Success in life is about ideas and execution. You have to have the right frameworks, then you need to be able to execute on them over time.
Here's a few ideas that have changed my life for the better:
1. Give before you get:
Always provide value first. Offer advice or help without expecting immediate returns. People remember generosity and will reward it later with trust, loyalty, and money.
2. Focus on the few things that matter most:
Most of your results come from a small portion of your efforts. A lot of people call this the 80/20 rule. In business, you have to identify your top revenue generating activities and double down on those. Cut the bottom 20%. It's typically a distraction.
3. Learn the power of “no”
In the beginning, you will want to say yes to everything. Saying yes builds momentum but later on you will realize that if you continue to say yes all of the time, you won't have time to focus on the most important things. Learn to say no to customers, investors, vendors, and employees if their requests don't align with your business goals.
4. Delegate what you’re not great at:
We all want to save money. But more importantly, we should want to save time. Learn to delegate and build a team. There are specialists everywhere who can help you. These folks will fill the gaps across marketing, sales, finance, operations, HR, legal, engineering, etc. If you are the CEO or the head of a department inside your firm, you need to think about who, not how. The most valuable, highest leverage thing you can do is build a team.
A quick note on that. I have only been able to delegate so much because I hire offshore talent. I have 325+ employees across my portfolio and 95% of them are offshore. Sales reps in South Africa for $2,400/month. Executive Assistants in Latam for $1,500/month. Finance professionals in Egypt for $1,100/month. Engineers in India for $1,500/per month.
If you want to hire one of these folks, click here to set up an interview and get $500 off.
5. Start small and start local:
You don’t need to reach millions of people to make millions of dollars. Start with 10 ideal customers. Then 20. Then 30. Many great businesses can be built with 100 recurring customers. Also, don’t try to build your product/service for everyone or it will end up not working for anyone. Customers want you to specialize at the start.
6. Passion doesn’t equal profit:
Too many people start businesses based on their own selfish desires. If you are passionate about it chances are so are thousands of other people. The market doesn't care what you want to spend your time doing. Build a business based on a gap and a need. Don’t try to turn your passions into business. Be passionate about building something and entrepreneurship. Think with your head, not your heart. These businesses are targets for passionate illogical people so be careful.
7. Ego is the enemy:
A lot of business is being in the right place at the right time. But an early win can also lead to an amplified failure. Your ego can lead to filtering the incoming information based only on what you want to hear. It can cloud your judgement. Being right is more important than tying yourself to the solution you wanted to work. Stay humble. Encourage those around you to challenge you. Change your mind quickly and often if the data points to it.
8. Make the one decision that removes a hundred future decisions.
These are things like which markets to pursue and which to avoid. Which person to hire to lead a team. Which person to fire. Make the one call that eliminates 100 follow up decisions.
9. It's not about finding great people. It's about simplifying the job:
I know there are exceptions to this but to do anything at scale you need to simplify what you are asking from your employees. They need to specialize. Ask them to be very good at one or two things and ignore everything else. Set up your systems so NORMAL people can do very well at your company.
10. Keep your emotions out of your decisions:
Be a stoic. Think logically and calmly in the face of stress, uncertainty, anger and fear. This is the skill that will get you very very far and save you tons in damage control. Read Ryan Holiday's The Daily Stoic.
11. Don’t underestimate service businesses:
Choose your competition wisely. It's a lot easier to compete on a local level with the mom and pop down the street than on a global level with venture capital and big money. Here is a list of service businesses I love.
12. Control your own platform:
Create your own content. Build your own distribution. Tell your own story. It's difficult but worth it.
13. Know the difference between value and money:
The hard and important work of a successful entrepreneur is understanding value. It’s easy to ignore value because we can’t see it, touch it or count it. It isn’t liquid in this very moment. The successful entrepreneurs know that all too well.
They know how to recognize it. They know how to measure it. They know how to plan for it and grow it. They know how to invest in it and build it over time.
14. You don’t build a network, you earn a network:
Networking is important – don’t get me wrong. Your network will become valuable only after you bring something to the table. Build your first company. Get really good at something. Then your network will grow.
15. Frugality wins:
Start a lean business that can survive change. Keep your expenses variable. Buy things used. The longer you can operate with a lean mentality the better off you will be.
16. The “blue ocean” strategy is largely bullshit.
Competition is good. It means there is money to be made. The market exists. You can study it and figure out a strategy that has been proven to work.
17. Money isn’t your most valuable asset. Time is.
And unlike money you can never get it back. Use it wisely and cut people out who waste it.
18. The key to success isn’t intelligence. It’s sales.
If you can get uncomfortable and put yourself out there you’re halfway there. If you can be compelling and attract others to your way of thinking you’ll win. Life is all about sales.
19. Starting a business isn’t right for everyone.
95% of folks are better off getting a job. It’s hard AF. Decisions are critical and plentiful. Risk is for real. Stress can be crippling. Delegation can be impossible for poor communicators. Most folks don’t have what it takes.
20. Getting rich quickly isn’t likely.
The media tells you the stories of the overnight successes. But that’s all bullshit. It gets clicks but it doesn’t work that way for 99.99% of successful folks.
21. You can’t have it all right now.
There is a difference between rich and wealthy. Rich people buy nice cars they bought with their first check. Wealthy people buy assets that send them money every month so they can work less. Focus on getting wealthy. Realize that it normally takes 15-20+ years.
--
P.S. Do you want more organic traffic and leads coming to your website?
Then you need to build more backlinks, create relevant content, and do professional SEO.
My friend Barrett from BoldSEO is willing to do 5 free SEO and website audits for business owners this week.
He will tell you what your domain authority is, how that compares to your direct competitors and 5+ tactical things you can do to immediately improve.
If you want to learn how you can rank higher on Google, you should book time with him here.
--
A few posts from this week:
--
--
--
--
--
Onward and upward,
Nick Huber
.gif)
