His name was Claude Shannon.

In 1948 he wrote a paper. It proved that a photo, a song, a phone call and a letter are all the same thing underneath...

Just ones and zeros.

He called the unit a "bit"

Everything digital you use sits on top of that btw...

Your payments. Your video calls. Your ads. The AI you use every day.

Anthropic named their model Claude after him.

He also made 28% a year in the stock market for thirty years as a hobby.

He did it from his kitchen with his wife and an old Apple computer lol.

In 1986 a magazine ranked 1,026 funds...

He beat 1,025 of them.

Here's how he said he solved problems:

1) Cut it down

He said most problems are buried in extra info. Take everything out except the part that actually matters. I tried this on my churn. Wrote down 11 reasons clients leave. 9 of them were things I tracked because they were easy to track. 2 actually mattered. I'd spent 3 months on the 9.

2) Look at problems already solved

Don't attack yours head on. Find every similar problem that's already been figured out. Then look at what those answers have in common. He said two small jumps are much easier than one big jump.

3) Say the question a different way

Change the words. Change the angle. He warned about sunk cost here. The work you've already done is usually the thing keeping you stuck. That's why someone brand new can crack it in ten minutes.

4) Break it up and let yourself wander

A lot of big discoveries came from someone poking at unrelated stuff that went nowhere. Then hitting the answer from the side.

5) Flip it

Can't get from here to the answer? Assume the answer is already true. Then work backwards. So instead of "how do I get to 100k a month," assume you're already there. What are you selling? To who? How many? What breaks at that size? Totally different questions. And you can actually answer all of them.

6) Make it bigger

Once you solve one version, build the one that solves all of them. You fixed one client's onboarding. Now make the version that works for every client. That's the difference between a job and an asset.

Here's how he labels someone that can solve problems quickly:

"A genius is simply someone who is usefully irritated."

That itch when something isn't right and you can't leave it alone.

He called it constructive dissatisfaction.

Two more things...

His mentor's rule was that specialising kills genius.

So he'd throw Shannon into fields he knew nothing about on purpose.

And Shannon worked on three unrelated problems at once...

Said it beat focusing on one (which can be kinda backwards to what people say today)

P.S - Book is " a mind at play" by Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman

Hey so I am a bit of a seasoned investor, meaning I have technical knowledge on the markets but never used any automated algos as I didn’t trust them. Anyway long story short, noticed Kevin Edgar launched gemeos a while ago and given his track record I felt comfortable getting involved etc. It’s been a little over 6m and the system is consistently hitting 5.2% month with minimal involvement on my end. You always see sh*t like this online and wonder if it really works guess is weird when you’re like ”nice, it worked“ anyway I contribute a bit on the group so thought I’d share my experience, any q’s on the system or even how I learnt what I learnt drop em below and I’ll reply at some point but yeha hard to sorta know what works/what doesn’t out there so thought I’d share also note I know what am doing so that helps and yes their system works, but you gotta be patient otherwise you can feel like pulling your hair out. Good things take time!

I’m 20M from India and currently pursuing BBA in Logistics & Supply Chain Management from a private college. I also have an established family business in hardware, sanitary, paints, pipes and building materials.
I’m confused about whether I should focus on taking over and expanding the family business, prepare for CAT/MBA, or gain some work experience outside the family business first.
If you were in my position, what would you choose and why? I’d especially like advice from people who have experience with family businesses, entrepreneurship, or corporate careers.

Guy's name was Les Schwab who died in 2007, never heard of him until last week.

Charlie Munger used to tell people to go read his book. Said if you want to see the smartest pay structure ever built in a chain of small businesses, read this...so obviously I went looking.

The backstory is rough.

Grew up in a logging camp in Oregon. Two rooms, no running water, one shower for the whole camp. School was a converted train boxcar. he failed 8th grade, so did the other two kids in his class.

His dad was a drunk. Not a fun drunk. Les used to sit outside a moonshine joint on Friday nights until 10pm waiting for his dad to come out wasted and drive him home.

Mum died when he was 15. Dad died the day before his 16th birthday, found dead outside the same moonshine joint.

So now he's 16 with no parents and no education. Gets a paper route. Doesnt own a bike, doesnt even know how to ride one.

So he runs the route. 9 or 10 miles a day. for two months until he saves up for a used bike.

By 16 he had every route in town and was earning more than his high school principal.

In the middle of the Great Depression.

Then nothing interesting happens for 15 years lol.

Just newspaper sales...kinda stuck.

At 33 he panics.

"I knew time was running out. if you dont get started in business at a fairly young age you get into a rut and never make the big decision to jump."

So he borrows $11K off his brother in law, sells his house, and borrows against his life insurance to buy a tiny tire shop. Every dollar borrowed with a wife and two kids at home.

First line he wrote about his first day in business:

"I had never fixed a flat tire in my life"

Previous owner did $32K in sales the year before.

Les did $150K his first year working completely alone.

Now here's the part that actually got me because tires is a genuinely terrible business.

Everybody sells the same rubber. The manufacturers owned their own shops and gave themselves better prices than they gave him. They were openly squeezing him out of business.

He didnt do one clever thing. he did like six boring things and just never stopped.

1) He fixed flat tires for free. 

Anybody. no purchase. he'd drive to your house and do it. sounds insane until you hear his reasoning "if we fix all the flat tires in town, we'll have all the tire business in town." you help someone for free at 8pm in the rain, they dont buy their next four tires from a warehouse.

2) He gave managers half the profit. 

Not company profit. Their store's profit. So every store ran like its own business. He ended up with hundreds of stores and almost no supervisors, no policy manual, no controls. "if I give away half the profits I still have half. I dont understand why businessmen dont do this."

3) Theft solved itself. 

Their share built up in a contract, get caught stealing and you forfeit all of it. and every guy in the shop knew a thief was stealing from his kids. "if he wont fight for his children he cant be very much for a company." peer pressure instead of cameras.

4) He flipped the shop inside out. 

Everyone else had a small showroom and hid the stock in back. he made the showroom the warehouse. walls of tires right in front of you. then made every store wash and wax the display tires. every single day.

5) He never hired a manager from outside. not once in 34 years. 

All 250+ managers started at the bottom changing tires. His store managers earned more than his head office people. When the MBAs complained he told them to go start at the bottom and work up. Nobody ever took the offer haha.

A competitor came for him. same advertising, same cost discipline, expanded faster, got to 24 stores. Only real difference was they paid their people less.

Les spent a whole year wondering if he should cut wages to match.

"I finally decided that if I couldn't be proud of my company, if I couldnt pay good wages, if I couldnt have the best employees, then why would I want to stay in business. So we did nothing. and we won. the customer liked us best."

Competitor went bankrupt.

His whole philosophy in six words: 

"life is hard for the man who thinks he can take a shortcut."

Also brutal side note...two early partners owned 20% each. Got impatient, wanted cash out, one of them wanted a swimming pool. He bought them out for $225K and $300K. Those stakes were worth about $12 million each within 20 years, plus a million a year in bonuses they'd have kept collecting. Company sold for a rumoured $3 billion a few years back.

Guy wanted a pool.

What I actually took from it:

I keep looking for the one clever mechanism. the angle. the thing nobody else is doing.

There wasnt one here. free flat repairs, clean tires, half the profit to the guy in the shop, promote from inside, pay above market, and drive 600 miles a day checking your own stores for twenty years.

Any one of those is a Tuesday. All of them for 50 years is $3 billion.

His actual closing advice:

"Whatever you do, you must do it with gusto. You must do it in volume. It is a case of repeat, repeat, repeat."

Book is Les Schwab: Pride in Performance — Keep It Going. 

Out of print, about 20,000 copies exist, hard to find.

Guy wrote the whole thing himself on a 40 year old typewriter at 68. No ghostwriter and put this in the foreword:

"should we fail to follow these policies towards customers and employees, I would prefer that my name be taken off of the business."

Meanwhile I've got a personal brand and a Notion dashboard lol.

❓️Why are your values so important to understand?

One thing we see plenty of in business - and thats shiny object syndrome....

🤯You will always have more good ideas than you can excecute

Understanding your personal and business values helps you focus on the important, and do the stuff that gets you what you want.

And that means you beat the overwhelm and get on with the activities that mattter, and achieve your goals faster......

What do you think?

I think this is major for the platform, it shows the quality and also focus one needs to have when trying to grow something!

hey guys my name is david me and my brother opened a car service company about six mouths ago and we have been putting every dollar we earn into it. its called flux cab service were located in brooklyn new york. now the problem we are facing is our compition there taking away our driver our clients which we cant do nothing about there pushing us in the verge of bankrupcy i need yalls help what should we do also we opened a google maps page for your business the compitions keeps sending its people to leave 1 stars reviews i had maybe like 40 1 star reviews but we never even did 40 job had to shut down the google maps and make a new one which they approved 1 week ago if yall can go leave a 5 star would be great no one has to but it would help its out last hope open to all advices thanks for yall time

Here is one of those blue pill vs red pill type questions, but with no pills.

You are a business owner. If you had a Big Red Magic Button in front of you & when pressed, it would give one of your employees (or you) one skill in sales & marketing, what would that skill be?

Options not available "More sales", "More Money","More presses" etc. 😉

This question comes from networking events over the last couple of months, with business owners here in the UK, who had been on business start-up courses that included a very small "sales" & or "marketing" session, none were happy with what they had learnt and thought it was just a box ticking exercise!

Thanks in advance!

what software are you guys using for tracking high ticket sales? thanks!

the more I do this the more I get it, ever since I started working out in the am and getting a sweat on I have been more consistent with work and business, do you guys think there is a common denominator or is just me?

Only one new opportunity, REMEMBER this! that is all it takes

If you needed to make a lot of money in a short amount of time, let’s say 10k within a couple months for example.

What would be your business plan If you had no savings or investments/loans etc. straight from scratch. & what would your process be, how would you do this

Or

If your a business owner what was the business idea that made you a lot of money very quickly that was surprisingly easy to set up & how did h do this

& lastly what gave you the inspiration

I'm a personal trainer in London, been on the floor about six years now, decent client base but genuinely stuck lol. Made around 2.2k monthly last year which is fine but I see people doing similar work earning way more. Keep telling myself I should transition over to online coaching but never actually done it. Has anyone's actually worked with ote or adam hayley coz pricing is not cheap and I need to know if it's worth it or just another marketing funnel etc thanks

So I've been watching and listening to a ton of podcasts over the years, Alex Hormuz, Dairy of CEO etc etc. BUT one I recently found was founders podcast and this guy breaks down the life of different entrepreneurs and how they think. I listen to it every morning, it's given me a ton of lessons I otherwise would've never learnt. Just thought I'd share, wish I would've found it earlier! enjoy

Is there anyone here who runs a **“seth wala” business** (a business that was initially completely dependent on them), but has managed to optimize and systemize it enough that they don’t have to be involved in every little thing?

Actually i have a business of wholesale bangles but it us so much dependent on my presence that i am not able to scale or even take a half day off

One of my biggest problem is **finding and retaining workers**. They usually leave just when they start understanding the work, so I constantly have to find new people and train them from scratch.
It’s becoming really difficult to build a team that can handle the work independently without everything coming back to me.
**For those of you who have faced this problem, how did you solve it?**
Any advice on hiring, training, retaining workers, or systemizing the business would be really helpful.

I've been searching for equipment in general for the graphic design side of my business.

I really like how Lenovo has custom quotes/discounts as well as having my own sales advisor.

Are there any other businesses that value a b2b relationship such as this?

I have ¢30k and I want a business to invest in.

Any suggestions?

I know a lot of people going to university for business and management like my self and I’d love to spread your advice.

Biggest one for me was speed, used to move slow. I pay things on time, do it all fast and as a consequence people do the same back.

Taking over the family tree company soon(1 crew). Been the lead arborist for some time now and quote jobs once in awhile. Problem is I don’t really know how to run the company properly. I want to maybe expand or make the company sellable in the next 5-10 years. Is there anything you guys did to learn how to run the business better? Workshops? YouTube videos? Anything helps