James Li

Updating my understanding of the world

[James Li @LiJames142]

What i’ve learned watching my friends print tens of millions while i feel behind as 26 y

1. Know who you are. Know what you want to do, who you want to be around, and the kind of life you want to live... it doesn’t need to be fully mapped out. just a general direction to move towards. that’s what matters.Nail that, and the fog in decision-making clears.

2. Surround yourself with great people who support you. Working with people you don’t enjoy, who don’t back you, is more painful than having no money.
the joy is building with people you click with. nobody aligns 100%. align on the big goals.

3. Everyone says “take asymmetric bets with big payoffs.”cool.

but do you have the balls to bet big, then sit in the discomfort while staring into the abyss of the unknown?

most don’t. that’s the edge.

4. Can’t live in regret. can’t live in what-ifs.

I’ve watched friends print tens of millions. but I didn’t make their decisions, and life is just a series of decisions.
learn from them. review to get hungry. never to regret.

run your race.

5. Time and energy are the only real currency.

if you’re spending yours, and other people’s, on a meeting, a convo or an argument, it better be worth it. Everyone needs to benefit from it in some form and it certainly doesn't have to be related to money.

don’t piss people off for no reason.

6. Ideas are cheap. my business partners and I have tons, and most of them could work.

The ideas were never the problem. execution is. Making them real. not quitting. being fast, effective and nimble.
elite execution. That’s the whole game.

7. Live life at 100%.relationships. work. health. life. all of it.

8. Growth isn’t just hard times. It’s hard problems.
even when things are going well, growth creates bottlenecks. every business has a central constraint.

Solve it creatively, and you grow. It develops confidence. leadership. People who want to follow you and partner with you.

9. Until you’ve made the money and are living the life you want and you’re wearing the crown you want, there’s no such thing as tired. no such thing as burnt out.

It's all noise and irrelevant. Keep going until you get it.

10. Being young is an unfair advantage.

nimble mind, able body, no fixed views, freedom to explore, no backlog of history dictating how you think.

use it.

11. Feeling like everyone’s smarter and more talented than you? not a weakness. that chip on your shoulder is fuel.

Social media amplifies it. I see people younger and smarter than me every day. Doesn’t make me quit. makes me hungrier.

what an exciting time to be alive.

12. Get in the weeds. use the new tech yourself before you invest in it.
ask:

- do people actually care?

- is there a real community?
- are they building useful things on top?
- how fast are updates shipping?
- how big are the improving in each update?

Then zoom out.

Map the value chain. understand the industry structure. find the adjacent industries that plug into the theme.

13. Build one business big. take the resources, connections and experience into the next one. it gets easier each time.

but build yourself too. people should follow you out of respect, not fear or power.

14. In a partnership, you’re always evaluating each other. is this person producing results?

It’s on you to evolve aggressively, solve problems, and make the business worth paying attention to.

15. You’re in charge of your own life. Nobody is coming to save you. No handouts.
If you’re a nobody, you have to work extremely hard to create value for your partners, your business, your family name.

Nothing falls out of the sky. It’s a long, hard journey for you to take on yourself.

[James Li @LiJames142]

Money doesn’t make influencers. it KILLS them.

The thing that got them famous was authenticity. The thing that ends them is the moment they sell it. and it’s happening faster than ever.

Think about how every big creator starts. ie.

Some guy or girl with a weird, contrarian take they would take to the grave with. posting late at night on blogs nobody reads. arguing in niche chat groups. dropping essays in facebook groups with 200 members.

no audience. no money. just BURNING PASSION

and THAT’S why we started listening.

not because they were right. half the time they were saying some outrageous shit. look at clavicular. look at Andrew tate you might think it’s insane, but you can’t look away, because they DEEPLY BELIEVE it.

passion is magnetic.

then the money shows up.

sponsors. brand deals. management. a content calendar.

and slowly, the thing that made them magnetic gets replaced by the thing that pays the bills.

“But James, people change. you can’t stay the same person forever.”

100% agree. people SHOULD evolve. you’re not the same person you were at 19, and neither am i.

that’s not the problem.

the problem is the money doesn’t let them.

Think about what actually happens. a creator blows up on one idea. one take, one persona, one angle. now the brand deals are built around that guy. the sponsors paid for that audience. the algorithm learned to push that content.

so what happens when they try to grow past it?

views drop. comments flood in: “you’ve changed.” “bring back the old you.” the sponsor checks the numbers and gets nervous. management says “let’s go back to what works.”

every single signal says the same thing: DON’T CHANGE.

“so just change anyway. who cares about the numbers?”

easy to say when it’s not your rent. not your team’s salaries. not a deal that pays more in a month than your parents made in a year.

evolving is a risk. repeating is safe.

so they repeat. they milk the idea until it’s bone dry. same take, new thumbnail. same rant, new title.

the irony is the money that froze them is the same money that kills them. the audience gets sick of the repeat and leaves anyway.

they didn’t sell out by changing. they sold out by NOT changing and betting on themselves again and again

authenticity is rarer than you think.

every creator on earth says they’re authentic. almost none of them stay that way once they make it big. not because they’re bad people. because the incentives eat it alive.

just look at how many youtube channels have been bought out by private equity...

Deep down influencers know that...

SPONSORS ARE NOT LOYAL TO YOU.

sponsors are everywhere. they don’t care who you are. they care where the eyeballs are. the second your audience fades and you lose your "magic touch", which really your authenticity to begin with.

budget moves to the next guy who starts out as himself. and the next. and the next.

capitalism is cold-blooded

that’s why the fall-offs are ACCELERATING.

more creators fighting for the same attention. algorithms that move on in a week. audiences who can smell an ad read in the first three seconds. sponsors who rotate creators like inventory.

the rise-and-fall cycle keeps getting shorter.

so is making money wrong?

no. absolutely not. for most of them, that was the point. get paid. i’m not mad at it.

just know the trade you’re making.

when you squeeze an idea dry for money, the eyeballs WILL leave. and once you’re irrelevant, all that money can’t buy your audience back.

you had your moment. people moved on.

you’re just another stat in the algorithm.

so here’s the test: would you still say it if nobody paid you?

if yes, keep going.

if no, you’ve already started dying. you just don’t know it yet.

[James Li @LiJames142]

The world will teach you the lessons you need. You just have to listen intently and be introspective.

[James Li @LiJames142]

I have a crystal ball for the future, and it's 99.99% accurate...

It's... Brainrot and doomscroll; here's what I mean...

If you’re in your 20s or 30s, do NOT get sucked into thinking like the older generation. DO NOT be pressured into what they think is "productive"

Being young IS the advantage.

You know what our generation is into. What we’re thinking about, what we’re using, what we’re watching.

The future belongs to young people, eventually, OUR generation will run the world.

Right now, somewhere, there’s a kid in their 20s grinding away. In a college dorm, in a lab, in their parents’ house, in a tiny one-bedroom apartment. Obsessed with the thing they love most.

They don’t know it yet, but they’re the next Elon Musk, the next Steve Jobs.

But be grateful: the generations before us worked their asses off to build the tools and infrastructure that make our lives this easy.

The future is for us YOUNG MINDS

[James Li @LiJames142]

@PaulNiklas8 I usually upload a reference image and get the LLM to describe it in a way that other LLMS will be able to capture the nuances. The ask the LLM to turn it into a prompt to generate similar images