Robbie Abed's Personal Blog

I learn something from James Altucher & Mark Suster continuously and I wanted to share it with the world.

They are both are successful entrepreneurs. One writes a lot about prostitution and the other writes about startups. To me, they are both the same thing. OK, let’s get this show started.

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I usually write about what they wrote about & what I learned from their content. Today, I’m taking a step back and talking about how I learned to blog from them. A recent post of mine, which was #2 on hacker news accumulating over 25,000 views in less than 24 hours, was really because of both Mark And James.

1. Be good at something – Mark & James are proven entrepreneurs. They know what they are talking about
2. Be consistent – James writes very consistently & holds a twitter Q&A session every thursday. He’s never missed one.
3. Bleed in the first line – James wrote this in one of his posts.
4. Relate to people – I’ve noticed that my blog posts that relate to people the most, are the one’s that get picked up on other tech & social media sites.
5. Find your voice – James & Mark both have very different writing styles, but I know what their style of writing is. Both very unique. They found their voice and stick to it.
6. Be personal – James is more personal then Mark undoubtedly, but both are very personal in the things they share. Mark shares the tips of the trades, James teaches you how to be happier.
7. Tell the truth – James has redefined the truth. He inspired me to write this post about the interviews I failed:
8. Guest blog, but be choosy
9. Be helpful – Mark is awesome at this. His posts are usually how to help people with their business. It’s always helpful & this is a big reason why I love it.
10. Shit, Fuck & Prostitution. – Not sure why I said this, but James has taught me to be bold. Thanks man.

So to James & Mark, thank you very much. You have helped me redefine my writing style & really help me find my voice.

I learn something from James & Mark continuously and I wanted to share it with the world. I will also pick a winner of who had the best content.

They are both are successful entrepreneurs. One writes a lot about prostitution and the other writes about business. To me, they are both the same thing. OK, let’s get this show started.

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James Altucher (http://jamesaltucher.com)

James always speaks from the heart and is brutally honest about his past life, so a Valentine’s theme post was expected and it was a great one.In this post titled “What To Do When She Leaves You“, he lists out exactly what you need to do when she leaves you.

I’ve always jokingly told my wife that as soon as she becomes a pharmacist, she’s going to leave me. What else am I good for besides paying the bills? At least I have a manual on what to do if it ever happens. Let’s hope that I don’t need it!

I left my fulltime job to work on my own company mainly because I wanted to be happier. I wanted to be more successful of course, but my main driver was to be happier with what I was doing with my life. In “What is the Method to Your Madness” he makes the following statement:

No method will work. No path will take you to the goals you think you need. Nothing anybody can tell you will ever work to make you really happier. Even, I have to admit, anything you read on this blog.

So at the end of the day: you tell me. Why do you want to escape so bad? What are you escaping from? What political, social, economic norms helped create this emptiness inside of you.

Amen brother!

Mark Suster (http://bothsidesofthetable.com)

Mark had two posts this past week. One about Successful Negotiation Tactics and the other about a successful bootstrapped entrepreneur. A commenter one of his posts said that his best posts are posts about his real life experiences or someone else’s and I can really resonate with that statement. After all, this post IS about what I learned from him!

Regarding negotiation, I didn’t learn anything drastically new but it confirmed a lot of my beliefs with salary negotiations. This is one area that I think I’m pretty good at, but I can always be better. The post can be summarized from this excerpt:

And so I learned an important negotiation lesson in college. Sellers will always chase you down the road if they think you’re walking away from a deal that they want to do.

Your job is to offer a price (or terms) and walk. See if they follow you. If you get to the end of the road and turn right and they’re not following you then you know you offered a price that was too low.

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The Winner?

If James wrote a post that was titled “How to make sure she doesn’t leave you” instead of “What to do when she leaves you”, then he would have won because my wife hasn’t left me YET. I know he doesn’t write the blog for me, but I chose the winner here not you!

Mark’s post regarding negotiations was a little bit more timely for me because I’m constantly negotiating as well. Mark Wins and it leaves the score at 2-1 in favor of Mark.

This is going to be a start of a series I create every friday assuming both of these “bloggers” create content during that week.  The reason I’m starting this is fairly simple: I learn something from them continuously and I wanted to share with the world. I will also pick a winner of who had the best content

They are both are successful entrepreneurs. One writes a lot about prostitution and the other writes about business. To me, they are both the same thing. OK, let’s get this show started.

——–

James Altucher (http://jamesaltucher.com)

In the past two weeks, James wrote a total of 8 blog posts. His titles contained words such as sex, death, money, failure, kindness and wikipedia. If that doesn’t tell you how awesome James was this past two weeks, I don’t know what will.

What’s prevalent in these blog posts is that he always has ideas or direct feedback on how to fix a problem. He also talks a lot about his failures, and what he learned from them. It’s common to hear about what people have learned, but it’s not that common for people to talk openly about their failures. I tried my best impersonation of James in this interview failures post, but his failures seem to destroy mine on every level!

In one of his most brilliant posts, he talks about having too much information. 99% of the post was about prostitution, transgendered people but had a great message to the entire post which he stated really well:

“ I sipped at my coffee. Still too hot. I was thinking about all of that data. What I would do with it. So much to learn about everyone. An infinite reality show. It’s amazing how things change every day.

I decided then, I wanted to live at least one more day.”

Mark Suster (http://bothsidesofthetable.com)

Mark had two posts in the past two weeks, but had a lot of great information in them.  In this post he talked a lot about finding out what truly makes you happy. You can take many paths to how you live your life, but if in the end it doesn’t make you happy, then you are probably doing something wrong.

He talked a lot about mixing his life & work and why it’s beneficial. This is why I was initially followed Mark, because he does seem to go the extra mile in reaching outside of his network. Although I never worked with him (or met him), I have a good idea of how he acts as a VC. He also dedicated an entire post to a new emerging blog called “Roger and Mike’s Hypernet Blog“.

The Winner?

James wins this week. He had quadruple the amount of posts Mark did, so Mark needs to step up his game

Overall, I learned to get rid of things that don’t make you happy and get to know people / startups deeper than you normally do.

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