July 7, 2024
Here’s 10 lessons that cost me at least $250,000 in hard costs & missed revenue:
Lesson 1
Comfort will k*ll you.
This is things like doom scrolling in bed or staying at a job for too long.Comfort will silently eat away at you and won’t know it until it’s too late. If you’re reading this, it’s not too late.
Lesson 2
Optics are more important than hard work.
Nobody will see your output if they don’t respect you. It does not matter how much money you have helped a person or an entity make. I’ve made this mistake at least thrice in my career.
Lesson 3
Hard work is not the same as getting the fundamentals right.
Nobody will bother to understand your energy input to respect your innovation unless you do Job 101 stuff.
Lesson 4
Overly prepared and overthinking aren’t the same thing.
After being over and under prepared for things, it’s always best to be over prepared or else you’ll say you didn’t give it your best shot.
Lesson 5
Don’t make a big decision if you aren’t sleeping well OR you know you won’t sleep well.
- You’ve likely worked really hard to get to this stage in the business relationship.
- Very easy to F it up here.
- This goes back to Lesson 3: Get the fundamentals right.
Lesson 6
If you feel like you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.
- I’ve heard this many times, but didn’t know until I experienced it twice.
- This is not your ego talking.
- It’s a real thing.
Lesson 7
Smart, financially successful, and successful are nor correlated.
Don’t weigh someone’s financial success relative to your desire to want to earn their attention.
- Weigh someone’s value for your attention by how they speak to you.
- Many millionaires don’t even know how to tie their own shoes – metaphorically speaking.
Lesson 8
Get yourself a mouse jiggler (especially if in Corporate America) but only if you actually make your company money.
Lesson 9
If you can’t afford a mouse jiggler, send emails at weird times (11pm-5am) so they can optically see you’re working hard.
I was about to get fired from a job even though I was putting up results; this single handedly saved my job.
Lesson 10
Do this today: Give value to someone you want to do business with without the expectation of return.
If you’re reading this, you are likely in Business 2 Business. This is not an Amazon search to reorder your favorite shampoo.
Conclusion
Hope these lessons save & make you money; wish I could have read them 100 days in a row to internalize them.
If this helps at least one person out there, this was worth putting out there.