Use the ‘deathbed test’ to evaluate decisions and avoid future regrets, focusing on things you might regret not trying due to fear or insufficient effort.
Cultivate obsession as a necessary trait for achieving significant goals, recognizing you’re competing with others who are equally driven, and it negates the need for willpower.
Establish a clear, ambitious mission for your business and personal life, as it provides purpose, fuels daily motivation, and drives significant impact.
Develop the ability to make quick decisions for reversible actions (’two-way doors’) while exercising extreme caution for irreversible ones (‘one-way doors’), always owning the outcomes and managing risks.
Invest deeply in self-awareness to understand your true needs, desires, and weaknesses, recognizing it as a ‘cheat code’ for a fulfilled life and effective problem-solving.
Maintain unwavering focus on your core mission, eliminating distractions and evaluating every activity against its contribution to that singular goal.
Proactively build external accountability structures (e.g., coaches, trainers) for areas where personal willpower might fail, especially when deeply obsessed with other priorities.
Embrace a long-term, consistent focus on the slow, compounding evolution of skills and knowledge, understanding that meaningful achievements take time and patience.
Build a unique, purpose-built business model that integrates the entire value chain (e.g., raw material to delivery) to achieve cost leadership and an unmatched competitive advantage at scale.
Focus on building a strong brand through quality products and customer experience, rather than competing solely on price, as branding creates long-term value and reduces competition.
Make your product available across all relevant sales channels (e.g., Amazon, retail) rather than limiting yourself to ‘pure D2C,’ to maximize customer reach and avoid ignoring potential buyers.
As an entrepreneur, personally build and solidify core systems and frameworks, then delegate their management and improvement to others to facilitate growth.
Prioritize hiring candidates who have already successfully performed the specific tasks or solved the problems you need addressed, avoiding ‘aspirational hiring’ based solely on potential.
Define authentic company values and use them as a consistent framework for coaching employees, framing discussions, and reinforcing desired behaviors, even being willing to part ways with high performers who don’t align.
Recognize and actively confront your fears about big risks and undertakings, especially when they are strategically important for business growth and diversification.
Actively and consistently work on fundamental building blocks (e.g., marketing, sales) to generate and maintain positive momentum, and quickly return to fundamentals when ‘cracks’ or slowdowns appear.
Accept that pursuing big goals involves making big mistakes; learn from failures, take a step back, and methodically rebuild with new insights.
Guard against lifestyle creep by continuously building undeniable skills and confidence in your ability to generate income, rather than focusing solely on cutting expenses, to sustain your desired lifestyle.
Offer extensive product customization and rapid fulfillment to serve niche customer needs and capture market share that larger, less flexible competitors cannot.
Despite intense work and travel, consciously prioritize consistent family time (e.g., dinner every night, limiting overnight travel) by structuring your schedule accordingly.
Engage in side hustles, practical projects, and continuous experimentation with new business models to develop entrepreneurial skills and discover new opportunities.
Cultivate an expansive mindset by building confidence in your ability to create wealth and opportunities repeatedly, rather than fearing loss or living in scarcity.
Seek out fragmented markets with no dominant national player and aim to build a nationwide brand to fill that void.
Strategically use an existing product or service as a ‘Trojan horse’ to gain access and build relationships for future, broader offerings.
Understand and adapt to generational shifts in customer preferences (e.g., desire for transparent pricing, no haggling) when designing new services.
To scale through acquisition, consolidate core business functions (e.g., ERP systems, recruiting practices) and develop standardized playbooks across entities to achieve operational efficiency.