When you notice a trend, you do so for several reasons: It might indicate what stocks to buy. It might indicate what businesses to start. And for every one trend there are many different businesses you can start. If it’s a negative trend, it might suggest how you can position your family to survive. It gives you something to talk about with your friends. It gives you ideas that may morph into revenue streams that nobody has ever thought of before.

Most of the trends I’ll discuss are based on two important ideas: All things end, and the better we prepare for that end, the more our legacies will just be beginning. Innovation takes place nonstop. Humans didn’t innovate for 2 million years, and then suddenly, with the arrival of the printing press, we began to innovate at faster and faster rates. Every year the level of innovation is higher than that of the year before.

So despite my general reservations about stock investing, I invest in companies that diagnose cancer. I invest in companies that I think can diagnose Alzheimer’s. I don’t like to invest in the cures but I like to invest in the diagnostics. I stay away from the cures because the FDA charges you $2 billion to test your cure and then they still might reject you, which doesn’t seem very fair.

There are many opportunities in the tech workforce space, including: Buying up stocks of employment firms that are getting more and more technologically savvy about helping to place employees, deal with healthcare issues, etc. Getting involved in companies that are being used to rehire the new temp workforce in ways they’ve never been hired before.

Trend Example: Chemistry 


Alcoa has made aluminum the same way since the late 19th century. Their profits are razor thin because everyone knows the aluminum manufacturing process and anyone can supply the appropriate chemicals and metals at just the right price.

However, this is going to change and someone is going to find a new way to make aluminum. They might discover new elements to use and new processes to smelt. Companies that hoard those elements or develop those new processes will benefit in a big way. Chemistry is going to be much more influential in the coming ten to twenty years than information technology.

Keep track of the changes in how people are innovating in chemistry and suddenly you will see what’s happening in alternative energy, battery storage, isolation of valuable chemical isotopes (like pure oxygen, for instance), etc. How do you make money on this? Read about it, keep an eye on the companies and markets involved, and you will see the right moment to place your bets. Just like the biotech markets, the chemistry space is difficult to value but the markets are huge, even in the trillions.


The Choose Yourself Guide To Wealth

I love meeting new people. I’ve always done a good job with the initial skills involved with meeting new people. I feel like I can meet anyone in the world that I want to. Whether I make use of that meeting is another story (I’ll expand on the importance of following up later).

You build a network by: Introducing people to others who can provide value for them. Make sure it’s “permission networking” (you get permission from both sides first. Otherwise, you are a burden and not a help). Introducing people to ideas without any expectation of receiving something back. This means you have to get good at coming up with ideas. Finding a meaningful connection between you and the other person. A connection that person might value. Lewis Howes contacted many former athletes. Sometimes people use their hometowns or schools. Sometimes people use mutual friends, etc.

Eight Skills You Need to Become a Super-Connector

1. Introduce two other connectors. If you can introduce two people who are themselves great connectors, then you become a meta-connector. They will meet and get along, since connectors get along with one another for two reasons: they are naturally friendly people (hence their ability to connect so easily with people) and they have a lot of friends in common almost by definition.

2. Introduce two people, but this time with a specific idea in mind. Marsha, meet Cindy. Cindy, meet Marsha. Marsha, you are the best book editor in the world. Cindy, your book is the best book idea I have ever heard. You both can make money together. No need to “cc” me. If you can help two other people make money, then eventually good things will happen to you. In a few cases, I’ve been able to do this. They’re rare, but it’s happened.

3. Host a dinner of interesting people. I’ve only done this twice. When the last Star Wars prequel came out I invited people from every aspect of my life (friends, hedge fund investors, writers) to a dinner, I got everyone movie tickets, and it was a fun night. I solidified my relationships with some of my investors, plus some of the funds I was invested in, and I managed to connect people who later did business together.

4. Follow up. This is the hardest part for me. I have a five-year-old list of people who introduced me to people I actually wanted to be introduced to and then I never followed up. For instance, a few months ago I wrote a post called “Burton Silverman, are you dead yet??” Burton Silverman is one of my favorite artists. I wanted to know if he was dead to see if the value of one of his paintings had gone up. He wrote me to tell me he wasn’t dead yet. And as I type this, his studio is only a few blocks away. I could visit him right now if I want. Except for some reason I never returned his e-mail. He’s on my list. But following up is the hardest part for me. Then I put it off until I start to feel guilty about not following up. So then I push back the follow-up even more.

5. Reestablish contact. The other day I was following my own advice. I wrote an e-mail to an ex-investor of mine from 2004, saying sincerely how grateful I was he invested with me and I always enjoyed his advice and friendship. He immediately wrote back (because, unlike me, he’s a good connector and businessman) and said, “What are you up to? Here’s what I’m doing. Maybe we can work together again.” This was six years after I’d last spoken to him.

6. Show up. I don’t know which rule on this list is the most valuable. But if a good connector invites you to a dinner or a meeting, then the best thing you can do is show up.

7. Interview people. Back to Michael Ellsberg, who did something genius. He figured he wanted to meet a lot of successful people, sort of the way Napoleon Hill did when he wrote his famous best-seller Think and Grow Rich. So Ellsberg got himself a book deal about how millionaires are educated and then, book deal in hand, he interviewed as many millionaires and billionaires as he could find. The guy is now a mega-connector. When I met him a few weeks ago, he had nonstop ideas about how one goes about meeting people.

8. Produce something of value. In order to connect two people, you must have people to connect. You have to meet them in the first place, and the best way to do that is to produce something of value. I tell a story where I describe how when I was broke and about to go homeless I tried a technique of just reaching out to people. I would write letters like, “Hey, would love to meet.” Unfortunately, that never worked. People are busy. Nobody wanted to meet some random guy like me.

So instead I tried a new technique. I would spend time researching the business of each person I wanted to meet and come up with ten ideas to help them that I would give them completely for free. I gave one guy, Jim Cramer, ten article ideas he should write. He ultimately wrote back, “You should write these”—which started my financial writing career. It also led to a habit of exchanging ideas with people at TheStreet that ultimately led to me selling Stockpickr to them. Another guy to whom I gave several trading system ideas ultimately allocated money for me to trade. This started my hedge fund trading career. Once I started concentrating on producing something of value—without worrying about what I would get out of it—it started coming back to me. Pretty amazing, huh?


The Choose Yourself Guide To Wealth

Being a leader doesn’t mean you are the guy who runs things. Being a leader doesn’t mean you created something or you did something great in the past or some other person has given you any kind of authority. Being a leader happens right now, today. It’s something you can do without money, without authority, and without anybody. But first, you have to lead yourself. It’s a mind-set.

Desire More Success for Others Than for Yourself 

Most important by far is that you be able to care about others’ success more than your own. Everyone around you needs to ultimately become better than you. That’s how you lead. The light is in front of you and you take them to the light and then go back.

Say “Yes, and…” I just wrote a book called The Power of No. Buy it because your life will be better (and I am not ashamed of plugging it). But now I’m about to tell you to say yes.

Constructive criticism works like this: You say, “Yes, and…” List what’s good about the person’s idea. Describe how you would improve it even more.

Figure out the vision that is the base of the idea that you are talking about. Connect the “why” of what you are suggesting to the initial vision. Does it work better than the initial idea? Always be open to the fact that you might be wrong.

Show Gratitude 

Yesterday I was talking to Lewis Howes, an athlete turned multimillion-dollar webinar and LinkedIn expert who was on my podcast a few months ago. Lewis told me that his outgoing voice mail says, “Before you leave me a message, tell me one thing you are grateful for.” He says the messages people leave blow him away.

Follow The “30-150” Rule (AKA The Vision Rule) An organization with less than thirty people is a tribe. There is evidence from 70,000 years ago that if a tribe got bigger than thirty people, it would split into two tribes. A tribe is like a family—that is, you learn personally whom to trust and not to trust. You learn to care for their individual problems. You know everything about the people in your tribe. Having just thirty people in the tribe allows a leader to spend time with each person in the tribe and to listen to their issues.

Be OK with Change 

Everyone has pain they don’t want to feel. For instance, I might feel pain if someone makes fun of my looks. I used to feel pain if someone questioned my net worth, which I equated with self-worth. If I’m a CEO, I might have pain if the “numbers” go down.

A leader is always prepared for change, and realizes that pain is just an opportunity to live in a bigger and more abundant world. This is the secret that most people forget when they build their brick houses and hide inside from the outside world so pain doesn’t seek them out.

Know The Importance of Dignity

If I don’t treat my own projects with respect, then how can I expect others to? If I don’t treat myself with dignity, then how can I expect the people around me to treat me, or even one another, with dignity?

Know There’s Always a Good Reason and a Real Reason for Everything, and Share It 

When you are a leader, people come to you with problems every day. The problems are usually very good problems. “The client is asking for too much.” Or “Jill didn’t do her job right,” or “My car broke down.”

A leader listens to the good reason closely to try and figure out what the real reason is, and then comes up with a solution. And there is always a real reason. Listen for that and see if you can help. A good solution solves one problem. A real solution solves a hundred problems.

Care About Your Health 

A sick leader is not a great leader. A leader who is spending time with people not good for them is not a good leader. A leader who doesn’t constantly practice creativity is not a good leader. A leader who is not grateful for the abundance already in his or her life will never lead his vision into abundance. He won’t know how.
There’s no such thing as instant health. There’s only such thing as practice and progress. All you have to do is check the box on progress. Progress compounds every day into enormous abundance.

Love What You Do

Don’t do something just for the money. Money is a side effect of persistence. You persist in things you are interested in. Explore your interests. Then persist. Then enjoy all the side effects.

Know How To Lead Yourself 

You don’t need to be leading anyone. Before I can lead anyone I have to lead myself. I have to read. I have to try and improve one percent a week. I have a handful of interests and I have a lot of experience. I have to get better at the things I’m interested in. I have to understand more deeply the painful experiences I’ve had. I have to every day practice the health—physical, emotional, mental, spiritual—that I suggest to everyone else. Sometimes I don’t. And I feel it. But that’s OK. Don’t regret. Today is a new day. Today is the only day.


The Choose Yourself Guide To Wealth

By and large you are what you do. At least in terms of your identity being externally expressed, what you do defines who you are to those around you in a big way. Conversely, if what you are doing now does not feel like an accurate representation of who you are and what you want to be, then it’s time to focus on acting more in-line with how you feel inside and beginning to update some of your internal identity drivers to support a more accurate external expression through your actions day to day.

If you can dream and not make dreams your master; If you can think and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with triumph and disaster; And treat those two impostors just the same,


If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, Yours is the earth and everything that is in it, And, what is more, you’ll be a man, my son. — Rudyard Kipling

Thoughts are discrete packets of energy that flow from your belief system and are the precursor to all conscious action. As those thoughts move from the formless realm of the mind to impact the world we live in they are felt as emotions, or energy in motion.

“Just as no one can be forced into a belief, No one can be forced to unbelieve.” — Sigmund Freud

Creative Constructs are temporary lifestyle changes that draw on your interests and passions to shuffle the deck in the game of life. Whether this means traveling for the summer, living abroad for half a year, participating in an intensive learning program or going off the grid and working on an organic farm for a season, creative constructs are an integral part of a dream lifestyle. Creative Constructs consist of setting parameters that let you work, learn and play; meet new people, relax and have an experience that is long enough to be meaningful, but not so long that you’re committing to a whole different lifestyle long-term or indefinitely.

Lifestyle Entrepreneur: Live Your Dreams, Ignite Your Passions and Run Your Business From Anywhere in The World

Build a Business With Growth in its DNA

1. Profit Margin It’s easy to work out whether or not your business has profit margin, or to at least estimate it early on. Imagine not being involved in your business at all—everything the customer experiences gets handled by a team of people or systems. How much does it cost you to keep that customer and how much revenue do they generate?

The actual, acceptable percentage will depend on a lot of things, but obviously you have to be making more than it’s costing you to service each customer. For our services startup I decided a reasonable figure was double. That is: half of our revenue is costs, half is profit, so I’d have a 50% margin. If it costs $50 / month to service a customer, I would price the service at $100.

I solved this problem by cutting out 99% of what I offered and only offering a service that I knew affordable contractors could excel at it. This enabled me to have an acceptable margin in the business of around 50%.

2. Large Market I’m not into niches. I want to make sure whatever I start could be a $1,000,000 business in a few years, ideally more. I hope you are the same. If you want something that grows, it has to have something to grow into, and the last thing you want is to kill your momentum by hitting a ceiling. I’ve mentioned serving a large market previously, but since it’s such a big growth inhibitor, it bears repeating here.

3. Asset Building When I sold my business, I learned that project clients were worth very little. The website and the recurring clients were transferable assets. The historical revenue from project work wasn’t worth much at all.

4. Simple Business Model Having a simple product and a simple value proposition makes everything else easier. From elevator pitches to growth tracking to hiring—the more complex a model, the harder it is to know when things are going well. If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.

5. Recurring or Predictable Revenue Having a simple MRR model makes everything easier. There are other benefits like predictable revenue, simple metrics, simple goals, easy-to-see growth/growth sources, easy resourcing/scaling, and constant sources of motivation. A year in and I am still manually updating the MRR on a daily basis and giving my team members virtual high-fives.


The 7 Day Startup: You Don't Learn Until You Launch

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The basics of starting a business are very simple; you don’t need an MBA (keep the $60,000 tuition), venture capital, or even a detailed plan. You just need a product or service, a group of people willing to pay for it, and a way to get paid. This can be broken down as follows: 


1. Product or service: what you sell 
2. People willing to pay for it: your customers 
3. A way to get paid: how you’ll exchange a product or service for money

To make this clear let's say it again; 
To start a business, you need three things: 

a product or service, a group of people willing to pay for it, and a way to get paid. Everything else

The hard way to start a business is to fumble along, uncertain whether your big idea will resonate with customers. The easy way is to find out what people want and then find a way to give it to them.

the problem: Many businesses are modeled on the idea that customers should come back to the kitchen and make their own dinner. Instead of giving people what they really want, the business owners have the idea that it’s better to involve customers behind the scenes … because that’s what they think customers want.

As you begin to think like an entrepreneur, you’ll notice that business ideas can come from anywhere. When you go to the store, pay attention to the way they display the signage. Check the prices on restaurant menus not just for your own budget but also to compare them with the prices at other places. When you see an ad, ask yourself: What is the most important message the company is trying to communicate?


The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future

Join our mailing list and we will send you one to two emails a week for 12 weeks teaching you the basic body weight exercises, nutrition guidelines, and mindset tools you need to be Indestructible. 

As you begin to think like an entrepreneur, you’ll notice that business ideas can come from anywhere. When you go to the store, pay attention to the way they display the signage. Check the prices on restaurant menus not just for your own budget but also to compare them with the prices at other places. When you see an ad, ask yourself: What is the most important message the company is trying to communicate?

When thinking about different business ideas, also think about money. Get in the habit of equating “money stuff” with ideas. When brainstorming and evaluating different projects, money isn’t the sole consideration—but it’s an important one. Ask three questions for every idea: a. How would I get paid with this idea? b. How much would I get paid from this idea? c. Is there a way I could get paid more than once?

If you have an existing business and are thinking about how to apply the concepts from this book, focus on either getting money in the bank or developing new products or services. These are the most important tasks of your business—not administration, maintenance, or anything else that takes time without creating wealth or value.

Friedrich Engels said: “An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.


The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future.

The point of launching a business quickly is that you can get real data from real customers. This will help you determine if the business is having an impact. But how do you know what a good result is? In examples where companies really take off, you don’t need to worry about this step. Companies like Buffer and Dropbox never had to worry about whether or not they were onto something; thousands of people were signing up. It was obvious!

Similarly, when companies are an outright flop, that tends to be obvious as well. They are the one-percenters. Most companies fall in the middle, so it’s important to have some sort of framework around whether or not your business is going well. The way I like to think about this is to focus on the One Metric That Matters (OMTM) at different stages in your business.52 When you launch, it makes sense to focus on the number of people who sign up and pay you. Set a reasonable target that takes into consideration your reach and your marketing efforts and price point.

With any business I’ve started, my primary goal has been to get to a point where I’m paying myself a reasonable wage as early as possible. The figure I’ve always used is $40,000 per year. If I can get to the point where I’m paying myself a wage of $40,000, I know I have enough there to keep the business going. Eventually I have the faith that I’ll continue to improve this number.

Here are some general principles around setting your OMTM target: Make it a financial metric, not a vanity metric like website visits or Facebook likes. Pay particular attention to who is signing up. If it’s just your friends, then that’s very different from the general public.

Set a goal for the first month and re-visit it each month after that. My team uses a live Google doc for tracking financials. It requires manual updating, but it’s great for motivation and it allows you to have live estimates instead of relying on old data in accounting systems. There’s a free template at wpcurve.com/7daystartup. Don’t measure something that no longer represents an important metric for your business. The OMTM will change over time.

The 7 Day Startup: You Don't Learn Until You Launch

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Once you know your assumptions, devise specific tests to validate them as cheaply as possible. These first tests in a channel are often very cheap: for instance, if you spend just $250 on AdWords, you’ll get a rough idea of how well the search engine marketing channel works for your business.

With limited resources, it’s almost impossible to optimize multiple strategies at once. Running ten social ads and testing everything about them (ad copy, landing pages, etc.) is a full-time endeavor. That is optimization, not testing. Rather, you should be running several cheap tests (perhaps two social ads with two landing pages) that give some indication of how successful a given channel or channel strategy could be.

“The faster you run high quality experiments, the more likely you’ll find scalable, effective growth tactics. Determining the success of a customer acquisition idea is dependent on an effective tracking and reporting system, so don’t start testing until your tracking/reporting system has been implemented.”

Traction: A Startup Guide to Getting Customers

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Before we get started, let’s define what traction is. Traction is a sign that your company is taking off. It’s obvious in your core metrics: if you have a mobile app, your download rate is growing rapidly. If you’re a search engine, your number of searches is skyrocketing. If a SaaS tool, your monthly revenue is blowing up. If a consumer app, your daily active users are increasing quickly. You get the point.

“A startup is a company designed to grow fast. Being newly founded does not in itself make a company a startup. Nor is it necessary for a startup to work on technology, or take venture funding, or have some sort of ‘exit.’ The only essential thing is growth. Everything else we associate with startups follows from growth.” In other words, traction is growth. The pursuit of traction is what defines a startup.

Startups get traction through nineteen different channels;

We discovered two broad themes through our research: Most founders only consider using traction channels they’re already familiar with or think they should be using because of their type of product or company. This means that far too many startups focus on the same channels (search engine marketing, public relations) and ignore other promising ways to get traction. It’s hard to predict the channel that will work best. You can make educated guesses, but until you start running tests, it’s difficult to tell which channel is the best one for you right now.

Each traction channel has worked for startups of all kinds and in all different stages. 

• Viral Marketing (Chapter 6)  Viral marketing consists of growing
  
• 
  
• Public Relations (Chapter 7)  Public relations (PR) is the art of getting your name out there via traditional media outlets like newspapers, magazines and TV.
  
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• Unconventional PR (Chapter 8)  Unconventional PR involves doing something exceptional (like publicity stunts) to draw media attention.
  
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• Search Engine Marketing (Chapter 9)  Search engine marketing (SEM) allows companies to advertise to consumers searching on Google and other search engines.
  
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• Social and Display Ads (Chapter 10)  Ads on popular sites like reddit, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and hundreds of other niche sites can be a powerful and scalable way to reach new customers.
  
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• Offline Ads (Chapter 11)  Offline ads include TV spots, radio commercials, billboards, infomercials, newspaper and magazine ads, as well as flyers and other local advertisements. These ads reach demographics that are harder to target online, like seniors, less tech-savvy consumers and commuters.
  
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• Search Engine Optimization (Chapter 12)  Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of making sure your website shows up for key search results.
  
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• Content Marketing (Chapter 13)  Many startups have blogs. However, most don’t use their blogs to get traction.
  
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• Email Marketing (Chapter 14)  Email marketing is one of the best ways to convert prospects while retaining and monetizing existing ones.
  
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• Engineering as Marketing (Chapter 15)  Using engineering resources to acquire customers is an underutilized way to get traction. Successful companies have built micro-sites, developed widgets, and created free tools that drive thousands of leads each month.
  
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• Targeting Blogs (Chapter 16)   Popular startups like Codecademy, Mint, and reddit all got their start by targeting blogs.
  
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• Business Development (Chapter 17) Business development (BD) is the process of creating strategic relationships that benefit both your startup and your partner.
  
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• Sales (Chapter 18)  Sales is primarily focused on creating processes to directly exchange product for dollars.
  
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• Affiliate Programs (Chapter 19)  Companies like Hostgator, GoDaddy and Sprout Social have robust affiliate programs that have allowed them to reach hundreds of thousands of customers in a cost-effective way.
  
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• Existing Platforms (Chapter 20)  Focusing on existing platforms means focusing your growth efforts on a mega-platform like Facebook, Twitter, or an App Store and getting some of their hundreds of millions of users to use your product.
  
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• Trade Shows (Chapter 21)  Trade shows are a chance for companies in specific industries to show off their latest products.
  
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• Offline Events (Chapter 22)  Sponsoring or running offline events – from small meetups to large conferences – can be a primary way you get traction.
  
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• Speaking Engagements (Chapter 23)  Eric Ries, author of the bestselling book The Lean Startup, told us how he used speaking engagements to hit the bestseller list within a week of the book’s launch, how he landed these talks, and why he chose to use this channel to generate awareness and book sales.
  
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• Community Building (Chapter 24)  Companies like Zappos, Wikipedia, and Stack Exchange have all grown by forming passionate communities around their products.
  

Poor distribution—not product—is the number one cause of failure. If you can get even a single distribution channel to work, you have great business. If you try for several but don’t nail one, you’re finished.

Traction: A Startup Guide to Getting Customers

Join our mailing list and we will send you one to two emails a week for 12 weeks teaching you the basic body weight exercises, nutrition guidelines, and mindset tools you need to be Indestructible.