Entrepreneur Shares 23 Lessons He Learned While Going From Earning $0 To $2M In Just 8 Years

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Danny Baldus-Strauss is an entrepreneur and growth investor who helps people attain financial freedom. Baldus-Strauss recently shared the 23 lessons he learned while going from earning next to nothing to pulling in close to $2M per year. In the Twitter thread, Baldus-Strauss offers advice like “play long term games,” “focus on the $10K+ questions, not the $5 ones”, “learn to avoid lifestyle inflation,” and nuggets of advice helpful to people of any age.

Here’s the complete thread from Baldus-Strauss’s Twitter account.

Baldus-Strauss combines personal experience and lessons with quotes from famous entrepreneurs to tell the overall story of his rise to success.

Here’s a quick rundown of Baldus-Strauss’s advice and lessons learned along the way.

  1. Play long-term games with long-term people.
  2. Focus on the $10K+ questions, not the $5 ones.
  3. Invest early and often. Time in the market > timing the market.
  4. Learn to avoid lifestyle inflation.
  5. You can get rich at your job, but you only get wealthy at home.
  6. Live in the present while still building and planning for the future.
  7. You’ll never get wealthy renting out your time.
  8. Cut expenses in areas you don’t care about so that you can spend extravagantly in areas you do.
  9. Every action is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.
  10. Money’s greatest intrinsic value is its ability to give you control over your time.
  11. Generating income is more important than cutting expenses, but it’s a balance.
  12. Mind, body, and business are connected.
  13. Be an optimist.
  14. Invest in your greatest asset- You!
  15. Money is made in the waiting.
  16. Volatility is not the same as risk.
  17. Focus on the future- not as in the next year, or even 3-years, but as in the next decade, or even two decades.
  18. “Only when the tide goes out to do you discover who’s been swimming naked” – Warren Buffett.
  19. The way to create life-changing returns is to hold onto your winners.
  20. Tune out the noise.
  21. Realize that stocks take the stairs up and the elevator down.
  22. You do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems.
  23. People who are right a lot of the time are people who often change their minds.

All of the advice is solid but if I had to cherry-pick the most important to focus on, just based on my own life experiences, I would say the most crucial points to remember are:

  • Learning to avoid lifestyle – Don’t buy the stuff you need to impress people you don’t like anyway.
  • Cutting expenses – cutting costs is important but don’t cheap out on life and experiences.
  • Be an optimist – Things could ALWAYS be worse.
  • Tune out the noise – The only voice that matters is yours.

For more about Danny Baldus-Strauss, check out his website.

Author
Chris Illuminati

Chris Illuminati is the author of five books and has written about personal finance, wealth, debt management, and entrepreneurship for numerous outlets including Wise Bread, Grow or Die, and Bankrate.