Meet me in hell.

The act of finding your life’s work as an entrepreneur is worth the time.

I’m sure that most people would rather have sex, float down the Caribbean, or eat delicious food instead of work on hard problems. So doing what you love doesn’t mean doing what you want in this exact moment. But it does mean doing something that, over a long period of time, brings you tremendous fulfillment.

Unproductive pleasures pale eventually. After a while, you’ll get tired of laying on the beach.

The Anatomy of Determination

Character and commitment matter much more than ability.

If you have a core set of beliefs in your company, get prepared to repeat the same maxims for decades.

Repeating Your Ideas

It’s much more important to be determined than to be smart.

The most significant predictor of success is determination.

Talent is overrated compared to determination because, after a while, determination will begin to look like talent.

When you want something, you must have it, no matter what.

Being strong-willed is not enough, though. You also have to be hard on yourself. Discipline yourself.

Everyone has base impulses. The more disciplined you are, the less you have to depend on willpower.

Ambition

Most people are malnourished in ambition.

Ambitious people are rare. If you find an ambitious peer, stick as close to them as you can. Ambitious people are weird, but they will take you to a new level of success.

The energy they emit is contagious and will fuel you better than any drug.

Creativity + Discipline + Ambition = Zone of Genius.

MEET ME IN HELL

“I think heaven and hell are right here. One person can be walking the clouds right next to someone enduring eternal damnation. And God is the land.” - Beth Dutton (it’s our world - everyone else is outside of it)

There are some kinds of dreams that can’t be achieved without thinking differently from the people around you. Your ideas have to do something that normally sounds like a bad idea to everyone else.

Grow resilient and stop worrying about the opinions or validation of others to make your dreams happen.

Independent-mindedness seems to be cultivated more in nature than in nurture.

How risk-averse are you?

Conventional-minded people greatly outnumber independent thinkers.

You can expand your peer group and influences in time, as well as nearby, by studying history and reading biographies.

When I read biographies, I do it to not just learn what happened, but to try and get inside the heads of people who lived thinking differently.

Every entrepreneur needs a library.

Things should not enter your head unexamined, yet some of the most powerful influences are subconscious.

The best place to find unconventional thinking is where no one else is looking (books).

Founders make the same mistakes over and over again. What’s the likelihood that I won’t do the same thing? Can I be one of the rare few that doesn’t make the same mistakes that most founders do? I have to read enough references of the most successful individuals in business to pick up their character traits and patterns of thinking so I don’t fall prey to stupidity.

No one knows how it is except those who have done it.

Figure out your problems in the business and then find out how to solve them.

Novel ideas come from curiosity.

Curiosity is your compass. Do what you’re curious about.

“Don’t work harder. Work smarter”

… is absolute bullshit unless you’re already past $10 million. You don’t know shit yet. Work harder to gain the skill sets to learn how to think.

That’s when working smarter actually makes sense. Do both. There is no way to evade hard work through sheer brilliance. All great things require intensity and dedication.

Here is a powerful thing: if you can figure out a way to wrestle any fear you have and make it push you from behind rather than standing in front of you, you’ll be unstoppable.

There’s always something that needs doing. If you can put time and energy between you and the beast of fear, you’ll only become greater.

How to avoid company death:

What not to do:

• Other things: A startup is so hard that not working on it is fatal to the company.

• Don’t get demoralized. When disaster strikes, go harder.

• Be relentlessly resourceful. Relentless resourcefulness is the recipe for success.

“Make something people want” is the destination. “Be relentlessly resourceful” is how you get there.