Actively decide where your operational bottleneck should be (ideally customer demand) to maintain control; otherwise, the system will dictate it, leading to inefficiency and discomfort.
Understand that a business’s scale is fundamentally limited by its churn rate; focus on retaining customers, as it’s crucial for long-term growth and avoiding excessive costs from constantly acquiring new users.
In logistics, mistakes like incorrect customs classifications lead to weeks of work and regulatory problems, making quality control cheaper than fixing errors.
View ‘micromanagement’ as ‘attention to detail,’ which is crucial for operational success, especially in complex systems like logistics where a single error can negate a month of efficiency gains.
If a role or company is your ’life’s work,’ identify areas where others excel and actively learn those skills to ensure you can lead effectively and adapt to future challenges.
Actively learn the 2-3 core ‘big ideas’ from numerous knowledge domains to build a robust framework of mental models, which enhances understanding and fosters innovation by applying concepts across disciplines.
In business, prioritize ‘velocity’ (speed with direction) over ‘mass’ (size or resources), recognizing that agility and rapid movement are more impactful than sheer scale, allowing startups to outcompete larger, slower incumbents.
Adopt a ‘founder mode’ mindset where you deeply understand all aspects of your business, rather than relying on external consultants or adopting a general manager’s approach that assumes transferable skills across industries.
Avoid over-optimizing for efficiency by breaking tasks into too many small, robotic steps, especially in service-oriented businesses where exceptions are common; instead, empower operators to manage shipments end-to-end to maintain quality and customer satisfaction.
Stay deeply involved in all company details, conduct skip-level meetings, and audit everything, rather than blindly trusting executives, to ensure alignment with your vision and long-term commitment.
Understand your natural strengths and weaknesses, and seek partners or team members who excel in areas where you are less proficient to help your business mature and grow.
Evaluate the effectiveness of policies based on their actual results and impact, rather than solely on the good intentions behind them.
Initiate positive interactions and take the first step in building relationships, as this proactive approach can lead to valuable connections and opportunities.
Strategically choose industries or niches where the competition is less sophisticated or less intense, rather than directly competing with ‘AI geniuses’ or the smartest people, to increase your odds of success.
Approach competitive environments with the mindset of striving to be the best, recognizing that while camaraderie is good, the ultimate goal is to outperform others.
When evaluating opportunities, focus primarily on the maximum upside potential and what actions can be taken to achieve it, rather than dwelling on potential downsides.
Use simple, easy-to-understand language in all communications, especially when pitching, to clearly convey your message and appeal to your audience effectively.
Don’t assume customers will appear just because you’ve built a product; you must actively pursue and acquire them.
While initially using human effort to meet customer needs, continuously strive to automate and structure workflows with software to reduce costs, improve quality, and make subsequent tasks more efficient.
Be aware that owning assets (like planes or ships) can create a conflict of interest, making it harder to be customer-centric as the primary goal shifts to filling assets rather than finding the best solution for the customer.
For industries like logistics that involve physical assets and complex coordination, prioritize in-person collaboration to ensure effective communication, problem-solving, and operational success.
Prioritize internal promotions and, when hiring externally for executive roles, require new hires to spend significant time (e.g., 90 days) observing and learning without making decisions, fostering humility and deep understanding of the company’s unique challenges.
Engage in direct, skip-level communication with many employees daily to gather unfiltered information, understand frontline issues, and collaboratively solve problems with executives, ensuring transparency and alignment.
Provide employees with choices and agency in their learning and training experiences (e.g., a menu of talks) to increase engagement and ensure they learn what is most relevant and interesting to them.
Actively work to disseminate internal knowledge and achievements across the company, as valuable insights and happenings often remain siloed, preventing broader understanding and collaboration.
Allow yourself to be consumed by the problems and opportunities in your industry, as this deep engagement can reveal its inherent interest and potential for a fulfilling career.
Adopt a production system where individual workers follow a product or shipment through multiple steps, completing many tasks and operating various machines, which enhances worker agency, engagement, and learning.
Empower frontline workers to halt production or processes when quality issues arise, ensuring problems are addressed immediately and reinforcing the principle that quality ultimately costs less.
Apply principles like statistical process control and lean six sigma to eliminate variance in workflows, creating an even flow that simplifies planning and prevents idle labor and assets.
For capital-intensive operations, strategically over-invest in the most capital-intensive parts of the system to ensure excess capacity, preventing them from becoming bottlenecks and maintaining continuous flow.
Challenge the dogma of ‘just-in-time’ inventory for critical goods; maintaining excess inventory, especially for non-perishable items or those with high-value downtime costs, allows you to provide parts on demand and command a premium.
In business, strive to perform all functions your competitors can, leaving no niche for them to exclusively occupy, and be willing to expand your offerings to prevent competitors from maintaining customer relationships through unique capabilities.
Build a detailed product library to track every subcomponent’s origin and cost, enabling precise valuation and minimizing duties by only paying tariffs on the specific dutiable portions, not the entire product.
Anticipate and prepare for increasingly complex global regulations (e.g., forced labor, forestry, carbon footprint tracking) by developing technological solutions to track detailed product and subcomponent data.
If you import goods, pay duties, and then export a product with the same classification, claim duty drawback refunds for the import duties paid, as billions go unclaimed annually and you can go back five years.
Exercise your right under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain your past five years of customs transaction data from CBP, even if in an unusable format, to identify potential refund opportunities with expert help.
Explore ‘first sale’ valuation to potentially pay duties based on the initial sale price of goods, not the marked-up import price, but ensure correct legal advice and meticulous paperwork.
Utilize bonded warehouses to delay paying tariffs until goods are released into U.S. commerce, allowing you to bet on future tariff reductions and potentially save costs.
Do not allow foreign factories to import goods for you and then buy them domestically, especially if they are cheating on valuation or classification, as U.S. Customs and DOJ consider this customs fraud and hold importers liable.
Utilize public shipping manifest data to identify manufacturers, product types, and importers, which can be incredibly useful for sourcing new products and understanding supply chains.
Gain early entrepreneurial experience by buying products at wholesale and marking them up, and learn practical skills like software development for invoicing and tax deductions.
If your initial career aspirations don’t pan out due to lack of skills or hiring, be open to opportunities that arise, even if they lead to an unexpected path like entrepreneurship.
Commit to intensive daily study (e.g., three hours a day for a few years) when learning a new language, especially if it’s challenging, to achieve fluency.
Choose learning environments or languages where you receive positive reinforcement and encouragement, as this can make the learning process more rewarding and easier to sustain.