school English teacher who used always tell us the same thing – minus the expletive – whenever we’d ask him something such as, how long should this paper be, should we focus on this or that, and so on. He would always say: What does Nike say? Just do it. No buts. Just do it.
At the time, I obviously didn’t give this much thought. But the fact of the matter is there’s so much value in doing. And it’s easy to overthink at the expense of doing. What he was teaching us was to have confidence in ourselves that we would figure it out along the way.
The reason there appears to be a lot of interest in “how to be a real estate developer” is because there isn’t really a set path. You don’t go to school, apprentice for a year under the wing of a developer and then, boom, you’re a developer.
Most developers have carved their own paths. They just did it.
I have started to meet with developers for my new book – becoming a real estate developer – and I can’t begin to tell you how impressive and inspiring it is to learn about their stories.
It’s easy to look at someone who is successful and feel overwhelmed by everything they’ve accomplished. But nobody starts at the top of their game (unless maybe they were born with a silver spoon in their mouth). Usually there’s a backstory of sweat and struggle that rarely gets told. As the saying goes: success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan.
But those are exactly the kinds of things I hope to uncover with this little project. I am less interested in the successes and more interested in the early decisions, struggles, and thoughts that went into making those successes even possible.
And one thing I’ve noticed is a tendency to just go for it. In fact, when I asked one developer if he had any advice for young aspiring developers, he said: just fucking do it.
As soon as he said this I couldn’t help but think of my elementary school English teacher who used always tell us the same thing – minus the expletive – whenever we’d ask him something such as, how long should this paper be, should we focus on this or that, and so on. He would always say: What does Nike say? Just do it. No buts. Just do it.
At the time, I obviously didn’t give this much thought. But the fact of the matter is there’s so much value in doing. And it’s easy to overthink at the expense of doing. What he was teaching us was to have confidence in ourselves that we would figure it out along the way.
The reason there appears to be a lot of interest in “how to be a real estate developer” is because there isn’t really a set path. You don’t go to school, apprentice for a year under the wing of a developer and then, boom, you’re a developer.
Most developers have carved their own paths. They just did it.
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