Thomas

I'd be suspicious of anyone whose entire business seems to depend on convincing you how rich they are. At some point I'd love to hear about the actual customers. You know, the people who supposedly paid for all this.

Cover the dinner without making it weird. Help your parents with something they've been putting off. Take your partner somewhere nice. You don't need a seven-figure bank account to start doing that. Just some room between what you earn and what you spend.

The first really useful thing money buys isn't a Rolex. It's being able to tell a terrible client, an unreasonable boss, or a deal that smells wrong: “No thanks.” Without immediately calculating whether you can still afford rent. That's a pretty good financial milestone.

There's a difference between spending $100 on dinner because you genuinely enjoy the restaurant and spending $100 because you need a picture that makes your life look expensive.

Somewhere there's a guy with a paid-off house, a healthy investment portfolio, and a car so boring nobody looks at it twice. And he's having a fantastic day. Meanwhile, half the internet is financing the appearance of being rich. I know which version sounds more interesting.

Imagine finally getting a $15k raise and immediately signing up for a $900/month car payment. You worked your ass off for that promotion, and now a German car manufacturer gets most of the benefit. Congratulations on the raise, BMW.

Having 83 followers is kind of a superpower. You can publish a terrible idea, realize you're wrong tomorrow, change your opinion, and almost nobody notices. Imagine having to explain every little change of mind to 800,000 strangers. Enjoy the freedom while it's cheap.

A pretty good test for networking: Would you still want to grab coffee with this person if they couldn't introduce you to anyone, buy from you, or help your career? If the answer is no, maybe stop pretending you're there for the conversation. People can usually tell.

You can outsource your emails, research, scheduling, admin, and half your writing now. Amazing. Just be careful you don't outsource so much thinking that the only thing left for you to do is approve decisions you barely understand.

Here's a slightly uncomfortable test for anyone using AI all day: Close the tab. Now explain the idea you just spent 40 minutes working on, without looking at anything. If you can't, what exactly did those 40 minutes improve? The document or your understanding?

You learn a lot about people when sht hits the fan. Some panic, some start pointing fingers, and some somehow make the situation even worse. Then there's the guy who's already figuring out how to fix it. I'd hire that guy over a hundred people who love talking about resilience.

There's something underrated about being the least impressive looking person in a room and being completely fine with it. No expensive watch, no rehearsed success story, no desperate need to mention how busy you are. Just a person who knows what he's working on and doesn't need strangers to approve of it.

Imagine building a business because you wanted to escape your 9–5, then ending up with a schedule that makes your old boss look generous.

It's getting way too easy to rent a brain for $20 a month. Need an opinion? Ask AI. Need to write something? Ask AI. Need to make a decision? Apparently AI can handle that too. Great deal.. until someone asks you what you actually think and there's nobody around to generate the answer.

Nobody's writing articles about your failures. Enjoy being unknown while you can. It's basically a free testing environment.

Nobody knowing what you're building is actually a pretty sweet deal. You can launch something terrible, change your mind, make embarrassing mistakes and try again next week.

Some people have been preparing to start a business for so long they could've gotten pretty damn good at running one by now.

You want to start something, but your friends think it's stupid. You want to change careers, but your parents disagree. You want to publish, but you're worried what colleagues might say. They can have opinions. You still have to live with the outcome.

It's possible to know more about making money than people who actually make money. You know every business model, follow every founder, and can explain exactly why their offer works. Then someone asks how many customers you've spoken to this month. Suddenly the conversation gets a lot shorter.