Crippled CEO Posts

In this blog, I’m going to explain, step-by-step, how to hire an employee.

Hiring an employee might be the biggest leap in the evolution of a business. It’s the first step toward being a business owner instead of “self-employed” (see my last blog for more info on that).

It’s essential to growing.

If you are one of the many “business owners” who I’ve spoken to over the years who says they’ve tried hiring an employee, but “it’s not worth it” because they don’t care enough, do crap work, are more trouble than they’re worth, cause more harm than good, and so on, you’re wrong. Millions of businesses are successfully employing billions of people right at this very moment. The concept of employment is not flawed. You’re just bad at it.

The steps I’m going to go through below are geared toward a full-time of part-time person. If you’re not ready for a full-time person yet, but need help, part-time is a great option, but it’s not your only one. If you are just starting off and need a salesperson, try and find someone who can work part-time and will work for just commission. If you need labor, consider paying by the piece/task. In both these cases, you get the security of a fixed expense. You’ll probably sacrifice some margins this way, but it reduces your risk.

I’m also a big fan of what I call “micro-hiring,” where you are hiring to get a specific task done, not hiring a person then giving them roles. These micro-hires are typically small weekly expenses — $25, $50, $100, maybe $200 a week. For instance, we have someone whose only job is to thank every person who shares one of our posts on Facebook. We have someone else whose only job is responding to every comment/message on Facebook and Instagram. We have another person whose only job is to call every lead that comes in as fast as humanly possible. Sometimes, it’s not another person you need, it’s just one or two critical but time-consuming tasks. Micro-hires are great for that. Fiverr is a tremendous resource for this. So are friends who are not working, who work from home, or work part-time.

Without further ado, how to hire an employee.

Step 0: Hire a payroll service

If you’re just starting, using a service like ADP or Paychex takes the stress and learning curve out of payroll taxes, running payroll, worker’s comp, direct deposit, and so on. They’re fairly inexpensive and a great way to go.

Step 1: Advertise

Start by letting the friends and family you trust and respect know that you’re hiring, and to send viable candidates your way. I’m a big fan of hiring friends and family. You may not be. This is a decision you need to make for yourself. But even if hiring people close to you isn’t for you, there’s a good chance they know quality humans.

If you can spend a little money, run an employment ad on your company’s Facebook page or LinkedIn. Facebook is better for general and skilled labor, sales jobs, customer service, and other non-executive type roles – probably what you’re seeking if this is your first employee. The Facebook job platform is really great, too. It’s a tremendous way to find lots of options quickly, which is what you want.

How you write your ad MATTERS. If you want a superstar, you need to write an ad a superstar will respond to. Be honest, but make it sound exciting, and be clear that you’re only hiring the best.

Here are two ads for a shipping manager.

Ad #1: Shipping clerk wanted. $17 an hour. Lots of growth potential. Overtime available. No experience necessary, but preferred. A/C warehouse.

Ad #2: Are you almost unhealthily obsessed with organization and attention to detail? Do you get oddly satisfied checking goals off a list? Do people ever accuse you of “caring too much” about getting things perfect? If all this sounds like you, you may be perfect for our shipping clerk position. $17 an hour, and with all of the overtime at time and a half you can handle. If you can handle 12+ hours a day, the opportunity is there for you to take. Only apply if you’re a superstar willing to be rewarded for your potential and earn promotions – workers hired in this position today will be the company’s leaders in the future. You don’t need any experience, just determination and a willingness to do what it takes.

Which one of those do you think will entice the best candidates? Specifically ask for the best of the best in your ad. Set the bar ridiculously high. Offer compensation worthy of the best. And that’s what you’ll get.

Step 2: Interview

Lots of people get interviews wrong. They think the purpose of an interview is to assess someone’s competency / their ability to execute the job. They think that by “interviewing” the candidate, asking questions about their skills and work history, they’ll be able to successfully discern how well they will perform.

This is malarkey.

It’s impossible to tell from an interview how well or how poorly someone will do the job.

And if you think you have some special trick or magic question to suss out the truth – hogwash.

The purpose of an interview is to gauge personality. Certain roles have certain personality prerequisites, and this conversation gives you a small determining if their personality is the right fit, and vice versa.

My advice for the interview is to just have a conversation. Preface the interview by saying that a conversation is your goal, and that their answers to any personal questions have no impact on getting the job. And then just chat. Do you like them? Can you spend 8+ hours a day with this person? If it’s a sales / customer service job, are they friendly and personable?

You can train someone to do most jobs. You can’t train personality or work ethic. As long as they meet any minimum technical requirements, ignore the resume. Ignore the references (who supplies a bad reference?). Choose for personality.

Step 3: Try them out

When you hire someone, let them know it is very tentative and probationary. As I said before, it is IMPOSSIBLE to successfully predict how well someone will perform. You have to try people out. And when – not if, WHEN – your first choice isn’t totally awesome, when you see a red flag on day 1 or 2, do yourself a favor, and more importantly, do THEM a favor, and fire them immediately. Fire fast. This is why getting lots of options via Facebook is good, because you are planning on hiring and firing a few, maybe a bunch, until you find someone perfect.

Step 4: Treat them like gold

You’ve gone through a lot of trouble to find a great employee; now, treat them that way. Great employees get support. Great employees are paid well. Great employees get raises, bonuses, and promotions. Great employees have autonomy and don’t need to be micromanaged.

Step 5: Have reasonable expectations

Do you want to know the secret to getting an employee to care about the business as much as you do? Give them half the company. That’s the only way. There’s no way you can expect an employee to care as much or work as hard in YOUR business as YOU do.

Congratulations. You now have an amazing employee, hopefully for years to come. With hard work, talent, and a bit of luck, the first of many. Short of childbirth, you are doing the most creative endeavor mankind is capable of. You are building a business – a living, breathing, evolving enterprise that impacts the world, has a personality, and affects people’s lives. And it is built, piece by piece, by the people you hire to be a part of it. Pick great people, allow them to be great, and then your company, inevitably, will be great as well.  

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Sometimes, I hear a business owner describe themselves as “self-employed.”

And sometimes they are right, but sometimes they are wrong.

Self-employed is typically seen as an interchangeable synonym for “business owner,” but I always take it to mean something different.

If you’re self-employed, you are – as the name suggests – employed by yourself. Like an employee, you are paid when you work. And like an employee, you’re not paid when you don’t.

If you work for yourself, and you are only generating revenue when you’re out there working, you don’t have a business. You’re self-employed.

If you can’t sell your company when you decide to stop doing it, because it’s predicated entirely on you, you’re self-employed.

If you own a business, or you’re a majority shareholder of a corporation, these things don’t apply. If I get sick and can’t work for one, two, three, six, or twelve months, the business (and I) will keep earning money. It will continue going, hopefully indefinitely (some might argue even better), without me there.

If I ever choose to retire, I can sell my business. Because it can operate without me, it has value to someone who might want to buy it. I’m not “self-employed.” I’m a business owner.

Now, while there are some clear advantages to owning a self-sustaining business versus being self-employed, that doesn’t mean that the latter is necessarily a bad thing.

If you make a conscious, thoughtful choice and decide that you love the hands-on art of creating custom carpentry, and you want to build each piece yourself, or you love teaching each student to float with your own hands, or you enjoy installing every pool fence yourself, then there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Some people don’t want a business; they just want a job they love without having a boss. They’re not planning to sell their business to fund their retirement; they put money into an IRA each month. If you decide this makes you the happiest, there is absolutely nothing wrong with going this route.

The PROBLEM is that a lot of people want to own a business, but INADVERTANTLY have become self-employed. They didn’t make a conscious decision. They didn’t make any decision, so life just happened to them.

THIS is what you want to avoid. Decide what you want your life to look like, and then build toward that intentionally. Every business starts off with self-employed owners. It’s up to you to decide if you want to keep it that way.

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What’s the one thing you have always wanted to do / thought you should do?

Why aren’t you doing it?

Why isn’t right now the right time to start?

You probably have a perfectly reasonable, totally logical, irrefutable reason.

A really excellent reason.

You’re going through a divorce.

You were just diagnosed with cancer.

You’re broke.

You were just laid off.

You just got a promotion.

You have 16 children.

They all have cerebral palsy.

Your mom just died.

Your mom is sick.

You just had surgery.

Someone was supposed to help you.

You’re in a wheelchair.

You need to lose weight first.

You need more practice.

You’re finishing college.

You’re pregnant.

You’re getting married.

You’re too old.

You’re too young.

AND SO ON.

Those are completely legitimate, rational reasons, and when you give them, or one of a million others, no one is going to argue with you. How could they? I know I wouldn’t.

But I wouldn’t argue with you because you’re right. I wouldn’t argue with you because if you are giving one of those completely legitimate, logical reasons, the REAL reason is that you don’t really want to do it bad enough.

Because it’s never, EVER the right time to start. There is always going to be shit going on. There’s always going to be a great reason why doing it today is a terrible idea.

But when you truly want it badly enough, none of that matters. You look at all those logical reasons not to start and say, “I’m doing it away.”

Your friends/parents/colleagues will say, “Um… is that a good idea right now, with this going on?”

And you’ll respond, “Sure isn’t,” and move forward anyway. You’ll push aside all those very real reasons and create your own reality. You’ll figure it the fuck out.

Because right now is always the worst time to start, but it’s the only time you have.

The worst and best time to do that thing you want is this very second.

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“Thank you for all that you do! Your work is amazing and saving so many lives.”

“You are an inspiration to everyone, but especially to those that are unsure of what their paths can be.”

I’ve been hearing how amazing I am more than normal the past few weeks. We’ve been fortunate to have the opportunity to participate in arguably my favorite thing Life Saver does, donate Life Saver Pool Fences, several times, and this weekend was our annual Life Saver Dealer Conference, where Life Savers from around the country fly to South Florida to learn how to do a better job of saving lives, hear about new developments, and so on. It’s also a time to hand out awards and celebrate successes. Long story long, between the donations, the blog, some consulting, and the conference, I’ve had heaps of praise thrown my way, from being told I’m inspirational to being told I’m the reason for a family’s new financial success to being told I’m literally saving lives.

And part of me feels awful, because while I am tremendously appreciative, and even happier about the positive outcomes, I know I’m not responding to these kind words like I “should”. I’m not overcome with emotion. I’m not overwhelmed. Because the truth is, while I am seriously grateful, and while I do use them as a barometer to know I’m on the right track, they mostly kind of bounce off of me. I don’t internalize them or attach these praises to my identity, my drive, or my self-esteem. And though I do have a very healthy ego, it isn’t constructed by these (incredibly kind) compliments and support.

Because I can’t. The moment the external praise becomes my fuel, my identity, my goal, or my validation, the moment I believe the hype, things change. First, my motivation changes. The reasons for what I do shift to things outside myself, things outside my control, in other people. If I let other people’s approval be what keeps me going, I’ll start changing to get more of that approval. And second, if I open myself to internalize and really believe the praise, then I also have to take in and be dragged down by the hate and negativity. The reason I don’t care about dumb comments on Instagram and negative opinions is because I’m also immune to the good stuff.

Now, with something like this blog, I am paying attention to what resonates most with people so I can provide the most value, just like I monitor ad campaigns to see which are providing the best ROI. There’s a fine line there, but it’s an important distinction.

 Thank you, truly, if you’ve ever said anything kind to me. I really do appreciate it. But if you find yourself hesitating in posting a video or doing something bold because you’re worried about negative feedback, think about how you absorb/feed on compliments. If your motivation comes from inside you, the external won’t matter – good or bad.

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My goal in 2015 was to make as many mistakes as possible.

MORE mistakes, not less.

In business, preferably.

Why?

Because the only people who NEVER make mistakes are the people who don’t accomplish anything. It’s impossible to have any kind of serious success without making lots of mistakes, without trying new and uncertain ideas. And by making mistakes my GOAL, I gave myself permission to do stuff that might totally fail, to shake the flawed misconception that I need to have a perfect score, that every endeavor must succeed.

 The key is to make manageable, survivable mistakes. You don’t want to bet the farm on a risky venture. I like the idea of firing bullets, then cannonballs. If you’re trying to sink an enemy ship at sea, and you only have so much ammunition and gun powder, you are better off risking a bit of gun powder and a small bullet on the first shot, which you aren’t sure will hit. You can miss a few of these with only minor consequences. But eventually, a bullet hits. You’re onto something. You’re lined up correctly. You fire another bullet the exact same way. It hits again. A third one, just to be sure – success again. NOW you launch the cannonball. Now go all in. Make mistakes, but risk small, so you can double-down on the things that work.

Since making that goal to make more mistakes in 2015, Life Saver has done some unique stuff. Interesting accessories, bold product upgrades, crazy marketing ideas, unconventional hiring, and more. We’ve definitely succeeded in making lots of mistakes. But our yearly sales have also TRIPLED since then, and continue to climb.

Only losers don’t make mistakes. Give yourself permission to fail in order to succeed at a higher level.

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I’m going to tell you a secret: getting laid regularly is good for business.

Getting laid increases sales.

Getting laid bolsters profits.

And not just for high-end escorts – but definitely them, too. Everybody.

And I’m not just talking about the physiological and mental benefits of sex and intimacy, though that is tremendously advantageous as well.

If you are getting laid regularly, you are experiencing a positive byproduct of investing time and energy into areas of your life outside of your business. You are spending time with the people you care about. You are relatively healthy. You are enjoyable to be around. You are doing all of the other things necessary for someone else to want to touch your no-no parts.

And you need that in order to run your business. If your life isn’t going well OUTSIDE work, the stress and loneliness of that will crush you. People talk about work/life balance as being important for your personal life, but the reality is that it’s even more important to your business life. Because the moment THAT side of your life explodes, not only will the fact that you’re miserable ruin your ability to be productive, creative, and proactive, but the sudden emergency of the situation will now DEMAND your time and attention – all of it – and now your business is suffering.

You need both wheels on the bike in order to keep pedaling. If one falls off, you end up face down in the concrete, looking like me on May 30, 2019, with two dozen stitches in my face.

Make sure that your non-work life is going well enough that you’re getting laid often. Your business will thank you.

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I confess. I judge you.

When you complain about your silly non-problems on Facebook, I fail at holding back an eye-roll.

I read recently about someone’s worst morning ever. The water in their shower took forever to heat up, so they were running late for work. And then as they were walking out the door, coffee spilled all down their shirt! They, of course, had to run back in and change. When they finally got to I-95: barely moving traffic. Worst. Morning. Ever. #fml

I’ve imagined what it would be like if we switched bodies. If my brain got to experience “your” worst morning ever, and “you” got to be me. But not on a bad day – on a perfectly fine day for me!

You’d wake up, laying on your side as I do. With monumental effort, you’d roll onto your back, and then realize… you can’t get up. You can’t even sit up. Terror would flood your mind. Eventually, someone would come in, and you quickly surmise they are going to bathe you, dress you, and help you into this wheelchair you somehow have. You call your family, who rush to you – devastated. Everyone is crying. A doctor is summoned, who informs you that you have cerebral palsy. You will be this way for the rest of your life. You’ll need help not only bathing and dressing, but cutting your food, using the bathroom, and a billion other things. You’ll never again be able to cook, drive, pick up a baby, play a sport, learn an instrument, be on top during sex, live alone, and so on. “My life is over,” you sob. You consider suicide. Your friends and family, when talking privately in hushed tones, wonder if that might be the kindest and smartest option.

Meanwhile, I’ve woken up as “you” on the #worstmorningever. I’m puzzled and excited when I just… stand up and get out of bed on my own. I walk to the shower, amazed I’m even walking. The water takes a while to heat up, but I couldn’t care less about the temperature. I’m showering on my own! This is the greatest shower in the history of showers. After showering and drying off, I can’t believe I’m dressing myself unassisted. I go to the kitchen, make and pour myself coffee without having to ask another soul at all for help, and then head out the door. As I’m walking out, the coffee spills all down my shirt. “Oh no,” I say, immediately thinking how I’m going to need to recruit someone to help me change my shirt, clean up the coffee. And then I realize… I can just change it myself. I don’t have to bother anyone. And three minutes later, I’m walking back out the door in a fresh shirt – no big deal. I get in the car and start driving to work. On my own. No one has to drive me. There’s traffic, but what do I care? This is incredible. It’s the greatest day of my life.

—

This might be a bit much, but the circumstances are real. Our perspective, expectations, and capacity for gratitude completely change the lens through which we experience the world. Your terrible morning might be the best day of my life. Consciously choosing to alter your perspective in real-time, or even in hindsight, is difficult, but entirely possible without practice. And as much as you can do it, increasing happiness and acceptance waits on the other side.

And when you complain about your trivial BS, I’m judging you.

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Lucky #13! Thank you to everyone who has been on board since #001. Hard to believe we are 13 weeks into this new tradition. I’m really enjoying it, and I hope you are, too. Let me know in the comments what your favorite one has been so far.

This one might be a bit shorter than normal, but it’s also exceedingly useful. It’s one of the best pieces of advice I have ever heard, and one of my favorites to give.

Pricing services is a conundrum that every person who has ever done a task for someone else in exchange for money has struggled with.

You don’t want to be so exorbitant that you get rejected or feel like you are being iniquitous, but you don’t want to cheat yourself, either. Setting your price percolates myriad emotions and prompts introspective explorations whilst attempting to determine your self-worth, your confidence, your competence, and how you are perceived by others. It’s a difficult process that some never fully come to grips with, resulting in an unrelenting cyclone of anxiety.

That’s why this exceptionally straightforward, clear-cut method for choosing what to charge is so important.

And this is it: charge the amount that makes you THRILLED to be doing the work. Not acceptable, not fair, not “enough” – thrilled.

At first glance, this seems possibly a bit TOO obvious, and maybe TOO simple, but choosing the amount where you are thrilled to be there has a bit more to it than it seems.

If it is your dream to oil up Playboy models or sing a duet with Celine Dion, the amount you would need to be THRILLED is likely… zero dollars.

On the other hand, if the work is, perhaps, testing highly experimental and possibly perilous eyedrops, you might need something in the upper seven figures in order to be “thrilled.”

Usually, though, the undertaking is somewhere between dream and permanent disability, but going by “thrilled” rather than “fair” lets you charge less to spend your time on tasks that bring you more joy, and allow you to still be happy doing something you’d otherwise detest.

Also, when you’re thrilled to be doing the work, you do a superior job. The results are better. Whoever hired you will be more likely to recommend you. And by giving someone the option of paying your “thrilled” price for work you would otherwise turn down, you let the customer decide if she wants to pay that much to retain you. If yes, she gets what she wants, and you’re thrilled to do it. If not, everyone is still happy.

And if you are doing work where no one is willing to pay the amount you need in order to be truly thrilled, then you’re not doing something you love, and it’s time to make a change.

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A couple days ago I posted this on Facebook:

“I will help you solve any problem, and I will teach you anything I know for free. Just ask below.”

I had zero inclination that I might use the “questions” and answers from it as a blog post, but the questions asked allowed for some interesting responses, so I figured, “Why not?”

Questions are all from my Facebook friends (and some are problems, not exactly questions), and answers are all by me.

Question

My wrist hurts again from having sex a lot.

Answer

Ibuprofen. Ice. Switch hands next time.

Question

Two questions:

You said a while back something about not using email marketing. But you have a fairly high ticket item. Do you just use retargeting ads to keep people moving towards purchasing?

My sales copy doesn’t seem to convert. I try to focus on benefits, how it helps solve their problem, but I’m getting no results.

Answer

I don’t recall saying that about email marketing — we do some — but it doesn’t do that well.

We DO use retargeting. And it’s fine. It converts.

Better sales copy can make a difference, but what works even better, eventually, is BRANDING. The nuances of your sales copy aren’t as important when your visitors are people who searched specifically for you by name because they know of you/you were recommended/you have a reputation for being the best. I want my site to convert well for people just looking for “pool fence,” but I much prefer seeing the number of people Googling “life saver pool fence” going up. THOSE people are going to convert.

Question

My home state has allowed repeat dangerous, offenders to roam free with no bail awaiting trial. My wife is afraid to go to her job now and I am afraid for her.

Answer

That sucks. So, we have a tendency to be more scared of things that are disproportionately less likely to harm us, just by hearing anecdotal stories. It’s part of our human caveman brain. We are terrified of snakes and spiders, which rarely kill anyone, but not cars, sugar, and alcohol. We are scared of being murdered by a stranger, like your wife is experiencing, but only 0.2% of deaths are homicide, and the VAST majority of those — almost 90% — are committed by someone known to the victim, not some random stranger.

So, step 1: understand that your caveman brain is exaggerating the threat. Dying in a car accident is far, FAR more likely.

Step 2: take control of the situation. Though the odds are rare, make yourself prepared — just in case. Equip her with pepper spray, get her in a women’s self-defense course, consider enrolling in jiu-jitsu, which has a ton of other benefits, see if someone can walk her to her car at night.

Reassure yourself that the actual threat is extremely unlikely, and then take precautions to be even safer.

Question

I want to know how did you start your business… what was your vision and motivation…?

Answer

I didn’t start Life Saver — my parents did — but I have started a few other businesses. The key is to really, really love the thing you are doing, because to be successful, you have to be obsessed, you have to be doing it all the time, and in the beginning, you’re probably not getting paid, so you have to love it or you’ll quit.

Question

I can’t put metal in my microwave. Help

Answer

You can. Just don’t turn it on.

Question

i want to know whats the best way to hire employees, i am working on my trucking company now and this year i want to start hiring people to drive for me. I have never been in a position before where i had to hire anyone. any tips?

Answer

I like placing ads on Facebook to find employees. I also am a big fan of hiring people that I know and friends. But I am kind of weird in that regard. It is impossible to tell from an interview how well someone is going to do. Ignore the resume, hire somebody it seems like you get along with, and then fire quickly when it’s not working out, until you get the right people.

Question

I’m starting with a new travel agent company how would you market yourself ? I have a Facebook group with about 100 people in it . Anything else to get my name out ? Thanks

Answer

That’s an excellent start. You need to be producing content in video, audio, and written form. I would pick the one you enjoy the most or you are the best at, then use that pillar content to convert into the other two. So, if you are making videos, have those videos transcribed into text for a blog, and use the audio as a podcast. I would also start doing mini interviews with customers for your Facebook video series/podcast about where they are going and the cool stuff they are seeing, and then again when they get back to get their thoughts on where they went. You could then compile these into best of lists, testimonials on certain locations from multiple people, and so on.

I would also host dinner or cocktail mixer parties for your customers where they can exchange vacation ideas based on where they went and get travel tips from you.

Maybe consider getting a stuffed animal mascot, like a little bear or something, wearing a shirt with your company name and logo on it, give it a name, and give it to customers to take with them on vacation and have them take pictures of it in cool locations. They can post the photos and tag the mascot, which should have its own Facebook/Instagram page, and they could send you photos to post as well.

I could keep going, but I think they should get the ball rolling for you.

Question

I just want Tony and Khabib to happen without any bullshit. Can you guarantee this?

Answer

I can’t. I wish I could, but I can’t

Question

Should I wear the black or red dress to dinner tonight?!? Helpppp!

Answer

Where is dinner?

(Response is fancy Italian place.)

I’d lean towards black, but whichever shows more cleavage.

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“It takes 20 years to make an overnight success.” – Eddie Cantor

One day, after three protracted weeks of anticipation, the silent, motionless egg broke open, and a baby chick emerged into the world. It was, from our perspective, a sudden, incredible transformation.

But to that baby chicken, there was nothing sudden or transformative about it. To her, this was just the latest result of a slow, steady, arduous process extended evenly over twenty days of effort.

On April 25, 2019, Forbes posted a feature/interview with me on their website. I thought it was pretty neat, so I shared it on my Facebook. There was an immediate and overwhelming response, with friends and colleagues commenting that they “knew I would make it,” that my work had finally paid off, and a flood of congratulations on my newfound success. While I appreciated the praise, I was astonished by the reaction. To me, the article was a seemingly sensible iteration on the work I had been doing for years, but to everyone on the outside, I had abruptly emerged from my egg as a “success story.”

We only see people and companies once they’ve already “made it.” They appear in a flash, seemingly out of nowhere, on top of the world. And to us, it seems to happen overnight, and as a result of a single idea – one grandiose action or stroke of luck.

The reality, though, could not be more different. Every business, and every person, who finds success does it by chipping away at the inside of their egg, a bit at a time, every day, usually for YEARS, with no one noticing, until they finally reach the position where you can see them.

Jim Collins, in his seminal book Good to Great, describes business success as a massive, humongous, colossal flywheel of incalculable weight, that you start pushing. And after one day, you move it a couple of inches, and then a couple more the next day, and more the next day, and then it starts picking up a tiny amount of speed from the weight and momentum of this flywheel. And you keep pushing, day after day, week after week, year after year, until the momentum has picked up and now this giant flywheel is spinning on its own, faster and faster. If someone asked you, “Which push was the one that really got it going?”, there is no way you could answer. ALL OF THEM. Bit by bit. That’s the way success is built, and there’s no skipping this reality. There’s no shortcut, no easy way around it. You must go through it – one chip of the eggshell, one push of the flywheel at a time.

And when you see someone suddenly killing it, remember that their overnight success is probably a decade in the making. It’s just now you can see it.

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