15 Valuable Lessons You Learn After Your First Big Win

You know, everyone always talks about lessons you learn from failures and how important they are. But if all you have are failures, then maybe those lessons are incomplete. Today we're going over 15 valuable lessons you only learned after your first win.

Welcome to Alux. You only need to be right once. A big win can set you up for life, or at the very least give you the momentum and resources you need to get bigger and better. So it doesn't matter how many times you get it wrong if you manage to get it right at least once. The only thing you need to be careful about is not to be wrong. So many times you can't afford to play the game anymore. And this is something you'll only truly understand after your first big win when you realize it was all worth it after all.

You need to feel it yourself, to experience it yourself, to fully grasp it. Winners know they can win because they saw it happening, and that gives them the discipline to do it again. It doesn't matter how you got there as long as you get there. Nobody really cares about the origin story that much. Nobody cares about how much work, sweat, and tears you put into it or how much you needed to sacrifice at the end of the day.

The only thing that matters is if you get what you want or not. Nobody can gatekeep success from you. They can't see you need to do this or that. People only care about the end product. If the end product is good, you did good. It's hard because you don't know how to make it easier.

So what do we mean by this? Well, imagine it's your first time renovating an apartment or building a house. There's an incredibly high chance you will underestimate the budget, the time frame, and the final look. It'll end up costing you double of what you thought it would. You would face problems with contractors you didn't even think were possible. There will be delays after delays. You're not going to be 100% satisfied with the end result. You say it's hard and you don't recommend it to anyone.

But if you were to do it a second time, you would probably get everything done on budget and on time. And that's because now you've seen what works and how it works. You're not making estimations anymore? No. The point is there's always a faster and better way to get something done. Just because you don't see it yet doesn't mean it's not there. And success teaches you it's always worth keeping an eye for a way to make things better.

It's only worth it if you make it worth it. If you don't have a real reason to do it, you'll face an uphill battle. That's because most days are tiresome and long. If you don't have a real reason to get into it, well, why are you even here? All the motivation books in the world will mean nothing to you if you don't find your own personal "why."

You see, success is not a part-time hobby. It's a full-time commitment. If you don't find a good reason to commit, then success won't have a good reason to reveal itself. Everyone is full of crap. This is something you realize once you hang out with other successful people. Nobody is perfect. Everyone makes mistakes. And there is a general collective of we're all just trying to figure this stuff out.

They might present it in different ways, but at the end of the day, everybody is just trying to figure stuff out. There's no formula to follow, no guidebook that is 100% foolproof. It's just a whole lot of trial and error based on educated guesses. Some have gone through more trial and error than others, and their guesses are more well-educated than others.

Mindset and immediate resources are the only things you can count on. These are the only tangible things that will carry you through. Mindset is extremely important because a wrong one will simply block you from thinking big enough or complex enough. If you don't genuinely believe it's possible, it's just not going to work. And even if it could work, you won't be able to see it because you're not looking for it.

It's like the saying: those who say they can and those who say they can't are both right. As for immediate resources, these are your time, energy, skill set, and money if you have any. If you are longer in the journey, you might also have people working for you by now, which is another type of immediate resource. These are things you need to work with.

Ideas, business plans, estimations, and time frames are all irrelevant if your immediate resources are not effective. Everything is basic economics. Business people love to talk about business stuff and make it sound fancy and pretentious. At the end of the day, though, it's all just kindergarten math. If you sell something for a higher price than what it costs you to build it, you make a profit. That's it. That's literally the only hard rule of success.

The way you make that happen depends on whatever your business is or whatever success means to you. But at the end of the day, as long as you spend one and you earn 1.1, you're profitable. And this is not just business-wise; it's life advice, too. If you get more out of it than you put in, it's a net. When that is where the money is, if you can't do it sustainably, you can't do it at all.

You've heard the saying before: life is a marathon, not a sprint, right? Well, it usually means to take things slow and not rush into it. But once you find success, you give the saying a little bit more nuance. You realize it's not about how hard you work but for how long. Wins take time to materialize. Okay, we're talking years. If you can't see yourself doing this for at least 1 to 3 years, which is the first stage, well, your chances to see that W are close to zero.

Success lives in windows of opportunity. What worked in the past isn't going to work right now. What works now isn't going to work in the future. For example, Facebook could never be started today. The social media window of opportunity is long gone. It's extremely unlikely that someone will start the new Facebook, as many people say they would, simply because, one, there's no more room for yet another platform, and secondly, the cost has gone up 100-fold to start such a project.

The world works completely differently every 3 to 5 years. Just look at how far air has gone. This also means the window of opportunity for something to make it big gets shorter and shorter. And that's because things become irrelevant a lot more quickly these days. And sometimes you're not aware you're in the perfect window of opportunity. That is what luck is.

If you don't ask, you won't get it. As simple as it sounds, this is an extremely powerful lesson. You won't get a promotion if you don't ask for anything. You won't get a client if you don't market for anything. You won't get a customer if you don't offer anything. So the first thing you need to figure out is what you have to give. Be extremely clear on that front and then double down on the ask.

Costs can pile up extremely fast. You can only do it alone for so long. At some point, you need another person because you don't have the skills and the time. You'll need tools and different resources. It's just unavoidable. However, you need to be careful not to end up in a position where you crumble under your own weight. The bigger your operation is, the higher the chances that you'll lose track of things. Costs can get out of hand. Things will become difficult to manage.

Focus on the thing that got you here. That is your main strength. Success is triggered by action. It doesn't happen accidentally or randomly. That's why the opposite of success isn't failure. It's inaction. Things happen because someone made them happen. Someone brought them to reality. If you find yourself thinking more and doing less, that means you are stagnating.

Nobody will work as hard at this than you do. This matters only to you, no matter how much you try to sell the vision to other people. So it's expected that you will be the hardest worker. If you don't bring your A-game every single day, you can't expect others to do so. You need to be the first to come and the last to leave. And while you're at it, you got to pour some kind of emotion into it.

If what you're trying to do doesn't stir up any kind of emotion in you, it's unlikely you'll stay until the end. At the end of the day, we are driven by emotions and desires. If you can't find inspiration or motivation and there's nothing that this thing can give you that you actually want to have, well, you might be playing the wrong game. This goes back to our fourth point where we talked about making it worth it.

You need to pour emotion into it and find a good reason. You need to find things that inspire you and give you the energy to keep on pushing. And lastly, wins are made in overtime. Progress is made when you don't feel like doing it. Here's the reality. Absolutely, everyone can do something that makes their life better for like a day or two. Everyone had that moment of, okay, from this day forward, I'm taking charge.

But almost everyone eventually calls it quits, postpones that, or tones it down. Why? Well, because the wins take time. You work for five years at something to win in the sixth year. But, you know, that's just not something that many people are comfortable with.

And of course, we've got a bonus for those of you who always stick with us until the end. And it's about money today. Money doesn't matter only after you have it. Early on, securing positive cash flow is the biggest win you can get. The world runs on checks, not promises and kind wishes. Satisfaction, work-life balance, fulfillment—those are things you can't afford just yet. The sooner you come to terms with this reality, the better.

We're certainly not here to sugarcoat anything for you. Okay. We hope you learned something valuable today, Aluxers. We'll see you back here next time for the Sunday motivational video.