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My Notes:
What’s Your Secret? “If you do things that are safe but feel risky, you gain a significant advantage in the marketplace.” Seth Godin
Archimedes over two thousand years ago: “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.”
The social and technological inventions of the past one hundred years have brought us to the “End of Jobs” while making entrepreneurship safer, more accessible, and more profitable than ever.
This book will show you what those trends are, the new leverage points that define them—and how you can begin to use them to create more money, meaning, and freedom in your life, and the lives of those you love.
Steve Jobs notes: “Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.”
The ability individuals have right now to deliberately design their lives and realities are greater than at any time in history.
Seth Godin defines a linchpin as: “[A]n individual who can walk into chaos and create order, someone who can invent, connect, create and make things happen.”
Allow me to borrow his definition and simplify a bit: Entrepreneurship is connecting, creating, and inventing systems—be they businesses, people, ideas, or processes. A job is an act of following the operating system someone else created.
Since 1983, the only segment of “jobs” to show significant growth were “Non-Routine Cognitive Jobs.” In other words: creating systems.
The problem both for us as a society and as individuals is that we’re asking the wrong question: “How do I get a job doing that?” What if the better question is: “How do I create a job doing that?”
The best way to improve conditions is for individuals with a strong moral compass to acquire power and build better systems.
Could your job theoretically be done over an internet connection and phone line?
The Complex is where the relationships between cause and effect are only clear in retrospect. It’s an emergent practice. This is the field that entrepreneurs frequently find themselves in.
It’s not clear what to do next because you exhausted the expertise you gained through education. The problem is solved, instead, by testing new solutions and seeing the reaction.
It’s not clear what to do next because you exhausted the expertise you gained through education. The problem is solved, instead, by testing new solutions and seeing the reaction.
Chaotic is the domain where there is no relationship between cause and effect. We must act in spite of the disorder, to develop ways to survive.
In his book, The Hard Thing About Hard Things, venture capitalist, and former CEO Ben Horowitz recounts taking his company public during the 2001 crash. In the midst of layoffs and sales falling off a cliff as the tech bubble crashed, he had to convince investors they should put more money into the company. There’s no guide book for that nor college course.
In his book, The Hard Thing About Hard Things, venture capitalist, and former CEO Ben Horowitz recounts taking his company public during the 2001 crash. In the midst of layoffs and sales falling off a cliff as the tech bubble crashed, he had to convince investors they should put more money into the company. There’s no guide book for that nor college course.
Times have changed. It’s now less valuable than ever to understand how to follow directions and implement best practices.
It’s the work of understanding and operating in the complex and chaotic systems—entrepreneurship that’s increasingly in demand.
It’s the work of understanding and operating in the complex and chaotic systems—entrepreneurship that’s increasingly in demand.
If you’re trying to grow a business, there’s always a primary limit preventing that. If you have an amazing product and no one knows about it, improving the product won’t help it sell more.
Limits play an enormous role in any system, from our day-to-day lives to how economies work.
There are three basic questions to ask when applying Goldratt’s framework:
What’s the system?
What’s the current limit?
What’s the obvious way to improve the limit?
Once you can identify the components of a system and discover what the limit is, figuring out how to improve it becomes much easier.
There are three basic questions to ask when applying Goldratt’s framework:
What’s the system?
What’s the current limit?
What’s the obvious way to improve the limit?
Once you can identify the components of a system and discover what the limit is, figuring out how to improve it becomes much easier.
While our first instinct is usually attempting to push harder, it’s more valuable to figure out where to push.
Limits can be applied to any system in order to dramatically improve the outcome without having to dramatically improve the inputs.
“Give me a lever long enough…and I shall move the world.” Addressing the limit is like having a longer lever. Instead of just pushing harder, we’re figuring out where to push to create the greatest impact.
We aren’t going through a global recession—we’re transitioning between two distinct economic periods.
In every previous transition, three shifts have taken place. In the current transition (the Fourth Economy), that looks like this: The limit is shifting from knowledge to entrepreneurship.
The entrepreneurial Complex and Chaotic domains are the ones increasingly in demand.
The dominant institution is shifting from Corporation to the Individual (or self). What used to require large companies, technology, and globalization has now been made available to the individual or micro-multinational.
The dominant player is shifting from CEO to Entrepreneur. Most institutions and individuals don’t have a good track record of adapting effectively to these shifts.
They continue working to address the wrong limit decades or even centuries later. We’re seeing that now.
The entrepreneurial Complex and Chaotic domains are the ones increasingly in demand.
The dominant institution is shifting from Corporation to the Individual (or self). What used to require large companies, technology, and globalization has now been made available to the individual or micro-multinational.
The dominant player is shifting from CEO to Entrepreneur. Most institutions and individuals don’t have a good track record of adapting effectively to these shifts.
They continue working to address the wrong limit decades or even centuries later. We’re seeing that now.
Globalization means you are no longer competing to be more knowledgeable than the person down the street, but more knowledgeable than seven billion people around the world.
Entrepreneurship is a skillset which can be acquired.
In his book, The 4-Hour Workweek, Tim Ferriss advocates the use of negative visualizations for people considering quitting their jobs. A tradition borrowed from Stoicism, negative visualization is the practice of imagining the worst possible outcome as a way to help ourselves make difficult decisions.
The First Rule of Extremistan: Don’t be a turkey.
The Second Rule of Extremistan: DO NOT BE A TURKEY.
The Second Rule of Extremistan: DO NOT BE A TURKEY.
As technology and globalization continue to advance, the Middle Class is dying.
That is, the moment when we are most confident about our security is the moment in which we are in fact most likely to be endangered.
The longer the market goes without having a correction, the larger the correction will be when it happens.
The longer we go in our careers and businesses without variation or randomness, the larger the amount of underlying risk we accumulate.
The longer we go in our careers and businesses without variation or randomness, the larger the amount of underlying risk we accumulate.
Everyone Is a Media Company
Venture capitalist Ben Horowitz, the CEO of the first cloud computing company, Loudcloud, said his customers were paying approximately $150,000 a month in 2000 to run a basic internet application.
Running that same application today in Amazon’s cloud costs about $1,500 a month.
Running that same application today in Amazon’s cloud costs about $1,500 a month.
Software as a Service: Dramatic reduction in cost and risk—less expensive and easier to find, lower risk Dramatic increase in potential—find the best-qualified person in the world
“Information wants to be free.”
Companies like Udemy and Team TreeHouse, which host online courses, have given people access to more valuable resources than universities at a fraction of the cost.
The punchline is this: the gatekeepers are dying.
You are a media company.
The Internet = Geography Is Irrelevant = Millions of New Market Verticals
By working with a single type of client instead of a single geographical area, he gained a lot of efficiencies that he could pass on in value to the clients both in terms of reduced costs and improved results.
"Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.” William Hutchinson Murray,
But, the entrepreneurial skill set is a bit more nuanced. It falls in the complex square of the Cynefin framework, an emergent practice.
You need other skills which still don’t have well-defined methods of learning them other than the hard way—actually doing them.
You need other skills which still don’t have well-defined methods of learning them other than the hard way—actually doing them.
But as entrepreneurship becomes more popular, there are more examples and scripts to follow.
Two have emerged as the most prominent: The Stair Step Method and Apprenticeships.
Two have emerged as the most prominent: The Stair Step Method and Apprenticeships.
Many full-blown entrepreneurs today started freelancing on the side, then transitioned to consulting or freelancing full time, and some have chosen to release their own products.
The first step in the Stair Step Method, as Rob explains it, is launching a product that sells for a one-time fee and has a single marketing channel: SEO (search engine optimization), paid advertising like Google Adwords or Facebook ads, a blog audience, or Amazon.com.
Step two is launching enough of those one-time products that you’re able to buy your time back. You can either quit consulting if you’re a consultant or quit your job if you’re employed. At that point, you’ve got confidence in building and marketing a business.
More importantly, you have a lot of time. Now you’re at step three. Instead of working nights and weekends like you had been, you’ve got 40–60 hours a week to put in on your business, giving you a platform to launch bigger products, and projects from.
Stair Stepping lets you build momentum behind your trajectory by developing the skills you need to run an entrepreneurial company.
It also lets you develop relationships. While it’s difficult to meet other like-minded individuals first starting out, once you begin to create a track record of results, people become curious about those results and want to work with you, learn from you, or just hang out and talk about how you’ve done what you’ve done.
It also lets you develop relationships. While it’s difficult to meet other like-minded individuals first starting out, once you begin to create a track record of results, people become curious about those results and want to work with you, learn from you, or just hang out and talk about how you’ve done what you’ve done.
The premise is pretty straightforward: you find someone that is doing what you would like to be doing in five to ten years and cut them a deal: “I’ll come work for you for relatively cheap and I’ll create results you would normally have to pay a lot more for, in exchange I get to train at altitude.
I get to see the inside of how your business works: how you launch products, what the industry looks like, and who I need to know.” Instead of playing with your own money (like what you would need from consulting, a job, or savings), you play with house money.
I get to see the inside of how your business works: how you launch products, what the industry looks like, and who I need to know.” Instead of playing with your own money (like what you would need from consulting, a job, or savings), you play with house money.
Technology startups have started to develop “mafias,” or groups of successful entrepreneurs that can trace their roots back to a common source. Elon Musk (Currently of SpaceX and Tesla), Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn), and Peter Thiel (Palantir) all worked together at PayPal.
Examples of Good Hiring Pages for Apprenticeships:
http://www.tropicalmba.com/
http://wpcurve.com/content-
http://www.appsumo.com/hireme/
http://benhebert.com/success-http://bookinabox.com/hire-me
http://empireflippers.com/
http://www.tropicalmba.com/
http://wpcurve.com/content-
http://www.appsumo.com/hireme/
http://benhebert.com/success-http://bookinabox.com/hire-me
http://empireflippers.com/
New Opportunity: If you want to hear about new apprenticeship opportunities or are looking to hire an apprentice for your startup or fast growth small business, please visit getapprenticeship.com
As humans, we love to work but dislike the obligation of it—the job-based paradigm.
However, once we reach a certain level of material abundance, popularly cited at about $75,000 per year in personal income, it becomes dramatically less motivating to us and there are two core drivers that people tap into: meaning and freedom.
The Millionaire Fastlane, where he breaks down two primary financial roadmaps to wealth.
The slow lane in the form of jobs, a path that most people raised in our society see.
The fast lane, entrepreneurship, the path most people don’t see and one that’s becoming easier, safer, and more profitable.
The slow lane in the form of jobs, a path that most people raised in our society see.
The fast lane, entrepreneurship, the path most people don’t see and one that’s becoming easier, safer, and more profitable.
Whether you make $500k per year or $8 per hour, your earning capacity at a job is linked to your time.
This is essential because time is the only truly limited resource in the universe.
We still haven’t invented the ability to make more time. Because you can only make more money by investing more time, we have no leverage to accelerate how much we earn beyond simply working more and more, which is exactly what most people have done.
What’s more and more often overlooked: you give up control.
You can’t make decisions outside the scope of your job. If external market forces doom the company, they doom you as well.
You can’t make decisions outside the scope of your job. If external market forces doom the company, they doom you as well.
The alternative to jobs, entrepreneurship, is based on Fast Lane math. At its core is a focus on rapidly building assets that grow without perpetually requiring direct intervention.
Stated in a formula, the Fast Lane is: Wealth = Net Profit + Asset Value Those terms are defined: Net Profit = (Units Sold) × (Unit Profit) Asset Value = (Net Profit) × (Industry Multiplier)
Net profit, commonly called profit, just means the profit left after we’ve accounted for all expenses and costs of delivering a product.
Increasing Net Profit: Controllable, Unlimited Variables Make You Rich
The first essential element to understanding here is that of the unlimited upside. In a job, your upside is always limited.
Most self-funded startups, entrepreneurs, and businesses I work with and talk with are disappointed by 20% annual growth in the business, while most people with jobs I know are grateful to get their 3% annual cost of living raise.
Because they have unlimited control and unlimited variables, exponential growth is possible.
A. Traffic—Sell more units by increasing Traffic
B. Economics—Raise Unit Profit
C. Conversions—Sell more units by increasing the Conversion Ratio Raising any one of these variables will increase the amount of net profit the business generates.
As more people becomes customers, you have more word-of-mouth marketing since more people have your products to talk about.
The end result is that all of these factors, fully under your control, begin to compound.
More people come to the site. Of those, a higher percentage of them buy, and on average, they buy more expensive items.
While raising any one of these variables increases the net profit of the business, raising all of them at the same time results in dramatic growth.
More people come to the site. Of those, a higher percentage of them buy, and on average, they buy more expensive items.
While raising any one of these variables increases the net profit of the business, raising all of them at the same time results in dramatic growth.
Unlike a job, there is no ceiling. While you can certainly tap out an industry and exhaust demand there, you will have acquired resources that you can use to invest in another industry, exactly what Rob Walling and other entrepreneurs did by stair-stepping their way into better and better businesses.
Assets Are More Valuable Than Cash.
Every dollar you add to the bottom line of a business is actually increased by a multiple. Unlike a job where your income is simply cash, net profit is actually the number used to value your business as an asset.
Let’s say you’re in a job and you get a big raise, an extra $50,000 more per year. That’s pretty sweet right?
You can do a lot with an extra $50,000. Let’s say you do the same in a business you own by generating an extra $50,000 in profit. You add not only $50,000 to your pocket, but also $100,000 in asset value to your net worth because of the multiple. Unlike a raise, adding $50,000 in profit to your company’s bottom line increases the value of the asset, which you own. Imagine getting a $50,000 raise and then having a free $100,000 thrown in.
That’s effectively what happens when an entrepreneur adds $50,000 in net profit to their business.
You can do a lot with an extra $50,000. Let’s say you do the same in a business you own by generating an extra $50,000 in profit. You add not only $50,000 to your pocket, but also $100,000 in asset value to your net worth because of the multiple. Unlike a raise, adding $50,000 in profit to your company’s bottom line increases the value of the asset, which you own. Imagine getting a $50,000 raise and then having a free $100,000 thrown in.
That’s effectively what happens when an entrepreneur adds $50,000 in net profit to their business.
Business brokers are awash in buyers and almost desperately looking for sellers.
How many people do you know that ten years into their job, are earning mid-six figures, working less than ten hours per week, and own an asset worth over $1 million if they chose to sell it?
Compound Interest Is Valuable Once You Have a Lot of Money.
If you build a company and sell it for a few million dollars, then compound interest is powerful.
A disproportionately large number of poker players end up becoming entrepreneurs. Now I see why: they get the math.
Expected Value is the sum of all possible values for a random variable, each value multiplied by its probability of occurrence.
“There is only one success—to be able to spend your life in your own way.” Christopher Morley
“Upon graduation, my primary driver was freedom. I remember thinking that at the time. I would like to be anywhere, anytime I wanted and have a lot of money.” Dan Andrews
We, as a species and individuals, always want freedom. Once we get it, we always want more.
If you own a Kindle and a smartphone, you have access to more books and knowledge than Rockefeller could have even imagined possible, much less had access to himself.
This natural desire for increasing amounts of freedom has been one of the main drivers in the advancement of civilization.
Who has the power in a republic like the U.S.? Who is the freest? The obvious answer would be the voters, right? Not quite. The people who really have power are those who decide which candidates show up on the voters’ ballots. They’re able to create the options you choose from.
In a world of vast possibilities, we focus all our attention on a relatively tiny portion because the most powerful people are structuring the consciousness of everyone else.
The power in a republic is more dispersed than in a monarchy, but it isn’t totally free.
Companies like AirBnB didn’t ask for power from Hilton—they leveraged the technology and the internet to take it. This happens on much smaller scales as well.
If our generation chooses it, if we seize it, the degree of freedom we can create is beyond the capability of human imagination.
It’s entirely possible that the freedom you can create in your life within two decades will be beyond the imagination of many people alive today.
It’s entirely possible that the freedom you can create in your life within two decades will be beyond the imagination of many people alive today.
Instead of choosing from a set of available options, we can create our own. It’s the triumph of design over choice. Instead of ordering from the menu, we are more empowered than any prior generation to become the cooks.
Are You Structuring Your Reality or Having It Structured for You?
But the most powerful are those who design both their own realities and the realities of others. They write the TV shows and design the products that the masses consume.
The degree to which we’re able to design our reality is directly related to our quality of life, freedom, and wealth. Those that design reality have a higher quality of all factors in their life, and through designing their reality they enable others to do the same by creating more wealth.
In designing my reality in the form of an iPhone, Steve Jobs and Apple created more power, freedom, and wealth for me than Rockefeller had. This leads to an upward spiral. As wealth is increasing, so is our ability to design our realities.
In designing my reality in the form of an iPhone, Steve Jobs and Apple created more power, freedom, and wealth for me than Rockefeller had. This leads to an upward spiral. As wealth is increasing, so is our ability to design our realities.
Edward Deci, the founder of Self-determination theory, noticed in his experiments and observations that great work emerged when individuals had more freedom, and were, in a sense, allowed to be more entrepreneurial.
By seeking more freedom and building it into our lives, we not only improve our ability to create more material wealth and make more money personally, but we also create more of it in the world at large.
A person who is chasing consciously chosen goals can’t help but grow into a deeper, more complex individual.
It’s in stretching skills, reaching up for higher challenges, that we become increasingly complex and more capable individuals and, consequently, more valuable to the marketplace.
It’s in stretching skills, reaching up for higher challenges, that we become increasingly complex and more capable individuals and, consequently, more valuable to the marketplace.
When we spend our time striving and growing towards a task that we freely choose, we do better work. The same input creates more input.
A natural drive towards an intellectual challenge resulted in more innovation and more patents.
When I work for myself there is the pure joy of creating and I can work through the night and not even know it.
As a society, we’re paying people more money to do things which create less wealth.
Yet we’re at a point where we can create more wealth and make more money for ourselves and others by pursuing work which forces us to grow in a way we personally find meaningful.
Yet we’re at a point where we can create more wealth and make more money for ourselves and others by pursuing work which forces us to grow in a way we personally find meaningful.
Let’s do a quick catch up before moving on: We’re goal-seeking, striving creatures. We seek goals which create meaning and freedom in our lives.
The lack of meaning is a modern problem.
It’s solved by pursuing a goal greater than ourselves. In doing so, we actually produce more valuable work, are happier, and as a side effect, make more money.
The lack of meaning is a modern problem.
It’s solved by pursuing a goal greater than ourselves. In doing so, we actually produce more valuable work, are happier, and as a side effect, make more money.
Diversification reigns supreme.
We tend to overestimate our ability to get things done in the short term, but underestimate our ability to get things done in the long term.
Never before in human history has an individual staring at his world had a greater ability to craft that story into one that now exists only in your imagination.
You have the opportunity, right now, to design the future. Your future. Our future. To write a story where you have more control over your reality, more freedom, more money, and more meaning that anyone alive a century ago could have imagined.
You have the opportunity, right now, to design the future. Your future. Our future. To write a story where you have more control over your reality, more freedom, more money, and more meaning that anyone alive a century ago could have imagined.
To get access to all the free resources included in the book (listed below), please visit http://taylorpearson.me/eoj Full Recorded Interviews with the ten entrepreneurs featured in The End of Jobs, detailing how they launched their own successful businesses.
Business Books to Fuel Your Entrepreneurial Career.
49 Tools and Templates to use when launching and growing a business.
A ninety-day goal setting worksheet to translate the book into actionable steps, and move you towards building an entrepreneurial career of freedom, meaning, and wealth.
Business Books to Fuel Your Entrepreneurial Career.
49 Tools and Templates to use when launching and growing a business.
A ninety-day goal setting worksheet to translate the book into actionable steps, and move you towards building an entrepreneurial career of freedom, meaning, and wealth.
Instead of planning your career, focus on developing skills and pursuing opportunities.
Looking ninety days out, you have a good idea of what you can actually get done in that time frame.
Your capacity estimations are about right, and yet you can make some very substantial progress towards a big goal.
Your capacity estimations are about right, and yet you can make some very substantial progress towards a big goal.
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