Vietnam war poetry and quotes | | Rising Storm 2: Vietnam

Dear Thaiforest community,
I have been following and practicing the Dhammayut tradition of Ajahn Mun for a long time. In particular, the teaching and instructions of Ajahn Martin and related Ajahns. I am turning to you because I am in a deep „spiritual“ crisis and need your advice.
In short: The monks of the Dhammayut tradition taught me as if the Dhammayut tradition was the only right way, because all other Buddhist directions (Western Buddhism/Mahayana/Zen) do not teach the „original“ Dhamma of the sublime Buddha. Ajahn Martin also noted in several places that Christian doctrine would lead to heaven and Dhammayut Buddhism to Nibbana. Other monks also taught that Western Buddhism is not the practice to reach Nibbana.
All this seems plausible to me in a way and I respect the practice of the Dhammayut monks to a great extent, but this fanaticism of a single real teaching drives me crazy. Sometimes it feels like the statements are from a sect.
In addition, I would like to quote some statements from monks of the Dhammayut tradition that make me very skeptical about continuing to follow this path.

in the C0wid period, conspiracy theories about vaccination, etc. were pronounced several times, also that wearing a mask would poison you because of the CO2.
a monk also did some very questionable statements about the wars in the world and the current situation in Ukraine.

My question to you: what do you think of such statements by monks? Have you heard such questionable statements from monks? Regardless of the truthfulness of the statements, I wonder why a monk expresses himself on political and health issues, because he has separated himself from secular issues.
What is your opinion of the Dhammayut tradition and the monks? Have you ever had bad experiences?
This inspiration would help me a lot to deal with my „spiritual crisis.“
Thanks to everyone!

I really like Brienne, she is probably one of our most honorable POV’s and in so many the true embodiment of what Knight should be despite being a woman which bars her from it. That being said something which annoys me is how she supports Renly when we first see her. I understand her personal affection for him due to him being nice to her, but going to outright serve him in his usurpation attempt is what always boggles me. We do get some of her insight on this went talking to Catelyn:
"I was taught that good men must fight evil in this world, and Renly's death was evil beyond all doubt. Yet I was also taught that the gods make kings, not the swords of men. If Stannis is our rightful king—" "He's not. Robert was never the rightful king either, even Renly said as much. Jaime Lannister murdered the rightful king, after Robert killed his lawful heir on the Trident. Where were the gods then? The gods don't care about men, no more than kings care about peasants." (ACOK Catelyn V)
She agrees with Renly’s view that because Robert claimed the throne, he is just as valid in doing it as well even if not next in line. But this logic while having truth to it is also incredibly flawed in that it ignores the context of when and why Robert took the throne. The crown prince literally had kidnapped his betrothed, and then after the king kills his best friend’s father and brother, demands his and Ned’s heads. Of course he was going to rebel, for most of the war it wasn’t even about making him King, it was only until the latter half with some decisive victories that they decided it. Obviously the context is very different to Renly where he has clearly been scheming for some time even before Robert dies and later just declares himself king. The best example of this nuance from Robert’s Rebellion comes from Stannis in one of my favorite Davos chapters:
“It is every man’s duty to remain loyal to his rightful king, even if the lord he serves proves false,” Stannis declared in a tone that brooked no argument.
A desperate folly took hold of Davos, a recklessness akin to madness. “As you remained loyal to King Aerys when your brother raised his banners?” he blurted.
Shocked silence followed, until Ser Axell cried, “Treason!” and snatched his dagger from its sheath. “Your Grace, he speaks his infamy to your face!”
Davos could hear Stannis grinding his teeth. A vein bulged, blue and swollen, in the king’s brow. Their eyes met. “Put up your knife, Ser Axell. And leave us.”
“…As you command.” Ser Axell slid the knife away, bowed, and hurried toward the door. His boots rang against the floor, angry.
“You have always presumed on my forbearance,” Stannis warned Davos when they were alone. “I can shorten your tongue as easy as I did your fingers, smuggler.”
“I am your man, Your Grace. So it is your tongue, to do with as you please.”
“It is,” he said, calmer. “And I would have it speak the truth. Though the truth is a bitter draught at times. Aerys? If you only knew…that was a hard choosing. My blood or my liege. My brother or my king.” (ASOS Davos IV)
Sorry for the long quote, it’s just one of my favorites, but I feel it’s just one that gives us perfect insight into the difficult situation that was thrust upon the rebels rather than actively sought like Renly did. Brienne or her family were never put in this situation and entirely of her own volition. Not only is Renly already usurping Stannis but since he also refuses to acknowledge Joffrey and Tommen as bastards, he is basically officially usurping them as well. Mind you Robb, a person’s who father was killed by Joffrey and again thrust into this situation where he could arguably have a bit more of a moral pass on who he chooses still seriously takes the account of succession seriously:
That makes him evil," Robb replied. "I do not know that it makes Renly king. Joffrey is still Robert's eldest trueborn son, so the throne is rightfully his by all the laws of the realm. Were he to die, and I mean to see that he does, he has a younger brother. Tommen is next in line after Joffrey." "Tommen is no less a Lannister," Ser Marq Piper snapped. "As you say," said Robb, troubled. "Yet if neither one is king, still, how could it be Lord Renly? He's Robert's younger brother. Bran can't be Lord of Winterfell before me, and Renly can't be king before Lord Stannis." (AGOT Catelyn XI)
In the end Robb is declared King in the North, which is considered treason by Stannis, and that is a conversation that can go back and forth, but the point is even when wronged by the Lannisters Robb mentally struggled with this but then Brienne a person about loyalty and following oaths just joins Renly.
It’s frustrating because Renly dies in the second book and we don’t get her POV until Feast in which she is mainly focused on finding the Stark girls. Obviously these characters are supposed to be flawed, but unlike say Barristan who questions his past loyalties to Aerys, we just see very little introspection on this part from Brienne when she is supposed to be this opposition corner thematically to Jaime a knight who also committed treason. I’m sorry if this isn’t making sense, I’m trying to improve my English, I just felt I needed to vent on this aspect of a character I really like, and wanted to see what everyone thought.

I had this in the back of my mind for past week because I’ve been listening music with quotes taken from God of War series.
The one that’s stuck with me the most is when Norse Kratos speaks to Greek Kratos on the Throne at the end of God of War Valhalla and imo it’s one of the best scenes in God of War Ragnarok and I love it no matter what… but now when I think of it, shouldn’t Kratos be speaking Greek (his native language) to his younger self since Greek Kratos wouldn’t understand Norse. I think this takes place in his head (or it’s an illusion) so in reality it doesn’t really matter.
I don’t know why, I thought it would’ve been real interesting to hear Norse Kratos sounding like TC Carson when talking to represent him speaking Greek. Anyway… just food for thought

US involvement in Vietnam was way before my time, but today I was reading a blog post about it that I followed from askhistorians, and it reminded me of what the US government did in Iraq and Afghanistan as I was growing up in the 90's. Back then I was disgusted by the way US media would slander people of these regions to justify the war, and used to read blogs written by kids based in Asia to better know them and what their lives were like.
Ironically, it was easier for me to find these things back when Yahoo was the primary search engine and google didn't exist yet, because people submitted their own sites to the appropriate categories and we weren't just subject to the whims of algorithms.
I'm curious to know whether anything like this still exists online. In the US it's difficult to get news about the larger world and we don't get much coverage outside of major catastrophic events. I'm interested to know what's going on from the perspective of the average person, how they feel about relations with America, and what life is like these days.

IGS REP PAGE
"*" = I should go first
NEW:

Ghostwire: Tokyo * (key temporarily exhausted)
Injustice 2 Legendary Edition *
Morbid: The Seven Acolytes
Oxenfree *

Fanatical Action Mystery Bundle

May 2024 Choice

March 2024 Choice

Afterimage (humble key pending)
Black Skylands
Destroyer: The U-Boat Hunter
Soulstice (key pending, gift link)
Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin – Ultimate Edition

February 2024 Choice

Games:

WANT:

Control: Ultimate Edition
Dead Cells
Deadlink
Deliver Us The Moon
Forgive Me Father 2
Journey
Katana Zero
Kentucky Route Zero
Kingdom Come: Deliverance
Life is Strange 1 and Before the Storm
Mirror's Edge
Monster Hunter: World
NORCO
Resident Evil 3, Village
The Wolf Among Us
Yakuza games (besides 4 and LAD)
Moonscars
The Evil Within 1&2
Webbed
Rising Storm 2: Vietnam + DLCs

Or any offers, Happy trading :)

IGS REP PAGE
"*" = I should go first
NEW:

Ghostwire: Tokyo * (key temporarily exhausted)
Injustice 2 Legendary Edition *
Morbid: The Seven Acolytes
Oxenfree *

Fanatical Action Mystery Bundle

May 2024 Choice

March 2024 Choice

Afterimage (humble key pending)
Black Skylands
Destroyer: The U-Boat Hunter
Soulstice (key pending, gift link)
Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin – Ultimate Edition

February 2024 Choice

Games:

WANT:

Control: Ultimate Edition
Dead Cells
Deadlink
Deliver Us The Moon
Forgive Me Father 2
Journey
Katana Zero
Kentucky Route Zero
Kingdom Come: Deliverance
Life is Strange 1 and Before the Storm
Mirror's Edge
Monster Hunter: World
NORCO
Resident Evil 3, Village
The Wolf Among Us
Yakuza games (besides 4 and LAD)
Moonscars
The Evil Within 1&2
Webbed
Rising Storm 2: Vietnam + DLCs

Or any offers, Happy trading :)

Which decades do you think lasted the longest and shortest in terms of aesthetic and culture?
For example I think 1950s culture lasted the longest:
Starting after WW2 (1946)
Ending in 1964 - Assassination of JFK (Nov. 1963) - Start of involvement in Vietnam - Rise of hippie culture - Civil Rights Act
I think the 1990s lasted the shortest
Starting in 1992: - 80s aesthetic and music didn’t fade out until 1992 - Fall of Soviet Union/End of Cold War (December 1991) - Bush Sr. —> Clinton (Nov. 1992) - Rise of Gangster Rap in place of New Jack Swing - Rise of Grunge in place of Metal Hairband Rock
Ending in 1997: - Death of 2Pac and Biggie Smalls /decline of gangster rap - Decline of Grunge Music - Start of Y2K culture/design
This is just my opinion not saying this is concrete so other people’s thoughts are appreciated

My grandfather was a colonel in the army reserves. As a person, he was a smart and reserved man, who wouldn’t worry his wife and children by telling them about the kind of stuff he was doing for the military. He was almost deployed during the war late into its progression. When in the end he wasn’t, he told his family it because he was deemed “too old.” For context he was a high ranking officer, whos age ranged between 30-40 depending on what year of the Vietnam war it was. Any ideas if this is the truth? I’m just a bit skeptical. If anyone has any idea how to find what unit he commanded or even what he did in the army, let me know. He just always kept it to himself.
Extra: What little I do know is that he was offered a promotion to one star general on the condition that he become a teacher and instructor at the naval war college. I also have all of his medals and uniform badges framed. Hopefully either of those details might help.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/18/us/bud-anderson-dead.html
From wikipedia: "Toward the end of Anderson's two combat tours in Europe in 1944 he was promoted to major at 22, a young age even for a highly effective officer in wartime. Afterward, he became a test pilot and a fighter squadron and wing commander, serving a combat tour in the Vietnam War.
Anderson retired as a full colonel in 1972, after which he worked in flight test management for McDonnell Douglas. A member of the National Aviation Hall of Fame, he continued to speak at aviation and military events well into his 90s. He received an honorary promotion to brigadier general in 2022."
I had the unique privilege of meeting Anderson twice at two seperate airshows in 2014 and 2021. One of the kindest people I've ever spoken to, and an towering legend in military aviation.
America has lost a hero today.

Blurb:
What if you could go back in time …
… and kick a few Baby Boomer butts?
When they came to forks in the road, Boomers often took the wrong one.
In Mission: Butterfly, three “Post-Tippers” – a generation raised after the calamitous climate tipping point of 2025 – go back to the mid-20^th century to set a few key people straight. But multi-national cartels, not quite finished ruining the planet, try to stop them.
As we learned in Stephen King’s 11/22/63, you can’t muscle history. The Mission: Butterfly team uses finesse instead. They nudge their targets to make different choices, creating ripples in time that profoundly change history. What if the Vietnam War didn’t happen? If J. Edgar Hoover’s racist snooping had been exposed earlier? If Native Americans’ occupation of Alcatraz had succeeded in winning reparations for indigenous people?
Like Jake Tapper’s “Charlie and Margaret Marder" mystery series, debut author Steve Krizman peppers this sprawling tale with believe-it-or-not history nuggets and surprising celebrity cameos. He exposes the political, economic, and religious roots of human-caused climate change.
TV series like The Man in the High Castle and For All Mankind, imagine “what could have been.” Mission: Butterfly aims higher: By revealing the far-reaching consequences of each individual’s actions and decisions, it causes us to wonder “what can be.”
Request:
After months of working and reworking -- with the help of friends and family -- I need fresh eyes. I ask my Beta Readers to:

Flag the good, the bad, the boring
Tell me whether the characters are relatable
Rate the story on a surprising/predictable scale
Note places that drag

I'm not in a great hurry, but would like to have feedback within four weeks. If you just can't get through it all, tell me where you stopped and why.
I am willing to swap manuscripts.

I was fighting China and India. War was going well, nuked all their armies, capturing territory was going well. However every time I would get to about halfway control, Vietnam, who was allied with them (all.under servent control) would send a army into the territory and I would instantly lose all occupation.
I'm not at war with Vietnam, no combat was occurring, but it just kept reseting occupation when they moved their army in.
What am I missing?

Does the book ever explain how the first Architect to attack Berlenhof was destroyed? I understand that the Intermediaries persuaded the Architects to leave several times (including the second attack on Berlenhof), but it doesn't seem possible to destroy an Architect with the weapons they had at the time. Am I missing something?
EDIT: This quote is from the prologue of Shards of Earth:

the universe now had one destroyed Architect; before the Battle of Berlenhof that number had been zero.

In two other places, the book mentions a destroyed Architect at Berlenhof:

‘Berlenhof was like a beacon,’ came Telemmier’s quiet, worn voice. ‘Could see it from across the universe. The grave marker of the Architect we killed here.’

He padded over on bare feet to look down at Solace, wondering at her. She’d left some kind of hook in him, an old rusty one from long ago. If their paths hadn’t crossed he’d never have felt the metal of it, buried in his flesh. But now . . . They’d killed an Architect together. Once. And they’d been together for a little while, in that camp, amongst the mass of war-wounded.

I'm not sure if it's mentioned anywhere else.

This might be a slightly philosophical post. But the aim is to get to the bottom of what you should be truly doing. To truly get the most results.
There seems to be a MASSIVE amount of conflicting information online about how to do this.
“Do stuff that moves the needle forward”
“Do stuff that brings in revenue”
What does this truly mean though. And is it even the right thing. That’s the purpose of this post, to uncover.
When I’ve spent my time on actual needle-moving forward things, like taking business from 0 to revenue, doing all offer development, operations, sales process, marketing myself, it generally has taken me about 6 months to fully ‘try out’ a business idea I’ve had.
Most times it hasn’t worked.
Either it wasn’t profitable. Or there was a big problem somewhere.
I believe fundamentally it’s because I’m moving too slow.
Because it usually takes me around 6 months to ‘validate’ whether a business has good potential.
When you haven’t sold it or developed expertise in it yourself yet.
And I would say about 5% of the time it does work.
So if it takes 6 months and only 5% of the time it works (where you bring in revenue, no major issues), and each time it doesn’t work you try a new variation of it or something new based on what you learned, then it might take 10 years of trying different things to get the business to work.
Which sounds like it takes way too long.
So I thought about how the top companies move much quicker.
What separates them and my strategy.
And realized they simply had much more people on their team.
If you think about any successful organization who has achieved great things, and is world-leading, usually there is not 1 person on the team.
There seems to be a correlation between number of people on the team and speed of progress they can make in business.
Which goes against what most conventional startup wisdom tells you, most small business content creators etc all tell you to do it all yourself.
Which I’ve done for quite a few years and it’s gone so slowly in terms of overall progress.
If you should ‘do everything yourself’ then most Fortune 500 companies would’ve had single founders, and 1 person on their team. But the vast majority of successful Fortune 500 companies had co-founders.
And most successful businesses I know of, had co-founders.
And as they succeeded, they got more people on the team, and these people helped bring more success, then they brought more people.
Obviously there can be bad staff and not everyone contributes to the success of the company.
But I do believe, based on this, and observing top companies, that generally the more successful they are, the more people were involved with bringing about the success.
Which completely contradicts most information given to startups about ‘lone wolf’, ‘go it alone’. If that were true, Google would have 1 employee. Apple would have 1 employee.
And they would have never gotten off the ground.
Anyway, I may not have explained this perfectly but I do strongly believe the more & higher quality people are working together on something, the stats show these companies tend to do better, and successful companies you see often have more people than less working on them.
From the very beginning and now.
Regardless of the stage they were at.
So going based off this information, that the more people, the better, I have hired 30+ different people for different roles. Over the past few years. Across different businesses. To help speed up the progress in different areas.
From marketing roles, sales process roles, web development, app development, customer service, delivery of services.
And I would say there have been maybe 1 or 2 of them where I was actually happy with the result.
Most times, I would hire someone to do a job, and they didn’t do the job well, despite saying they were experienced.
And showing past examples of their work. And telling me everything I wanted to hear about how good they were.
It would often be that they would end up performing badly in the KPIs I set for them, giving many excuses, asking for help/questions/not solving anything on their own.
And just so many other problems. Like when there were multiple people at the same time on a team, working on the same project, they would blame each other and no one took responsibility despite clear responsibilities.
All telling me how other staff were bad and they were good, but getting conflicting info from all staff where they blame each other for everything so it’s difficult to know who to trust and who is being truthful.
Oftentimes not being reliable or doing what they were clearly asked to do.
Oftentimes trying to outsource the work I game them, to other people and not caring about the quality.
At my expense.
So I lost lots of clients, had low performing areas in the areas I hired for a lot of the time.
To be fair, things happened faster the more people there were.
But they often needed much more from me than they were contributing.
Like they always wanted to get paid more, for doing less work, weren’t reliable, did low quality work, didn’t hit KPIs, missed clear deadlines, always gave excuses, blamed others/external things, always asking how “I” wanted their job to be done, to the point where I was having to literally tell them every single thing to do and become an expert at their job myself, and show them how to do what they were put there to do, or do it myself, and still get a low quality result from them.
Anyway, the list goes on in all the problems I have experienced hiring people.
It really seems like a minefield.
But there were 1-2 people who did actually do well, who were responsive, who did what they committed to do, who hit deadlines, who did what they were asked, who didn’t give excuses. Who were actually honest hard workers who figured out how to solve problems and actually do the job that was asked from them.
Because of the amount of people I hired and the very low % of people who seemed to do their job well, it made me think that I am probably the problem here. If so many people are doing a bad job and not doing what they were actually hired to do. When most other companies seem to succeed at hiring people.
Then it must be a problem with myself and how I am hiring and managing them.
So it makes me think I need to level up in how I hire and manage people.
I’ve tried lots of different businesses and variations of them and some have done okay, some have not.
Mainly the most success I’ve had is in my own freelancing, where I don’t have other people on my team.
Because it’s kind of turned into a headache working with others. Who just seem to have mostly never been able to deliver what they promised without it becoming pointless to hire them in the first place with all the work I’m doing on their behalf and trying to pick up after all the problems and failures they’ve done.
So I’m not sure exactly what to spend my time and resources on.
I have money saved up from freelancing.
Where I can continue to hire people.
But I do feel I’ve had many many bad experiences.
And I believe it’s mostly my fault. Maybe my training, my hiring, my management, at places along the line I’ve not done it well enough.
I’ve tried to make improvements each time but it has kind of seemed like luck to get people who do actually do their job well.
I genuinely want to hire people and succeed in this.
Because if I can successfully work with people to achieve outcomes, rather than relying only on myself, I can build a real business and not just do freelancing.
In freelancing, I was able to make $3k-5k/month but it was very stressful and I hated speaking with clients, and was constantly stressed.
I generally really don’t like socialising with people. Including clients and staff.
And staff often try to get me to socialise unnecessarily so they can avoid doing their job, and pull me away from mine.
So trying to make it work.
I want to make it work with hiring people because if I can do this, I can make 10x-100x-1000x faster progress with other people on the same team.
But I do have a very bad track record so far. So it’s kind of painful returning to it and continuing to have bad experiences.
But at the same time I know it’s me who’s probably at fault because there can’t be this many bad people I’ve hired and it surely can’t be this bad for everyone.
I think the reason is that I’ve been better at managing myself and doing things successfully solo throughout my life.
Like I’ve achieved very good things in solo sports, in academia, and in many areas that don’t require a team, but often become frustrated working in a team.
But I don’t want my business success to be limited to 1 person.
So I truly want to make it work in improving my ability to manage (ideally a large amount of) people in a way where they can actually deliver and it work well.
Because I was capped in freelancing to making $3k-5k/month because I couldn’t take on more clients because I was undercharging and overdelivering and couldn’t handle more due to being massively stressed out and hating it. I was able to work with less clients at times and charge higher, but they never wanted me to ‘outsource’ my work to others or bring on a team, and I felt bad about it because had bad experiences where I had felt like I let clients down, and oftentimes they told me they had hired me because of me, and not wanted me to ‘outsource’ the work.
But I want to make it work.
Building a real business with a team. Not just doing freelancing and relying just on myself.
So I have time and money and resources to put into this.
I have 1 staff member currently who is unproductive. But we have an equity deal so it doesn’t cost me money for them to perform. But costs me lots of time and their performance is extremely weak. Don’t even want to go into detail, but it’s a nightmare. Their performance is about 1/10 but I believe I can raise their performance if I improve my ability to raise their performance.
Anyway. I want to build a team, but not sure exactly what activities are best ways to spend my time.
If I am physically making improvements, I feel I am slowing down the business progress.
Whereas I want to hire and manage people.
I’ve built training so that this co-founder is able to hire people. And these people can use the same training to hire people.
But I don’t currently have training to enable them to manage people.
My fear is that without training, people just ask unlimited questions on how to do something in their role and it becomes pointless to have hired them because I have to do everything they should have done to do it, so they basically just become a robot following very specific instructions. Rather than a human being who can achieve things independently.
So for example, if I made this training, it would take up all my time, whereas I have savings I’ve accumulated from freelancing which I can put into either having the co-founder manage staff, or have the co-founder make management training at the same time to enable more and more staff to hire and manage new staff. To achieve overall objectives and KPIs.
Or I could have the co-founder hire someone to make the training.
Then that frees up my time, my co-founders, time and only takes financial resources to accomplish.
What I want to achieve, is a scenario where I can give staff KPIs and objectives, and they are enabled to hire and manage people who can meet these objectives. Independently without my help required.
They give feedback, and I have a system for feedback to internal improvements can be made based on staff feedback.
Without it being unfiltered, it’s structured and organised so people can’t just get unlimited help/training/whatever from me.
Where they should be able to take actions, iterate, learn, improve, and act as independent thinking people who can achieve objectives themselves. Or within a system where it’s not all tied directly to me.
E.g. I have direct reports going to me.
But they have direct reports who go to them.
Previously I had a system where I did this, but then staff at the bottom of the hierarchy would ask their managers questions, and the managers wouldn’t know the answer so would then ask me the questions, and so jumping over the managers and making me deal with everything.
Whereas I want to build a system where people can make business progress in their specific area, independently without everything going to the CEO. Only important/urgent things are feedbacked to the CEO.
This way I believe much faster progress can happen.
Because I won’t be bogged down by exponentially growing problems.
Like with how it works in any successful organisation.
Tim Cook has only a handful of direct reports. Who each only have a handful of direct reports. And so on.
He’s making the most important decisions, dealing with what’s most important and strategic, with top authority, dealing with everything as a birds eye view, but not doing every employee’s job for them, teaching every employee how to do their job. Picking up the pieces after every employee misses their deadlines, doesn’t do their work, gives excuses, does poor work that doesn’t help the company.
Even in any successful organisation. Each unit/person is making their own decisions, taking their own action, learning from it, practicing themself at improving, gaining their own experience, not all relying on 1 person, every single person in the organisation, just for them to do their job.
In successful organisations, people at every level experience new problems all the time, and don’t need to contact the #1 person at the top just to deal with it.
They come up with a solution and go for it. And iterate. Learn, try to do something better next time. And there’s a constant learning/feedback process going on across the organisation which everyone takes part in, not just 1 person doing every part for everyone.
I believe this structure of modelling what actually successful organisations do is the correct way. Because they’re successful for a reason.
Not this ‘hustle grindset’ BS in the startup/business world where lots of information seems to be saying the wrong thing. It just makes no sense to make every single person 100% reliant on you for them to do their job.
Anyway so I’m thinking about what I should do with my time.
What I want to do, is tell my co-founder what to do, which involves hiring and managing people who do things that move the needle forward in the business, as defined by me, and some of those people also hire and manage people. To have an exponentially growing system of people growing the organisation. And a communication and feedback and learning system and autonomy within the system itself so it can take action, learn, grow, thrive. As a system within itself.
I believe if hypothetically, I did everything myself, then it takes about 6 months to ‘validate’ whether a business has good potential, and 5% of the time it does. So if I do everything myself, I believe it will take me 10 years to get a business off the ground.
But if I utilise my money and time more efficiently, I can have as many people working on each part involved in validating these businesses as possible.
I don’t know if that is lazy or smart.
I believe it’s both. But mostly smart. Because I believe I can convince, hire, organise, manage people to either work on equity deals or pay in a way where businesses can realistically bring in profit.
My co-founder does very little of what I ask him to do.
And he wants me to be doing individual things.
He objectively is financially and intelligently very poor and has very minimal skills or experience.
Not to be offensive. Just to paint a picture. So since there is conflicting information everywhere in the business world and you need to choose who to trust, I don’t trust what he believes.
Objectively I am much richer in all these areas than him.
So I used to operate on a democratic system with them. But it’s kind of like, in a vote for president, if you have 80% of the population being easily controlled by the media and being very dumb and easy to sway and manipulate into believing anything, and they vote for things which are objectively dumb and go against what the smartest and objectively most valuable people vote for, I don’t want to be held back by a dumb population having authority or being listened to, if they have a clear, long track record of making very bad decisions.
If you were to take business advice from a homeless person with no experience, money or intellect, or a Fortune 500 CEO, who let’s say objectively has massive experience, money, intellect and success. Then I would probably take what the CEO has to say.
If you had to listen to what a scientist vs 12 year old had to say about a scientific topic, you’d probably want to listen to the scientist who studied the topic and is well respected in their field.
So I believe it would be dumb for both of us, if he made decisions, objectively.
But at the same time it’s difficult to truly know what the truth is.
The Fortune 500 CEO could be telling you what you want to hear, and could have an incentive to lie to you to send you in the wrong direction with bad business advice so you don’t become competition to them, and the homeless person could be honest.
The scientist could be trying to gain fame and get attention to themself to build their career on a lie and fake experiments whereas the 12 year old could be a science savant.
So it’s difficult to truly know what the truth is.
If I should listen to him or myself.
Objectively.

I believe if I spend time building the business via this logic I’ve described above, it can grow much faster, with unlimited people working on it and performing well, if the necessary improvements are made.
And I believe if I were to do the individual things necessary to do it, it would take 6 months to ‘validate’ each’s potential. I.e. try everything in that timeframe to make it work, build a good service/product, build good sales process, build good marketing, deal with customers, etc, all on your own.

Whereas in the first option, other people could do all these things.
Human development over history has happened due to the input of millions, if not billions of people.
There wasn’t 1 person who did all the work to get Carnegie or Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg to gain the success they’ve achieved.
They all build an empire off the backs of others.
Did the slave owners do the slave work themselves when they brought slaves to America? No.
Does Elon do all the individual parts necessary to grow the company? No. He leads and controls the people in order to do that.
Does Mark Zuckerberg single handedly get Facebook off the ground? No. There were 10+ people involved. He stole code from others. Who sued him.
All of these people had exponentially growing staff as the company grew, as fuel to grow the company.
So if you have the money and strategy to lead them to success, I believe it surely is possible.
So long story short this is a long rambling piece of writing but I believe there’s very little impact 1 individual person has on the success of a company. Controlling and amassing an army of people who build the company up and contribute to the company sounds more true.
Does 1 person do everything involved in every sports team? No. Each player plays their respective part. Directed by the coach/manager.
Does 1 person do everything involved in musical orchestras? No each musician plays their part. Directed by the conductor.
And so on.
If you can build an exponentially growing team of staff who effectively work together, bring others on, take action to grow the business, learn from mistakes, make improvements, are highly motivated, are led successfully, it can achieve great things. I feel like it’s a delusion that individual people single-handedly grow companies without others.
So what should that person spend their time doing?
Doing all the millions of things necessary to grow the company? Or bring and manage others who some make progress themselves, some bring and manage others, to gain more and more resources to make progress at faster and faster rate.
Do successful people really have only 1 person responsible? No. They have teams of people behind them.
So trying to do the work of 1,000 people as 1 person sounds 1,000x as hard as getting 1,000 people to each do the work of 1 person.
So if you can finance the growth of the company via hiring others.
Let’s assume I can finance this exponential staff growth. Then surely I should do it right?
Like if I were to compete with 1 person trying to grow their business, and I had 1,000+ people, all doing their jobs effectively, being organised, working as a system not all relying on me, the competition where it’s 1 staff member on average would get beaten.
And surely any excuse you could give, I could just hire someone to solve that excuse.
Like “oh but what roles do you hire these people to do?” well I could hire someone whose role is to figure out what roles they should do. “But what if x?” well I could hire someone whose role is to solve that too. And so on. “Oh but do you have enough money to pay these staff?” Yes. And I can hire people whose job is to bring in money. Whether it’s fundraising, raising from
Did Hitler fight WW2 with 1 person? No. He fought it with millions, if not hundreds of millions of people.
Did Amazon/[insert any Fortune 500 company] get to their size today from having 1 staff member who did everything? No. They had thousands if not hundreds of thousands of staff.
Did any successful mom and pop shop/small business get to their size today from 1 staff member? No. They are one of the largest employers in the USA. Which means they hire a lot of people. Successful mom & pop shops generally have more staff the more successful they are.
Armies generally have more success the bigger and more effective they are.
Companies generally have more success the more staff and more effective the staff are.
So surely we shouldn’t hold ourselves back, to use the example of war, it’s like trying to go to war with others who have hundreds of thousands of people in their army, with just 1 person, yourself. Who is going to win? Them.
How are you going to compete with companies with way more staff, and way more effective staff than you? You would have to become exponentially more effective as 1 person which I just don’t know if it’s realistic.
I think it’s more delusional to believe that 1 person can do as well as 10 or 20 or 50 or 100 or more people who are each as effective as that 1 person.
So if you were to win, you would probably want to expand your army/staff and make them more effective, rather than try to make yourself somehow perform on the same level as armies/companies with thousands or hundreds of thousands of people. It’s just delusional to believe you can beat them in my opinion.
In business, you’d have to be extremely skilled at hundreds of different skills, spend 10+ hours on 100+ individual areas of the business each week to compete with 1,000+ staff who, if performing effectively, would crush you.
This is just my thoughts.
Am I being delusional? Come on…
I just feel like this is the way. Just look at the most successful organisations in history. Was it 1 person?
No, 1 person cannot realistically win a war against 100,000+ people. No matter how good they are. They would need to be top 0.00000000001% in skill in the world at what they’re beating the other side at.
Could 1 footballer beat a football team of 100 people of equal ability than them? No.
Could a company of 1 person outperform a company of 1,000 people? No.
So I believe if I can solve the ability to do this, I can grow a team of unlimited size to conquer and beat any problem thrown at us.
It’s just down to control of people.
Money doesn’t exist.
Even biggest most successful companies in the world mostly didn’t get there on their own.
I believe less than 1% of Fortune 500 Companies were bootstrapped. Or something similar.
And this is what I’m saying.
People in the small business/entrepreneur world tell you you need to have everything yourself.
How are you going to outfinance, outcompete companies on complete other levels without acquiring these resources from others? Just relying on yourself.
How could 1 person get more financing/investment in a company from investors compared to 1,000 of equal ability.
It’s never 1 person ‘beating the world’. Or beating the industry on their own.
Maybe if your aspiration is to be an average business.
“Oh but you should do what is best at each level, and it’s different for each level. Start just by yourself until you get X revenue. THEN hire people”
…..Well if you struggle to get X revenue on your own, how are you ever going to hire others?
The others help you grow the revenue in the first place.
I feel like the small business world is too overreliant on the founder and delusional about the capabilities of 1 person when competing against units 100-1,000x + bigger than them.
Come on.
Anything you want to compete in. In business.
Generally you already have competition.
And if you manage to somehow “spot” something they’ve “missed”, they could just copy you and wipe you out with their massive resources anyway.
In my opinion you need to expand your resources as FAST as possible.
Not this BS “oh wait until you get X profit on your own to hire other people”
Well if you’ve only made good profit on your own as a freelancer, and you’ve spent a lot of years trying to get a business off the ground solo, what are you meant to do?
“Oh just make it work” Great advice.
I just feel like there’s too much delusion into what it actually takes.
In a job or as a freelancer. It’s easier to make $3k-5k/month revenue because you’re only competing against individuals.
But when you try to compete against other businesses to make $3k-5k/month profit, you’re competing against businesses with 10x-100x the people, the money, the resources, the everything, to beat you.
So how are you meant to realistically beat them on your own? Without expanding your resources as quick as possible.
So because of this I believe if 1 person on their own is somehow meant to take a business from $0 to $10k/mo profit, then surely it will happen quicker if more people, of equal ability, are trying to make the business $0 to 10k/mo profit.
To be honest I don’t know what the truth is. This is just what I believe the truth is.
Because I’ve consumed so much wrong information from people acting like they have the correct advice in business.
All Youtube videos, articles, courses, claiming to make you successful in business, when in reality it’s just advice that sounds either easy to say or easy to hear.
Like it’s easy to say as a comment to this post, a response that takes 5 seconds to write, like the first thing that comes to your mind, like “just figure it out on your own”. But that’s not necessarily the truth, it’s just easy for you to say as a commenter. Comments aren’t necessarily the truth.
And on the other side business advice is easy to hear. Like “work on your own, make $1m/month, move to X country, live the life, working 2hours/day” which is just pure delusion. And most of the time the content/advice’s purpose is to benefit the business who made it, not the receiver of the advice. Because it’s selling a course or they have ad sense so they just want maximum engagement and views.
And anyone who is successful in business doesn’t need to give any advice. Because they’re applying the advice. Not giving it. Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos etc have no strong incentive trying to help others get to their level because they could just make an extra $10M-100M from spending the same time/energy/resources giving advice into growing their business.
They’re never gonna have advice that would help you beat them because otherwise they would’ve applied it themself.
And they are actually incentivized to not want others to truly succeed. Because it means more competition for them and less success for them.
So 99%+ of info online just seems like it’s not true.
I’m trying to figure out what is true and what isn’t.
Honestly though it’s difficult to even trust what anyone says in business. Any advice or feedback. For the reasons given.
Because 99% of feedback is either from people who haven’t truly grown a successful business, or it’s not related to you, or it involved luck, or it’s just like a motivational quote they tell you, or it’s a snarky comment they tell you.
It’s only helpful to them. And you are actually their customer or viewer or their entertainment. Not a successful business yourself. Because it’s just all misinformation that all contradicts with the truth.
So not even sure if it’s worth trying to get advice or if it’s all just pointless, just to figure it out myself from experience, trial and error and learning from my own thinking than relying on any other thinking.
Anyway do you think this is just crazy and I’m going crazy or is there any truth to what I’m saying?
Let me know your brutal honest feedback

This might be a slightly philosophical post. But the aim is to get to the bottom of what you should be truly doing. To truly get the most results.
There seems to be a MASSIVE amount of conflicting information online about how to do this.
“Do stuff that moves the needle forward”
“Do stuff that brings in revenue”
What does this truly mean though. And is it even the right thing. That’s the purpose of this post, to uncover.
When I’ve spent my time on actual needle-moving forward things, like taking business from 0 to revenue, doing all offer development, operations, sales process, marketing myself, it generally has taken me about 6 months to fully ‘try out’ a business idea I’ve had.
Most times it hasn’t worked.
Either it wasn’t profitable. Or there was a big problem somewhere.
I believe fundamentally it’s because I’m moving too slow.
Because it usually takes me around 6 months to ‘validate’ whether a business has good potential.
When you haven’t sold it or developed expertise in it yourself yet.
And I would say about 5% of the time it does work.
So if it takes 6 months and only 5% of the time it works (where you bring in revenue, no major issues), and each time it doesn’t work you try a new variation of it or something new based on what you learned, then it might take 10 years of trying different things to get the business to work.
Which sounds like it takes way too long.
So I thought about how the top companies move much quicker.
What separates them and my strategy.
And realized they simply had much more people on their team.
If you think about any successful organization who has achieved great things, and is world-leading, usually there is not 1 person on the team.
There seems to be a correlation between number of people on the team and speed of progress they can make in business.
Which goes against what most conventional startup wisdom tells you, most small business content creators etc all tell you to do it all yourself.
Which I’ve done for quite a few years and it’s gone so slowly in terms of overall progress.
If you should ‘do everything yourself’ then most Fortune 500 companies would’ve had single founders, and 1 person on their team. But the vast majority of successful Fortune 500 companies had co-founders.
And most successful businesses I know of, had co-founders.
And as they succeeded, they got more people on the team, and these people helped bring more success, then they brought more people.
Obviously there can be bad staff and not everyone contributes to the success of the company.
But I do believe, based on this, and observing top companies, that generally the more successful they are, the more people were involved with bringing about the success.
Which completely contradicts most information given to startups about ‘lone wolf’, ‘go it alone’. If that were true, Google would have 1 employee. Apple would have 1 employee.
And they would have never gotten off the ground.
Anyway, I may not have explained this perfectly but I do strongly believe the more & higher quality people are working together on something, the stats show these companies tend to do better, and successful companies you see often have more people than less working on them.
From the very beginning and now.
Regardless of the stage they were at.
So going based off this information, that the more people, the better, I have hired 30+ different people for different roles. Over the past few years. Across different businesses. To help speed up the progress in different areas.
From marketing roles, sales process roles, web development, app development, customer service, delivery of services.
And I would say there have been maybe 1 or 2 of them where I was actually happy with the result.
Most times, I would hire someone to do a job, and they didn’t do the job well, despite saying they were experienced.
And showing past examples of their work. And telling me everything I wanted to hear about how good they were.
It would often be that they would end up performing badly in the KPIs I set for them, giving many excuses, asking for help/questions/not solving anything on their own.
And just so many other problems. Like when there were multiple people at the same time on a team, working on the same project, they would blame each other and no one took responsibility despite clear responsibilities.
All telling me how other staff were bad and they were good, but getting conflicting info from all staff where they blame each other for everything so it’s difficult to know who to trust and who is being truthful.
Oftentimes not being reliable or doing what they were clearly asked to do.
Oftentimes trying to outsource the work I game them, to other people and not caring about the quality.
At my expense.
So I lost lots of clients, had low performing areas in the areas I hired for a lot of the time.
To be fair, things happened faster the more people there were.
But they often needed much more from me than they were contributing.
Like they always wanted to get paid more, for doing less work, weren’t reliable, did low quality work, didn’t hit KPIs, missed clear deadlines, always gave excuses, blamed others/external things, always asking how “I” wanted their job to be done, to the point where I was having to literally tell them every single thing to do and become an expert at their job myself, and show them how to do what they were put there to do, or do it myself, and still get a low quality result from them.
Anyway, the list goes on in all the problems I have experienced hiring people.
It really seems like a minefield.
But there were 1-2 people who did actually do well, who were responsive, who did what they committed to do, who hit deadlines, who did what they were asked, who didn’t give excuses. Who were actually honest hard workers who figured out how to solve problems and actually do the job that was asked from them.
Because of the amount of people I hired and the very low % of people who seemed to do their job well, it made me think that I am probably the problem here. If so many people are doing a bad job and not doing what they were actually hired to do. When most other companies seem to succeed at hiring people.
Then it must be a problem with myself and how I am hiring and managing them.
So it makes me think I need to level up in how I hire and manage people.
I’ve tried lots of different businesses and variations of them and some have done okay, some have not.
Mainly the most success I’ve had is in my own freelancing, where I don’t have other people on my team.
Because it’s kind of turned into a headache working with others. Who just seem to have mostly never been able to deliver what they promised without it becoming pointless to hire them in the first place with all the work I’m doing on their behalf and trying to pick up after all the problems and failures they’ve done.
So I’m not sure exactly what to spend my time and resources on.
I have money saved up from freelancing.
Where I can continue to hire people.
But I do feel I’ve had many many bad experiences.
And I believe it’s mostly my fault. Maybe my training, my hiring, my management, at places along the line I’ve not done it well enough.
I’ve tried to make improvements each time but it has kind of seemed like luck to get people who do actually do their job well.
I genuinely want to hire people and succeed in this.
Because if I can successfully work with people to achieve outcomes, rather than relying only on myself, I can build a real business and not just do freelancing.
In freelancing, I was able to make $3k-5k/month but it was very stressful and I hated speaking with clients, and was constantly stressed.
I generally really don’t like socialising with people. Including clients and staff.
And staff often try to get me to socialise unnecessarily so they can avoid doing their job, and pull me away from mine.
So trying to make it work.
I want to make it work with hiring people because if I can do this, I can make 10x-100x-1000x faster progress with other people on the same team.
But I do have a very bad track record so far. So it’s kind of painful returning to it and continuing to have bad experiences.
But at the same time I know it’s me who’s probably at fault because there can’t be this many bad people I’ve hired and it surely can’t be this bad for everyone.
I think the reason is that I’ve been better at managing myself and doing things successfully solo throughout my life.
Like I’ve achieved very good things in solo sports, in academia, and in many areas that don’t require a team, but often become frustrated working in a team.
But I don’t want my business success to be limited to 1 person.
So I truly want to make it work in improving my ability to manage (ideally a large amount of) people in a way where they can actually deliver and it work well.
Because I was capped in freelancing to making $3k-5k/month because I couldn’t take on more clients because I was undercharging and overdelivering and couldn’t handle more due to being massively stressed out and hating it. I was able to work with less clients at times and charge higher, but they never wanted me to ‘outsource’ my work to others or bring on a team, and I felt bad about it because had bad experiences where I had felt like I let clients down, and oftentimes they told me they had hired me because of me, and not wanted me to ‘outsource’ the work.
But I want to make it work.
Building a real business with a team. Not just doing freelancing and relying just on myself.
So I have time and money and resources to put into this.
I have 1 staff member currently who is unproductive. But we have an equity deal so it doesn’t cost me money for them to perform. But costs me lots of time and their performance is extremely weak. Don’t even want to go into detail, but it’s a nightmare. Their performance is about 1/10 but I believe I can raise their performance if I improve my ability to raise their performance.
Anyway. I want to build a team, but not sure exactly what activities are best ways to spend my time.
If I am physically making improvements, I feel I am slowing down the business progress.
Whereas I want to hire and manage people.
I’ve built training so that this co-founder is able to hire people. And these people can use the same training to hire people.
But I don’t currently have training to enable them to manage people.
My fear is that without training, people just ask unlimited questions on how to do something in their role and it becomes pointless to have hired them because I have to do everything they should have done to do it, so they basically just become a robot following very specific instructions. Rather than a human being who can achieve things independently.
So for example, if I made this training, it would take up all my time, whereas I have savings I’ve accumulated from freelancing which I can put into either having the co-founder manage staff, or have the co-founder make management training at the same time to enable more and more staff to hire and manage new staff. To achieve overall objectives and KPIs.
Or I could have the co-founder hire someone to make the training.
Then that frees up my time, my co-founders, time and only takes financial resources to accomplish.
What I want to achieve, is a scenario where I can give staff KPIs and objectives, and they are enabled to hire and manage people who can meet these objectives. Independently without my help required.
They give feedback, and I have a system for feedback to internal improvements can be made based on staff feedback.
Without it being unfiltered, it’s structured and organised so people can’t just get unlimited help/training/whatever from me.
Where they should be able to take actions, iterate, learn, improve, and act as independent thinking people who can achieve objectives themselves. Or within a system where it’s not all tied directly to me.
E.g. I have direct reports going to me.
But they have direct reports who go to them.
Previously I had a system where I did this, but then staff at the bottom of the hierarchy would ask their managers questions, and the managers wouldn’t know the answer so would then ask me the questions, and so jumping over the managers and making me deal with everything.
Whereas I want to build a system where people can make business progress in their specific area, independently without everything going to the CEO. Only important/urgent things are feedbacked to the CEO.
This way I believe much faster progress can happen.
Because I won’t be bogged down by exponentially growing problems.
Like with how it works in any successful organisation.
Tim Cook has only a handful of direct reports. Who each only have a handful of direct reports. And so on.
He’s making the most important decisions, dealing with what’s most important and strategic, with top authority, dealing with everything as a birds eye view, but not doing every employee’s job for them, teaching every employee how to do their job. Picking up the pieces after every employee misses their deadlines, doesn’t do their work, gives excuses, does poor work that doesn’t help the company.
Even in any successful organisation. Each unit/person is making their own decisions, taking their own action, learning from it, practicing themself at improving, gaining their own experience, not all relying on 1 person, every single person in the organisation, just for them to do their job.
In successful organisations, people at every level experience new problems all the time, and don’t need to contact the #1 person at the top just to deal with it.
They come up with a solution and go for it. And iterate. Learn, try to do something better next time. And there’s a constant learning/feedback process going on across the organisation which everyone takes part in, not just 1 person doing every part for everyone.
I believe this structure of modelling what actually successful organisations do is the correct way. Because they’re successful for a reason.
Not this ‘hustle grindset’ BS in the startup/business world where lots of information seems to be saying the wrong thing. It just makes no sense to make every single person 100% reliant on you for them to do their job.
Anyway so I’m thinking about what I should do with my time.
What I want to do, is tell my co-founder what to do, which involves hiring and managing people who do things that move the needle forward in the business, as defined by me, and some of those people also hire and manage people. To have an exponentially growing system of people growing the organisation. And a communication and feedback and learning system and autonomy within the system itself so it can take action, learn, grow, thrive. As a system within itself.
I believe if hypothetically, I did everything myself, then it takes about 6 months to ‘validate’ whether a business has good potential, and 5% of the time it does. So if I do everything myself, I believe it will take me 10 years to get a business off the ground.
But if I utilise my money and time more efficiently, I can have as many people working on each part involved in validating these businesses as possible.
I don’t know if that is lazy or smart.
I believe it’s both. But mostly smart. Because I believe I can convince, hire, organise, manage people to either work on equity deals or pay in a way where businesses can realistically bring in profit.
My co-founder does very little of what I ask him to do.
And he wants me to be doing individual things.
He objectively is financially and intelligently very poor and has very minimal skills or experience.
Not to be offensive. Just to paint a picture. So since there is conflicting information everywhere in the business world and you need to choose who to trust, I don’t trust what he believes.
Objectively I am much richer in all these areas than him.
So I used to operate on a democratic system with them. But it’s kind of like, in a vote for president, if you have 80% of the population being easily controlled by the media and being very dumb and easy to sway and manipulate into believing anything, and they vote for things which are objectively dumb and go against what the smartest and objectively most valuable people vote for, I don’t want to be held back by a dumb population having authority or being listened to, if they have a clear, long track record of making very bad decisions.
If you were to take business advice from a homeless person with no experience, money or intellect, or a Fortune 500 CEO, who let’s say objectively has massive experience, money, intellect and success. Then I would probably take what the CEO has to say.
If you had to listen to what a scientist vs 12 year old had to say about a scientific topic, you’d probably want to listen to the scientist who studied the topic and is well respected in their field.
So I believe it would be dumb for both of us, if he made decisions, objectively.
But at the same time it’s difficult to truly know what the truth is.
The Fortune 500 CEO could be telling you what you want to hear, and could have an incentive to lie to you to send you in the wrong direction with bad business advice so you don’t become competition to them, and the homeless person could be honest.
The scientist could be trying to gain fame and get attention to themself to build their career on a lie and fake experiments whereas the 12 year old could be a science savant.
So it’s difficult to truly know what the truth is.
If I should listen to him or myself.
Objectively.

I believe if I spend time building the business via this logic I’ve described above, it can grow much faster, with unlimited people working on it and performing well, if the necessary improvements are made.
And I believe if I were to do the individual things necessary to do it, it would take 6 months to ‘validate’ each’s potential. I.e. try everything in that timeframe to make it work, build a good service/product, build good sales process, build good marketing, deal with customers, etc, all on your own.

Whereas in the first option, other people could do all these things.
Human development over history has happened due to the input of millions, if not billions of people.
There wasn’t 1 person who did all the work to get Carnegie or Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg to gain the success they’ve achieved.
They all build an empire off the backs of others.
Did the slave owners do the slave work themselves when they brought slaves to America? No.
Does Elon do all the individual parts necessary to grow the company? No. He leads and controls the people in order to do that.
Does Mark Zuckerberg single handedly get Facebook off the ground? No. There were 10+ people involved. He stole code from others. Who sued him.
All of these people had exponentially growing staff as the company grew, as fuel to grow the company.
So if you have the money and strategy to lead them to success, I believe it surely is possible.
So long story short this is a long rambling piece of writing but I believe there’s very little impact 1 individual person has on the success of a company. Controlling and amassing an army of people who build the company up and contribute to the company sounds more true.
Does 1 person do everything involved in every sports team? No. Each player plays their respective part. Directed by the coach/manager.
Does 1 person do everything involved in musical orchestras? No each musician plays their part. Directed by the conductor.
And so on.
If you can build an exponentially growing team of staff who effectively work together, bring others on, take action to grow the business, learn from mistakes, make improvements, are highly motivated, are led successfully, it can achieve great things. I feel like it’s a delusion that individual people single-handedly grow companies without others.
So what should that person spend their time doing?
Doing all the millions of things necessary to grow the company? Or bring and manage others who some make progress themselves, some bring and manage others, to gain more and more resources to make progress at faster and faster rate.
Do successful people really have only 1 person responsible? No. They have teams of people behind them.
So trying to do the work of 1,000 people as 1 person sounds 1,000x as hard as getting 1,000 people to each do the work of 1 person.
So if you can finance the growth of the company via hiring others.
Let’s assume I can finance this exponential staff growth. Then surely I should do it right?
Like if I were to compete with 1 person trying to grow their business, and I had 1,000+ people, all doing their jobs effectively, being organised, working as a system not all relying on me, the competition where it’s 1 staff member on average would get beaten.
And surely any excuse you could give, I could just hire someone to solve that excuse.
Like “oh but what roles do you hire these people to do?” well I could hire someone whose role is to figure out what roles they should do. “But what if x?” well I could hire someone whose role is to solve that too. And so on. “Oh but do you have enough money to pay these staff?” Yes. And I can hire people whose job is to bring in money. Whether it’s fundraising, raising from
Did Hitler fight WW2 with 1 person? No. He fought it with millions, if not hundreds of millions of people.
Did Amazon/[insert any Fortune 500 company] get to their size today from having 1 staff member who did everything? No. They had thousands if not hundreds of thousands of staff.
Did any successful mom and pop shop/small business get to their size today from 1 staff member? No. They are one of the largest employers in the USA. Which means they hire a lot of people. Successful mom & pop shops generally have more staff the more successful they are.
Armies generally have more success the bigger and more effective they are.
Companies generally have more success the more staff and more effective the staff are.
So surely we shouldn’t hold ourselves back, to use the example of war, it’s like trying to go to war with others who have hundreds of thousands of people in their army, with just 1 person, yourself. Who is going to win? Them.
How are you going to compete with companies with way more staff, and way more effective staff than you? You would have to become exponentially more effective as 1 person which I just don’t know if it’s realistic.
I think it’s more delusional to believe that 1 person can do as well as 10 or 20 or 50 or 100 or more people who are each as effective as that 1 person.
So if you were to win, you would probably want to expand your army/staff and make them more effective, rather than try to make yourself somehow perform on the same level as armies/companies with thousands or hundreds of thousands of people. It’s just delusional to believe you can beat them in my opinion.
In business, you’d have to be extremely skilled at hundreds of different skills, spend 10+ hours on 100+ individual areas of the business each week to compete with 1,000+ staff who, if performing effectively, would crush you.
This is just my thoughts.
Am I being delusional? Come on…
I just feel like this is the way. Just look at the most successful organisations in history. Was it 1 person?
No, 1 person cannot realistically win a war against 100,000+ people. No matter how good they are. They would need to be top 0.00000000001% in skill in the world at what they’re beating the other side at.
Could 1 footballer beat a football team of 100 people of equal ability than them? No.
Could a company of 1 person outperform a company of 1,000 people? No.
So I believe if I can solve the ability to do this, I can grow a team of unlimited size to conquer and beat any problem thrown at us.
It’s just down to control of people.
Money doesn’t exist.
Even biggest most successful companies in the world mostly didn’t get there on their own.
I believe less than 1% of Fortune 500 Companies were bootstrapped. Or something similar.
And this is what I’m saying.
People in the small business/entrepreneur world tell you you need to have everything yourself.
How are you going to outfinance, outcompete companies on complete other levels without acquiring these resources from others? Just relying on yourself.
How could 1 person get more financing/investment in a company from investors compared to 1,000 of equal ability.
It’s never 1 person ‘beating the world’. Or beating the industry on their own.
Maybe if your aspiration is to be an average business.
“Oh but you should do what is best at each level, and it’s different for each level. Start just by yourself until you get X revenue. THEN hire people”
…..Well if you struggle to get X revenue on your own, how are you ever going to hire others?
The others help you grow the revenue in the first place.
I feel like the small business world is too overreliant on the founder and delusional about the capabilities of 1 person when competing against units 100-1,000x + bigger than them.
Come on.
Anything you want to compete in. In business.
Generally you already have competition.
And if you manage to somehow “spot” something they’ve “missed”, they could just copy you and wipe you out with their massive resources anyway.
In my opinion you need to expand your resources as FAST as possible.
Not this BS “oh wait until you get X profit on your own to hire other people”
Well if you’ve only made good profit on your own as a freelancer, and you’ve spent a lot of years trying to get a business off the ground solo, what are you meant to do?
“Oh just make it work” Great advice.
I just feel like there’s too much delusion into what it actually takes.
In a job or as a freelancer. It’s easier to make $3k-5k/month revenue because you’re only competing against individuals.
But when you try to compete against other businesses to make $3k-5k/month profit, you’re competing against businesses with 10x-100x the people, the money, the resources, the everything, to beat you.
So how are you meant to realistically beat them on your own? Without expanding your resources as quick as possible.
So because of this I believe if 1 person on their own is somehow meant to take a business from $0 to $10k/mo profit, then surely it will happen quicker if more people, of equal ability, are trying to make the business $0 to 10k/mo profit.
To be honest I don’t know what the truth is. This is just what I believe the truth is.
Because I’ve consumed so much wrong information from people acting like they have the correct advice in business.
All Youtube videos, articles, courses, claiming to make you successful in business, when in reality it’s just advice that sounds either easy to say or easy to hear.
Like it’s easy to say as a comment to this post, a response that takes 5 seconds to write, like the first thing that comes to your mind, like “just figure it out on your own”. But that’s not necessarily the truth, it’s just easy for you to say as a commenter. Comments aren’t necessarily the truth.
And on the other side business advice is easy to hear. Like “work on your own, make $1m/month, move to X country, live the life, working 2hours/day” which is just pure delusion. And most of the time the content/advice’s purpose is to benefit the business who made it, not the receiver of the advice. Because it’s selling a course or they have ad sense so they just want maximum engagement and views.
And anyone who is successful in business doesn’t need to give any advice. Because they’re applying the advice. Not giving it. Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos etc have no strong incentive trying to help others get to their level because they could just make an extra $10M-100M from spending the same time/energy/resources giving advice into growing their business.
They’re never gonna have advice that would help you beat them because otherwise they would’ve applied it themself.
And they are actually incentivized to not want others to truly succeed. Because it means more competition for them and less success for them.
So 99%+ of info online just seems like it’s not true.
I’m trying to figure out what is true and what isn’t.
Honestly though it’s difficult to even trust what anyone says in business. Any advice or feedback. For the reasons given.
Because 99% of feedback is either from people who haven’t truly grown a successful business, or it’s not related to you, or it involved luck, or it’s just like a motivational quote they tell you, or it’s a snarky comment they tell you.
It’s only helpful to them. And you are actually their customer or viewer or their entertainment. Not a successful business yourself. Because it’s just all misinformation that all contradicts with the truth.
So not even sure if it’s worth trying to get advice or if it’s all just pointless, just to figure it out myself from experience, trial and error and learning from my own thinking than relying on any other thinking.
Anyway do you think this is just crazy and I’m going crazy or is there any truth to what I’m saying?
Let me know your brutal honest feedback

Okay yall. Can u give me the poetry quotes yall r memorising pls. And why u all freaking out I swear poetry is so easy and the modern story it’s just explaining the meanings and comparing. But the unseen poetry’s r hard

As a collection of like minded individuals we must start completely ignoring the existence of the masses (I.E women, inbreds). And not in a superficial way, we shouldn’t disagree with them, we shouldn’t look at them and we certainly shouldn’t talk to them. They simply shouldn’t have any existence within our minds and then, I am convinced of this, “they” will simply cease to exist.
I am not perfect, perfection is something we must move toward. But because I am not perfect I feel myself ponder the idiocy of others. Or trying to explain my position to women. I am going to stop this. I don’t need to explain myself any more.
For a long time I DIDN’T believe truth and objectivity was possible. Clarity was an impossibility.
You don’t believe in truth? you don’t know what truth is? You cannot define truth? questions like this plagued my mind for hours, teachers in school affirmed these thoughts. I was young and Impressionable. I’m not perfect.
You can define truth. Ignore the intellectualism, ignore the thoughts of others, ignore your environment. You are truth, everything you believe is the truth. The world and people around you demand you to view things through endless layers of nuance, you don’t need it. People believe that a greater depth of understanding is equal to intelligence. That being an “expert” is a good thing. It is not, you will only yearn for more. I have yet to meet a professional or expert I respect, they are shackled to their field of knowledge. Unable or unwilling to view things from a broader more truthful perspective.
Looking at things through the lens of collective groups or definitions is also reductive. The “haves” and “have nots” are arbitrary distinction. I can harp on for hours about how the modern age strips meaning from us, refusing to allow us to view things from our own perspective. Being the critic is easy, finding an alternative is hard. That is what my father says.
So here is alternative, lift weights and dominate others. Physically and mentally. Your will is the most important thing, disregard morals, they box you in. Others will try and box you in, why? You ask, I say, disregard their motives. It is not important to know others unless you, personally, deem them of value.
These concepts; equality, post modernity, ideas, consciousness. Waste of time. Strive for excellence, strive for intelligence. They hate that I disagree, they say I am morally bankrupt, they say I live a deeply sad life. Either are true, I feel stronger, I’m happier than ever. What you feel is important, your emotions are important. Base your morals off your emotions.
They created industrial war, it is no longer an art. The 20th century told us one thing, humans want to kill each and strip each other from history. Everything is driven by profit, stand against profit for it is how they control you, shackle you to community. To the collective. Money and success is not valued by the number you have in your bank account. Actually the number in your bank account is directly correlated to have much of yourself you’ve given away. How you have betrayed yourself. Given in.
Success is happiness, and I am happy.
David foster Wallace once said that
“If you worship money and things — if they are where you tap real meaning in life — then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already — it’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Worship power — you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart — you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on”
once I heard this quote I’d decided to value nothing. But I think I misunderstood the idea behind Wallace’s words. I am not perfect. Maybe you shouldn’t worship anything. Or maybe you should worship yourself, in totality. For you, the individual, is already perfect. I don’t agree with Wallace on everything, but unlike the people today he thought about things. Had original ideas, not the endless pseudo-intellectual rehashing and slight modification of ideas that have floated through the collective ethos for years. You already know everything you need to know to live this very moment, and that is all that matters.
But the truth is I want it all, yet I am told that I shouldn’t do that. Accept my weakness, let go of my childlike desires. They say; “truth is unobtainable and perfection is unobtainable”. And do you know who says that, ugly people. They shouldn’t have an opinion anyway.

I don’t know what to put this under but I got an ad while watching film theory and in the first 20 seconds I got a quote that says “find the Tuesday tapes” and Morse code I don’t know what this is about but on the frame that I’m on the bottom left on the screen it says LWP I don’t know what it is but I’m gonna do some research but also there was text almost like a want to set out someone into war by words saying “ many from the outside don’t know what you have seen” and I believe the date is set either before 2001 or before the towers fell I don’t know

Today I want to tell my story of how I self-advocated and what I did to achieve that goal. I'm telling my story to help those who are in a similar position to what I was in and to inspire those to self-advocate.
To recap from my earlier posts. I have ADHD and fell under the "multiple disabilities" characterization. My high school teacher claimed that I have autism (Not diagnosed). I personally don't believe I have autism or at the very least I have a high functioning autism. Throughout most of my school career, I was in a self-contained classroom with kids with severe disabilities. Even if I was in the general population I had a paraprofessional or peer tutor. I never believed that I should have been in that position. As a consequence, I never really learned any social skills, I was segregated, and felt like that people didn't want anything to do with me because I was sped. The reason why I ended up in this position was probably a combination of me having the "multiple disabilities'' characterization and me testing low in three year revaluation tests. If you want more info on this then feel free to search my profile. This is an alt account and is primarily used to ask questions about special ed so It's really easy to find stuff about me.
Before I get into my story I just want to make it clear that I'm not against special ed. There's good and bad people in every profession. I believed I was in danger for myself and for my future. I don't believe that my teacher was evil and had the best of intentions but he was putting me in a position that was hurting me and I had to act. If you have any questions or feedback feel free to let me know in the comments. Another thing is that this post has been really hard to make. It opened up some old wounds and as a result took several days to write.
Here's my story: So in late middle school I was tired of the placement that I was in. I was tired of not having friends, Not being able to socialize with my peers, not being able to date. I also was thinking about what my life will look like after high school, I was concerned that I was going to never have friends, Never be in a relationship, and not have the social skills to make those friends. I was generally very concerned for my future. So I decided that for my 8th grade year (2017-2018) I would do my absolute best for both my behavior and academics. Throughout the year nothing changed. I was hoping that me doing well would show that I didn't need any support but at the end of the year I still had paraprofessionals in most of my classes and was being pulled out for tests. In the summer between middle school and high school all I can think about is I want high school to be different. I wanted friends, I wanted a relationship, and I had dreams of me in the student council. When I got into high school I had peer tutors along with paraprofessionals (Peer Tutors are general ed students who sign up as an elective to help special needs kids. They basically serve the role as paraprofessionals with less responsibility). I did everything again and had the exact same result. In January of 2019 (freshmen year) I decided that my current strategy wasn't working. They also started making the peer tutors fill out behavioral checklists for their student(s) by grading them on how well they behaved/followed directions and gave them badges that say "peer tutor" which made me feel singled out. Because of that the peer tutors felt more like babysitters then someone that is an equal. So I went to my special ed teacher and asked him to remove the paraprofessional and the peer tutors. He told me no and said that I needed them. I changed my strategy again and I was going to ask for the Peer Tutors to be gone first, then focus on removing the paraprofessionals. I was more concerned about the peer tutors over the paraprofessionals because I was concerned that since they were part of the student body that this was going to affect me when I was running for the student council. I was worried that they'd tell others I was special needs then people would think I was incompetent. So every 2 weeks I would ask him again to remove them and each time he would give me a different excuse on why I couldn't be alone. Here's some of the excuses he gave me: "The peer tutors need to be there to collect data", "You need to prove that you can do the work yourself", "It's not up to me. It's the general education teacher that decides if you need a peer tutor or an aide", "Peer Tutors are supposed to represent a trainer for a job. If you refuse training then you're going to get fired". I brought it up again during my yearly IEP which took place in March. Once again my teacher said no, bringing up another excuse. As far as I can remember, my parents were neutral about the aide situation. Later one peer tutor was removed, what happened is that the peer tutor moved to a different town and they didn't bother on sending a substitute. A win is a win so I celebrated it. At the end of my freshman year I was pretty much defeated and didn't achieve the goal of being 100% independent. Over the summer I took a look at my situation and decided that my current plan is not working. I knew that when my sophomore year of high school starts I will have aides and peer tutors in classes. I knew that if I wanted to get what I wanted I would have to do something big. I knew that I would have to put up a fight, and put in a lot more effort. Over the summer I developed a war mindset inspired by two quotes from Sun Tzu:
"Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win”
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
I knew that I can't be going into sophomore year blind, so I started drafting a plan. I created a Google doc outlining my goals and what I wanted to accomplish. I knew that I won't be able to win every battle and that I need to choose which fight is worth fighting for. I thought to myself, “Well the peer tutors we're given training on the first day of school and probably have strategies to deal with poor behavior but what about planned well organized protests?” So I began researching strategies on how paraprofessionals/peer tutors dealt with negative behavior and reverse engineered those tactics. I read forms, I Watched YouTube videos and found as much information that I could find. For the peer tutors I didn't know too much about them. I didn't know if it was something that only my school did or if other schools did it. I did some research and found out that other schools had a peer tutor program and some have uploaded training videos on YouTube. Some peer tutors told me that they did babysitting and did nanny work so I looked up babysitting tips. I reverse engineered all of those tactics and came up with strategies to counter those techniques and put all that information that I learned into a google doc that I can use for future reference. During this time I also researched how to become a better negotiator and started learning a little bit of psychology. The plan was to first negotiate and if that doesn't work I will protest and make demands and negotiate. Over the summer I got really good at negotiating and practiced a lot on my father and my sister (they were totally oblivious). To this day I use those negotiating tactics. After I created my document and was satisfied with all the information, I went to bed that night and knew that I have already won and that my sophomore year will be my last year that I 1-1 peer tutor or aide.
Fast forward to the first day of school, as expected I had peer tutors and aides assigned to me in classes. My sped teacher had a chalkboard On the back wall full of sticky notes that had everyone's schedules and a name of someone was assigned to that student for each class. This time around I only had one peer tutor outside of the special ed classes. This is a big improvement over the three I had before but I still have my original goal of having none. For the paraprofessionals I had 2 in Gen classes.The goal was to first remove the peer tutors then the paraprofessionals. Even though this seems to be an improvement I continued with the plan. Since this was the first day, the peer tutors were in another classroom learning policies and other stuff they needed to know so I was alone for the day. I walked over to my special ed teacher and ask him one final time to remove the peer tutor he says no and then I asked him to let me be alone for 2 weeks so I can prove I don't need help and he still denies me. I then tell him that I will allow the peer tutor for 2 weeks and after that she needs to go. My teacher doesn't respond. (To add context the peer tutor that I had, she was a peer tutor in my math class in the prior semester so I already know who she was. We used to talk a lot and was surprised when I saw that she was assigned to me.)
For 2 weeks she mostly left me alone with her occasionally checking up on me. For those 2 weeks I purposely close my self off and adopted a body language that would subconsciously discourage her from approaching me. I did this by keeping my head low and staying as focused as possible. The only thing she did was confront me when I start packing up 2 minutes before the bell rings. She tells me that I shouldn't be packing up and to pull my stuff out again. I tell her no and hold my ground. She writes in my planner that I packed my stuff up early and refuse to pull it out. That happened like 2 or 3 times. On Thursday on the second week my class was tasked to create a PowerPoint. FYI this was a mythology class, while I was doing this PowerPoint I decided instead of manually trying to type in the locations and people from this mythology which the names were very long and complicated. I decided would be easier just to copy and paste them in. My peer tutor sees me doing this and doesn't say anything. At the end of class she writes that I plagiarized in my planner and tells my special ed teacher in person what happened. My sped teacher pulls me out of class (I had his math class right after mythology) and starts telling me that my peer tutor has seen me copy and pasting paragraphs and goes on this lecturing on why plagiarizing is bad. I explained to him that I wasn't copying paragraphs It was only copying names and locations and explain my reason for it. He didn't believe me but he didn't make me retake the assignment. After that I was pissed off and the next day I confronted her about it. I forgot what her reasoning for not telling me was but I told her that she needs to look into things before she makes false reports. After that incident, I decided to wait a week before I ask my teacher to remove her. Also during those first 3 weeks I turned down help from peer tutors and paras if possible In the special ed classroom. I did this to prevent sending any mix signals. I personally didn't mind if I had to work with a peer tutopara or not In the actual sped classroom. I only cared if it was in any of the general education classes. I just thought it would look contradictory if I was accepting help in the sped class and then requesting peer tutors to be removed from my gen classes.
At the beginning of the fourth week I went to school early and went to my sped teacher's class before first hour starts and then I again asked him to remove the peer tutor and the paraprofessionals. He says no again and brings up that I was being academically dishonest by plagiarizing. I tell my side of the story once again on what happened and he still doesn't believe me. At this point I leave and more pissed off. At this point negotiations didn't work so I started small protests by preventing the peer tutors from filling out my planer and the behavioral checklist. Most of them didn't care since there was other students they can fill out and they only need to fill out one to be graded for the day. One peer tutor gave me the puppy dog eye treatment and I eventually cave and let her fill it out. I still let the one peer tutor that was assigned to me in the gen class due to me being the only student and my intention wasn't to ruin, her grade. During the fourth week I began brainstorming ideas on how I can do a massive protest.
On Thursday of the fourth week of school, a walk into the mythology class and it started out like any other day. Class started and my teacher starts talking. I pull up my phone to respond to some messages and my peer tutor sees me. She asks me to hand my phone over to her and I tell her no. She tells me that I can't be on my phone and I tell her okay but I'm still not giving it to you. She then pulls out her phone and puts it on the table. She then tells me to put my phone on the table. I tell her no again. A few minutes past and the teacher finishes up talking. She passes the assignment and immediately my peer tutor begins to try and help by reading the questions. I slide the packet over closer to me and start ignoring her. I was hoping that she will get the hint and leave me alone. She doesn't so put on my hoodie and tried to mentally block her out. I don't remember what she said during all this since I was blocking it out but I do remember her touching me and the general ed teacher coming over and start assisting the peer tutor. It was a lot of pressure and I was actually about to give up because it was too much. But they both gaved up before I did and I was very relieved. After that, the class was pretty much quiet. The peer tutor wrote an entire paragraph on what happened. I walked to my math class and sat down. I then see my peer tutor walking into class and ask for my sped teacher. I already knew it was about me. I see them talk for 2 minutes and sure enough I see my teacher calling me over. I walked outside the classroom and me and the teacher begin to go at it. We end up saying the same things we have said before. However, my teacher this time mentioned that if I keep up my behavior that he's going to call in a meeting with my parents. The rest of math class was pretty much the same. However, my English class with the same teacher he went on a rant about using accommodations seeing that he had a disability growing up which was tourette's and he were love to have a peer tutor. I was quiet for the whole class since I was already exhausted because of everything else that had already happened. For the rest of the weekend, I've been coming up with plans on how I would be able to pull off a massive protest.
Now for the good news. On the fifth week of school, I noticed that my peer tutor was missing. My teacher pulled me aside again and told me that he decided that he was going to pull her for 2 weeks to see how well I would do without her. I told him thank you, that's what I wanted since the beginning of the school year. After those 2 weeks he didn't reinstate her and I didn't have a peer tutor or paraprofessionals in gen classes since. The deal moving forward was as long as I had a D or better he wasn't going to send any support unless I asked for it. My relationship with that sped teacher also had improved significantly. Later in my Junior year of high school I ran in my school's election and won. I was given the social media position.
In hindsight, I'm glad I didn't have to pull off a big protest. But the same time I wish that this situation could have ended in a different way.
Everything that I just told you is only the tip of the iceberg. There's so much detail that I had to leave out just to make this story shorter. Lot of it I'm still processing even though I found great strength in myself fighting back against a system that I believe was ruining my life. That war mindset hasn't left my mentality yet. I'm still dealing with the consequences of me being in special ed. Everything I told you happened 5 years ago and I'm still living through it like it just happened. I'm mentally recovering and eventually I will recover. Right now I'm in therapy and I'm writing down everything I can in a Google doc to process everything emotionally. Maybe one day I'll give that story to a writer and make a book out of it.
If you have any questions feel free ask them, I would love to answer them.