I've always said, "Your business reflects your personal life"
That's one of my favorite epiphanies. It's with this reflection where we can gauge our gaps and glitches.
Answer these questions: "Why am I valuable? How am I one in eight billion people?"
We all wrestle with this existential question at one point or another, and many are ambitious enough to pursue the path to find the answer. But after so many years of doing that myself, I figured it out.
Your value is simple: It begins with the thing(s) that bring out the child within you. The child in you enjoys this thing. That thing is square one: Your Potential.
To turn your potential into forward motion, you must train and hone it. That can be actively working on it everyday by creating personal projects or getting a job that teaches you how to use it more often.
I do both:
My foundation is built atop of Psychology and Technology, and I firmly believe they are opposite sides of the same coin. Those two disciplines bring the child-like wonder out of me, but it's nothing more than potential.
To work on them everyday, I'm employed full-time doing Marketing & Sales for tech startups and I setup, improve, and build Technology for a variety of personal projects and side-hustles. This job function came very easy to me.
In the simplest terms: Sales is the art of proving your product or service is more superior. Marketing is the art of positioning your product or service above the sea of other solutions. Doing this daily satisfies most of my "Psychology" side.
I know this is my potential speaking because I find myself going above and beyond. I study the most successful people. I study the businesses they built. I find who inspired them and deduct why and how that played a role in their life. I read their books and listen to their interviews. I learn what their hobbies are. I even take their training if it's available. I become obsessed with their world for a short span of time because I believe there's something of value in their life's story.
The earliest memory I have with Technology was when I was 7 years old. I took apart my mom's desktop computer and beamed at the internal components while dusting off the motherboard and wiped the fan clean. Then, I taught myself how to hack wifi in 5th grade, taught myself how to program by 7th grade. By high school, I signed up to formally learn C++ and Java and by my senior year, I interned as my high school web administrator. Post-high school til now, I do it all. From building small web apps for different friends and businesses to training artificial intelligence to participating in CTF events online.
Now look inwards and take stock of what brings you this much joy. What are the things that you find yourself going back to over and over?
Do not mistake a proxy-activity for the fundamental discipline.
Mine is mistaking Sales or Marketing brings the child-like wonder out of me when both are rooted in Psychology. Or mistaking Web Development, Artificial Intelligence Research, or Cybersecurity as the fundamental discipline when they're all based on Technology.
Now answer the questions above:
Why am I valuable? How am I one in eight billion people?
Because I am one in eight billion. I am unique, and my cross-section of life experiences and fascinations are a sample size of one: me.
Your Self-Inventory
When I became an entrepreneur, I knew taking care of my mind would allow me to balance the highs and lows.
I decided to share the Notion template I've used over the past five years to stay level-headed.
I'm sharing my framework to make improving your quality of life simple.