We both have kids. We both love them. But after years of running, building, scaling, and sacrificing, we admitted something most people don’t say out loud.

We’re not doing it for them.

Not first, anyway.

The truth is simple: you're doing it for you.

Because you want to win.
Because you want to build.
Because you want to feel like your life is your own.

Saying it’s for your kids makes you sound noble. Society claps. But if you're honest, the fire started in you long before anyone called you "Dad."

And that’s not selfish. That’s clarity.

When you show up fully for yourself, you lead better. You parent better. You grow stronger. Family benefits, but the work starts inside.

So the question isn’t, “What are you building?”
It’s “Why haven’t you owned the real reason yet?”

No more half-truths. This thing is about you. And it always was.

100 Ways to Live a Better Life by Jacques

This Week: Health

If your body breaks, everything else breaks with it.

Business, relationships, clarity, all of it suffers when your health slips. You don’t need six-pack abs or to run marathons. But you do need energy. You need strength. You need a baseline you can rely on when life gets chaotic.

1. Start resistance training and never stop.

2. Sleep 7 to 8 hours a night without exception.

3. Eat whole foods, mostly protein, and stop snacking.

4. Get morning sunlight and fresh air every day.

5. Walk 10,000 steps a day.

6. Measure metrics that matter to you.

7. Do blood work at least once a year.

8. Build a consistent routine you can repeat anywhere.

9. Remove or limit the stress that is slowly ruining you.

10. Take full ownership of your health.

"A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure."
— Oscar Wilde

Until Next Time

That’s it for this week. A shorter note, but a focused one.

– Jacques

P.S. If you enjoyed this, share it with someone who thinks like you.

Check out other things I’m busy with:

• We Edit Podcasts — A full-service B2B podcasting agency that helps brands turn listeners into customers.

• Hunting Portal — Your next hunting adventure starts here. Outfitters, taxidermists, gear heads, and more.

• Halalisana — We help township-based businesses grow, scale, and thrive in South Africa. We offer conferencing, co-working, and a coding academy.

• Kouga News — Hyper-local. Independent. Unfiltered News.

• More coming soon.

Stop playing the victim.

We live in an age where blame has become currency.
The economy.
The system.
AI.
The algorithms.
The endless parade of "what ifs."

It’s easier than ever to freeze. To rationalize inaction because the world feels like it's shifting beneath your feet. Entire industries are vanishing overnight. Jobs are being rewritten by code. The ground feels unstable.
And so people wait.

They wait for someone to tell them it’s safe again. For a guarantee that will never come.

So it comes down to, you either happen to life, or life happens to you.

The systems you’re afraid to step outside of?
They were built for a world that no longer exists, a world of stable paychecks, 40-year careers, and neatly packaged retirements. That scaffolding has collapsed. The new game rewards those who move fast.

The ones winning aren’t smarter.
They’re simply willing to place bets on themselves.
Willing to face the discomfort.
Willing to move while others sit and analyze.

If there’s an idea in you. Start.
If there’s a change you’ve been afraid to make. Move.
If there’s a book, a business, a hard conversation, or a new chapter. Step into it.

Your future self is already watching.
And years from now, it will either be grateful you moved or haunted that you didn’t.

Worried someone else already did it?
Irrelevant.
Uber wasn’t first.
They were just better.
There’s always room for better.

This is your permission slip:
Wake up earlier.
Send the email.
Make the call.
Pitch the idea.
Take the swing.
Fail, learn, swing again.

No one is coming to save you. But you?
You’ve always had the power to save yourself.
You just have to start.

100 Ways to Live a Better Life by Jacques

We’ll mark off the topic we covered the previous week.

Finance
Love
Family
Health
Lifestyle
Community
Spirituality
Philanthropy
Adventure
Discomfort

This week, we’re moving on to Family. Whilst family always remains a challenge, remember to be grateful for the place you find yourself in. There are people out there who would give everything they have to sit around the same table you do every night.

Family.

1. Lead Your Family Like You Lead Your Business
You have strategy meetings, goals, and performance reviews at work. Why does your family get the leftovers? Set vision. Create rhythms. Build traditions.

Lead your family with the same intentionality you lead your company, or someone else will lead them for you.

2. Protect the Table
Family dinners are the operating system where trust is built, kids are heard, and spouses stay aligned.

Phones off. TV off. Presence on.

Protect the table, it’s where your family learns to talk, listen, and belong.

3. Fix Your Marriage First
Your kids feel every crack, even the ones you think you hide. If your marriage is fractured, don’t hide behind "doing it for the kids."

Heal the marriage. Prioritize the partnership.

Healthy parents raise stable kids.
It starts there.

4. Say Yes More Often
Your kids don’t need more money.
They need your yes.
Yes to playing catch.
Yes to reading one more story.
Yes to answering their weird questions.
Yes to being interrupted.
You’re building memories. One “yes” at a time.

5. Build Family Traditions, Not Just Memories
Anyone can have one-off vacations. What your kids crave is predictability.
Family game night. Sunday walks. Holiday rituals.
Traditions create safety. Safety creates trust.
Trust creates unbreakable families.

6. Be the Emotional Anchor
Life throws storms at every family. Your job is not to panic.
Your job is to steady the boat. When your family looks at you during a crisis, be the calm in the chaos.
That’s real leadership.

7. Choose Family Over Hustle
You will be tempted to trade time for opportunity. Choose wisely.
Your business can survive without you for a weekend.
Your child’s soccer game only happens once.
Regret always shows up late.

8. Raise Adults, Not Dependents
Your job is not to create kids who need you forever. Your job is to raise confident, capable adults who don’t. Give them responsibility. Let them fail. Teach them consequence.
The world isn’t soft. Neither should you be.

9. Model What You Preach
Kids don’t do what you say. They do what you model.
You want them to be kind? Be kind.
You want them to read? Read.
You want them to pursue big lives? Then live one in front of them.

10. Make Home Their Safe Place
The world is brutal. Your home should be the place where they can fall apart without fear. No judgment. No shame. Just unconditional belonging.
They’ll face enough critics. Don’t be one of them.

3 Things Worth Sharing

1. The Valley Below

This week, between meetings and travel, I managed a quick trip back to the farm, but this one felt a little different.

My father, my son, and my daughter were with me as we drove through the bush, looking for something to stalk up on. We stopped on a ridge where the land opened wide beneath us, that quiet kind of wide where the bushveld holds its breath before night settles in.

My son and I climbed up a narrow ravine to glass into the valley while my daughter stayed back in the truck with her grandfather. The two of us stood there for a while, just listening. The air was cool. The shadows long. The kind of moment you don’t orchestrate, you just find yourself in it.

It took me right back to the long walks I used to take with my dad at that same age. And now, I get to watch my son start his version of that journey. There’s a lot he still has to learn out here, about the land, the animals, the dangers, and the patience that only nature teaches, but that’s the beauty of it.

The long game isn’t just raising kids. It’s watching them grow into the same trails you once followed.

2. Kouga News: The Next Chapter in Local Journalism

I'm thrilled to announce the launch of Kouga News, the first in a series of ventures we're rolling out in South Africa this year. Kouga News is not just a website, but the start of building a newsroom for the Kouga region. With so many local outlets gone, our mission is clear: deliver hyper-local, independent, unfiltered news that serves this community with truth and relevance.

The platform is live, the team is growing, and this is only the beginning.

3. ElevenLabs v3

ElevenLabs dropped v3, and it’s staggering.

70+ languages. Multi-speaker dialogue. Full emotional nuance: [whispers], [sighs], [laughs], you name it.

What used to cost businesses hundreds of thousands in voice talent and studio time can now be done at scale for pennies.

This is exactly the kind of rapid evolution that makes me double down on my “do it today” philosophy: The tools are here. The excuses aren’t.

Question I’m Pondering

What part of my father’s example am I still carrying and should I be?
Legacy is both blessing and baggage. The question is: what gets passed on next?

Until Next Time

Families aren’t built on grand moments.
They’re built in the quiet.
Slow walks.
Patient conversations.
Small lessons that stack up into legacy.

Next week, we move into Health, where discipline, longevity, and ownership collide.
The body keeps score. It’s time to start listening.

– Jacques

P.S. If you enjoyed this, share it with someone who thinks like you.

Check out other things I’m busy with:

• We Edit Podcasts — A full-service B2B podcasting agency that helps brands turn listeners into customers.

• Hunting Portal — Your next hunting adventure starts here. Outfitters, taxidermists, gear heads, and more.

• Halalisana — We help township-based businesses grow, scale, and thrive in South Africa. We offer conferencing, co-working, and a coding academy.

• Kouga News — Hyper-local. Independent. Unfiltered News.

• More coming soon.

We used to say, “Ideas are cheap.”

Now? They’re practically free, and AI just turned the tap wide open.

You can wake up, open a chat window, and ask for 100 startup ideas by lunchtime. AI won’t just give you ideas, it’ll give you names, branding, market research, pricing models, and a half-decent homepage draft in 30 seconds.

The bottleneck used to be creativity.

Now it’s execution.

And here’s the thing: Ideas still can make you rich.

Not all of them. Not by accident. But if you know how to sell ideas, package ideas, and ship ideas, there’s no shortage of leverage.

Here’s one right now:

Startup Idea: AI Deal Mapper

A Chrome extension that scrapes newsletters and shopping sites for daily deals, filters by category, then drops personalized summaries into your inbox.

Revenue model: Freemium + affiliate commissions.

Market: Busy parents, professionals, and discount bloggers.

How to build it: Use Puppeteer or Playwright to scrape, OpenAI or Claude for summaries, then plug into SendGrid for delivery.

Build in public.

Monetize on day one.

And just like that, you’ve got an idea worth building. Not because it’s sexy. But it solves a real need.

The real skill now? Building your idea machine.

Here’s the framework:

1. Collect Prompts: Save the ones that spark interest (personal pain points, frustrations, obsessions).

2. Run AI Iterations: Ask for 10 variations. Refine the angle. Challenge the assumptions.

3. Check Viability: Use tools like Exploding Topics, Google Trends, Reddit, and niche forums.

4. Brand It Fast: AI can name it, logo it, and describe it in seconds.

5. Wrap It in Content: Launch on X, YouTube Shorts, or a blog. Show your work.

6. Ship It Small: Use Carrd, Gumroad, Stripe, Replit, or Framer. No excuses.

7. Listen to Responses: Signals over silence. Feedback over perfection.

A decade ago, the hardest part was getting an idea out of your head and into the world.

Today, the hardest part is being honest about whether you’re going to do the work.

100 Ways to Live a Better Life by Jacques

We’ll mark off the topic we covered the previous week.

Finance
Love
Family
Health
Lifestyle
Community
Spirituality
Philanthropy
Adventure
Discomfort

This week, we’re moving on to Love. An uncomfortable subject for some, not so much for others. Here are a few thoughts I have to make loving easier.

Love.

1. Be Fully There or Don’t Be There at All
Love doesn’t need fireworks. It needs presence.

We live in a distracted world. Notifications. Deadlines. Background noise. But the people you love can feel when you’re half-there.

I’ve sat at dinner tables where everyone had great intentions, and no attention.

The body’s present. The mind’s already at tomorrow’s meeting.

When you love someone, give them your bandwidth.

Not just your time. Your attention.

That’s what they remember. That’s what they crave.

2. Stop Outsourcing Emotional Labor
Too many men pride themselves on being providers, but shut down when it’s time to feel.

You can close deals, hire teams, and lead companies, but ask you to talk about your inner world? You freeze.

And your partner ends up carrying the emotional weight of two people.

You don’t need to be a poet. But you do need to show up emotionally.

Sit in discomfort. Name what hurts. Learn to ask better questions.

The people you love aren’t mind readers. And they’re not therapists either.

Pull your weight.

3. Say the Things You Think They Know
We assume people know how we feel. We wait for perfect moments.

But the truth? Most people are starving for clarity.

“I’m proud of you.”
“You’re beautiful to me.”
“I’m still in.”

These words don’t get old. They get deeper with repetition.

My grandmother used to say “I love you” every time she left the house.

She wasn’t dramatic, she was deliberate.

Say the thing. Then say it again.

4. Keep Your Word Like It’s Gold
Trust doesn’t collapse. It erodes. Slowly. Quietly.

It’s the “I’ll be there in 10 minutes” that becomes 40.

The “We’ll talk later” that never happens.

You may think it’s small, but to the person counting on you, it matters.

Love doesn’t require grand promises. It requires follow-through. If you say you’ll do something, do it.

That’s how safety is built. That’s how love lasts.

5. Don’t Weaponize Distance
Silence isn’t power. It’s cowardice dressed as control.

There’s nothing strong about shutting down to prove a point.

Withholding affection, dodging conversations, and punishing through absence, it doesn’t fix anything. It just builds resentment.

The strongest move is staying in the room. Even when it’s tense. Even when you’re hurt.

Say, “This is hard, but I’m not going anywhere.”

That’s real love.

6. Love in Their Language, Not Yours
You might think you’re showing love, but are you showing it the way they feel it?

Some people need physical affection. Others need words.
Some feel most loved when you take out the trash.
It’s not about what’s convenient for you.
It’s about learning them. Studying them.

Love is translation.

Speak in a way they can hear.

7. Choose Them Daily
Love is not a lightning strike. It’s a discipline.

You’ll wake up some days and not feel it.
You’ll be annoyed. Tired. Frustrated. Bored.
And in those moments, you don’t wait for the spark, you choose the commitment.

This isn’t Hollywood. It’s real life.

The most loving thing you can do?

Wake up. Look across the table. And choose them, again, again, and again.

8. Protect What’s Private
We’re addicted to sharing. But some things weren’t meant for the timeline.

Your fights, your affection, your process, it doesn’t all need to be public.

Love is sacred.

The more you expose it, the more you weaken it.

Build a world they feel safe in.

Not a brand the world applauds.

9. Forgive Without Keeping Score
Real forgiveness doesn’t live in your back pocket, ready to be pulled out in the next argument.

If you’ve forgiven them, let it go.

Scorekeeping turns love into a courtroom. “Who’s hurt more?” “Who messed up last?”

There’s no winner in that game. Only two people too proud to move forward.

Don’t forget what happened. But stop using it as a weapon.

That’s love with teeth.

10. Be the Safe Place
Life is loud. Love should be quiet.

Not empty, quiet. Not cold, quiet. Safe quiet.

When they walk through the door after a brutal day, do they feel like they can breathe or brace?

The world already expects them to perform.

Don’t be another performance space.

Be the one place they can fall apart without fear.

2 Things Worth Sharing

1. Anduril and Meta Team Up to Transform XR for the American Military

Anduril announces that they’re partnering with Meta on a range of integrated XR products designed specifically for the warfighter.

"My mission has long been to turn warfighters into technomancers, and the products we are building with Meta do just that.” – Palmer Luckey

“We’re proud to partner with Anduril to help bring these technologies to the American service members that protect our interests at home and abroad.” – Mark Zuckerberg

Seems they’ve finally been able to bury the hatchet and move forward on advancing defense tech that will make a big difference in the field.

Read more here

2. Jbay Surf Fest Incoming in July

42 Days 9 Hours 34 Minutes and 15 seconds till Jbay Surf Fest kicks off.

The JBay Surf Festival is set to electrify Jeffreys Bay from July 11–20, 2025, blending world-class surfing with a vibrant mix of music, sports, and community events.

Witness the WSL as it returns to the legendary Supertubes. Top surfers, including South Africa's own Jordy Smith and Matthew McGillivray, will compete on one of the world's most iconic right-hand point breaks.

Question I’m Pondering

What version of love am I modeling for my children?

Not what I say love is. What I show in the way I speak, react, hold space, and show up. Because whatever they see, that’s what they’ll repeat.

Until Next Time

Love isn’t the highlight reel.
It’s the quiet decision to stay.
To listen.
To soften.
To show up when it’s easier not to.

Next week, we move into Family.
Where love becomes legacy.
The patterns we pass down.
The stories we rewrite.
And the people we build it all for.

– Jacques

P.S. If you enjoyed this, share it with someone who thinks like you.

Check out other things I’m busy with:

• We Edit Podcasts — A full-service B2B podcasting agency that helps brands turn listeners into customers.

• Hunting Portal — Your next hunting adventure starts here. Outfitters, taxidermists, gear heads, and more.

• Halalisana — We help township-based businesses grow, scale, and thrive in South Africa. We offer conferencing, co-working, and a coding academy.

I'm writing to you this week with jet lag in my bones. I just got back from a 6-day round-trip from South Africa to the U.S. First a bachelor party, then straight into meetings. I've averaged a lot less sleep than I’m used to nowadays, and I’m still on the grind, finalizing a new venture we’re launching on June 1. (Actually, there are three in the soon-to-be-announced mix).

But in all the movement, there’s clarity too.

In 2009, I stumbled across a blog post by a guy named Dragos. It was called 100 Ways to Live a Better Life.

Simple format. Big impact. Just one idea at a time. I was young, dumb, and full of fire, but that list stuck. It was the first time I saw wisdom written like a to-do list.

Fifteen years and a few scars later, I’m writing my own version. Not because I’ve figured it all out.

But because I’ve lived through enough to know what sticks.

This isn’t theory. It’s field-tested.
And it’s yours.

100 Ways to Live a Better Life by Jacques

Organized across 10 categories that matter more than we like to admit:

Finance
Love
Family
Health
Lifestyle
Community
Spirituality
Philanthropy
Adventure
Discomfort

This week, we’re kicking off with Finance. I’m thinking that I’ll revisit each point with an extended note of thoughts once we’ve gotten through the 10 weeks of 10 points each.

Finance.

1. Earn Before You Optimize
Spreadsheets don’t make you rich; sales do. You can’t manage what doesn’t exist. First, get paid. Then worry about how to clean it up.

2. Save Like You Might Get Punched
Because you will. Business dries up. Deals fall through. Life gets expensive fast. Treat your savings like armor, not a nice-to-have.

3. Own Assets That Work While You Sleep
The dream is freedom. The reality is that most people work to look free. Own things that make money while you’re offline.

4. Don’t Finance Stupid
If it loses value and doesn’t earn, it’s a liability. If you're paying interest for status, you're just renting ego.

5. Cash Flow Is the King, Queen, and Crown
Revenue is loud. Profit is humble. Cash flow is survival. Protect it like your life depends on it, because it does.

6. Learn to Read a P&L, Then Live One
Your life is a business. Track your income, your expenses, and your margin. Money is a mirror.

7. Your Friends’ Lifestyles Are Not Benchmarks
New cars, Bali trips, Rolexes, most of it’s on credit. You don’t know their numbers, just their Instagram filter. Play your own game.

8. Get Tax-Smart Early
The system isn’t built for the lazy. Learn the rules or get played. A 30-minute call with a tax pro can save you six figures.

9. Never Confuse Revenue With Wealth
A 7-figure topline means nothing if you’re burning it on dumb sh*t. Real wealth is what you keep. Not what you spend.

10. Give With Your Wallet, Not Just Your Words
Generosity starts with $10, not $10K. Put your money where your mouth is, even if it’s just a little. It grows your heart.

That’s all for the finance section, next week we look at Love.

2 Things Worth Sharing

1. Google I/O 2025 – AI on the Offensive

If AI were a sport, Google just dropped a full starting lineup at I/O 2025.

Twelve major announcements—all AI.

From Gemini Live (a live, on-screen AI assistant that feels like a blend of ChatGPT and Siri on steroids) to Veo 3 and Imagen 4, tools that can generate high-def video and photorealistic imagery at will, Google is betting the house on generative everything.

Other notables:

• Gemini is replacing Google Assistant across Android.

• AI-powered Gmail smart replies that draft entire emails based on bullet prompts.

• Android XR smart glasses with real-time visual recognition and overlays.

It’s clear: AI isn’t a feature anymore. It’s the operating system.

And just as Sundar Pichai took the mic, guess who also dropped a headline?

2. OpenAI’s $6.5 Billion Jony Ive Power Move

On the same day as Google’s I/O conference, OpenAI dropped a grenade.

They announced the acquisition of io, the AI device startup led by none other than Jony Ive—yes, the same Jony who helped shape the iPhone.

A $6.5 billion deal. Quietly brewing. Casually announced. Right as Google tried to dominate the news cycle.

You can’t make this up.

The goal? Build a standalone AI hardware device. Something that feels more personal than a phone. More useful than a laptop. It’s rumored to be a daily AI companion, always present, always learning.

This isn’t just about the device. It’s about who owns the rails of the new interface layer: Voice. Presence. Interaction.

And who’s going to build the thing we all carry next?

If OpenAI wins this one, they’ll go from chatbot company to consumer empire.

Watch this space.

What I’m Watching

This one pulls no punches. South African entrepreneur and outspoken investor Robert Hersov joins Patrick Bet-David for a brutally honest conversation about corruption, crime, and chaos in South Africa—and what needs to happen next.

Hersov calls out government failure, media cowardice, and what he sees as the urgent need for private sector leadership.

Whether you agree with all of it or not, his clarity is rare, and his boldness even rarer.

If you're South African, this one hits home.

If you’re not, it’s a masterclass in calling out rot and proposing real action.

Question I’m Pondering

If I lost everything tomorrow, what skills would rebuild it?

Wealth fades. Markets crash. Circumstances change. But what muscle are you secretly betting on?

Until Next Time

We kicked off with Finance, because money touches everything.
But next week, we move into the messy, sacred space of Love.

Not just romance.
But presence. Vulnerability. The hard work of staying.
And the courage to be fully known.

I’m not writing from perfection.

I’m writing from experience, the bruises, the blind spots, and the moments I got it right.

See you next week.

– Jacques

P.S. If you enjoyed this, share it with someone who thinks like you.

Check out other things I’m busy with:

• We Edit Podcasts — A full-service B2B podcasting agency that helps brands turn listeners into customers.

• Hunting Portal — Your next hunting adventure starts here. Outfitters, taxidermists, gear heads, and more.

• Halalisana — We help township-based businesses grow, scale, and thrive in South Africa. We offer conferencing, co-working, and a coding academy.

• More will be revealed soon.

Some people can handle many things. They juggle businesses, family, passions, and problems, and still find the energy to start again the next day. Others, when immersed in one project, are consumed by it entirely. Their focus is singular, deep, and unwavering.

Neither is better. Both are powerful in their own right.

Capacity is deeply personal. It can’t be copied. It’s not something you learn in school or read in a book. It’s wired into you. And the moment you start measuring your output against someone else’s capacity, you lose sight of your own rhythm.

Think of a farmer. Some enjoy the idea of farming, the landscape, and the lifestyle. And then there are farmers. It's not what they do, it's who they are. They feel the land, they know the weather without checking the forecast, and they recognize the flock by memory. You can teach someone how to manage a farm, but you can’t teach someone to miss their sheep when they’re away. That comes from the core.

Now flip the lens, look at someone like Richard Branson. Virgin Records, Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Galactic, and 397 other ventures. He didn’t stay in his lane. He built a freeway of ventures. That kind of breadth takes vision, but more than that, it takes capacity. And a rare ability to compartmentalize and deploy attention precisely where and when it’s needed.

For me, I've always played out of my lane. Not out of arrogance, but out of necessity.

When I enter a new space, I evolve. I learn. I absorb until my skillset matches the challenge in front of me. It’s how I’ve been able to squeeze two decades of business experience into half the time. And it’s why I’m building nine new companies in the next 12 months aimed at localized issues in South Africa, each aimed at solving a problem I can’t ignore.

And here’s the truth: hustle culture sells you the idea that you have to be everything to everyone. It’s a trap. Most people wear burnout like a badge of honor. But the real flex? Knowing your design and operating inside it.

I’m teaching my kids this early:

God created you as uniquely as you could possibly be. You weren’t made to copy someone else’s life. You were made to live your own, fully.

So, whether your gift is depth or breadth, own it. Stop apologizing for how you were made. Build your life around your capacity, not someone else’s expectations.

Because the world doesn’t need more generalists pretending to be specialists or vice versa.

It needs people who show up as themselves.
Consistently. Quietly. Powerfully.

“The man who clears a path isn’t always the one who walks it. But he changes the map forever.”

3 Things Worth Sharing

1. Market Insight: Trump’s Tariff Cuts Spark Shipping Sector Surge

President Trump's recent decision to reduce tariffs on Chinese imports from 145% to 30% has led to a notable rebound in the shipping and retail sectors. Companies like ZIM Integrated Shipping and Old Dominion Freight Line have seen stock surges. This 90-day tariff reduction, effective until August 14, marks a significant de-escalation in the U.S.-China trade tensions. Retail giants such as Amazon, Walmart, and Home Depot are poised to benefit from resumed shipments and inventory restocking ahead of key sales periods. Markets are reacting positevly.

2. Tech & Defense: Saudi Arabia's $600 Billion Investment Commitment

During his visit to Saudi Arabia, President Trump announced a historic $600 billion investment commitment from the Kingdom. The sweeping deal includes a $5 billion energy investment fund, a $5 billion fund for advanced aerospace and defense technologies, and a $4 billion global sports initiative. This move strengthens economic ties and represents a new era of partnership between the United States and Saudi Arabia.

3. AI Breakthrough: Google DeepMind's AlphaEvolve Revolutionizes Coding

Google DeepMind has introduced a groundbreaking AI tool named AlphaEvolve, designed to tackle complex mathematics and computing challenges. This advanced agent demonstrates capabilities in solving intricate mathematical problems and designing sophisticated algorithms, representing a significant leap in AI's problem-solving potential. AlphaEvolve builds on DeepMind’s history of innovation in the AI space, including earlier breakthroughs such as AlphaGo and AlphaFold. The new tool exemplifies how AI can efficiently handle abstract reasoning tasks that traditionally required human intelligence, hence expanding the boundaries of what AI can achieve in scientific and technological applications.

What I’m Watching

In the latest episode of The Shawn Ryan Show, Tom Homan, the U.S. Border Czar under President Trump's second administration, discusses his extensive experience in immigration enforcement. Homan shares insights into the challenges of border security, the strategies for increasing ICE detentions, and the importance of enforcing immigration laws to protect national security. His candid conversation with Shawn Ryan provides a deep dive into the complexities of U.S. immigration policy and the measures being taken to address them.

Question I’m Pondering

What are we pretending not to know?

In a world flooded with information, it's easy to overlook inconvenient truths. Are there areas in our lives or society where we're choosing ignorance over action?

Until Next Time

This week’s edition was a bit more concise, think of it as a quick breath between deep dives. Next week, we’re back to full programming, and I’m excited to share something special:

“100 Ways to Live a Better Life”
A curated, no-fluff guide split across 10 categories.

We’ll kick things off with Finances.

Until then, stay sharp, stay grounded, and remember:

“The man who clears a path isn’t always the one who walks it. But he changes the map forever.”

—JVH

P.S. If you enjoyed this, share it with someone who thinks like you.

Check out other things I’m busy with:

• We Edit Podcasts — A full-service B2B podcasting agency that helps brands turn listeners into customers.

• Hunting Portal — Your next hunting adventure starts here. Outfitters, taxidermists, gear heads, and more.

• Halalisana — We help township-based businesses grow, scale, and thrive in South Africa. We offer conferencing, co-working, and a coding academy.

• More will be revealed soon.

Discipline > Motivation (Always Has, Always Will)

Let’s get this out of the way: motivation is mostly bullsh*t.
It’s unreliable. It’s emotional. It vanishes the second things get inconvenient.

You don’t build companies, families, or legacies on motivation. You build them on discipline.

Every founder I know who’s actually made it, who's built something real, didn’t do it because they were “inspired.”
They did it because they showed up when it sucked.
They made the hard call when no one clapped.
They held the line when everything screamed for compromise.

Do you think I get out of bed fired up every day?
No.
But I’ve trained myself to execute whether I feel like it or not. That’s discipline.

We’re in a world addicted to dopamine and "hacks."
90% of people don’t need another app.
They need to stop lying to themselves.

They need to get up, make their bed, do the work, and shut up about how hard it is.

Want to know what’s harder?
Being 40 and realizing you built nothing because you waited to “feel aligned.”

Discipline is walking away from a shiny opportunity because it isn’t aligned with what you said you’re building.
It’s choosing your wife over your ego.
It’s choosing your kid’s game over another meeting you don’t need to take.

It’s doing the same small things, daily, that no one will praise, but everyone will feel the impact of.

Motivation is for tourists.
Builders train discipline like it’s a muscle.

Don’t wait to feel ready.
Decide. Move. Repeat.
That’s how you build.

3 Things Worth Sharing

1. Bitcoin Breaks $100K, Again

Bitcoin surged past $100,000 for the first time since February, reaching as high as $103,000. This rally coincided with a broader upturn in global equity markets, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average rising 1.3%. Some attribute this to a Uk - USA trade deal that’s incoming?

2. New Tech Releases This Week

• Apple's Foldable iPhone: Apple is developing a foldable iPhone featuring a new type of display panel developed by Samsung that has never been used in a foldable product.

• DJI's Mavic 4 Pro Drone: DJI is teasing its Mavic 4 Pro, likely launching May 13, 2025. The standout feature is a spinning triple camera, promising unmatched aerial flexibility.

• Lenovo Legion 9i (18”): Lenovo announced the Legion 9i (18”, 10), a high-performance gaming laptop available starting June 2025. An 18 inch laptop? Might as well carry around wide screen at this point.

3. A Tragic Loss at Simola Hillclimb

We were at the Simola Hillclimb all weekend, supporting friends, catching runs, and soaking in what’s become one of our favorite family traditions. It’s one of those rare events that combines adrenaline with deep community.

This year, it ended in tragedy.

During a warm up run on Sunday, veteran racer Pieter Joubert lost control of his Lotus Exige and crashed fatally. He was a respected competitor, and his family, present at the track, asked that the race continue in his honor.

The paddock was shaken. The air changed.
But what stood out most was the collective respect, the silence, the tears, the nods from other drivers who knew exactly what kind of risk comes with this kind of love.

We remember Pieter not just for his skill, but for his presence in a sport that asks everything from you and rewards it with moments of greatness few get to feel.

What I’m Reading

• Surrounded by Idiots – Thomas Erikson — Breaks down human behavior into color-coded types: red, yellow, green, and blue. If you lead people, hire people, or get frustrated by people, this book is a cheat code for managing different minds without losing yours.

• The Power of Discipline – Daniel Walter — Zero fluff. This one drills the truth home: you don’t need better goals—you need stronger follow-through.

AI Radar

• Amazon’s “Enhance My Listing” — New AI tool for sellers that rewrites and optimizes product listings using Bedrock. Smarter listings = more sales.

• ServiceNow AI Agent Fabric — A multi-agent platform for enterprise automation. Think task bots that talk to each other across systems.

• Google NotebookLM Mobile Apps — NotebookLM is going mobile. AI-powered note-taking and source summaries are now in your pocket, and they will launch on May 20.

• Azion’s Edge AI Upgrades — Edge-deployed models (Mistral, Florence, Qwen) with lower latency, better privacy, and lower cost. Real AI at the edge is here.

• Warner Bros. Discovery’s “Cycling Central Intelligence” — AI for live sports broadcasting. Real-time athlete data, race context, and storytelling tools—debuted at UCI World Series.

Question I’m Pondering

What am I tolerating that’s slowly making me weaker?

Until Next Time

Don’t wait to feel ready.
Decide. Move. Repeat.
That’s how you build anything that lasts.

– Jacques

P.S. If you enjoyed this, share it with someone who thinks like you.

Check out other things I’m busy with:

• We Edit Podcasts – A full-service B2B podcasting agency that helps brands turn listeners into customers.

• Hunting Portal – Your next hunting adventure starts here. Outfitters, taxidermists, gear heads, and more.

• Halalisana—We help township-based businesses grow, scale, and thrive in South Africa. We offer conferencing, co-working, and a coding academy.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about growth, aging, and how different I feel from the kid who started his first business. Back then, I moved fast because I didn’t know any better. I took risks because fear hadn’t caught up yet. It was raw, messy, and full of momentum.

Now? I’m older. I’ve got a wife of 10 years, two incredible kids, multiple exits under my belt, and hundreds of employees across different continents. The stakes are higher. The noise is louder. The weight of responsibility is real.

But here’s what I’ve learned:

You don’t stop evolving just because you’re comfortable. Or successful. Or older. You only stop if you choose to.

We all look back sometimes and wish we’d known more, moved differently, thought bigger, or simpler. And that reflection? It’s worth paying attention to. Because if you don’t, life repeats the lessons until you do.

50 Things I’d Tell My Younger Self

In 2014, I wrote a list of 16 things I’d tell my younger self. A decade later, I’ve got a lot more to say.

Let’s dive in.

1. Get serious about your health early. Nothing else matters without it.

2. Your wife will be your greatest asset—treat her that way every day.

3. Saying “no” is a superpower. Use it often and without guilt.

4. Speed is good. Endurance is better.

5. Your kids won’t care about your work, they’ll care if you were there.

6. Don’t fake confidence. Build competence, it’s quieter and more lethal.

7. Everything is sales. Learn how to sell early.

8. You’ll never regret over-communicating.

9. Build things that outlast you.

10. Rest is a tool, not a reward.

11. Learn to sit with discomfort, it’s where growth happens.

12. Take the meeting. But don’t take the bait.

13. Integrity is expensive. Pay it anyway.

14. Hire slow, fire fast. Always.

15. Forget perfection. Speed of iteration wins.

16. You don’t need motivation. You need systems.

17. Watch your circle. Who you spend time with writes your future.

18. Your instincts are better than you think, trust them.

19. The best deals happen off the record.

20. Ownership > Titles. Every time.

21. Being a father will break you open in the best way. Let it.

22. Learn to love boredom, it’s where clarity is born.

23. Stay out of debt unless you’re using it as a tool.

24. Don’t outsource your values.

25. Build things that make you proud to tell your kids about.

26. Reputation takes years to build and seconds to destroy. Guard it.

27. The loudest person in the room usually knows the least.

28. Stay dangerous, complacency kills edge.

29. Never stop learning, even when you think you’ve “made it.”

30. Don’t let success make you soft.

31. Build margin in your life; financial, emotional, and physical.

32. People will copy you. Let them. Execution wins.

33. Be kind, but don’t mistake that for weakness.

34. Chase peace, not just happiness.

35. Track your wins, but study your losses.

36. Comparison is poison. Run your own race.

37. Your greatest ideas will come when you’re outside, not behind a screen.

38. Work out your own definition of success earlier.

39. Stay humble. The market can humble you overnight.

40. Make time for friends who sharpen you.

41. Never stop asking: “What’s the worst that can happen?”

42. Don’t take criticism from people you wouldn’t take advice from.

43. Learn to love the process, not just the result.

44. Money solves money problems, nothing more.

45. Build things worth talking about.

46. Don’t chase trends. Build what matters.

47. Slow down when things get overwhelming, speed up when you’re clear.

48. Make sure your calendar reflects your priorities, not just your obligations.

49. Talk about money more, you’d have saved yourself a lot of headaches.

50. At the end of it all, it’s not about exits or accolades. It’s about the people who love you when everything else is stripped away.

I actually came up with 117 things, but we’ll stick it to 50 for today.

What I’m Listening To

Beatboxing has taken over my household lately, our eldest is fascinated by music, instruments, and sound itself. We’ve been watching video after video, and honestly, the skill level in the scene keeps blowing my mind.

Vahtang’s take on Black Betty is next-level. And if you want a deeper dive, check out Chezame’s reaction videos, they break down what makes these performances insane.

Question I’m Pondering

Am I building a life my kids will want to model or just one they’ll inherit?

Until Next Time

Keep building what matters.

Love your people well.

– Jacques

P.S. If you enjoyed this, share it with someone who thinks like you.

Check out other things I’m busy with:

• We Edit Podcasts – A full-service B2B podcasting agency that helps brands turn listeners into customers.

• Hunting Portal – Your next hunting adventure starts here. Outfitters, taxidermists, gear heads, and more.

• Halalisana — We help township-based businesses grow, scale, and thrive in South Africa. We offer conferencing, co-working, and a coding academy.

In 2010, Scott Belsky mailed me a copy of his new book Making Ideas Happen. I was a few companies deep, fresh out of school, and moving fast. That book changed something in me.

It gave shape to chaos.

I’d been running off instinct and ambition, raw and untamed. Scott’s words introduced structure to the storm: systems to compartmentalize ideas, frameworks to excavate value from mental trenches. It gave me tools to build deliberately.

I picked the book up again last week, 15 years later.
It hit me like a brick to the chest.

I remembered the early days, when everything felt urgent, when momentum was currency, and I still believed I could bend the world to my will. I had no blueprint, no safety net, just drive.

Then life got louder.

Businesses scaled, teams grew, and the weight of responsibility set in. Problems got more complex. The chaos didn’t go away, it just got cleaner, more expensive, more… corporate.

Success crept in like a sedative.

And over time, it dulled the edge that got me here in the first place.

Last week, I caught a glimpse of that earlier version of me.

And I’ll be honest.

I miss him.

3 Things Worth Sharing

1. Canada Needs a Reset

Let’s be blunt. Canada’s in trouble.

We’re sitting near the bottom of the global health care system performance index (2nd last according to some reports), the economy is shrinking, and unemployment continues to rise due to immigration. And somehow, we’re still pretending the current leadership is competent.

The Liberal government has stacked catastrophe on catastrophe, from housing to healthcare to policy paralysis. And now the whisper is Carney? That would be an outright disaster.

I’m not a conspiracy guy. This isn’t about dark agendas or shadow figures.
It’s about data. It's about decline.

If you’re in Canada, you vote Blue. — 28th April

If you’re in the U.S., you vote Red. — Done

We’ll leave it at that.

2. Education Is Broken — Ask Zach Yadegari

Zach Yadegari built an AI business called Cal AI that generated $30M in its first year. Yet he faced rejection from 15 out of the 18 colleges he applied to, despite boasting a 4.0 GPA and a 34 on the ACT. Stanford, MIT, Harvard, and Yale?

“Not a chance, bud.”

Why? Because the traditional education system rewards compliance over capability. It’s a legacy machine built by people who wouldn’t last a week in the real-world environments they claim to prepare students for.

This isn’t a one-off problem.

It’s structural.

And while there are brilliant people working on new models, the pace of change isn’t fast enough. It’s going to take parents, operators, technologists, and yes, builders to flip the system.

I’m working on my own version of this, because I can’t have my kids sitting at a desk for 8 hours a day, being trained to memorize instead of create.

I’m not raising them to start “working” at 6, to die at 25, and to be buried at 65.

The system is broken. It’s our job to build something better.

3. Biltong > Jerky

Let’s settle this.

Biltong isn’t jerky. It’s better.

If you’re from South Africa, you already know. Biltong or droëwors are the go-to snacks. Not soaked in sugar. No fake smoke flavor. Just meat, spice, air, and time.

And if you aren’t, well today is your lucky day, here’s a quick video on how to do it properly.

You're welcome.

What I’m Reading

The Let Them Theory – Mel Robbins

I don’t usually reach for self-help, but this one hit different. It’s sharp. No fluff.

Takeaways:

• Stop managing other people’s expectations, it’s a losing game. Let them misunderstand you. Let them doubt. Let them go.

• You don’t need to fix everything. Most of the chaos in your life? Optional.

• The more you try to control others, the less control you have over yourself.

• Letting go isn’t passive; it’s power.

It’s a simple premise, but powerful, especially if you’ve been in the trenches too long, managing too much.

What I’m Watching

THE GRINDSTONE – A Wyoming Elk Hunt

Not your average hunting film.

Grit, cold, commitment, and the kind of solitude that resets you. It’s more about why we go out there than what we bring home. The cinematography is clean, the pace is meditative, and it’ll make you want to throw your phone in a drawer and disappear into the mountains for a while.

Question I’m Pondering

What would I work on if I wasn’t trying to protect what I’ve already built?

Until Next Time

Don’t wait until it’s perfect, just make it real.

– Jacques

P.S. If you enjoyed this, share it with someone who thinks like you.

Check out other things I’m busy with:

• We Edit Podcasts – A full-service B2B podcasting agency that helps brands turn listeners into customers.

• Hunting Portal – Your next hunting adventure starts here. Outfitters, taxidermists, gear heads, and more.

• Halalisana — We help township-based businesses grow, scale, and thrive in South Africa. We offer conferencing, co-working, and a coding academy.

We’ve built entire industries around “getting things done” instead of doing what matters.

Most people aren’t productive—they’re just busy avoiding hard decisions.
They spend hours tweaking dashboards, fiddling with calendars, optimizing workflows…

Not out of discipline. Out of fear.

Fear of committing.
Fear of being wrong.
Fear of actually doing the work.

Real builders don’t optimize. They execute.

Clean systems don’t build great companies. Clarity does.

3 Things Worth Sharing

1. Funding

There’s a dangerous myth in early-stage entrepreneurship:

“If I raise more, I’ll win.”

In reality, venture capital doesn’t solve your problems—it amplifies them.

• Bad hiring? You’ll do more of it.

• No product-market fit? You’ll scale dysfunction.

• No clear value prop? You’ll spend a year building features that nobody needs.

VC’s aren’t looking for perfect models, they’re looking for momentum, clarity, and asymmetric upside. The smartest ones are backing systems and founders, not slide decks and hype.

Here’s what I’ve learned (and seen) over two decades building and investing:

• The best rounds don’t chase headlines—they chase heat.
  Warm intros and hype don’t beat real traction and founder clarity.

• A lean, focused team with a clear niche will outperform a bloated, funded team almost every time.
  Especially in markets that punish burn.

• VC’s don’t fund ideas. They fund inevitability.
  Your job as a founder is to make your execution feel inevitable. Not optional. Not probable. Inevitable.

If you can’t make money without VC, you probably won’t with it.

2. Speed

The McMurtry Spéirling, a fan-assisted electric prototype, has set a new benchmark by becoming the fastest car to lap the Top Gear test track, achieving a time of 55.9 seconds, surpassing the previous record set by a Renualt F1 Car by 3.1 seconds.

Watch the video here

Key Specs:

• Powertrain: Dual electric motors delivering approximately 1,000 bhp

• Weight: Under 1,000 kg

• 0–60 mph: Approximately 1.4 seconds

• Top Speed: Electronically limited to around 150 mph

• Downforce: 2,000 kg generated by a fan system, even at a standstill

• Noise Level: Fan system emits about 120 dB, comparable to a jet engine

This achievement underscores the potential of electric vehicles in high-performance applications, challenging conventional automotive engineering and pushing the boundaries of speed and design.

3. Big Shift

Google just dropped Ironwood—its most powerful TPU yet, built specifically for AI inference at planetary scale. For most people, this goes over their heads.

Key Specifications:

• Compute Power: Each Ironwood chip delivers up to 4,614 TFLOPs of FP8 performance. ​

• Memory: Equipped with 192 GB of High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) per chip, offering 7.2 TB/s bandwidth.

• Scalability: Supports configurations up to 9,216 chips per pod, achieving a total of 42.5 exaFLOPs. ​

• Efficiency: Delivers 2x the performance per watt compared to its predecessor, Trillium. ​

• Networking: Features 1.2 Tbps bidirectional Inter-Chip Interconnect (ICI), enhancing chip-to-chip communication. ​

• SparseCore: Includes an enhanced SparseCore accelerator for processing ultra-large embeddings, beneficial for recommendation systems and scientific computations.

Training gets all the headlines, but inference is where the real game is played. Ironwood is built not to impress, it's built to serve AI to billions in real time. This marks a significant leap in AI hardware, emphasizing real-time decision-making capabilities.​

The race isn’t to build the biggest model. It’s to have the fastest deployment.

What I’m Reading

Defense Reformation – 18 Theses by Shyam Sankar (Palantir CTO)

“Startups, not states, will define the next generation of defense.”

Shyam breaks down why legacy defense contractors can’t keep up. Procurement is now a liability. Speed is deterrence. Software is the new battlefield.

Takeaways:

• Sovereignty depends on velocity.

• Defense must be deployable in hours, not years.

• Startups like Palantir, Anduril, and Shield AI are the new prime contractors

This is what defense looks like when it's built like a startup. In an age when 51 becomes 5, times are changing, and we’re heading back to a multi-input defense approach. The big players are frustrated, but we’re in this mess because of them.

What I’m Listening To

Mike Ritland Podcast – Hivemind Swarm Pilot ft. Brandon Tseng (Shield AI)

Brandon Tseng, ex-Navy SEAL and co-founder of Shield AI, breaks down autonomous warfare: drones that fly without GPS, make decisions on the edge, and win through real-time intelligence.

“We don’t need more humans in the loop. We need faster loops.”

AI Radar

• Suno v3 – Studio-quality songs with vocals and lyrics in seconds.

• FireCut – AI cuts long-form videos into viral-ready shorts.

• Reka AI – New contender in frontier models, with strong performance and clean architecture deployable anywhere.

• Limitless AI – Most wearable Ai assistant for meetings, notes, and context tracking.

Question I’m Pondering

What if governance should be built like startups. Fast iterations, small teams, and local ownership?

Maybe the solution isn’t reforming the big machine. Maybe it’s replacing it entirely.

Until Next Time

Back to building.

Your challenge:

Look at one system you rely on—your schedule, your news, your workflows, and ask: Is this designed for clarity or control?

See what happens when you rebuild it from scratch.

See you next Thursday.
— Jacques

P.S. If you enjoyed this, share it with someone who thinks like you.

Check out other things I’m busy with:

• We Edit Podcasts – A full-service B2B podcasting agency that helps brands turn listeners into customers.

• Hunting Portal – Your next hunting adventure starts here. Outfitters, taxidermists, gear heads, and more.

• Halalisana — We help township-based businesses grow, scale, and thrive in South Africa. We offer conferencing, co-working, and a coding academy.

• Melck Group – Buy undervalued real estate in a small coastal town in South Africa.

Peace is underrated.

Not the kind that comes from a meditation retreat—but the kind you earn. The kind that shows up when your actions match your instincts. When you're no longer borrowing goals from Twitter threads or building things that drain you just to prove something.

I used to chase momentum—more speed, more noise, more wins. Now I chase alignment. And it's not quiet because it's empty — it's quiet because it’s right.

Most people are addicted to the chaos. But chaos is expensive. Peace? That’s real wealth.

3 Things Worth Sharing

1. Business Insight

The best businesses don’t “scale”—they deepen.

Instead of obsessing over growth, ask: Can I go deeper? Deeper into customer problems, deeper into value, deeper into storytelling.

Depth compounds.

2. Tech

Figure 01 Robots are here—and Brett Adcock is moving like a freight train. This isn’t just Boston Dynamics 2.0—these humanoids are being rolled out in the real world, working shoulder-to-shoulder with employees at BMW. If this lands the way it looks like it will, the next industrial shift won’t be driven by code—it’ll walk, balance, and hold a wrench.

Worth watching closely.

3. Adventure

Went bowhunting for fallow deer in the Bedford mountains this past weekend with a few mates. Early mornings, cold air, and long walks in the veld. No signal, no noise — just good company and wild country.

The best thinking happens when you're tracking something.

What I’m Reading

• High Agency — an essay on the rare trait of bending reality without waiting for permission. If you’re a builder, this one hits deep.

• Revisiting “Shoe Dog” — still the rawest look into building something from nothing.

What I’m Listening to

• Wesley Huff on The Joe Rogan Experience — heavy-hitting honesty on culture, meaning, and modern confusion.

• Nathan Michael on Eye on AI — The future of AI-Powered Drones and Autonomous Warfare with Shield AI

• Fred Again – Boiler Room Set — energy in audio form. The soundtrack to building with feeling. Evenings feel like mornings.

Currently working on

Halalisana Township Incubator is located in Humansdorp, South Africa. We help local entrepreneurs move from idea to execution, guiding them from pre-incubation through to funding and scale. We currently have 21 businesses incubated. We also offer conferencing facilities, co-working, and a coding academy for kids.

It’s early, but every step is rewarding

AI Radar

• Firebase Studio – Just launched. Makes backend logic, authentication, and DB workflows stupid simple. Feels like cheating.

• 21st.dev – A clean, well-curated repository of modern components. Great for building fast without starting from zero.

• GPT-4o Image Generation – The new image feature is insane. Sharp control, stunning quality, fast output. Feels like we just jumped 2 versions ahead of everything else.

• Bolt Integrates Stripe — A longed-for feature to make sales integration for no-code app building easy.

Question I’m Pondering

What would this look like if it were simple?

Why I’m Writing This

It’s been 10 years since I last shared anything consistently online. Privacy gave me peace, but it also took something: the outlet, the friction, the signal chain that comes from pressing publish.

No feedback loop. No resistance. No community. Just me. Whilst I do enjoy my silence, silence can also become a cage.

And the way I live—quiet, enclosed, intentional - I need an outlet again.

This newsletter is the start of that. A place to think out loud, build in public, and start conversations that matter.

Until Next Time

– Jacques

P.S. If you enjoyed this, share it with someone who thinks like you.

Check out other things I’m busy with:

• We Edit Podcasts – A full-service B2B podcasting agency that helps brands turn listeners into customers.

• Hunting Portal – Your next hunting adventure starts here. Outfitters, taxidermists, gear heads, and more.

• Halalisana—We help township-based businesses grow, scale, and thrive in South Africa. We offer conferencing, co-working, and a coding academy.

• Melck Group – Buy undervalued real estate in a small coastal town in South Africa.

It’s interesting to look back over the past few years and see how the startup scene has evolved. A few years back, new business owners weren’t running after funding to put their startups on the map. They came up with creative ways to do so and pushed the boundaries of what we thought was impossible to accomplish.

Now more than ever though I get emails from startup founders looking for funding to get their ideas or startups off the ground. They feel their ideas are worth billions, but don’t really want to put their own money at risk for the sake of it and it’s starting to weigh down on the industry.

A few years ago you needed to work hard to get where you want to be and no I’m not saying it’s easy pickings today, but listening to founders trashing their ideas because they couldn’t get funding makes me cringe.

Anyway, let’s not go into depth about the startup scene and how things have changed, let’s rather look at the main reason why startups fail. No, it isn’t because they have a bad product or couldn’t reach their funding goals.

The main reason is that they can’t find enough paying customers to sustain themselves and grow their businesses month after month. Yes, there are needles in the haystack, but the majority of the time, finding a founder that knows what he or she is doing first time round is very rare.

Jason Evanish wrote a solid article two years ago on practical tips to acquire your first paying customer and that can be found here.

In this article though, I want to give you five broad areas you can shift your focus towards for acquiring your first paying customers. At the end of the day, you need to know which areas to focus on when going live with your product or business.

A) Inner Network

Whenever I start or get involved in something new I reach out to a few people close to me to find out what they think of the business, I get their feedback and more-so have them test run it for me. Every single time I’ve done this, I’ve had people signup for long-term use. Yes, it does depend on their industries and what service or solution the business provided, but the point is, people close to you like to add value and be involved with whatever you’re working on.

B) Cold Calling

A lot of you might think that cold calling is dead. I don’t agree and I can show you millions of other business men and women who don’t agree either. You need a good sales team that know what they are doing and believe in the products they are selling. If you’re new to sales, dive into some training by Chet Holmes or Grant Cardone. There are a lot of sales trainers out their that can help you smarten up your game.

C) Suggestion Approach

Many a times I’ve had people reach out to me to suggest a new product that is available on the market. Don’t be scared to put yourself out there. If you feel that your product is a good fit for a certain business or person, reach out to them and suggest they try out the product. Yes, you might feel bit biased about it, but that’s completely normal. If you don’t tell people about your business, why should others?

If you don’t tell people about your business, why should others?

Click To Tweet

D) Special Pricing

When launching a business you will often find people running special pricing offers for the first month or so to get as many people through the doors as possible. When you launch and reach out to different platforms for marketing distribution, offer their readers or customers special pricing when being referred by them. Make sure that you as the business also run special pricing offers, but just not as low as through the platform you’re being launched through.

E) Establish Referral Partnerships

Build a strong network of people that believe in you and your business and let them help you sell your products or services. By offering them 20% or a margin dependent on the selling price of the product, they can put your product in front of people you might not have access to. Establish relationships with people that can help you take your business to the next level.

Conclusion

Now don’t get me wrong, these areas I mentioned above aren’t the only areas you can focus on. There are hundreds of different ways to find new customers and a lot of them depends on your industry too. So, if you’re looking for more, go back and read Jason’s article I mentioned. He put together 95 other ways you can find your first paying customers and if you’re still unsatisfied, head to Google and search Growth Hacking. There is enough information for you to immerse yourself in.

I was sitting down with some friends Sunday afternoon and we were talking about the likely hood of success. What the odds are for someone to make it as an entrepreneur and how many people are left in the wake with broken hearts and dreams.

To be honest, the majority of business owners or label them as, “entrepreneurs,” if you want, are likely to fail.

However, the entrepreneurs that end up succeeding are the ones who learn from failure. They don’t allow failure to get them down. They see it as a learning curve. A learning curve that takes hard work, determination and risk taking.

There are cases where first time entrepreneurs succeed, but it’s in the minority of society.

Entrepreneurship isn’t for the fearful amongst us, it takes a certain type of person to be able to push past the unconventional thinking patterns, hard work, stress, risk-taking, unstable and secure-less lifestyle.

I decided to make a quick list of six reasons why you won’t make it as an entrepreneur. Don’t see these as stumbling blocks though, if you believe, you can achieve. All of us started somewhere.

1. Can’t handle the unknown

This seems simple as life is lived in an unknown fashion, but it’s about more than that. It comes down to not knowing how the ins and outs of your industry, the relentless competition, where your next paycheck is coming from or even how far down – success road, your company is going to be in 12 months.

It’s a mix of variables that are only lightly explored in the paragraph above and can dig much deeper than the scenarios mentioned.

2. Can’t handle stress

I’m sorry. Did I just use a word you don’t like? Deal with it. Stress is part of climbing the ladder. Whether in a corporate environment or starting a new business, you encounter stress. It’s up to you to decide how you handle it, whether it motivates you or mean the end of you.

A person can learn to handle stress in different ways and some people are more prone to it than others. If you can’t handle stress, I wouldn’t advise entrepreneurship.

3. Don’t want to work more than 6 hours a day

It’s probably one of the most frequent things I come across. Yes, established and successful entrepreneurs do have more freedom than those just starting out. We are able to set our own schedules and work around that, but if you’re looking at becoming an entrepreneur, you should be married to the grind. Ok, not literally, but you shouldn’t be scared or find it irregular to work 12-16 hour days. Everyday of the week.

If you’re passionate about what you’re building, there shouldn’t be anything stopping you.

4. Need a lot of personal time

Unfortunately you won’t get paid if you take personal time off. You stipulate and set the bar for your income by how many hours you put into crafting your result. If you’re fond of personal/me time, entrepreneurship isn’t a good fit for you.

5. Can’t sacrifice time

The majority of society always points out how important work and life balance is. As a fellow entrepreneur, I agree, it’s important, but only after I’ve hit my goals, closed my deals and don’t have to worry about my bills or lifestyle expenses.

A lot of entrepreneurs nowadays emphasize on putting family first, however, when they were grinding away and working hard, they weren’t married, have kids or grand-kids. Times change and so do priorities.

A work life balance is important, but make sure it fits into your schedule of how you do things.

6. Can’t handle delayed self gratification

Most important of them all. If you are impatient and want results now. Don’t become an entrepreneur. We focus on long term returns and ignore short term gratification. It takes years to build your company into a sustainable enterprise. Yes, there are exceptions, but those are rare and can’t be bargained upon.

You have to understand that sacrifice is part of the journey. It is what makes it all worth it.

Conclusion

The world are full of people that are stuck in corporate positions that are perfectly formed to become entrepreneurs and they now have the experience to pursue entrepreneurship. I am never against anyone looking to get into entrepreneurship and encourage it on the contrary. Just make sure you commit to it and don’t give up when the first wall goes up. Push through it and pursue your dreams. There is nothing better than showing someone you made it that doubted you in the first place.

Your business is only as strong as your brand. Your brand is only as strong as your reach and your reach is amplified by the core people that make up your business. It’s a cycle that needs to be focused on.

One of the many questions I often have to answer coming from new business owners or founders are related to marketing their business. They want to know where they can market their business. It’s not often times really about the, “How” for them, but its about the where.

People believe that platforms make a difference. The more the merrier and in 2015 the world around us are controlled by different platforms curating information every second of every day.

With the information available today it’s more than possible to launch a successful business and sell it in a year or two for a lot of profit. If that is your goal of course. For the majority of business starters, they want to build sustainable businesses that generate revenue and a decent size of profit that scales year after year in order to create freedom for themselves.

In the list I’ve created below, I show you where you can take that new idea that you’ve put together, that course that you’ve launched, that summit that you’ve scheduled and reach people that never knew you existed.

This list was put together in no particular order.

1. Your own Website

2. Email marketing

3. Direct mail

4. Guest posting

5. Giveaways

6. Twitter

7. Facebook

8. YouTube

9. LinkedIn

10. Snapchat

11. Tumblr

12. Google+

13. Public Relations

14. Pinterest

15. Instagram

16. Periscope

17. Google Adwords

18. Facebook Advertising

19. Twitter Advertising

20. Meerkat

21. Landing pages

22. Tele-marketing

23. Webinars

24. Ebooks

25. Result Case Studies

26. Blogging

27. Personalised URLs (PURLs)

28. Print advertising

29. Affiliate programs

30. Partnership Programs

31. Billboards

32. Banner advertising

33. Magazine/newspaper advertising

34. Video Blogging

35. Podcasting

36. Business Directories

37. Networking Meetups

38. Conferences

39. Virtual Summits

Conclusion

If there are any additions you’d like me to make to the list, please let me know. I tried to cover those that are in my scope and which we use or have used in the past. Hopefully you found some value in this article.

I find it interesting how often I run into friends, colleagues or just people that I meet that struggle to push out content. I mean content at all. They just throw their hands in the air and wave it like they just don’t care…Haha, no, they keep saying they don’t have any ideas.

Nothing. Nada. Zip.

That’s usually when I push James Altucher’s book – Choose Yourself into their hand(their inbox via Amazon..Shhh) and tell them to get back to me within a week.

People are able to go from nothing to something in a matter of days. They are able to push out content, come up with ideas and never run dry again. If you think I’m talking smack, go read his book and then follow it up with Claudia Altucher’s book- How to Become an Idea Machine. It will change your life.

Don’t take my word for it, try it for yourself.

Now back to why you’re actually here.

A lot of people struggle from writers block, but don’t do anything about it. Sitting on your behind dreaming about how big you want your brand to become won’t get you there.

It might help you set up the framework of what you’re working towards, but the article won’t write itself.

I have a simple formula I like to call the GRINDO method.

1. Go on Vacation

This doesn’t only apply to writers block, it applies across the board. If you’re stuck in any situation where you feel overwhelmed and aren’t able to perform like you usually do. Take a few days off, book a holiday and escape. Without your phone, any connectivity to the outside world. Your laptop is fine, but stay offline.

2. Read and Read some more

Pick up some books as the airport or book store on your way. There is nothing that rekindles ideas like reading someone’s book about how they went through the troubling times of life and got out on the other side of it. Don’t just say you’re going to read, actually do.

3. Idea Lists

Force yourself to come up with new ideas everyday. You can start out slow and work your way up gradually. You don’t have to pump out 30 ideas in the first day, but you could do better than five. Read Claudia Altucher’s book. Just do it.

4. New Routines

Change up your routines. Currently wake up at 7AM? Get up at 6AM, setup a morning routine that is completely different from your everyday life and follow it profusely for a week or two. Perhaps make it part of your lifestyle. Change is good for everyone.

5. Drink some fine wine

If you drink wine, invest in some good wine. Don’t buy the $15-$25 bottle, go out and invest in some good wine($100+). Have it with your dinner or as a treat in the evenings. Take it all in- the smell, taste, color, make the moment last.

6. One person in mind

Write for one person. Choose the one person that you want to purely give some advice to and start writing. Write about what’s on your heart, what you wish you could tell them and pull that through to your public writing too. Teach someone something, one person only and publicize it. It’s bound to be one of your best pieces yet.

Conclusion

It’s true that there are different ways and methods to get rid of your writers block, however the above worked for me every single time.

Don’t take my advice for it, just give it a try. It really is as simple as can be.

If you’ve been around the marketing space in recent years, you already have this looping through your head on a daily basis… “The money is in the list, the money is in the list, and the money is in the list.”

People have frantically scoured to find ways to increase their email list size and often times it hasn’t been the right way.

Now I’m not going to go through a long list of how not to build your list today, instead I am going to focus on one little aspect.

Giveaways.

The reason I want to talk about giveaways is because I see how many times people make the mistake of thinking that giveaways are the best way to build their list. Don’t get me wrong, running giveaways to build your list is a big multiplier for creating awareness and building hype around your brand.

However, if you are going to build your entire list around giveaways, your entire list is going to keep expecting things for FREE. I’m sorry, but it’s the truth!

I have seen a lot of people start new blogs or brands over the years and focus on creating reach with giveaway, after giveaway, after giveaway. Heck, I even did it when we launched RichVibe in 2011. I gave away an iPhone 5 when it just popped onto the scene and then followed it up with another giveaway.

Suddenly we had 20,000 people on our email list and it felt good. Now to a lot of people 20,000 might not be a lot, but remember this was pre Kingsumo Giveaways.

What do you think happened to our email list once we started sending new blog posts their way? Asked them to complete surveys? Asked them to start buying stuff from us?

Yes, people started unsubscribing. Others reported our content as spam. Engagement dropped and I started to get frustrated because people weren’t buying, reading our articles, or completing our surveys.

I realized that list building had more to it than just racking up numbers to show off to the world. It was about building a long-term relationship by consistently adding value to our subscribers, giving them what they wanted to hear, and building a brand around what we were good at – linking consumers with luxury products on a daily basis.

Yes, a lot has changed for RichVibe since 2011, but the model remains the same.

Here are my quick tips for building a solid email list without basing it on Giveaways:

Targeted giveaways are good for exposure

A targeted giveaway is a good strategy to build an email list. What? I’m contradicting myself. No, I’m saying that targeted giveaways for your niche is a good launch strategy for creating buzz around your brand. Take a look at the result that Josh Earl got when he ran a targeted giveaway on his site: Growing my email list 3,418% in 2 weeks.

He specifically targeted developers by providing a license to the Sublime Editor. He’s a developer and decided to run it right down his readers avenue. The majority of his readers are also developers and therefore the engaged audience were consistent with his brands audience.

Engagement rates will be down

As you can see with the results that Josh Earl got, as mentioned above, he also experienced a massive drop in engagement rates after the giveaway was over. A lot of people provide you with their email address simply because they want things for free. When your giveaway is over, don’t get frustrated when a lot of new subscribers start dropping off your list. It’s completely normal, they were only using you to get free stuff. Haha.

Be diverse

If you provide a diverse array of content for your email list, you will constantly keep them engaged. One of my favorite newsletters is written by Ryan Lee. I read every single one of his newsletters and enjoy it because of how personal he gets with them. Yes, he does often list something for sale, but he does it strategically and the entire point of the newsletter isn’t just to sell, but to engage with his subscribers on different emotional levels everyday.

Build trust and provide value

Having an email list is like having access to someones front door of their house. You knock on their door every time you hit send. Therefore you need to make it worth while for them to keep inviting you inside. Once inside, stop talking about yourself and shift your focus to them. See how you can help them, how you can provide value, and how you can start gaining their trust. Like Gary Vaynerchuck says, “Stop hard selling and start focusing on building that trust level. It’s all about the Jab, Jab, Jab and then deliver the right hook.”

Conclusion

I wrote this article today to give you some tips on being wise when building an email list with giveaways. I don’t think a giveaway is bad for business, just be strategic about when you host them. Special holidays or your business’ birthday might be a good pick. However, the most important rule to follow for list building is to nurture and develop your relationship with your audience over time. Have fun.

Valentines evening was spent with my beautiful wife over a glass of wine at a local eatery by the name of, “The Barn.” It’s located in Mont Kiara, Kuala Lumpur, our current stop on our travels that we decided to do this year.

For those of you who don’t know, Carli and I got married on January 3rd of this year. It’s coming up on two months….Time flies.

We had a great day that far exceeded our expectations and were enormously blessed by our family and friends.

So why am I writing this? I’ve talked to a lot of different young men over the past year that were wanting to get married, but a lot of them didn’t truly understand why she was worth marrying. They obviously fell in love with her for their own reasons, but when the idea came up of spending the rest of their lives together, fear and delays became the norm.

Now I know this article won’t apply to everyone out there, but if you’re looking at getting married, it’s important to make sure you make the right decision.

So here is my 11 Signs Why She’s Worth Marrying…

1. She shares your values

This is probably the most important part for me. She has to be on-board with and share your values. Spirituality, kids, sex, family, life and even divorce. If your future wife doesn’t see eye to eye with you, you’re better off finding someone who does.

2. She understands your vision

She get’s you. Your vision, your dreams and ambitions. She knows that you’re willing to do whatever it takes to achieve those dreams. She supports your vision for family and how both of you want to build your life together.

3. She respects and honors you

Respect goes both ways, but it’s important for your future wife to understand the traits that accompany respect and honor. It’s not about submission or control, it’s about companionship. If she respects you, she truly supports you, understands you and loves you.

4. She doesn’t just think about herself

Selfishness is the root of all misunderstandings in marriage. I can’t begin to stress how many arguments could be avoided if selfishness was left outside of marriage. Yes, as humans we are naturally selfish, but if she has learned to understand the root of it and overcome it, you’re setup for a winning relationship.

5. She puts your relationship first

She goes out of her way to show you that you come first. Whether it’s standing up for you, always talking highly of your relationship and you as a person or just cancelling plans because something important to you came up that needed attention. It’s you and her for life. Make sure she shares that same view.

6. She is your best friend

She should be the one you can’t wait to speak to everyday, the one that you share everything with, the one that laughs at your jokes, understands your moods and finishes your sentences. Friendship is the base on which your marriage is built. Don’t overlook it.

7. She is attractive

There is a person out there for everyone and therefore it’s important that your wife is attractive to you. Would you be able to wake up 40 years from now and still see the beauty that you married? Our outside appearances might change overtime due to aging, but the person you married 40 years ago is still by your side.

8. She is a hard worker

This obviously differs from guy to guy, but for me it’s important to have a wife that isn’t afraid of working. I’m not saying she has to take care of everything whilst you sit back, but running a household with kids eventually is a lot of hard work. It isn’t all about the laundry and the dishes, it’s about the love she has for you which leads to serving, support and working hard.

9. She strives to always be better

It’s important that your future wife focuses on developing herself as she matures into the woman she was always intended to be. Growth is important in marriage and having a wife that believes in bettering herself everyday is a win, win situations.

10. She knows what she wants in life

She needs to know what she wants in life. Being held up with decisions and misunderstandings because of it is avoidable if she knows where she wants to go in life. This accounts for her personal life and you as a couple.

11. She is able to stand up for herself

She should have her own say. Being a walkover won’t help your relationship. If she disagrees, she should be able to stand up and say something about it. It’s not about ruling, but more about working together.

Conclusion

That’s my take on 11 signs for you. Now some of you might say that I missed out on having her put God first all the time. In our relationship God isn’t part of our priority lists, he is our lives. Therefore God comes first automatically in everything we do. If you were to put God on a list, you’d only focus on him for a few minutes of the day and that’s not how we live our lives.

What would you add to this list of worthy signs? Let me know below.

For me an Entrepreneur is someone who owns a business, employs people and is able to step away from that business if they have to for a brief period of time whilst it grows and they rest.

Over the years I’ve met a lot of people who have referred to themselves as entrepreneurs. Some of them were in fact entrepreneurs, but the rest of them were individuals who were either freelancing, just setting up shop or running their businesses by themselves without any hired help.

What I have come to notice lately amongst the next generation of business owners is that the word entrepreneur is thrown around way too much. From individuals sitting on ideas, or just having launched a blog they immediately start calling themselves entrepreneurs.

Some of them do go onto being successful entrepreneurs, but the majority of them don’t ever really get their ideas, businesses or blogs off the ground as they would have wanted to…but still they call themselves entrepreneurs…

So it got me thinking. We look at people like Richard Branson, Bill Gates and Elon Musk – they are called entrepreneurs in their field of expertise as they’ve been able to help change thousands, if not millions of lives over the course of their careers.

Then we look at the next generation of business starters calling themselves entrepreneurs, do you think the word “Entrepreneur” is being overused amongst new business starters?

I decided to drop a quick tweet on Twitter to a few people and asked them what they thought about the situation. Obviously my tweet wasn’t as detailed as this article, but they caught on to what I was talking about.

Do you think the term “Entrepreneur” is overused amongst new starters?

@Jacquesvh nope- doesn't matter what you call it as long as you are moving forward and taking shots! :)

— Jaime Tardy (@eventualmillion) January 30, 2015

@Jacquesvh Yep. Totally. I think it's kind of a douchebag term that's ego-loaded. Not in every case but too often.

— Jordan Harbinger (@TheArtofCharm) January 30, 2015

@Jacquesvh Maybe. Either way, what you call yourself isn't thing that matters. It's what you do that counts.

— James Clear (@james_clear) January 30, 2015

@Jacquesvh Not sure. I don't mind the term. As long as you are doing something somewhat innovative.

— Dan Norris (@thedannorris) January 30, 2015

@Jacquesvh No. You earn the right to be called an Entrepreneur when you get up every time you are knocked down

— Tom Corley (@RICHHABITS) January 30, 2015

@Jacquesvh Entrepreneurs imho is someone who builds a company that employs at least one other person full time.

— Dan Martell (@danmartell) January 30, 2015

@Jacquesvh The question is "Are they REAL entrepreneurs?". Do they have a 'company', employees, a customer base? Or are they just trying?!

— Chris Ducker (@chrisducker) January 30, 2015

@Jacquesvh yes. Sadly it's come to mean "startup" rather than fast growth.

— Daniel Priestley (@DanielPriestley) January 30, 2015

@Jacquesvh entrepreneurs have their biz pay their bills.

— noah kagan (@noahkagan) January 30, 2015

@Jacquesvh I guess so. Just because there are so many wantrepreneurs out there.

— Brian Dean (@Backlinko) January 30, 2015

@Jacquesvh no

— Grant Cardone (@GrantCardone) January 30, 2015

Conclusion

At the end of the day, James is right about what he said. It’s not about what you call yourself, but rather about what you do on a daily basis. Are you building your dream or are you building someone else’s dream for them?

Let me know what you think in the comments!

Admission plays a big role in maturity. We often fail to admit our wrongs and try to justify our situations with our own opinions. When all we need to do is be teachable.

I believed I knew how life was going to turn out. I had good mentors, people that I believed could teach me a lot about life and business. I set goals, I chased them, I reached some of them and the others fell away to be pushed down a funnel and re-enter my target area.

I signaled out who I allowed to influence me and who I was going to listen to. That didn’t make me teachable, that made me blind.

I started my career young(age 13) and there were a lot of sacrifices that I made to get me where I am today. Some of them could have been avoided or handled differently, but that’s life. I had to play hard ball and fend for myself most of the time. Even though I had a team, I often times felt that I was keeping things going by myself.

I failed to see the value in things that now mean the world to me, but that is how I learned.

Today I can say that I’m thankful for the people that I now have around me, those that called me out over the years, those who helped me grow to understand how life and success go together.

Here are sixteen points I wish I could have rung home ten years ago, hopefully some of these help you through some struggles you currently face.

• It’s okay not to be okay.

• Life doesn’t always work out as planned.

• You’re never to young to start influencing people.

• There is a difference between making money and leaving a legacy.

• You shouldn’t compare your chapter 1 with someones chapter 30.

• Life is only as good as you allow it to be.

• Not all mentors are right. You are allowed to question advice.

• People will love you, people will hate you, most of the time it will have nothing to do with you.

• Things won’t stay the same, embrace change.

• Daily planning is everything.

• Relationships are your best investment.

• Help the people around you make a success of themselves.

• You can learn from everyone around you, even the store clerk at checkout.

• For success your attitude is equally as important as your ability.

• The things you often don’t like about yourself is the things other people love.

• Never be ashamed of who you are and what you’ve accomplished.

Would love to hear your thoughts and questions in the comments section.

Till next time!

You often find yourself running through life at such a pace that you miss most of the exciting things around you. You make promises to see people and a month goes by, then a year and then a decade…Where has the time gone? Where has the people gone? What have I done until now? These are all questions that you would potentially ask yourself when life comes to a staggering halt.

This actually hit me smack bang in the face today. What if I were to die today. How will I be remembered? What will I be remembered for? Who will remember me?

Everyday we take our lives for granted. We do what we have to, to survive. Most people anyway. They are stuck in unhappy careers that suck the life out of them. They die at the age of 25 and only get buried at 65. That’s reality for the majority of the population on earth anyway.

I want you to look at life differently.
Take a step back and assess your life, your lifestyle and your time. Where do you spend most of your time? What do you do most of the time? Do you influence people around you? Do you use your experience and wealth of knowledge for the greater good? When was the last time you did something good for someone else because you wanted to, not because you had to?

Think about it for a bit. Make a list of the things you’ve done for others in the past month. Short list? Long List? Why are you doing these things? Recognition? You shouldn’t be.

You should be doing it because you like helping people, not because you want your name in the newspaper.

“The heart behind the action is remembered in the long run.” – Jacquesvh

Build something that Changes Lives
If you feel that you’ve been stuck in your office job and you are going nowhere slowly, it’s time for change. You have the ability to be great, you just need to believe in yourself. I believe you can do it, so should you.

It’s time to dust off that idea book and start putting some ideas into action. You don’t want to be remembered as the guy or girl that had all the ideas, but never executed any of them do you? Well, get your ass in gear.

It’s time for change.
It’s time to start leaving a legacy behind.
It’s time to start building something that will influence people for generations to come.

The time is NOW.

How long does it take to form a habit? According to scientific research, the average human will take 30 days of constant engagement with a task daily to form a habit. Habits are good in some cases and bad in others. Habits can help you succeed or keep you from succeeding…Make sure you have good habits in place that empower you to move forward in life and not backwards.

This little poem about habits is for you..The person that needs to form habits or have tons of them. I’m sure you will be able to relate. Enjoy.

My name is habit

I am your constant companion,
I am your greatest helper or your heaviest burden.
I will push you onward or drag you down to failure.
I am at your command.

Half of the tasks that you do you might just as well
Turn over to me and I will do them quickly and correctly.

I am easily managed; you must merely be firm with me.
Show me exactly how you want something done.
After a few lessons, I will do it automatically.

I am the servant of all great people
And the regret of all failures as well.
Those who are great, I have made great.
Those who are failures, I have made failures.

I am not a machine but I will work with all its precision
Plus the intelligence of a person.

Now you may run me for profit or you may run me for ruin.
It makes no difference to me.

Take me, train me, be firm with me and
I will lay the world at your feet.
Be easy with me and I will destroy you.

I am called Habit!

[Author Unknown]