School for Startups Minutes

It seems that we're constantly getting bombarded by people trying to sell us things. Every connection on LinkedIn is trying to sell me something. Half of my emails are sales pitches or propositions of some kind, and I just don't know how to sort through all of them. This week, we're talking about how to spot BS in business, and, importantly, how to protect yourself. We've already talked about thin...

This week, I'm talking about how to spot BS in the business world, and, more importantly, how to protect yourself. I've already commented that if you're going to hire a consultant or something like that, a service provider, call their last three customers and make sure that all three experiences went well. If they can't provide three customers, well, that tells you a lot right there. Right after t...

Frequently, we see what we suspect is BS in front of us in business, dating, and in every part of life. This week, I want to talk about how to spot BS and how to protect yourself from it. You know, in business and in life, people can claim anything; they can describe success, claim experience, and present polished stories and resumes that sound convincing. The language is smooth, confident, and re...

This week, I have been talking about things that sound important but aren't. In the end, that 4:45 email that our boss sends, that we really didn't need to worry about, looking busy when you're actually just wasting time doing work that no one notices, and making a big decision that turns out not to be a big decision - these are all things we worry about, but we just shouldn't be worrying. Maybe t...

Many decades ago, back in the 90s, when I was starting my very first business, I spent about a year writing the business plan, trying to decide on the name, arguing about what the logo should look like, and deciding how many partners we should have. We discussed so many things that were completely irrelevant, that never needed to be discussed, but they got discussed. We spent a year getting ready...

A couple of years ago, my wife and I were getting ready for a party. It was early summer, so we assumed that a lot of people would want to go outside. We did all of the things that you do at the beginning of the season. We got the pool ready, we pressure washed, we cleaned all of the furniture, and we put new flowers out. We did everything, and in the end, not a single person asked to go outside....

This week, we're talking about things that sound important but are not. I've already talked about how so many work emails come in at 4:45 marked urgent, but are actually not really relevant at all. Today, I want to talk about things that make us look busy but don't create any progress. We all have forms that have to be done, meetings that you have to go to, and emails that you need to respond to,...

It's 4:45 in the afternoon, and you get an email marked urgent. You open it, dreading what it could be. It's from your boss to the entire office. A lot of people have already left and won't see it, so can it really be that urgent? You open it, and it says there is a staff meeting tomorrow at nine o'clock. This is quite an unusual pattern, and you know that if you hadn't read the email, you would h...

There are certain things that are true that are uncomfortable, and we don't like talking about these things because they make us think about things that are very uncomfortable about ourselves, our family, and our business associates. This week, I've been talking about five of these life truths that we just try to ignore. I've pointed out some things that are very uncomfortable, and I hope that you...

There are many life truths that we just don't like to admit or to acknowledge because they're too uncomfortable, and they lead us to places where we just don't want to go. Well, this week, I am going there and talking about some of these life truths that we need to acknowledge so that we'll be happier people and better at our jobs. I'll give you another one right after this. This is particularly t...

  There are certain things we just do not want to admit. And this week, we are talking about five of these life truths that are just not very cofortable. I've already suggested this week that one of the ideas is that you are not the spotlight of the world. Not everyone is constantly thinking about you. I'll give you another one right after this. Another life truth that we don't want to admit all t...

This week, I'm introducing five life truths that are just very uncomfortable. These are not things we like to talk about or acknowledge, but we need to in order to be happier people and better business people. These are things that we need to talk about and acknowledge. I'll give you an example right after this, There is something called the spotlight effect. It is the belief that people notice us...

This week, I'm going to introduce five life truths that are just not very comfortable, but are, as I said, true. We must learn to deal with these before we can be happy as people and successful as business people. So this week, I'll introduce the five, and I'll start right after this. First unfortunate life truth: no one is thinking about you. We spend an incredible amount of time worrying about w...

This week, we have been talking about how to build competitive advantages for your business. Sometimes we call them unfair advantages, because that's the way the outside sees it. But do remember, these are always legal and moral. As long as you are within the law, there's nothing against building some sort of advantage that makes your business more competitive. We want to do that as much as possib...

You remember that restaurant in your hometown that's been there forever, and it's got a great reputation, and everyone knows it, and everyone just loves it. It's part of the community. They have created an unfair advantage for themselves. Of course, it's not unfair. It's unfair for all the other restaurants that don't get the same amount of love and attention, but they built that for themselves ov...

Unfair advantages occur when you can position your business in such a way that your competitors are blocked or prevented from entering a space, or maybe it's just more difficult for them. But these are not unfair. They're perfectly legal, perfectly moral. The word unfair, though, is seen from the perspective of your losing competitor. So whenever you can set these up, it's a good thing if you want...

We are talking about unfair advantages. Now, these are not unfair. It's just that they seem unfair to the people who don't have them. For example, you can position your business in such a way that it locks other people out. At my very first business that I ran in my 20s, we had locations at Stanford, MIT, Georgetown, UCLA, and a whole bunch of other places. And because of that, competitors in the...

In business and in life, you want to get as many advantages as you can. If you have a good strategic advantage over your opponent, you will win more, be more successful, and probably have more money. And so we all try to achieve these advantages in every aspect of our lives. Today, this week, I want to talk about how to get some of these advantages. Some call them unfair. I call them your due rewa...

I want a good life, and I want a good life for you. So this week, we have gone through some of the components, listed them, and given some advice. I'm going to wrap that conversation up today, but before that, I want to review briefly. You need to work on positive, happy relationships in your life. You need to have something that's important, something that you do that's meaningful. You need to re...

Do you have everything in the world that you want? I mean absolutely everything. If so, where do you put it? Oh, you got a bigger house so that you could have more stuff. A good life means that we eventually have enough, realize that, and quit accumulating stuff. This week, I've been talking about what the components of having a good life are, and we have realized some really important things. I'm...

Do we have a good life? Do you have a good life? When you think about yourself and what you have done in the last 20, 30, 80 years, do you feel like it's a good life? That is so important for us to think about and to make sure that we are creating the circumstances so that when we are at the end of our lives, we say yes to that question. So we need to think about it and actually spend some time ma...

We all want a good life. We want a good life for ourselves, our family, and our friends. The problem, though, is that we don't go to the next level and actually define what a good life means. So this week, that is what I am going to do. I'm going to talk about a good life and the components that make it up. I already talked about the fact that relationships are incredibly important to having a goo...

I think, universally, everyone wants the same thing: a good life, right? We all wish that for ourselves and for our friends and family. We say, "I want to have a good life. I want to be happy." But we never go to the next level and define what that actually means, to say these are the components of a good life and how to work on each one. So that's what I'm going to do this week. I'm going to defi...

This week, we have been talking about the idea that optimizing our lives to the maximum degree might not be such a good idea. This optimization culture quickly teaches us that there's always a better version of everything: a better routine, a better system, a better diet, a better version of you. That sounds awesome at first, but over time, it creates a moving target that you will never reach. The...

Tim Ferriss, the man who wrote The 4-Hour Workweek , just recently revealed that he thinks we may have gone too far as a society in optimizing everything in our lives. Some people are wearing sensors on both wrists. But something interesting is starting to happen now. After years of adding tools and systems and routines and tracking, many people are starting to do something in the opposite directi...