📶 Coolest Things I Learned Over the Past Year

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Good morning 👋

Every time I learn something that changes my worldview, I capture it in the notes on my phone. At the end of the year, I’ll refine that list and share what I think was most interesting.

Here’s what I learned in 2021, and here’s what I learned in 2022.

And here’s what I learned in 2023 …

TL;DR:

• 📶 Lessons About Business

• 🧠 Lessons About Investing

• 👥 Lessons About People

BUSINESS

1. Seven reasons people sell businesses: death, divorce, disease, distress, dullness, disagreement, and departure.

2. If you’re willing to show up late to meet a person (common advice for guys today), you should just cancel the meeting. You don’t think they are important anyway.

3. You have mastered a task when someone else has done it for you.

4. Understanding insecurities is the biggest marketing opportunity. This is why beauty products sell the best to women and “get rich quick” scams sell extremely well to men. 

5. The best is almost never the most viral.

6. Technology today takes out most direct aggressive competition between people. You even see competitors collaborate sometimes. 

7. Every web page is a sales asset. People form their opinions of you and your business based on everything you share on the internet.

8. Never sell a product or service; always sell a concept.

9. People don’t pay for more info; they pay for packaging, structure, and implementation.

10. If you want truly differentiated outcomes, you have to have some level of independence. Original is the enemy of safe.

11. 10x developers disappeared when it became easier to launch online businesses. It used to take years to build the foundation of a website; now you can spin something up in a day. The new bottleneck is attention, and 10x marketers are the new MVPs.

12. It has become SO easy to spot who is in it to win it, and who is looking for a quick buck. Looking for a competitive advantage? Give a shit.

13. Most decisions should be made with about 70% of the information. If you wait for 90%, you’re moving too slow.

14. Every big trend sparks an equally large anti-trend. More venture capital dollars sparked the revival of “boring” businesses. Hookup culture sparked more people to choose the “trad” life. More fast fashion has led to more people opting for sustainable clothing instead.

INVESTING

1. Money is to be spent on 1) making more money or 2) making you happier long-term. That is all.

2. The tighter you hold your money, the less of it you attract.

3. The person who knows first is the person building.

4. Risk just means lots of capital.

5. Investors have four faulty traits: overconfidence, biased judgments, herd mentality, and loss aversion.

6. If everyone believes something is true, there is no one else left to convince.

7. Most of the best investors are the oldest. The number one rule of investing? Don’t blow yourself up.

8. The higher you move up the ladder in finance, the more you realize that investment decisions are made because of relationships more than numbers.

9. If you want to make it in real estate, follow the surfers.

10. Anyone can do it once. The best do it consistently. Consistently boring days make for extraordinary decades.

11. Modern financial theory is wrong. Investors aren’t always rational – they can be insane. Investors don’t have the same preferences – an individual has a different portfolio objective than a corporate treasurer. Prices don’t move continuously – they gap up and down. Price behavior isn’t random – it’s dependent on recent history.

12. Greater knowledge of danger permits greater safety.

PEOPLE

1. You will see that as your life changes the way you think also changes.

2. Your network only equals net worth when you bring something to the table. Your network will expand in proportion to how valuable you are as a person.

3. The higher someone’s obedience to rules, the less you should trust their moral judgment.

4. If you talk enough, eventually you’ll say something smart. The issue is that most people will have already tuned you out.

5. Economies run in cycles, but people forecast in straight lines.

6. Clear writing gives poor thinking nowhere to hide.

7. How you live depends on which seeds you water. Show me a person’s calendar, and I’ll tell you their priorities. Show me their priorities, and I’ll tell you the quality of their life.

8. Everything about somebody tells you something about that person.

9. If you want it bad enough, you find a way. If you don’t want it bad enough, you find an excuse.

10. If you’re too big to serve, you’re too small to lead.

11. If video games teach us one thing: If you want to motivate humans, frequent rewards are more addicting than one-off rewards.

12. If you’re talking about something new or novel, you’ll have to repeat yourself for years before you’re heard.

13. If something’s going to be difficult to hear or share, invite questions at the end. 

14. Humans have proven they'll throw privacy out the window if they can trade it for pleasure (convenience, entertainment, money, fame, etc.).

15. Almost no one will accept responsibility in a crisis.

16. Moral Pollution: We act like bad reputations are contagious, and mere proximity to something labeled immoral is itself immoral. Brands cut ties with people deemed unethical not because they value ethics, but because they fear contamination. Cancellation is moral quarantine.

17. Preference Falsification: If people are afraid to say what they really think, they will instead lie. Therefore, punishing speech – whether by taking offense or by threatening censorship – is ultimately a request to be deceived.

18. Herostratic Fame: Many people would rather be hated than unknown. In Ancient Greece, Herostratus burned down the Temple of Artemis purely so he’d be remembered. Now we have “nuisance influencers” who stream themselves committing crimes and harassing people purely for clout.

19. Being valuable and useful is all you ever need to do to sell things. Help people out. Send interesting posts. Write birthday cards. Record videos sharing your ideas for growing their business. Introduce people who would benefit from knowing each other then get out of the way, expecting nothing in return. Do this consistently and authentically and people will find ways to give you money. I promise.

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- Clay