Was how long it took me to get to the point of feeling like I was doing ‘OK’ as a business owner.

That doesn’t mean I’ve ‘made it’ or that I’m guaranteed to avoid all hardship or failure or embarrassing mistakes in the future (in fact, they’re pretty certain I’m sure) but it’s a nice feeling to experience just for a minute.

Despite me writing here every day, I feel that most ‘advice’ given in blog posts like these is just not right for most people.

My goal is completely selfish, to write for myself. But as a secondary goal, not a distraction, if each article I write helps one person a tiny bit I’m happy with that.

On this occasion though I think I can give one one piece of advice that applies to everyone. Something that I did learn over four years, nine months and 27 days.

Which is to constantly find any way you can to keep hanging out with smarter people, people that are doing better than you in something that you want to achieve, people that you look up to.

In poker there’s a saying:

If you look around the table and you can’t figure out who the sucker is, you’re the sucker.

In business, I think it’s the opposite:

If you look around at the people you connect with regularly and they don’t make you feel slightly uncomfortable (in a good way) or, you don’t feel like you can learn a lot from them, then you’re at the ‘wrong table’.

And if you can’t hang out with them physically, then ‘hang out’ with them online, you’ll still learn.

(Jon Nastor covers this idea more eloquently in his latest email).