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Don’t tie your identity to your business
When you tie your identity to your business, your self-worth rises and falls with it. Every win boosts your ego; every setback feels like a personal failure. This emotional entanglement clouds your judgment and decision-making. Good decision-making blends data with emotion. You need both. But when your identity is on the line, emotion tends to…
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Focus on your customers
As a business, your main priority is making sure your customers are taken cared of. Remember a business exists because it is a solving a problem for someone. So a business should be focused on giving value to customers. And once you focus on giving value, you make sure your products are made of the…
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Business Checklist
I found this really cool post from Andrew Wilkinson on X. I recommend his book Never Enough: From Barista to Billionaire by the way. I posted a while back about what is a business and I thought I would add a checklist on what a business or entrepreneurship is – thinking about it from First…
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No solutions, only trade-offs
Thomas Sowell’s Basic Economics is one of my favorite economics books of all time. Why? Because it skips all the complicated formulas and charts you usually see in macro and microeconomics classes. I took both in university, and I still get haunted by those isoquants and isocost curves! Anyway, Sowell is such a clear thinker,…
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Problem? GOOD. Now take action.
One of the things I’m working to change in our company is how we deal with problems. Right now, the default is to talk about the problem — sometimes endlessly. And what happens when that’s the focus? Emotions get stirred up. People get frustrated. We overanalyze. There’s too much talk and too little action. The…
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Don’t follow your passion
In order to succeed, you need to “follow your passion.” We all have heard this phrase. But I feel uncomfortable with this. I know people who have become extremely successful not because they followed their passion. They simply pursued an opportunity, put their head down, overcame a lot of obstacles, and eventually became successful. Their…
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Sell with authenticity
I come from a family of entrepreneurs. Since I was exposed to business at a very young age, I could already spot a snake oil salesman from a mile away. These type of sales people usually talk a lot. They are masters at manipulating emotions and getting you to feel comfortable with them. They sell…
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What is a business?
A business solves a problem. It creates value by providing solutions to a problem. Answer these two question and you have yourself a business. The answer needs to be succint. If you wrote an essay answering these two questions, you have an overcomplicated business. It will probably not work.
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A relationship is more important than business
A few years ago, my parents and a family friend started a new business venture. As with most partnerships, the mismatch of goals and efforts eventually led to the splitting of the business. The split was filled with tension, and I had to step in and agreed to a split which was unfavorable to us.…
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Scaling a business versus staying small
I see entrepreneurs who are happy with one store. I also see some with the ambition of scaling to multiple locations. Scaling a business has its financial rewards but the level of risk and stress is also high. If you scale a restaurant to 10 locations, now you have more than 10 times the problem.…
