Self Awareness is the Way To Leverage in 2025 - How To Fix it in 30 Days Flat
Level 2 - Value Investor
Welcome Avatar! If you’re wondering how to help the next generation, this is going to be a good starting point. One thing of immense importance to us is remaining on top of new trends. As you get older it isn’t logical to work 60-80 hours a week anymore. However, you do need to spot major trends and shifts to avoid the trap of passing on stale/dead info. In 2025? Some people still believe Wall Street is an amazing way to wealth (extremely rare now) and some people are *really* stuck in the past obsessing about networking events (News flash, the best networking event is the internet).
That said, before you tell your kids to find smart people on the internet. You’ve got to start with the foundation *self awareness*
Self-Awareness is directly linked to knowledge and aspirations. Don’t confuse interest for talent.
The future is elite individuals leading the way. The only way to become elite is by finding your God given talents + having the self awareness to methodically find them. We are certain that everyone reading this (yes you) has some sort of strange talent. It just needs to be found + monetized.
If you don’t believe that individual focus is the future? Well… you’re going to be sorely disappointed. Felix Dennis was decades ahead of his time when he stated “Team spirit is for losers, financially speaking. It’s the glue that binds the losers together…” - How to Get Rich
Part 1: Unlocking Self Awareness
Self improvement was a popular topic in the early 2010s. It does work. The problem? Majority focus on the wrong things. Do you really need to give 100% on everything? Is everything worth your time? Are you even going to be good at it? Whats the maximum value you get from this?
These are brutal and tough questions. They cause you to analyze your actual abilities and potential. In 2025? It’s rarer than ever. A huge chunk of the adult population was told “You can be whatever you like if you work hard enough”. In reality they should have been teaching them “You can be the best in what you were meant to do”.
Completely different belief system. Night & Day.
Lucky for You… We’re now living in an increasingly algorithmic and calculated world. Every feed, every ad, every click is designed to know you better than you know yourself. Hilariously, it is working. 99% of people don’t even notice and consume what is thrown at them.
The 1%? They are the ones gathering information for self evaluation.
Why Most Fail
The vast majority are too surface level. They just look for ways to get rich. They never ask if they will be good at it. If you’re an anti-social person who prefers being alone and indoors… in-person sales is a terrible choice for you. You’ll quit within a few short weeks. Just because something pays a lot of money, doesn’t mean you should do it.
Diagnosis needs to come before tactics. What are you good at? What does the competition look like? Where is your edge? Where is your niche?
This is the main reason why people don’t improve over time. They chase whatever is hot and never ask if they fit into that industry in the place
Guys grinding 16 hours a day to become the exception to the rule (practiclaly never works)
Trying to get better at everything despite 75% of the items leading to dead ends
Copying billionaires who made their money 20 years ago in an industry that doesn’t even exist anymore. Biggest example is copying Buffett’s portfolio when the entire future is tech (he isn’t a tech investor!)
No self-awareness. No alignment. Permanently swimming upstream.
Self-Awareness *Then* Skill Development
Self-awareness changes the rate at which you compound. If you were improving at a rate of say 5% a year? You’d compound your gains by 25-30% with self awareness
You stop wasting time juggling 5-10 ideas that don’t fit your skill set
You become more narrow finding 1-2 important items (multi-tasking is a scam sold to Corporate America)
Your rate of improvement goes vertical since the niche fits your specific skillset
Example: If you realize you’re not built for managing people? That’s fine. Stop forcing it. Don’t go into a heavy human capital business. Structure a leam business, automate, partner with at max 1-2 people who fill the roles you’d fail at. Suddenly you’re not fighting your DNA every day.
Self-awareness is the “do less, achieve more” mantra. The only hard part? It requires brutal honesty, not hopes and dreams (hope is never a good strategy).
Autist Note: Inverse the example if you’re the life of the party and have immense people management skills. You won’t have high turnover, you can slot people into the right roles. You can scale without the constant worry of “did I hire the right person”
How to Build Self Awareness
Track Behavior Not Intention: What you say and think isn’t relevant. The results from what you’ve done = the truth. Figure out how much time you’re spending on activity A. How good are the results vs. the competition. If you’re good at something it will be obvious. Your results will be comparable to someone working 4-5x as hard.
Take Mental Note of Your Energy Levels: When do you work best? Night or day. When do you feel drained? What happened that day specifically? Was it accounting type work, phone calls, parties, etc? You need to know with certainty if cognitive work is the drain or emotional work. They are typically polar opposites. By no surprise, we’re specifically wired for cognitive work. A 60 minute conversation would be 100x more painful than 5-6 hours of writing, editing ads, testing new software tools etc. The answer will be clear as day. This alone will save you thousands of hours per year. No wasted time on things that reduce your mood/energy
Evaluate Each Loss: If something goes wrong, take the time to do a deep and brutal analysis for the why. Did you switch to a new contractor? Was that the problem? Did you spend less time on it? Did you lose focus and pour energy into things that didn’t move the needle? Be honest about it. Once you find the error, never repeat it. Many times you’ll find that the problem was your own decision making (yes, the majority of the time the answer is within). Figure out why you made that decision, take note of it, never repeat. Now you can avoid ruminating on it. You know why and you can move on since the past doesn’t exist anyway
Extend Your Time Horizons: We’ve noticed that people can’t even pause for 3 months. How can someone like this survive the ~3 years it takes to become a decent business person? You know the answer.
Check patterns across 1, 5, 10 and even 20 years. Your real strengths and weaknesses show up repeatedly. Ignore them and you’ll be that guy who “never changed”. The biggest backhanded insult in the world. It means you didn’t get better.
The 2025 Edge
The majority? Panic mode over AI, markets and competition.
The minority? Using emotions, AI and algorithms to figure out where they fit in. You won’t be worried about AI/Algorithms if they are doing your work for you.
Self-awareness gets you out of NPC purgatory. Doing the same stuff everyone else is doing just because it is on the Television or Instagram feed. Get this right and everything else will follow.
Life is a massively rigged game. Once you know yourself deeply, you’ll win at health, relationships, money and investing.
Part 2: 30-Day Plan to Fix This Now
Before going down this path, remember that we assume you agree with our long-term beliefs. The future is digital. Rich and poor divide. Easier to scale with technology and less human capital. Higher amounts of degeneracy/gambling. This is a completely different view of the future vs. the “go to school, get job, work 40 years, retire” map that is given to the NPCs.
Prep (Day 0–1):
Write the businesses you want to start. The *vast* majority are just idea guys. This means they follow trends and have 10 ideas they juggle. Guaranteed failure so we’re going to end this on day one.
Excel Sheet Score Card: Spend the day doing the following: 1) cognitive work related to - reading, calculations and research. Focus on one of those business ideas. 2) Go out and do something social - can be as simple as lunch with new people. It cannot be anyone you know already, 3) do a light workout of 20 minutes at 8am and at 8pm
Commit 15 minutes: You will now write down in that excel sheet if you felt more energized doing cognitive work vs. social work and the quality of your simple workout (you could lift, run, it doesn’t matter, 20 minutes will not lead to any exhaustion)
Phase 1 — Observe (Days 2–10)
Review: At this point you already have enough information. Your body and rhythm is unlikely going to change (genetics!). If you found that you’re more energetic at night? You will now do all your business work at night. If you find that cognitive work made you want to sleep? You’re going to cross out all those crack pot business ideas that require heavy cognitive load 24/7
Narrow: You now have 9 days to narrow those business ideas down to 1-2. No exceptions. No excuses. No nothing. 1-2 at most.
Start Spamming the Algorithms: You will now search for topics related to those two ideas only. If you’re looking at a makeup business? You’ll be clicking nothing but search queries for makeup related items. Loading and unloading Sephora, MAC etc. Spam all your devices.
Finalize the Direction: At this point you have one idea. Period. Done. You’re going to go with this idea and nothing else. You can write down the close second and put it into a shoe box. That said, it is now dead to you. You’re going all in on this one idea only. Back to spamming the algorthm
Phase 2 — Clarify (Days 11–20)
Day 11: You get a maximum of three tasks. This is the most you’ll be able to handle. Do you need to test demand? Do you need to determine which product to sell first? Do you have an edge or new marketing angle settled? Better have all of these and get cracking.
Day 15: Check in on your excel sheet. If you’re *less* tired than day one? You’re on the right track. Your brain is now freed up from all these other meaningless crackpot ideas you had before. Laser focused on just one thing and you’re using your peak hours to get them done
Day 16-20: Eating glass time. You have no excuses now. Every single day you should only have 1-2 tasks moving the chains forward. If you didn’t do them, you don’t deserve any success. Not today, not ever.
Phase 3 — Experiment (Days 21–30)
10 Minute Journal: Before you go to bed you will now take those 1-3 items and write down exactly what you did to move forward. If you are forced to write down “thinking of a logo or website name” you have FAILED. There is no situation in which that is priority number one. You could simply click one of the ads (from spamming the algorithms) to come up with a good enough name and logo within 5 minutes
Energy Check: If your energy is increasing? Congrats you’re on the right track. Your actions are now aligned with your natural tendencies. This is where self awareness is developed. If you’re low energy in the morning, that’s when you do your basic fitness stuff (you’re not going to the Major Leagues). If you’re in high energy mode? The phone goes on silent, you create those ads, you A/B test, you track down the manufacturer on the labels of competing products etc. Locked and loaded until you gas out
Day 30
Once a month: You sit down and compare what quality of product you’re creating now versus day 1. If it is the same, this is yet another red flag. If you see an improvement and audibly say “wow can’t believe i used to believe that would work”, we’d wager *heavily* that you’ve found the right blend of effort, talent and focus on what matters
Now Once a Quarter: Since you’re on your way, you now check about once every 90 days. This is a full 30 minute set aside review. The daily 10 minute journal is just to make sure you didn’t waste the 24 hour period.
Now for the Final Psychological Hurdle: The last part is actually quite difficult. You’re no longer allowed to ruminate about past decisions and past ideas. They are dead. If you could have handled a situation better? Oh well it is in the past. The past doesn’t exist. You jot down what went wrong and use it to review the next time it occurs in the future. Had a bad experience with the wrong product? Figure out what was wrong with the research. As you can see, it all circles back to taking control of all facets of improving.
Qualitative Metrics That Matter
*Quality*-work hrs per day ↑
Regretted decisions per month ↓
Percent time on work designed to build equity ↑
Energy trend improving ↑
In the end, we’re all just advanced computers and machines. You want the machine to run smoother, take the fastest route and do so with the least amount of energy.
Hopefully this simple roadmap works for you. It worked for us and is 100x harder than it seems. Only the top 1% will constantly look to maximize all their time on this planet. That is why they get all the spoils.
Good luck! As always, we can give you formula but we can’t do it for you. Your talents and skills will always be different from the person sitting next to you. Just need to find them and abuse them until you make it.
Disclaimer: None of this is to be deemed legal or financial advice of any kind. These are *opinions* written by an anonymous group of Ex-Wall Street Tech Bankers and software engineers who moved into affiliate marketing and e-commerce.
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Day-person, work in tech sales, strong social skills, weak technical skills. Miserably failed for the last 5 years to build wifi/ecomm business cause basic things like looking for suppliers on alibaba massively drains my energy/mood.
I was thinking doing some sort of luxury services biz through door-to-door sales, but I have a day job. (Could do it on the weekends)
What biz would you recommend me that I could do next to my day-job with my skillset? Thx
I'm picking up what you're putting down. And look - honestly, I agree with you about investment banking not being the move long term as a career, although I'm wagecucking for now. The thing for me is that finance is an actual skill of mine. It makes sense to me. For example, I did a shot of tequila before what was considered a "hard" finance exam in my grad program, and then got the highest score in the class. But by no means do I get joy from some of the absurdities of IB either
Looking into some fractional CFO roles or other ways I could freelance my skills, on top of maybe rotating some crypto gains Q4/Q1 2026 into a proto-multi family office with some friends & family money. Use that to seed some business ideas too.