Due to popular demand, I decided to share my other insights with you about my entrepreneurial journey thus far. To be honest, I never expected I would get the number of upvotes, DMs, and Reddit awards yet here we are. As explained in part 1 (read here) I originally wrote about 25 insights but I removed most of them and trimmed it down to 11 in the first part. It might be a bit long so I split it in two parts, apologies if it's too long in general. In that case just skip to the insights.ZeitgeistA very important predictor of entrepreneurial success is timing. This is important to keep in mind. Just think of all the major successful SMMA that were started 5+ years ago. It was a great time to start one then because social media was just about to take off to the moon in general but now you might be late to the game. There were times in my life where I could see certain trends emerging (e.g. fitness) but I never did anything with it for some reason. That has been proven to be a mistake, at least for me.Insight #12: try to identify the zeitgeist and leverage bigger trends, timing is criticalSkillsBeing a digital marketer at heart, but also able to code & understand business/ finance helps me be in a position where I can be an asset to many in business. As a result, I have had many people come up to me asking me to be part of something (mostly declined it though). This is a great position to be in and it's all because I chose, many years ago, to acquire new skills. I would advise you to get clear on what position you want to be in and upskill accordingly.Insight #13: decide what part you want to play in a business (eventually) and upskill accordinglyRelevanceRelated to 'Skills': some of you might be more the generic 'hustler' type of people. Great, but in my experience, these people do not tend to get very far. Because 'doing business' is not a relevant skill when you start something usually. I speak from experience; in my tanked VC business I was with two cofounders; me, a software engineer, and a 'hustler'. The problem we quickly ran into was that while I and my technical cofounder were building analytics, landing pages, and coding up an MVP, the other guy did not understand any of it! As a result, he mostly kept us from doing the work and mostly came up with very generic business 'advice' that we ourselves also understood. I am not blaming him at all for our failure, but in retrospect, it became clear to me that in that business, he just wasn't relevant.Insight #14: team up with people truly relevant to the business you want to startMoneyThis one is big. As I explained in part 1 of this post, I come up from a very poor background. And never having money takes a toll on you at one point. Not surprisingly, I chased it throughout my 20s. And so, I fell for every get-rich-quick thing ever created and known to man. From visiting real estate "gurus" to affiliate marketing BS in dinky hotels, trading options, you name it. I even build a site that actually did about $500 a day in profit dropshipping sex toys because hey, sex sells! But the problem I came across time and time again was that I found out I either was embarrassed by what I was doing or found out pretty quickly it was all a charade. I am now convinced: quick money is slow money, and slow money is quick money. It takes time to build something successful over time, period.Insight #15: completely forget about quick money and build something long termKnow thyselfThe most important insight is by far this: know thyself. Throughout my life, but especially my teens and early 20s I thought I was, at best, average in terms of intelligence. It took me almost 30 years on this planet to find out that I was actually quite bright (±130 IQ). I can not stress enough how much misery, pain, and suffering it has taken me throughout my life because I kept on listening too much to other people giving advice who either had no skin in the game or we're not seeing the entire picture like I was at the time. Full disclosure: when I took a professional IQ and personality test with a psychiatrist for the first time, I broke down and cried like a baby. It finally all made sense why I was the way I was and it helped me a lot. I personally am a big believer in doing a professional IQ test, the MBTI, and the OCEANs test for now. The last one is very important because most entrepreneurs have a very specific combination of personality traits (low on neuroticism, medium on extraversion, high on openness, high on conscientiousness, medium on agreeableness).Insight #16: know thyself: take a professional IQ test. Also, take the MBTI test and Big Five.Personal lifeOne of the reasons me and my girlfriend broke up was because not only was my life going down the absolute motherfucker shitter, I was also working all the time and hardly spent time with her. It is no surprise then, that she eventually lost any feelings she had for me. Trust me when I say that she, to me, was about as close to 'the one' there is. And I fucked it all up for nothing. It still makes me very, very sad just thinking about it. But the same happened to friends as well. If you are always working, you will regret it I can guarantee it so try to somehow balance your life a bit. I know that is difficult for many of you because you are probably a workaholic like I am, but the regrets sting eternally.Insight #17: there is more to life than business, spend time with your loved ones, family and friendsLifeplanIf you are like me you think life can be planned. You get clear on what you want and then just reverse engineer the steps to get there. Simple, right? WRONG. Life will throw you many curveballs and it will be your job to navigate through all of this shit. Related to becoming anti-fragile (explained in part 1) I would say that a big problem I often had was that things were not going 'according to plan' and my brain just couldn't take it. PUSH THROUGH! HUSTLE HARDER! was my answer, and it always failed. I have since learned to become way more adaptable, being clear on my long term goals and direction in life, implementing habits and tasks, but in between being very open to whatever happens.Insight #18: life happens when you are busy making plans, decide on a direction and be adaptableDecisionsAnother one that messed me up and sometimes still does. Due to insecurities, I started having a very, very hard time making decisions. In just about every area of my life. I have since then also learned to become way more decisive. Perhaps a golden insight (for me at least) was when I realized that the key is to go through A DOOR and then go through THE NEXT DOOR. You DO NOT go back through the first door otherwise you will get stuck in a sort of loop you will not escape. For example: if you are having a hard time deciding where to live but you know you like the sun and big cities, then stick to that and continue in your search for big cities with plenty of sunny days. Don't think, 'oh but I actually also like the country and vineyards' because now you go back through door number one and you are fucked.Insight #19: making decisions is all about going through a door, and then the next one, etc.CPA & CLV & HAPPYOK slightly more directly related to business but I had to throw it in. I have found that the ONLY metrics that matter in business are CPA (cost per acquisition), CLV (customer lifetime value), and HAPPY (happy customers tell others). Everything else is just a bunch of fucking bullshit and mental masturbation. As long as your cost per acquisition are lower than your customer lifetime value due to good unit economics, and you make sure your customers are happy (which will lower your CPA) you are good. Understand these numbers and see how they apply to your own business.Insight #20: CPA, CLV and HAPPY customers is all that matters, fuck all the other metricsRevenue, Profit, MoneyThis one I learned from a business mentor and boy did it take me a while to truly understand it. There is a BIG difference between REVENUE (=VANITY), PROFIT (=ILLUSION), AND MONEY (=IN MY POCKET). For example, one of my businesses did about $300K (REVENUE) got sold for about $250K (PROFIT), but after taxes and other bullshit, I had about $150K left (MONEY IN MY POCKET). I know it sounds obvious and simple, but you will quickly found out it is anything but simple. You can't go to the grocery store and pay the bills with REVENUE or PROFIT so understand the difference. You need MONEY. period.Insight #21: revenue = vanity, profit = illusion money = in your pocketActionI will keep this one short: I have fallen victim to the paralysis analysis mentality more and longer than I would like to admit. It is truly embarrassing and was probably because of my insecurities. That being said, become a man of action yourself and judge people only on what they do, not what they say. I am starting to believe that even 10.000 miles of action in the wrong direction is still better than standing there with your dick in your hand doing nothing. Please do not be that guy. I was that guy, and now I am at ground zero. My new major goal for the upcoming decade is to let me actions speak for me.Insight #22: always take action, let is be your default mode, and judge people only on their actionsReputationHere is the last one: your REPUTATION IS EVERYTHING. Do not fuck this one up. I am luckily the kind of person who always knew this (thanks dad) so one thing I did extremely well was to always treat people with respect, never breaking trust, and always taking the high road if need be. One reason I am able to probably get back on my feet again is because people know that if they work with me they can 1) trust me with their lives and 2) will benefit from it one way or another. This is perhaps why, going back to quick money, it can really fuck you over. You don't want to be that cheesy slimeball slinging $5000 courses filled with garbage. People will remember and your reputation will be tainted for a long time.Insight #23: protect your reputation, build it up over time, add value to everyone, never break trust.EDIT: Apologies, this turned out longer than I thought but I really, really want to help especially you younger guys to NOT make the same mistakes I made. It will save you years of turmoil, misery and frustration I can guarantee it. Again I wish you all the best and remember: know thyself.About me: during my 20s I started about 6 businesses. Out of those 3 flopped. One was sold within a year for a low six figure sum. The second did $3 million ARR with $600K profits. The third we raised some VC but had to fold the venture within a year. I am trying to recoup ever since but it's been extremely tough. You can read my whole story here in part 1 of this mini series. see hubwealthy.com/wealthy
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