𝔠𝔯𝔶𝔭𝔱0ᗯ1ᘔᗩᖇᗪ ’𝓶.𝓣’’ — My 10 Rules for Success:

10 Rules (in no particular order) — READ BELOW!

crypt0w1zmt’s
10 Rules of Success:

• 1) Experience > Assets
• 2) Karma always comes full circle.
• 3) You are whatever you say you are.
• 4) Trial & Error — aim LOW!
• 5) Remove Fear Embrace Failure
• 6) PRIORITIZE / ORGANIZE
• 7) Personal Roadmap
• 8) Take necessary RISKS
• 9) Create Passive / Supplemental Income
• 10) Perseverance & Consistency is 🔑

I will expand on each rule in a comprehensive oped which is outlined below. Enjoy the read!

It’s well worth it (IMHO) and has served me well in my formative years. I can only hope that it would do the same for any would-be prospective readers.

• 1) Experience > Assets

My brother once asked me if I had to choose between sacrificing my entire net worth & sacrificing all the information/knowledge/skills I have, what would it be? To most of you: this should come as a no-brainer. However, you should really give this some deep insight before quickly dusting off the sentiment that talent/hard work/experience is worth more than liquidity? There is but ONE exception and that is what I refer to as the “dentist syndrome” in which case — dentists are more prone to suicide than most upper-middle-class, middle-aged, white-collar individuals.

Why is that?

As Jeff Bezos once said: there are 4 types of work:

1. There’s those with a job.
2. Those with a career.
3. Those with a business.
4. Those with a calling.

So this is a really case-by-case, contextual & highly circumstantial notion to dwell on…don’t just immediately assume the obvious answer being “duh obv. talent/skills/knowledge/hardwork” but the truth is (I know it’s a cliche, I use them alot and that’s for a reason: they are TRUE) the fact remains if you’re miserable doing what you do…even if you do it great, and make a lot of money doing it; that’s all the more reason why you should save some money & dump your ‘career’ (if its figuratively/literally killing you) and this is where most 99%ers will argue: “the bills got to get paid.”

Often times you’ll hear counter-arguments from nihilists like —

“I still gotta eat…not everyone is lucky enough to do what they love for a living.” I call BULLSHIT.

You can live in a halfway house & spend 8 hours a day in the library & come out on top?

Will you?

Probably not…not if you’re chasing Lambos, chasing a career solely for superficial or monetary incentive, or even working hard at something you truly detest.

Find your CALLING and what you do won’t feel like work. We’re not fortunate enough to have our passions given to us at birth — it’s not something that will find you; you literally have to seek it out and the only way to do that is to take risks — which brings me to:

• 2) Take NECESSARY Risks

You’re never going to get anywhere in life by playing it safe, doing everything by the book, and living some generic version of postmodern upper-middle-class American “success” in which you’re a cog in a machine —forced into a loop & for those who are okay with the 9–5 lifestyle (I can understand as it most certainly has its appeal.) the stable work schedule, the consistency in paycheck & safety net of a 401(k); not having to worry about 1099 tax or libel laws + the costs of running your own business, etc.

If that’s the life for you: go for it.

Some people have no problem being a code monkey debugging for “innovators” who are only innovators from the 40 hour weeks you all put in debugging & writing algos for their products/services. Either that or be a financial analyst, like a sous chef cooking an entire 5 course spread for one individual only to be handed the leftovers as an “attaboy!” while the partner/senior executive at your firm takes credit for the client you acquired or the portfolio you managed.

Some people are keen on living a comfortable lifestyle, working a consistent schedule, (in my experience, these are some of the happiest people...embedded in their home lives, living life on their morals/guidelines/trajectory using their own barometer & compass of values.

BUT YOU DIDN’T click on this post because you wanted to be one of those guys.

You clicked on this because you want to be an entrepreneur.

You’re reading this because you want to BE YOUR OWN BOSS and that brings me to my next point:

• 3) You are whatever you say you are.

— “I am whatever you say I am, if I wasn’t, then why would I say I am; in the paper, the news, everyday I am…” — Eminem

It always astonishes me how certain rappers/lyricists are capable of some of the most advanced literature that IVY League English majors wouldn’t be able to drum up if their life depended on it…for example: when Lil Wayne was sipping lean & puffing THC and freestyled “literally, without writing or thought” the line “safe sex is great sex so you better wear that latex before you get that ‘late text’ that “I think I’m late…” text…” (stay with me I”m going somewhere with this!) just like Eminem in the Way I Am — flowing iambic pentameters like Picasso with a canvass or Lil Wayne’s triple entendre…these are forms of literature so advanced & the irony is they have no idea how difficult/unique it is (from a linguistics perspective) just what they’re doing…

It’s not just rhyming multi-syllable words: but creating poetry. I digress.

If you walk up to Eminem and ask him to create a beat & rap a verse using iambic pantemar, or asked Lil Wayne to spit a triple entendre, odds are they’ll probably be pissed & misconstrue your question as a condescending, pompous mockery of their lack of education. Eminem taught himself English literature that rivals Dickensian story-telling with cadences/nuances to boot.

Lil Wayne taught himself to *off the cuff* toy with the English linguistic play on words & through clever use of metaphors/subtext, effectively become a modern-day Robert Frost — a poet of our time.

Do you think Elon Musk went to school for aeronautical engineering, astrophysics & mechanical engineering? NO!! Google it! There’s an interview where this dumb reporter asks him so plainly “how did you learn Rocket Science” and in the most badass response Elon retorts “I read a lot of books.”

The combination of hard work, stubbornly NEVER taking no for an answer, repeated failure and failure, and failure and failure and failure X 100 until probability & statistics eventually results in a success….this is what differentiates the 2% from the 98%.

Now I am by no means the 2%, (I would be — if not for a certain legal situation…see medium article “Fintech F**KD”, but I digress) but I can tell you with absolute certainty I am well on my way to being financially successful (if that’s your subjective analysis/barometer for what defines success) as I have come to learn that success cannot be quantified…least of all by money. Success is a frame of mind. As for me? I have paved the road to be there by the end of Q4 (again).

I was a junkie in my late teens 20s…borderline homeless; in out rehab.
Always brilliant with software but it took a rock bottom near death experience and 3/4 of my best friends dying from opioid ODs, coupled with losing everything & everyone I cared about to light a fire in my stomach which forged…like a broken vase.

A jagged weapon.

There’s a reason the 98% are the 98%. They’re not willing to do what the 2% is. Personally, when you lose everything/everyone, the best motivator (for me) was anger. The thought of people thinking I wouldn’t last, the jealousy every time I climbed a rung of the ladder on my career, the prayers from those who wished upon my demise…people say hate/anger is a bad thing. I disagree.

When channeled (in a nonviolent, conducive & constructive manner) hate/anger/insecurity/doubt is what led to the formation of Tesla, SpaceX: it’s the reason why all the nerds in high school are now living the lives of the very same jocks who bullied them (except more lavish) and self-awareness is KEY in these moments.

Channel your rage but don’t let it consume you.

Prove them wrong and when they try to bring you down; smile in their face & toss them a donation/giveaway while they spend every waking moment on Twitter trying to disparage you.

So with that I'll end with another Eminem quote:

“I love being hated its great it lets me know that I made it wouldn’t have it no other way, I wouldn’t trade it for the world!”

P.S. on this — it’s absolutely QUINTESSENTIAL to have a support network…even if it’s just one person.

I’m grateful to have my mom, wife, brother: when you only need one person to keep you grounded, having 3 has been a blessing. Let me repeat how to reiterate the precariousness of this methodology: if you’re using anger & the “I’ll show them” attitude for self-motivation…make sure you have someone to lean on otherwise that rage will consume you, it’ll intertwine with the insecurities & self-doubt: before you know it you’re a mess having a nervous breakdown (I speak from personal experience) and this is why I always say it couldn’t be more important to have that outlet for channeling it as well as the means to control it & to have a few people who love you in your support network either to bounce ideas off of or to tell you what you don’t want to hear especially when its exactly what you need to hear.

I’ve had enough “yesmen” come and go in my career the past 7 2/3 years now:

I'm not interested in ‘friends’ — business partners, acquaintances, networks: sure.

Friends? I’m good.

You don’t get to be a ‘success’ (though subjective, relative to the individual at hand) success to me means being in that 2%: and the fact of the matter is, if you’re not willing to work 80 hour weeks…if you still want to “have a life” then you’re not going to get what you want because in an ever-growing competitive world… it’s a dog-eat-dog world & if you’re not hunting or alert 24/7 that one day you decided to take off the “hustle” could be the day you missed the opportunity of a lifetime.

So why do it?

Why push yourself to be a mess who works incessantly? Part of it has to do with the calling Bezos referred to…it doesn’t feel like work if it’s something you (I”m not going to say enjoy; more like ‘excited by’) because with the exception of PewDiePie — we can’t all make $2 million a month playing video games!

Even in the case of PewDiePie…he’s a hard-working, philanthropic, PR & marketing genius in his own right…so there’s always more than meets the eye.

• 4) Trial & Error — aim LOW!

For those who of you haven’t seen Joe Rogan’s 2nd podcast with Dr. Jordan Peterson — I highly recommend it. Borrowing from his playbook, the term “aim LOW” is used to log & detail the importance of incremental progress. WAY too often do people get embedded in the overall…

”I don’t have a nice house. I am in debt… blah blah” well, before you complain about not being rich & not having everything you think you deserve.

Stand up, look around your room, and set smaller goals.

I mean micromanage & compartmentalize to the MAX. Is your bed made? Is your room clean? Pet dog/cat fed?

For this I’d adhere to the “2-minute rule” (courtesy of Graham Stephen @ youtube) in which his belief/ritual/way of life goes like this: “if it’s a task that takes less than 2 minutes, I do it immediately without thought.”

This helps to stave off procrastination, it helps to bolster the incremental progress & not dissimilar from bodybuilders: when you feel your muscles tone & you feel you can bench press 20LBS more than you could a month ago…it’s a feeling of euphoric satisfaction that can only be achieved after 6–8 weeks of “this doesn’t work…no matter how much I work out I don’t get in shape!” which ironically, is the point where most people quit their diets/workout regimes. (the 3W) mark — so for this step I would encourage using something like a journal/daily manager.

Personally, this is my favorite: it is necessary for not only does it cover all aspects of health: (mindfulness, spirit, body) & in addition to providing tips: the very process of writing down your daily progress & (before you go to bed every night) writing down your TODO list for the next day: it just makes life so much easier & less chaotic. I highly implore you to give it a shot!

Start with the “2 minute rule!” GO!

• 5) Remove Fear Embrace Failure

I’ll keep this short & sweet.

Better yet: defer to the img below as an explanation, for their life experiences would present a case far more solid than I ever could.

That’s not to say that success is defined by fame.

I’m simply using the life experiences of renowned individuals to really hammer and illustrate this point.

• 6) PRIORITIZE / ORGANIZE

— I should’ve really kept rules 6 & 7 more towards the top but as I stated before: these are in no particular order. If you have something (say research, a writeup, email responses, etc.) that can be done whenever…then prioritize not just by importance & relevance but also by convenience.

If you need to go to the bank & request a business loan or attend an investor’s meeting for a pitch: do not do what I'm doing right now and spend your entire Monday morning writing an oped when I could very well be doing this tonight! This was a particularly tricky one for me: as for years I had always hammered the “PRIORITIZE/ORGANIZE” ritual in my head as being two major impediments to my “personal roadmap” (next rule) — so this is where Karen (my administrative assistant) has been a lifesaver…and no you don’t need to be rich to hire a data entry/administrative assistant.

You just need to be smart, savvy, and willing to work twice as hard for half as much as the next guy/gal.

For me, living in the Greater NYC region, there are plenty of brilliant women/men from Columbia, NYU, Pace, to those studying abroad: many of which are living exorbitant NYC housing/tuition costs.

Not to mention the cost of living. I currently employ 8 people. I don’t pay any of them. I met a realtor who (with est. 88,000 people living in NYC per annum) was having extreme difficulty flipping the properties in NYC brownstone across the st. from Central Park E. Well, duh.

Nobody’s going to be able to afford (if they could, nobody’s gonna want to pay) a $35 million mortgage on what is essentially a 2 bedroom apartment. But as any realtor will tell you: real estate is all bout location, location location. So what did I do?

In short, I created a quid pro quo atmosphere where (the dinosaur realtor who still used a Motorola flip phone and had no social media/marketing/advertisements whatsoever) where I pitched him on a (for AirBnB he was charging $4800 per month on a 5 BR 2 GR 3BR in Hell’s Kitchen) and in short — with him hemorrhaging liquidity & all he had was 16 available rentals that he had tried desperately to rent but placed on Airbnb…this is the “shark smelling blood in the water” type scenario for programmers like me.

When you come across a struggling/failing business, they’ll offer you anything if you can deliver tenants.

We agreed, 4 tenants, I get 1 room for the average duration of each tenant’s stay. What took him years to barely be able to sell (even 1) was a simple matter of drumming up an HTML banner, using google analytics to discover the demographics, age, (typically couples age 30–45) who just so happened to be looking for new places to live…then tossing 0.5 BTC worth of digital marketing & by the end of the month, the landlord had 5 leases signed and as part of our agreement:

I got the mansion AirBNB for $-720 (yes, you heard right) he’s paying me $720 a month until the end of Q4 after I moved one more property for him at a -15% discount on my personal lease and since the agreement was 4 tenants, 1 lease: we settled on 15% for the 5th….

He’s also offered me 15% on any more of the remaining 8 leases he has: and eventually, I’ll get around to that.

The pointis: I grew up on section-8, welfare, broke. You have to work smart, not hard. I didn’t MOVE into the brownstone & live in a palace — I took that investment and flipped it into another investment by loading it up with an incubator: using a Linkedin recruiter for 1 month poached 8 of the best minds I could find & the offer was simple “you live in/around greater NYC, you have the skills I need, call your parents and tell them to bounce the check on the $120,000 NYU is trying to take for your shitty dorm room housing costs: you can live in my palace for free — just sign this contract” and just like that I got 4 python devs, 1 admin assistant, 1 data entry clerk, marketer, 2 graphic designers all living in the AirBnb while I stay back-and-forth between my wife/apartment in the LER and my mum’s house in North Jersey.

Why mention this? Swallow your pride.

I'm 30 years old. I barely recognized some idiot (now degenerate) I went to High School with on my way to the ferry (which is conveniently 2 minutes down the street from my mum’s in North Jersey) so the convenience alone (coupled with the free laundry & meals is amazing =D) and this degenerate tries to approach me and say “what you been up to, add me on Facebook” when I replied “I don’t really use FB, check my twitter” he looked at my phone and said “WTF” then proceeded to follow himself on Twitter using my handle (LMAO) before hopping on the 7 1/2 min boat ride across the Hudson. His body language, demeanor, attitude (of all my childhood neighbors as well) are met with confusion as one day I’m leaving my mom’s apartment in a $1200 suit with $200 shoes & a $14,000 watch yet the next day I’m screaming “MOM!!! MEATLOAF!!” in my childhood bedroom =D.

What I’m illustrating is: you got to be like Jimmy Iovine.

It doesn’t matter what others think, what matters is what they do & while they may talk shit & hate you: they’ll have no choice but to respect you. treat life like a racehorse: “put your blinders on, don’t look left or right & just go for the goal!”

• 7) Personal Roadmap

So many people in Fintech, esp. forex trading Crypto these days don’t have any idea what a roadmap or whitepaper is which is true “SMH” to another level….I won’t get into that or I’ll start on another tangent.

They speculate & BS out their ass and their followers came from sheer luck or because of some dumb viral moment they got lucky with on an irrelevant topic. I rest my case.

What you need to do is create long-term & short-term REALISTIC goals. Tether (no pun intended) your short-term goals to your long-term goals and in conjunction with incrementally logged progress (see above) that’ll be a recipe for success.

Believe me…it sounds archaic, but don’t use notes, pages, or data to type your daily logs.

Use a pen & journal. Write them down. It will help TREMENDOUSLY!

Set a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual, and 2, 3, 5 year plan.

Rinse & repeat every night & get it done!

• 8) KARMA’s a bourgeois bitch, so wine & dine her or end up losing everything…

‘Nuff Said

• 9) Create Passive / Supplemental Income

— This is tricky waters to navigate esp. in a field like FINTECH.

If you’re coming from the developers perspective:

I’d advise you to do some freelance coding, there’s no shortage of work there. As far as Finance, the best you can do is continue to work the institutional markets — work a job (self-employed; like Uber/Lyft) something where you can set your own hours & be your own boss — this is important as you cannot find a short-term temp job with a set schedule binding you to a loop that doesn’t fit your personal roadmap.

If you need some liquidity fast: do what I did last summer:

I spent $1600 on a Hyundai SR dirt bike, then signed up referrals/affiliates from everything from Uber Eats/Doordash/Postmates (all the rideshare deliveries) but ONLY the ones with signup/affiliate bonuses. For Postmastes it was (complete 50 rides receive $150) for DoorDash (complete 200 for $500) and in addition to the tips, wages: (i’m not saying to KEEP doing them, I’m saying do EVERY one of them and rack up those affiliate bonuses for the beginning rides) as in 11 days and 49 minutes I made (with the DirtBike avg. $16.45 n hour + $5 per hour = $21.45 IN ADDITION to the +500 (Postmates) +200 (Grubhub), +200 (DoorDash), +200 (UberEats), +500 (DoorDash), (Caviar) +500 received from affiliates from all food delivery rideshare: the affiliate bonuses alone were more than sufficient to cover the cost of the bike & gas, which I then sold for $2000 even after less than a month: this was during “cryptowinter2018” so everyone was hurting for liquidity: but I made over $5,000 profit in >30 days!

Perfect way to supplement your income if you’re short on capital.

• 10) Perseverance & Consistency is KEY.

Not deviating from any of my other 9 rules, none of my other obligations, none of my other personal responsibilities. I made my supplemental income my side-hustle; despite it being a matter of emergency, immediately needing liquidity: it was just a matter of putting in 90 hour weeks that month instead of 80.

Embrace Failure. Be open-minded. Don’t assume anything (everybody has something to teach you, even the dumbest of us) and remain hardworking, passionate; maintain your insatiable curiosity & find your calling.

Have a wonderful week everyone!

Peace && Love ❤

• Ahmed T.
  
  
  Originally posted On Mon, Jun 8, 2020 at 9:25 AM Ahmed “M.T.” Tarabichi

Edited & Re-Posted on 3/14/2022