17 shower thoughts on business & career 🧵
Be great at setting expectations.

I have never met a good employee or a good founder that fails to set proper expectations.
Write down your decisions.

Memorializing your thoughts & revisiting them is one of the greatest ways to accelerate personal growth.
Time creates clarity of thought.

When you're unsure or fear that emotions are playing into a decision, take a break and revisit later.
Follow your passion is bullshit.

Passion isn't a light switch. It's a process and it's a feeling that ebbs and flows.

Follow your skills, your energy, and what pays the bills.
Who you work for > what you work on

Your manager makes or breaks your experience.

Working on horrible shit with a great manager is better than working on great shit with a horrible manager.
Psychological safety is the most underrated aspect of culture.

Want to suck the life out of a business?

Create an environment where employees fear sharing ideas, concerns, and questions.
Pull employees push a company forward.

The best people I've ever hired default to action & think three steps ahead.

Proactivity is a secret weapon.
The Peter Principle is a real thing.

Every employee can be promoted to the point of incompetence.

It makes you realize that hyper-promotion can be a bad thing.
Knowing what you don't know is more important than knowing what you know.

When you know what you don't know you remove blindspots.

When you know what you don't know you can ask for help.
Hiring is an acquired skill not a spidey sense.

First-time founders & managers think they're the world's greatest recruiter.

They think they have this sixth sense about spotting talent.

I know, because I was one of those people.

It's bullsh*t. Hiring is learned.
Managing is a game of opposing skills.

It's part coaching.
- support
- safety
- empathy

And it's part managing.
- goal-setting
- feedback-providing
- accountability
The greatest way to network is through creating content.

People want to connect with people who enhance their thinking.

The best way to show you are a good thinker is by being a good writer.

Luckily, the cost of writing is ZERO thanks to the internet.
Imposter Syndrome is normal.

I suffer from it & so do millions of others.

You doubt yourself & feel like a fraud because you have lofty ambitions.

Know that you're not alone & know that you have fears because you really care.
Procrastination is normal.

I've hated myself for procrastinating since college.

And I've finally accepted that it's part of the process.

Of course, we can always strive to be more efficient and effective.

But to expect zero procrastination is to be living in the clouds.
Long walks are food for the mind & soul.

I find my best ideas & my biggest breakthroughs happen when i'm in motion.

Long walks help ground me in the present & separate me from technology.

It's a great recipe for elevated thinking.
Making big, audacious, educated asks is a competitive advantage.

We fear asking for things because we fear rejection.

But know what's even worse than rejection?

Regret.
Keeping your word is a competitive advantage.

95% of people:
- are late
- miss deadlines
- forget to send an email

If you say you're going to do something and then do it, you'll outperform most people in the workplace.
What other important lessons am I missing?

Reply with your ideas 👇
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@businessbarista

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More from @businessbarista

22 Jun
Most people f*ck up meetings.

We spend ~12 hours/wk in them.

We spend 3 years of our career in them.

Yet we don't do anything to make meetings better.

Here are 6 ways to fix them today 🧵
Meetings are a last resort, not a first option.

There's a HUGE opportunity cost.

A one-hour meeting with five people isn't a one-hour meeting.

It's a five-hour meeting in terms of cost.

Understand the opportunity cost of every meeting you call.
Cut all meetings by 33% when scheduling.

I hate when a meeting goes the full time because that's what the calendar says.

If a meeting is 30 minutes, schedule for 20.
If a meeting is 60 minutes, schedule for 40.

It forces you to stay on track & respect everyone's time.
Read 9 tweets
18 Jun
Amazon's 1997 Shareholder Letter provides a glimpse into the brilliance of Jeff Bezos.

It's a free MBA class in Strategy & Leadership.

Here are 4 lessons from it 🧵
Lesson 1: Choose your words wisely

The letter is 1,617 words.
Customer occurs 25 times.

That word focuses Bezos & focuses the people that look to him for guidance.
Jeff knows that while Amazon's mission is simple, execution is nearly impossible.

To succeed, the company's northstar must be unmistakeable to everyone.

Everything in this letter comes back to the customer.
Read 12 tweets
14 Jun
Owning your business doesn't mean controlling your business.

Here are 6 steps to take control of your business 🧵
Let's set the stage. It's 2019.

@MorningBrew looks wildly different.

• 15 employees.
• Working out of WeWork.
• 3 products.

Everything about the company is younger, smaller, and earlier.
But the biggest difference in the company is how we are thinking and operating.

Planning and process are two words not in our vocabulary.
Read 20 tweets
10 Jun
Who you surround yourself with is who you become.

9 steps for optimizing your circle 🧵
Step 1: grab 2 sheets of paper and a pen/pencil/sharpie
Step 2: on first sheet, make a list of your 10-20 closest personal connections

For me, this includes:

- Mom
- Girlfriend
- @austin_rief (co-founder)
- @SahilBloom (friend)

I get to 17 connections on my list.
Read 16 tweets
8 Jun
I recently invested some $$ in Bitcoin.

Here's why 🧵
First, why did it take me so long to buy?

I hadn’t taken the time to research BTC myself.

Never make a decision just because a bunch of people on Twitter tell you to.

Use loud voices as a sign to do research, not make decisions.
Second, I spent 30 hours researching prior to pulling the trigger. Why?

1) If I lost my investment it would definitely sting.

2) I think of Bitcoin as a gateway drug to other applications of blockchain technology.
Read 13 tweets
7 Jun
“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with"

This old adage is wrong in two BIG ways.

Here's why👇
First, the number is wrong.

Five should be more like 50.

Today, far more than five things influence who you are and who you'll become.
That's thanks to the internet.

It has unlocked connection truly unbundling the human experience.

What was Town Square is now Twitter.

What was University is now YouTube.

What was the local bar is now Clubhouse.
Read 12 tweets

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