Whatever else you do - Fly the OODA loop ✈️
Think like a fighter pilot: observe - orient - decide - act. When PayPal got started they tried 6 different business models in 18 months. Visa and eBay were in the same space - they had a lot more money but failed, because they just worked on one idea...
1. Compound yourself 📈
Compounding is magic. Look for it everywhere. Exponential curves are the key to wealth generation.
2. Have almost too much self-belief 👩🏻🎤
Self-belief is immensely powerful. The most successful people I know believe in themselves almost to the point of delusion.
3. Learn to think independently 👑
Thinking from first principles and trying to generate new ideas is fun, and finding people to exchange them with is a great way to get better at this. The next step is to find easy, fast ways to test these ideas in the real world.
“I will fail many times, and I will be really right once” is the entrepreneurs’ way.
Figure out what to do in situations that seem to have no solution.
4. Get good at “sales” 🛒
Self-belief alone is not sufficient—you also have to be able to convince other people of what you believe. This requires an inspiring vision, strong communication skills, some degree of charisma, and evidence of execution ability. Show up in person whenever it’s important.
5. Make it easy to take risks 🥵
It’s often easier to take risks early in your career; you don’t have much to lose, and you potentially have a lot to gain. Once you’ve gotten yourself to a point where you have your basic obligations covered you should try to make it easy to take risks. Look for small bets you can make where you lose 1x if you’re wrong but make 100x if it works.
6. Focus 🙏🏼
Focus is a force multiplier on work, but it is much more important to work on the right thing than it is to work many hours.
7. Work hard 🏋🏽♀️
You can get to about the 90th percentile in your field by working either smart or hard, which is still a great accomplishment. But getting to the 99th percentile requires both—you will be competing with other very talented people who will have great ideas and be willing to work a lot.
8. Be bold 🧨
Follow your curiosity. Things that seem exciting to you will often seem exciting to other people too. People want to be part of something exciting and feel that their work matters.
If everyone else is starting meme companies, and you want to start a gene-editing company, then do that and don’t second guess it.
9. Be willful 🏔️
A big secret is that you can bend the world to your will a surprising percentage of the time.
Ask for what you want. You usually won’t get it, and often the rejection will be painful. But when this works, it works surprisingly well.
10. Be hard to compete with 🦹🏼♀️
For example, you can do it with personal relationships, by building a strong personal brand, or by getting good at the intersection of multiple different fields. There are many other strategies, but you have to figure out some way to do it.
Most people do whatever most people they hang out with do. This mimetic behavior is usually a mistake—if you’re doing the same thing everyone else is doing, you will not be hard to compete with.
11. Build a network 🧬
The size of the network of really talented people you know often becomes the limiter for what you can accomplish. An effective way to build a network is to help people as much as you can.
12. You get rich by owning things 🛍️
This can be a piece of a business, real estate, natural resource, intellectual property, or other similar things. But somehow or other, you need to own equity in something, instead of just selling your time. Time only scales linearly.
13. Be internally driven 💠
Do what you do to impress yourself and because you feel compelled to make something happen in the world.