Tessory

Monet Nielsen | Tesseros
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Biweekly stories for the entrepreneurially minded. Tessory is the forge of Tesseros, where the experimenting happens. Time, energy, money, and AI tools do not stay separate from the business, so we try things, break things, and figure out what actually sticks. Work projects, household fixes, family routines. No tech background required. Honest tests and the small shifts that come from them, so the skills you build apply across your work and your home. New episodes every other Tuesday. Start anywhere. hello@tesseros.com · https://tesseros.com/tessory

  1. 25 Aug

    Retirement: Shaping It Before You Reach the Number

    There was an AI competition we were building toward with a hard deadline in August, and we stalled on it. I couldn't come up with a game I liked, and the entry was supposed to have the business running on AI, which I hadn't done. Then the summer we'd already planned came up against the deadline, and winning the competition at the loss of that summer didn't meet the value of what we wanted to do. We chose the summer we built over a deadline that would have taken it away. Most of us treat retirement like a number. Hit it, and the plan is done. My grandma had it worked out decades earlier, taking occasional shifts at the trading post in Tulameen because she liked the work and liked the people. There wasn't a specific stop, it was a, "Hey, what seems interesting? Let's continue that." The same question belongs inside your company, because sometimes you build things differently if you know what your end goal is. This week's Tessera: name one thing you'd keep doing if you won the lottery tomorrow, then look at your week and see whether any of it is actually there. Read the companion article at https://tesseros.com/tessory-e19-retirement Timestamps: 00:00 Retirement as a shape instead of a date 01:21 Letting the AI competition go 03:18 A porch conversation in Tulameen 05:40 Planning a ten-year wind-down 07:33 What happens to your company if you stop 08:18 Automated e-transfers and keeping your own backups

  2. 11 Aug

    Emergency Planning: Deciding While You're Still Calm

    I'm recording this on August 10th, 2026. There are wildfires all across British Columbia, there's an alert at the edge of our city, our bags are packed and sitting by the door, and today is a normal working day. Technically, nothing has changed. The smoke is the part that really gets you; it doesn't let you forget that there is danger, and the day continues anyway. It's fine and not fine at the same time. Emergency planning is a really strange skill because you build it when you don't need it for a moment when you can't build it. The bag isn't specifically for the fire. The bag is for you standing in a doorway with no judgment left. Every decision that held up under pressure has always been one we made before the pressure arrived. This week's Tessera: pick the future self who needs the hand-off, the one who can't think or the one who checks too often, and build one list or one system for them. Read the companion article at https://tesseros.com/tessory-e18-emergency-planning Timestamps: 00:00 Wildfire alert at the edge of the city 01:35 Why emergency planning gets built in advance 03:06 The fires and floods a few years ago 04:36 What the kids chose to pack 06:40 Planning while calm as a hand-off 07:15 Building a grant finder agent into Notion

  3. 14 Jul

    Passion as Information: What to Do When Nothing Is Lighting You Up Yet

    In my mid-20s, Simon Sinek's "Find Your Why" video swept through the office, and everyone around me lit up while I quietly panicked. I'd been told my whole life to follow my passion, and I didn't have one. Around the same time, my team read Good to Great chapter by chapter in a work book club, and I remember doing the math instead of feeling inspired: getting from a 90 to a 100 can cost almost a third of the work that the 80 took, and I didn't want to spend those extra hours on a version of great I hadn't chosen. What feels like missing passion can be information. It tells you "not this, not yet," and it points you toward trying the next thing instead of forcing the thing in front of you. Once I started designing my own roles around what genuinely interested me, Good to Great finally made sense. I wanted to be great at things I'd actually picked. This week's Tessera: pick one thing at work or at home that feels stuck or flat, swap it out for something you wouldn't normally try, and pay attention to whether it draws you in. Read the companion article at https://tesseros.com/tessory-e17-passion-as-information Timestamps:00:00 The passion myth and following your why02:28 A perfectionist's honest math on effort04:45 Rebuilding a retirement plan around what you control09:11 Automating repetitive templated work with AI10:44 Perspective Flip version two and hosting update

  4. 30 Jun

    Momentum: Starting, Keeping, and Redirecting It

    There's a spot on the bike trail behind our house where the path drops and then swoops back up, and you can see both the short slope and the long climb right in front of you. My younger son gets nervous at the top because the gravel there is slippery, so if he stops to walk up he slides. But if he kept his momentum down the hill, it would carry him three-quarters of the way up the next section, and one or two pedal strokes get him over the rest. Stopping is what makes it hard. Staying in motion is what makes it easy. That's one of three aspects to momentum I've been contemplating: the physical kind, where staying in motion beats starting and stopping. There's also the design kind where you build a process so momentum can pass from one person to the next, and the redirecting kind for when the exact piece you want to move won't budge no matter how well it's designed. This week's Tessera: Name which of the three you're dealing with right now - starting, keeping, or redirecting, and get that moving today instead of waiting for the whole thing to be right. Read the companion article at https://tesseros.com/tessory-e16-redirecting-momentum Timestamps: 01:09 Designing process momentum at an accounting firm 03:52 Physical momentum on the bike trail 05:27 Getting stuck on the AI game competition 06:20 Redirecting momentum into a website audit 08:00 Choosing which aspect of momentum you need this week

  5. 16 Jun

    Feedback vs. Reassurance: Knowing What You Need

    Growing up, part of my family was into racing, which meant I got direct, specific feedback on how I drove. There were so many trips where my grandma would talk through exactly how I used the accelerator, how much I braked into a corner, how I came out of the exit. It wasn't harsh, it was honest and precise: here's what you did, here's what it cost you, here's what to try instead. I didn't understand at the time how rare that kind of feedback is. Most people never get it, not because nobody notices, but because people don't always say anything. Feedback and reassurance are two different things, and most of the friction comes from asking for one while meaning the other. If you want reassurance, ask for that directly, it's a legitimate thing to need. If you want feedback, mean it, attach a timeline, and be ready to hear something that stings. This week's Tessera: Pick one thing you're building right now, hand it to someone who will tell you the truth, give them a date, and follow up on that date instead of waiting for them to circle back on their own. Read the companion article at https://tesseros.com/tessory-e15-knowing-what-you-need Timestamps: 00:00 Feedback versus reassurance 00:25 Direct feedback from racing as a kid 02:18 Playtesting Perspective Flip and deadlines 04:26 The difference between asking for feedback and asking for reassurance 05:22 Nice versus kind 07:05 The backyard landscaping story

  6. 2 Jun

    Attitude and Effort: Practicing Discomfort Before You Need It

    There's a gardening process called hardening off. When you've grown seedlings inside and want to move them outside, you don't just put them out and leave them there. You bring them out for an hour, then back in. The next day, a couple of hours. Then half a day, until they can stay outside on their own. In this house right now, the mantra is attitude and effort. One kid is learning to keep playing a game after he's lost. The other is being asked to show up for gym and track and try, not win just try. And the household rule is that if the kids are being asked to push into discomfort, the adults have to be doing it too, which is part of why this podcast, and Tesseros, and learning AI tools in the open, all exist. You don't build resilience by thinking your way through fear. You build it through small, repeated exposure, the same way a plant hardens off. Cold calls, an uncomfortable conversation, a new tool you don't know how to use yet, all work the same way. If it's your feelings on the line and not your safety, you go out for an hour and you come back. This week's Tessera: Pick the one thing you've been avoiding because it feels uncomfortable, not because it's actually risky, and give it one small, contained practice effort. Read the companion article at https://tesseros.com/tessory-e14-practicing-discomfort Timestamps: 00:45 The household mantra of attitude and effort 01:54 Practicing discomfort (The sidewalk test) 03:19 Shifting from fear to logic at work 06:12 The gardening process of hardening off 07:38 The web of skills: Harmony over balance 10:50 Experiencing one uncomfortable repetition today

  7. 20 May

    Perspective: Choosing Your Lens

    We went for a hike over the weekend and my youngest was not into it. He was done before we left the house. Then the grassland changed to forest, streams appeared, the temperature dropped, the air got damp, and the birds started sounding different. He forgot to complain because things got interesting: a small waterfall, caves built into the rock where people had had fires. He stopped counting how long he'd been walking and started getting excited about what was coming next. It wasn't until we were almost back out that he asked if we were almost there. The trail didn't get shorter. He didn't develop more endurance. What changed is what he was looking at, and that changed the whole experience. Perspective is a functional skill, not a personality trait, and it's different from changing the thing itself. Both moves are useful, and choosing the wrong one costs you. This week's Tessera: Pick one thing that's felt immovable lately and run it through three lenses before deciding what needs to change: what would an optimist see, what would someone looking back on this in a year see, and what's the most sideways, absurd angle that could still technically be true? Read the companion article at https://tesseros.com/tessory-e13-choosing-your-lens Timestamps: 00:36 The hike and shifting perspective 02:18 Perspective as a functional skill 04:55 The three lenses behind Perspective Flip 06:58 Using AI to reframe and build 08:42 Changing the stories we tell about ourselves 10:52 Applying the three lenses this week

  8. 5 May

    Jump the Track: Knowing When to Pivot

    My fridge died a couple weeks ago, in the morning, right as we were getting ready for school. A power surge took out several appliances across the neighborhood. It still had lights, but the control panel was blank except for a row of eights, and neither compressor was kicking on. I spent about 90 minutes with Gemini working through it methodically before landing on the control board being fried, and the repair not being worth it. That's the moment that pushed me back into an idea I'd been chasing down for a friend a few weeks earlier: the railroad track analogy from episode 154 of Moonshots with Peter Diamandis and will.i.am. The analogy: building a career or a life used to mean choosing a track and staying disciplined on it. Now the tracks themselves get moved, sometimes blown up, while we're still traveling on them, and the skill isn't staying on track anymore, it's developing the agility to jump to another one without breaking everything in the transition. This week's Tessera: Name one thing you're still trying to make work even though part of you already knows the track has shifted, and ask honestly whether you're staying because it's still going somewhere, or because leaving feels like losing. Read the companion article at https://tesseros.com/tessory-e12-knowing-when-to-pivot Timestamps: 00:45 The railroad track analogy for resiliency and agency 03:10 The broken fridge and troubleshooting with Gemini 05:25 Pausing the kitchen remodel to get clarity 07:50 Publishing the new Tesseros pages and the fear before hitting go 10:20 Using AI as an iterative tool for quick wins 12:10 Applying the railroad track idea to work and life

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About

Biweekly stories for the entrepreneurially minded. Tessory is the forge of Tesseros, where the experimenting happens. Time, energy, money, and AI tools do not stay separate from the business, so we try things, break things, and figure out what actually sticks. Work projects, household fixes, family routines. No tech background required. Honest tests and the small shifts that come from them, so the skills you build apply across your work and your home. New episodes every other Tuesday. Start anywhere. hello@tesseros.com · https://tesseros.com/tessory

Information

  • Creator
    Monet Nielsen | Tesseros
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    20
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Monet Nielsen | Tesseros
  • Show Website
    Tessory