A list of books I hate because they make young entrepreneurs think about business the wrong way.
A thread.
Zero to one - Peter Thiel
I don't get it. Entrepreneurs aren't trying to re-invent the wheel. The ones who do fail.
It's about small, incremental progress.
Blue Ocean Strategy - W Chan Kim
It's not about the blue ocean and a monopoly.
Its expensive, risky and you're going to fail. Find a pink ocean where the market exists and you can carve just enough for yourself.
Steve Jobs - Walter Isaacson
He's a jerk. What he did won't work for you. You can lead through fear or you can lead by getting folks who work for you to WANT to do the work.
How not to manage 101.
Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell
Why are we studying unicorns?
Don't try to be an outlier.
Do common things uncommonly well and you'll win.
Millionaire fastlane - M J Demarco
He suggests finding a tech biz to invent, making a bunch of money, and then putting it in government bonds to earn just enough to get by through retirement.
A ridiculous way to invest a nest-egg.
Art of War - Sun Tzu
Book idea: be extremely vague like a palm reader and let people use their imagination.
The Secret - Rhonda Byrne
A joke. Accomplishing things takes action, doing, working and making things happen.
Good to Great - Jim Collins
Just what we need! More case studies on massive fortune 500 companies!
Start with Why - Simon Sinek
Let's study folks who founded tech unicorns and make a bunch of early estimates about their passions and what they did best and act like they are heros.
The theme:
These books outline principles that work very well for fortune 500 CEOs and billionaires. If you want to change the world then read these books.
But...
These themes are not applicable to opportunists. Folks who start small.
Folks who put themselves out there with a small biz. Folks who are worried about cashflow and doing common things well.
Forget these books and get out there and learn to sell yourself and your ideas.
Go make $1000. Don't try to change the world.
Build a sustainable business that can help YOU accomplish your goals.
Spend your time studying unicorns and you'll end up working for somebody else.
Spend your time looking for opportunity and you'll make something of yourself.
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It outlines and reinforces the fact that business, negotiation and any human interaction is inherently very emotional. Mirroring, tactical empathy, starting with no and labeling are all phenomenal.
The first stop for any beginner. This is a great book about the importance of creating a business that can thrive without you. Preaches a lot of my favorite business principles like working on the things that are important but not urgent.
A thread on how real estate investors, developers and operators can make millions a year and pay almost nothing in TAXES by using depreciation, bonus depreciation, and 1031 exchanges.
How it works:
Depreciation is the act of slowly, over time, deducting the initial expense of an asset against your taxable income. Generally over a 27.5 (residential) or 39 (commercial) yr time frame. So each year you can write off 2-3.6% of the purchase price against your income.
Thats a big deal. We're buying a new property, a $3MM self storage facility. Thats a $60k a year write off against about $260k in NOI and 200k in cashflow on a $3MM deal.
My partner and I started a business out of our dorm rooms in 2011 while Juniors in college.
But our tool of choice wasn’t groundbreaking code.
It was a 1999 ford cargo van we bought for $1500 on craigslist.
A thread about me.
It was a pickup and delivery storage business for college students. When they went home for the summer, we picked up all of their stuff and stored it nearby. Then we’d bring it back to them when they came back.
We didn’t make much money at all the first few years.
A lot of grinding. Late late nights in warehouses. 140 hour work weeks.