You're Playing Too Small. On Purpose.

Hey buddy,

Today's issue is a bit different from usual. I'm not going to talk about a business idea today. Instead, I want to talk about a business mindset.

Last month I had some free time to kill, so I did something I almost never do.

I watched two TV series:

WeCrashed & Super Pumped

The first one is about the rise and fall of WeWork. Super Pumped is the story of how Travis Kalanick built Uber from zero.

First of all, I highly recommend watching both.

They're so much better than your usual fictional stories, because all of this actually happened. Both are billion-dollar businesses. It all sounds so far-fetched, but it was real.

Now here's what got me thinking.

Everyone online is selling you the same dream.

Start a solopreneur business. Hit $10k a month. Buy back your time. Sip coffee on a beach somewhere. Don't hustle, don't grind.

And I get it. There's nothing wrong with $10k a month.

In fact, for the longest time, that was my goal too. Hit $10k/mo from my online business and live a relaxed life. $10k is a lot of money.

But lately, something has shifted in how I think.

Why play it safe?

There's a whole world out there literally building literally BILLION-dollar businesses, and here we are aiming for just $10k/mo.

Doesn't that sound a bit meek?

It's playing small with extra steps. It's a safe dream dressed up as an ambitious one.

We were not meant to play small.

We all have 24 hours in a day. We all get roughly the same amount of time here on earth (hopefully).

So why not play it big? Why not put your time and effort and energy to build something huge.

My father always says, “you have just 12 hours in a day, you can put those 12 hours either to work on a $100k business or on a $1bn business. Both require same time, both require same energy. The choice is yours”

Here's what I'm saying:

I'm not going to tell you to build a $10k/mo business. I'm going to tell you to build a BILLION-dollar business.

Here are some starting steps, IMO:

1. Compress the timeline.

Elon Musk has this idea that rewired how I think about goals.

Pick a goal. If you think it'll take ten years, give yourself just six months instead.

Now, it's highly unlikely you'll hit it in six months. But you'll end up miles ahead of where you'd be if you'd given yourself the full ten.

The deadline isn't the point. The compression is. Urgency pulls the future forward.

2. Pick delusional goals.

Not realistic ones. Not "achievable" ones. Delusional ones.

Small goals are safe, and safe goals produce safe lives.

If your goal doesn't sound a little insane when you say it out loud, it's too small.

Aim at something that scares you.

3. Go where the game is played.

This is the one that matters most.

Move to San Francisco. Dive headfirst into Silicon Valley, into startup culture, into the room where the big things actually happen.

Find a co-founder. Pick a real problem, a big one, and build the solution.

Build the product. Build the company.

It's a once-in-a-lifetime window.

And it genuinely does not matter if you get it right or wrong. The outcome isn't the prize. The experience is. That's what you keep.

4. Remember, you only live once.

You're young. Work hard. Compete hard.

Go all-in. This is the season for it.

You can play it safe at 40, at 45.

Right now you can afford to bet everything, because the downside is small and the upside is your whole life.

So raise the money. Take the funding. Build the company. Do epic things.

And think back to those two shows.

Adam Neumann crashed WeWork. Travis got pushed out of his own company. And they are still billionaires and got TV series made about their lives.

That's how much more the swing matters than the landing.

Now picture this. You're old. You're sitting with your grandchildren. And you get to tell them: I built a billion-dollar company. The valuation hit a billion dollars.

How cool would that be as a story? I know I want to tell my grandkids that one.

It won't matter how it went. It won't matter what the outcome was. What'll matter is that once, just once in your life, you had something that big.

Go have it.

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