Depends on your personality and inner drive.Getting Vulnerable... & $180M Entrepreneur Calls Out My Idea & Helps Set Me On The Right Path.. & A Weird Mindset Hack That's Been Helpful
You know what quote is extremely true?
"An object in motion stays in motion"
I think the same is true for entrepreneurs.
"An entrepreneur in motion.. stays in motion"
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I've recently realized that things like social media addiction, eating too much, wasting time - these activities are the children of misdirection.
When we have no direction, everything just feels so.. bland, depressing, neutral.
The problem with being an entrepreneur is that we are bound to experience these times of misdirection often.
When we fail a business, we don't know where to go next, until we do.
When in a phase of misdirection, we start scrambling around asking everybody in our path if idea after idea sounds like a good idea, and we lose hope in that idea quickly.
I've begun to realize the reality - entrepreneurship, while the rewards are large, we need to have a purpose for doing it beyond money. Sometimes, it's just very cutthroat.
The reason I'm writing about this is because I'm there right now.
I find myself in these feelings of misdirection once in a while, and I've actually developed a little "mind hack" which is what I like to call a "checkpoint"
Similar to a game, whenever I'm in a phase of misdirection, I say to myself "checkpoint"
What this means is that the low will motivate the upcoming high. And also that this low is higher than your last low, and that the next low will be higher than your last one.
Even if you feel as low as you did in any other low, you're still at a higher low than the low you had a year ago.
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I met today with someone who was very generous to meet with me.
The fellow is the co-founder of a cryptocurrency mining company valued around $180 million currently.
Since I'm in my "checkpoint", I naturally seek out ways to go from misdirection into full-fledge purposeful direction again.
So, I reached out to him and asked if he'd meet with me (someone in my family knows him)
I wanted to ask him about the crazy idea I was about to pursue, and maybe get a hint of direction with a bit of caution mixed in there.
We met at a gym and walked in the back to a tiny room where he sat down and talked to me for an hour..
He asked me about my failed project, and also about the new project I was planning.
When I told him, he said the unexpected:
"You're not going to need $1 million in funding, you're going to need $15 million."
"On top of that, you're going to need to attract hundreds of thousands (or millions) of users on one end, and thousands of users on the other end of the spectrum to make this work. On top of that, the business model will be extremely difficult to break even on the funding you received"
In essence: it's stupid. Don't do it
I was actually quite relieved by what I heard, because to be honest..
This new idea had me feeling like a nervous wreck, having such an arduous project to complete.
He said..
"First of all, what is the fastest way that you can take this concept and make put a deal together in a way that does not involve building a company with $15 million in funding?"
"Second of all, the two most important things for you to be doing right now:
Learning, and Meeting People"
I then asked..
"Ok learning, what do you mean by learning?"
his response
"Doing, and reading."
"If you're going to be out there pitching deals, you need to know what you're talking about, and you need to be an expert in the eyes of the person you're pitching for the deal. However, you don't need to know EVERYTHING. You just need to know more than your audience knows. When I started raising money for my crypto company, I knew nothing. But since I knew 10% more than the people I was pitching, I still raised the money."
He then said something counterintuitive, that really struck a chord.
"Why are you trying to reinvent the wheel in real estate? Nobody is going to find a new way to build a building.."
"My company is worth $180 million, and guess what - my company is not different than others. Maybe differentiation matters for building a product, or SaaS, but for bitcoin mining operations or real estate, it really doesn't. The people that win in these industries are the ones who are able to build a reputation, play the rules the right way, and implement scale."
"When people ask me what is different about my company, I say there's 1,000 small things that are different, but other companies also have 1,000 small things that are different since no company is the same. But we don't have some kind of super secret sauce that makes us better than anyone else. That stuff is all bells and whistles"
Oh...
Why am I trying so hard to reinvent the wheel?
You can scale anything if you're good.
"Just take what you're wanting to do, and instead of making it for everyone (we wanted to make it a platform for non-accredited investors to invest), play with the big boys, and make sh*t happen. You don't need a fancy app. My company website looks like it was made with webflow (it was) in 1 hour. You would never think we are a $180 million company. But no one necessarily cares, because we're just out there in the real world making things happen, and scaling it with software and employees"
I then asked him
"I think I know what you're going to say, but that requires a ton of experience & deep pockets"
he said
"Yes, you partner with someone who has the experience"
This part was actually really impactful to me.
I think a lot of us young people underestimate the power behind apprenticeship, mentorship, and partnership with someone who is way better & more experienced than you are.
You can think of having an experienced partner or a mentor as hopping on their "slipstream".
By being onboard with them, you are essentially hacking time, bypassing years of mistakes that you would otherwise make.
If you don't have an in-person mentor who is truly invested in your success, it's almost an absolute necessity, otherwise you'll be tinkering like you're supposed to but it may or may not take 10X longer for you to find something significant.
I've noticed books are not really enough. Having an in-person mentor invested in your success is like reading a book, on steroids.
Then I had the realization..
You can go fastlane in an old industry like real estate young..
As long as you hop onboard other people's slipstreams, and with that newfound credibility under those people, leverage other people's money.
And you don't necessarily need to reinvent the wheel, all you need to do is pick the right system.
I've met real estate agents that work for themselves (and are super stressed)
I've met real estate agents that have 150 agents under them (and don't work much).
New concept? No. Good marketing, great reputation, and the right system? Yes.
Now I am just speculating here. As I said in the beginning of this post I've been in a misdirected state for a little while.
But the conversation with this entrepreneur helped me and set me on a new direction, that is much more practical and isn't focusing on hypergrowth.
I hope this also helped someone else reading this.
You need to find out who you are. There are different types of business people and entrepreneurs.
I recommend you to do the wealth dynamic personality test. I am not in anyway affiliated to the test provider. I did once during an interview for free which the hiring manager probably pirated the set of questions somewhere.
I took the test ten years ago. It took me ten years to realize that the test is not nonsense.
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