A Quote, An Article I Wrote & An Article I Loved

1.A Quote

Baltasar Gracián was a Spanish Jesuit, writer, philosopher, and a real bad-ass.

His most popular book was The Art of Worldly Wisdom - I bought it for $7 at a second hand bookstore 8 years ago and have lost track of how many times i’ve read it.

Although he was a member of a Catholic religious group called The Society of Jesus, there isn’t one mention of religion in his writing.

I think Baltasar was trying to say: have faith that things will work out, stay positive, but make sure you do the damn hard work that is necessary. Work hard enough and you’ll eventually catch a lucky break.

One translator said, what he meant was: God helps those who help themselves.

I like my translation better.

2. How to Become Omni-Competent

I originally wrote this on LinkedIn and Medium.

You can ready the full version, but here’s the gist:

Omni-competent: able to deal with all matters.

As a founder, you wear every hat and have to be somewhat competent across all departments: sales, design, marketing, product, strategy, finances, leadership, operations… the list goes on.

All these departments require different skillsets.

However, all skills are learnable.

You don’t have to learn all the skills for each department. You only need to learn the critical few that provide most of the results.

Remember the 80/20 rule.

What are the crucial skills you need to learn in each department that will provide you most of the outcomes you need until you can hire someone to do the role.

In sales, it’s probably connecting with a prospect, asking needs based questions, showing how your product/solution solves that problem, then providing the prospect with a simple way to pay you.

If you nail those four things you will close most of yours sales. Everything past those four will provide incremental gains.

The same goes for all departments; understanding finances, developing strategy, good design, etc.

Focus on the few things that matter in each department, don’t get too bogged down in the detail and become omni-competent along the way.

3. 10 Crazy Advertisements You’ll Love

Some of these made me laugh, some made me think.

Read the full article here and see all 10.

Here’s my favourite:

Ryan