My Story, My Movie
Who Knew 10,000 Hours Worth of Mistakes Would Turn Into 7 Awesome Lessons?
I was called crazy for dreaming and made fun of for my failures
“If I had to live my life again, I’d make the same mistakes, only sooner” — Tallulah Bankhead
Entrepreneurship is just French for “go get it.” (source: just trust me, bro)
It’s too easy to single out the term to only apply to business,
but entrepreneurship is EVERYTHING!
And if you create content online,
you are included in this category whether you acknowledge it or not.
Many want to grow but often ignore the importance of failure.
- I dropped out of college in 2018.
- By 2019, my car was on the verge of being repossessed.
- By the end of 2020, I was making over $8,000 a month doing sales.
- 1 quarter into 2021, I quit my 6-figure job to start my first business.
- We hit $1.1 Million in revenue (25% profit) by the end of that same year.
- In 2022 we doubled revenue, but our strategy sucked,
- and so did our profit.
- We’d end up stabilizing in 2023,
- but hidden was a deep gash that had been plaguing us since inception.
- And it was already too late to save us…
Even though the last 5 years were filled to the brim with highlights,
it was rock bottom that taught me the best lessons!
I was blessed to have learned so much —
Here are…
The 7 Awesome Lessons I Learned in 10,000 Hours
1. Do It Your Way
My career has been lined with people who disagree with my methods,
But the successes didn’t come until I embraced my own way.
People offer advice from their perspectives.
If it worked for them,
They think it will work for you, too.
They really don’t mean any harm,
In fact, they probably want you to succeed.
However, if you feel dissonance between the advice and your gut,
You should try implementing the advice in your own way,
Or just don’t take it *shrug.*
It’s your life at the end of the day,
And nobody else will have to live with the result.
So, find a way that works for you and do it your way!
“But more, much more than this, I stood tall and faced it all and I did it my way.” — Frank Sinatra
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2. Anything is Possible… With a Plan
Rule #1 to achieving something out of this world — PLAN IT OUT!
A plan can make something that seems impossible more realistic.
Did you know 66% of businesses are started without a formal business plan? (according to a 2015 survey)
Is it a mystery that only 25% of businesses make it to 15 years of age?
If you have a dream, plan it out — I am begging you.
Your plan needs 3 things: A budget, a scope, a timeline.
- Scope — how much work needs to be done to accomplish the plan?
- Budget — how many resources will be dedicated to the plan?
- Timeline — when will the plan and each of its parts be completed?
These 3 things will change each other as you get deeper into your plan.
- If the budget increases (maybe you now have more time to spend on it), your timeline will shorten, or maybe your scope will increase.
- Remember, creating a plan is only half of it. Make sure you monitor your progress and make the necessary adjustments.
3. Become an Expert
Identify the skills required to achieve your goals and master them.
- If you want to be a photographer, master framing, master exposure, master perspective.
- If you want to be a writer, master storytelling, master sentence structure, master networking.
Whatever you want to be, find someone who is an expert at ‘that,’
Then, identify what makes them an expert.
Those attributes are what you should master!
In due time, you become the expert!
4. Give Things Time
We’ve heard it before,
“Overnight success doesn’t happen overnight.”
Well, this will apply to virtually anything you can be successful at,
We have to be fair to ourselves.
If the work is being put in, and we’ve made a plan, it’s only a matter of time.
As a general rule of thumb,
I give things 90 days of sheer effort before changing my habits.
In my experience,
90 days is more than enough time to receive some form of reassurance.
Make sure to give your ‘thing’ enough time.
5. Create a Process ASAP
I am a firm believer that everything has a process,
A natural order.
When it comes to achieving something,
There’s a process for that, too.
In reflection, I made a huge mistake while starting my business.
I didn’t record any of the processes that made us an ‘overnight success.’
In just 8 months, we had made over $1 Million,
And I didn’t record a thing!
While I can reflect on the past to draft something up,
It just wouldn’t be the same.
In the past moments,
There are many variables and nuances that go unnoticed upon reflection.
Those little, tiny, seemingly insignificant details…
Are often the key to a process's replicability.
“The devil is in the details.”
The sooner you create a process,
The sooner you can revise it to make note of those tiny, powerful details.
The initial process doesn’t have to be perfect,
It’s only a starting place.
As you add to your process, reflect on the results.
This will be the key to its replicability.
Keep a journal and habit tracker—the easiest way to note your process.
6. Always Be Intentional
Actions without intention do nothing but waste time.
“It is a commonplace observation that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” — Cyril Parkinson (Parkinson’s Law)
In my 3-year stint as a CEO, I wore many hats: Accounting, Sales, Customer Service, Management, HR, etc.
And the days when I worked without intention,
Were just busy days where I accomplished nothing.
I’d spend 8 hours working on one or two tasks.
Plus, I was stressed as can be.
It felt like I was doing a lot,
But in reality, I wasn’t.
Upon observing this behavior, I knew something had to change.
I scoured the internet to find several books on productivity.
One by one, I opened listicle after listicle.
There was one book at the top of each… “Atomic Habits” by James Clear
So, I read it and found a fix to my problem.
See, I had been working without intention.
I’d go into each day without any clue what needed to be done.
As a result, new things kept popping in,
And every one of them seemed urgent,
Upon reflection, I realized that ‘Intention’ is simply action with a purpose.
To be intentional, I just had to put my tasks into a plan,
Make them purposeful.
Not long after my changes, I began working like a madman,
And I was 10x’ing my output within a week!
Don’t. Waste. Time.
Give yourself daily objectives and work from there.
A task list (Microsoft To-do) or Eisenhower matrix can help you prioritize.
7. Passion or Bust
My biggest lesson —
The gash that sabotaged my company from the beginning,
A lack of passion.
I started my company for a noble cause,
But my heart was never in it.
Entrepreneurship, content creation, writing, whatever… it’s all the same.
- It’s difficult.
- It’s exhausting.
- It’s likely to not work.
Most of the success comes from outlasting everyone else,
Outworking everyone else,
And outperforming everyone else.
It’s a dog-eat-dog world.
How can you survive with so many cards stacked against you?
My answer is: passion.
Passionate people work hard because they love what they do.
They are energized by their work,
Not drained.
They don’t care if it’s difficult —
They do it anyway, and they do it well.
They don’t care if it's profitable,
They’d do it for free.
How can any mortal compete with a monster like that?
Now, I see many people disagree on passion as a necessity for success,
But that begs me to ask, “Is it worth it if you aren’t happy?”
I’m not here to judge, this is just a list of lessons I’ve learned.
I can only speak from my experiences.
When my heart wasn’t in my business, it felt like a job, a prison.
My heart is 100% in this new venture,
I write 1,000 words a day without exhaustion.
I comment on other people’s content without complaint.
I write on my Substack every day to a small crowd of 20,
And it feels like I write to 1,000,000 people.
No one can compete with the unconditional love of what you do (passion).
If you are one of the passionate few looking for a place to belong,
Be sure to join my Substack!
I hope these lessons can bring you value!
Thanks for reading!
