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Comment by DayDollar | Hacker News Reader

Encourage others to take impossible risks. Theire failure and corpses build a bridge to your success. Try to see obnoxious "You-can-do-it-talks" not as ego-pumping, but as leveraging of stupid people into free R&D. Do not be first, find others who are stupid enough to develop and research for you- invest just enough, to become a goto adress once they are desperat- skin the carcasses. Be the general in the fifth row of the army, who will be painted as victorious, while all those "inspired" men, are laying dead and dieing at his horses feet.

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Some people have bad motivations, but that is not true for everyone saying these things.

I had no choice, I couldn't do anything but start a business, I was a failure as an employee because of how I looked at life and the process of building/creating. I was always at odds with my employers to make things work better. (I was told to work slower and less hard because I made others look bad sigh)

So what do you say to someone like me? I need to hear "you can do it" because even though I am inclined to do it anyways, it's still really hard to build your own business.

This kind of information is incredibly helpful (encouraging) for me in my situation at this point in time. For many others it's not good advice.

> So what do you say to someone like me?

Welcome to the club! You are an entrepreneur. It is really hard. Depressingly so sometimes. You are on your own because you can do it!

Learn to sell. Learn what selling is. Find a problem you have. Solve it in a repeatable way. Sell the solution.

Talk to people. What are their problems?

Repeat. Build up multiple cash flows. Software. Real estate. Consulting. Find entrepreneurs near you. Team up.

You can do it. Many people way less capable than you are already have.

Find an existing solution. Solve it better. You don't have to be first. Just be better. You already are.

You can do it. I know you can. Be relentless in the face of overwhelming odds.

You can do it! I did. We did. Everyone you know will think you are crazy. You. Are. Not.

You are wonderful. You make the world a better place. Keep at it!

Ha, this is ridiculously cheery. I feel like I shouldn't need this, but I did. Thank you.

I wanna be like this...but I just don't have the energy and discipline so I have failed before I even began.

we are all born lacking all the things that we currently possess. just because you don't have something right now doesn't mean you can't develop and cultivate it over time. all it takes is being willing to grind and even suffer a little bit if necessary to develop it. i have the same problem myself but im at a crossroads in my life where i just can't sit around being upset with myself for not having the skills and such that i desperately need to live a functional and fulfilling life, so i understand the difficulty. you're not alone. just know that you can do it if you keep on keeping on, i believe in you!

You seem like a fun person to have a conversation with!

I kind of feel to be in a bit of a similar predicament.

If you're up for it, my email is in my profile.

But when you started your business, was it:

- With a goal of supporting your health and personal needs

- An exercise of your own judgement, where your decisions were based on your own huristics for evaluating reality?

When you looked at something and thought "this is, based on my genuine judgement, impossible" did you decide to do something else? Or did you say "I have strong evidence that this cannot possibly work, and I'm really sleep-deprived... but sleep is for the weak and impossible is nothing." and plow onwards relentlessly?

If the former: great!

If the latter: Thats the problem that I think DayDollar is talking about. It is a pattern that I fell into at MIT -- I took on more commitments than was possible to grow into with the skills I knew how to gain because "impossible is nothing". I was constantly drunk-with-fatigue. I looked for help learning how to write first drafts and got told "just do it!" so I spent hours digging my nails into my skin in front of a blank page. I didn't know how to "do it" but the answer was too obvious for anyone to believe me. I asked for help learning how to manage my time and manage writing. Instead, I got encouragement.

The problem with giving advice like "you can do it!" or "start before you think you're ready!" is not that it is wrong. The problem is that it does not assess the situation. Bad advice is a zero-argument function.

Good advice recognizes that you are the source of observations about your situation and gives you a tool to do that better. Good advice offers heuristics: fallible methods of solving a problem which rely on human judgement.

The author of this piece quotes author David McCullough:

> There comes a point where you just have to stop, and start writing.

Good advice would be a question to ask to guide someone to realize when they've hit that point.

--------

The comment below me by /u/throwaway35784 tells you to do a whole bunch of things and the only thing it asks you to observe about your current situation is "Find a problem you have."

Everything else that he says is advice that is often a good idea but depends on the situation.

I think we completely agree on what good advice is, and I think I see where I was missing something before.

"You can do it" is not advice per se, it's encouragement.

If I am already doing it, or I intend to, or I am trying to or failing, or I am about to quit or not start, "you can do it" helps me not lose hope. It's not technical or directional, it's uplifting. "Someone cares" can be enough to turn my day around when I am on the knife's edge of success and failure. Then I can do what I already know needs to be done. Thanks for your views on how to give good advice, I think they are quite useful.

"An exercice of your own judgement [...]" Very interesting point. It's a very pragmatic way to test your perception and your judgement on so many level.

You couldn't pay me enough to have a boring 9-5 job where you clock in every day and do the same thing for 20 years that you're not really that great at. Some people have a built in character for taking these kinds of risks. I actively turn down investment money to fight my away from lifestyles that you have described. Everybody dies, even the guy safe in his treehouse, next to the water cooler from a heart attack built up of years of pointless stress worrying over someone else's dream.

So I'm an entrepreneur and I think this is a negative and unhealthy attitude. It also just doesn't make sense. If you're an entrepreneur, is everyone that helps you build your company a loser?

It comes down to risk tolerance. Some people can tolerate more risk and desire more automony. For me, I view my company as a combination of many dreams. I don't make all the decisions or come up with all of the ideas. I actually find encouraging autonomy and mastery, my employees are more productive and happier.

It also seems wrong to morally judge people for living a life they want to live. For too many people simply having a stable job is a dream.

You can't escape judgement, as the parent post shows in his own judgement of other's risk taking behaviour. Some people think it's an 'impossible risk' some people thinks it gives life, a difference of values. The risk is a side thing. The focus is on creating what has value in my world view and somebody else's dream is not it.

I don't make any bones for or against a moral 'argument' in terms of other peoples lives, just a stalwart defense of my own and others like it. I don't think any boss gets far hobbling their employees in any capacity. I have a great respect for the work people do and getting in their way is a waste of everybody's time. For those that dream of a stable job I would encourage them to dream bigger, if they are focused on work and not on some social or personal journey in life.

If everybody was aiming at the same thing I did and valued the same things I did, then yeah they would be losers for copping out on what they want. But not everyone is me and I barely have an opinion beyond passing interest about people who live with different values and goals, but are happy to see them succeed. A rising tide lifts all boats.

> Do not be first, find others who are stupid enough to develop and research for you- invest just enough, to become a goto adress once they are desperat- skin the carcasses.

This strategy has an actual MBA term--it's called the "fast follower".

Basically, the first guy proves the market and takes all the arrows. The second guy reaps the vast majority of the profit in the space.

It's why semiconductor companies are so stagnant, for example, and simply buy each other rather than generate genuinely new, interesting products.

I thought it was called “second mover advantage”.

or hackaton, crowd sourcing....

Lol this way you will never start because guess what when 4 people ahead of you die, you will just turn back. You are not good to walk on their corpse. Imo this is totally wrong way of doing anything.

Sounds like a depressing fantasy painted as brutal reality. Maybe an enticing belief for those of us here who are also depressed, but just a fantasy nonetheless.

Not really a startup kind of person, are we?

Shh shh shh you're giving away the game.

That's just some straight up machiavellianism.

Wear Sunscreen. But only if it's that coconut stuff that gives you cancer.

Similarly, try to convince people that competition is inherently unfair, and that it shouldn’t exist. They will either become apathetic or invest their effort into trying to undermine competition itself, making it far easier on everybody else who’s focused on competing.

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