We all want to know what we know now but ten years ago.
That’s how this Reddit AMA felt when I read it. Len, a 102-year-old WW2 veteran, sat with his grandson to answer questions about history, WW2, and life in general. His grandson, who did the writing part, wanted to hear more of Grandpa’s stories.
These are my favorite answers and quotes.
“War Is Never Necessary. There Is No Such Thing as a Justified War”
Len served with the Canadian troops in the liberation of the Netherlands in 1939. Nazis were trying to reach Copenhagen.
After many years, Len has overcome traumas thanks to his wife and family’s support. But there are memories he can’t erase and, even to this day, he has bad dreams about it. He still remembers his service number – Eight-one-two-four-zero, by the way – and the D-Day is still vivid in his mind. He can’t even watch the landing scene from Saving Private Ryan.
[About D-Day] I just thought “I have a job to do”. Analyze the situation and react. If you stop, dig a hole. You don’t say “I think this is ok” you dig down deeper. Don’t go hunting for souvenirs in a minefield.
Someone in the comments shared the story of her young grandmother during those war times. She and her class learned and sang the Canadian national anthem to the soldiers. She even refused to wear a green hair ribbon to school because the Canadian flag was red.
“We had no idea that the Holocaust was happening. We saw three emaciated people walking in striped pajamas with big smiles on their faces. They had been liberated. That was the first time I learned about the atrocities that had been committed. In some of the media portrayals, this isn’t the case.”
“War should NOT happen. Surely there is a lesson. Don’t let it happen again.”
“Don’t Drink, Don’t Smoke, and Common Sense”
That was what Len answered when someone asked about what to do to live to such an amazing age.
His secret for a good life? “Non-smoker, non-drinker, and not necessarily following all the trends. Do your own thing.”
The higher we climb the mountain of life, the more perspective and the better view we have. From Len’s 102-year-old perspective:
A perfect day? “Waking up and being alive… A nice visit. A nice conversation with someone. And some tea.”
To enjoy each day to the fullest? “Surround yourself with people that you love. Take a minute to step back and see all the beauty around you.”
“People have forgotten the value of life. People focus too much on possessions and not the people and beauty that surrounds them.”
“During the Depression There Was NO Money”
Len has witnessed the adoption of cars, computers, and cell phones, but more shocking: he lived through the Great Depression.
Apart from pictures and history textbooks, we have no idea of an economic event of such proportions. Just last week (the first week of August 2024, if you’re reading this from the future), the US Stock Market fell between 10% and 20% and we called it “Black Monday” and were afraid of another recession. But here’s what Len shared when he was asked about the Great Depression:
“There’s no way of comparing that. During the Depression, there was NO money. I knew a man who hauled wood by horse to the school. A day’s work got you one dollar. We were okay, we had lots of vegetables and chickens. No use selling a cow because you would only get a dollar so you kept it for meat and milk. There is no comparison.”
Are You Scared To Die? –”No. It Happens to Everyone”
“If I could give myself advice I would say stay away from controversy. If something works stick with it.”
When asked what young people today should understand: “The value of life. Don’t louse it up.”
“T.V. is a pain in the neck. Interesting. Informative. Unnecessary.” Oh boy! I wished he had answered when and how he learned this one.
“Important: integrity and honesty. Unimportant: Money”
When asked about fearing death: “Not a bit. Lived a good life, what else do you want. No. Nothing wrong with dying.”
A 40-something asked about what waking up at 102 looks like: “Everything hurts, but I am not suffering.”
“Take care of your body. You only get one.” “Don’t smoke.”
This AMA was full of wisdom. But my favorite answer is when someone asked Len what he wanted to do when he grew up: “Happy.”
I can only imagine how fulfilled he has lived all these years to say at 102 he’s not afraid of death. What a wonderful life!
Having too much money brings a different set of challenges.
That’s one of the takeaways from this conversation between two millionaires. It’s one episode of the “Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal.” This time Ali sat down with Andrew Wilkinson.
Here’s the YouTube episode if you want to watch it:
Ali Abdaal started medical school, then became a YouTuber, and since then has run an online education business. But I didn’t know about Andrew Wilkinson. Andrew went from barista to billionaire, coming from a middle-class family.
“I’m as Stressed as You Are”
For me, hearing Andrew say he was stressed too was one of the most shocking parts of that conversation — right at the start.
We might believe that money makes life easier. But from that conversation: it just brings a new set of challenges. We have to choose our own money adventure and when to stop.
This reminds me of a past boss.
He was a well-known entrepreneur in my city (and maybe in my whole country). He came from a wealthy family and ran more than a couple of successful businesses. But when he tasted the bat soup in 2020, there was no money to add more time to his countdown timer.
I guess money can’t buy certain things. For everything else, there’s a credit card. I’m stealing that from a TV commercial.
“Be a Financial Prepper”
Be paranoid. Only the paranoids survive.
During the conversation, Andrew shared he’s a prepper. Not in the sense of keeping a basement full of weapons, canned food, and gas masks ready for a zombie apocalypse. But in the sense of having multiple income sources.
“Be unbreakable financially”
In 2024, I had to internalize that lesson thanks to yet another round of layoffs in the software industry. I lost my main income source, a.k.a salary. I had other income sources, but not enough to cover my monthly expenses.
Robert Kiyosaki is right: “Build your asset column” and “Make your assets pay for your luxuries.”
I had to truly live it to learn it. Knowledge is only potential power unless put into practice.
“The best way to feel rich is to have cashflow”
Be the Sushi Master or the Chipotle Founder
Apart from the money lessons, my most important takeaway from this podcast episode is to:
“Design your life around your flow state”
We could choose to be the best sushi master of the world — worth a Netflix documentary — or the Chipotle founder.
One has mastered his craft to the point of perfection. Maybe he’s happy having only one restaurant and serving one smallish crowd. The other took a different route and created a reproducible business with thousands of locations, taking himself out of the equation.
That’s success seen from different perspectives.
Both of them followed what they enjoyed doing. Each followed a different adventure.
It sounds like the story of a businessman who ran into a fisherman taking a nap in a hammock under a palm tree. After a long conversation and giving a business plan for free, the businessman realizes that the entrepreneurial journey he was sharing with the fisherman will end with a nap in a hammock under the same palm tree.
In any case, follow your flow state and delegate things you don’t enjoy.
Towards the end of the conversation, Ali started to ask for advice to expand his own business. It was interesting to hear the business and money insights from a billionaire who came from the middle class. It wasn’t advice for everyone, but I took this last part:
“Sell something boring to a rich person. Don’t sell a complex product to cheap people.”
He went from unloading cargo trucks to being Spain’s best copywriter.
So far I’ve only been following English-speaking copywriters. I write landing pages for my coding courses in English. That’s why I hadn’t heard of Isra Bravo.
In a podcast interview, he shared his best lessons. You can watch the full interview here in Spanish. I only needed to watch that interview to start following his work.
You don’t need to learn Spanish to watch that interview. Here are my favorite lessons from that interview:
1. Never run promotions or offer discounts
Instead of trying to make more sales by lowering your prices, improve your product and get better at selling. Don’t do what everybody else is doing.
Instead of promotions and discounts, offer a launch price to your existing clients. They’re your best clients since they already bought from you.
2. Good Copy > Good Design
Good copy is more important than an outstanding design.
Isra’s most popular book, “I Write Because I Like to Make Money,” is an example of bad design with a good copy. Its cover doesn’t have bright colors or fancy fonts. It’s full of text with some bold sentences. It’s the type of book cover we would create in Microsoft Word with 0 design skills. But it reads like a good social media post or a persuasive email.
I Write Because I Like to Make Money. Via: goodreads.com
Here’s what it says:
“I write because I like to make money. And I teach thousands of people, who also like making money, how to do it. My name is Isra Bravo and in 2017 I unloaded trucks and was broke, but not anymore…“
Yes, that’s on the book cover. And I only translated the first part for you.
After hearing that and watching the most popular book from the best copywriter in Spain, I started to redesign my website’s homepage to remove visuals and have better copy.
Don’t get better at design. Get better at copywriting.
3. It’s easier to stand out on saturated markets
People are afraid of saturated markets.
YouTube is saturated. LinkedIn is saturated. Instagram is saturated… The whole world is saturated. But Isra teaches that it’s easier to stand out in saturated markets.
To stand out, you have to do what everybody else isn’t doing and make fun of your competitors in your copy.
By day, I’m a software engineer. And if you land on anyone’s coding website, everybody is passionate and codes the whole day for passion, except when they’re sleeping, but they dream about code too.
To stand out in the saturated market of coding, I’m changing my website’s copy to show my failures instead of my achievements—that’s what everybody is doing. Oh, I’m also saying I’m not passionate.
If you offer any kind of “done for you” services, don’t simply put on your website a bunch of logos of the clients you’ve helped. Everybody does the same. Instead, share a quick story of what you did for them.
Stand out by doing a good job, delivering it on time, and changing your copy to be different.
4. Never offer a lower price to new buyers
When you offer lower prices to new buyers, you’re betraying your current clients.
It’s the same feeling when we find out that a recently-hired team member is making a higher salary than us, who have stayed longer at the job and worked harder. Arrggg! We feel cheated and betrayed. Our clients feel the same.
Never offer a lower price than the one your current clients bought at.
5. Never offer too much value for free
People don’t value what they get for free the same way they value what they paid for.
Last year, as a therapy while recovering from burnout, I started to record coding courses. And I heard the advice to give away my course for free in exchange for testimonials. I did it. But I had to nearly chase my friends for a rating and a review. Some of them only logged in and never watched past the first lecture.
Always leave them wanting more in your copy, but never give away too much for free.
Learn to write and you will never starve again. With words, you can sell anything. Just remember, don’t run promotions or offer discounts.
I hate seeing “passionate” listed as a requirement in job postings.
How can we measure passion? Is there a quiz, like those magazine questionnaires? “Find out if you’re a passionate coder in less than 5 minutes with 10 easy-to-answer questions.”
The best coders I’ve met at past jobs weren’t what we’d call passionate. By passionate, I mean making open source contributions, speaking at conferences, and writing posts. They were busy enough making money.
We all start as “passionate,” but as time goes by all that passion fades away
The other day, Miguel, one of my readers, shared a similar experience. Here’s an excerpt of his email:
Personally, I’ve become discouraged in my programming career and no longer aspire to work at one of the most important tech companies. I just want to pay my bills and meet my family’s needs.
If you are in a similar situation, you’re not alone.
At some point in our careers, we all feel the same way. I know I have.
Probably, it’s because we’re problem solvers at heart, and companies confine us to cubicles and box us in with SCRUM and its ceremonies. And we don’t get to solve problems. Yes, “ceremony” is the right word.
When I started coding over 10 years ago, I dreamed of joining a big tech company like Google or Microsoft too. Sliding between offices, having a chef cooking our meals, getting a massage, riding a bike between buildings…
But, I realized big companies have their own challenges. More middle managers and more office politics. More of being a small cog in a machine. Even smaller cog and larger machine. They’re not the best place for everyone.
Code for money, do a good job, but don’t let your work be your only source of meaning
There’s nothing wrong with working at a coding job just to pay the bills.
We have to do what we have to do to put a roof over our heads and bread on our tables. If it’s coding, so be it.
But if we’re coding just for money, we should have hobbies, side projects, and other activities to find a sense of meaning and value outside work. Otherwise, the day job will become a burden. Trust me on this one, I showed up just for money and ended up burned out and sick.
My first job taught me A LOT. I had 0 hours of flight time. Everything was new to me. I had to learn about the job and to navigate the corporate world at the same time. But I was fired.
Yes, fired. Not laid off. Fired. Same result, different cause.
Did I deserve it? Probably. Did I learn something? Sure.
Here are five lessons I learned from that:
1. You could lose your job at anytime
It’s obvious now. But it wasn’t 10+ years ago.
I was fired. But you could also lose your job for reasons you don’t control. A pandemic, a recession, or a layoff. Or your company gets acquired and extinguished. It’s outside of your control.
When I was in university, I thought being an employee was the safest route. Starting a company was for crazy people. I was sooo wrong. I only needed to be fired once to change my mind.
What’s truly safe? What you build for yourself: a side business, a rental property, or an investment portfolio.
Build something you can’t be fired from…Well, Steve Jobs was fired from Apple, so handle with care.
2. Job offers aren’t published anywhere
A couple of weeks after losing my job, I was interviewing for a small company in my city.
On the day I left, I had a conversation with my direct boss. Ex-boss, at that point. I don’t remember exactly what we talked about. I don’t know what he saw in me either. Maybe he saw his younger self across the desk that day. But he made a couple of phone calls and arranged an interview for me. It was a lucky day for me after all.
My first job wasn’t advertised anywhere. I got it because I knew someone who knew someone. And my next job wasn’t advertised either. Again I knew someone who knew someone.
Our world is moved by connections. By knowing someone who knows someone. Make an extra effort to build your professional network.
Your network is your most valuable asset.
3. Accept the rules or disagree with your feet
Talent and hard work aren’t shortcuts to avoid corporate rules.
There was a new rule at work. I didn’t like it. But I was naive to think anyone would ask me if I liked it and was willing to follow it. HR? My boss? My boss’ boss? Of course, nobody did.
I was wrong to believe my hard work would exempt me from that rule. Not following that new rule got me fired in the end.
A job is a game with rules you don’t control. And you have no voice when those rules change. Either you accept those rules or disagree with your feet. Trying to negotiate has no results. And not following them…well, now you know what happened to me.
4. Listen to your body, it might be telling you something
It sounds like a cliché. But listen to your body and look for small clues.
Don’t want to get out of bed to work multiple days in a row? Do Sunday evenings make you anxious anticipating next Monday morning? Your body might be telling you something.
At some point in my first job, I felt like I was leaving my life behind, sitting at a computer. I was demotivated and disengaged. My morning alarm was torture.
I didn’t listen to my body. I kept doing the same expecting change without doing anything. The next time I forgot to listen to my body years later, I got burned out and eventually sick.
Every time I need to make a change in my life, my body tells me when it’s time. “I feel it in my fingers…I feel it in my toes…”
5. Always have an exit plan
I jumped and left my first job with no plan at all.
By not making my own plan, I let society choose a plan for me: work hard, get promoted, and get a 3-5% raise every year. Wait to retire. Then, die.
Take a moment to find out what you want and value the most for your career. Money? Connections? Recognition? Growth? Then, choose the jobs and places that take you closer to that.
Don’t let others decide by going on auto-pilot. Have your own exit plan. Always.
Parting Thought
After many years, I realized my first job was a launching platform. It put me in the right moment, next to the right people. It started a chain of events that brought me to where I’m now.
At my first job, I learned some of my most valuable career lessons. The world isn’t what my teachers told me in university. I had to learn and figure out things on my own. I started my financial journey by making my first deposit into an investment account. I got my first real hours of flight time. I paid for a family dinner with my money for the first time.
After every ending, there’s a new beginning. Pastures are always greener on the other side.
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