About

About Steve Padgett

I study masters. Then I decide what is actually mine.

I’m Steve Padgett. I’ve been a CPA since 1991. I live and work in Mount Vernon, Washington. I’m also a guitarist and an entrepreneur.

Those facts describe my work. They don’t describe the whole of what I pay attention to.

For a long time I’ve learned from people who write and teach about how to live, work, focus, and grow — and from people who would never call themselves teachers. Some are famous. Some are a whole craft. Some are standing in a room I’ve actually been in. The risk, for me, has always been the same: taking too much, keeping the wrong things, or never adding anything of my own.

That’s why this site exists.

The method

The method comes from a line widely associated with Bruce Lee:

“Absorb what is useful, discard what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.”

— Bruce Lee

I use it as a way to study, not as a brand to stamp on someone else’s work. On this site I will take one master at a time, write about what I absorbed, what I discarded, and what I had to add from my own life. I’ll do that in essays and in short videos.

The first seven are Bruce Lee, Napoleon Hill, Grant Cardone, Jim Kwik, Brendon Burchard, Tony Robbins, and Ray Dalio. I’m also studying Nir Eyal as an upcoming master. After that, and alongside them, I expect to write about styles — grappling is one example I have in mind — and about people who are not famous, when I have their blessing to use their names.

What this site is

This is an author site. A book, The 7 Masters: Absorb, Discard, Add, is ahead of me, not behind me. Until that book exists, the work is here: essays, videos, and a letter when there’s something new.

What this site is not

It is not my CPA firm, and it is not tax advice. It is not a complete summary of anyone’s teaching. It is not an official project of Bruce Lee, of the other teachers I study, or of their companies. They have not endorsed this. I quote sparingly, I attribute what I quote, and I write from my own practice.

A note on names

If I write about a private person, I will do it only with their permission. Famous teachers can be discussed as public work; private lives cannot.

Newsletter and contact

If you want the new essays and videos, you can join the list. If you need to reach me about this project, use the contact page.