📝 Ryan Holiday's Career Wisdom & Your Dream 100

Sup friends 👋🏼,

This week made me appreciate the value of older mentors in our lives - I’ve been trying to organise some administrative / accounting-related issues, and I cannot tell you the value of calling upon experienced mentors who’ve been there before, and can offer some sage advice.

It was also ETHDenver - a community-owned festival that celebrate the convergence of blockchain technology, decentralization, education, community and culture - this week. I’m pumped to level up my learning from some of the recorded talks (if you’ve come across any talks that you like, send ‘em my way!).

Let’s roll into it 🙂 

#1: Career Wisdom from Ryan Holiday

I’ve been following Ryan Holiday for years - ever since his first book (Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator) back in 2012. He was an agent for a while, a marketing director for American Apparel, and now an owner of a bookstore. He’s also written some of my favourite books on Stoicism. He’s put together a list of 37 pieces of hard-fought career advice that’s useful for anyone. Some of my favourite:

• Be quiet, work hard, and stay healthy. It’s not ambition or skill that is going to set you apart but sanity.

• Very rarely have I ever let anyone go because they did not have the skills to do their job. It’s almost always their unwillingness to learn those skills or their inability to take feedback.

• Find what nobody else wants to do and do it. Find inefficiency and waste and redundancies. Identify leaks and patches to free up resources for new areas. Produce more than everyone else and give your ideas away.

• Always say less than necessary. Saying less than necessary, not interjecting at every chance we get — this is actually the mark not just of a self-disciplined person, but also a very smart and wise person.

• Lyndon Johnson said that the way to get things done was to get close to those who are at the center of things.

• If you can afford to, delegate it. If you can’t yet afford to, automate it. Time is the most precious resource.

#2: Find your Dream 100

I read this story about Charlie Munger hiring Chet Holmes to sell magazine ads. He’s given a list of 2,200 potential advertisers to contact - he doesn’t contact any of them.

He orders every competitor magazine and realises only 167 companies account for 95% of the advertisements. He decides to go all-in on these companies. Free lunches, gifts etc.

Fast-forward three years and Chet takes the magazine from 16th in the market to double their closest competitor.

Write down your dream 100 clients. Do anything you can to win them.

#3: One tip for Better Communication

Totally agree with this - I try and think through what the other person will ask, and address all the questions when I’m writing a document.

#4: How to go from Founder Prison to Founder Freedom

A summary of a few of the pieces of advice from Matt Grey:

• Find your Ikigai - this is made up of:

  • What brings you joy

  • What you’re good at

  • What the world needs

  • What you can get paid to do

• Say no to things fast, and only say yes to things that are a “Hell yes”.

  • Does your gut, head and heart all say yes?

• Apply the 80/20 rule!

Worth internalising some of the lessons!

#5: Things I'm doing at 44 to avoid regret when I'm 84:

Lots of great pieces of advice here, like:

• Making family #1. Work is work & family is life. I won't regret spending more time with my family but I might regret working too hard that I miss the ballet recital

• Reminding myself of my mortality. Life is fickle & it can get taken away from you at any time. This is why I pursue my dreams without abandon

• Working on my strength, mobility, power, and cardio. These are the pillars of maintaining a fit body as I age

• Stop over-worrying. Worrying about something is a signal but it sucks energy away when you let it run your life. Put that energy into finding solutions.

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

Till next week,

Fahim ✌️