Best of 2024: The Blueprint for a Transformative New Year

1. Adopt ‘Don’t Die’ Philosophy

Embrace the philosophy of ‘Don’t Die’ for individual longevity, social harmony (don’t kill each other), and environmental preservation (don’t kill planet earth). This positions you to benefit from future technological advancements, especially with rapidly improving AI.

2. Regulate Emotions with AVP

Practice the AVP method for emotion regulation: Acknowledge what you’re feeling, Validate that it makes sense to feel that way, and Permit yourself to feel it, adding ‘and I can cope with it’. Practice in low-stakes situations by setting a daily reminder to build this skill.

3. Treat Inner Voices as Passengers

View negative inner voices (e.g., imposter syndrome, self-blame) as passengers in your car, not the driver. Engage in a relationship with these parts of yourself by talking to them, preventing them from taking control of your actions or self-perception.

4. Avoid Financial FOMO

Cultivate a lack of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) as the single most important financial skill, especially in modern markets. This prevents impatience and changing strategies, which are critical for accumulating significant wealth over a lifetime.

5. Cultivate Endurance & Manage Risk

Develop endurance and cap downside risk to stick around longer in your endeavors, similar to Warren Buffett who accumulated 99% of his net worth after age 60. This combination of financial prudence and psychological persistence is crucial for massive long-term success.

6. Prioritize Sleep Optimization

Make perfect, consistent sleep your number one priority by establishing a fixed bedtime (e.g., 9:30 PM) and waking naturally. Optimize for deep sleep by eating your last meal early (e.g., 11 AM) to ensure digestion is finished before bed, which lowers resting heart rate and maximizes REM/deep sleep.

7. Focus on Micronutrient Intake

Prioritize getting sufficient essential micronutrients (vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, amino acids) from your diet. These run your metabolism and prevent insidious damage that accumulates over time, contributing to age-related diseases.

8. Eat Dark Leafy Greens Daily

Consume dark leafy greens daily to ensure adequate magnesium and vitamin K1 intake, which are common deficiencies. Magnesium is crucial for energy, damage repair, and bone health, while K1 is essential for blood clotting processes.

9. Consume Fatty Fish Regularly

Eat fatty fish like wild Alaskan salmon, cod, mackerel, or sardines to get marine omega-3s (DHA and EPA). A high omega-3 index (8% or more) is linked to a five-year increased life expectancy and is as important as avoiding smoking for longevity.

10. Prioritize Needs Over Avoidance in Diet

Shift your nutritional framework from focusing on what to avoid to focusing on what you need. By ensuring you get essential micronutrients, you naturally avoid processed foods that lack nutritional value.

11. Be Curious About Yourself

Cultivate curiosity about your internal state as a foundation for emotion regulation. When reacting to triggers, ask ‘What’s going on inside of me?’ instead of blaming external factors, which empowers you to understand and control your reactions.

12. Peel Out of Grind Culture

Actively disengage from ‘grind culture’ behaviors, such as working for days without sleep, even if they are socially praised. These behaviors are detrimental to health and counterproductive to long-term well-being and longevity.

13. Focus on Repeatable Actions

When observing successful individuals, identify and focus on what is repeatable (e.g., patience, risk framework) rather than non-repeatable conditions (e.g., specific market timing). These are the actionable strategies you can apply to your own life.

14. Practice Empathy for Decisions

When observing others’ decisions, especially those you disagree with, practice empathy by asking yourself what you would do if you had their experiences, family dynamics, and DNA. This helps you understand underlying motivations and factors outside of their control.

15. Align Intent with Behavior

For leaders, ensure your stated intentions align with your actual behavior. Use an exercise where you imagine your funeral and what colleagues would say about you, then hold yourself accountable to those desired stories in your daily actions.

16. Prioritize M&A Integration

When acquiring companies, prioritize integration from the moment the deal is agreed upon, not just after closing. Standardize critical systems like ERP, HRIS, CRM, and internal social media to prevent a fragmented ‘mishmash’ and foster a unified culture.

17. Select Industries Carefully for M&A

Before pursuing M&A, thoroughly research and select an industry that is large, fragmented, offers economies of scale, allows for technology application, and aligns with your management style and expertise. This strategic selection is foundational for successful acquisitions.

18. Form Cross-Functional Positioning Team

When defining company positioning, involve a cross-functional team including product, marketing, sales, customer success, and support. This ensures alignment, buy-in across departments, and prevents positioning changes from failing to stick.

19. Develop a Strong Market Point of View

Cultivate and communicate a distinct point of view on the market to educate customers about the context surrounding your product and why your approach is valuable. If customers align with your market perspective, they are more likely to choose your product.

20. Be a Low-Cost Producer

Strive to be a low-cost producer in any business by actively eliminating waste. This strategy is critical for staying in business during tough times, as controlling costs provides stability regardless of revenue fluctuations.

21. Maintain Business Focus

Stick to your core business and avoid diversifying into areas you know nothing about, especially after achieving initial success. Focus is a critical business principle that prevents losing direction and making significant mistakes.

22. Monitor Key Business Indicators

Regularly monitor the 5-7 key indicators specific to your business (e.g., revenue, sales, margin, costs, capital). Staying well-informed upfront allows you to address problems early and operate without surprises.

23. Foster Open Organizational Communication

Encourage open communication at a personal level within organizations, especially between individuals or departments that are blocking decision-making. This breaks down silos and makes power structures easier to navigate, as many issues stem from lack of direct conversation.

24. Executives: Own Behavior’s Impact

Executives should take responsibility for the impact of their own behavior, particularly in how feedback is delivered. Use video feedback to help them see how their actions are perceived by others, even if their intent is positive.

25. Work 70 Hours as Entrepreneur

As an entrepreneur, commit to working 70 hours a week, not 50. This level of hard work and dedication is considered essential for building a successful business and generating ‘good luck’ over time.

26. Recognize Fortunes Made After 50

Understand that most significant fortunes are made after age 50, as earlier years are often spent building a base of assets (land, factories, people) that may not immediately show up in the bottom line. This encourages a long-term perspective on wealth creation.

27. Act on Opportunities Late in Life

Remain open and willing to act on investment opportunities even late in life, such as leveraging low interest rates to invest in higher-yielding dividends. Continued engagement and strategic action can lead to significant wealth accumulation at any age.

28. Keep the Back Door Open

Always maintain an exit strategy or contingency plan, especially when leveraging or diversifying. Be careful with new ventures, testing the waters rather than committing too heavily to things you know nothing about.

29. Ask Questions, Don’t Have All Answers

Cultivate the habit of asking questions rather than always claiming to have the answers. The person who asks questions often appears more insightful and fosters a learning environment, especially after achieving success.

30. Don’t Perceive Others as ‘Above’

Avoid falling into a power structure where you perceive others as significantly ‘above’ you. This perception can limit your creative freedom and what you feel you have permission to do or say, hindering effective interaction.

31. Quantify Omega-3 Levels

Measure your omega-3 levels using an omega-3 index test (from red blood cells) to get a long-term status of your intake. This allows you to objectively determine if you are getting enough and adjust your diet or supplementation accordingly.

32. Implement Structured Daily Routine

Establish a highly structured daily routine based on scientific evidence for health span and lifespan. Measure everything, look at the evidence, implement protocols, and then measure again to continuously fine-tune for optimal results.

33. Incorporate Morning Circadian Rituals

Start your day with rituals that support your circadian rhythm and overall health, such as a few minutes of UV light therapy in the dark morning, taking specific supplements, or light therapy on your hair.

34. Engage in Daily Full-Body Workouts

Perform daily, full-body workouts for about an hour, focusing on flexing and stretching every muscle. Avoid heavy weights that are hard on joints to build strength and cardiovascular fitness without injury.

35. Consume Vegetables for Breakfast

Integrate a significant quantity of vegetables (e.g., a few pounds) into your breakfast as part of a highly structured nutritional protocol aimed at cellular rejuvenation.

36. Rejuvenate Every Organ

Focus on quantifying and rejuvenating every organ of your body, considering the biological age of individual organs (e.g., heart, lungs, liver) as a more powerful predictor of health than chronological age.

37. Record Audience During Presentations

Record your audience during presentations, not just yourself, to get an instant feedback loop on what stories or jokes land and what falls flat. This approach optimizes for audience engagement rather than just your personal delivery.

38. Break Presentation Social Construct

Challenge the social construct that a presentation is a unique, high-stakes event. Instead, view it as simply talking to a group of people, which can reduce anxiety and help you be more present and comfortable.

39. Put in Presentation Reps

Practice presentations consistently by ‘putting in the reps,’ ideally daily for several weeks, focusing on outlines and repetition. This builds comfort and skill, leading to much better performance than last-minute cramming.

40. Prioritize Comfort in Presenting

Focus on getting yourself to the most comfortable state when presenting, as this is when you are most effective. Build your presentation skills on this foundation of feeling free and natural.

41. Use Video for Self-Feedback (Audience Focus)

Utilize video recordings for self-feedback on presentations, but critically, focus on the audience’s experience and engagement rather than getting fixated on minor personal appearance flaws. World-class presenters are audience-centric, not self-centric.

42. B2B Sales Storytelling: Why Us?

In B2B sales, structure your storytelling to answer the question ‘Why pick us over the other guys?’. This involves painting a picture of the entire market, discussing alternative approaches, and showing where your product fits.

43. Help B2B Customers Understand Market

In B2B sales storytelling, help customers confidently make a decision by painting a clear picture of the whole market, including competitors and trade-offs of different solutions. Many B2B buyers are new to the product category and need this context.

44. Diagnose Business Problems Accurately

Differentiate between a positioning problem and other business issues. If customers love your product but you lack meetings, it’s a lead generation problem; if there’s confusion early in the sales process, it’s a positioning problem. Correct diagnosis is key to effective solutions.

45. Pay Close Attention to Acquisition Multiples

When doing M&A, meticulously analyze the multiples paid for acquisitions. The difference between your cost of capital and the acquisition deployment price is a significant lever for creating immediate shareholder value.

46. Foster Talent & Relationships in M&A

During M&A, prioritize forming strong relationships with people, ensuring you retain great talent, and gracefully exiting weak players. This human element is crucial for successful integration and maintaining a strong, productive workforce.

47. Develop a Philosophical Stack

In an era of rapidly advancing AI, develop a personal ‘philosophical stack’ that informs your daily actions and how you think about reality. This provides a playbook for navigating an unprecedented future where human intelligence is being superseded.