Some business tips I suppose

1. Pick a job you are willing to do for free and do it until you are known as the man who does that job – if you are the best at something you will live comfortably, even the best clown in the world is paid.

2. Do not hire other people to do everything for you. This is a sure way to go broke and not know why.

You have to know the core skills related to your business industry to be able to hire and scale down the line, if you are building houses and you know nothing about the process you will never know if you are getting ripped off or if anything is being done right. If you get all services for the cheapest price, your product will be cheap and you will have little repeat business. Learn to provide some of the services yourself.

1. Never over-brag, those who talk about how good business is are usually doing poorly, and those that constantly complain are usually doing well. When business is good there are many hiccups and many problems on a daily basis. If there are no problems it means there is no business.

2. assume everything you get offered is a scam unless proven not to be.

3. Never name your price, ask them for their budget first

4. if investing, invest in real estate, buy the cheapest house in the nicest neighborhood if you plan to live in it for a while, if you are planning to fix it up and rent it out, buy a 2/3 bed ONE bathroom and convert it to a TWO bathroom as people will pay a lot more to have that extra bathroom and it will cost you little to install.

5. Creating freely is a right that is earned. You must create things you may not want to do for a while to one day be able to choose.

6. Do not be afraid to ask – reach out to business owners and people in your area who are experts in fields you lack in. You'll be surprised how many professionals have absolutely no one coming to them to learn from them with immense respect for their work. No CEO will knock you down for just starting up your small business, but an employee is more likely to. Anyone who has built a big business has at one point been an owner of a small business and so they will be the exact person to understand your position. Everyone who hasn't gone through this process actually doesn't want you to succeed because it proves their whole worldview wrong. People who have built businesses of their own want to help you and see you win because then they will be responsible for helping the next big success in their industry and it helps attract even more talent to that industry by showing how good it can be.

7. Work for free – for example, when I wanted to get into advertising I made free print ad posters for small brick-and-mortar retail stores near my college, In return for the free ad design and printing all I would ask for is a little bit of space at the bottom of the ad to put my website ( i created an agency name and built a website, I had no real agency yet, but the name sounded ubiquitous and you couldn't tell how new it was) This link at the bottom of the ads gave me the ability to go to other stores and pitch my services by opening with "hey I made an ad for Boston jewels around the corner if you've walked by it's right on the front" and they would be able to go and see my work in person, meaning the trust was instantly boosted and these next stores I'd pitch wouldn't know if I did it for free or not, they just were able to see the quality and the design and assumed it was paid work.

8. BE AGILE – super important – once you make a business plan it is important to stick to the general plan of where you are going but the how may have to change along the way. You may be introduced to new business strategies that could be better than the previous methods you planned on utilizing, so don't be afraid to pivot, if you try something new and it doesn't work don't be afraid to change back. You have to be flexible in business while remaining on a general course toward your ultimate goal.

Write down where you want to be in 20 years and then write the plot backwards on how to get there.

1. Assume you'll never sell your business, and that you will make a solid salary of 5k a month no matter how big it scales, what business would you like to run? Example: I imagined the scenario of running a film and art studio that produces major motion pictures but still making just a livable good stable salary nothing crazy, would I still want to do it? and my answer was ecstatically yes of course. That's how I knew that's where I'd want to be no matter what. This is very important because if you are thinking of the exit when you are just getting started (which I've seen founders do) then you may not really be passionate about that business, you are just attached to the imagined end result, which may never come. So if no exceptional rewards end up coming your way, do something you'd want to spend 20 years doing anyway. There are never any guarantees so if you find something you enjoy, you won't ever be disappointed when the big payday doesn't come.

There are two ways to do things:

find what is in demand and figure out how to supply it

figure out what you can supply and find a way to make people demand it.

Patience is key, long-term success is always better than short-term. Rome wasn't built in a night, Na Mean???