Your Personal Foundation of Sand

Money Twitter is a hornet’s nest of business advice, images of opulence, and relentless self-promotion. Young people (almost exclusively dudes) focused on building businesses and sharing frameworks for the entrepreneurial struggle.

The essence of their advice to aspirational wantrepreneurs is as follows:

1. Develop a Specific Skill People Need: copywriting, coding, buying ads, Zapier, Hubspot, etc.

2. Give that Skill to Someone for Free: get a case study demonstrating your impact.

3. Use that Case Study to Sell: social proof is powerful.

4. Scale your Operation: hire and train.

This is good advice. It’s a helpful framework that creates legibility to a world that remains opaque to someone without proximity to a small service business.

But it overlooks a key element that will make (or break) your business endeavor.

The skills you acquire need a foundation on which to stand. This included your personal wellness, the principles that you abide by, and your self-awareness.

Energy matters. If you’re sick, you’re less productive. If you’re low energy, you’ll have a hard time closing any deals. If you don’t look like you take care of yourself, your prospects will be skeptical that you’ll take care of them. Your nutrition, fitness, and sleep are part of the equation.

But if you’re a healthy scumbag, your reputation will eventually sink your business. You only get one name, protect it with principles about how you do business, the standards that you hold, and the responsibility that you take for your actions.

If you’ve got those two pieces right, you’re almost there. Now you’ve got to look in the mirror and climb the steepest peak. Do you know what you’re capable of? Do you understand how you’re perceived by your peers, employees, and leads? There’s no formula that works here, but self-reflection paired with honest conversations with friends and mentors is the start.

Start building these pillars and you’ll have the foundation of something great.

Otherwise, your ‘stacking skills’ on a wobbly table poised to topple over at the most inopportune time.

Build wisely.

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