A useful belief for tasteful entrepreneurs

The first year after Daniel Vassallo quit his job and went independent, his income was $33,000. The year after that, he made 10x. 

If you asked him how that happened, he would describe it like this, “I got a new sense of urgency at the end of 2019 and started working backwards from my financial goals to ‘survive’ rather than doing things to maximize my upside.”

In his bid to avoid returning to full-time employment at any cost, he more thoughtfully approached his projects to help him earn in the near term. He took on some freelancing gigs, he made video courses—whatever he could that wouldn’t involve risk he couldn’t afford.

Daniel did good work—I studied his Twitter course and got a lot of value out of it, so I also joined his community—but it’s clear that he wasn’t too precious about it

When his co-founder Louie Bacaj made his first course, Daniel told him not only to time box it, but to also, “Treat it like a brain dump instead of a masterpiece. If it becomes extremely successful, you can always convert it to a masterpiece.” In other words, don’t let good taste get in the way of being effective.

When I get too bogged down in the details, I think about Daniel and making small bets. It’s a useful belief, and it helps me get back to work.

P.S., Notable but a different topic: He also developed a skill, which he describes like this, “The main income stream was different almost every year, but rather than expanding it was more an exercise of adapting. i.e. getting better at noticing what the market needs and what I can (and want to) provide.”

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