Juanma Gironella

“Discipline is remembering what you wanted to be” David Campbell

Spot on

Entrepreneurship is the most spiritual journey you’ll ever go on… because every day it tests your faith, your patience, and your identity.

“Knowledge is knowing what to say. Wisdom is knowing whether to say it or not.”

The reason so many very successful founder have a ‘touch of the tism’ is because what makes you more successful as a child makes you less successful as an adult. To win as a child you need to follow rules and get along with everyone to fit in. To win as an adult you need to write your own rules, get along with few people, and differentiate. So if you’re split between two paths: conventional wisdom and your own path - pick your own. You’ll either be very right or very wrong. But no one wins big following the herd.

Don’t shrink the vision to fit the doubt

The reason most people stay average is because average behaviour gets you social acceptance much earlier than exceptional behaviour gets you results.

You don't need advice from editors on rejected manuscripts.  My short story “Ender's Game” was rejected by Ben Bova at Analog back when that was the top market for a sci-fi story. Ben gave me feedback. He thought the title should be “Professional Soldier” and he said to “cut it in half.” But I knew he was wrong on both points and submitted it to Jim Baen at Galaxy. He sat on it for a year, and responded to my query with a rejection. There was some kind of explanation, but I don't remember what it was. I concluded at the time that Baen's comments showed that he had barely glanced at the story. So … I got feedback both times, but it was not helpful. I looked at Ben's rejection again. What was it about the story that made him think it should, let alone COULD, be cut in half? Apparently it FELT long. What made it feel long? Now, post-Harry Potter, I would call it the quidditch problem. I had too many battles in which the details became tedious. So I cut two battles entirely, merely reporting the outcomes, and shortened another. In retyping the whole manuscript (pre-word-processor, that was the only way to get a clean manuscript), I added new point-of-view material to the point that I had cut only one page in length. So much for “in half.” But I already knew that my manuscripts did not need cutting — if it wasn't needed, it wouldn't be there in the first place. Even the battles were still there, but instead of showing them, I merely told what happened (so much for the usually asinine advice “show don't tell”), which kept the pace going. Those changes made, I sent it to Ben again. I did not remind him of what he had advised me to do. I merely told him I liked my title, and said, “I have addressed your other concerns,” which was true. I figured he wouldn't remember what his exact words had been. My answer was a check. That revised story was the basis for my winning the Campbell Award for best new writer. Did Ben's feedback help? Yes — but his specific advice was not right, and I knew it. On my next two submissions, Ben hated my endings, and I revised as suggested. The fourth submission he rejected outright, and the fifth, and I thought, Am I a one-story writer? I went back to Ender's Game and tried to analyze why it worked. Then, deliberately imitating myself, I wrote “Mikal's Songbird.” Ben bought it, and it received favorable mentions. I was afraid then that I had consigned myself to writing stories about children in jeopardy. But in fact I was writing character stories rather than idea stories. And THAT was how I built a career, not by self-imitation, and not by following editorial suggestions. I did get wise counsel from David Hartwell on my novel Wyrms, but that was on a book that was already under contract, and it was story feedback, not style. I got wise counsel from Beth Meacham, too, on various books over the years — but again, only on books that were under contract. I also received appallingly stupid advice from the editor of my novel Saints, which temporarily destroyed the book's marketability; after that, I was allowed to go back to my original structure and save the book — now it's one of my best. Editors don't know more than you about your story. They especially don't know why they decide to accept or reject stories. YOU have to know what your story needs to be, and take only advice that you believe in. Your best counselor on a story nobody bought is TIME. Let some time pass and then reread the story. Don't even think about why it Didn't Work. Instead, think about what DOES work, and then write it again, a complete rewrite, keeping nothing from the previous draft. Find the right protagonist and begin at the beginning — the point where the protagonist first gets involved with the events of the story. Be inventive — the failed first draft no longer exists, so you're not bound by any of your earlier decisions. THAT is how you resurrect a good idea you did not succeed with on your first try.

Startup founders finally turning profitable after years of shipping, failing and questioning their life choices:

If you want to be an innovator, you have to be comfortable looking stupid for a long time. You’re going to piss some people off and you’re going to get a lot of nos. That’s the only way to start having valuable breakthroughs.

the status symbol used to be a Ferrari. now it's a fourth child.

Listening to my white noise podcast at 1.5x speed so I can rest faster

30 years of web browser market disruption

As a founder, you can get a lot of things wrong. But if you're unwiling to die, it will eventually work out. Be optimistic, and try to be right. But even if you're not right, don't die.

Someone asked what's the most underappreciated quality in startup founders. I realized I could answer this by asking what's the most underappreciated aspect of startups. That's easy: how hard they are. So the most underappreciated quality in founders is sheer toughness.

Envy is the acknowledgment of having lost a secret race.

Dirty Sánchez is a tyrant and traitor to the people of Spain 💩

The bigger the dream, the bigger your tolerance for uncertainty, stress, and criticism must be.

I hired an ex McKinsey consultant to compile all my sales materials to document how GrowthAssistant company reached $22M in ARR. He collected: - Recordings of sales calls - Sales scripts - SOPs - Lead gen systems - etc 100s of top companies paid me for access to it. Today I'll give it away for free. RT + reply "GA" to get a copy in DMs.

The ultimate form of optimization is elimination. Nothing is more effective than removing the ineffective.