I can tell you this: Everything in my life that I am happy about it is the product of a huge mistake.
I've had to change careers several times. Sometimes because my interests changed. Sometimes because all bridges have been burned beyond recognition, sometimes because I desperately needed money. And sometimes just because I hated everyone in my old career or they hated me.
Read every book, blog, website, whatever, about what you want to be an expert in.
When I was 22 years old, I thought girls would like me if I wrote a novel. I spent so much time writing that I was thrown out of graduate school.
The best, very best scammers will always ask for your advice. This is their favorite technique. It makes them vulnerable. It flatters your ego.
Nobody wants to make me a rich man. In fact, most people want to make me a very poor man. I can guarantee some people fantasize at night about how poor they can make me.
I keep track of my blog stats, Facebook subs, my Amazon rank, Twitter followers, Facebook likes per posts, my chess ranking. I get stressed when they all don't go up.
Every successful business, even Google, Facebook, Twitter, started with a combination of manual improvements and friends of the founders using the site.
Life is better when your sinuses are clean, when your arteries are clean, and when your digestive tract is clean.
Branding jails corporate America, but honesty sets entrepreneurs free.
Don't forget: when you start a website, it's not yet a trusted site. So you have to bring people from a trusted site to your site to build up the trust in your site.
Honesty is the fastest way to prevent a mistake from turning into a failure.
Poker is a charismatic game. People who are larger than life play poker and make their living from playing games and hustling.
Life is cold. People stay warm through the intimacy of a story.
Games are all about taking risks.
Become a beacon of enhancement, and then, when the night is gray, all of the boats will move towards you, bringing their bountiful riches.
I'm scammed almost every day. Or, if not scammed, at the very least someone tries to scam me. Usually more than once a day.
I'm a big believer in minimalism. Not materialist minimalism, although that's part of it, but time and energy minimalism. The body is given only so much energy a day.
I am a sore loser. It's not that I'm so competitive with others. But I'm competitive with myself. I like to do better than I did before.
People unconsciously know when you are not listening to them. Then they say 'No' to you.
Buying coffee on the street instead of in a Starbucks is the poor man's way to get rich. In other words, you will never get rich by scratching out ten cents from your dollar.
Money you lose you can always make back. But even five minutes of time lost is gone forever.
Help is a conversation. If one side talks too much, the other side will get bored. So make sure you help back when you can.
Being a leader doesn't mean you created something or you did something great in the past or some other person has given you any kind of authority.
When I was 22, I was thrown out of graduate school and then fired from three jobs in a row at higher and higher salaries where I saved nothing.
A lot of times, people send me emails, and then I forget about them, or I never respond to them, or I respond to them weeks later.
Nobody is more worthy of love in the entire universe than you. I wish I had reminded myself of that more.
Everyone is different. We all suffer from the disease of being human. There are a thousand cures but no antidotes.
Happiness is just a positive perception from our brain. Some days, you will be unhappy. Our brain is a tool we use. It's not who we are.
Do what you do with love, and success is a natural symptom.
The first rule of personal finance is that it's not personal and it's not financial. It's about your ability to make ten changes and not get too depressed over it.
Take control of who you report to, what you do, what you create. Or start a business on the side. Deliver some value, any value, to anybody, to somebody, and watch that value compound into a career.
The people who don't know personal finance have TV shows about it.
If two people believe in the same story, they might be thousands of miles apart and total strangers, but they still have a sense they can trust each other.
In every business I had ever started, even ones that had totally failed, I had kept good relations with the investors.
Honesty is about the scars. It's about the blemishes. But it's more than just bragging about failure, which could be a form of ego. It's about truly helping people.
Investing is for wealth preservation, not wealth creation, so first you have to make wealth.
Don't stay at the job for safe salary increases over time. That will never get you where you want - freedom from financial worry. Only free time, imagination, creativity, and an ability to disappear will help you deliver value that nobody ever delivered before in the history of mankind.
Whether you're an entrepreneur, an employee, a student, a homemaker, a writer, it's time to start forgetting about all the ways the world has promised you safety and comfort.
Most people don't have the power of persuasion.
How great is it to just rest and be happy and not move when you don't have to.
Ultimately, the best speakers are the ones who have put 10,000 hours into listening.
If you spend a lot of energy on things that are wastes of time, then you waste energy, get sick, and die faster.
I love being honest and intimate with people. I love building community. I love emailing with readers.
Don't buy into the 20-hours-a-day entrepreneur myth. You need to sleep 8 hours a day to have a focused mind.
Products are valued higher than services.
Procrastination is your body telling you you need to back off a bit and think more about what you are doing.
Whenever things are good, I always worry about what could go wrong.
America is a country of fighters. People who fought their way in and then continued fighting.
