9 business principles I live by

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I launched a business brokerage with my father.

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Thought #1:

Life is full of people who try to emotionally bully others for their own benefit.

In relationships, life, work as well.

Be secure enough to tell them to F off or ignore them all together. Crabs in a bucket!

Thought #2:

I live in a house I bought in 2017 for $289k.

Living in a house with a $1200 mortgage makes entrepreneurship less stressful.

Thought #3:

Don’t ruin your hobbies by trying to make money off them. Make your money and then spend it on your hobbies.

The billionaire telling you to follow your passion made his billion in rental properties.

Thought #4:

Real estate market is headed downhill.

A lot of sponsors in serious stress figuring out how they’re going to pull of refinances at 7-9% interest rates.

It won’t bubble to the surface until they fail to pull them off over the next 12-36 months. If rates are still here in 24 months, which I think is likely, chaos will be upon us in certain asset classes.

Thought #5:

Too many folks set the bar way too high with entrepreneurship.

The next million dollar company. The next sexy startup.

Forget all that.

Why isn’t the goal to build something that pays you good $ every year and requires only a few hours of your time per week to make it happen?

Want to build a startup worth $1 million? Start by making $1k in cash and go from there.

Thought #6:

If you aren’t rich, every single business you start needs to be cashflow positive within weeks.

If it isn’t, go get a job working for somebody who knows how to make money or a rich person with a big idea.

Sounds silly but this is why most people fail. Poor early decisions. It isn’t your job as a non rich person to change the world with your big idea.

If you want to change the world, it’s your job to get rich and then go about doing that however you want. Harsh, but true.

Thought #7:

People think the key to building an incredible business is finding incredible people.

I totally disagree and here is why.

Thought #8:

Bad advice: “Make money doing what you love.” Good advice: “Make money chasing an opportunity and then spend your time doing what you love.”

Too many people are selfish entrepreneurs.

Doing what they love all day. Not enough people look at the market and say “where can I add the most value with the least amount of risk and the highest likelihood of success?”

What you’ll find when you start a business is that you aren’t doing any of that stuff you loved anyway (if you’re doing it right).

It’s hiring, firing, managing, selling, finance, systems.

And you start to fall in love with the game of business.

Thought #9:

Stress is the gap between expectations and reality.

Manage expectations -> reduce stress.

Extra:

People who are in the Silicon Valley bubble have no idea how much work will be required to build and maintain our physical world over the next 50 years.

The techs fixing the elevators will be billing more per hr than the attorneys riding in it.

Onward and upward,

Nick

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About Me

I started the Sweaty Startup in December of 2018 because I believe the Shark Tank and Tech Crunch culture is ruining the real spirit of low-risk entrepreneurship.