There are a lot of underrated skills in this world.

Attributes that aren’t openly discussed but are widely shared by the most successful among us.

Here's how you can increase your chances. Knowing what advice to take (and what to ignore) is a superpower.

My method:

Take it from anyone.

Weigh it according to how happy / successful the giver is.

Put it through my bullshit meter.

Do the work to apply it to my life.

Ignore 75% of it.

Cherish the rest.

A mindset shift that really changed my life: Walk into every single interaction with the goal of adding as much value as humanly possible.

Don't think about charging money, withholding info, etc.

Prove you know your stuff.

Help in a massive way.

Gain trust. Profit later.

In 2021, I worked on a career-defining $75M self storage deal that could have generated tens of millions in enterprise value for my company Bolt Storage.

But we lost it to a competitor...

It hurt!

Here's what happened: The deal was for a 20 property portfolio (750K sq ft.)

The owner's brother-in-law follows me on X.

They wanted to sell their portfolio, so he called me to visit the properties to discuss buying them.

I went & loved the properties. I spent 4 hrs discussing the deal.

Why?

What successful people understood before they were successful.

A short thread. Mentorship isn’t about finding a great mentor.

It’s about becoming a person great mentors WANT to help.

5 counterintuitive things about running a company: #1:

If you love doing the work itself you’ll be disappointed.

Running any company at a high level has nothing to do with the actual service your company provides.

It involves hiring, delegation, recruiting, sales and performance management.

And solving problems all day.

People think hiring overseas is for virtual assistants.

THEY COULDN’T BE MORE WRONG.

I’ve rebuilt the sales teams at 4 of my companies from all over the world.

And they cost 80% less than US equivalents - as low as $6 per hr.

Here is a look at the TALENT: Paul - South Africa - $33,600 per year ALL IN

Experience as a manager, business owner and as a sales person.

Available for hire today. Send me a DM if you'd like to interview him or somebody like him!

A friend of mine makes about $500k a year and controls his own schedule.

3 kids. Travels a lot. Has hobbies. Works 30-40 hrs a week.

Here is the career path: Limped through college with below average grades.

Starbucks barista for 2 years making $12 an hour.

Got married at 24.

Took a job for $30k a year as an assistant at a bank.

There is always a bottleneck in every single business.

Here are the stages: 1. First it is customers.

If you already have the ability to provide the service yourself, you just need a customer or two to get the ball rolling.

As soon as you get those first few customers, you have a business and you are off to the races.

How to figure out if your business idea is any good in 5 minutes or less: My friend in Athens told me recently that he wanted to start a house painting business.

We were sitting on my back deck drinking a Keystone light on Saturday at about 4pm.

He asked me what I thought.

I went to work.

10 important things I've learned about hiring: #1: A unicorn isn't just going to walk in the door.

If you're looking for someone who cares about your business as much as you do, you'll never find them because they don't exist.

To succeed you have to build a business with systems where normal folks can thrive.

How to get rich without getting lucky: Find a way to make $100/hour doing something simple IN YOUR TOWN.

Do it until you have $10K+ in the bank & you’re too busy to sell new customers.

Hire employees for $20/hr to do what you do so you can sell new customers.

A funny thing:

Small businesses will spend $75k on a truck or $500k on a building or $10,000 a month in rent…

But they’ll run their multi-million dollar business with a $500 website that isn’t optimized. Hire a good web development agency and invest in a simple website that converts visitors into customers.

It is the way over half your customers will find you - get it right!

What successful people understood before they were successful: Mentorship isn’t about finding a great mentor.

It’s about becoming a person great mentors WANT to help.

How to grow a business the old fashioned way, a thread: Don't be afraid to do things that don't scale.

A friend of mine runs a landscaping company.

He gets most of his customers with yard signs and gets most of his employees with flyers taped up at gas pumps.

Doesn't have a website and he clears $250k + per year.

I still attribute a lot of my success to running every major career decision through this test from age 20 onward:

Which route increases the odds of me being able to do whatever I want with 100% my time when I’m 35 yrs old? It turns out, when I really did the math, I didn’t need a unicorn startup.

I needed to stash about $1MM (after tax) by 27 and then invest it wisely from there.

That definitely wasn’t going to happen with grad school or law.

And most normal jobs didn’t cut it either.

A hill I'll die on:

95% of entrepreneurs should forget about technology (a few big fish and a lot of sophisticated fishermen) and focus on small business (small fish everywhere and really crappy fishermen).

A THREAD... Be like water.

Take the path of least resistance.

The goal of every entrepreneur should be:

#1. Gain financial freedom

and

#2. Maximize the probability of achieving #1

I've been serious about personal development and getting better at business for 15+ years.

But not just reading and thinking about business...

I've put the concepts to work.

I sold my first business for 7 figures and built a real estate portfolio worth $100 million+.

I've now started several other successful companies and recently bought Shepherd with a group of phenomenal partners and investors.

Here are a few of my top takeaways: 20% of your customers will produce 80% of your profit.

20% of your customers will also produce 80% of your headache.

The sooner you learn THESE AREN'T THE SAME CUSTOMERS the sooner you can grow, scale and experience less stress.

I once made $10,000 in profit in one weekend as a college student with no money.

A thread on how I did it: It was about 8 weeks before graduation weekend in Ithaca NY in 2012.

I was a senior about to graduate.

My mother was bugging me to help her find a hotel near campus for graduation weekend.

It was for her, my father, my grandparents and my sister.

We needed three rooms.

The life of an entrepreneur can be brutally difficult.

But nobody talks about it.

Time for a stiff drink and a few words on some of the most stressful periods in my life.

A thread. The thing about being an entrepreneur is that there is nobody you can ask for help.

There is no boss you can call and dish off the really hard problems to.

High school sports is a different level today.

You can’t compete at most high schools unless you do travel leagues, summer leagues, camps, lessons and dedicate your life to it.

So screw it.

My kids will be average athletes, enjoy the outdoors and will be great at business.

I was a D1 All American. Still hold 3 college school records and 6 high school records.

But it ain’t worth it today. There are several sports that aren’t even worth playing.

Football is a brain injury waiting to happen.

Swimming is 4am and 4pm practice and 4 hours a day in the pool.

Volleyball and baseball are year round travel sports living out of hotels.

A thread on how to turn $100 into a lot more:

Sound silly? Good.

It really is this simple sometimes.

Lets go👇 First, get on your computer and buy a web domain.

Get a freelancer (upwork or fiverr) to make you a logo/flyer and get $45 worth of flyers printed at your local print shop.

Buy a box of sidewalk chalk if you really want to grind and get gritty.