Honesty is the fastest way to prevent a mistake from turning into a failure.
James Altucher
Your competition is not other people but the time you kill, the ill will you create, the knowledge you neglect to learn, the connections you fail to build, the health you sacrifice along the path, your inability to generate ideas, the people around you who don't support and love your efforts, and whatever god you curse for your bad luck.
Everyone is an entrepreneur. The only skills you need to be an entrepreneur: an ability to fail, an ability to have ideas, to sell those ideas, to execute on those ideas, and to be persistent so even as you fail you learn and move onto the next adventure.
Most people are not good people. In business, in art, in almost every 'world' I've been in, most people I've meet are pretty gray to black. It takes practice to be the person who is a source of compassion and honesty.
Don't time travel into the past, roaming through the nuances as if they can change. Don't bookmark pages you've already read.
The American Dream never really existed. It was a marketing scam.
The only way to make real wealth is to get rid of your salary. In a salary, by definition, you are creating wealth for others, and you are creating a chain and handcuffs for yourself.
Every day, you reinvent yourself. You're always in motion. But you decide every day: forward or backward.
Don't regret your mistakes. You'll always make mistakes. The better you are, the less mistakes you make. The only way to get better is to thoroughly analyze your mistakes.
Worry will never solve tomorrow's problems. It will only take energy away from today.
Life is cold. People stay warm through the intimacy of a story.
Poker is a skill game pretending to be a chance game.
Investing is for wealth preservation, not wealth creation, so first you have to make wealth.
I'm scammed almost every day. Or, if not scammed, at the very least someone tries to scam me. Usually more than once a day.
Procrastination is your body telling you you need to back off a bit and think more about what you are doing.
Life is better when your sinuses are clean, when your arteries are clean, and when your digestive tract is clean.
Games are all about taking risks.
Take control of who you report to, what you do, what you create. Or start a business on the side. Deliver some value, any value, to anybody, to somebody, and watch that value compound into a career.
The people who know personal finance hide the money very carefully.
Money you lose you can always make back. But even five minutes of time lost is gone forever.
Your hands are not made to type out memos. Or put paper through fax machines. Or hold a phone up while you talk to people you dislike. One hundred years from now, your hands will rot like dust in your grave. You have to make wonderful use of those hands now. Kiss your hands so they can make magic.
The best, very best scammers will always ask for your advice. This is their favorite technique. It makes them vulnerable. It flatters your ego.
I am a sore loser. It's not that I'm so competitive with others. But I'm competitive with myself. I like to do better than I did before.
Happiness is just a positive perception from our brain. Some days, you will be unhappy. Our brain is a tool we use. It's not who we are.
I keep track of my blog stats, Facebook subs, my Amazon rank, Twitter followers, Facebook likes per posts, my chess ranking. I get stressed when they all don't go up.
Don't sweat it if you are stuck in the corporate job right now. But begin to plan ahead. I know from much personal experience that it takes 1-3 years to transition from total scratch to making a living from home in any career you want.
Buying coffee on the street instead of in a Starbucks is the poor man's way to get rich. In other words, you will never get rich by scratching out ten cents from your dollar.
Here's what a phone is: It's a computer that has a little app on it that allows me to dial numbers and then talk to someone.
Being a leader doesn't mean you created something or you did something great in the past or some other person has given you any kind of authority.
The first rule of personal finance is that it's not personal and it's not financial. It's about your ability to make ten changes and not get too depressed over it.
Nobody wants to make me a rich man. In fact, most people want to make me a very poor man. I can guarantee some people fantasize at night about how poor they can make me.
Do what you do with love, and success is a natural symptom.
I find that many entrepreneurs are trying to do everything when it would be cheaper and more time-efficient to delegate, even if there are monetary costs associated with that.
You're the average of the five people you spend your time with.
Technology, outsourcing, a growing temp staffing industry, productivity efficiencies, have all replaced the middle class.
Everyone is different. We all suffer from the disease of being human. There are a thousand cures but no antidotes.
If two people believe in the same story, they might be thousands of miles apart and total strangers, but they still have a sense they can trust each other.
Every game, and almost every life situation, has short cuts: ways you can get better without learning the entire literature of the game from beginning to end.
Be honest about mistakes. Even if you are afraid of what people think.
Don't stay at the job for safe salary increases over time. That will never get you where you want - freedom from financial worry. Only free time, imagination, creativity, and an ability to disappear will help you deliver value that nobody ever delivered before in the history of mankind.
I loved Internet businesses, having built and sold one. And I loved the financial business, despite the fact that it was almost all a scam.
Quantity and persistence will get you the outcomes you need.
Poker is a charismatic game. People who are larger than life play poker and make their living from playing games and hustling.
Somebody has to be on stage, and some people have to be in the audience. That's the only difference. Don't put any thought as to why you are on the stage or how you need to be 'better' than the people in the audience. You aren't better. You're simply the speaker.
Most people don't have the power of persuasion.
I've had lots of ups and downs. I've had situations where I've gone against the rules, and I've lost everything.
I want every idea I have to make me money. I want every post I write to have 10,000 Facebook likes. I want every talk I give to have people laughing at all the right jokes. I want everyone to like me all the time.
Read every book, blog, website, whatever, about what you want to be an expert in.
I'm a big believer in minimalism. Not materialist minimalism, although that's part of it, but time and energy minimalism. The body is given only so much energy a day.
Products are valued higher than services.
