Think Like You’re in the 1% – Focus Energy on Important Questions
🏎️🔥 spend your effort on things that move the needle
Reading time: 17 minutes.
Table of Contents
One of the benefits of our Q&As is that is creates an opportunity for us to come up with new post ideas. After we realized we were complaining about repetitive questions, we decided we’d go ahead and make a post that gets rid of them.
In essence, most questions don’t really matter.
What we mean by this is there are really:
only a handful of decisions that really matter
questions with direct answers that are useful and impactful immediately
a whole host of questions surrounding “fear and worry” that don’t even need to be addressed
Think like you’re in the 1% is certainly a rude title and that’s the point, much like the content and audience we intend to focus on.
The good news is that most questions will typically fall into category 2 which makes the Q&As a lot easier as there is an immediate and definitive answer.
❌ Common Questions That WON’T Help Change Your Life
Jobs & Career
Think about it like this.
If you take a job making $100K or a higher risk job making $70K with $40K in illiquid private stock… this really isn’t a question.
Why? Well both of these mean that you’re going to be worth about the same in 1-5 years.
Unless the stock somehow goes up 10x (unlikely) you will be in the exact same position as the guy who takes cash up front and simply buys some higher risk stocks.
It’s interesting because people ask these questions all the time and yet the choice between the two rarely makes a difference.
$10,000 differences for 5 years is $50K…
That’s not going to change your actual lifestyle.
Why are we starting with this example? It’s because rich people think about time.
Sure you “could” work a lot harder and make an extra 10% in one of those positions but is 10% really going to change the *value of your time*?
No. This is why we always respond with the following which has come up at least 30-40 times in Q&As.
“Always choose the option that gives you more free time”.
This only sticks with people who will eventually get rich. If people don’t understand this sentence we’ll bet against them 97% of the time. The entire point of this blog is to get rich while you still have time to enjoy it.
If you’re happy with being a millionaire at 55 years of age (in today’s dollars to keep it simple), it’s best to leave.
It’s best to leave because this is just not how rich people think. Rich people don’t care about:
401Ks
an extra 3-4% increase in net worth
earning hourly wages
The only time they care about these massively long time-horizon investment vehicles is when their accountant rings them up and tells them there is a more tax efficient way to set his money up for
inheritance in the future
lowering his total taxes being paid
This should now shine a light on why we don’t really put much effort into responses that don’t deal with anything life changing. It’s because we know it doesn’t really matter. Also. It is very likely that the person asking the question already knows what he or she is going to do and just wants affirmation. So we type out the same old answer “Sure go with A or B. Make sure you don’t lose time”.
The only time it gets difficult is if someone is already close to becoming rich… then you can make small tweaks to make sure the person gets over the finish line safely.
But. If they are already close to the finish line they would always choose the risk off option… which then… by definition… means they are looking for affirmation. They already know the right answer.
This brings us to the final point on this subsection which is that rich people have clear thoughts because they don’t waste their brain power on questions that don’t make a big deal.
You don’t see rich people wondering if they should:
buy a coffee
upgrade to business class
buy a new laptop
These aren’t meaningful changes since they don’t generate any equity (fancy name for ownership).
Unless there is an opportunity to make large amounts of money, they are not spending their time worrying about the bread crumbs.
This sounds terrible as we realize that a laptop purchase could ruin a normal person’s budget. But. That’s the way it is. If you’re not rich yet, the rich people who end up making it don’t have time to even think about buying a laptop.
When you’re killing yourself trying to get a product to sell, getting clients and holding down a job (if you need to keep the lights on)… None of these questions ever come up.
That’s right. What we’re saying is if a question is about two different jobs we know the person hasn’t bothered even trying with a business… otherwise they wouldn’t have asked the question. They would know the answer and wouldn’t bother jumping in the Q&A.
Anyway. Most people waste their time talking about:
prestige
a new opportunity for 10-15%
other such nonsense which is good for the people who actually want to get rich (lowers the competition!)
Comment: Income
💬 TIME says:
Great post, and timely…
Favorite section was #1. If you’re in the game of online business once you hit a significant profit day (although you shouldn’t think in terms of days), you will realize how small a “day job” income really is.
That doesn’t mean keeping another income stream for as long as possible while your stabilizing your business is a bad idea – it just means this:
If you were going to save $30K in NYC from a $110K job working 9-5, and all of sudden you hit an event in your online business and make $5K in a single day while you slept – your mindset completely shifts.
Comment: Revenue Multiplier
💬 AC says:
Nailed it. Again.
Businesses have a usual 3-4 multiplier to every extra $$ you make and it all boosts the value of your business, hence your net worth.
More importantly, you can sell it and liquidate all this value.
Doesn’t even compare to the best-paying careers.
Even a small business owner making 100K per year through their business is leaps and bounds ahead of someone making 100K at their job.
Related Archives:
We are launching a Twitter Community. The idea is to discuss subjects in a more closed-off space.
More signal
Less clickbait / algorithm-optimized garbage
Interested?
Most “Personal Finance”
The funny thing about personal finance is that the vast majority of the “big disaster” decisions can be avoided as follows:
don’t get legally married – minimum pre-nup if you absolutely must
never have 100% allocation into a single asset class
don’t take stock tips from anyone
don’t follow the markets
Funny how these four points are exactly what the masses try to do.
A large number of smart people get divorced and are forced to start over.
People try to go “all in” to somehow make it in one shot… doesn’t work.
They try to follow someone else for investment advice instead of thinking for themselves.
They try to follow day to day price moves on everything.
Pausing for a second…
Yes, hedge fund managers and other investment professionals do track markets and all of these things like hawks. But. They underperform the market. Every. Single. Year.
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