FASTer - Issue #101

March 03, 2023

|Skills|Leverage|Conditioning|- How to Win at Life!

As you develop your skills and build your business, you'll reach a point where you no longer have to tolerate working with difficult people. In the beginning, you may have had to put up with unpleasant customers, partners, and investors just to keep things afloat. But as you gain experience and accumulate wealth, the power dynamic shifts in your favor.

Suddenly, you have leverage. You no longer have to bend over backward to please people who treat you poorly. You can start firing those bad customers, breaking up with problematic partners, and buying out investors who don't share your vision.

If your unique skills and expertise are in high demand, it means you can negotiate better terms for yourself. You're no longer at the mercy of others who hold all the cards. You have the freedom to make decisions that are in the best interests of your business and your life. For all of that to come true, you have to have skills that are monetizable.

If you find yourself being a pushover in life, it's important to recognize that having leverage means nothing if you don't know how to use it. It's essential to overcome any insecurities and understand your own value, so you can start training others how to treat you.

Consider "training & conditioning" people how to treat you. People "manage you" the way you allow them to. If you tolerate customers who treat you poorly, you'll only attract more of the same brotherhood. Similarly, if you let investors take advantage of you, or allow employees to disrespect you without consequences, you'll create a toxic culture in your business and in life

As a sane individual, it's your responsibility to set expectations for how you want to be treated. Let others know what they can expect from you, and what you expect from them. There should be no room for mistreatment or manipulation, so set the rules, and set them early. Put an end to games. Life is too short to play other peoples games, only participate in games whose outcomes you have leverage over.

To avoid having one person hold all the power over your business, it's essential to minimize the number of individuals who can disrupt your life. You should have a safety net in place, so if an investor backs out, a customer leaves, or a partner tries to change the terms, you can lean on someone else to help you out.

Once you have this safety net in place, you can start enforcing the "no ass**le rule." This means that as soon as someone proves to be difficult to work with, you can move on without any disruption to your life. It's a great feeling and can help you live a stress-free life.

As your skills and expertise continue to develop, your leverage increases, and you become even more selective about the type of people and opportunities you get involved with. This, in turn, allows you to work on even better things and make even more money.

By cutting out the jerks and focusing on quality projects, you can level up again and again, creating a snowball effect that propels you to greater heights.

Outcomes

In keeping with the theme of having people treat you right, there is some responsibility on you to "get a read on people". It gets easier over time, but since your outcomes are linked to how people will work with you, react to your opinions and how they will treat you, it's best to get ahead and analyze them first, to have better outcomes in life. I read some thing which is a fantastic distillation of the process you can apply to pre-configure your outcomes.

One New Thing (that I learnt some time ago)

The screenwriter's plan in "Die Hard with a Vengeance", to break into the Federal Reserve and escape with the gold was so plausible he was questioned by the FBI. The FBI were said to have changed their security to account for it.

Boring Stuff that Scales

ChatGpt being all the Rage and AI being the next best thing since sliced bread. Will you only read about this and be left behind from this revolution also, just like you did on top level domain names, crypto, b2c, tokens and then some. So what is different this time around? There is a lot of information available, you just need to take public domain info/ideas/tech/research and apply it to launching quick and dirty business models.

I read a list some where of 200 AI ideas, most are generic but they are 200 more than I had and like more than you did too. Read it, think about applying these tools and resources to boring ideas and help scale your own personal items. If you aren't teaching your self AI tools and working on mastering some type of tool in your niche, you will miss out big. Heres a list to get started, thinking about it.

Notion – The all-in-one workspace for your notes, tasks, wikis, and databases.

A new tool that blends your everyday work apps into one. It's the all-in-one workspace for you and your team

https://vaulted-polonium-23c.notion.site/200-AI-Startup-Business-Ideas-66af264ef5bc4671ab42a4a4542c90e9

What you should be Reading

First...Where should you be reading ....

"The Fine Art of Small Talk" by Debra Fine. This was an interesting book. It gives you 50 ways to fuel a conversation. Every one can learn the art of small talk, especially those starting off in business without formal training or education or those who have been solo contributors much of their lives and transitioning from a corporate to a personal environment. Its a quick guide to being less awkward.

Monetize your time (By building a $ized Skill)

The time for fun and games is over, in our market the PKR to USD is 300:1, inflation is at its worse. How will you survive? How will you invest your time to make sure that end the of shrinkflation, inflation and political turmoil you come out on top? Do you have a plan or you just being herded based on whatsapp forwards? The only thing you can really do is invest your time in to some thing that converts to a dollarized return. AKA pick up skills that you can do remotely, digitally, inexpensively for markets where labour arbitrage ensures that your payouts are meaningful.

Don't let excuses hold you back

No skill? YouTube and courses can teach you

No knowledge? A book can help

No money? Look for ways to earn online

Feeling overwhelmed? Start small and build up

Not a coder? No-code tools can help you get started

Keep pushing and don't give up!

Made in Pakistan

Any thing that you can export. Get started. Research is your friend. Go to oec.world to explore and visualize the wonderful world of Pakistani export data. Some past musings from twitter threads listed for inspiration & action.

One Last Thing

The 19 Billion $ Accident.....This week(end), I want you to be inspired. Good things happen to good people and great things happen to people who take chances.

The ASK

So here is my ask, if you are one of those who genuinely like and enjoy this newsletter, please do me a favor, sign up via email your self first (if not already) and share the link with 2 other people you know who can benefit from it. Here is the Link to share:

This is a gentlemen's promise, some thing I cant enforce. I am counting on you to spread the word and possibly help some one else to better their "outcomes".