40 Brutal Business Lessons I'd Tell My Younger Self

This video offers 40 key business insights, distilled from the speaker's experience in online business, where he has generated over $100 million. It's intended to provide advice he wishes he had early in his career. While some points are tactical and might be advanced for beginners, a separate, more beginner-friendly resource is recommended for those just starting out. 1. **Make a lot of people a little richer, and you'll make yourself a lot richer.** Success comes from adding value to people or businesses, helping them make more money, and receiving a percentage of that. Profitable businesses often involve direct percentages based on value provided. 2. **You are going to get screwed over. Be ready.** Expect that people will act in their short-term self-interest, even at your expense. Accepting this reality reduces personal offense and encourages proactive self-protection and strong boundaries. 3. **Marketing is a license to make money at will.** Understanding human psychology and direct response marketing, including building offers, running ads, and creating conversions, provides an unlimited ability to generate income. Marketing (one-to-many) is more potent than sales (one-to-one). 4. **If you're working for other people, study their business inside out.** View apprenticeships or jobs at great companies as opportunities to learn their operations, systems, and insights, preparing you for when you start your own venture. 5. **Sell what people want to buy, not what you want to buy.** To make money, focus solely on market demand, removing personal preferences from the equation. 6. **Today's actions are tied to next year's results.** Maintain a long-term outlook (at least one year) for your efforts. Avoid expecting immediate results, as this can lead to discouragement. Frame expectations correctly regarding when outcomes will materialize. 7. **Revenue means nothing; worry about your margins.** High revenue figures are meaningless if profit margins are low. Focus on profitability over gross income. 8. **Own a small pond before you own the ocean.** Start by hyper-niching down and dominating a small market segment. This provides valuable business and operational insights before expanding into more competitive or larger markets. 9. **Learn every part of the business so people don't take advantage of you.** Understand the basics of all business areas (e.g., coding, copywriting) to prevent employees or contractors from misleading you about effort or deadlines. 10. **Contracts, contracts, contracts.** Always have enforceable contracts with employees and clients. Even with trusted long-term colleagues, formal agreements are essential for business operations. 11. **Have a story to tell.** People remember stories more than achievements or possessions. A compelling story builds trust and encourages business relationships. 12. **You will overestimate the kind of products people want to buy.** Often, simpler, easier-to-consume offers are more profitable than complex, "done-for-you" solutions. Don't overcomplicate your offerings; consider the average consumer's preferences. 13. **Protect your word and your reputation at all costs.** A tainted image is nearly impossible to recover from. Your word is your bond, and at higher levels of business, character references are crucial for securing deals. 14. **Lose right now so you can win in the end.** Prioritize long-term opportunities over short-term cash plays. Sometimes, accepting a lower paycheck or role can lead to significantly larger future gains. Avoid short-sightedness. 15. **Make money first, improve later.** Avoid spending excessive time and resources building a "perfect" product before validating market demand. Build a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), test its profitability, and only then invest in improvements. 16. **Your network is a gun and a vest.** A strong network facilitates deals and deters others from trying to exploit you, as they know you have connections. 17. **People already did the dumb stuff that you're going to do. Read more books.** Avoid common mistakes by learning from others' experiences through reading, especially in the early stages of your entrepreneurial journey. 18. **How to never lose clients in your life.** Go beyond simply doing your job. In service-based businesses, constantly add value that exceeds client expectations to retain them. Proactive service is key. 19. **Results come from depth and not volume.** While initial action is important, sustained success comes from deep understanding, strategic thinking, planning, and analysis, rather than just high-volume, blind effort. 20. **Understand that you are in it for the long run.** Maintain a long-term perspective in business. Avoid making short-term, reactive decisions when stressed or exhausted; these are often detrimental. 21. **How to vet people correctly.** Judge people by their actions, not their words. Set up small "tests" or observations to understand their character before entrusting them with significant responsibilities or resources. 22. **Amateurs trust people. Pros have contingencies.** Trust is important, but intelligence means having backup plans and safeguards in place. 23. **Understand every single number of your business.** View your business as a "symphony of numbers." Learn to identify which metrics are "off" to diagnose and correct issues, much like tuning an instrument in an orchestra. 24. **Build a flywheel.** Successful businesses sell multiple times to the same person, often with increasingly expensive products, rather than just making a single sale and moving on. 25. **The first sale is not how you make money.** The initial sale is a "lynchpin," opening the door for customers to access and purchase other, potentially more profitable, offerings. 26. **Measure your team's performance with behaviors and not KPIs.** While KPIs are useful, focusing on instilling proper company culture and tracking behaviors can naturally lead to desired KPI outcomes. KPIs are often symptoms of underlying behaviors. 27. **Study yourself like a mad scientist.** Understand what daily actions lead to your peak performance. Document these "triggers" to consistently operate at your highest level. 28. **Build your offer around negative risk.** When pitching, address potential losses first. Show customers they won't lose their investment, or even better, demonstrate "skin in the game" where you also risk something if they don't get results. 29. **Do not add more to your offer. Add bonuses.** Selling one core product with multiple bonuses makes customers feel they are getting significantly more value (e.g., 10x) than a product with many features but no bonuses. 30. **Behavior beats intelligence.** High IQ is less correlated with success than high conscientiousness and strong work ethic. Action and consistent effort are more critical than raw intelligence. 31. **Constrain yourself and your team on purpose.** Imposing tighter deadlines can dramatically increase productivity and results, preventing wasted time. 32. **Being assertive is better than being friendly.** In business, trust is built on authenticity and competence, not just friendliness. People seek a "ruthless pro" who will get the job done. 33. **As an owner, your job is to do things that don't scale.** Owners should focus on creative thinking, strategizing, researching, and setting direction—tasks that are inherently unscalable—while the team handles scalable operations. 34. **Document, delegate, and don't do it again.** Extensively document all operational processes to prevent employees from repeatedly asking how to do basic tasks or making errors, thereby improving efficiency. 35. **Connections are really important.** A strong network can provide significant advantages, often outweighing superior product quality. Invest in building and expanding your network, especially into more influential circles. 36. **Manage your nervous system.** Your internal state (calm, focused, anxious) directly reflects in your business's performance. Developing this self-regulation is crucial. 37. **1 hour of deep work is better than 5 hours of superficial work.** Deep, focused work drives business forward and prevents critical details from being missed, unlike shallow, unfocused activity. 38. **The business is you. Everyone is watching.** Your team observes your leadership and commitment. Your behavior sets the tone and inspires (or demotivates) your team's efforts. 39. **How to close 100% of prospects.** Thoroughly research prospects to uncover small, personal