Howdy Paid subscribers,

We’ve got news!

The flyby paid subscription is going on PAUSE for a bit. 💥

That’s right.

I’ve decided to try experimenting with posting outside of a fixed schedule entirely.

What does this mean?

The paid subscription will be paused for now and I’ll only focus on publishing FREE content going forward.

You’ll still be getting free posts every now and then, whenever they are ready, hot and fresh of the oven, but I won’t be publishing regular paid content anymore, and you won’t be getting charged going forward.

My intention is to go all in on quality, and spend as much time on posts as needed.

Let’s see how this experiment goes.

I might revert back to the weekly paid posts at some point, but for now, it’s going to be entirely free posts without a fixed schedule, similar to a good old-fashioned blog, but with a focus on quality, excellence, and craftsmanship.

Some of these might even take 2-3 months to produce (if not longer), but the result will definitely be much higher, as well as the length, so stay tuned, as there’s only one place we can go, UP!

If you’d like to refund your paid subscription and cancel it entirely, then just reply to this email and I’ll make sure you get you’re money back. Otherwise, you'll stay locked at the current price in case the paid subscription comes back, and still be able to access all the previously published paid content. But either way, you won't be charged anymore going forward.

Thank you so much for tuning in so far and I’m excited to see where we are headed!

To infinity and beyond.

Sol

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This post is a tasty two-minute read and is for paid subscribers only.

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Howdy everyone!

Welcome to Issue #11 of the Flyby Book Club. The last pick was a straight shot of motivation to send you soaring in the direction you need to go. Check out the review here.

This month’s pick is all business.

I’ve always wondered what goes on behind the hallowed walls of an M.B.A.

But once I got into the habit of taking action and continuously improving and learning, getting another degree suddenly became a distant afterthought.

But still, if you are like me, you might still be a bit curious about what it entails.

So this month’s pick is an MBA in a box, or rather, in a book, walking us through everything you find on the learning side of the program.

It’s been recommended by a lot of world-class entrepreneurs.

So, let’s see what it’s all about.

The 11th book is…

Drumroll, please🥁

…

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Someone once asked Somerset Maugham if he wrote on a schedule or only when struck by inspiration. “I write only when inspiration strikes,” he replied. “Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o’clock sharp.”

That’s a pro.

Welcome to the 10th edition of the Flyby Book Club. The current pick is The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, and is a fiery five-minute read.

In my opinion, this book should be required reading for all entrepreneurs, artists, and anyone working in a creative field. Any time I’ve lost momentum in the past, this is the book I’ve picked up, and it’s always sent me soaring in the direction I’ve needed to go— Laser focus on the work that matters.

This book is about the fundamental forces that take shape when we go about pursuing any calling and also the one which holds us back— Resistance.

Resistance, shortly put, is anything that keeps us from doing our work and can take any number of forms— obvious ones like procrastination, video games, social media or subtle ones like too many side projects, always fighting fires or doing work that doesn’t really move the needle much but is considered “urgent.”

Here’s a sample of the list of activities that attract Resistance according to the book:

1) The pursuit of any calling in writing, painting, music, film, dance, or any creative art, however marginal or unconventional.

2) The launching of any entrepreneurial venture or enterprise, for profit or otherwise.

3) Any diet or health regimen.

…

Anything that needs to be done that leads to us evolving to our higher self will naturally evoke Resistance. It’s an invisible force that tries to hold us back and keeps us at the same level that we are currently on.

Throughout the book, we come to see Resistance for what it really is — Fear. Whether it’s fear of failure, fear of what others will think, fear of rejection, or the biggest one of them all — fear of success, they are all just traps that keep us from reaching our highest potential and doing what we need to get done most.

The way out of this trap is to follow the fear and flip it upside down, right into the ground. By tackling the very thing we are most afraid of getting done.

Rule of thumb: The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.

The antidote to this Resistance is what Pressfield calls— Turning Pro. When we turn Pro, we get to work and stop Resistance in its tracks.

Turning Pro is a state of mind. One where we get down to business and focus on putting in the work, the process, the inputs, taking it one day at a time, and giving it our best.

It’s about putting yourself in the mindset of a professional, or how we think a professional, as an ideal, would operate and bringing that mindset into our own day-to-day attitude. A simple way to do that is to just use any notable experience from your day job and put that same fiery work ethic to use for your passion, art, venture, calling, and smash Resistance down into the ground.

In short. Commitment.

But this also doesn’t mean getting attached to the outcomes and trapping yourself in a perfectionism loop. The emphasis is on the inputs, on craft and mastery, on moving in the direction of progress and taking action.

It’s about putting in the work consistently, without overthinking things or taking things personally, and trusting that the magic will come.

To do this, we also need to take a step back and view our work separately from US.

The professional loves her work. She is invested in it wholeheartedly. But she does not forget that the work is not her. Her artistic self contains many works and many performances. Already the next is percolating inside her. The next will be better, and the one after that better still.

Check out the chapter You, Inc., in the book for a valuable framework on how to think about this. It’s especially valuable for anything that requires “sales.” I often refer back to it when I find myself getting over-identified with my work.

As we’ve seen many times in this newsletter, it’s about focusing on the process with discipline and an eye toward continuously improving. The results will eventually arrive. And in style.

Overcoming fear is the key to turning Pro and defeating Resistance.

There’s no mystery to turning Pro. It’s a decision brought about by an act of will. We make up our mind to view ourselves as pros and we do it. Simple as that.

Once Resistance is defeated, we get a glimpse of the higher realms of our truest potential. A sample of the life we are capable of living, and much much more. I’ll let you read the book to find out what this is. It goes deep, and I mean deep.

Check out the book. It’s a short one that packs a powerful punch. The real benefits come from applying it to the work that matters most to you immediately, by simply, turning Pro.

I’ve read it several times and will be re-reading it again, no doubt.

If you need to get your personal flywheel of progress spinning again or just in the right direction, get to work.👊

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  ---

The professional cannot take rejection personally because to do so reinforces Resistance. Editors are not the enemy; critics are not the enemy. Resistance is the enemy. The battle is inside our own heads. We cannot let external criticism, even if it’s true, fortify our internal foe. That foe is strong enough already.

This post is about starting at the end and is a tasty two-minute read. It's for paid subscribers only.

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Last week’s post was about building a racecar. This one is about the engines that drive growth and is a flaming five-minute read. 🔥

I’ve been recently diving deep into growth marketing and learning all the different areas it encompasses. This post is about marketing without a big budget (or any budget, for that matter).

We looked into this a bit in the Learn Startup review, but let’s zoom in again with an eye toward growth. The three flywheels in that book for sustainable growth were virality, stickiness and paid acquisition (i.e., ads run from revenue). And then there’s also my personal favorite — word of mouth.

First things first, word of mouth isn’t the same as virality.

Virality is something that is engineered or baked into a product that makes it so it can’t help but spread itself.

The classic example is the footer at the end of every Hotmail email sent when the company launched. “P.S - Get your free hotmail here.” 

Another one is Dropbox’s referral program, where you could get 250 MB free for every friend you invite. The more friends you invited, the more free space you got. I remember sending this link to multiple colleagues and friends at the time.

There’s another one I had on the list, but I realized that it’s a bit of a unique and interesting case. So, I’ll save it for the end. *

Anything that makes it so the product can’t help but become contagious.

This can, of course, bring a lot of attention, but it’s important to note that this isn’t because of word of mouth, i.e., people telling their friends about your product.

To me, word of mouth is much more valuable in the long term and can only be triggered with a rock-solid product. 🪨💎

Why? Because people will only share a product with their friends if they genuinely like it, not because the product made them do it or because of us telling them to. This was the premise of the first book in the club — Purple Cow by Seth Godin, and is my favorite form of marketing. Create a product so remarkable that people can’t help but tell their friends about it. And if they aren’t sharing it, then keep improving the product till they do. That’s how we make hits.

With virality, you can end up drawing huge crowds to a somewhat mediocre product or one that isn’t ready to handle the surge of growth and end up with a net negative in the long term. This can be a form of short-term thinking. So, for me, it’s all about word of mouth first and creating something that is truly worth sharing. I think of it as ❤️ Heart > Hype 🔥.

In the Lean Startup, this was known as the sticky engine of growth. That is, one focused on retention and getting people to actually use and get value out of your product. It’s the same with anything really (content, games, education, you name it). The end goal is always having people appreciate and enjoy whatever it is they are engaging with.

But over-optimizing for “retention” can have downsides, too. Think of all the products that use annoying notifications or features like streaks that stress you out if you stop using the app. An example that comes to mind is Headspace and Duolingo, both of which I stopped using a long time ago because of these features. Compare that to the Waking Up app, which has a continuously incrementing counter of “minutes meditated.” This can only go up. Even if I don’t use the app for a few weeks or even months, it’s still there, and I can pick up the progress right where I left off. With streaks, on the other hand, once it’s lost, I really don’t have any incentive to start using the app again, and I end up no longer being a customer.

One is an example of negative reinforcement (pestering the user for not using the product, and making them feel like they are losing something), and the other is positive (making the user feel good whenever they do choose to come back). The negative reinforcement “tricks” to get users to come back tend to fall flat and are usually just signs of a product that needs to improve or, worse, doing things this way just because everyone else is doing it without really thinking for themselves. Again, short-term thinking.

It’s become so prevalent now that these types of annoying features are pretty much everywhere. Wanna stand out from the crowd and wow your users? Do the opposite and embed a spotless, clean design into your product that makes users feel good and embody a sense of calm just by using your product.

If a product is genuinely good and adding value, then users will come back on their own and you won’t require these tactics. So again, it’s about being remarkable and creating something that people want to use in the first place and share with their friends.

The thing to optimize for me would be engagement and delivering smiles. Making it so that when people use your product, either because some friend told them to, or off their own volition, that it delivers a strong enough wow factor to turn them into genuine fans.

That’s really the north star for me— Laser focus on creating outstanding quality, maximizing core product value and, delighting customers, however many iterations this takes. 🌟

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This post is an analogy for product development and is a fiery four-minute read.

🔥

It's for paid subscribers only.

Imagine one day, you decided to set about building a new type of racecar. 

What would this look like?

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This post is a timeless three-minute read and is for paid subscribers only.

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Happy New Year, fellow entrepreneurs!

Welcome to the 10th edition of the Flyby Book Club. 

New Year, new rules. 🎉

I've decided to shuffle the structure of the club a bit. 

Instead of these being monthly picks, the book club will now be dropping off the calendar entirely. 💨

This means…

Sometimes, we'll get one book per month, sometimes less, sometimes more. It will depend on what the pick is, and how the month flows.

Let's see how it goes.

Of course, we'll also get a stream of many more flyby biographies this year. Stay tuned! It's going to be epic.

The last pick was about adopting the legendary growth mindset, something that can improve our lives in every area and move us toward the direction of overcoming challenges and rapid growth.

This month's pick is about conquering the fear entirely and giving it a name. It's short and sweet. One that will pack a swift punch of creative awakening and jolt you awake from whatever is holding you back. 

Any time I lose momentum, this is the book I pick up. It always smacks me in the direction I need to go.

It's one of my favorite books, and I've started reading it every January now. I would have picked this last year as well, but the book club started in Feb so we never got to it. See, that pesky calendar again. Always getting in the way.

This book is for anyone interested in carving their own path or working in a creative field — artists, entrepreneurs, writers, all of the above, you name it.

Be warned; it will unleash your inner power like an electric storm in full fury and drop you suddenly into the depths of your deepest dreams.

Let's hear it then.

The 10th book is…

Drumroll, please🥁

…

The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

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Welcome to the final book club review of the year (2023).

This month's book was Mindset by Carol Dweck. One that was truly mind-blowing. 

This post is a nifty 9-minute read. I tried to keep it shorter than usual and will continue shortening these posts going forward.

First, a quick poll:

Alright, let's get into it.

I'd say this is probably one of the most important books anyone can read. That’s why it’s on my list of Top Six Books for New Entrepreneurs.

Whether you are an entrepreneur or not, this book smacks a solid shift in orientation that can send you soaring to your highest potential.

So, check it out if you haven't already.

Mindset is about the two types of mindsets that people can pick up. The fixed mindset and growth mindset.

A fixed mindset is one that suggests ability (knowledge, skill, talent, personality) is fixed and can't be improved.

A growth mindset says that all these areas (including ability in the arts, sports, business, science, anything) can be improved with the right effort and attitude.

A fixed mindset puts people in a lack. 

People with a fixed mindset keep trying to defend their fixed traits. For someone who believes they are naturally talented, learning new things or improving their skills would be a blow to their ego. Why would you need to improve something you are already naturally good at? This keeps them from reaching their full potential and causes them to always be defensive in order to try and make themselves look good and feel better. Other people tend to not get along with them either.

A growth mindset puts people in abundance.

People with the growth mindset treat everything as a challenge, as an opportunity to learn, grow and better themselves. Mistakes are part of the process and can show us areas we would need to work on and improve. Scale this attitude over time with focused effort and optimizing strategies, and you will no doubt reach greater and greater heights. It's also worth noting that the growth mindset applies to everything, from math to art, to sports, to social skills. Anything can be improved upon.

The author doesn't dismiss "talent" altogether. Some people do start out with a certain advantage in certain areas, but unless they keep putting in the work to grow, they will reach a plateau and be surpassed by someone with a growth mindset in that field. Think tortoise and hare, except the tortoise is also increasing its speed as it learns more and becomes faster and faster.

"Do people with this mindset believe that anyone can be anything, that anyone with proper motivation or education can become Einstein or Beethoven? No, but they believe that a person's true potential is unknown (and unknowable); that it's impossible to foresee what can be accomplished with years of passion, toil, and training."

Personally, I do think this is very much possible, as long as you are following your inclinations and climbing the right mountain, and not just doing something to prove a point or live someone else's best life. It would just be a matter of going all in on whatever you want to be great at and genuinely enjoy doing (with the right strategies, of course).

The one "talent" growth mindset people have is being able to figure out how to construct this mountain for themselves:

"Howard Gardner, in his book Extraordinary Minds, concluded that exceptional individuals have "a special talent for identifying their own strengths and weaknesses." It's interesting that those with the growth mindset seem to have that talent."

Really, the difference comes down to defending what you know (since you think it can't be changed) or challenging yourself to improve (since everything can be improved).

This belief gives us a love for learning, growing, and self-improvement in all areas.

And that is all you need to reach the top of your potential while enjoying the climb.

"You can see how the belief that cherished qualities can be developed creates a passion for learning. Why waste time proving over and over how great you are, when you could be getting better? Why hide deficiencies instead of overcoming them? Why look for friends or partners who will just shore up your self-esteem instead of ones who will also challenge you to grow? And why seek out the tried and true, instead of experiences that will stretch you? The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it's not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset. This is the mindset that allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives."

Amen.

Let's go through a bunch of areas the book covers where this applies (it has more as well, so read the book for the whole story).

Sports

"Did you know there was once a strong belief that you couldn't physically train for golf, and that if you built your strength you would lose your "touch"? Until Tiger Woods came along with his workout regimes and fierce practice habits and won every tournament there was to win."

The same concept applies to sports. Talent is overrated, yet that's what most people (including many experts) think is what makes a difference. In some sports, genetics (e.g., height, body type) can make a difference, but other than that, it really all comes down to effort and practice. The best athletes are the ones who love the practice and are continuously improving. The growth mindset ones. That's what puts them at the top of the top. In the fixed mindset, one tends to start off ahead but then hit a plateau, fearing effort as it would be seen as a challenge to their "natural ability and gifts." Thus never reaching their full potential.

The book gives several examples of both mindsets in various athletes across different sports. Check it out if you are into sports; I found it to be a super fascinating read.

"Are there sports you always assumed you're bad at? Well, maybe you are, but then maybe you aren't. It's not something you can know until you've put in a lot of effort. Some of the world's best athletes didn't start out being that hot. If you have a passion for a sport, put in the effort and see.

Sometimes, being exceptionally endowed is a curse. These athletes may stay in a fixed mindset and not cope well with adversity. Is there a sport that came easily to you until you hit a wall? Try on the growth mindset and go for it again."

The concept is repeated here in the sports context, but really, as we've seen, it applies to everything:

"Athletes with a growth mindset find success in learning and improving, not just winning."

It's about character and the mindset of a champion, that is, the mindset of learning, improving and focusing on reaching your highest potential. Scale this to other areas of life, and you'll become a solid growth mindset all-rounder.

Business

Of course, this plays out big time in the business world. 

The book covers different CEOs and leadership styles in detail, and no surprise, the growth mindset leaders were thriving, empowering their colleagues, and focused on evolving as a unit, whereas the fixed mindset ones were always trying to cover their mistakes, make themselves look good, and prove their worth, thus leading to people not wanting to work with them and profits going down.

Organizations themselves can have a fixed or growth mindset; this comes from the culture and whether failure is encouraged or reprimanded. Some fixed-mindset organizations never admit to their mistakes, costing them their reputation and also financially. One such example in the book was Enron. A company that went from boom to bust.

This is in contrast to growth mindset organizations, where employees feel like they want to be part of the team, have a sense of belonging, and feel a personal sense of dedication to the mission.

If you've ever wanted to quit a job, chances are there was fixed mindset management in place, and if you ever plan on hiring people, make sure to build in a growth mindset culture, starting with leadership. Check out the book for details on this.

If you are an entrepreneur starting out, this mindset is even more of a top priority. It’ll point you in the direction you need to go rather than trying to keep up appearances. And if you are flying solo, then this is even more important, as you will no doubt have some gaps in your knowledge. But the growth mindset will help you learn how to cover them over time, know the areas you might need to eventually hire for and embrace the challenge. 🔥

It's the same with launching a product.

If it doesn't take off, someone with a fixed mindset would get defensive and blame the market for "not getting it" or come up with some other reason, such as bad timing or lack of capital, or perhaps put themselves down for creating a lame product. Not true. With a growth mindset, you would know that the launch is just the first step. Then it's about getting feedback, learning from it, improving your product, perhaps trying different marketing strategies and creative ways to spread the word and keep going till you are able to shape your product into something that is a success, even if this means pivoting entirely. We discussed this in detail in Making Hits📀💥.

Relationships

This book covers relationships as well; while this isn't the core theme of this newsletter (or is it?), this passage was too valuable not to share:

"So far, having a fixed mindset has meant believing your personal traits are fixed. But in relationships, two more things enter the picture—your partner and the relationship itself. Now you can have a fixed mindset about three things. You can believe that your qualities are fixed, your partner's qualities are fixed, and the relationship's qualities are fixed—that it's inherently good or bad, meant-to-be or not meant-to-be. Now all of these things are up for judgment. The growth mindset says all of these things can be developed. All—you, your partner, and the relationship—are capable of growth and change."

🤝

As far as parenting goes, it's about the language and attitude towards development. This same thing applies to teachers and coaches as well. We saw this a bit last week in a tennis lesson, with the two different styles of coaching and how failure and success were viewed (winning vs improving).

I also found it interesting to learn about how much impact praise had on development and how the style of praise impacts a child's mindset. Praising ability (e.g., smart, talented, fast) puts them in a fixed mindset. Praising effort (e.g., practice, work, strategies) puts them in a growth mindset.

Here are some examples of praising effort from the book:

"I like the way you tried all kinds of strategies on that math problem until you finally got it. You thought of a lot of different ways to do it and found the one that worked!" 

"I like that you took on that challenging project for your science class. It will take a lot of work—doing the research, designing the apparatus, buying the parts, and building it. Boy, you're going to learn a lot of great things." 

"I know school used to be easy for you and you used to feel like the smart kid all the time. But the truth is that you weren't using your brain to the fullest. I'm really excited about how you're stretching yourself now and working to learn hard things." 

"That homework was so long and involved. I really admire the way you concentrated and finished it."

Now, if only we could go back in time and give this type of feedback to our younger selves. But, it’s never too late to start now, and begin again.

The same applies to coaching and how feedback is given.

Developing the Growth Mindset

Can the growth mindset be developed? Absolutely. According to the book, just knowing that this mindset exists is enough to break people out of the spell of the fixed mindset.

"One day, we were introducing the growth mindset to a new group of students. All at once, Jimmy—the most hard-core, turned-off, low-effort kid in the group—looked up with tears in his eyes and said, "You mean I don't have to be dumb?" From that day on, he worked. He started staying up late to do his homework, which he never used to bother with at all. He started handing in assignments early so he could get feedback and revise them. He now believed that working hard was not something that made you vulnerable, but something that made you smarter."

What's important to remember, though, is that it's not just about working hard at a problem or project but having the attitude of continuous improvement, trying new strategies, experimenting, and stepping out of your comfort zone. This is the growth mindset and, in terms of entrepreneurship, a necessary prerequisite for innovation.

As the author suggests, developing a growth mindset is a journey and a process itself. We all have a fixed mindset in certain areas; the first step is becoming aware of when it shows up and then replacing it with a mindset of growth over time. One that is rooted in lifelong learning, embracing challenges, persisting in the face of setbacks, welcoming effort in pursuit of mastery, learning from feedback, finding inspiration in others doing great things, and encouraging them as well.

In the end, the question to remember is this:

What would you like to have? Loads of validation of what you already know to be true and what you are good at? Or loads of challenge, learning, and breaking through the barriers of what you thought was possible?

For me, it's definitely the latter.

It's the beginner's mind, the challenge, the pursuit of greatness by embracing the process, the practice, and the tiny moments, all colliding together into the sudden symphony of excellence and creativity.

Right here in the present moment.

💥

Happy New Year, everyone. 🎉

Let this year be full of growth, learning, and meaningful challenges. Because that's what moves us forward.

Onwards.

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The silence of the cold winter frost was broken by an ever-so-comforting ray of warm sunshine. Mia was jolted out of her sweet, bear-like hibernation and was ready to take on a new challenge. It was as if she could sense the light of spring awakening among us all.

She walked to work through Central Park in the comforting winter-spring sun as the sound of rubber hitting the turf snapped her out of her trance. CLUCK-POP. She stood there mesmerized, watching the tennis practice go on for five straight minutes, which, in Manhattan time, could be considered five straight hours. The tennis court was a synthetic oasis in the middle of the bustling city. A patch of vibrant green surrounded by towering skyscrapers. The nets fluttered slightly in the breeze as the sound of balls plucking strings pulsed to a rhythmic heartbeat amidst the city’s soundscape. She realized she was late. It didn’t take her much brainstorming to think of what her next challenge would be. By lunchtime, she was browsing tennis rackets on Amazon.com.

In the gym that evening, all she could think about was a new racket. The next day, during lunch, she stopped by a local racket shop in midtown to try some of them out. A few minutes later, she became the proud owner of a peach and yellow graphite sculpture, more work of art than sports equipment. A wide grin erupted in her face.

She lingered by the courts on the way home from the gym that evening, this time with a racket in hand. There were about twenty or so twenty-thirty-somethings burning the rubber. All moving in different silhouettes of a ballet crescendo. The balls bounced back and forth like an amateur performance of their own.

Mia was hooked.

She waited for the class to finish and walked up to a tall, slender, middle-aged man who, for some reason, had the appearance of a coach.

“Hey, I’m interested in joining a group. Are you the coach around here?”

“Umm…” replied the tall man in a deep baritone voice.

“Sorry. I don’t work here,” he mumbled as he scurried away like a mouse.

“Oh, sorry! Do you know who does?”

Too late. He was already gone.

Welcome to New York City.

She looked around, confused, then spotted an old Asian-looking man standing serenely in the corner, smiling. 

“Weird, wonder what he wants,” she thought.

Suddenly, an athletic woman in her mid-thirties ran up in a pair of retro tiger shoes and started shouting — “All right. Let’s go. Let’s go!” Her jet-black hair snapping snakishly like a swinging whip.

“We don’t have all day people! Let’s Move.”

Mia looked around nervously. Seems like the next session had started. She started to sneak away until she heard a shout piercing through in her direction.

“You! Court #3, far end.”

“But.. I don’t.”

“Chop, chop, MOVE!”

Mia gulped. With her gym clothes still on and racket still wrapped in its packaging, she found herself in the game now. Guess it was time to try out the new racket.

It’s not that she had never played before, but it had certainly been over a decade. And she never really took any serious lessons before.

Here we go.

“Alright everyone, you know the drill,” shouted the apparent coach. “30 pushups. Let’s go!”

Mia was confused. Pushups? She had just come from an hour-long gym class and thrust into boot camp!? What was happening?

Joanna, the coach, walked over angrily, “Alright missy, go go go, this isn’t a Christmas parade.”

Joanna was out for blood.

“You look new. Have you ever played before?”

“Umm, yes. I mean, not for a while.”

“What level are you?”

“Umm, intermediate?”

“Let me see your swing.”

Joanna dropped a few balls and then asked Mia to hit them as the others continued to swivel up and down in a rhythmic worm-like motion.

Still nervous, she smashed them hard. A bit too hard. 2 out of 3 went over the net. One went out of the ground, and another landed right inside the baseline. Not bad, she thought.

“Are you really an intermediate? I’d say improver at best. Maybe even a false beginner. Definitely not intermediate,” snapped Joanna.

Mia was taken aback. She found this coach a tad bit rude, and the comments chipped away at her confidence.

“This group is for intermediates only.”

“Yes, well that’s what I was trying to...”

“Come back tomorrow morning. 8 am. We’ll do a 1:1 session. It will be $50 per class. Finish your pushups first.”

Unsure of what just happened, Mia started questioning this whole tennis idea.

“I thought this was supposed to be fun,” she thought, “And cheaper!”

She went home and hit the bed, knackered.

The morning arrived faster than a Shinkansen bullet train. She rushed out of her cramped Manhattan apartment and glided into the courts. It felt a bit like having a job before her job.

Eager to commence the training and finally try out her new racket, she entered the courts, trying to forget about the “mishap” from last night. Joanna was already waiting.

“You are two minutes late missy.”

“Oh.. Umm, it’s Mia, and I was just..” Joanna cut her off, “Save it. Next time, don’t bother showing up. Drop the racket, let’s start with 30 pushups.”

Here we go again.

After what seemed like 30 minutes of intense cardio (Manhattan time), she wondered if she was ever going to be able to get a swing in.

Halfway in, she looked around the other courts longingly, and found all the other students to be having an amazing time with their respective coaches and actually playing tennis. “How in the world did I end up with Joanna?” she pondered.

“Are we ever going to play some tennis?” she asked in frustration.

“Tennis? How can you play tennis when you don’t know how to run. You need to learn to run first. If you can’t catch the ball, what’s the point?”

“But I already know how to run.”

“Ok, let’s see you move then,” snapped Joanna.

She made Mia burn the rubber for a few more minutes before she brought out the bucket of balls.

“Alright, let’s see what you’ve got improver.”

Joanna switched to the other court and started smashing aces that were clearly not intended for someone at a beginner/improver/intermediate level. It was as if she was channeling some prior resentment into her coaching.

This isn’t going well, thought Mia. Being an expert and teaching others were two completely different skills.

She managed to clip one. It edged back up, outside the court.

The rest just went all over the place. After running circles around the court trying to catch the ball, Mia was exhausted.

“Back to pushups,” shouted Joanna with a sharp look.

This continued for a few days; the sessions got more and more intense, and there was no break. Joanna was running Mia like a workhorse, and Mia felt as if she was training for the US Open, or more likely, the Olympic gold in track. She considered buying a pair of Nike shoes to fit the theme.

A few weeks later, she was starting to feel a pain in her shoulder. She mentioned it to Joanna. 

“It’s fine; just ice it.”

And they continued the gauntlet. The session went on, and it was clear Mia was starting to hate the game she wasn’t even getting to play.

She headed off to work, her mind a whirl of confusion. Her shoulder aching even more from the unusual motions of swinging the racket. She headed straight to the snow room to apply some ice.

“Is this what this place is for?” she thought to herself, standing in the Snow Room of the opulent Bubblesoft office. A monument to the cold, a room full of ice peaks, cold mist, and footsteps in the snow, submerging you within the depths of an ice cave regardless of the day, time, or season.

She tried to quickly sneak out, slightly embarrassed to be using the ice room everyone thought was completely ridiculous. “Why do we even have this here!?” is what everyone would say.

“Getting some Ice, are we?” inquired a familiar voice from behind.

Busted.

“Seb! I didn’t see you there,” she blushed, somewhat embarrassed. “Just trying to cool down my arms. I had a tennis lesson.” 

“You play tennis?”

“I was trying to, but I’m not sure anymore. This coach is horrible! All I do is run around while she shouts at me.”

“Let me guess, Joanna?”

“Yes! How did you know?”

“Trust me. You want to fire her ASAP. It only gets worse.”

“Oh?”

“I can’t even begin to explain. Get out while you still can.”

Mia chuckled nervously but also didn’t take Seb too seriously. She had heard this story before.

“Isn’t that what you keep saying about Bubblesoft, Seb?”

“Oh yeah. You bet! Bubblesoft is a cult. No doubt. Why else do they call us Bubblers? I’m outta here!”

“I’m going to start my own business soon,” he affirmed.

Mia chuckled, “Sure Seb.”

“I’m sure we’ll be having this same conversation again next month.”

Seb was now a bit flustered. Seems like he needed to make a move. What was he waiting for, the Year of the Tiger?

“We’ll see about that. Anyway, I know of a really good tennis coach. He’s a bit… different. I’ll tell him to get in touch with you.”

“Sure, thanks a bunch Seb! I’d be happy to go with anyone other than Joanna,” she smiled, “Anything would be a step up from this!” now relieved she wouldn’t have to go through this debacle again. 

Seb nodded. “You bet. Oh, before you go, how’s the new guy doing?”

“You mean Max?”

“I don’t know, something’s off with him. He always seems to be moping around, and hovering around my screen, trying to see what I’m upto. I feel like he might be more interested in my job than managing the project.”

Seb chuckled, “Yeah, I think he hates it here. I should probably have a word with him someday.”

“Or.... maybe he just likes you,” he teased.

She blushed.

“Oh, what!? no way, I doubt that. I’m sure he would have said something by now.”

“You’d be surprised Meow! You’d be surprised!”

She had a weird Deja-Vu. As if she’d had felt this all before. Around the same time last year. Perhaps it was just the spell of the seasons.

Mia was awakened the next morning by an abrupt text from Joanna at 7am.

“No availability at 8am, can you make 7:45?”

Make that 2 more.

“Actually, make it 7:30.”

“See you court 3”.

Mia, now getting quite annoyed. “Who does she think she is? The nerve! That’s my slot, how can she just give it away.” 

She texted back furiously.

“Hi Joanna, I won’t be able to join any more sessions. I’ve decided to try out another coach.”

Her heart pounded as she got an instant reply.

“Ok. Can I please ask why you would do something like this?”

Mia thought this was a bit unprofessional.

“Hello???” flew in a second text.

She now panicked, clearly not a fan of confrontation. “It’s just my work schedule is changing a bit, and I won’t be able to make those slots anymore.”

“We can arrange a different time, no problem.”

Yikes, maybe she should have just told the truth.

“It’s just... I’ve already scheduled something with the other coach.”

“Cancel it then.”

She tried ignoring it.

“Are you still able to make 7:30 today?”

No dice. She would have to face her fears head-on.

“Sorry Joanna, I would like to try a different style of learning. I’ll get back to you if I need another session, thanks for all the coaching!”

Joanna stopped responding, as Mia’s heart was still pounding.

Phew thought Mia. That was close. A bit too close.

She started wondering, “Maybe I was a bit rough on Joanna; she didn’t have the best people skills, but she had managed to get me in top shape after all.”

Ding. Another text arrived.

“Cancellation policy is 24 hours. Please transfer $50.”

Never mind. Mia was now fuming.

That evening, she walked past the courts disheartened, looking enviously at all the students who seemed to just flow effortlessly, like their bodies were made of elastic bands.

“Mia, I’ve been expecting you,” echoed a calm, serene voice, seemingly coming out of nowhere, yet at the same time, filling every corner of the courts with an omnipresent surround sound.

She turned around to find the old man she saw on her first day at court.

“Oh, you have?” quizzed Mia.

“Yes, our mutual friend Seb told me you were interested in some tennis lessons.”

“Oh, yes. Yes, I was.”

She was surprised and didn’t think of this man as a coach. He was dressed in a beige robe and didn’t even have a tennis racket. She thought he was just an elderly man walking by every now and then. But there was something about the smile on his face. So serene, yet so confident. It could only follow that he must know something.

“Of course, let’s get started then,” said the old man.

“Right now? But I wasn’t expecting to play right away.”

“Then what are you doing at the tennis courts Mia?”

Good point.

“Sure… I suppose I can play right now. It’s just that I’ve already spent my budget for the day, unfortunately.”

“Excellent, I like your spirit, Mia! And don’t worry, consider it on the house,” he smiled.

Mia was taken aback by the generosity, a complete contrast to her previous coach.

“What’s your name?” asked Mia.

“You can just call me Kai,” he said with a smile.

“Sure thing, Kai.”

Mia stepped out with intense fervor, ready to jump into the action; all that training with Joanna had made her a bit jumpy.

She dropped down to the ground, ready to grind out some pushups.

Kai smiled.

“Relax Mia, where are you off to? We shall start with a few deep breaths.”

Mia blushed, “Oh, right, sure thing Kai.”

A few minutes in, they were both doing what seemed like a Tai Chi routine. Mia was now confused again. First, it was boot camp with Joanna, and now Tai-Chi with Kai. Would she ever get to play any tennis? Well, at least this one was free.

After a few minutes, she started to feel calm, more focused, and weirdly “in the zone.” 

“Let’s hit a few balls,” said Kai.

He brought his bucket out of nowhere and placed a bullseye on the other side of the court. Aim for this, please.

“But I’m still learning…”

“You need to believe Mia. Trust that you already know enough.”

“Ok, trust. Sure thing, Kai!”

Kai tossed a few balls, and Mia lasered in on them like a hawk. Smash. The first one curved swiftly over the net and bounced straight into the target. Again. Boom! Three in a row.

Mia didn’t know what was happening. She had suddenly gone from frustrated to fierce, all in the blink of an eye.

“Very good, Mia,” smiled Kai. “You seem to have done this before. That was some terrific top spin.”

Mia blushed and smiled.

She suddenly felt a surge of energy, and her joy for the game started emerging again. She immediately realized how big an impact a good coach could have. She was now eager to play every morning again, and her enthusiasm had returned like the sounds of the birds chirping in the early spring sun. The snow peaks had melted, and her world was waking up again.

She got into it, really, really into it. She started practicing at home. Shadow swings, real swings, hitting balls against the walls, floors, and ceilings, annoying her neighbors, watching Wimbledon on repeat in her spare time, and, of course, considering going pro each day in a few heated minutes of debate with herself.

She even spent a few days creating a custom vibration dampener for her racket, with some bells on it. Taking the foot off the pedal and training with Kai had made her find the sweet spot between effort and rest, between productivity and purpose.

She was now in love with the game again and ready to play with passion.

Mia had found love for the game and a newfound love for life itself.

The weeks went by in a breeze. Mia got better and better; she found her whole life improving mysteriously. The discipline, training, and daily wisdom from Kai was working its magic without the forceful effort of the struggles with Joanna.

She even thought about entering the local tournament. She was ready for another challenge, and her competitive spirit was taking flight. There was only one problem. She couldn’t get her serve right.

After practicing ferociously for weeks, she found herself repeating the same mistakes from before. She had never managed to learn how to serve properly before, and now it was only getting worse. 

“It feels like I’m fighting against myself Kai. No matter how hard I try, I can’t shake off my old way of serving.”

Kai walked over patiently, calm and observant.

“Old habits are the hardest to break, Mia. Sometimes, we need to spend more time unlearning what isn’t serving us anymore. No pun intended, of course,” he guffawed wildly as Mia chuckled. 

“Practicing an incorrect technique will only ingrain incorrect habits deeper, you see.”

“Yes, that makes sense. I’m just not sure to know how to change it.”

“A long time ago, I had a student named O-nami, a sumo wrestler. He was a fierce warrior, but afraid of the grand stage, afraid of the roaring crowds. Soon, his fear turned into a habit, and it became second nature. Anytime he would enter the stage, he would freeze.”

“O-nami? Sumo?” asked Mia, confused. “I didn’t know you were a sumo wrestler, Kai.”

“I have been in many places, Mia,” he said with a mysterious smile. “It’s all connected.” 

“Oh, that’s wild, Kai. How did O-nami overcome his fear then?”

“He learned to channel the energy of his fear, summoning the great waves of the ocean. Instead of running from the roar, he learned to ride it, to use it. In essence, he had to learn to begin again with the mind of a beginner. Letting go and finding the real strength within. A strength that was ever-present yet lay dormant.”

Mia started thinking deeper about this, more profoundly.

“Your serve is like O-nami’s stage performance. In order to grow, you must be willing to break it down and rebuild it, step by step. But the real change will be all in the mind – accepting that letting go of the old could lead to something better.”

“Letting go of what doesn’t serve you,” he guffawed once more as Mia smiled.

“Seb was right; you are quite the character, Kai,” chuckled Mia.

“Let’s start with the basics – your stance, your grip, your swing, and most importantly, an empty mind. Forget what you have learned, focus on what you know to be true.”

She reset her stance, concentrating on the ball and visualizing a perfect serve in her mind. She tossed it into the air, her body moving in a fluid, more controlled motion. “Let go.” Time slowed down as she struck the ball. Click. Swoosh. It sailed over the net, landing perfectly in the service box – an Ace. 

“I did it, Kai! That felt different, more... right.”

“Well done, Mia. You’ve begun to summon your own great waves. Like O-nami, you’re learning to use your inner strength. This is just the beginning.”

Mia beamed, filled with a renewed sense of purpose and confidence. She picked up another ball, ready to serve again, her spirit lifted by Kai’s guidance and her own breakthrough.

After the groundbreaking session, she decided to sign up for the tournament and started training even more regularly. She would now hit the courts five days a week, practice with Seb, who was still working at Bubblesoft, and play matches with students from the intermediate group, as she literally up-skilled.

Tennis in Central Park had now become a central part of her life.

There was now less than a week left to the local tournament. She had been practicing non-stop and had already improved beyond the level of the other students. Most of them just being part timers, not really taking it seriously. Mia had managed to fit years’ worth of training into a mere few months just by focusing her mind completely on this one area. Now, that’s the right way to do Manhattan time, she thought.

She even started to give Seb a run for his money. He was bewildered.

The first match arrived like the winds of change. Mia was nervous, yet at the same time ready. The opponent entered. It was the same student from the group session who had scurried away like a mouse. A tall, slender, middle-aged man. This should be interesting, thought Mia.

It was his serve. Cluck, pop, swoosh. Ace. 15-0.

Mia was now jolted awake. Seems like he was a decent player. Next serve. Cluck, pop, swoosh. She managed to barely get a flick into an accidental drop-shot. Middle-aged man just managed to dive in, slicing it perfectly cross court. 30-0.

She heard the teachings from Kai echoing in the background, “Forget what you’ve learned, feel what you know, summon the great waves.” Time to fly. She cranked up the octane and activated tournament mode.

Next serve, Mia smashed it back down the line. Middle-aged man tripped. 30-15. He grunted. The game was on.

Next serve, a fierce volley went on for a few minutes; Mia sliced it cross-court to capture the point. 30-30, then 30-40 in rapid succession, as she unleashed her potential in a wicked blur of motion.

The man lost his cool and threw down his racket in frustration. The sign of a true amateur. Someone not in control of their emotions. Mia was able to take advantage and run him over. First game, Mia.

Round 2.

The man was still somewhat frazzled and hadn’t regained his composure.

Mia to serve. 

Cluck, pop, swoosh. Ace. 15-0. 

Cluck, Swoosh, miss hit. 30-0. 

Cluck, return, backhand slice. 40-0. 

Pop.

Game. 

A series of masterful plays followed. Each point a testament to her growing prowess. The sets blurred into a showcase of her skill. No contest. Mia had won her first-ever tournament match, in style. She jumped up in excitement and went over to high-five Kai. He simply smiled and bowed instead. 

“Well done, Mia, your practice has shown great promise. We must now keep our eye on the target. The journey continues.”

They continued training for the next few weeks. Mia kept getting stronger and stronger. She won all her matches with grace and reached the quarterfinals of her first ever tournament.

She was elated.

She went over to check the roster to get an idea of who her next opponent would be. Her enthusiasm, eagerness, and work ethic had sent her soaring to her highest potential; she couldn’t believe she was in the knockout stage. She was curious to find out who she would be paired with.

She took a deep breath and checked the list.

“Alright, you’ve got this. First ever quarter final, no biggie!” she gulped.

She opened the list.

Her face dropped when she found out who the match was against.

It couldn’t be.

--- Quarter Finals - Match 3 ---

Mia vs Joanna.

“What!?”

A nightmare in reality. She would now have to face Joanna again. Mia knew Joanna was quite skilled, but worse, she knew Joanna was all about winning and not the love of the sport. This match would be a cage match for the mind more than the body. She also fully expected Joanna to still be holding a grudge and perhaps even play dirty.

She had noticed Joanna staring like a hawk every now and then in her training sessions with Kai, but she hadn’t spoken to her since. She did feel she could have handled “the breakup” a bit better, though.

Now, they would be going head-to-head.

There was only one thing she could do. Keep calm and practice along. There was tennis to be played, after all.

She went home and continued her practice regimen, intertwined with deep rest. All she could do was focus on the process. The score would simply take care of itself.

With three days left, she started training ferociously, running corner to corner to up her athleticism. Joanna’s pounding attitude had started replaying in her head again.

Her speed had skyrocketed like a cheetah on wheels.

She got a spin ball on the left side, bam, no problem, top spin to center court, ace return.

Mia was ready.

Drop shot near the net; she smashed it back with ease. Slice; no problem. 

She might even be faster than Joanna now, she thought. This would be her chance to prove that Joanna’s methods might not be the best. Inadvertently, she started channeling Joanna’s energy and was suddenly determined to win at all costs.

Flat backhand drive to the right corner. This one was a bit outside of her reach, but she wasn’t about to let it slip. She cranked up the octane and dove in like a high-speed jet. She found herself losing balance a mere microsecond before.

*CRACK*

Mia tumbled as her racket flew up like a helicopter taking off.

The music just stopped.

This wasn’t good.

Kai rushed in. “Mia, are you alright!?”

She groaned. Her ankle was the size of a Big Apple.

“Oh dear. Mia. We must take you to the hospital.”

Her ankle was toast, and she couldn’t get up anymore.

Darkness falls.

The ambulance arrived in a flash, but Mia had already sensed the verdict. The paramedics swooped in like a swat team and rushed her to the local hospital. The doctor on call addressed the injury and responded with a stark, motionless expression, “Your ankle has a 2nd-degree sprain. You won’t be able to move much for a few weeks, I’m afraid.”

“Few weeks. What!? But I have a big tournament THIS WEEKEND!” she cried.

“Oh. That’s not going to be happening, I’m afraid. You’ll be lucky to get out of bed by then. We are looking at 6-8 weeks of recovery time. On top of that, we’ve found there to be signs of a stress fracture in your shoulder. I don’t think you’ll be able to play anything anytime soon. You are going to have to take it easy for a while and get lots and lots of ice. I would look into investing in a good Ice room subscription somewhere.”

The diagnosis hit her like a crushed rock.

Mia was devastated. She saw her dreams fade and rush out the window like the cold winter snow melting into the sewers. All the months of passion, effort, and hard work had been of no use. She was shocked and heartbroken.

After being sent home, she iced her ankle in disbelief. Wimbledon was still on, but she had suddenly lost all interest. At least she had an ice room in Bubblesoft, she thought. “Wait. Why do I even care about an Ice room. This is so stupid! UGH!” she shouted.

She lay in bed with an ice pack, staring at the ceiling, reflecting on her journey. “Was it all for nothing?” she wondered. Her mind drifted between frustration, sadness, and the fear of never playing again.

A few mornings later, still saddened by the turn of events, she hopped back out to the court to pick up her stuff.

Kai glanced over and smiled, “How’s the warrior today?”

“Not much of a warrior now, am I?”

“Ah, Mia. Sometimes, being a warrior means knowing when to rest and heal.”

“No more tennis, I’m afraid. My journey is over, Kai,” she sighed as a tear rolled down her cheek.

He gently patted her shoulder, as he seemed to still have his signature smile turned on.

“Do not fret Mia,” he started slowly.

“Your journey is only beginning.”

“Tennis was just a path, not THE path. And it has shown you what lay sleeping inside of you.”

“When one door closes, countless more open.”

She looked up.

“Each moment in life has infinite pathways for you to choose from. Infinite. And every pathway in life has infinite possibilities. Your passion is like a river. It may change course, but it never stops flowing. You may not be able to play tennis right now, but you can choose where you wish to go next. You are completely in the driver’s seat. The only thing that matters is that you take your heart, spirit, and drive with you. That is the key.”

His words touched Mia to her core, and she suddenly found hope again. It all made sense; merely a few months ago, she didn’t even care about tennis, and now it had somehow consumed her. But it was just one of many, many paths she could choose from. The whole world was her oyster.

The last few weeks had made her realize her true potential. She could now channel that energy into the next pathway. All she needed was a worthy goal, a challenge, a mountain worth climbing.

She thanked Kai and started to hop home; she had some brainstorming to do.

As she limped back, suddenly, the dampener on her racket fell to the ground, making a clink sound that echoed angelically like a Tibetan singing bowl. 

Mia froze.

Suddenly, she had an epiphany.

She remembered how hard it had been for her to find these dampeners. She had looked everywhere but couldn’t find any she liked, so she had made her own with a cute character on it. She called it a nibbler.

“When one door closes, countless more open,” swirled Kai’s words in his signature omnipresent surround sound.

She couldn’t use her legs or her shoulder for now, but she had her hands and her fingers! And she was an artist, after all.

She went home and brainstormed, made rough designs, could hardly sleep with the creative juices flowing. She would create a business, no, design a BRAND! Hot Shot Nibblers. She came up with a lineup of 20 different icons. Each one unique and having its own personality. She designed her own characters in a vibrant cartoony style, gave them all names and a back story, and put her personal touch and flair to them.

She had taken her warrior spirit and embedded it into the characters, creating a selection of nibblers that would inspire their owners to play to their highest potential.

Learning tennis again had unlocked her drive, her passion, her energy again. Now, she could channel it into something that mattered even more to her. Something that would build upon her vast reserves of existing skills. She would use it to share her creativity with the world and spread the joy with countless other tennis players across the world. People just like her.

The weekend was a firestorm of creativity, brainstorming, and design. Wimbledon stopped altogether and was now replaced by Shark Tank. Hanging out with Seb so often had perhaps rubbed off on her, she thought.

She wasn’t quite sure what the next steps were, but she was excited to find out. She had picked up playing tennis in just a few months, hadn’t she? Now, it was time to take it to the next level and learn about entrepreneurship.

She would simply take things one step at a time.

The morning arrived faster than a Shinkansen bullet train. The spring-summer leaves flowed with energy and radiance. Mia felt electric. She limped across to work early, eager to get some glorious ice time to speed her recovery. “So that’s what this room is for,” she concluded. She stopped by the tennis courts on the way and saw Kai drop her his iconic, serene smile.

She hopped up to him, still recovering but smiling widely.

“Thank you, Master Kai,” she bowed, unsure where the urge to call him master came from.

She stood there still for a mere three seconds, which felt more like three minutes. This time, though, she had a serene smile on her face that broke through the rush of the city, turning Manhattan time into mystical moments of magic.

“I have found my next path,” she smiled.

“Yes, I can see it in you Mia, and I am very happy,” he bowed serenely.

He held out his hand, releasing a lotus flower that caught sight of the wind, flying away with the breeze, like a pastel phoenix rising anew from the ashes.

“Say, how would you like to continue training? You might not be able to play tennis for now, but we can work on your visualization skills, and perhaps do some slow Tai-Chi movements to speed up your recovery,” he smiled.

“That sounds great, Master Kai,” she said excitedly.

“I’m all in!”

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  ---

In the first issue of the Flyby Book Club — Purple Cow by Seth Godin, we came across this epic quote:

“The best design solves problems, but if you can weld that to the cool factor, then you have a home run,” - Mark Schurman of Herman Miller.

Today, let’s analyze what exactly gives a product or company this elusive cool factor.

This post is a shrewd 7-minute read and for paid subscribers only.

Read more

This post is about constructing the right mountain for yourself and is an elevating eight-minute climb.

This post is for paid subscribers only, but the free preview below is a rare one-minute ore.🪨

To me, the key to designing an inspiring, creative, and fulfilling life is to set a worthy goal and then strive to attain it by focusing on the process. 

• Setting a worthy goal → something that is challenging, inspiring, meaningful to you, involves self-growth, and has the potential to improve the world.

• Focusing on the process → realize that fulfillment comes from the day-to-day and not when you attain said goal. Just by setting a worthwhile target and making sustained progress, you are already there. Enjoy it.

Scale this over to decades, with a new worthy goal every 10 years or so (or just going deeper into the same one), and you've got the recipe for a very unique, creative, and interesting life.

One full of mastery.

This involves constructing the right mountain for yourself. One that would make for a challenging climb and meet all the other criteria above as well.

Let's dive deeper into constructing this mountain from an entrepreneurship perspective.

Read more

This post is about the Art of the Product Launch and is a smooth 6-minute read.

This post is for paid subscribers only.

Read more

Hello, fellow founders!🧡

Back in high school, I used to think I was bad at math.

Naturally, my grades reflected this belief.

Fast forward to college, I was consistently top of my class.

What changed?

Well, mainly, I started applying the same stuff in more exciting ways (building video games instead of solving arbitrary proofs).

But, more importantly, what this did was give me a firsthand glimpse of awakening from the limiting belief many of us unwittingly trap ourselves into — “I’m not good at X.”

That’s just not true, and something called a fixed mindset.

I firmly believe anyone can learn (and get exceptionally good at) anything if we set our minds to it.

This month’s pick shows us how.🚀🔥

Welcome to the 9th edition of the Flyby Book Club. 📖

Last month’s pick was about building a startup out of nothing. Naturally, this involves learning new things and building a bunch of skills we might not have had before (marketing, sales, branding, coding, writing, speaking, design, whatever they might be). This month, we’ll learn how to rewire our brains for success in skill acquisition.

This month’s book is about a fundamental shift in mindset that can improve literally every area of our lives. It contains one of the most powerful concepts I’ve read about, and I think it’s time to give it another read.

This month’s pick is about the legendary growth mindset. Something we can use to upgrade our beliefs in any area. It applies to learning, skills, business, parenting, relationships, you name it.

If you haven’t read this book before, I recommend you read it. Otherwise, read it again, and again. It’s worth imprinting this stuff into your subconscious.🎯🧠

The ninth book is …

Epic drumroll please 🥁🌟

…

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Welcome to the 8th edition of the Flyby Book Club. 📖

This month's post reviews The $100 Startup - by Chris Guillebeau and is a sizzling 16-minute read.🔥

This was the first time I'd read this book, and I was pleasantly surprised. If you read this as part of the club (or otherwise), reply back with how you found it, or use the buttons below! 👊

I thought it was quite good and covered a wide range of topics, mostly dealing with taking the first steps into the vast ocean of entrepreneurship, but it also covered growth and scaling a business without getting too big (employees, investors, outside funding, etc.).

Stuff that would be useful for any kind of bootstrapped entrepreneur.

Here's my review:

The last book, "Anything You Want," had the premise of building your own utopia (whatever that might mean) while delivering value to people.

This book is a bit more niche and has a slightly different yet related premise.

Freedom X Value.

Personal freedom (e.g., freedom from a job, to do whatever you want) while at the same time delivering value to customers. Where "value is created when a person makes something useful and shares it with the world."

This also has the constraints of starting out with a small budget (<$1000) but generating enough income to match your lifestyle (>= $50k). I found many parts very similar to The Four-Hour Workweek, and overall, this is an inspiring concept and mindset. Even if you don't want to make it your life goal and want to aim bigger, this can be a legit launchpad, and many of the concepts remain the same.

The goal in the book is not to scale into a huge operation but rather create a business that can fund your lifestyle and not require any employees or investors. The way to do this is by, of course, delivering value to customers. I'm all for this approach, and since the time this book was published, there are countless more ways to achieve this now.

The author calls this type of startup a microbusiness, but I don't see it that way. I'd say a lot of these concepts have the potential to scale into something bigger while at the same time keeping your operations small if you are smart and strategic about how you go about it. I've covered my thoughts on this subject in "How to Build a High-Growth Tech Startup (all by Yourself)."

"Microbusinesses aren't new; they've been around since the beginning of commerce. What's changed, however, is the ability to test, launch, and scale your project quickly and on the cheap."

Yup, and it's only getting quicker.🏃‍♂️

Passion & Skills💖🎯

The book focuses on building a business around your passion or skills. 

"Many people are interested in building a business that is based on a hobby or activity they are especially enthusiastic about. As we'll see, not every passion leads to big bank deposits, but some certainly do."

The equation in the book is:

Passion or skill + usefulness = success

The formula listed here is the intersection of passion (or skill) with usefulness. Take something that you are super interested in or know a lot about and find a way to make it useful to the world.

"Not everything that you are passionate about or skilled in is interesting to the rest of the world, and not everything is marketable. I can be very passionate about eating pizza, but no one is going to pay me to do it. Likewise, any individual person won't be able to provide a solution to every problem or be interesting to everyone. But in the overlap between the two circles, where passion or skill meets usefulness, a microbusiness built on freedom and value can thrive."

This is exactly the equation we saw in Book Club #2 - How I Built This.

I'm definitely all for that and wouldn't do it any other way. I would actually go a step further and add scratching your own itch to the mix. My equation would be:

Passion X Skill X Scratch your own itch.

For me, my primary passion+skill used to be software (games and graphics, to be specific), but now I’m adding entrepreneurship and writing to the mix. I plan to keep adding to this list throughout my life as I go about my journey in pursuit of mastery. The book has a couple of examples of apps as well, for example:

"Elsewhere, Brandon Pearce was a piano teacher struggling to keep up with the administrative side of his work. A programming hobbyist, he created software to help track his students, scheduling, and payment. "I did the whole project with no intention of making it into a business," he said. "But then other teachers started showing interest, and I thought maybe I could make a few extra bucks with it." The few extra bucks turned into a full-time income and more, with current income in excess of $30,000 a month."

That sounds like the definition of Scratch your own itch if you ask me. Solve a legitimate problem in your own life by creating a product and then marketing it to the world.

This book also introduces the core concept of Skill Transformation. That is, taking some skills you have, combining them with new skills, and using them to build a business.

I think this is super interesting and something every entrepreneur actually needs to become super comfortable with.

Going from passion+skill → business will almost always require skill transformations and learning a bunch of new skills. Otherwise, you would be hanging out in the hobby or employee zone. For me, this skill transformation is the fun part and really my personal why behind initially wanting to get into entrepreneurship (and also writing this newsletter). I like learning new things, and I think this is the best way to go about it while also delivering value at scale. I suppose that's similar to what this book is talking about (freedom X value). But for me, the freedom to pursue the process is the goal itself. It's kind of a self-reinforcing loop (we'll slope on down to another example of this later in this post; stay tuned!🎿).

The book gives a great example of skill transformation in Scott Adams, who writes the popular Dilbert comic:

"I succeeded as a cartoonist with negligible art talent, some basic writing skills, an ordinary sense of humor and a bit of experience in the business world. The "Dilbert" comic is a combination of all four skills. The world has plenty of better artists, smarter writers, funnier humorists and more experienced business people. The rare part is that each of those modest skills is collected in one person. That's how value is created."

He took his interests and skills and combined them together into something that brought unique value to the world. This is differentiation and how you make the competition irrelevant. In short, creating a blue ocean for yourself and swimming in uncontested waters.

Hustling⏳

One of the core skills needed, according to the book, when turning your passion into a business is Marketing. Or, as Chris calls it→ Hustling. 

The author describes this as a sliding scale.

• All marketing + No product = Scam ( Avoid 👎)

• All product + No marketing = Hobby ( Quicksand 🏜️)

• 50% product + 50% marketing = Hustle (Yes! 💪)

Personally, I tend to skew more towards the product side, as this is where I find my flow, but I am starting to pick it up on the marketing side as well now. I'll be discussing marketing in more detail soon in the premium posts as I'm starting to get more into this. #WatchOut!💥

"The vast majority of case-study subjects I talked with built their customer base without any paid advertising at all; they did so largely through word of mouth."

As we've seen over and over in this publication, this book also suggests that the goal should eventually be word of mouth. But you do have to get that initial traction somehow. That's where hustling comes in, and really, what's at the core of it → Building something worth talking about.

This brings us to the copy or how your product is framed.

When selling your product, you want to convey the emotions users will feel rather than features. This is to allow users to picture your product in their lives and more clearly imagine how it would fit in. 

"More than anything else, value relates to emotional needs. Many business owners talk about their work in terms of the features it offers, but it's much more powerful to talk about the benefits customers receive. A feature is descriptive; a benefit is emotional."

It's really about making the customer the hero in their story. As we discussed in writing your own story.

Here are a couple of examples from the book of going from features to benefits:

V6 Ranch: Horse rides and campfires → Stay with us and become a cowboy (or a cowgirl) 

Higher Ground Yoga: Private yoga classes for busy women → Relax and prepare for the day through a personalized, guided practice

And here's one from me:

Startup Flyby: Notes, thoughts, stories about entrepreneurship → Think Big. Follow your dreams. Move the world forward.

I'm working on some new ones as well.💡

Taking Off🛫

The book mentions how the subjects in the case studies all had a common experience. Getting started was much harder than keeping the ball rolling and growing.

"Over and over, the subjects of our case studies discussed how growing the business wasn't nearly as hard as starting the business. "It took a while to find something that worked," a common statement began, "but once we were rolling, we gained traction and quickly took off."

Like this example of Purna, who started with a personal blog and then shaped it into a resource for mastering Excel, making a six-figure income.

"Purna started his website several years back, but for a while it only contained posts about his family and life in India. In 2009, he settled in and got more serious, chronicling a series of tips and tutorials about using Excel to become more productive. Crucially, he didn't target Indians, but instead reached out to interested prospects all over the world. He also didn't depend on advertising revenue, something that very few people in our study mentioned. Instead, he created products and services himself, offering downloadable guides and an ongoing training school. 

He was also a good copywriter. Updating spreadsheets can sound like incredibly tedious work, but Purna positioned the core benefit away from numbers and toward something far more powerful: "Our training programs make customers a hero in front of their bosses or colleagues." Not only would their work become easier, Purna said, but other people would recognize and appreciate them for simplifying a complicated process."

We discussed this strategy in detail in Making Hits 📀💥. Check it out for a deeper dive.

"Take it from Purna: If spreadsheets can be made sexy, surely any business can find a way to communicate a similar message."

Once you've got a business, then it's about applying "tweaks" or improving on what's working and what's not working. The trap many business owners fall into is that of maintenance mode, where the business is chugging along but not improving (we saw this in the E-Myth revisited). The author suggests setting aside some time every day to focus on improving the business.

I like to do this pretty much all the time, as discussed in The Telephoto Lens. 📸

As far as tweaks go, here are the main one to grow your business (specifically revenue):

1. Increasing Traffic — Bringing more eyeballs to your business.

2. Increasing Conversion — Converting more eyeballs into customers.

3. Increasing Price — Either by add-ons or delivering more value and raising the core price.

And, of course, this one from the Happy Knit case study that stood out for me:

"Every order sent by mail includes a personalized thank-you note from an employee, encouraging customers to call if they need help with a pattern, plus free samples of other products. If an item is back ordered because of a computer glitch, an employee will call the customer proactively to apologize and ask if she would like a substitution. 

"Be nice to people and provide a great service" may not sound like much of a differentiation, but all these things add up. Whether you have a retail store or not, you could learn something from Happy Knits."

This is exactly what we discussed in Customer Service IS the Marketing.

"The first $1.26 is the hardest, so find a way to get your first sale as quickly as possible. Then work on improving the things that are working, while ignoring the things that aren't."

So, if you haven't started yet, then what first step can you take to get off the ground?

Note: This doesn't have to mean launching right away, but even just getting started on building your product or service and getting it ready for launch. (see The Three Pathways to Entrepreneurship)

After that, it's just improve, improve, improve.🚀

Launch🚀

Speaking of launch, the book discusses launch strategy. 

I think this is interesting, and I'll do a deep dive on this topic in a premium post soon, but let's give it a quick spin for now.

The book talks about treating your launch like a Hollywood movie. Or, to be exact, a Blockbuster. Building hype, pre-selling, teasing, and then launching in style! 

I'm actually not too keen on this approach. Firstly, as described in the book, it can be overly stressful. Second, this tends to get people stuck up on the launch and then quickly wanting to move on to the next thing, putting all your hopes on a big success on day one, or leading to a huge spike of initial customers, overwhelming you, then leading to a drop, making you want to try and replicate it like a dopamine spike. Nah.

I think growth should be a gradual process. Even courses and one-time products should be treated as part of a core business and marketed on an ongoing basis, focusing on the details and creating a product so good that people can't help but get enough of it. I like this more zen approach of just doing a softer launch and then continuing to improve your product from there. I'll discuss my philosophy in a separate post.

That being said, doing a little teaser and pre-marketing probably isn't going to be the worst thing, especially if you already have an audience somewhere.

With a launch, you want to create an offer that people can't refuse. As the author describes — Picture running a marathon; if you reach the middle, would you rather have a slice of refreshing orange or a sluggish donut? For most runners, the orange would be the way to go. This is what your offer should be like. Something that naturally attracts customers (orange) vs repelling them (donut).

"Build something that people want and give it to them." ← That's it right there. Entrepreneurship in a nutshell.🌰🐿️

Going Global🌏

Once you launch, then it's about scale.

"Nev Lapwood was a classic ski bum. He lived in Whistler, British Columbia, and worked "off and on" in restaurants at night while snowboarding during the day. Life was basic but good…until the limited employment ended when Nev was laid off. Needing to make ends meet, he began offering snowboard lessons, a part-time gig that was highly valued by his students. 

Teaching students in person on the Whistler slopes was fun and rewarding, but it also had a number of built-in unavoidable limitations: lots of competition, relatively few clients, and limited times of year when he could work. Nev knew that people all over the world wanted to learn about snowboarding—what if he could teach them all virtually without needing to be in the same place? Getting his act together, Nev worked with a couple of close friends to create Snowboard Addiction, a worldwide series of snowboarding tutorials. 

It was an instant hit, drawing customers from twenty countries and making $30,000 in year one—not bad for a ski bum. (Since Nev had never been that focused on making money, that was the highest annual income he had ever had at that point.) The next year, he put more thought into the business, scaling up with affiliates and a broader range of products. The result: just under $100,000 in net income. Nev was still on the slopes during the day but worked closely with his new partners during the downtimes to scale the business even further. The next plan was foreign language translation: Snowboard Addiction went out around the world in nine languages, with more versions scheduled to roll out based on customer demand."

Nev took his passion for snowboarding and went from local (teaching) to global (information product + physical add-ons). He put in the work to build a kickass product and then scaled it throughout the globe.

Soon, his product was taking off, allowing him to free up his time to do what he liked best. Snowboarding. This was his passion, which he turned into a product, which allowed him to put more time into his passion, developing the skills even further, allowing him to improve and create even better passion products, creating an unstoppable self-reinforcing loop of passion at scale (Here it is! As mentioned at the top of the post. Cha-ching! 🛎️).

Not bad, indeed.

"Naturally, the growing business had its challenges. An untrained and accidental entrepreneur, Nev had to learn a lot about strategy, accounting, and marketing. Stickers that were ordered from China arrived months late and in an unusable condition. Just two years in, however, the business was on track to earn at least $300,000."

There's also a lot of skill-building and transformation going on here. "Nev had to learn a lot about strategy, accounting, and marketing." As we discussed, this is the heart of entrepreneurship. Take the skills you have, in this case, snowboarding, and combine them with new skills (branding, marketing, sales) to create something of value for others.🏂

Learn. Apply. Grow. Repeat.

Product → Service 🛠️ Service ← Product

This is similar to the concept discussed in the book about turning a Service into a Product. This is super interesting and perhaps an easier onramp for anyone wanting to get started with entrepreneurship. 

If you are already providing a stellar service, then think of a way to turn that intro a product and scale it on the internet.

This can take many forms, but we can use the course example again. For example, if you are teaching people a skill in real life, like the piano teacher example we saw earlier. Then, this can easily translate into a product that can scale independently of your time.

Spend some solid time building a kickass product and then launch it. After that, you'd just be left with marketing and customer service. But if you already have clients from your service business, then they would very likely be interested in buying the product and being your first customers. If the product is really as good as you say it is, then they might just tell their friends about it, triggering the magical word-of-mouth loop!🎡

This concept can translate to a job (skills) as well. If you have a job or any domain in which you've spent time gaining expertise, find the areas that could be turned into a product. This could either be a course or something that uses those skills in the product itself. Or, the best way— find a problem you had in that domain and scratch that itch!

The key aspect of skill transformation would be what skills you are most interested in learning. In the piano example, there could be several options; the target would depend on your inclinations, timeline, and goals.

1. Learning the new skills of speaking, presentation, and video editing and turning the existing skills of composition, music theory, scales, chords, etc, into a video course. See Year of the Tiger for an example of this.

2. Learning the new skills of computer programming or app development and taking the existing music skills into creating an app that helps people learn to play piano in a unique way or something similar. This doesn't need to be a big enterprise, and you could choose to keep it as a small app. See Deja-Vu.

3. Learning whatever is needed to create a physical product that you feel is missing in the market. This is how Vic Firth started his drumstick business. He was practicing for a concert but found that the sticks he could buy at the time weren't holding up. So he went full inventor mode and decided to come up with a better drumstick. His sticks are a stronghold in the market today. (this probably wouldn’t fit the criteria of this book, though.)

The book provides the inverse, too. Turning a product into a service. I'm much less inclined towards this, but it might be a viable option for some.

"After relocating to Toronto, the idea was to build a small business helping other people make the adjustment to raw foods. Being a software engineer (and a self-described geek like Brett Kelly in Chapter 4), Nathalie programmed a database, set up an app, and built her own website. The first incarnation was Raw Food Switch, which correctly represented the concept but seemed a bit boring. One day Nathalie noticed that the same letters—and therefore the same website—could be rendered as Raw Foods Witch, leading to a new theme. Dressing in character with a pointed black hat for photo shoots, she rebranded the whole business around herself. Nathalie created programs, one-time products, and individual consultation sessions in the same way we've seen others do throughout the book. Raw Foods Witch grew into a $60,000 business after the first year."

Start with a product (e.g., blog, website, newsletter) to establish expertise in a domain, and then sell consultancy services to whoever is looking for said expertise. Again, it's not my M.O. I like to create things at scale, but this might be suitable depending on your personality and inclinations. It's all about constructing the right mountain for yourself.🧗

There are loads more examples and case studies in the book. Definitely give it a spin if something in here caught your eye.👁️

Overall, this book is rock solid and a constant source of inspiration, especially if you want to get into entrepreneurship. It felt a lot like the Four-Hour Workweek but without the focus on outsourcing. This book actually has a discussion about the pros and cons of outsourcing; the people surveyed all fall into two camps. Pro Outsourcing and Against Outsourcing. I'm definitely on the do-it-yourself and aim-for-mastery side, so I tend to do things myself (with a little assistance from ChatGPT every now and then). But everyone can decide whatever works best for them.🌞

If you haven't yet set up a business and have been wanting to do it for a while, or if you have a service and want to turn it into a product, or if you are already running a business and are looking for some useful tweaks, check out this book. It's surprisingly good.

The core message again is that anyone can become an entrepreneur. You don't need large amounts of capital, or have to quit your job, or even take any unnecessary risks. It's more about focusing on building something of value and scaling it as you see fit. 100% Agree. See "The Three Pathways to Entrepreneurship" for a deep dive into this.

And then, as your business takes off, you can channel some of the profits toward social causes as well. For example, 1% of the profits from paid subscriptions to Startup Flyby go towards cleaning up the planet by removing carbon from the atmosphere. I plan to increase this % as more people start subscribing. You can figure out your own way of helping out, and as the book shows, sometimes this can even be the core mission of the business and building a social enterprise.

That's it for now, and see y'all next time. If you liked this post, please share it with a friend, and better yet, upgrade to the paid subscription. We'll be going deep into many of these topics over the coming months.

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Welcome to the 2nd Edition of Flyby Biographies. 🎉

This post is a crispy 12-minute read and contains lessons from one of my favorite entrepreneurship books.

I'm not kidding when I say I've read this book 5 times already. Just this year! The short page count definitely helps (you can read it in an hour or so), but it's really the solid lessons that always hook me in.

If I only had one book to take with me as I launched and scaled a business, this would be it.

The book is "Anything You Want" by Derek Sivers (3rd Edition), and I'd say it's an absolute MUST-read for all entrepreneurs of any kind. That means you!

This book shares the story of how Derek bootstrapped and scaled his tiny hobby CD Baby into a multi-million dollar business with 85 employees over 10 years despite his best efforts in trying to get it to not grow and stay small!

Since the book is quite short, I'll only focus on the initial, or startup phase of things to keep it on theme. But the book covers everything from startup ($500) to (accidental) growth (oops) to exit ($22 million). I suggest reading the whole thing when you get a chance.

But for now, Let's hit play. 📼

The premise of the book is to build your own personal utopia with the sole aim of doing what's best for your customers. This is how Derek sees business. I like this dichotomy. It's a very Zen-like approach to doing things and perfectly resonates with me.

The business itself is something you LOVE working on, and the process, day-to-day work itself is the purpose, rather than some end goal, needless growth or future payout. The target of the business is to be useful to the world and improve your customer's lives, immediately, right now, in the present. This is a win-win positive-sum game scenario where everybody wins. You’ll be happy because you’re working on something you enjoy. The customers will be happy because your product and service provide them with something that improves their lives. And in the end, you'll be rewarded as a side-effect, even though that wasn't the main aim.

It's bringing the goal from some hypothetical future state that may or may not materialize right here into the present moment, where everybody wins.

The way I see it, this is the balance, or "the Tao of business." The input brings you joy and makes you smile (work), and the output brings the world joy (product) and makes other people smile. The money (profit) is the side effect and can be used to improve both the business and your own life. Thus leading to more win-win for everybody.

Anytime either of these ends is off balance, the Tao gets disturbed —

You aren't happy working on your business? It'll show in the product, and customers will take notice, leading to a drop in sales.

Customers aren't happy with your business? This will hurt your brand, sales will drop, and It will affect how you feel and make you unhappy.

So it's about continuously balancing the yin and the yang of the equation so that both sides are operating smoothly, like a well-oiled machine.

Just selling my CD 💿

Derek describes how he came across founding CD Baby in the chapter "Just selling my CD." Feel free to read the story (and the whole book, for that matter). It's awesome. But the gist is clearly a case of "Scratch your own itch." Something I've written about many times here as the best way to come up with a business idea if you are still figuring out what to do.

Derek was a musician at the time and wanted to sell his CD on this shiny new thing called "the internet." Back then, there wasn't any PayPal or payment processors, so he did the next best thing— He invented one. He taught himself computer programming, web development, business skills, and after months of hard (and satisfying) work, managed to set up a "buy it now" button on his website that people could use to purchase his CD. Soon, his friends asked if he could host their CDs as well. He said yes. The word spread, and he found himself with the beginnings of a small little business on his hands.

"Since I couldn't afford a programmer, I went to the bookstore and got a $25 book on PHP and MySQL programming. Then I sat down and learned it, with no programming experience. Necessity is a great teacher."

(As a side note, now you can just have ChatGPT teach you how to code and also tell you what you need to learn for whatever it is you want to build. I'd still mix it with some good ol' books, though. 100%.)

A week after launch, a customer asked him if there were any new releases, thinking the website was a store. A store? That's interesting. This made him ask… Wait, why isn't this a store? He decided to shift direction into what the market wanted and turned his little payment processing website into a storefront to help independent musicians get noticed without having to sell away their rights to big record labels. This became what was known as CD Baby.

He started by scratching his own itch, and then once he hit the market, he went with the flow and decided to completely serve the market (at scale) and build a real business that would be a win-win for all.

💡Ideas vs Execution 🏎️

As we've seen many, many times in the book club so far, Derek mentions the concept of Ideas vs Execution. But his description is the best I've found so far.

Ideas are a multiplier of execution.

• AWFUL IDEA = -1

• WEAK IDEA = 1

• SO-SO IDEA = 5

• GOOD IDEA = 10

• GREAT IDEA = 15

• BRILLIANT IDEA = 20

• NO EXECUTION = $1

• WEAK EXECUTION = $1000

• SO-SO EXECUTION = $10,000

• GOOD EXECUTION = $100,000

• GREAT EXECUTION = $1,000,000

• BRILLIANT EXECUTION = $10,000,000

To make a business, you need to multiply the two.

Multiply the two, and you’ve got a rough back-of-the-napkin estimate of how much a business could be worth.

Brilliant Idea X No Execution = $20

Good Idea X Great Execution = $10,000,000

So, really, it isn't so much about the idea as it is about excellence in execution. Derek suggests this is where we should focus our efforts.

In the case of CD Baby, the original idea was for him to just sell his CD on the Internet. Not open a digital storefront for indie musicians. Ideas evolve, but it's really the execution that is more important.

As Derek Says:

"No plan survives first contact with the customer."

No funding needed. Start now. 👊

This book shows you firsthand that you don't need outside funding to start executing and can build a great sustainable business simply by helping other people. Bootstrapping and lack of large budgets make you resourceful, whereas others with large pockets would be wasteful and lack a sense of urgency.

We'll see this again next week in the book club review for the $100 startup, but CD Baby is a perfect example of this.

The business was self-funded and didn't take any outside investment, even though it launched during the Dot Com era when VC money was free-flowing like a water jet cranked up to max (and then the jet fizzled out). It was built entirely on the back of being useful to other people and providing exceptional customer service. It used its own profits to grow. According to Derek, the initial investment was only $500.

"I spent only $500 to start CD Baby. The first month, I earned back $300. But the second month, I made $700, and it was profitable every month after. "

And as Derek says, this can be scaled down all the way to one. Just start by helping one person, even if it's just a friend, then two, then ten, and finally scaling that into a product that is useful to many people at scale. Chances are, if a few people like it, then many more will as well.

You don't really need a big budget to start helping your friends.

"Starting small puts 100% of your energy on actually solving real problems for real people. It gives you a stronger foundation to grow from. It eliminates the friction of having big infrastructure and gets right to the point. And it will let you change your plan in an instant, as you're working closely with those first customers telling you what they really need."

This is the same concept as what we saw in the Lean Startup a couple months back. Check out the book club review here.

"So no, your idea doesn't need funding to start. You also don't need an MBA, a particular big client, a certain person's endorsement, a lucky break, or any other common excuse not to start."

Customer Service 👩‍🍳

Speaking of helping people, throughout the book, Derek underscores the importance of customer service. I would say he was really in the business of making people smile. This reminded me 100% of Jeff Johnson from the Nike story (Shoe Dog). If you remember, Jeff went over the top to delight customers, build relationships with them, get to know their preferences, and make them feel valued. Both books have a story of a conference where customers straight-up told them they prefer their business over competitors simply because of the over-the-top customer service.

It's this commitment to going all out on customer service that generates word of mouth and turns customers into raving fans. You can think of this as— customer service IS the marketing. You want to focus on existing customers and make them happy rather than looking to bring in MORE new ones. If they are thrilled, they'll end up spreading the word for you and generating word-of-mouth growth. Then, like Derek, you might be in a position where you find yourself growing TOO FAST and wanting it to slow down. But that's a good problem to have, I'd say.

"If you're ever unsure what to prioritize, just ask your customers the open-ended question, "How can I best help you now?" Then, focus on satisfying those requests.

None of your customers will ask you to turn your attention to expanding. They want you to keep your attention focused on them.

It's counterintuitive, but the way to grow your business is to focus entirely on your existing customers. Just thrill them, and they'll tell everyone. "

It's really about the Tiny details of how the entire business is run. The attention to detail in the product, going the extra mile when appropriate, making people laugh and smile. Bringing out your personality and the personality of your brand and making it shine. As I wrote once before— write your own story by helping others write theirs.

In short, whatever business you are in, transform it into the business of delivering smiles! Speaking of Jeff's, this happens to be the motto of Amazon as well (Ever notice how all their logos have a giant smile in them?). We might just learn more about this in a future edition of Flyby Biographies. *wink*

"Imagine what you'd do if your favorite rock star called. You'd drop everything and give them all the time in the world. So that's how you should treat everyone that contacts your company. Why not? You don't have time? Make time. It's how everyone deserves to be treated. It makes life better. It makes work more fun. And it's the right thing to do."

Scarcity vs Abundance 🌸

This is further reflected in the chapter in the book on Scarcity and Abundance. Really, all this comes down to running the business (and your life) from a mindset of abundance.

Abundance is rooted in a sense of gratitude and generosity, like you always have enough! Scarcity is rooted in a sense of lack and selfishness, like you always need more.

You can see this in businesses of all sizes. The best service is provided by the ones with a sense of abundance versus the ones with a scarcity mindset tend to be a big turnoff and have bad attitudes.

Scarcity tends to repel people and makes you closed up. Abundance attracts people and makes you warm and welcoming.

Scarcity is short-term thinking, with a focus on the bottom line, but ironically leading to less sales.

Abundance is long-term thinking, with a focus on delivering smiles, but ironically leading to more sales.

In the end, it all comes circling back.

Think: How can I bring more of an abundance mindset to my life and business?

Being, Not Having. 🧑‍🎤

This brings us to one of my favorite concepts in the book and exactly my approach to entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is about being, not having. One of the reasons I got into it is to learn about everything it takes to scale a business from the ground up (product to execution) and become a skilled entrepreneur. Not to outsource everything and sit around on a beach all day. That might work for some, but for me, it just beats the purpose. It's not about the future. It's about living with purpose right NOW!

Same with this newsletter, one of the reasons I started it was to learn how to write like a pro. It wouldn't make much sense to outsource the writing part, now would it? The goal is to become a writer, not have a successful publication that runs itself.

So, with any business, you have to decide— do you want to be the person doing the work that is meaningful to you, be the operator, or just be the owner. If your goal is learning and growing, then it might just be all three. Unless it grows too big and gets out of hand, of course (see the book for details).

As Derek mentions, this comes at the cost of speed, and you will grow at a slower rate. But again, do you care more about growth or enjoying the process and making something useful?

“When you want to learn how to do something yourself, most people won't understand. They'll assume the only reason we do anything is to get it done, and doing it yourself is not the most efficient way.

But that's forgetting about the joy of learning and doing.

Yes, it may take longer. Yes, it may be inefficient. Yes, it may even cost you millions of dollars in lost opportunities because your business is growing slower because you're insisting on doing something yourself.

But the whole point of doing anything is because it makes you happy! That's it!

You might get bigger faster and make millions if you outsourced everything to the experts. But what's the point of getting bigger and making millions? To be happy, right?

In the end, it's about what you want to be, not what you want to have.”

Don't discount the joy of learning and doing for some arbitrary pot at the end. For me, fulfillment lies 100% in the process, and that's exactly what Derek is saying here as well. Find the work that you are super excited to do, then delegate the rest as you grow. If the work you enjoy happens to be being a skilled operator and scaling big, then go for that, but you have to ask yourself, what is it that's meaningful to you and what you want to become, and not someone else's idea of what you should be doing, or as Derek says, "trying to impress an invisible jury."

If you don't really know what you like, then it might be best to learn to do everything yourself at first and delegate whatever doesn't gel or you aren't super interested in. Note: your preferences can change over the years, so keep your identity flexible, like water, but vision firm, like a mountain.

"When you sign up to run a marathon, you don't want a taxi to take you to the finish line."

You can say that again.

The book has some great lessons on delegation, hiring, firing, and knowing when it might be time to sell a business. So check it out if you are interested.

Anything you want 🏰

In the end, the message is right there in the title: you can make your business “Anything You Want” — big, small, local, global, online, offline, cool, casual, goofy, fun, hip, whatever you want! As long as everyone is happy and you are profitable, of course.

You need to figure out your compass, or how you grade yourself, what's important and meaningful to you, whatever that might be, and go for it.

“Business is as creative as the fine arts. You can be as unconventional, unique, and quirky as you want. A business is a reflection of the creator.

Some people want to be billionaires with thousands of employees. Some people want to work alone.

Some want to be famous in Silicon Valley. Some want to be anonymous.

No matter which goal you choose, there will be lots of people telling you you’re wrong.

Just pay close attention to what excites you and what drains you. Pay close attention to when you’re being the real you and when you’re trying to impress an invisible jury.”

As Derek says, it might as well be something that makes you go, "Hell Yeah!"

“Whatever you make, it’s your creation, so make it your personal dream come true.”

Otherwise, say "No".

That's it for now. Definitely give this book a read, or five, or ten.

Read it, dig it, dunk it, dwell in it, relive it.

If you liked this post, then check out the other biographies here. This is #2, but there are more on the way. 🚀

Happy building, and don't forget —

"No plan survives first contact with the customer."

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This post is a short 4-minute read and is for paid subscribers only.

Quality, Quality, Quality. My eternal quest when it comes to creative work is always quality. The same goes for this newsletter. That's why I'm always experimenting with new stuff to try and turn this into the highest quality entrepreneurship newsletter around, and at the same time, improve the quality of my writing.

It always seemed quite obvious to me. The longer you spend on something, the higher the quality, versus the less time you spend, the lower the quality tends to be. Turns out this isn't always the case.

Read more