Ever heard that riddle about whether you should take a million dollars or a penny, doubled each day for a month? Take the penny. You’ll end up with $1.3M if it’s a 28-day month, and as much as $10.7M if it’s a 31-day month. Doubling is extreme, but even growth of a fraction of a percent compounded every single day can achieve mind-boggling results. When you’re trying to go from idea to inception, progress each day is crucial. You can’t get stuck waiting for one big leap. You need to take at least one step every single day.
Category: Education Through Entrepreneurship
Lessons from Building Praxis – Part 3
When I knew I wanted nothing more than to get Praxis off the ground, there was one more hurdle before I got started. My most important partner in every endeavor needed to be on board. My wife.
Lessons from Building Praxis – Part 2
Failure sucks. It’s awful. It should be avoided. You shouldn’t feel weird for not liking failure. You should want to win. But some things are worth failing for. When you find one, you need to act, and fast.
Lessons from Building Praxis – Part 1
I had a lot of entrepreneurial ideas prior to Praxis. Most were pretty weak, some were good. But it didn’t matter. I didn’t have what it takes to execute on any of them until I pushed myself much, much harder on personal growth.
One Way to Tick People Off…
Achieve quickly what they labored long and hard for. This is guaranteed to enrage some set of people. Even if your success is not overnight, if it appears you achieved it quickly, or with fewer hoops than most in your field, they will not like it.
Get Your Ass Out There
You can’t sit behind a walled garden becoming an expert before you reveal your stuff to the world. No one hides for a decade, refining and refining, then releases a completed magnum opus to the world. It will suck.
Don’t Be Afraid to Be Interesting
Nearly every significant business connection I’ve made has been because of my deep love of ideas. The value of my radical, ideas-based network dwarfs that of my pure business/practical connections.
How Not to Change the World
Don’t run for class president. Don’t go to HOA meetings. Don’t join a committee. Don’t get involved in political campaigns. All of these activities are about reform. Get into the institution, play by its rules, and try to make it behave differently than it wants to. Forget this approach. It sucks. Here are four reasons why.
Meaningful Learning Is Just-in-Time, Not Just-in-Case
Average people learn what they need to avoid pain. Elite people learn what they need to get the grade, ace the test, win the award, gain certification, impress people, and obtain honors. Ascendant people don’t care about accolades or awards or tests or stickers or stars. They learn exactly what’s needed to solve a problem that matters to them, exactly when it’s needed. No more, no less. No sooner, no later.
How I Changed My Mind on Intellectual Property
I’d been solidly libertarian for many years the first time I gave thought to “intellectual property” (copyrights and patents) at all. Someone mentioned the protection of property, including intellectual property, as the root of prosperity and freedom. I agreed without hesitation. It just seemed to make sense.