Random business building tips.

I use the term business here pretty lightly because I would dare say most these apply to simply being a solid human that other people want to be around. They have all served me particularly well in both business building and being a decent human so take from it what you will.

1. Be consistent in how you treat people: If I am doing this right, my clients have absolutely no clue if I am working with 25 people or 2 because they are each treated like they are my priority. While there is a drastic change behind the scenes depending on how many people I'm working with, there should be zero change in my interactions with my people.

On the flip side of this, you would think it would be easy to prioritize 2 people, right? It should be, but what I see happening over and over again is someone "only" has 2 people so they start to slack. They think well, it's only 2 people so does it really matter? If you are a new Instagram account, and you "only" have a few hundred followers, those few hundred followers are the ones that count THE MOST. I've been in a million online communities that lack any engagement from the creator because there aren't enough people in it. If you have a group with 3 people, you better treat those 3 people like they're the damn Kings and Queens of something important. They are taking a chance on you. The "early adopters" are the ones that are going to bring you the most value and who are going to be key to your growth. TREAT EVERYONE LIKE THEY MATTER.

2. Do what you say you're going to do. I'm not sure this needs explanation. It seems like literally the easiest to understand concept and yet so few people actually live by this rule. If you said you were going to do it, find a way to do it. I don't care if it's hard, or if you have to pivot 100 times to make it work, problem solve and find a way to get it done. And if you can't, be upfront or bring in someone who can.

3. Stay the course. Don't bail when shit gets hard. You want to know the single thing that I believe makes the difference between someone who finds success at what they are trying to do and someone who doesn't? It's your ability to stick it through. Your ability to do the mundane shit day in and day out. Your determination to stick with your plan when it's not going according to plan. You will need to adjust along the way, but if you truly want to build something monumental, it takes significantly longer than you think and it means putting in the work, not jumping to the next shiny thing that you might be able to make a quick buck off of.

4. Show initiative. Take charge of something! Whether it's in your own business or if you are working for someone else, be someone who does something more than just comes up with ideas. Ideas are great, we need those (I personally have too many of them), but what we need more of is people who will take the reins and get shit done. Stop waiting for someone to hand you something or to "get lucky" and go fucking do it yourself.

5. Find the answer. When people send me messages asking for stupid things, if I wait just long enough, more often than not they can figure it out themselves. So I now try to think through the stupid question I'm about to send someone to see if I can figure it out myself. Most of the questions we ask others are because we're too lazy to find the answers ourselves. We are a society that is seriously starting to lack problem solving skills. 98% of the time you can google it. The other 2%, put in the effort to find a solution yourself.

After re-reading all of that, I guess this was more of a rant of what I see happening with those who can't seem to understand why they aren't finding the success they want. I promise it's not rocket science. Rant over.