Pushing the Lead Domino

Pushing the lead domino is another heuristic I’ve been using lately. In the words of Tim Ferriss, “which of these [tasks], if done, make the the rest easier or irrelevant?”

Most people know about the 80/20 principal, in that 20% leads to 80% of gains, but the lead domino is even more powerful. It’s the 80/20 principal on steroids, making it easier for me to focus on what’s important. There’s always one thing that I can be working on that will make everything I’m doing much easier. (more…)

Property Simple: Automated Social Media Advertising for Real Estate Agents

Property Simple, a company that helps real estate agents sell and capture more properties, is our first portfolio company to make the jump from Latin America to the US market. Adrian Fisher, Property Simple’s founder, moved to Los Angeles full time a month ago to continue to help real estate agents sell more faster.

Property Simple helps real estate agents in two ways.

Property Simple’s first product allows real estate agents to improve their personal branding and stay top of mind within their network by automatically posting property listings and unique agent information to an agent’s own social media profiles like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Plus. By posting automatically, agents stay top of mind in their personal network, which are the people most likely to refer a seller to them, without having to spend 30-60 minutes per day on posting on social media. (more…)

An Economic Slowdown Is a Good Time to Launch a Startup

A version of this post originally appeared in Spanish as a column in El Mercurio, Chile’s equivalent of the New York Times with the title Una desaceleración es un muy buen momento para lanzar un emprendimiento.

As some context to my non-chilean readers, Chile, along with most resource producing countries, is currently going through an economic slowdown. Most of Chile’s government revenue comes from Copper sales, who’s price has gone down by 55% from its peak. Although Chile’s not in a recession yet and Chile’s economy is in great shape compared to other Latam countries, unemployment is up, businesses are investing less and people are worried.

Here’s the original column:

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Offense vs Defense

I’ve been using going on offense vs. being on defense as an heuristic to see if I’m working on the right things each day. Am I on offense or on defense? How much time am I spending on defense each day?

I can’t take credit for this heuristic, as I took it from multiple Tim Ferriss podcast guests like Chris Sacca, Naval Ravikant and Derek Sivers. (If you’re not listening to it, highly recommended!).

Offense is when I’m setting the agenda for my day, trying to grow my business. Whether I’m doing research, taking time to think and create a plan then executing it, in the street selling, banging the phones cold calling for leads or creating content/landing pages for my business. It’s the way I grow my business. (more…)