Weekly Nuggets: Listening To Your Inner Voice

Julio Froment

Hey friend,

Here’s the best content I found this week 😛

📚 Book Passages

[Context]

▻ Source
This passage was extracted from the book “How To Get Rich”.

▻ Author
Felix Dennis. He was one of the 50 richest people in the UK, with an estimated net worth of 400-900 million USD. He wrote the renowned book “How To Get Rich”. He passed away in 2014.

Back in the late 1970s, I had a conversation with a much older man, a senior manager at the high-street retailer, W.H. Smith. W.H. Smith are a power in the magazine and newspaper industry. This old buffer was friendly and helpful towards my little publishing company. I was interested in launching a personal computer magazine. He dissuaded me, warning me over and over that ‘nobody would ever pay money to read monthly magazines about dinky little computers’. Several colleagues in my company agreed with him. After weeks of discussions, I abandoned my plans.

Shortly thereafter, another entrepreneur, Angelo Zgorelec, launched just such a title, called Personal Computer World. It soon exhibited all the signs of becoming a big success. Fortunately, Angelo did not have sufficient capital to promote it. In the nick of time I was able to purchase a majority stake in the magazine, which I proceeded to sell for a small fortune four years later to a large conglomerate.

So what is the lesson here? Because I had been dissuaded from launching my own title, and did not own the magazine outright, I was forced to pay Angelo a million pounds or so for his remaining share. Well done, Angelo!

Had I launched a similar magazine myself earlier, I would have been £1 million richer in the autumn of 1982. (Around £2.4 million in today’s money.) If I had invested that £2.4 million at a low rate of compound interest, I would be £4 million richer than I am today. That is what that well-meaning old gentleman at W.H. Smith and his long-winded advice cost me. He cost me nearly $8 million in my pocket right now. And whose fault was it? It was mine, for prevaricating and listening to a Jeremiah.

“Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice.” - Steve Jobs

🎬 Top YouTube Videos (+ Notes)

▻ President of Shopify

Highlights:

• The most successful merchants on Shopify were accidental!

• When we started Shopify, there were many competitors -- Yahoo Stores, Magenta…
  But the idea wasn't necessarily to do something that no one else was doing, but TO DO IT BETTER. This was not this massive novel thing, we just did it better!

  "If you never have a single great idea in your life, but become skilled in executing the great ideas of others, you can succeed beyond your wildest dreams. They do not have to be your ideas. Execution is all."

  - Felix Dennis

• If I were to invest 3M$ into 3 Businesses, which ones would be?

  1. "I would definitely put one of those millions of dollars into the hands of a creator who is on the precipice of figuring out: "what exactly does my audience like?". And then creating a better version of that"

  2. The second one would be someone who is obsessed about something that is SUPER niche. For instance, someone completely obsessed about black t-shirts. He can go and do the BEST black t-shirts in the market and only focus on that!

  3. And the 3rd one would be someone who can make something expensive significantly more affordable to the masses.

▻ Cliff Weitzman — Founder of Speechify

Highlights:

How to increase your network and become luckier:

• Bond over Ambition or Vulnerability…

  • Small talk has its place, but its only thru a shared AMBITION / VULNERABILITY / EXPERIENCES that we bond!

  • it helps to structure it as a story :
    1) What you want? --> Goals, Desire, mission.
    2) Why can't you get what you want? --> Challenges in the way. People connect with that!

• Cold email strangers and people you admire. Create a tracking system and reach out to learn, seek mentorship, or explore job/internship opportunities. Research their content, consume it, and then make contact.

• Get comfortable asking people to hang out. Building relationships often starts with casual social interactions.

• Write thank-you notes to express gratitude. They have a significant impact on the receiver, and little cost to you!

• Put positive energy into the world without expecting anything in return. Giving without expectations can lead to good things happening.

• Work in your zone of genius (work that feels like play to you) and create opportunities for yourself.

🪺 Top Tweets

▻ Everything that man ignores does not exist for him. That is why the universe of each one, is summed up to the size of his knowledge. — Albert Einstein

▻ The work is the win

Wishing you a lovely weekend,

Julio ❣️