Arhiva: octombrie 2019

Last week I sent an email to the email list (you should subscribe, by the way). I was talking about Basic advice and how important it is that, from time to time, someone reminds you how important it is to focus on the basics. My definition of basic advice is this: advice that’s really easy to understand, without too much explanation.

Chris, one of the people on our list, asked for more examples of basic advice.

What a great idea, I thought. Why don’t I make a list, while I’m at it and update it whenever I have more advice?

By the way, you can help. If you have more suggestions, make a comment below and I’ll add it to the list, along with your name. I’ll also add your link, if it’s not what I consider to be a spammy site :D

So, without further ado and in no specific order, here is the

MEGA LIST OF BASIC ADVICE (BUSINESS AND PERSONAL)

Initially, I was gonna do just a business advice list, but I was thinking of more and more personal advice, so I added that to the list as well. This means that the list is split in two: Business and Personal. Scroll down for the “Personal” section.

Business Basic Advice

1. Watch your costs

Most of the business go down because they spend too much.

2. Don’t hire too fast

Hiring creates lots of complexity in the business and it tries to sort a problem by throwing more resources at it. Most of the times it doesn’t work

3. Fire fast

Once you decided to fire someone, do it fast. Don’t postpone it, because it impacts your entire company/team.

4. Get a lawyer as fast as possible

Someone needs to read all those contracts and make sure they’re ok.

5. Get an accountant as fast as possible

The easiest way to break the law is by not paying taxes. Don’t fall into that.

6. Don’t send an email when angry

Write the email as draft. Wait 24 hours. If you feel the same, send it. If not, rephrase it. Anger rarely solves anything.

7. Raise more money than you need

There are lots of potential pitfalls on the way. If you raise money, try to raise at least 20-30% more than you think you need.

8. Raise money before you need to

Raising money takes a long time. Start raising money at least 9-12 months before you estimate you will run out of money. I would start 18 months before, frankly.

9. Read books about your industry

I’m biased here, since The CEO Library is about reading books. Still, I think that long form puts some things into perspective a lot better than articles online. No matter how many articles you read, nothing will make you feel the pain of firing people as much as The Hard Thing about Hard Things will make you feel. If you want to know how to read more, here’s a really good article on our site about it (Cristina, my cofounder at The CEO Library, wrote it).

10. Grind every day

Most businesses just need to survive to be successful. Do your work everyday, even if it’s boring during some days.

11. Don’t break the law

You really can’t run a legitimate business from jail.

12. Follow-up on email after every call or meeting

It took me a little bit of time to get into this habit, but following up on email after every call or meeting you have is the essential. This gives you a “paper trail” of the discussion and lets all people involved remember what you talked about. Also, if someone forgets something, there’s always someone to point that out.

If you have more suggestions for business basic advice, please add it in the comment section below.

Personal Basic Advice

13. Wash your hands

Really. You know how many people I see leaving toilets without washing their hands? Now, that I told you, you will never NOT see it.

14. Breathe

Sometimes, that’s all you need to go through the day. One breath at a time.

15. Don’t send a message when angry

Really, don’t. If you are angry with someone and want to clear the air, talk face to face. Or at least on the phone. It will give you some time and it’s a lot more difficult to say stupid things face to face or on the phone.

16. Clean your living place

Really, clean your place. I’m not saying you should be Monica from Friends, a cleaning freak, but don’t keep weeks old food on the sofa.

17. Read books

I feel that long form reading activates parts of your brain you don’t normally use. Especially fiction. I imagine so many things when I read Science Fiction, I dream entire worlds after that.

18. Exercise/Go out and walk

I’m not the best in keeping up with this, but I still walk as much as I can. The best life I’ve lived was when I was working out constantly.

19. Get some sunlight

Really. Go out and take a walk. Get some distance from your life for a bit.

20. Sleep

I’ve been sleeping 7-8 hours a night in the last few months and I’m seeing such a big change in energy and productivity. Cristina wrote a while back about sleep in our newsletter, so give it a read here.

21. Eat well

I need to remind myself this every day. I’ve been eating really bad food lately and I can feel it in the level of energy I have in the 1-2 hours after eating. Eating well improves your well being and productivity.

22. Don’t stop learning

Read new things, find interesting courses, watch videos, go to physical courses. Never stop learning.

23. Do things in moderation

Even the good things can be too much and they can lead to burnout if you overdo them.

If you have more suggestions for personal basic advice, please add it in the comment section below.

TL;DR: I want to buy some websites. See below for more info.

Years ago, before I started MavenHut, I was building content websites. Mostly blogs about different things. One about cars, another one about motorcycles. I sold all of them to support MavenHut in the early stages.

At the beginning of this year, though, I started to look into investing money in websites. I took a course about it that was an eye opener. I might write about what I learned at some point, who knows.

Any way, the idea is that I’m looking to buy websites. It doesn’t matter if you haven’t updated them in a while or you write daily, it doesn’t matter if it’s making no money, a little bit or a lot, just let me know. Even if I don’t buy them, I know people that might be interested.

Some guidelines of what I’m looking for:

• English content
• Need to be at least 2-3 years old

If you have these type of websites, fire an email to websites @ bobbyvoicu.com. If you can put the URLs in the first email, the better. If you want more information, just ask in the email.

It took me a little bit of time because of some traveling I needed to do, but I finally tried Apple Arcade during the last weekend.

If you don’t know what Apple Arcade is, read this article. The tldr; version is that it’s a new program by Apple where they finance new and high quality games to be launched on all Apple platforms: MacOS, iOS, iPadOS and tvOS. The twist is that you have no in-app purchases. You pay for the subscription and that’s it. The subscription is $5/month and you can try the games for free for the first month, without needing to pay anything.

I’ve been quite excited about it, because I want to have some cross platform games that I can play on TV and on my mobile phone/tablet as well. I use SteamLink, I use Remote Play for PS4, but having native games on all platforms I use is so much better.

Another reason I loved the idea is that, starting with the latest version of the operating systems you can use Playstation’s DS4 controller natively through bluetooth. There were some hacks previously, but now you just connect the controller you want and that’s it. It also works with some XBox controllers, I think, but I don’t have an XBox, so I didn’t test it.

The games I tried yet: “What the Golf“, ustwo’s “Assemble with care” and some OceanHorn 2. I played What the Golf mostly on the iPad, and Assemble with care and Oceanhorn 2 on Apple TV, with the controller.

What the Golf

This is a weird and funny game. I can’t really tell you too much without spoiling some things, so if you have the time, play it. It’s… a golf game. Sort of. It’s really great to play on your phone during travel, among other things.

Assemble with care

This one is more of a story rather than a game. Yes, it is a bit of a puzzle game, but it’s more in the vein of Firewatch, rather than Monument Valley, another game made by ustwo. You learn the history of some people in a small city through repairing their old stuff (watch, camera, statue aso).

I’ve finished the game in about 2 hours, I think. I played it on the Apple TV, with the remote. While the controller worked in the menus, it didn’t work in the game.

I think it’s a nice, reflective game, that you can play when you’re feeling nostalgic. The voice acting is good and the graphics, the colors, make it like a living painting. I liked it.

For a more complete review, read this article.

Oceanhorn 2

It’s a game similar, in looks, to Nintendo’s Breath of the Wild. I played for about 30 minutes, but I remembered I didn’t really like Breath of the Wild anyway, so I stopped there. The controller works really well on the Apple TV, but this is not the kind of game I enjoy playing.

I’m looking for other games to play, so stay tuned, I might actually write more about Apple Arcade. I actually looked for a reason to learn to stream for a long time, so this might be the moment.

This is one of the funniest videos I’ve seen in a while. It shows what you can do if some newsletter doesn’t unsubscribe you when you ask for it.

As a bonus, you can also watch the following video on how to talk with email scammers. It’s the same person (James Veitch) and it’s as funny as the previous one.

Image from Canva

Starting with January 24th, 2020, we’re gonna see the first new episodes of a Star Trek series with Jean-Luc Picard.

Like many people my age (I’m 41 now), the first Star Trek I’ve ever watched was The Next Generation. Picard, Data, Riker, Worf, Troi, Geordi, they were all names we grew up with and vastly enjoyed watching. For me, in particular, it might be the thing that made me love SF in all its forms: movies, TV series and, most of all, books.

While the new series is not around those characters (with the exception of Picard, of course), some of them will appear in the new series. I’ve seen glimpses of Data, Riker and Troi in the trailer. You can also see Seven of Nine, from Voyager, who seems to be playing a much larger role than the other ones.

I’m crazy about Christmas. The thing is, I wasn’t as crazy about Christmas when I was a kid as I’m now, at forty-something.

What happened in between?

Well, as an adult, the holidays season (including Christmas, of course, and New Year’s) is the most quiet period of the year. Nobody sends you emails, nobody wants something urgent from you. Except family, but hopefully you manage/like that part of your life.

Once I understood why I loved the quiet period, I started to associate things with it: Christmas carols, the Christmas tree, Christmas lights… This means that once the summer is over, I want the Christmas feeling as early as possible. So right now I’m negotiating with my fiancée having a Christmas tree starting with October…

I’m also listening to Christmas songs right now. Just because I can.

The question I answered in this video is “Should I start a side business while working a 9 to 5 job?”

To start with the conclusion: if you want to really succeed, I don’t think it’s recommended to start a side business while holding a full time job. A business you can’t focus on most of your time is most likely going to fail.

If you start a hobby or you don’t care about revenues or success of the business, then you can start whenever you want.

Transcript:

Should I start a side business while working a nine-to-five job?

No, I don’t think you should do that. I come from a school of thought that says you should need to focus on one thing and do it really really well. I can understand that your case might be different: you have a family, you have a mortgage, you need money to live. It all means you need the money from the nine-to-five job.

If that’s the case, what I would suggest is that you save money for at least six months or a year of living without generating of revenue.

Cut your costs as much as possible, as much as you can, so that it becomes easier to live off the money that you that you saved and once you’ve done that, bite the bullet and start the company.

If the business doesn’t work, you can always go back and find a job even if it takes a little bit longer. The business will not be a success if you can’t focus on doing just that.

It can’t really work. Yes, there are exceptions to that, but most of the people don’t really make it work. You can start an online business, you can find ways to create a side revenue, but I don’t think that a side revenue from writing for other sites, let’s say, is a side business.

If you really want a business, you need to focus on that, so save some money, cut the costs and bite the bullet and quit your job and start the company.