A few key decisions early in my trading career and my financial life completely changed for the better in just a few years.
1. No big losses
2. No averaging down
3. No chasing extended stocks
4. No giving back decent profits
5. Always get odds on my money

THE LESSER KNOWN MAHARANA OF MEWAR:RANA KUMBHA
Kumbalgarh Fort is one of most spectacular sites of India,atop a hill abt 3600ft above sea lvl in the https://t.co/LkjmzzBhE2's second largest wall is surrounding it.A fort wall second only to Great wall of China,still not so famous.

This longest wall of India stretches to almost 36Km and encompasses a few hills, many step wells and over 360 temples and palaces. Birth place of the Great Maharana Pratap, this fort is named after another Great Maharana of Mewar, who is not given his due in the History.

Builder of many architectural marvels like the Kumbhalgarh Fort, an erudite scholar, a patron of arts, music, culture & a great warrior was the Great Maharana Kumbha. Yet we don't know much about him. Let's get to know him a little.

Maharana Kumbha was the undefeated King of Mewar from 1433-1468CE.He never lost any battles &kept Mewar out of the reach of Islamic Invaders till the time he was alive. Born on Makar Sakranti to Maharana Mokal & Saubhagya Devi, Rana Kumbha was only 13 when he ascended the throne.

His father was killed by his own relatives in a political conspiracy. He was a powerful King about 8ft tall &charismatic personality,a hardcore Hindu Rajput who could shed his life for Hindu honour without thinking twice.He was an ardent skillful warrior who never lost a battle.

1) Core attributes of a promising founder worth following:
- Progress/trajectory over time
- How well they lead a team &
- Make the vision happen
- Most impressed when someone is way ahead of where you thought they would be when you check up/see them a few months later.

2) Indie Makers have such a benefit of being small, fast, nimble workers in comparison to big companies.

We can easily pivot and vastly change a project of ours. We can change as we learn more about our users.

Big companies can take months/years for even the smallest of pivots.

3) Before you find a product market you can pivot your project as many times as necessary until you find something that works.

Then you only have one thing to do: scale, scale, scale.

4) Be obsessed with the little details.
- listen to every single person who uses your product
- reply to every single person who emails you about your product
- ask them what they like and do not like
- iterate your product, make changes, pivot if necessary

5) Paul Graham's (@paulg) name came up with a feeling of great admiration! Naturally! It was Paul who said:

In the early stages of a company just;
- write code
- talk/sell to customers to stress test your idea

Nothing else.

(A THREAD)

18 Things I Would Do At 18:

I was a dumb 18-year-old. I thought I had the world figured out. I didn't.

I stayed up till the wee hours. Drank every liquor invented.

Partied non-stop. Woke up after noon.

Surfed the web aimlessly.

Read BS self-help.

Repeat.

If I could do it all over again, here's 18 things I would do...

PHASE ONE: GET MY MIND RIGHT

ACTION #1: Break the chains - I wish I made the decision earlier. I didn't. I was scared. Anxious. Nervous. I knew once I made the decision, there was no going back.

Don't be like me.

Make the decision at 18. The decision to pave your own path in life. To go against the herd. To choose your own adventure. To commit to whatever sets your heart on fire.

ACTION #2: Cut off every negative person in your life.

Scroll through the contacts in your phone...

Notice how the names make you feel.

Delete any and all names that fill you with doubt and negativity.

ACTION #3: Condition your mind to embrace the producer mindset instead of the consumer mindset.

Consume 20% of the time. Produce 80% of the time.

Case closed.

ACTION #4: Set an intention to make $10k a month and write it out every MORNING and NIGHT as if you already achieved it (in the past tense).

Visualize yourself already having the money as you write.

Cheesy?

Yes.

Does it work?

Yes.

PHASE TWO: EDUCATION

Most software founders, particularly in B2B, need to get radically better at sales. @Steli , who is the best person for explaining the scrappy stages in the beginning and then building out a team with scripts and processes, wrote a guide to:

For technical founders it is irrationally, obscenely hard to reverse years of programming (ba dum bum) that sales is a value-destroying activity. Sales is CLEARLY a value-creating activity, contingent on you have a value-creating product.

The world will not drop what they are doing to adopt your work. This is particularly true in B2B, where simply building a better mousetrap won't overcome the activation energy required to get people with additional non-mice problems to prioritize changing mousetraps today.

This is very non-obvious for founders because founders are not often people who *want* to be sold to. We often come from a background where trying out tools is a bit of a fun hobby. We like looking at all the options, making charts, and ripping out partially complete tests.

"This week I unsuccessfully trialed four software options for automating that thing that has been killing us. Our actual production process remains the same as last week. Don't worry; this was a great use of time." is not a thing you want to write in a progress report to manager.