Entrepreneur

Let's talk about the difference between cocky and confident, with science. 🔬 In the famous Kruger and Dunning study at Cornell, people who scored around the 12th percentile on tests of grammar, logic, and humor guessed they were in the 62nd. That's what cocky looks like: big belief, no backup. Now look at the flip side. Research by Traci Sitzmann and Gillian Yeo suggests that past performance is one of the biggest drivers of genuine self-belief. Real wins build real confidence. And confidence can grow on purpose. In a randomized trial with entrepreneurship students, those taught that their abilities could improve with effort walked away more confident and more persistent. Meanwhile, doubt has a cost. A systematic review found impostor syndrome affects anywhere from 9% to 82% of professionals, and it's tied to lower performance and burnout. So the goal isn't to fake it. It's to believe in yourself enough to start, then build the proof that makes the belief true. That's how you go from "cocky" to unstoppable. 🚀 Sources: Kruger & Dunning (1999), Journal of Personality and Social Psychology; Sitzmann & Yeo (2013), Personnel Psychology; Burnette et al. (2020), Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice; Bravata et al. (2020), Journal of General Internal Medicine.

Stop reading this comment and checkout our website instead - link in bio.

All-nighters shouldn't be a badge of honor, but if you can't reach deep when your company needs it, we question if you have what it takes. Note, this super occassional. Like once-or-twice a year. But when it happens and your business needs it - do it.

Every founder's origin story has a villain. Sadly many of those stories came from horrible exes, disengaged teachers, and ill-intentioned coaches. The exact people that were supposed to be there for us. 🦹

Let's run the science on the "born entrepreneur" myth. 🔬 First, the fear. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor found 49% of adults worldwide say fear of failure would stop them from starting a business. A lot of that fear comes from believing you either have "it" or you don't. Now look at what actually happens on attempt number one. Harvard researchers Paul Gompers, Anna Kovner, Josh Lerner, and David Scharfstein studied venture-backed founders and found first-time entrepreneurs succeeded about 18% of the time. Founders who'd already had a success? About 30%. The researchers concluded a large part of entrepreneurial success comes down to skill, and skill shows up after reps. So how do you keep showing up long enough to get those reps? A randomized trial by Jeni Burnette and colleagues gave entrepreneurship students a growth mindset intervention built on the idea that anyone can improve their entrepreneurial ability with effort. Those students reported more confidence and showed more persistence on their main project than the control group. Belief in growth kept them going. Going kept them learning. Nobody's handing out entrepreneur DNA at birth. You earn the skills one rep at a time, and the research says the reps compound. Sources: Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2024/2025 Global Report; Gompers, Kovner, Lerner & Scharfstein, "Performance Persistence in Entrepreneurship," Journal of Financial Economics (2010) and NBER Working Paper 12592; Burnette et al. (2020), Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice.

We are absolutely thrilled to be unveiling A LOT of new changes to the format of The Blox! It's going to make our fans very happy to see the final product, but we can't unveil too much because we don't want to ruin the surprises!

Meet Sierra, from our casting team!

We LOVE our recurring fan favorite judges and we're also equally excited/nervous about all the new changes this season!

Day 0 is here and our contestants are rolling in! They seem to be a healthy dose of excited and nervous! Good luck to all particpating teams this week!

Try this the next time you're about to shrink in a meeting. Before you walk in, write one sentence on a sticky note: "I'm the best person in this room to solve this problem, and here's why." Then write the why. Your experience, your results, your unfair advantage. If you can't fill in the why, that's not a confidence problem. That's your homework. Go get the reps, the skills, or the proof until you can. When you can fill it in, stop apologizing for it. Walk in like you belong there, because you earned it.

Sometimes I say stuff that is controversial just to get attention. This is not one of those moments. I'm being as honest and caring as I can be. Please don't come for me in the comments - but here we go... Unless you've started a successful company that made you millions in the past...you don't know what you're doing. And unless you're mentor has STARTED a company worth milllions, they also don't know what they're doing. Not...they worked for a big company. Not...they drive a nice car. Not...they're a doctor so their inteligence will translate. Not...the government funded this program so it must be legit. Not...the local university funded this program so it must be legit. Guess what, I didn't know what I was doing a single time I ever did something for the first time. So when you go to embark on the hardest thing of your professional career, you bet your tushy it's going to be super complicated to unravel. The Blox is a proven educational system for infusing a ridiculous amount of education into our founders' brains in a relatively short period of time. It will unlock a ton of other perks too: community, vendors, social proof assets, and more. Link in bio to learn more and apply.

Nobody puts "solo-parented through a product launch on four hours of sleep" on LinkedIn. They should. 🫠

What do you think about this spooky story?

Make a list tonight of every person who told you that you couldn't do it. 📝 The coach. The teacher. The ex. The relative who still asks when you're getting a "real job." Now write one sentence next to each name about what they got wrong. Keep that list somewhere private. You don't need to send it to anyone, and you definitely don't need to post it. Just pull it out on the days you want to quit. Plenty of founders run on caffeine. The ones who last also run on unfinished business.

That founder who "makes it look easy" has a graveyard of awkward pitches, botched sales calls, and posts nobody liked. You just weren't there to see it. Here's a habit that speeds up the reps: record yourself pitching your business once a week. Same pitch. Phone on a tripod. No retakes. Watch the first one and cringe. That's your baseline. Then watch week twelve next to week one. You'll see a different person. That's what "natural" looks like up close.

Try this the next time something flops. 🧠 Talk to yourself the way you'd talk to your best employee after they made the same mistake. You wouldn't call them an idiot. You'd say, "Okay, what happened? What did we learn? What do we try next?" Then you'd send them back out there, because you need them in the game. Same rules apply to you. You're the most important employee your business has. High standards stay. The verbal abuse goes.

Let's be honest about why that idea is still sitting in your notebook. 📓 It's not because you don't have $250,000. It's because you've decided you need permission to start. Permission from an investor. Permission from a bank. Permission from a rich relative who hasn't called you back. Nobody's coming to give it to you. Here's what we'd do instead. Write down every possible source of money, no matter how small. Savings, family, friends, customers, grants, competitions, a side gig, the stuff in your garage. Next to each one, write a realistic number. Not your dream number. A real one. Add it up. Then cut your launch plan until it fits that total. That's your budget now. Not the one on the whiteboard. The one you can fund. Most founders who get started don't have more money than you. They just stopped waiting.

Confession time: we have redesigned slides that nobody asked us to redesign while there were unanswered client emails sitting right there. 🙃 It felt amazing. It accomplished nothing. That's the trap. The fun work gives you the dopamine of progress without any of the risk. The scary work, like calls, pitches, and follow-ups, is where the money hides. So we started a rule: no design work until the day's scariest task is done. Our designs got a little slower. Our sales got a lot faster.

Let's look at the research behind feeling like you're drowning as a founder. 🔬 Gallup found entrepreneurs are more likely than other workers to report feeling stressed a lot of the previous day (45%) and worrying a lot of the previous day (34%). A report from the Canadian Mental Health Association and BDC found more than half of entrepreneurs reported feelings of inadequacy (51%) and depressed mood (50%). It also found owners of businesses with fewer than 10 employees and lower revenue reported more stress. Smaller team, more weight on your shoulders. Here's the part that worries us: in that same report, only 16% sought help from a professional. Now, the good news. Psychologists E.J. Masicampo and Roy Baumeister found that unfinished goals create intrusive thoughts that hurt your focus on other tasks. But when people made specific plans for those goals, the interference went away. The plan alone was enough to quiet the noise. Researchers at Baylor found that writing a specific to-do list for five minutes before bed helped people fall asleep about nine minutes faster. And Gallup found that, despite the stress, entrepreneurs are more likely to report learning something interesting each day (71%) and are more optimistic about their futures than other workers. So the struggle is real, but so is the upside. Make a plan. Write the list. Talk to someone, and if it's more than a rough week, make that someone a professional.

Canceling your ads to save money is like skipping the gas station to save on your road trip. Good luck out there. ⛽