Thread Round-up: Entrepreneurship, education, writing.
Three threads on entrepreneurship, rethinking education, and perfecting the written word.
1. Nick Huber, @sweatystartup.
⭐ What entrepreneurs should focus on to gain financial freedom.
A hill I'll die on:
95% of entrepreneurs should forget about technology (a few big fish and a lot of sophisticated fishermen) and focus on small business (small fish everywhere and really crappy fishermen).
A THREAD:
Be like water.
Take the path of least resistance.
The goal of every entrepreneur should be:
#1. Gain financial freedom
and
#2. Maximize probability of achieving #1
Because when you have financial freedom your world opens up.
You can start doing what makes you happy.
And you can positively impact a lot more people with project #2, 3, 4 etc. You're in a position to try to change the world if you have financial freedom.
So why don't more folks think about opportunities with more weight added to #2?
The odds part. The risk. The probability.
The amount of small businesses in America that absolutely print money and still do business like it’s 1985 is astounding.
Why is everyone trying to fish for sharks against Stanford and Harvard grads and venture capital and big tech?
Sure you hit big. And we see the folks who did all over twitter.
But what about the other 95% who tried but couldn't achieve #1?
Business should be more like poker.
How can I maximize my gain and minimize my risk?
How much cash do I really need to try to win on this hand?
People don't need as much cash as they think to be free.
$100k a year in passive income is enough for most folks.
Just not having to go to a job they don't like would change everything for most folks.
So why don't we look up from our computer screens?
The amount of small businesses in America that absolutely print money and still do business like it’s 1985 is astounding.
Fax machines. Secretaries. Land lines. Written ledgers. Cash payments.
Innovation can happen in really small ways.
I'm getting moderately wealthy right now by applying out-of-the-box software to self storage facilities.
I'm one of about 100 groups of folks doing exactly this.
Am I trying something new? No.
Am I innovating? Sure.
Am I taking risk? No.
Am I copying off of others? Sure.
Am I trying to educate a market? No.
I'm fishing in a pond (small self storage facilities) with tons of small fish (20,000+ of them in the USA) and a ton of crappy fishermen (60 year olds who don't use email).
So my ask of you:
Learn from the true innovators. Pay attention to silicon valley and how they do business.
But look up from your computer screen.
There is a small business 1/2 mile from your house that prints money and does business like its 1985.
Nobody wants to buy that business.
Nobody wants to start that business.
Because there is a little bit of sweat. It's not easy. It might take a little bit of physical work (god forbid) in the early days.
And so the fish are just sitting there. They may not be large enough fish to make it on the cover of Entrepreneur magazine.
But they are big enough fish to change your entire life and the life of your kids and their kids.
Why wouldn't you throw your line there?
2. @KapilGuptaMD.
⭐ Rethinking the value we derive from schooling and how it applies to future success.
"True education occurs on the pavement, not the blackboard."
School: A House of Mediocrity
Content: wholly irrelevant
Time: a tyrannical overtaking of a human's time, virtually assuring mediocrity in all pursuits
Social: most negative social influences have their origin in school.
School is a sanctified concept all around the world
Children who have real talents (proficiency in test taking is not a real talent) are asked to forego them in order to study and get good grades
Budding Picasso's and Jordan's are turned into factory workers
School is an enormous convenience for working parents
It is a warehouse for academics who would struggle in the private sector
It is a parallel universe that suits its own end
It charges hundreds of thousands for that which can be had for free with an internet connection
School is the ultimate example of the power of societal conditioning
Make something sacred, and one can get away with anything
Ask any teacher who is willing to speak the truth:
"What can you possibly teach me that will benefit me in the real world, and that I cannot learn online, for free?"
True education occurs on the pavement, rather than the blackboard
Humans do not learn via classroom settings
Particularly not those things which add almost zero value to their lives
Proponents of school hide behind lofty phrases that incite fear in the uninitiated
"Don't you want your child to have an education?"
"Do you not wish to be educated?"
Have a look at the syllabus and the social environment
And one quickly recognizes what "being educated" means
Apprenticeship is education
Jumping into the deep end and learning how to swim with water rising above your head is education
Learning the nature of human beings is education
Seeing patterns that others have not seen is education
Every child who seeks to achieve something in his life
Must learn at a young age what he naturally gravitates toward, and what talents he has been given
Then every egg that he has, and a few from the neighbor, must be placed in one basket
To be continued . . .
3. Ellen Fishbein, @EllenRhymes.
⭐An actionable framework to improve your writing.
This applies to any writing, whether it's social, blog, site copy, or more.
After 20,000+ hours of collaboration with 400+ writers, my team and I developed a new framework for writing:
— COMPOSE —
C = Concept 🔥
O = Objective 🚀
M = Material 🎨📚🧩
P = Plan ♟
O = Organization 🏛
S = Style 🕶
E = Elegance 🥋
** More—>
🔥 CONCEPT is the burning question, experience, or intuition that gets you going in the first place.
You want to understand it more deeply.
When you talk about it, you learn new things that you didn’t recognize before.
Ideally, it’s a “mindworm” that won’t leave you alone.
🚀 OBJECTIVE is what you want your reader to feel, think, do, or understand.
Maybe you want readers to learn something, buy something, believe something, or laugh.
Or maybe your objective is to quench your curiosity—to understand a topic better. That quest is no less worthy.
🎨📚🧩 MATERIAL comes from research, conversation, imagination & your environment.
It includes:
* definitions
* descriptions
* stories
* arguments
* data
* examples
Think: “What might get my readers to feel, think, do, or understand what I intend?”
Gather now; judge later.
♟ PLAN means “think a few moves ahead.”
Plan to cover all the essential points, and only the essential points.
Plan loosely! Bullets & sketches are more useful than meticulous outlines.
🏛 ORGANIZATION is the order in which you arrange your material, a.k.a. “structure.”
A story is ordered in time.
A how-to guide gives you a series of steps to follow.
Persuasive or argumentative pieces are ordered logically: some ideas provide support/evidence for others.
😎 STYLE comes from mastering fundamentals!
Writers often get feedback on style (tone, voice, word choice, etc) but that's rarely helpful—because beneath most stylistic problems, there’s a fundamental skill that needs strengthening.
Style comes *after* you work through COMPO.
🥋 ELEGANCE is the ultimate polish that makes hard work look easy.
Writers reach elegance the way martial artists reach the black belt.
“Beauty walks a razor’s edge; someday I’ll make it mine,” wrote Bob Dylan. Elegance is the beauty we’re working to make ours!
📜 Notes:
💡 COMPOSE doesn’t always happen linearly. E.g. you might already have some material, then discover a concept.
💡 That said, walking through COMPOSE linearly can help writers get unstuck, even mid-project.
💡 I welcome ALL questions!
Article: writing.coach/compose
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