If you do business, you’ll get stressed.

It’s unavoidable.

Here are 10 ways I’ve learned to deal with stress (mostly because this year has sucked so bad): 1/ Don’t pretend it doesn’t suck.

In our culture, leaders and CEOs are supposed to pretend stress doesn’t get to them.

Don’t fall into that trap.

Acknowledge it’s tough, and you’ll deal with it better.

We hired a private chef to cook for our family.

Call me an elitist, but I was shocked how affordable it was.

Here’s the breakdown: For people asking how we did it:

Advertised (craigslist/thumbtack worked best)
Looked at 10 candidates
Phone screened 4
Checked references on 2. Ran a background check.
Did one paid trial day
Hired him

Now he comes by one day a week, for about 6 hours.

Cooks at our place, then cleans.

Meals in tupperware, ready for us to do our thing.

My brutally honest career advice:

A ton of US jobs are going to be irrelevant soon.

Globalization, AI, the shrinking birth rate… these supertrends are changing everything.

BUT: here are 5 careers with rock solid futures in the USA: #1: GOVERNMENT CONTRACTS

Government spending is sticky. And not going anywhere.

Here’s my simple system for KPIs

Financial statements show a company's past.

But… How do you predict the future of your business?

You need a KPI (Key Performance Indicator) system.

Here’s how I do them. 🧵 I’ll use our company @hirewithnear to explain.

Near helps companies hire nearshore employees in LATAM.

Here’s a screenshot of their KPIs (actual #'s removed!).

This simple spreadsheet shows the future of the business.

Here's how we did it:

From the Mr Beast "how to work here" guide.

Interesting how this mindset towards consultants is radically different than how Gen X/Boomers see them. But this makes sense from first principles:

1) Find the absolute best in the world at a thing
2) Pay them (well) just to teach you that thing
3) Do it yourself using that knowledge

Aldi is the fastest-growing grocery chain in America.

They’re adding 800 new stores in the next few years.

Here are 9 things they do differently: * Aldi keeps staple foods cheap

Customers don’t remember the price of everything.

But they remember the stuff they buy all the time:

Milk, bread, eggs.

Lesson: Human psychology means shoppers feel like everything is cheaper.

How to sell a business, make a ton of money — and pay no taxes.

For the right person, this strategy is gold.

Read on 👇 The answer is QSBS ("Qualified Small Business Stock")

A 1993 tax incentive... made amazing in 2017.

If you're a small business owner/investor, it can make you millions.

Board meetings are expensive.

So to make the most of it, you need a dead simple meeting format.

Here’s the simple, foolproof template used to oversee dozens of companies:

🧵 👇 We'll use a fictional company to show how we do things:

"Grilldey’s"

It’s a beloved neighborhood bar and grill with big ambitions.

I’ll walk through the format we use, step by step.

I considered moving out of the USA.

After some research, I realized leaving is stupid.

There is no chance the USA will stop being the global superpower.

And the best country for opportunity.

The reason surprised me:

⬇️ First, the usual arguments for optimism about USA are:

• democracy
• the rule of law
• the US Dollar
• aircraft carriers (i.e., strongest military)
• immigration
• entrepreneurial culture
• and many more.

But...

Many companies’ KPIs are way overcomplicated.

And a pain to track and fill out!

It misses the whole point of why KPIs exist:

To predict the future of your business.

Here’s my simple system to make them useful again: 👇 I’ll use our company @hirewithnear to explain.

Near helps companies hire nearshore employees in LATAM.

Here’s a screenshot of their KPIs (actual #'s removed!).

This simple spreadsheet shows the future of the business.

Here's how we did it:

I’ve watched my friends make $1,000,000s.

The secret?

Investing in ways only business owners can.

8 unconventional ways they did it: 1) Acquire one of your suppliers

• Both businesses get guaranteed supplier/customer
• “Vertical integration” = efficiency
• Gives you a competitive advantage

Example: Grocery chain buys the local milk supplier.

When people start something with a partner…

They often make a big mistake.

They don’t create alignment on Day 1.

It can end in disaster later.

Here’s the tool to solve that. 🧵 It’s called a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU).

You and your partner(s) put down in writing:

• What's the idea/vision
• Who's doing what
• What's our plan

It’s not a contract or legal document.

You usually write it yourself with no lawyers.

After being in hundreds of board meetings, I've learned:

World-class board members are worth their weight in gold.

Here's how the greatest board members set themselves apart.

🧵 ** They sprint to problems

When a company stumbles, great board members jump in right away.

“We have a problem, you say? Let’s get on the phone today and do some work!”

Average board members let problems get solved -- sooner or later.

Now is a turbulent time in our economy.

My eldest son is about to go to college.

He asked me what careers to pursue, and what to avoid.

Here’s what I told him: First, look at what trends are going on in the world.

- Globalization of workforce
- Reindustrialization of USA
- Shrinking birth rate
- Emergence of AI
- Increasing size of US gov’t spend

So what do you do with this knowledge?

First, what to AVOID:

A lot of people think all HoldCos are basically Berkshire Hathaway.

But believe it or not, we’re not all Warren Buffett.

There’s actually 4 different types of HoldCos.

And they’re each useful in different situations. 🧵 Here are the 4 types of HoldCos:

1) HoldCo (eg. Berkshire Hathaway)
2) Accumulator (eg. @dura_software)
3) Platform (eg. Roper)
4) Roll-up (eg. Waste Management)

These are shown here (thanks @willschoebs and Scott Management):

I spent $96,000 producing videos this last year.

I gained 2,200 followers.

With some videos getting <100 views.

But I’ve finally figured it out. (I think.)

Here are the 8 biggest things I’ve learned from a year of failing (and now succeeding) at video: A little background:

I’ve been hard-core creating on social the past few years.

I love teaching, and it makes business building so much easier.

But I realized I was only on one platform (Twitter)… and what if something happened to it?

I decided to branch out into video.

Americans are terrified to be honest with each other.

We go to parties or work, but everyone keeps tough talk to themselves.

(I have 10-year colleagues and I don’t know their religion or politics.)

I only realized how weird this is when I visited other countries.

👇🧵 If I want to improve continually, American culture makes it hard.

I need feedback from others to get better.

Here’s my OVER THE TOP feedback system I run:

(Yes, it’s stupid I have to do this but I’m playing the hand I’m dealt!)

We hired a private chef to cook for our family.

It was an amazing decision.

What we learned was surprising: Context: my son has a chronic health problem.

So we needed breathing room.

I looked at our time and frustration each week.

Food was a big pain.

We ate poorly, rushed meals and spent hours in prep/planning.

On our podcast @acquanon, we see this often:

A retiring person owns a business worth $750k.

But they used that business years ago to own real estate worth $5mm today.

This is how to set it up. 🧵 It's called the "OpCo / PropCo" structure...

Your business is the Operating Corporation (the "OpCo").

You buy the real estate via a "Property Corporation" you create.

OpCo rents your business real estate from PropCo.

Generation X is weird.

These 43-58 year-olds are so strange it presents golden opportunities.

Here are 10 mind hacks to use with Gen X: DISCLAIMER: I’ll be generalizing.

Not every Gen X will think this way.

Especially those Gen Xers closer in age to either Boomers (born 1946-64) or Millennials (born 1981-96).

But these will work with most.

I know a big business where no employees quit for a whole year.

How?

The CEO spends tons of time communicating their story.

One great tool for this is...

The Open Book Meeting.

Here’s how we do ours: This meeting has different names:

· Open Book
· All Hands
· Townhall

Our type is called “Open Book.”

This name reflects the nature of the meeting:

The CEO updates the entire company, good and bad -- with transparency.

Increasing:

· alignment
· engagement
· culture