๐Ÿ”‘ Habits of Successful Organizations + How the King of Yogurt got his start

January 4, 2023
Welcome to the 287 new readers of The Business Academy. The ๐Ÿ”‘ key to success is information. Iโ€™ll be distilling the most impactful information I picked up over the last week so you donโ€™t have to. Todayโ€™s Business Academy takes 3 minutes and 3 seconds to read.

Summary of todayโ€™s issue

๐Ÿ”‘ #1 - The Habits to Make a Successful Organization

๐Ÿ”‘ #2 - The King of Yogurt Started with an SBA loan

๐Ÿ”‘#3 - How to Win Without Being Lucky

๐Ÿ”‘#1 - The Habits of Success

In the spirit of a New Year, letโ€™s talk about habits.

I listened to a fantastic interview with the General Partners at Benchmark VC.

For the last decade, the firm has hosted a famous weekly dinner series.

They invite their backed founders, interesting leaders (like Bezos), and even founders of companies they missed investing in.

The following quote from the interview struck a chord with me:

โ€œFirms are full of strategies that are not coupled with reality.โ€ - Peter Fenton

This quote led me to reflect on what are goals in my business that may be de-coupled with reality.

He follows this statement with a quote from a famous philosopher:

Firms are a collection of habits ~ William James

Benchmarkโ€™s core strategy is the pursuit of curiosity.

The dinner series represents a strategic decision to systematically weave curiosity into their organization.

Hopefully, now youโ€™re thinking:

  • What are the strategies of my firm?
  • What habits do we have that represent those strategies?

Here are my strategies, and corresponding habits:

Thinking Better โ†’ Write Weekly.

Writing helps me work through things Iโ€™m thinking about and engrains lessons I want to keep.

Actively Learning โ†’ Write Weekly.

Writing this newsletter checks two of my boxes. By making a commitment to share quality learnings with you each week, Iโ€™m forced to be constantly learning. I guess a thank you is appropriate to my readers for helping me with these goals.

Invest in Great Companies โ†’ Structured Deal Review.

We have a scheduled weekly deal review. This forces our team to prepare and review dozens if not hundreds of deals before our meeting.

Build Community โ†’ Join a Mastermind + Twitter

Some great things in my business happen from knowing people doing interesting things. Iโ€™m in a Mastermind Group with fellow entrepreneurs and capital allocators. Also, being active on Twitter has introduced me to interesting business partners as well.

This year Iโ€™m considering joining YPO.

Questions to consider:

What are strategies you want to pursue in your career or relationships? What habits will you implement to achieve these?

๐Ÿ”‘#2 - The King of Yogurt Started with SBA

If youโ€™ve been following me for a while, you know Iโ€™m a believer in the power of the SBA program to create wealth.

The founder of Chobani started his business by buying a cheese factory using SBA. It must have been terrifying, but he turned that initial investment into an empire.

The SBA requires a personal guarantee, so remember to tread very carefully. Most small businesses are not a good investment.

๐Ÿ”‘#3 - How to Win Without Being Lucky

Sahil Bloom is one of my favorite writers on the internet.

My favorites from this thread:

Become Antifragile - create structure in your life to protect yourself when the worst happens. For me, that means creating multiple cash flow streams to supplement your W2.

Be Comfortable with Discomfort - you need to take action. If you want to grow, you need to push yourself into discomfort.

Iโ€™ll add one of my own:

โ†’ Host Interesting People:

Host events that bring together interesting people. As the host, by default, your guests will become close to you.

Meeting a few great people can permanently change the trajectory of your life.

Hope you and your close ones had a nice holiday.

Have a great week,

Sieva

ps: if you enjoyed todayโ€™s newsletter consider sharing it with a friend. Thank you.


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