The screenshot below is from a real exchange I had with my friend “Lisa”, who was born in Venezuela and now lives in the US. She gave me permission for to use this screenshot in this article.

Last week, I watched the news coverage of Trump's moves on Venezuela. Maduro being seized. International laws being broken. The headlines were absolutely alarming.

And I felt what I was supposed to feel: outrage.

Then I texted my friend “Lisa”.

She was born in Venezuela and still has family there.

I wanted to check in, see how she was processing this chaos.

I could only imagine how heart-broken, infuriated, and crushed she must’ve been to see her home country under attack. To feel so helpless that a foreign government would break international laws and illegally capture a democratically elected official.

Her response stopped me cold.

"I am very happy. Every Venezuelan that I know is happy."

Wait. What?

She went on:

"I like that he has a plan and he understands he can just not leave Venezuela."

I was surprised. This was not the response I was expecting.

Her response was a masterclass and forcing function in intellectual courage:

"I think he's a prick. Full of himself. And freaking racist. But if he improves the economy and helps Venezuela and other countries, that is OK."

She continued:

"I don't need him to like me. I just need him to fix the economy to enable me. Enable others to use intelligence. The currency of him liking me is not worth enough for me."

And then this:

"I think a lot of people who don’t like him are idealistic. They don't know what being in a hard country is. People who are born in California or these Hollywood people..."

"Ideally, I would have someone kind and who is not a racist motherf—. But I’ll take him. And I hope he can fix Venezuela. From what I have seen so far, he will. He will get paid for it with oil and whatever."

Here's what struck me about her texts.

She wasn't defending Trump. She wasn't excusing racism. She wasn't abandoning her values.

She was doing something harder.

She was holding two truths at the same time:

And she was refusing to let the first truth automatically cancel the second.

That takes courage.

Not physical courage. Not social courage.

Intellectual courage.

The willingness to interrogate your own thinking. To separate emotion from analysis. To consider that the "obvious" conclusion might not be the complete picture.

It’s one of The 6 Types of Courage, and in my opinion is the most important, particularly for entrepreneurs, investors, and leaders.

Working at Netflix changed my life. DailyCourage wouldn’t exist without it.

I had no idea how important of an experience my time there was while I was actually working there. I knew it was a cool company with great pay, perks, and interesting culture, but I had no idea how Netflix’s infamous Culture would permanently shape my approach to life and business.

My friend's texts reminded me of someone else who modeled courage for me: Co-Founder & CEO, Reed Hastings.

Reed was an incredible mentor, not because he gave me advice, but because he showed me what it looks like to be decisive, make big bets, and to publicly challenge your own thinking in real time, especially when the stakes are high.

Three moments stand out:

A few weeks before Netflix was supposed to launch its own hardware device, originally called Project Griffin, Reed pulled the plug.

The team of 20 had worked on this for years. The launch was imminent. And Reed said no.

His reasoning? Netflix had to be hardware independent. If we launched our own device, we'd be competing with the TV manufacturers and streaming boxes we needed as partners. We'd win a small battle and lose the war.

So he spun the project out. It became Roku. Roku’s HQ office is literally next door to the Netflix HQ office in Los Gatos.

That decision required intellectual courage—the willingness to look at something you've invested in, something that's almost at the finish line, and say: I was wrong about this. The strategy needs to change.

Most leaders can't do that. Their ego won't let them. Reed did it weeks before launch.

For years, Netflix's identity was "no ads." It was a point of pride. A differentiator.

And now?

Netflix has an ad-supported tier with 190M subscribers.

They aired Christmas Day NFL games and will be airing The FIFA World Cup in 2026.

This isn't a desperate pivot. It's intellectual courage.

It's looking at a core belief—"we don't do ads"—and asking: Is this belief serving our future, or just our past?

The answer required challenging an identity that had defined the company. Most organizations can't do that. They cling to what made them successful, even when the world changes.

Netflix keeps interrogating its own assumptions. That's why they're still here.

In this CNBC interview, Reed talks about how his marriage counselor’s advice ended up impacting Netflix’s culture and success.

″Early in our marriage, we had this great marriage counselor. He got me to see that I was just lying a lot. I was saying conventional things like, ‘Family’s the most important thing,’ and then I would stay at work late, you know? And so, it helped so much for him to really show me that I wasn’t being that honest.”

The counselor taught Hastings that you have to be honest, no matter how hard it is, to gain others’ trust, and that it’s vital to admit mistakes in real time.

Hasting said the counselor became a “great CEO coach and mentor,” because the lesson in marriage also taught him that “total commitment to the truth, even when it is uncomfortable, is the right way to build a company, too.”

So he took that lesson in honesty, which he now refers to as “radical candor,” and made it protocol at Netflix, according to Hastings’ book, “No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention.” 

Now “every time I feel I’ve made a mistake, I talk about it fully, publicly, and frequently,” Hastings wrote in the British Times on Monday. Doing so encourages employees to think of “making mistakes as normal,” which in turn, “encourages employees to take risks when success is uncertain . . . which leads to greater innovation across the company,” Hastings wrote.

That's intellectual courage: the willingness to look at the gap between what you say and what you do, and tell the truth about it.

Here's something I learned at Netflix: one of the company's eight core values is courage.

But here's the thing—courage isn't just one value among eight. It's the foundation for all the others.

You can't practice candor without courage. You can't challenge decisions without courage. You can't admit you were wrong without courage. You can't innovate without courage.

Every other value requires courage to actually live.

My friend texting me about Venezuela was practicing the same thing Reed modeled at Netflix: the willingness to think independently, hold complexity, and tell the truth—even when it's uncomfortable.

I'll be honest with you.

When I first saw the news about Venezuela, I didn't question my reaction.

I felt outrage, and I assumed the outrage was correct.

I didn't ask: What do actual Venezuelans think?

I didn't ask: Is there context I'm missing about decades of dictatorship?

I didn't ask: Am I responding to the policy or to the person?

I just... reacted. The way I was supposed to react. Based on the information I was supposed to accept.

My friend's texts were a mirror. She showed me someone doing the hard work I had skipped.

She was separating:

That's intellectual courage. And I wasn't practicing it.

This isn't really about Trump or Venezuela or Netflix.

My friend isn't confused. She's not a hypocrite. She's someone who has done the hard work of thinking for herself—even when the conclusion is complicated and doesn't fit neatly into any camp.

Reed wasn't weak when he killed Roku or admitted he'd been lying about his priorities. He was strong enough to challenge his own story.

That's what DailyCourage is all about.

Take a few minutes with this question:

When was the last time you genuinely challenged one of your own beliefs?

Not a belief that was easy to change. A real one. Something you feel strongly about.

There's no judgment here. Just honest inquiry.

Notice what comes up.

Here's your challenge for the week:

Identify a belief you hold strongly.

It could be about:

Pick something you feel strongly about.

Now find the strongest possible argument against it.

Not a strawman. Not the dumbest version of the opposing view. The steel man, the most compelling, thoughtful, reasonable case for the other side.

This is hard to do alone because our brains are designed to protect our existing beliefs.

So here's a tool to help:

Copy and paste this into ChatGPT, Claude, or your AI tool of choice:

You might do this exercise and come out more confident in your original belief. That's fine. At least you'll know why you believe what you believe.

Or you might discover some nuance you hadn't considered. Some validity in the other side. Some complexity that makes you hold your belief a little more loosely.

Either way, you'll have done something rare: you'll have thought for yourself.

Like my friend texting me from across the country, holding her complicated truth about a complicated situation.

Like Reed killing a product weeks before launch because the strategy was wrong.

That's intellectual courage.

And it's a muscle that only grows when you use it.

Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.

With courage,

Jonathan