Your Biggest Lesson from 2023...?

[Fox]

The year is nearly up.. what did you learn?

---

My biggest lesson is that time is insanely valuable.

And building the use of your time into your "final" business system is a huge mistake, but very easy to make.

The goal has to be to use time to build a system that will work as much as possible on its own.

That is, your time should not be used directly - it should all go into building systems.

This is an obvious lesson from reading MJ's books... but this is the difference between knowing the path and walking the path I guess

 

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[Timmy C]

The year is nearly up.. what did you learn?

---

My biggest lesson is that time is insanely valuable.

And building the use of your time into your "final" business system is a huge mistake, but very easy to make.

The goal has to be to use time to build a system that will work as much as possible on its own.

That is, your time should not be used directly - it should all go into building systems.

This is an obvious lesson from reading MJ's books... but this is the difference between knowing the path and walking the path I guess

Well, from a business perspective I guess my lesson is not to give up too early.

@MTF Profile picture is true.

for example, a few years ago i made some online courses.

I ditched that business as the idea didn't interest me. I all but forgot it existed and I had stuff for sale online on random platforms.

I finished checking my accounts today after getting an email that I have a payment.

Turns out these courses made me $700 so far this year after i got done checking.

I did no marketing at all, and haven't touched it in years.

I didn't even know about it till the other day lol.

If I would have stuck to that ONE thing, what could i have turned it into now?

I learned that you also have to enjoy what you do, you can't HATE a business and still work on it.

Life's too short for that crap.

 

[MTF]

My biggest lesson is that time is insanely valuable.

I'd say the same lesson for me but different conclusions.

Because time is insanely valuable and passes super fast, make sure that you enjoy your life. Either way, time will pass quickly but in one scenario you feel like you've wasted your life on nothing while in another you'll be happy for all the memories (even if still wishing for time to go more slowly).

So make sure that you're in the right, positive environment for you and that every day you do things that excite you and make you happy.

As a side note, this also means that if you hate where you live, prioritize your needs over forcing yourself to live where you hate because of your family and friends.

 

[Xeon]

Understanding FastLane and entrepreneurship principles is one thing, doing and seeing success from it is another! All the book knowledge translates into nothing in the real world!

 

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[rjdgreat]

biggest lesson for this year:
God's grace is better than our self-determination.

 

[Dufresne85]

I never wrote down any goals for the year. But last year I did for 2023, now looking back I haven't achieved most of them - This is mainly because of a lack of prioritization and also an inability to focus on one thing at a time.

At least now I know what my goals are for 2024. Prioritization and focus on thing at a time.

 

[circleme]

First (half) year into my Fastlane journey but:

Done is better than perfect > ship fast > stick to it

I did launch my latest SaaS product within a week, the first one took me over a month. Conclusio: Starting with an MVP and let my target audience guide me regarding new features, etc. My opinion doesn't matter at all in this context.

I had a lot of mindset-things going on since starting my journey and it's quite insane how bad doing more than one thing really is. Especially if you try handling / starting multiple business ventures at the same time. Also it's really contraproductive to think about different business models just because yours doesn't work at the get go.

There is still the big question of "When to move on?" but I will figure this out as well.

 

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[EL_00]

The year is nearly up.. what did you learn?

---

My biggest lesson is that time is insanely valuable.

And building the use of your time into your "final" business system is a huge mistake, but very easy to make.

The goal has to be to use time to build a system that will work as much as possible on its own.

That is, your time should not be used directly - it should all go into building systems.

This is an obvious lesson from reading MJ's books... but this is the difference between knowing the path and walking the path I guess

2021-2023

I'm stuck doing overqualified job for myself. From a cashier, an admin, a shop keeper. The job that only required high school graduate, but I spend 4 years in college and it makes me miserable. Recently I'm doing tutoring and it pays at least enough for monthly bills rather than previous jobs with low payment and never enough.

It is what I learn recently:
- yes, you cannot force rat to drink water! Be miserable enough, that you keep wake up 4:00 in the morning thinking it's the life I'm hoping for? What I'm gonna do? Scary feeling to be homeless next month is good for me to not be comfortable on my zone.

- don't limit yourself, I read a lot from here and I experience when offer tutoring for the first time. I'm not comfortable, shy, just not good enough to teach other kids, but see no parents even ask me where I graduate, degree, or my score! But the minus is their first question still how much it cost to teach their children? So I might be treated as a commodity now, but you got the point.

Now I'm challenging myself to sell website, for business. I need more than underpayment and opportunity to talk with business owner and be comfortable. It's important for my next step cause no one could taught me that. And here's what I learn while doing it: I'm a suck at cold-texting and scaredy cat at coldcalling. Need to fix it up.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Bump.

 

[Kevin7]

PICK your priorities... we think we do, but every day just eases into the next one, there's no urgency because nothing really seems it's actually on fire. Time is limited, most other things aren't. Go for it or at least start on it TODAY.

 

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[Jrjohnny]

The year is nearly up.. what did you learn?

---

My biggest lesson is that time is insanely valuable.

And building the use of your time into your "final" business system is a huge mistake, but very easy to make.

The goal has to be to use time to build a system that will work as much as possible on its own.

That is, your time should not be used directly - it should all go into building systems.

This is an obvious lesson from reading MJ's books... but this is the difference between knowing the path and walking the path I guess

You can live life to the fullest by simply appreciating the small things that you have, rather than the big things you don’t.

 

[Bearcorp]

While trying to make sporting comebacks this year, my mind might think I'm still 20 but my body reminds me I'm almost 40! And new things hurt that never used to as well.
Should have listened to the older generation that tried to warn me. But that's not my style, I need to make the mistake myself to really learn from them..

 

[Timmy C]

While trying to make sporting comebacks this year, my mind might think I'm still 20 but my body reminds me I'm almost 40! And new things hurt that never used to as well.
Should have listened to the older generation that tried to warn me. But that's not my style, I need to make the mistake myself to really learn from them..

Would you say it has a lot to do with you being inactive for a long time as much as the age? Of course age would be a factor.

A guy who is 60 still trains BJJ where I am, only about 2 days a week on average though.

My coach is 40 and he still destroys us all on the mat.

 

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[Bearcorp]

Would you say it has a lot to do with you being inactive for a long time as much as the age? Of course age would be a factor.

A guy who is 60 still trains BJJ where I am, only about 2 days a week on average though.

My coach is 40 and he still destroys us all on the mat.

Definitely being inactive! not from a fitness point of view but the specific movements. I haven’t played Aussie rules in 10 years, playing AFL 9’s the last few weeks my knees, Achilles, hamstrings, everything’s sore. It’s the different movements that I haven’t been doing. Plus when I stopped playing my hamstrings were shot, I had to manage them when I was playing all the time so it was silly of me to think it wouldn’t be an issue again. But I’m enjoying it, so it’s motivated me to get the rehab done and keep at it.

The problem was the first game I sprinted around and ran like I was 20 again, took all of 5 mins for one hammy to go, I have to remember to ease myself into it, warm up more, look after myself more than I had to at 20

 

[Wombat]

My lesson from this year is: everything is my fault. _Everything_.

Some things were directly my fault.
Other things were initially caused by something outside of my control, but I:

• failed to correctly identify the problem, and/or
• failed to respond appropriately

It's. all. my. fault.
And that's a good thing because it means I have control. A better 2024 requires me to better myself.

 

[datagod]

That building business can have ups and downs.

Had quite a shake in business. Lost a lot of profit a month.

What's interesting I feel now much better. It was a time that I was earning x5 what people made in my country. But I wasnt that happy.

Maybe it's just because i appreciate now stuff more or I just got more mature.

1. Money is not everything
2. Time goes on. Even if you don't want to
3. Do sports and more sports!
4. Sitting and stress will kill you. Read num 3.
5. Go out with friends. Beer, coffee?
6. Turn off phone. Leave it home or in car. Read num. 5.
7. Failing business is better than no business. You learn a lot what you could do differently etc.
8. Focus. Focus. Focus. I am still quite young and I still have problems with focus. But i am getting better with focus.

"One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." - Neil Armstrong

 

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[DarkKnight]

The year is nearly up.. what did you learn?

---

My biggest lesson is that time is insanely valuable.

And building the use of your time into your "final" business system is a huge mistake, but very easy to make.

The goal has to be to use time to build a system that will work as much as possible on its own.

That is, your time should not be used directly - it should all go into building systems.

This is an obvious lesson from reading MJ's books... but this is the difference between knowing the path and walking the path I guess

I learnt that everything has a start and an end and nothing lasts forever. If you're going through hard times, keep going until the Gods give up.
The sun ALWAYS shines after the dark night ends. Its just a cycle. Like life and death. Day and Night. Busts and Booms.

In Mr. Churchill's words,
"If you're going through hell, keep going."

 

[luminis_]

The year is nearly up.. what did you learn?

To achieve a goal, you must become the version of yourself that is deserving of achieving it.

You can't earn $1 million as your current self. Your current self is incabable of becoming a millionaire and you must psychology "kill yourself" and evolve into someone who is deserving.

And don't cling on to identities and beliefs that keep you poor and weak.

 

[NervesOfSteel]

The year is nearly up.. what did you learn?

I know that majority of the population is Financially illiterate and this year I learned that they prefer to remain that way.

 

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[whitelight]

I started my copywriting journey and am grateful for that..

 

[freek]

A few of my biggest lessons:

• When you start out, focus on revenue and profit; all the other stuff is irrelevant for now. I see so many people on here talking about the perfect name, the design of their images, the way their website looks. Just use simple templates; they will be more than good enough when you start out.

• Outsource all the stuff that doesn't bring in a lot of money but needs to be done. Yeah, sure, it's nice to work on your designs, but unless you're really good at it, just outsource it to someone who has experience and is actually good at it. It will save you a lot of time to focus on bringing in more revenue. Relevent for a lot of arreas.

• Rank your priorities based on the amount of money they will bring in.

• Don't worry about stuff you don't know how to do exactly; you will figure it out along the way. Even with legal stuff, just start selling and work the other stuff out later. (However, this is not legal advice .)

• Realize that bad things are not as bad as they look the first time you hear about a problem. If it doesn't cause you to go bankrupt in 24 hours, it's no biggie. Especially when you start out because you have nothing to lose. Problems can be turned into great events when you handle them correctly. Start seeing them as opportunities; it sounds cliché, but it's true. Also, I think the amount of problems you are able to solve shows how good of an entrepreneur you actually are. Give me ten big problems this week, and I am sure my company will be better the moment the week has passed. Problems drive improvement.

• Act like you are way bigger than you are when dealing with other companies. It got me a great deal; I'll figure out how to deliver on it later.

• Take risks; you literally have nothing to lose when starting out.

• Think bigger and do a few tasks that have an impact a few months later. For instance, this week I had a lot of urgent stuff to deal with; still, I started the morning by applying for things to be able to sell in a different country. Not relevant to the urgent problems, but I will be damn happy in 3 months that I still took the time to do this.

• CENTS is so important.

• Think about scalability and systems more often.

• Work on your company, not in it.

 

[StrikingViper69]

Focus on making something to sell.

I spent years trying to build an audience.

I should have skipped ahead to selling something.

Sell something and your buyers are your audience.

Test, test, test.

Keep things simple.

EDIT: a better reply after thinking about it. If something isn’t working, pivot within the field. Build on things you’ve already made and use them to create something new. I started building a list with a free ebook and building seo traffic to my blog.

Then I tried selling courses several times, which didn’t work. Then took the free ebook and tried selling it instead of giving it away, and people started buying it.

Then took that and doubled down and wrote a proper book, which has been selling since.

 

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[JordanK]

I had a small discussion with Fox on this recently.

My biggest lesson is that the snowball/time in the game effect is real.

I'm just over 5 years in Real Estate now. When I started out I set myself massively unrealistic goals with short time periods. Mentally it was as if I thought the world was going to end in 3-4 years time. That isn't the case.

The longer I spend in this game the more my skills grow and compound. My long term business deals generate more revenue which helps me invest more and on and on. I'm also seen as more of an authority locally and have engaging conversations where value is traded more equally with people who are a multiple of times more successful and longer in this game than me.

For any new entrepreneurs reading this. Every business you run, opportunity that doesn't work out or fails. You will learn valuable skills that will help your next business or allow you to move faster next time. Tasks/objectives that used to take me a month I can now do in days as my skills and more importantly my confidence grows.

I forget where the quote is from but it says "confidence doesn't come from talking yourself up in front of the mirror, it comes from having a stack of undeniable proof that you are who you say you are and you've done what you said you were going to do".

 

[freek]

confidence doesn't come from talking yourself up in front of the mirror, it comes from having a stack of undeniable proof that you are who you say you are and you've done what you said you were going to do".

Alex Hormozi

 

[parabolic]

@Fox kicked off this thread with a mandatory lesson about creating systems to conserve your most precious resource - time. Wholeheartedly agree.

The other ones I keep thinking about are:
- Find a problem to fix or a way to help somebody (@MJ DeMarco and @Andy Black quotes frequently replay in my mind).
- Don't overthink. Focus your energy and thoughts on making it happen rather than making it perfect.
- Don't action fake!

"Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it." - Salvador Dalí

Execute! Sell! Repeat!

 

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[HYPOMANIC]

The year is nearly up.. what did you learn?

---

My biggest lesson is that time is insanely valuable.

And building the use of your time into your "final" business system is a huge mistake, but very easy to make.

The goal has to be to use time to build a system that will work as much as possible on its own.

That is, your time should not be used directly - it should all go into building systems.

This is an obvious lesson from reading MJ's books... but this is the difference between knowing the path and walking the path I guess

DON'T WAIT FOR SHIT
PERFECTION IS BS!!!!
AS LONG AS YOU ARE ALIVE AND NOT IN PRISON YOU CAN F*ck UP OVER AND OVER AGAIN.
FAIL FASTER AND DON'T MAKE IT MEAN SHIT!!!!!!!

 

[Anna13]

I never wrote down any goals for the year. But last year I did for 2023, now looking back I haven't achieved most of them - This is mainly because of a lack of prioritization and also an inability to focus on one thing at a time.

At least now I know what my goals are for 2024. Prioritization and focus on thing at a time.

Have you tried GoalSumo.com? It‘s effing amazing for goal setting and achieving!

 

[HYPOMANIC]

DON'T WAIT FOR SHIT
PERFECTION IS BS!!!!
AS LONG AS YOU ARE ALIVE AND NOT IN PRISON YOU CAN F*ck UP OVER AND OVER AGAIN.
FAIL FASTER AND DON'T MAKE IT MEAN SHIT!!!!!!!

add
LIFE ISN'T ABOUT DOING THINGS RUGHT BUT DOING THE RIGHT THINGS HAHAH

 

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[Anna13]

I have learned to focus, even if it‘s way harder to be a fastlaner, than I thought! I have definitely learned that marketing costs, but must be done, or you are out of the game. It all comes back to this fact: money makes the world go round and if you don‘t have money or can‘t sell, then you‘ll never have an amazing life. Get rich or die tryin’ - there‘s no other option for me. And I‘m not trying to compensate or something, because I have the greatest love of all and I‘m pretty grateful for stuff people would not even care to think about. Still, the only way into an amazing life is and always will be: money! So, I‘m going for it! That‘s my lesson from 2023. Looking forward to 2024!

 

[Black_Dragon43]

My biggest lesson is that if you’re willing to work so hard that you feel like you’re losing your mind and going insane by how many hours you’ve put in… then you’ll get outsized results that you wouldn’t even dream were possible for you.

But… there is a downside, your mental health will definitely suffer, and you won’t feel human anymore.

That’s sort of what I’ve done this year. Over 425 tasks / projects completed (compared to just 25 abandoned tasks/projects). To give you an idea, one “task” for example was learning how to code and creating an AI app from scratch to support your team of writers and add differentiation that none of your competitors have. And doing that all in 2 weeks while still handling 4-5 sales calls per day and all the other tasks.

I’ve fallen sick the past 10 days or so, so I’ve slowed down a lot and finally had a chance to look back. I can’t even believe what I’ve managed to achieve this year. I wouldn’t have imagined this even in my wildest dreams 1 year ago. But the amount of work I’ve put in this year has just been insane — I think I probably worked as hard as the past 2-3 years combined into one. Literarily wake up, do some exercise and then glued to my chair from morning to evening except 1-hour spent watching a show in the evening with my partner. I even ate while working.

I haven’t had a chance to even really make sense of the money I’ve earned partly because my father has fallen ill battling with lung cancer so I’ve been helping him and partly because I just had no time to pause, and I’ve reinvested a lot into getting the best people on my team, improving our margins, etc.

(An interesting side-note, I’ve been so overwhelmed this year that I don’t even consider if I can do X task — I just start doing it. Like my mind has no time to consider if coding an app myself from scratch is a good idea vs spending money and trying to find a developer for it, so it just jumps into action)