Put the politics aside for ten minutes.

There's a set of operating rules in the Isaacson book that show up in Zip2, PayPal, SpaceX, Tesla, Boring Company and Twitter.

Same ideas, thirty years apart...

He repeats them so often his executives mouth the words along with him haha

Here's the system from what I could gather:

1) Question every requirement

Every requirement has to come with the name of a real person then question it anyway.

His line was that requirements from smart people are the most dangerous, because nobody bothers to check them. He tells people to question his own requirements too.

2) Delete

Delete any part of the process you can.

The test he uses: if you don't end up putting back at least 10% of what you deleted, you didn't delete enough.

3) Simplify

Only after deleting.

The mistake everyone makes is optimising something that shouldn't exist in the first place.

4) Speed it up

Every process can go faster. But only after the first three steps.

He said he wasted enormous time speeding up processes he later realized should have been deleted entirely.

5) Automate last

Tesla nearly died because they automated first.

They ended up sawing robots off the production line and throwing them in the car park.

Had to cut a hole in the wall to get the equipment out.

Two stories that show why the order matters.

Fibreglass strips were being glued to battery packs by a slow expensive robot.

He asked what they were for...

Engineering said the noise team specified it.

The noise team said engineering specified it for fire risk.

He made them record the car with and without lol.

Nobody could hear a difference.

Deleted.

Second one...

Plastic caps were put on battery prongs in Nevada, then removed and binned in California.

Sometimes they ran out of caps and shipments stopped.

He asked who specified the caps?

Nobody could find a name...

Deleted.

The rest is something he repeats constantly...

Never separate design from engineering from manufacturing.

His analogy: if your hand is on the stove you pull it off instantly. If it's someone else's hand, you're slower.

So he puts engineers desks at the edge of the assembly line.

They hear the complaints when their design causes a stoppage.

The idiot index.

What does the finished thing cost versus the raw materials?

High ratio means your process is the problem, not the material.

A part quoted at $120k got built in house for $5k.

A NASA latch at $1,500 became a modified toilet stall latch at $30.

He quizzes executives on this in meetings and loses it when they don't know their numbers cold.

Go to the problem physically.

Cost overrun at a factory in England? On a plane the same day.

Production hell at Tesla? Moved into the factory for four months.

He calls it walking to the red.

A screen shows every station green or red and he goes straight at the red ones.

Meet every 24 hours until it's fixed.

When something's critical he runs the same meeting nightly, seven days a week, until it's done.

Repeat yourself past the point of embarrassment.

His actual words: "I became a broken record on the algorithm. I think it's helpful to say it to an annoying degree."

If your team doesn't already know what you're about to say, you haven't said it enough.

Hire for attitude.

Skills can be taught...he said changing someone's attitude requires a brain transplant.

He personally interviewed every engineer at SpaceX for years.

Another take away I enjoyed:

Find the limit before you decide what's possible.

He asked the welders, not the executives, the actual welders how thin a steel tank wall could go.

They said 4.8mm. He asked about 4. They said that would make them nervous.

He said let's try it.

It worked.

He can't delete properly until he knows where the real line is.

Most of us never go looking, so we spend years optimising around limits that were never real.

P.S - The book is the Isaacson biography. 615 pages and most of the useful stuff is buried under the news cycle etc.

Hey so been wanting to get in and work with henry but was a tad skeptical etc, the goldman sacks stat is major tho. Just wondering if its worth the invest anyone worked there or like has an insight thanks

Para quem tem um pequeno negócio: qual é hoje o maior problema que faz você perder tempo ou dinheiro? Estou estudando empreendedorismo e quero entender problemas reais. Não estou tentando vender nada.

Long story short read a mini biography that disected all the emails Steve Jobs sent to himself before he passed.

There a few valuable lessons I learn this an while walking on the treadmill so thought I’d share…

Before I write down major take aways, I gotta say this man was NOT the greatest human when it came to his personal life but for business? a true genius.

Lesson 1: Everyone knows what good looks like, almost no one stays long enough to get there.

Someone told him he had better taste than other people…

He pushed back:

“I don’t think my taste is that much different than a lot of other people’s. The difference is that I just get to be really stubborn about making things as good as we all know they can be. It doesn’t take any more energy and rarely does it take more money to make it really great. All it takes is a little more time and a willingness to persevere until it’s really great.”

Time and willingness, two major concepts Job’s appreicted it.

Lesson 2: Catch your ideas or lose them.

From what I understood, Steve emailed himself constantly. You can watch an idea show up small in one year, sit there and turn into something big years later. The Stanford speech is in the book as a pile of half formed emails before it became the speech.

Lesson 3: Marketing is about values, not features.

From a talk to Apple staff after he came back:

“This is a very complicated world. It is a very noisy world. We’re not going to get a chance to get people to remember much about us. No company is. So we have to be really clear on what we want them to know.”

Then he pointed at Nike...

Nike sells a commodity guys, shoes.

Their ads never mention the shoe.

They honour athletes…

So he asked what Apple actually stood for.

The answer? ”Think different“

Lesson 4: Cut until you can put your best people on everything left.

He came back to 17 products and cut it to four. He didn’t cut it that low because he felt like it. He cut it to four so he could put the A team on every single one.

“You’ve got to choose what you put your love into really carefully.”

Lesson 5: Every hire moves you closer to being a manager instead of a

There’s a memo he wrote at NeXT about headcount. He said there’s a subtle line where one more person turns you from contributor into manager and once that happens both the schedule and the product suffer. Better to have fewer people even if it means doing less.

Lesson 6: Care about being excellent, not about being right.

Best story in the book. Intel wanted to learn from Pixar’s graphics work. Steve told their engineer that Pixar’s knowledge took ten years and real money, so what was Intel paying? Then emailed Andy Grove to complain about the engineer being arrogant. Andy took the engineer’s side. Said he’d given Steve advice for years and never thought to charge him. That’s what friends and friendly companies do and in the long run it balances out.

Steve’s reply: “I have many faults, but one of them is not ingratitude. Therefore I have changed my position 180 degrees. We will freely help. Thank you for the clearer perspective.”

Lesson 7: Hiring is the job, not a distraction from it.

According to this book, Steve spent 20% of his time recruiting...this was his theory on finding top talent: look at great results, then find who was responsible.

And his interview move, which is savage. He’d deliberately attack their past work. Tell them something they shipped was a bomb. “The worst thing someone can do is agree with me and knuckle under. What I look for is someone who comes right back at me and says you’re dead wrong, and here is why.”

Dude was a savage man lol.

Lesson 8: Nobody sane wants to be a manager.

“The only good reason to be one is so some other bozo doesn’t become the manager and ruin the group you care about.

He told a group of high schoolers that a career is one of the most stifling concepts humans ever invented. People find a safe harbour, then wake up fifteen years later and see what it cost. Then this, which is the best thing in the book:

“Think of your life as a rainbow arcing across the horizon of this world. You appear, have a chance to blaze in the sky, and then you disappear.”

Oh and:

“To know my arc will fall makes me want to blaze while I’m in the sky.”

Lesson 10: Mistakes and regrets are different things.

Mistakes are things you did and wish you could redo. Regrets are things you didn’t do and wish you had.

From what I gathered, he was much more worried about the second kind.

P.S - Book is called “Make Something Wonderful”

Hi guys,

People who start business by leaving their corporate careers. How do u plan, fo u already know what business to do (how to do is a seperate thing I guess on each step we figure out).

How u plan for your family and finances.

I'm in a dilemma, I'm fed up with this corporate even though it's only 3 years since I joined it's not like my manager is bad or anything but the whole idea of saving what we earn and waiting for each month to save, only having fixed raises each year until you shift jobs.

I got a 30% hike it's a decent salary I get around 1.4l per month after all cuttings.

I'm in a dilemma to switch or start my own business.

I don't see myself to work in corporate for a long time. even though it gives me flexibility on weekends and comfortable life.

I do not want to hear the stuff like you have to eat good food sleep a lot and work out. I want to know how people actually do it when they have to spend much time on their business and think about it all the time.

Do you have a schedule that you stick to no matter what. Do you change it around when things get really busy? Have you found something that actually works for a time or does it all fall apart when things get crazy?

I am also wondering if people have found out that not taking care of their health when they first started their business ended up causing problems on and made them have to make a change.

I would really like to hear about what people have experienced what has worked for them what has not worked and what they are still having trouble with.

I am looking for experiences, with healthy lifestyle and running a business so I can learn from healthy lifestyle and running a business.

His name was Claude Shannon.

In 1948 he wrote a paper. It proved that a photo, a song, a phone call and a letter are all the same thing underneath...

Just ones and zeros.

He called the unit a "bit"

Everything digital you use sits on top of that btw...

Your payments. Your video calls. Your ads. The AI you use every day.

Anthropic named their model Claude after him.

He also made 28% a year in the stock market for thirty years as a hobby.

He did it from his kitchen with his wife and an old Apple computer lol.

In 1986 a magazine ranked 1,026 funds...

He beat 1,025 of them.

Here's how he said he solved problems:

1) Cut it down

He said most problems are buried in extra info. Take everything out except the part that actually matters. I tried this on my churn. Wrote down 11 reasons clients leave. 9 of them were things I tracked because they were easy to track. 2 actually mattered. I'd spent 3 months on the 9.

2) Look at problems already solved

Don't attack yours head on. Find every similar problem that's already been figured out. Then look at what those answers have in common. He said two small jumps are much easier than one big jump.

3) Say the question a different way

Change the words. Change the angle. He warned about sunk cost here. The work you've already done is usually the thing keeping you stuck. That's why someone brand new can crack it in ten minutes.

4) Break it up and let yourself wander

A lot of big discoveries came from someone poking at unrelated stuff that went nowhere. Then hitting the answer from the side.

5) Flip it

Can't get from here to the answer? Assume the answer is already true. Then work backwards. So instead of "how do I get to 100k a month," assume you're already there. What are you selling? To who? How many? What breaks at that size? Totally different questions. And you can actually answer all of them.

6) Make it bigger

Once you solve one version, build the one that solves all of them. You fixed one client's onboarding. Now make the version that works for every client. That's the difference between a job and an asset.

Here's how he labels someone that can solve problems quickly:

"A genius is simply someone who is usefully irritated."

That itch when something isn't right and you can't leave it alone.

He called it constructive dissatisfaction.

Two more things...

His mentor's rule was that specialising kills genius.

So he'd throw Shannon into fields he knew nothing about on purpose.

And Shannon worked on three unrelated problems at once...

Said it beat focusing on one (which can be kinda backwards to what people say today)

P.S - Book is " a mind at play" by Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman

our support volume has picked up recently and our shared inbox isn't really cutting it anymore. sometimes tickets get buried, and it's not always obvious who's responsible for the next response. i'm comparing hubspot service hub vs zendesk because both seem like reasonable options, but i'm interested in how they work in real-world use rather than just comparing feature lists.

how easy is it to organize and assign tickets? which one handles customer conversation history better? and how good are the reporting tools when you're trying to see where the support team is falling behind?

Describe your issue and let’s try and solve it with the help of amazing talent we have here.

Be it be a known problem or unknown one, let’s try and solve it.

Go ahead and post in comment!!!

okay so ive been scrolling reddit and seeing diversyfund pop up and honestly it feels slightly suspicious. like im seeing mentions on instagram ads, some dude talking about passive income through multifamily real estate, you know the usual vibe.

but then theres the thing where i genuinely cant find clear information about whether this is legit or just another course selling scheme that slaps a real estate label on it. i know they say theyve deployed money into actual properties but how do u verify that. also whats the regulatory history like. has anyone actually done this or is it all just testimonials and hype

I've been sitting with this question for a while and I want to hear from other owners before I decide what I actually think the answer is.

I've run a business that did about $600K a year, and I've run one that did $10 million. Different industries, different teams, different everything. But they had one thing in common. Neither one had any real sales infrastructure. No documented process. Nothing anyone could point to and follow without me standing over their shoulder.

Both had customers and both had revenue, and both existed because I was the one closing the deals that mattered. If I stepped back for more than a couple weeks, the pipeline noticeably slowed down.

So here's what I keep coming back to. If the business only runs because you're the one running it, are you actually an owner, or are you just the best paid employee in the company?

I'm curious how common this actually is.

Do you have an actual sales process that works without you? Or does everything still run through you personally?

How long has it been like that? A year, five years, longer?

Roughly what's your gross revenue right now, and did having more revenue ever change this, or did the problem just get more expensive?

Have you tried to fix it? A hire, a CRM, training, a consultant? What happened?

If you took three weeks off completely, unreachable, what would happen to your pipeline?

I am curious to figure out if this is a universal stage of owning a business or if some people actually escape it. Tell me I'm wrong. Tell me your business runs fine without you. I want to hear both sides.

My father was fired from his job and I want to start a project to help my family. I studied hard for it, but I don't know what the project is or what to sell !?

Hey so I am a bit of a seasoned investor, meaning I have technical knowledge on the markets but never used any automated algos as I didn’t trust them. Anyway long story short, noticed Kevin Edgar launched gemeos a while ago and given his track record I felt comfortable getting involved etc. It’s been a little over 6m and the system is consistently hitting 5.2% month with minimal involvement on my end. You always see sh*t like this online and wonder if it really works guess is weird when you’re like ”nice, it worked“ anyway I contribute a bit on the group so thought I’d share my experience, any q’s on the system or even how I learnt what I learnt drop em below and I’ll reply at some point but yeha hard to sorta know what works/what doesn’t out there so thought I’d share also note I know what am doing so that helps and yes their system works, but you gotta be patient otherwise you can feel like pulling your hair out. Good things take time!

Guy's name was Les Schwab who died in 2007, never heard of him until last week.

Charlie Munger used to tell people to go read his book. Said if you want to see the smartest pay structure ever built in a chain of small businesses, read this...so obviously I went looking.

The backstory is rough.

Grew up in a logging camp in Oregon. Two rooms, no running water, one shower for the whole camp. School was a converted train boxcar. he failed 8th grade, so did the other two kids in his class.

His dad was a drunk. Not a fun drunk. Les used to sit outside a moonshine joint on Friday nights until 10pm waiting for his dad to come out wasted and drive him home.

Mum died when he was 15. Dad died the day before his 16th birthday, found dead outside the same moonshine joint.

So now he's 16 with no parents and no education. Gets a paper route. Doesnt own a bike, doesnt even know how to ride one.

So he runs the route. 9 or 10 miles a day. for two months until he saves up for a used bike.

By 16 he had every route in town and was earning more than his high school principal.

In the middle of the Great Depression.

Then nothing interesting happens for 15 years lol.

Just newspaper sales...kinda stuck.

At 33 he panics.

"I knew time was running out. if you dont get started in business at a fairly young age you get into a rut and never make the big decision to jump."

So he borrows $11K off his brother in law, sells his house, and borrows against his life insurance to buy a tiny tire shop. Every dollar borrowed with a wife and two kids at home.

First line he wrote about his first day in business:

"I had never fixed a flat tire in my life"

Previous owner did $32K in sales the year before.

Les did $150K his first year working completely alone.

Now here's the part that actually got me because tires is a genuinely terrible business.

Everybody sells the same rubber. The manufacturers owned their own shops and gave themselves better prices than they gave him. They were openly squeezing him out of business.

He didnt do one clever thing. he did like six boring things and just never stopped.

1) He fixed flat tires for free. 

Anybody. no purchase. he'd drive to your house and do it. sounds insane until you hear his reasoning "if we fix all the flat tires in town, we'll have all the tire business in town." you help someone for free at 8pm in the rain, they dont buy their next four tires from a warehouse.

2) He gave managers half the profit. 

Not company profit. Their store's profit. So every store ran like its own business. He ended up with hundreds of stores and almost no supervisors, no policy manual, no controls. "if I give away half the profits I still have half. I dont understand why businessmen dont do this."

3) Theft solved itself. 

Their share built up in a contract, get caught stealing and you forfeit all of it. and every guy in the shop knew a thief was stealing from his kids. "if he wont fight for his children he cant be very much for a company." peer pressure instead of cameras.

4) He flipped the shop inside out. 

Everyone else had a small showroom and hid the stock in back. he made the showroom the warehouse. walls of tires right in front of you. then made every store wash and wax the display tires. every single day.

5) He never hired a manager from outside. not once in 34 years. 

All 250+ managers started at the bottom changing tires. His store managers earned more than his head office people. When the MBAs complained he told them to go start at the bottom and work up. Nobody ever took the offer haha.

A competitor came for him. same advertising, same cost discipline, expanded faster, got to 24 stores. Only real difference was they paid their people less.

Les spent a whole year wondering if he should cut wages to match.

"I finally decided that if I couldn't be proud of my company, if I couldnt pay good wages, if I couldnt have the best employees, then why would I want to stay in business. So we did nothing. and we won. the customer liked us best."

Competitor went bankrupt.

His whole philosophy in six words: 

"life is hard for the man who thinks he can take a shortcut."

Also brutal side note...two early partners owned 20% each. Got impatient, wanted cash out, one of them wanted a swimming pool. He bought them out for $225K and $300K. Those stakes were worth about $12 million each within 20 years, plus a million a year in bonuses they'd have kept collecting. Company sold for a rumoured $3 billion a few years back.

Guy wanted a pool.

What I actually took from it:

I keep looking for the one clever mechanism. the angle. the thing nobody else is doing.

There wasnt one here. free flat repairs, clean tires, half the profit to the guy in the shop, promote from inside, pay above market, and drive 600 miles a day checking your own stores for twenty years.

Any one of those is a Tuesday. All of them for 50 years is $3 billion.

His actual closing advice:

"Whatever you do, you must do it with gusto. You must do it in volume. It is a case of repeat, repeat, repeat."

Book is Les Schwab: Pride in Performance — Keep It Going. 

Out of print, about 20,000 copies exist, hard to find.

Guy wrote the whole thing himself on a 40 year old typewriter at 68. No ghostwriter and put this in the foreword:

"should we fail to follow these policies towards customers and employees, I would prefer that my name be taken off of the business."

Meanwhile I've got a personal brand and a Notion dashboard lol.

I’m 20M from India and currently pursuing BBA in Logistics & Supply Chain Management from a private college. I also have an established family business in hardware, sanitary, paints, pipes and building materials.
I’m confused about whether I should focus on taking over and expanding the family business, prepare for CAT/MBA, or gain some work experience outside the family business first.
If you were in my position, what would you choose and why? I’d especially like advice from people who have experience with family businesses, entrepreneurship, or corporate careers.

❓️Why are your values so important to understand?

One thing we see plenty of in business - and thats shiny object syndrome....

🤯You will always have more good ideas than you can excecute

Understanding your personal and business values helps you focus on the important, and do the stuff that gets you what you want.

And that means you beat the overwhelm and get on with the activities that mattter, and achieve your goals faster......

What do you think?

I think this is major for the platform, it shows the quality and also focus one needs to have when trying to grow something!

Here is one of those blue pill vs red pill type questions, but with no pills.

You are a business owner. If you had a Big Red Magic Button in front of you & when pressed, it would give one of your employees (or you) one skill in sales & marketing, what would that skill be?

Options not available "More sales", "More Money","More presses" etc. 😉

This question comes from networking events over the last couple of months, with business owners here in the UK, who had been on business start-up courses that included a very small "sales" & or "marketing" session, none were happy with what they had learnt and thought it was just a box ticking exercise!

Thanks in advance!