Your Biggest Lesson from 2023...?

[Fox]

The year is nearly up.. what did you learn?

---

My biggest lesson is that time is insanely valuable.

And building the use of your time into your "final" business system is a huge mistake, but very easy to make.

The goal has to be to use time to build a system that will work as much as possible on its own.

That is, your time should not be used directly - it should all go into building systems.

This is an obvious lesson from reading MJ's books... but this is the difference between knowing the path and walking the path I guess

 

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[MTF]

My biggest lesson is that time is insanely valuable.

I'd say the same lesson for me but different conclusions.

Because time is insanely valuable and passes super fast, make sure that you enjoy your life. Either way, time will pass quickly but in one scenario you feel like you've wasted your life on nothing while in another you'll be happy for all the memories (even if still wishing for time to go more slowly).

So make sure that you're in the right, positive environment for you and that every day you do things that excite you and make you happy.

As a side note, this also means that if you hate where you live, prioritize your needs over forcing yourself to live where you hate because of your family and friends.

 

[AceVentures]

Being a dad has made me happier than anything I'd ever tried before.

It's crazy, and I never thought it would happen like this. But after one year of being a father, it has become so much easier for me to just be myself. I've stopped caring about so many things that I used to waste my time worrying about, and I've got access to infinite love every day.

I spent years studying books, courses and podcasts on discipline, motivation, and mindset. That stuff all feels like a gimmick now compared to the feeling of having a family.

 

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[Timmy C]

The year is nearly up.. what did you learn?

---

My biggest lesson is that time is insanely valuable.

And building the use of your time into your "final" business system is a huge mistake, but very easy to make.

The goal has to be to use time to build a system that will work as much as possible on its own.

That is, your time should not be used directly - it should all go into building systems.

This is an obvious lesson from reading MJ's books... but this is the difference between knowing the path and walking the path I guess

Well, from a business perspective I guess my lesson is not to give up too early.

@MTF Profile picture is true.

for example, a few years ago i made some online courses.

I ditched that business as the idea didn't interest me. I all but forgot it existed and I had stuff for sale online on random platforms.

I finished checking my accounts today after getting an email that I have a payment.

Turns out these courses made me $700 so far this year after i got done checking.

I did no marketing at all, and haven't touched it in years.

I didn't even know about it till the other day lol.

If I would have stuck to that ONE thing, what could i have turned it into now?

I learned that you also have to enjoy what you do, you can't HATE a business and still work on it.

Life's too short for that crap.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

That much of what defines you during your adult years was defined in your childhood years, set by your parents inexplicably, or inadvertently.

For parents, be careful of the example you set for your kids as you tackle life, as much of how they live their journey is likely a reflection of dealing with their perceptions of your parenting. Something you might say or do, an incident that takes 10 seconds to execute, a situation a parent might not even remember, might be remembered by your kid 40 years later. In fact, their entire life might be defined by it.

 

[luminis_]

The year is nearly up.. what did you learn?

To achieve a goal, you must become the version of yourself that is deserving of achieving it.

You can't earn $1 million as your current self. Your current self is incabable of becoming a millionaire and you must psychology "kill yourself" and evolve into someone who is deserving.

And don't cling on to identities and beliefs that keep you poor and weak.

 

[rjdgreat]

biggest lesson for this year:
God's grace is better than our self-determination.

 

[freek]

A few of my biggest lessons:

• When you start out, focus on revenue and profit; all the other stuff is irrelevant for now. I see so many people on here talking about the perfect name, the design of their images, the way their website looks. Just use simple templates; they will be more than good enough when you start out.

• Outsource all the stuff that doesn't bring in a lot of money but needs to be done. Yeah, sure, it's nice to work on your designs, but unless you're really good at it, just outsource it to someone who has experience and is actually good at it. It will save you a lot of time to focus on bringing in more revenue. Relevent for a lot of arreas.

• Rank your priorities based on the amount of money they will bring in.

• Don't worry about stuff you don't know how to do exactly; you will figure it out along the way. Even with legal stuff, just start selling and work the other stuff out later. (However, this is not legal advice .)

• Realize that bad things are not as bad as they look the first time you hear about a problem. If it doesn't cause you to go bankrupt in 24 hours, it's no biggie. Especially when you start out because you have nothing to lose. Problems can be turned into great events when you handle them correctly. Start seeing them as opportunities; it sounds cliché, but it's true. Also, I think the amount of problems you are able to solve shows how good of an entrepreneur you actually are. Give me ten big problems this week, and I am sure my company will be better the moment the week has passed. Problems drive improvement.

• Act like you are way bigger than you are when dealing with other companies. It got me a great deal; I'll figure out how to deliver on it later.

• Take risks; you literally have nothing to lose when starting out.

• Think bigger and do a few tasks that have an impact a few months later. For instance, this week I had a lot of urgent stuff to deal with; still, I started the morning by applying for things to be able to sell in a different country. Not relevant to the urgent problems, but I will be damn happy in 3 months that I still took the time to do this.

• CENTS is so important.

• Think about scalability and systems more often.

• Work on your company, not in it.

 

[Andy Black]

No doesnt mean no when you're selling. Talk a bit longer and you'll get a maybe, then a yes.

I take a different tack.

No is No and Maybe is No.

"Sales is a screening process." (Blaise Brosnan)

I only want to work with people who bite my hand off down to my ankle.

 

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[Johnny boy]

Some personal changes and realizations.

Your friends, your partner, your family, all the people in your life..you’re supposed to be on the same team. Imagine playing a game of football or baseball, and the other team hated each other, competed against each other, talked bad about each other…you would laugh at them. A good team is united against the outsiders, not turned against each other. Apply that to your own team and remember you should always be thinking about it this way, where you’re genuinely trying to bring them closer, like you were a team captain.

The same goes for your relationship with your girl. It’s not cool to disrespect her. It’s like keying your own car and thinking it’s cool. It’s just stupid.

Be on the same team and work to bring people closer like a captain. Make sure the enemies are clear and unite the team against them with you.

The next thing I realized is that your religion is not what you think happens when you die. Your religion is what you prioritize in your life. If you make the focus of your life something secular or something pointless, and that’s what will be waiting for you (spoiler alert: there’s no heaven for ‘Seahawks fans’ or ‘Entrepreneurs’ if that’s the primary focus of your life)

I had to ask myself point blank, ‘what is my religion then?’ And seeing that I was spending all my focus, energy, thoughts and time on entrepreneurship and it was my identity, I had to admit that my religion had previously been entrepreneurship.

Making something your religion is selling yourself to it. What are you getting in return for your deal? I sell my soul and sacrifice to ‘business’ and all I get is money? F*ck that. Make sure when you offer up your soul you get a fantastic deal, and the temporary pleasures of this short life are not a good trade.

I will always be doing entrepreneurship because it’s natural for me, but it is not my religion, my true identity, my main focus, my all consuming goal, etc. It’s just something I do.

I am at peace, thankful and patient. Everything is happening as fast as it should be. It’s not my job to worry. I’m doing things because they should be done and it’s part of my life, but nothing to do with fulfilling an identity or not being enough.

With that said, I’ve stopped expecting to be happy all the time. I’m grateful to be alive. When I have to take my medicine, or things go wrong, or life kicks me in the teeth, I’m still alive and things are amazing. I’m a man, not a child. A man is built to work. I am not special. Grab a shovel, bust your a$$, and stop bitching. Life is too good and you’ve been too lucky to complain about anything anyways.

Life makes a lot more sense to me this year. Lots of clarity. Didn’t get it straightened out until recently though.

 

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[Wombat]

My lesson from this year is: everything is my fault. _Everything_.

Some things were directly my fault.
Other things were initially caused by something outside of my control, but I:

• failed to correctly identify the problem, and/or
• failed to respond appropriately

It's. all. my. fault.
And that's a good thing because it means I have control. A better 2024 requires me to better myself.

 

[StrikingViper69]

Focus on making something to sell.

I spent years trying to build an audience.

I should have skipped ahead to selling something.

Sell something and your buyers are your audience.

Test, test, test.

Keep things simple.

EDIT: a better reply after thinking about it. If something isn’t working, pivot within the field. Build on things you’ve already made and use them to create something new. I started building a list with a free ebook and building seo traffic to my blog.

Then I tried selling courses several times, which didn’t work. Then took the free ebook and tried selling it instead of giving it away, and people started buying it.

Then took that and doubled down and wrote a proper book, which has been selling since.

 

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[JordanK]

I had a small discussion with Fox on this recently.

My biggest lesson is that the snowball/time in the game effect is real.

I'm just over 5 years in Real Estate now. When I started out I set myself massively unrealistic goals with short time periods. Mentally it was as if I thought the world was going to end in 3-4 years time. That isn't the case.

The longer I spend in this game the more my skills grow and compound. My long term business deals generate more revenue which helps me invest more and on and on. I'm also seen as more of an authority locally and have engaging conversations where value is traded more equally with people who are a multiple of times more successful and longer in this game than me.

For any new entrepreneurs reading this. Every business you run, opportunity that doesn't work out or fails. You will learn valuable skills that will help your next business or allow you to move faster next time. Tasks/objectives that used to take me a month I can now do in days as my skills and more importantly my confidence grows.

I forget where the quote is from but it says "confidence doesn't come from talking yourself up in front of the mirror, it comes from having a stack of undeniable proof that you are who you say you are and you've done what you said you were going to do".

 

[Black_Dragon43]

My biggest lesson is that if you’re willing to work so hard that you feel like you’re losing your mind and going insane by how many hours you’ve put in… then you’ll get outsized results that you wouldn’t even dream were possible for you.

But… there is a downside, your mental health will definitely suffer, and you won’t feel human anymore.

That’s sort of what I’ve done this year. Over 425 tasks / projects completed (compared to just 25 abandoned tasks/projects). To give you an idea, one “task” for example was learning how to code and creating an AI app from scratch to support your team of writers and add differentiation that none of your competitors have. And doing that all in 2 weeks while still handling 4-5 sales calls per day and all the other tasks.

I’ve fallen sick the past 10 days or so, so I’ve slowed down a lot and finally had a chance to look back. I can’t even believe what I’ve managed to achieve this year. I wouldn’t have imagined this even in my wildest dreams 1 year ago. But the amount of work I’ve put in this year has just been insane — I think I probably worked as hard as the past 2-3 years combined into one. Literarily wake up, do some exercise and then glued to my chair from morning to evening except 1-hour spent watching a show in the evening with my partner. I even ate while working.

I haven’t had a chance to even really make sense of the money I’ve earned partly because my father has fallen ill battling with lung cancer so I’ve been helping him and partly because I just had no time to pause, and I’ve reinvested a lot into getting the best people on my team, improving our margins, etc.

(An interesting side-note, I’ve been so overwhelmed this year that I don’t even consider if I can do X task — I just start doing it. Like my mind has no time to consider if coding an app myself from scratch is a good idea vs spending money and trying to find a developer for it, so it just jumps into action)

 

[The One]

You literally just got to do stuff.

I was too busy overthinking on how should I do this? How should I do that?

You Must read "The One Thing" - this will direct EXACTLY what you should do.

Thank you all who responded to soo many of my annoying questions. Especially you @Andy Black and @PureA

Also, I'm currently using @MJ DeMarco awesome website GoalSumo.com. I would have given an affiliate link but there ain't one yet. It actually is useful. It's like a flipping (can't say f**king anymore - tryna change) accountability partner and North Pole for your goals.

Happy new year?

 

[datagod]

That building business can have ups and downs.

Had quite a shake in business. Lost a lot of profit a month.

What's interesting I feel now much better. It was a time that I was earning x5 what people made in my country. But I wasnt that happy.

Maybe it's just because i appreciate now stuff more or I just got more mature.

1. Money is not everything
2. Time goes on. Even if you don't want to
3. Do sports and more sports!
4. Sitting and stress will kill you. Read num 3.
5. Go out with friends. Beer, coffee?
6. Turn off phone. Leave it home or in car. Read num. 5.
7. Failing business is better than no business. You learn a lot what you could do differently etc.
8. Focus. Focus. Focus. I am still quite young and I still have problems with focus. But i am getting better with focus.

"One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." - Neil Armstrong

 

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[DarkKnight]

The year is nearly up.. what did you learn?

---

My biggest lesson is that time is insanely valuable.

And building the use of your time into your "final" business system is a huge mistake, but very easy to make.

The goal has to be to use time to build a system that will work as much as possible on its own.

That is, your time should not be used directly - it should all go into building systems.

This is an obvious lesson from reading MJ's books... but this is the difference between knowing the path and walking the path I guess

I learnt that everything has a start and an end and nothing lasts forever. If you're going through hard times, keep going until the Gods give up.
The sun ALWAYS shines after the dark night ends. Its just a cycle. Like life and death. Day and Night. Busts and Booms.

In Mr. Churchill's words,
"If you're going through hell, keep going."

 

[Anna13]

I'd say the same lesson for me but different conclusions.

Because time is insanely valuable and passes super fast, make sure that you enjoy your life. Either way, time will pass quickly but in one scenario you feel like you've wasted your life on nothing while in another you'll be happy for all the memories (even if still wishing for time to go more slowly).

So make sure that you're in the right, positive environment for you and that every day you do things that excite you and make you happy.

As a side note, this also means that if you hate where you live, prioritize your needs over forcing yourself to live where you hate because of your family and friends.

That‘s why I‘m finding joy in parties on the weekend. Work hard calls for party hard: dance the stress away. No need for drinking much. Just dance and meet cool people! Thanks for reminding!

 

[Yeti]

My biggest lesson for 2023 is consistency wins.
Do the unsexy, 'stupid', foundational work, consistently.
One step at a time.
Step by step.

Being consistent can be hard, but it can be easy, and it can be hard again.

I learned it now. Better late than never..

 

[Canadoz]

Some of my learnings from 2023

1) Formality kills sales. All our lives we've been conditioned to think that in business you must be "professional". But sometimes you can be so "professional" at the expense of rapport. And when there is no rapport there is no sale. Next time you're in with a meeting with a client, those little conversational sidetracks at the beginning of the call or the end will make or break you. Chill out. Never be afraid to talk about something other than business during a sales call.

2) Always Act Very Busy Even if You're Not - Nobody goes to the empty restaurant or bar. Everyone heads to where other people are going. Humans are sheep in this respect. If a customer suspects that he's the only one buying your product - this does not inspire confidence. To remedy this - always project an image of "busyness".

3) Know how to question prospects - Never ever assume you know what they mean. "We need a car that's economical" sounds like a common sense statement. It's not. Ask them "What do you mean by an economical car?" Followed by "Why do want a car like that?" Not only will you discover that their interpretation of "economical" might be different to yours. You'll also discover the underlying reason "why" they want an economical car. Now you're in a much better position to actually sell to them.

4) Never ever give a quote over the phone - Customers think you're just making it up. Turn your quotation giving into a mini ritual and always do via email.

5) Increase the acceptance of your quotations exponentially by giving a price break-down. Ever get a crazy quotation from a supplier like an auto repair shop. Then you see the break down and it makes more sense. Do the same with your own customers - give a detailed quotation breakdown and see the acceptance rate multiply.

6) Warmth and Competence - When selling, you must project warmth and competence. If you project warmth without competence - you will fail. If you project no warmth and and no competence - you will almost certainly fail. Ever wonder why almost everyone loved Bill Clinton? Well only Bill Clinton could spin a homespun humourous yarn growing up in small town Akansas and fluently talk about GDP all in the same speech. That was was warmth and competence. Be more like Bill and people will buy more from you.

7) The Power of Humour - I think humour is the most powerful thing. Because not only does it project warmth, it also projects competence. Now you might be thinking, "how does a witty accountant project competence?". Well, because most people assume that witty people are also very competent people. So, it's like humour becomes like a two-edged sword.

8) Welcome to the Isolation Zone - Finally, as a solopreneur, you have to have meetings with yourself away from the hub bub of normal activity. Did you meet your goals? How well are your business goals progressing? Do you need to tweak your business goals? Where I live, there are around 10 hotels within a 20 minute drive away, I will always take an hour or two out of my schedule every 7-10 days for these "reality checks". Phone turned off. One writing pad. One Pilot pen. One coffee. One hotel lobby. This makes sure that you're business is not just bobbing up and down following currents like cork in the ocean but is following a dedicated course to achieving your business goals.

I hope you enjoyed my learnings from 2023!

 

[BlackMagician]

For me, it's COMPOUNDING.

For years, i took steps and worked on my plans. Plans and goals keep updated but eventually, this year, everything comes together and I can see the effect of compounding. The actions are compounding so much that i can't believe.

 

[monnffffiiiiiii]

No doesnt mean no when you're selling. Talk a bit longer and you'll get a maybe, then a yes.

 

[Thaddeus]

The year is nearly up.. what did you learn?

---

My biggest lesson is that time is insanely valuable.

And building the use of your time into your "final" business system is a huge mistake, but very easy to make.

The goal has to be to use time to build a system that will work as much as possible on its own.

That is, your time should not be used directly - it should all go into building systems.

This is an obvious lesson from reading MJ's books... but this is the difference between knowing the path and walking the path I guess

The most important thing I learned this year is to just TAKE ACTION. That is the gateway to your success, skip all the mental masturbation revolving around the task and just do the most important, mental challenging task first. For example if you're starting an agency as I am, just send out your first cold email AND build from that, learn on the way.

 

[Xeon]

Understanding FastLane and entrepreneurship principles is one thing, doing and seeing success from it is another! All the book knowledge translates into nothing in the real world!

 

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[Dufresne85]

I never wrote down any goals for the year. But last year I did for 2023, now looking back I haven't achieved most of them - This is mainly because of a lack of prioritization and also an inability to focus on one thing at a time.

At least now I know what my goals are for 2024. Prioritization and focus on thing at a time.

 

[Kevin7]

PICK your priorities... we think we do, but every day just eases into the next one, there's no urgency because nothing really seems it's actually on fire. Time is limited, most other things aren't. Go for it or at least start on it TODAY.

 

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[Jrjohnny]

The year is nearly up.. what did you learn?

---

My biggest lesson is that time is insanely valuable.

And building the use of your time into your "final" business system is a huge mistake, but very easy to make.

The goal has to be to use time to build a system that will work as much as possible on its own.

That is, your time should not be used directly - it should all go into building systems.

This is an obvious lesson from reading MJ's books... but this is the difference between knowing the path and walking the path I guess

You can live life to the fullest by simply appreciating the small things that you have, rather than the big things you don’t.

 

[Bearcorp]

While trying to make sporting comebacks this year, my mind might think I'm still 20 but my body reminds me I'm almost 40! And new things hurt that never used to as well.
Should have listened to the older generation that tried to warn me. But that's not my style, I need to make the mistake myself to really learn from them..

 

[Timmy C]

While trying to make sporting comebacks this year, my mind might think I'm still 20 but my body reminds me I'm almost 40! And new things hurt that never used to as well.
Should have listened to the older generation that tried to warn me. But that's not my style, I need to make the mistake myself to really learn from them..

Would you say it has a lot to do with you being inactive for a long time as much as the age? Of course age would be a factor.

A guy who is 60 still trains BJJ where I am, only about 2 days a week on average though.

My coach is 40 and he still destroys us all on the mat.

 

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[Mattie]

The year is nearly up.. what did you learn?

---

My biggest lesson is that time is insanely valuable.

And building the use of your time into your "final" business system is a huge mistake, but very easy to make.

The goal has to be to use time to build a system that will work as much as possible on its own.

That is, your time should not be used directly - it should all go into building systems.

This is an obvious lesson from reading MJ's books... but this is the difference between knowing the path and walking the path I guess

1. The right people and working as a team make things happen quite faster and quite efficient.
2. What I have learned in here, shows my work ethic and mindset is quite different then the people they are used too.
3. Self-discipline, sacrifice, goes a long way. Not doing what everyone else is doing.

 

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