📝 30 years of Business Knowledge & Lessons from Peter Thiel

Sup friends 👋🏼,

I was on a hike yesterday with a bunch of friends - it involved many a steep staircase like this, but thankfully this little guy kept the energy high 🐶

I love being able to get away into nature (not something I do often enough!) and hang out with friends to jam about what we’re up to, our challenges and get some sound advice. It’s like group therapy, but in nature - 10/10 recommend :)

Anyway, let’s get to it 🙂 

1/ 30 years of Business Knowledge

If you tend to follow ‘entrepreneurship’ TikTok or YouTube Shorts, you’re bound to see this guy pop up.

His name is Simon Squibb - he sold his agency to PwC and now runs a YT channel interviewing people on the street about what their dream is.

I enjoy his content, and didn’t think I’d sit down to a 2.5h vid of his, but here we are - see the comments for yourself to see how this went over.

Some of my key lessons:

• Marketing should be fun (he told a story of how he bought a staircase and gained a ton of free media exposure)

• Getting a co-founder can be a huge benefit, but don’t let that stop you

• Create a mind-map, not a business plan (this was the most valuable takeaway)

Click the vid and scroll to the area most interesting to you - this is worth a bookmark.

2/ Lessons from Peter Thiel

Joe Lonsdale is the managing partner at a US-based venture capital firm that manages over $6 billion in capital.

He wrote a blog post with key lessons learned from his long-time co-founder of Palantir, Peter Thiel.

A few of the standout lessons to me:

1️⃣ / Don't divide your attention

Dividing our attention between 10 things means that we don't make any meaningful progress on any of them.

An extra hour of focus on the current project has a much higher return than an hour on something new.

2️⃣ / Don’t waste time talking about what you plan to think about; instead, work through it immediately.

If you're sitting there talking about problems you plan to solve later, there's a good chance you're just mentally procrastinating. Sit up and be proactive about tackling problems immediately - you can probably create an outline or a method to solve a problem in <10min.

3️⃣ / Return to first principles and act quickly on new conclusions

Elon Musk talks regularly about breaking things down at a 'first-principle' level.

We should constantly question our assumptions and return to first principles by building the argument up from scratch, to help us uncover new solutions and opportunities we might've missed.

/3 Graham Stephan’s Next Step

A 2nd YT video from me this week - I’ve noticed a trend of YouTubers taking a step back from the endless content wheel and deciding to lower their frequency, and focus on quality.

Graham talks about mental health, how he grew his real estate portfolio, and his next steps in finding what lights him up & the type of work that gives him energy.

/4 Tim Ferriss interview with Scott Glenn

Scott Glenn is an American actor, having played various roles in films like Apocalypse Now, Urban Cowboy, The Right Stuff, Silverado, The Hunt for Red October, The Silence of the Lambs, Backdraft, The Virgin Suicides, and The Bourne Ultimatum.

Came across this epic quote that’s stuck with me:

/5 Dana White Quote

Bonus:

This one is just for the lols:

That’s a wrap - let me know your favourite link 🙂 

Till next week,

Fahim ✌️