It took me 7 years to do a 7-figure exit. Stop looking for simple solutions

[peterwilliams]

I wrote a post here a couple of weeks ago. I recently exited my business for 7 figures, and gave my best takeaways from my journey.

I got a lot of complaints that the list was too general and abstract.

First I was insulted, but for the past 2 weeks I’ve really been contemplating how I could actually say something useful to aspiring entrepreneurs.

After reading a bit on this forum, it’s very clear to my why so many here seem to struggle;

Most of the people here are not able find a path and stick to, work hard and master it.

Instead, they switch between different business ideas. And they get nowhere and get frustrated.

I think this is often due to information overload and unreal expectations.

Every other post I see is;
Should I be doing dropshipping or own product?
What business is best to start 2022? What’s the best way to make money with blockchain?

Everyone wants quick results. Everyone wants to be a millionaire fast. Everyone wants to learn all the super-tricks to build a successful business in a 1000 word Reddit post.
But no one is ready to work for it (working for it is not equal to throwing up a dropshipping product from alibaba and spending 50 USD on Facebook ads).

So if I could only give one advice it’s to follow these steps;
- Stop looking for quick and easy solutions. They don’t exist. Realize that it will probably require 100 times more effort and time than you expect.
- Find a business model that’s proven to work and that you find interesting.
- Work day and night at understanding and learning it.
- Find a mentor. Even if it takes you months or years. I can’t stress this enough.
- Apply everything you learn. Fail. Redo. Trial and error.

That’s it. Really. So stop asking silly questions like “is Shopify or dropshipping bettter”. Stop looking for easy money. Stop looking for overnight success. It doesn’t exist.

To give you an example; The most successful Ecommerce entrepreneurs I know have spent years mastering skills such as FB ads, copywriting, product sourcing, branding etc.

Do you really think you can watch some YT videos, read a few posts and then compete with them?

I guess what I want to say is; stop being naive. Decide for one business model you like and don’t give up until you’ve mastered it. Find a mentor. Find someone to listen to and learn from that’s done what you want (and no, no gurus).

And for the love of god, stop wasting your time asking strangers on Reddit what business you should start.

Get to work. If you are serious about succeeding you have to put in the work. It’s simple. It’s a cliche. And still, it’s exactly what at least 50 % of this sub has to do.

 

[613jono]

@peterwilliams From a realistic point of view, managing that in 7 years is a great achievement. Well done!

 

[peterwilliams]

@613jono Thank you very much!

 

[boboman]

@peterwilliams Genius is 1% inspiration & 99% perspiration.

 

[rmzavazi]

@boboman And perspiration is 85% discipline, 15% 'motivation"

 

[jordanmulcahy1987]

@rmzavazi and 100% reason to remember the name

 

[olivine]

@jordanmulcahy1987 Moms spaghetti

 

[ohumhithere]

@olivine I'm a gampo, I'm a fool

 

[cooldude12344]

@boboman That saying never made any sense to me because if it's true, it actually means genius is just 100% inspiration.

Everyone puts in the work (they have to, or else they starve to death...), so you can cancel out the perspiration, since everyone does it.

But not everyone gets the right inspiration. So, actually, if this is true, then genius is 100% pure luck :/

 

[cmdaniels1986]

@cooldude12344 I don't really understand your thought process here to assume that genius is just considered 100% inspiration and thus equal to 100% luck.

I personally think that belief system does not serve you.

Luck is created by the opportunity and our preparedness for said opportunity.

Opportunity + Preparation = Luck

The harder you work, the more opportunity that will come your way. The harder you work, the more preparation you will have had to be ready for the opportunity. Luck is the seemingly random byproduct of being so good and having generated opportunity so wild that it seems magical.

In fact, the quote that the OP of the comment posted, comes from Thomas Edison's work ethic in his masterful inventions.

He worked tirelessly, around the clock, through the night, sleeping in his chair, on the floor, jumping up at a moments notice whenever he awoke to continue working on whatever project he was working on. He did this ever since he was a boy, until the day he died. Edison was not "lucky" when he created the lightbulb as we know it today. All the knowledge, skills, life experience, beliefs and character traits he developed over his life contributed to his wild success. He became so prolific because he worked so hard that it was hard for people to ignore him. He was SO good at what he did, he brought in thousands of people to his workshops just to see what he was doing.

People don't get inspiration because they don't know enough, because they don't do enough. Inspiration is a byproduct of exposing yourself to a wide range of experiences either in your specific field or in the world, that culminate into this thing one calls inspiration.

 

[cooldude12344]

@cmdaniels1986 > The harder you work, the more opportunity that will come your way.

How would this be magically possible?... What is "opportunity"?

You haven't said anything about what the first post said.

It said you need inspiration to be genius, and inspiration is a magical imaginative act of coming up with a brilliant idea/service/product etc...

If you have 10 people...all of them will have to work to survive. If only 1 out of 10 gets the inspiration for how to make, say, an iPhone, and becomes a billionaire, then what made him different from the other 9 guys that put in the work, but didn't become billionaires?



For your general arguments, they seem easily defeated by this question for our actual world:

Given that almost everyone has to work hard in order not to starve to death, why doesn't everyone end up a billionaire? Why are there only a few thousand billionaires instead of billions of billionaires if all that matters if hard work?

 

[cmdaniels1986]

@cooldude12344 I agree with you, I didn't touch on the original comment, but I also didn't discredit it either. I was discrediting the idea that inspiration is luck. Inspiration is greatly influenced by your environment. Who you spend time with, what you spend time doing, where your attention is going, what is available around you at your disposal. You get inspiration when novel ideas come to you at the right time from a culmination of all the experiences you've had.

Over the course of a lifetime, the person who works harder will be exposed to more stimulus, more experiences overall, that will lend to generating more opportunity and inspiration than the person who does not work hard or desire to work hard. Opportunity is never guaranteed, so it is in our best interest to do things at a higher volume so there is more potential for opportunity. If you send 500 cold emails versus 50, you will have 10x more potential for opportunity. You are not guaranteed positive outcome, but at least you're giving yourself a fighting chance.

Your line here, "If you have 10 people..." is fundamentally missing out on all of the wisdom, skills, beliefs, and character traits needed to conceptualize what an iPhone even is. Realistically the person who needed to come up with the iPhone is not in the odds of 1 in 10, it's more like 1 in 7 billion. That one person, Steve Jobs, started from boyhood in learning about computers, coding, technology, generally making odds and ends. Are those other people doing the same? Are they devoting consistent energy and time into learning, understanding and developing new things? If so, then it is a fair argument.

Steve also learned how to do business. He learned how to do sales and was truly ruthless. He had character traits that the 'normal' man would be too afraid to develop. Steve had the a sense of complete and utter disregard for what was considered normal and did what ever he wanted to do. Realistically it took about 30 years of business experience to develop the iPhone. Without that, Steve would not have been able to even think of it as we know the iPhone today.

Your final question is assuming that everyone even wants to be a billionaire, which is simply not the case. Those who do want to be a billionaire but have not yet achieved it either lack the time, the skills, the beliefs, or character traits to assume the position of a billionaire. You are putting "Hard work" in a box. Hard work in and of itself is multi dimensional. You have to work on yourself, your beliefs, your skills, your character traits and beyond yourself, your relationships, your hobbies and your work and whatever else.

Anyone can truly become a billionaire. Study a billionaire, adopt their traits, and follow that path for 20-30 years, every day. Does everyone want to do that? No. Can everyone do that? No, they will give up very quickly once they realize that life does not give them fulfillment.

That's why your character traits are important here. Not everyone wants to work like an animal for their entire life. People find simplicity to be quite endearing and beneficial for their mental health and wellbeing. That is totally okay! Knowing yourself and what you truly want out of life is so important otherwise you will continue to find deep dissatisfaction and a dissonance between what you are doing and what your higher self truly wants. Steve was made for Apple. That was his destiny that he manifested. But it doesn't HAVE to be yours.

 

[sillyfool]

@cmdaniels1986

Anyone can truly become a billionaire.

Oh oka-

Can everyone do that? No,

 

[cmdaniels1986]

@sillyfool You are pulling out of context and not considering anything I wrote

Anyone =/= everyone.

 

[cooldude12344]

@cmdaniels1986 > Who you spend time with, what you spend time doing, where your attention is going, what is available around you at your disposal.

Which is entirely random. You can't choose who to spend time with for the most part since it's a 2-way problem. You might like to spend all of your time with Warren Buffett learning about investments, or Mark Zuckerberg learning about mastering social media...but they don't want anything to do with you. Or, if it turns out that they DO, then you're one of a very few super lucky people.

> You get inspiration when novel ideas come to you at the right time from a culmination of all the experiences you've had.

Perfect, so work matters EVEN LESS. You not only need magical inspiration, you have to have magically had the right set of experiences PLUS get lucky enough to be in the right time and right place!

With all of this you have truly made an incredible case that work means almost nothing regarding success. Instead:

The friends the world gives you + the pure magic of being in the right time and place AND having the magical ideas at just that right time and place thanks to having the right random friends surrounding you.

> That one person, Steve Jobs, started from boyhood in learning about computers, coding, technology, generally making odds and ends. Are those other people doing the same? Are they devoting consistent energy and time into learning, understanding and developing new things? If so, then it is a fair argument.

They definitely are. Even if billions aren't, everyone in the tech industry in Silicon Valley today easily fits all of those straits 100% isomorphically. So, everyone in that industry should be a billionaire if the work matters.

That would be at least a quarter million people:

https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose...-hiring-trends-silicon-valley-comparison.html

And everyone in Silicon Valley DEFINITELY would like to be a billionaire. So, we should expect to see hundreds of thousands of billionaires if the work is all that matters.

BUT, you yourself have made a great case in the first part of your message that the work doesn't matter at all.

Having the luck of the right friends deciding they like you + magical inspiration for ideas from your friends at the random "right" time and place is what makes you a billionaire.

Indeed, the work is irrelevant, and the real world statistics show that is clearly the case, or there would be 250,000 just in Silicon Valley.

You can point to dumber cases than Steve Jobs that perfectly showcase this too. Billionaires like Jack Dorsey, Travis Kalanick, Brian Chesky, etc... billionaire CEOs of household names. None of them studied "ruthless sales" for 30 years or anything, they hadn't even had careers that were 10 years long... what did they all have in common that allowed them to become billionaires? Exactly what you've said: randomly lucky friend groups that allowed them to have magical inspiration moments at just the right time and place.

If you want to define "putting in the work" or "perspiration" or "hard work" as "having randomly lucky friend groups that allow you to have magical inspiration moments at just the right time and place" then sure...but that's a very bizarre definition of "hard work" that likely no one would agree with it seems like.

 

[princesspumpkin]

@cooldude12344 Adding in my 2 sats here...

The point you are making is very valid, however I would state it a bit differently. A business valuation is just a function of how many people are served and to what degree. That valuation is by definition independent of work or inspiration, it is simply a state.

The question is what does it take to get to that state. Obviously, one could luck into the right team, right market need, right product offering, right business model, and thus scale quickly without much work or inspiration.

In practice, it really takes both. Specifically, in my opinion, getting a high likelihood of success requires a predictable process and hard work directed toward finding a need and then deriving the right product, business model, team capabilities etc to scale it up.

People really should NOT* just slave away at an unsuccessful business waiting for "opportunity" or "luck" to magically appear. Instead, they should execute a systematic process to get to that point...

 

[cooldude12344]

@princesspumpkin Well, if there is a systematic process that someone can just follow to become a billionaire, what is it that is stopping so many people from using it to become billionaires?

I know many, many people who work an insane amount of hours trying to become rich, most of them provide solid amazing work, products, and services in multiple industries even, but none of them have achieved billionaire status. Meanwhile, Adam Neumann's random friendship encounter with Mashayoshi Son made him a billionaire despite apparently building a fraudulent company based mostly on throwing lavish parties.

If there is a simple known system one can follow to become a billionaire, what is stopping them from using it? (and apparently most people? Because only a handful of billionaires seem to get minted every year compared to the tens of millions of people working so hard to become them)

 

[sillyfool]

@princesspumpkin The entire point is that there's no systematic approach for becoming a billionaire. You could be a clone of Steve Jobs in the 1970s and there's no guarantee that you'd succeed. That one guy who made an operating system before Bill Gates and Microsoft, forgot his name, isn't rich either.

Ofcourse, it's insanely hard work but there's no system, guaranteed path or plan that will lead you to becoming a billionaire. There's people who made the exact same as Zuckerberg before Zuckerberg made Facebook, all with the dream of becoming wealthy and they didn't succeed either.

 

[cmdaniels1986]

@cooldude12344 I understand what you're saying, but I'm not sure you're fully understanding my point. I'm probably not explaining it well enough. But that's okay.

Have a nice day!

 

[slhamilton11]

@cooldude12344 I wouldn't say everyone "puts in the work."Not by a long shot. There is a huge difference between 'working barely enough to survive, at a part-time minimum wage job with zero focus' and 'working a full time job and being great at it because you need the money to survive and to pump the extra income into your side-hustle, which you also put more-than-full-time-hours into every week because you are incredibly focused on making it succeed."