My First Million
The best business ideas come from noticing what's working and doing it better, faster, or for a different audience.
Pain Threshold Success Framework
A mental model stating that an individual's success is directly proportional to their ability to tolerate and persist through difficulty, discomfort, and extended periods of uncertainty without external validation or immediate rewards.
How It Works
High pain tolerance allows entrepreneurs to bootstrap longer, make harder decisions, and persist through market rejection while competitors quit. It creates competitive advantage through selective pressure - only those who can endure the difficulty continue competing.
Components
Identify the specific pain points in your current situation
Assess whether enduring this pain serves a strategic long-term goal
Build systems to make the pain more tolerable (support networks, milestones, recovery routines)
Regularly evaluate whether the pain is productive or destructive
Use pain tolerance as a competitive moat - persist where others cannot
When to Use
When evaluating long-term strategy decisions, hiring for key roles, assessing market entry timing, or determining whether to bootstrap versus take funding. Also useful for personal development and team building.
When Not to Use
When dealing with unnecessary suffering that doesn't serve strategic goals, toxic situations, or when pain indicates fundamental problems that require pivoting rather than persisting.
Anti-Patterns to Avoid
Example
“A software startup bootstraps for 10 years instead of raising capital, enduring cash flow stress and market uncertainty. The founders' high pain threshold allows them to maintain control and build sustainable unit economics while venture-funded competitors burn through capital and fail.”