My First Million
The best business ideas come from noticing what's working and doing it better, faster, or for a different audience.
Society wrongly stigmatizes intense work while celebrating intense practice in sports and music. Working long hours on something you love is equivalent to athletes practicing all day.
The Reasoning
We accept that mastery in any field requires intense practice and long hours. Business building is a craft like music or sports, requiring similar dedication. The stigma exists only because business can generate money, but the motivation is craft mastery, not money.
What Needs to Be True
- Work can be intrinsically rewarding like sports/music
- Monetary outcomes don't invalidate craft motivation
- Intensity is necessary for mastery in any field
- Social stigmas about work are culturally constructed
Counterargument
Business work often exploits others while sports/music doesn't. Work intensity can damage relationships and health. Some work is genuinely just about money, not craft.
What Would Change This View
Evidence that business intensity systematically harms others more than sports/music intensity, or that most intense workers are purely money-motivated rather than craft-motivated.
Implications for Builders
Don't feel guilty about working intensely on things you love
Frame your work as craft development
Communicate the craft aspect to family/friends
Choose work you can sustain long-term
Example Application
“An entrepreneur works 80-hour weeks building their company but frames it as practicing their craft of building businesses, similar to how musicians practice music for hours daily.”
Related Knowledge
Dance like no one's watching, build like everyone's waiting
Be creative and playful in your building process while recognizing that people need what you're creating
High Authority vs Delegated Authority Model
Binary leadership approach where you either operate with complete top-down authority or delegate full decision-making au
Passion Project Connection Strategy
A relationship-building approach that focuses conversations on people's current passionate interests rather than their well-known achievements, creating deeper engagement and authentic connection.
Three-Stage Currency Adoption Framework
A currency must pass through three distinct stages to become truly functional: store of value, medium of exchange, and unit of account.
Systematically improve content creation skills through deliberate practice
By video 100, your content quality has improved dramatically through conscious iteration, and you no longer need external advice because you've developed your own judgment and skills.
Create a prestigious content creation university that becomes the Harvard of digital media education
10,000 students paying $25K/year, graduates highly sought after by companies and successful as independent creators