The life success list you'll never read elsewhere

An empty life

I’m so sick of reading about ‘What billionaires do before breakfast’ and other success related click bait, that I thought I’d write my own click bait heading, but then write a post with answers you didn’t actually expect. And by the way, WTF is the point of being a billionaire or CEO, if you get up at 4.30am to do your personal trainer gym session before you beat every other cubicle dweller to the office before the sun comes up. Gimme a break.

So here it is, from the Sammatron – in no particular order, my top 14 things – the real life success indicators that Business Insider and Mashable haven’t got the guts to publish:

  1. Deciding whether or not you can be bothered shaving, regardless of what is on that day.
  2. Your ability to avoid traffic jams at will and organise you life around peak hours.
  3. Being able to work the hours you choose in a day, not the 9-5 design of the industrial dawn.
  4. The ability to wear what you want to work, because your work is valued more than the cut of your cloth.
  5. Having enjoyable past times that cost little to undertake.
  6. Your best friends also happen to be your family members.
  7. You know that time is the ultimate asset, not zeros in a bank account.
  8. You know that saving more than you earn is far more important than how much you actually earn.
  9. You know that life without a mortgage (an engagement until death) is more important than your postcode & size of your dwelling.
  10. Being able to choose where you want to live – not where your industry is.
  11. You put work behind family, health, and exercise.
  12. Having the guts to stop doing work you dislike, regardless of the short term economic cost.
  13. Understanding that economics is far less important than relationships, family, mental well being and pretty much anything you can think of once you can feed yourself and have somewhere safe to sleep at night.
  14. BONUS – you don’t confuse School with Education. The later is greater than the former.

Boom.

Follow me on SnapChat – search from Sammartron for more such goodness.

 

Should you really be in charge? 

Charles in charge

When a startup gets bigger than ourselves, we need to remember why we brought in others. We bring in others so we place authority in ideas, rather than support the idea of authority.

Once we’ve decided pay others for their labour and advice, the best thing we can do is let them do their work.

The problem with 'How To' advice

How to Advice

The internet is filled with How To advice. Which proves how important it is in building the life you want. But it has a simple flaw we ought remember:

How to advice is disposable.

How to’s are a set of tactics which need to change as the world around us changes. This means we need to constantly re-assess what we know, and ask if it is still relevant. With the pace of technological change today, this is a question we need at the top of our list.

This is why philosophy is always greater than tactics. Philosophy is enduring, and tactics and temporary. If we have a guiding philosophy on what we are doing and why, finding the best tactic for the day becomes infinitely easier.

You should totally read my book – The Great Fragmentation.

Why OzTam's Aust TV ratings are still way behind the times

Television man

The TV industry in Australia recently claimed its ratings measurements have now ‘caught up with the times’ – as they now include catch up TV. Here’s a question for them: Do the ratings include Youtube views?

It’s pretty clear now that TV is not the aggregation of the formal channels. There is no such thing as TV, there is only this: All audio visual content streamed to eyeballs = TV.

This means that every video we view on Youtube is TV. Every Video we watch on Facebook is TV. Everything we send from our mobile to our big screen is TV. Every Snap we watch is TV. The real problem the TV industry is facing is it’s limited definition of the market today. Twenty years on and they still don’t get it. Their recent announcement confirms that the thing they are measuring is their share of a shrinking pie. Sure, it’s not in their short term interest to expand their definition of the market, but pretending it isn’t so, doesn’t make it go away.

Yet another reminder that in times of dramatic technological change market share is a fools measure. Put simply, new solutions to old problems mean our real competitors are usually invisible.

You should totally read my book – The Great Fragmentation.

Why being better is not enough

better

We have to make it more than just ‘better’. It’s got to be worth the hassle of changing over. The previous sentence really matters when we launch anything. That’s the bit that provides the real context to a startup. What level of friction do our customers have to endure to engage us instead?

We might be lucky enough that they can simply choose us at a shelf instead. Or maybe they’ll need to undertake complex changes to access what we have brought to the market. Install software, change operating systems, create new habits, remember to come back, or communicate with strangers. A big part of starting anything is getting our audience past the associated friction they have to overcome.

It pays to know what these challenges are before we start. Sometimes making a better X is the easy bit.

You should totally read my book – The Great Fragmentation.

 

Why profits are better than wages

profits vs wages

Profits are better than wages for two reasons. The first is, you can make money when you are not in the room. The second reason is a bit more curious:

You can sell a profit making ‘machine’, while you can never sell a wage. This means that every dollar you earn from profits has a natural multiple built into it. If you earn a dollar through profits you may be able to sell that dollar for 2, 3, 5 or more than 10 dollars.

In the end, it’s the simple difference between carrying buckets of water, or building a pipeline directly from the source.

You should totally read my book – The Great Fragmentation.

 

 

Why Silicon Valley is a temporary phenomenon

Detroit Motor City

If Silicon Valley wasn’t a temporary phenomenon, then Britain would still be the centre of manufacturing.

If Silicon Valley wasn’t a temporary phenomenon, then the Spinning Jenny would still be the most important tool of production.

If Silicon Valley wasn’t a temporary phenomenon, then steam would still be the primary from propulsion of our machines.

If Silicon Valley wasn’t a temporary phenomenon, then Detroit would still be the dominant economy of the USA.

Everything has to start somewhere. It so happens that this thing started in a former orange grove in California. Sometimes we confuse the start with the long term reality. And this is the start, we are merely 20 years into this revolution. It’s worth remembering the combustion engine motor car didn’t arrive until 150 years after the start of the Industrial Revolution. The most important things and locations for our current revolution are yet to emerge. What this means is what you make and where you make it can change the trajectory of the future. But more than that it means we need to have a bigger mindset than thinking one place is the centre of everything.

You should totally read my book – The Great Fragmentation.