So You’re an Elite Performer? Maybe, And Maybe Not.

[MTF]

I think business is a lot different than sports.

You can't accidentally become a F1 driver or the worlds best soccer player.
The rules are so defined and the competition so intense.

People train their whole lives to complete against someone else for the exact same prize, under the exact same conditions. You aren't going to have much "luck" since every small margin is already well mapped out.

But business has so many gaps. Markets and demands are always changing and new opportunities open all the time.

The first "online success" person I ever met was this dude in South America. And he was a total disaster.

He was late 20's, had a drinking problem, and would always get us kicked out of bars. If you think of elite focus and discipline... this was not it. (Still a super fun and legit dude).

But he had still succeeded. He taken a course on software ideas, had made a basic software that did animations for businesses, and had put it online for affiliates to team up with him.

And it absolutely crushed it. Did like $5-6m sales in two years.

Right product at the right time to a hungry new audience who wanted to buy.

This is why I think the analogy of the gum ball machine is so fitting. It is 50% just showing up day after day and putting in the work to make something succeed. To me that isn't "elite", it is grit.

Can a bunch of personal work help? Of course.

Is it needed to win... not at all.

This is very well articulated and I think you should have posted this thread instead of me. And here you are saying I write well yet you drop a gold post like it's nothing.

 

[Panos Daras]

View attachment 55440
Thoughts on this @MTF?

More follow your passion feel good nonsense, or proof everyone has a unique value they can provide to the world?

View attachment 55440
Thoughts on this @MTF?

More follow your passion feel good nonsense, or proof everyone has a unique value they can provide to the world?

The Japanese are wise. The problem is that people think that the Ikigai you find. You do not find it; you make it.

You get paid for what the market needs that you are good at, which leads you to love it, which makes the world love it more, which makes you make more money and get paid better and love it more. It is like a flywheel. Also, you need to be realistic; even if you adore something, it will suck sometimes.

 

[Black_Dragon43]

Regardless of what you guys think, it’s always winner takes all. Always.

If I buy a palace, you can’t buy the same palace. If I marry a woman, you can’t marry the same woman.
If I build the biggest business in the world, you can’t build the biggest business in the world.

We’re getting crushed by the elites because we’re weak, effeminate and don’t have significant resources. Therefore we have no word at the table of the powerful when they decide how to split the spoils.

You can lie to yourselves all you want that it’s not winner takes all. But when the shit hits the fan and Amazon raises its fees as they always do, and it drains all the profits from eCommerce businesses that rely on their infrastructure, I’ll laugh my a$$ off.

Because that bald F*ck Bezos wants to legally rob you of ALL your money, ideally. And why wouldn’t he? Lures you in with the carrot, feeds you every day so you get nice and fat, until one day — snaps your neck and eats you!

And to those of you that say that business is about creating wealth from nothing — that is true, of course.

But the essence of money is basically the power to control what other people do. The really powerful people, who have control over hundreads of billions of dollars — they get to decide how resources are allocated, what the rules of the game should be, and so on.

And, the power to control what other people do is limited. And it’s always shared amongst those huge whales with access to more capital than you can imagine. And that power is definitely winner takes all.

 

[The-J]

In some sense, believing that you're an elite performer, or that you need to be one, is a limiting belief!

Great post.

 

[Jobless]

Personally I've met only one person 'wired differently' to the point their intellect seemed superhuman to me. Not an athlete or musician, where you realize they have put in decades of training. It was a young academic and child prodigy with photographic memory or some type of extreme computational ability. Like their brain ran 10x faster than mine, and my brain is decently sharp. Humbling experience.

If you asked a long complex question, he would answer you before you finished the question. After hearing just a few words, he predicted the rest of the question, processed the problem and formulated an answer immediately.

Thankfully, life is all about asking good questions, not giving a perfect answer.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Andy Black]

This is very well articulated and I think you should have posted this thread instead of me. And here you are saying I write well yet you drop a gold post like it's nothing.

You started with a story @MTF and it was very compelling.

@Fox included a story too.

You both can write but I think Rob's thinking is a bit clearer and he arrived at a neater conclusion.

I notice Rob started with "I think" and also mentioned "I think" later. That didn't make what he wrote weaker to me, but stronger. I kept reading Rob's thinking without feeling the scientist/mathematician in me rebel at absolute statements.

Just saying I still suspect the authoritative stance on writing *may* have an adverse affect on how we think.

 

[MakeItHappen]

Of course you can plan for that

Of course you can pick a growing market

Or a new traffic source or opportunity

Or a market where everyone does well

Or a big enough market where you are rewarded based on how good you are

The current one is TikTok shop, there’s probably others too but TikTok shop is on my radar rn

There’s so much opportunity out there

People are over complicating this

Can you provide value to someone?

Can you provide a unique value to someone?

How many millionaires have been made in the weightloss niche, there’s probably a new one being made every day.

Some dudes are good enough that they make 1m, some make 20k. It’s a big enough market that there’s room for everyone and always will be.

Like Andy said, it’s not winner take all.

Local businesses are even better. Builders etc. Barely any real sophisticated competition and plenty of opportunity to make millions.

I didn't want to sound pessimistic.

I was talking more about big business opportunities (hundreds of millions or billions) just as MTF was talking about the best of the best in a particular sport. I was not talking about whether one can make a million with new traffic sources or a little weight loss business. Because in the big business opportunities you will find geniuses and true elite performers. Good luck succeeding in a highly competitive mature market with many big players if you want to become a big player too. If you want to start the next big hedge fund on Wall Street to become a billionaire good luck. Then again if you want to become a millionaire by starting a small, niche investing community online that's more likely but you will not become a billionaire this way.

Usually, risk and reward go hand in hand and for everything you do there is an opportunity cost. Yes, there are sometimes asymmetric opportunities but more often than not if something is potentially very lucrative then there are either a lot of risks (not necessarily a bad thing) a lot of competition, or a combination of both.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[MTF]

It’s crazy that you can write a thread this good on a random topic.

You got to figure out a new business model where you can connect these writing skills.

I know you don’t want the work but I would hire you as a content writer in a second.

And ya great points - this was a super interesting read.

That's interesting as I almost didn't post this thread because I thought it wasn't good enough. Then again, I've been second-guessing myself in every aspect of life recently.

I don't see how I can use these writing skills in any sensible business. I may be better than an average person but I still completely suck compared to serious writers. And even these serious writers don't make much money. The more popular AI becomes, they less they'll make.

I mentioned Brandon Sanderson. He once wrote somewhere that he took a job specifically at a hotel reception desk so he could spend his 12-hour night shifts writing. And then he was probably writing even more after work. There's no way to compete with such obsessed people.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[MTF]

They truely are built differently. Especially in the sense of sacrafice to what the normal script looks like. It takes insane dedication to be the elite top.

The other side of that.... do you NEED to be elite to live a happy and fulfilled life? Often times not.

Great writing MTF, I agree with Rob (@Fox ) !

Thank you.

Being happy and fulfilled is a different thing for sure though I'd say that if you're this obsessed about something, you probably have a very strong sense of meaning in life which automatically makes you happy and fulfilled.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[MTF]

Whenever I think I’m great, I think about the drop of sweat dripping down the left testicle of Steve Jobs.

These black dragons have some weird fetishes going on...

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[MTF]

You wouldn’t even make a local rich list let alone best in the world rich list with money like that

I think you're underestimating how poor Poland is compared to Australia lol. You don't really need to make much to be one of the richest people in your city.

According to the latest reports, in Poland there are only 43,000 people who make more than 1 million PLN which is 240k USD per year. According to Credit Suisse there are only 100,000 USD millionaires in Poland. That's compared to 2,177,000 in Australia which has 26 million people compared to 37 million in Poland.

As for the rest, I get your point and now understand it better and do agree with most of what you said.

 

[Kevin88660]

I recently attended a freediving workshop with one of the best freedivers in the world. He’s been a world record holder in the hardest discipline of freediving for over 15 years, with nobody ever coming close to contesting it.

While I completely sucked at the workshop, embarrassed myself and began questioning whether I should even continue with this sport, there was one big lesson I got out of it.

Namely, true elite performers are wired completely differently than a regular person. COMPLETELY differently. And whatever notions you have, you’re probably still missing the mark. If you think you’re an elite performer, you’re most likely fooling yourself.

Here are just some of the things that were completely normal to him:

1. He shared an extremely hard training table for freediving that is so hard that your brain pretty much shuts off while doing it as you’re in a constant state of wanting to breathe. I tried a version of it that was probably at most 0.1% as hard and failed in the first minute.

Just to give a rough comparison with an easier to understand sport, it would be sort of like doing an all-out sprint for 20 seconds, taking 5 seconds to rest and doing it again—and continuing so for 30-40 MINUTES, each time maintaining the same proper technique and speed.

He recommended doing this table at least 2-3x a week.

Someone asked: “I assume you reduce the intensity of this table so you can do it a few times a week?” He replied: “You assume wrong. I do this table 4-5x a week, each time all-out, for months on end when preparing for a competition.”

And I know he’s not bullshitting because he has a track record to prove it. So imagine doing the hardest possible workout you can do that makes you hate your life and then doing it 4-5x a week your entire life.

2. He’s been testing every single tiniest thing in freediving throughout his entire career. Whatever someone asked him, he has tested it extensively. Exact timing of every movement in relation to another movement. Exact position of every single body part. 0.5 second adjustments to his training to make it even harder.

He created a technique (which he demonstrated live) in which he was able to drop his heart rate from 78 bpm to 36 bpm in a matter of seconds. It was crazy to watch because on the outside nothing was happening. He was hooked up to a precise pulse oximeter so everyone could see his heart rate and oxygen saturation (which stayed at a constant 100%).

In slightly colder water he noticed that his speed of freefall (when you’re deeper, you’re negatively buoyant and are falling) was slightly slower than in warmer water. So he learned that cold water has slightly more density which makes him just a tiny bit more buoyant. He calculated exactly how much weight to add to his weight belt to counter that effect (about 300 grams) and keep his freefall speed consistent across different diving locations.

He came up with some incredibly dangerous exercises that subject your body to the same crushing forces as if you were at up to 300 meters of depth (it’s all done dry, with your own body). He doesn’t even share these exercises publicly (only privately with the top freedivers) as he doesn’t want to be responsible for some serious injuries if an untrained person does this.

3. When he began freediving, he got so obsessed with training that he tried to stay in a hypercapnic state the entire day (hypercapnic means you have increased carbon dioxide levels in your blood; carbon dioxide levels go up as you hold your breath and this makes you have an urge to breathe).

So he was constantly counting his breaths, under-breathing, and aiming to have no more than 5 breaths per minute. For hours. Every day. All so he could get better even when he wasn’t diving.

Now, What Does This Have to Do With Business?

If you think that you’re an elite performer, think again. Unless you display the same crazy level of obsession, you’re not playing in the same league. Not even anywhere close to it.

Yeah, maybe you’re better than an average person. But this doesn’t make you elite. Most likely, in the grand scheme of things, compared to that guy, you’re still closer to that lazy fat slob on the couch than to this guy. He’s that good, and so is every single true elite performer.

Now, I don’t mean it in a negative way, to lower your expectations or stop being ambitious. Perhaps you really ARE that elite performer and if you are, that’s awesome.

I’m sharing this to offer a few thoughts for a discussion:

1. Meeting a true elite performer can humble you and inspire you to step up your game. There’s a reason why you always want to be the least capable person in the room (I definitely was in that workshop, and failed dramatically).

You can only look up. You’re not getting any satisfaction from being better because everyone else is miles ahead of you. Your standards are transformed and you see what’s truly possible. Stagnation is not acceptable. The only way is up or else you’re out of the group because you won’t keep up.

2. Or meeting a true elite performer can discourage you from further trying when you realize how vast the difference is between a regular mortal and the best of the best. This in itself signals that you’re probably NOT an elite performer at heart (otherwise it wouldn’t discourage you; you’d just use it as fuel to go harder).

3. If you assess that objectively you’re incapable of ever getting remotely close to the elite performer or unwilling to put in the work to get there, you need to evaluate your capabilities and see where you can win.

This of course depends on the context. If you’re running for basic fitness, you’re not going to give up just because you can’t ever beat Usain Bolt or Eliud Kipchoge. In the same way, a weekend warrior at a bouldering gym can’t compare himself to Nirmal Purja.

But if we’re talking about business and making any considerable amount of money, entering any field where you’re dealing with multiple elite performers all but guarantees failure if you can’t ever objectively match their work ethic, capabilities, and resources.

4. So what are we left with if you want to win?

You pick wide fields with fewer elite performers or ideally, fields where nobody is truly obsessed about them.

This is one of the core reasons why it’s so hard to win in any industries where people are extremely passionate about, such as the film industry, music, sports, etc. People absolutely love these things and many are capable of practicing virtually 24/7. Good luck winning against people who have been essentially bred to become top performers. Unless you’re absolutely sure you’re of the same stock, you don’t stand a chance.

5. In business, for those who realistically know they’ll never be elite performers, this leaves us with:

• Opportunities that aren’t related to an obsession. If you want to make woodworking products, there’s probably a guy who spends 14 hours a day woodworking who will outcompete you. In contrast, you’re unlikely to encounter a true elite performer offering a service for septic tank cleaners because nobody is that obsessed about it. Same goes for your typical boring but essential services like waste management, gutter cleaning, or towing.
• Probably skip any content-based or software-based businesses. Both attract thousands of true elite performers (think Mr. Beast for video or any egg-headed Silicon Valley developer programming 18 hours a day). Many inspirational stories come from these fields and yet these are the ones where the survivorship bias is one of the strongest (“Mr. Beast succeeded so I can, too,” discounting millions who failed).
• If you still want to go after fields where elite performers are common, specialize in something that doesn’t interest a wider audience but still addresses a painful need. You won’t beat a company made up of hardcore surfers selling surfboards. But you may specialize in selling gear for cold water surfers because much fewer people are obsessed about surfing in cold water.
• Another way is to go after a more local market. Even in crowded fields, if you change your competition from global to national, state, or city-wide, you’ll automatically dramatically increase your chances of winning. For example, if you don't come from an English-speaking country, you may never outcompete Brandon Sanderson in writing fantasy and sci-fi but you may win in a smaller market such as Poland, like Andrzej Sapkowski (the creator of the Witcher).

Prior to the workshop, I had studied countless elite performers but only through books, podcast interviews, etc. There are many online gurus, authors, podcasters etc. talking about elite performance but in reality very few people are at this level. Getting to know one in person has dramatically changed my perspective on the top performers. It has made me realize that I’ve never been one and am unlikely to ever be one as I have too broad interests and I'm too weak.

Have you ever met any elite performers? What were they like? What have you learned?

I think to phrase it differently and I agree with you, I don’t want to compete with the smart and brightest and the most hardcore people with insane work ethic.

Avoid a winner take all industry. For instance the business of search engine. Being second like Bing still sucks. Whereas other industries can have many more winners.

There are a lot of elite players in the tech space. There are also a lot of elite players doing slowlane jobs in medicine, law, and research. Generally elite players tend to be attracted to “socially accepted prestige” and I avoid them.

 

[ZF Lee]

That's interesting as I almost didn't post this thread because I thought it wasn't good enough. Then again, I've been second-guessing myself in every aspect of life recently.

I don't see how I can use these writing skills in any sensible business. I may be better than an average person but I still completely suck compared to serious writers. And even these serious writers don't make much money. The more popular AI becomes, they less they'll make.

I mentioned Brandon Sanderson. He once wrote somewhere that he took a job specifically at a hotel reception desk so he could spend his 12-hour night shifts writing. And then he was probably writing even more after work. There's no way to compete with such obsessed people.

Writing can be one heck of a tool in the Fastlane toolbox.

As long people need to read something before buying stuff, writing IS needed to craft a decent marketing message. Even if they are already warmed up, they still need directions to get to the offer.

I am reminded by a Kiyosaki story in one of his books. He got asked by a writer why he sold tons of books even though he wasn't the best writer ever. He basically said there was a difference between a 'BEST-SELLING' author vs a 'best-writing' author.

That was not to say Kiyosaki totally supported selling crap all the time (although he did give himself up to the network marketing shills). But I did find powerful value in his tale of a poor dad vs rich dad...and the power of comparisons can be one of the most poignant story themes that has been used all over history.

This is what AI cannot do very well today. To take our human experiences and themes-- and turn them into something that changes lives into a different parallel.

This is why I say "Balance is bullshit" if you want to be at the top of your game.

Balance = Middle. Middle = mediocrity.

Want to be elite? There is no balance.

Want to be better than average? Then wander into periodic imbalance, with periodic retreats into balance. This is pretty much how live, I have chapters of great obsession and imbalance, then go back to balance.

When you commit to obsession as a lifestyle choice, that's how you end up sick, mentally ill, and divorced 3 times with half your children hating you.

Steve Jobs and David Goggins ahem ahem...

I believe that the Fastlane is meant to free people-- not to make more prisoners.

 

[MTF]

Writing can be one heck of a tool in the Fastlane toolbox.

As long people need to read something before buying stuff, writing IS needed to craft a decent marketing message. Even if they are already warmed up, they still need directions to get to the offer.

Writing to sell is very, very different from writing to entertain or educate. I doubt that any bestselling fiction author, a journalist, or a screenwriter could write a sales letter. I absolutely hate writing sales copy, it always sucks, and I'm sure that's the case for most writers. So writing abilities by themselves don't give you any advantage here since it's such a different skill you may just as well learn a completely different one.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[MTF]

I beg to differ.
See how Daniel Throssell does his welcome email sequence.

Most copywriters would just do 5-6 emails with some standard spell on the brand's basic values, origins story, bla bla bla...but not him:

The Parallel Welcome Sequence Archive | The Persuasive Page by Daniel Throssell

Below are all the 'interim' stories in the Parallel Welcome Sequence I invented to 'onboard' new subscribers to my email list at The Persuasive Page.

persuasivepage.com

He literally runs his new email subscribers through his own fancy universe.

He explains how it works:

Introducing The "Parallel Welcome Sequence": A NEW Kind Of Email Series That Gets Up To 200% Engagement From Your New Subscribers | The Persuasive Page by Daniel Throssell

In 2020, for my own email list , I invented the “Parallel Welcome Sequence” — a radical, fresh take on the traditional “autoresponder”.

persuasivepage.com

The way how he weaves his own universe into welcome emails was SO good...it got ripped off by a certain big-shot in copy guru-land.

I think he could get away with this because the target folks were most likely to be voracious readers/writers like himself, and in email-- you can afford to be more casual since its your list.

That's cool and unique. Thanks for sharing that.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[MitchC]

Thoughts on this @MTF?

More follow your passion feel good nonsense, or proof everyone has a unique value they can provide to the world?

 

[MTF]

I really do like your point about how top performers are wired differently.

However, I think things are being made more complicated than they need to be.

Storytime:

Last week, I researched to hire someone to replace the windows and balcony door in my house to improve energy efficiency. This upgrade qualifies for a government subsidy, making it a somewhat reasonable move for me.

The contractor took measurements and then quoted me €10,000 just for labor.

WTF I thought!

This project was only supposed to take about 7 hours. So I researched YouTube and how-to websites.

Turns out, the work is easy to do. Anyone with half a functioning brain cell and opposable thumbs can do it.

This made me think. Even if this contractor only gets a few crappy clients like me each month, he could still make a huge profit.

For example, suppose he secures 6 clients a month, each requiring 9 hours of work (including ordering and picking up materials and driving to location and measuring). In that case, he could be earning €720,000 a year, minus expenses.

Assuming his total annual expenses are very aggressively €100,000, his profit would be around €620,000 for what is with minimal effort.

Now, let's consider a less lazy worker who manages 12 clients a month.

That’s a total of 144 a year, with each job taking about 9 hours. That's 108 hours a month or roughly 27 hours a week, assuming four weeks per month.

With expenses staying roughly the same(they were on the high end in the first place), this workload would lead to a profit of €1,240,000.

So what happens If the business is sold for twice the profit?

Well, that's €2,480,000 just for being "average/ good enough/ bad".

You don't need to be an "elite performer" to achieve this.

That's why I said that you need to be careful what industry you get into. I even recommended boring oldschool businesses over flashy ones like software, content creation, etc. so your story proves my point. This is exactly the type of industry where you're unlikely to meet true elite performers.

 

[Kevin88660]

A fat slob binging on potato chips will be a fat slob binging on potato chips. If that is who he is he was never supposed to be someone else.

Similarly a happy janitor was never supposed to be a enterprise owning billionaire. They are happy being themselves.

The mix of things that excite you the most will create who you are.

You will never being able to deliver if you're not excited by what you do.
And you can only be yourself if you do things that excite you. If it doesn't excite you, it means it's not who you are or what motivates you.
The reality is that you are not yourself, and lying to yourself that you are someone you are not. Because you assume being you is not good enough.

A cherry tree cannot become an apple tree. He can put some makeup and appear like it, but then he is just lying to himself.
Instead of trying to sell apples, he should sell what he can sell best: cherries.

Similarly you will only find the most pressing and most specialized need in any area if you go deep into it.
And you only go deep into it if it's something you would naturally do anyway by being yourself.
This is a form of barrier to entry. By being YOU, you have a natural barrier to entry, you have a specialized knowledge that no one else can copy unless they are an exact copy of YOU.

Not to invalidate any other belief systems, but this is how I see it, and it is perfectly reasoned from my perspective.

“Being yourself” means different things to different people.

I used to think this is entirely nonsense. But I think there is some sense to it, and understanding yourself actually helps you to find your success better.

It is definitely NOT about happily being a janitor whole life with no ambition in life.

There are different style of chess players. Some are aggressive, some are not, some play by the book religiously, some are more spontaneous. Different people are actually suited to different styles of playing. This has to do with their personality, experience and upbringing. There are elite chess players of totally different styles.

The more you understand yourself the more you are able to develop your own modus operandi in business and stick to it and have the highest rate of success.

 

[MTF]

We are considered elite performers in our industry because we have all of our front teeth and have a working phone number.

#whateverittakestowin
#hustle
#grind

And this is a perfect example of engineering your own elite-performer-free category and owning it.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[MTF]

So I found something else to do where I could legitimately have a shot at being the best in the world because so few people are doing it.

Thank you for sharing this story. This conclusion is exactly the point I wanted to make in the thread. If you aren't a true elite performer (and to determine that you need to be very honest with yourself), find something where you realistically have a shot at being the best.

 

[MTF]

@MTF

When I was younger I met a family friend a couple of times. (He's passed away now) He was a competitive sailor with an Olympic Gold and Silver medal. He was very competitive, but he could turn it on or off. So when he wasn't training or racing, he seemed like a perfectly normal guy.

He would pay huge attention to details. A couple of the things he would do for major events, eg. Olympics were to have a boat specially built for that event. His team would research the typical wind and wave conditions for the location of the event and build a boat accordingly. For example, his class of boat was defined, so he couldn't change the design, but within the design parameters there was still flexibility. So if they were expecting light winds and waves, they would make the boat out of thinner materials and if they were expecting heavier conditions they would make the boat from thicker materials to make it more robust.

Another example was that before major events, he would go on a diet (a pizza diet) and gain weight (about 50lbs / 25kg or so) in order to make himself heavier relative to the weight of the boat. This allowed him to move more of the weight of the total unit around by moving around the boat to try to gain an advantage. He would lose the weight after the competition.

These were just a couple of the things that he did, there would have been many others.

Most of these sorts of people are obsessive, so they are very good at one thing and suck at everything else.

This guy sounds exactly the same as the freediver I described. You can tell by these crazy sacrifices only to slightly boost the performance. It's so crazy that he would gain such a crazy amount of weight and destroy his health just to gain a competitive advantage.

Interesting last point... I'm a generalist and this actually makes me think that I suck at everything because I'm at best average in everything I do. I'd rather be a specialist and be very good at one thing.

 

[MTF]

Great thread, I think the takeaway should be to get around some people like this so you can see adjust your mindset and work ethic baseline after seeing what insane execution really looks like

I kind of wonder how much you can adjust your mindset and work ethic if you aren't a true elite performer. I mean, it's all fine to spend a day with a person like that but realistically, how much can you improve if you haven't been this obsessed until now?

Maybe you're in the wrong field if you aren't this obsessed. Or maybe you just don't have it in you to ever become one.

I imagine that you'd need constant exposure and interaction with such individuals to really make a big difference in how you operate (as a result of a long process of osmosis) instead of meeting them just once.

 

[MTF]

In some sense, believing that you're an elite performer, or that you need to be one, is a limiting belief!

Great post.

It could also be an empowering belief. Some people put a lot of pressure on themselves to be the best. Then they meet a true elite performer and they realize they will never, ever get anywhere close to them in that field.

This can free them to pursue something else where they may develop this level of obsession or simply be happy with their limited capabilities.

 

[MTF]

Personally I've met only one person 'wired differently' to the point their intellect seemed superhuman to me. Not an athlete or musician, where you realize they have put in decades of training. It was a young academic and child prodigy with photographic memory or some type of extreme computational ability. Like their brain ran 10x faster than mine, and my brain is decently sharp. Humbling experience.

If you asked a long complex question, he would answer you before you finished the question. After hearing just a few words, he predicted the rest of the question, processed the problem and formulated an answer immediately.

Thankfully, life is all about asking good questions, not giving a perfect answer.

Sounds like this dude:

Technology | Business | Motivation | AI on Instagram: "In a resurfaced clip, Cognition CEO Scott Wu appears to excel in a 2010 math competition, showcasing remarkable speed and accuracy in answering complex questions. The video gained attention shor

348K likes, 1,819 comments - thebusinessmagnets on April 2, 2024: "In a resurfaced clip, Cognition CEO Scott Wu appears to excel in a 2010 math competition, showcasing remarkable speed and accuracy in ans...". Scott, 5000, two, fifty-five, 1234

www.instagram.com

 

[MTF]

I agree with the topic of the thread.

You have to make Sure you compete in an area where you have an edge. That might mean picking a niche that is smaller than your ambition.

I like the concept of combining expertise in more than one area to become hard to compete with.
If you are a top 10% content writer and a top 10% leader and you have top 10% knowledge in MMA you could build a content agency, leading great employees, for MMA related businesses .
The high performers in each of the 3 areas can't compete with you now and there are likely few people in the world who can. Yet you dont have to be elite at anything to do it.

I love this idea. Thanks for sharing that. You're essentially engineering a situation in which becoming an elite performer is inevitable.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[MTF]

When it comes to deciding if you’re prepared to pay the price to reach a particular level, I think that’s a good consideration, but things like this mainly apply to sports or skills, not business. You have to be realistic about what you can achieve with the time you’re willing to invest.

I think that this consideration is very important. You need to be super clear if you're doing something only as a passion or if you want to become really good at it. If you're still going to enjoy it even if you always suck, then of course it makes no sense to ever compare yourself to anyone else.

Business isn’t about being the absolute best, it’s about getting the job done. You don’t need to have a IQ of 200 or be an Olympian.

For sure. You just need to be very cautious not to enter a field where you do need to have these resources. For example, in general, I'd say that any software business does require having a crazy high IQ. Otherwise you won't be able to effectively lead your developers and understand what the F*ck they're doing.

I liked your point about competing locally, and totally agree. Dominating a local scene isn’t that difficult, generally speaking the competition is pretty poor locally.

That's of course assuming that your local scene is big enough to get the results you're after. Otherwise you need to target a bigger scene.

 

[MTF]

However, there are also Elite Performers in terms of getting the job done. Some people have the genes to only need 4 hours of sleep to feel fully rested. Some people are willing to sacrifice their health, family, relationships, and leisure time to achieve goal X. These people might have started their first lemonade stand at 6 years old coming from an entrepreneurial family.

As a former professional poker player, I was aware that I wasn't an autistic, obsessed kid with an IQ of 150 and a photographic memory. I didn't have any business trying to compete with the best high-stakes players in the world. And I didn't had to. To win at poker you simply have to play against players that a weaker than you. It's called table selection. And guess what... if you don't know who you have an edge against at the poker table it's likely that you have no edge at all. If you don't know your competition to the degree that you know why you are better than them chances are you are not.

Great point and thanks for sharing the example with poker.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[MTF]

Your fixed quote shows that even being "the best" is relative.

I'll argue that the only thing that matters is that you solve a problem. Loosing the business "competition" doesn't mean you get nothing, it means your Samsung and not Apple.
It means your Frankfurts second largest Cleaning business.
Or the fifth largest.

That may still be millions a year.

Enough stupid and lazy people have gotten reasonably successful, therefore I know that I can become as successful as I need to be by being just a above outstanding and far below incredible.

Top 1% means you need to beat 100 people. 80 of them aren't even trying and 15 are stupid. I can beat 4 other people that are trying.

Sure, if you choose the right industry then there are still millions to be made. You just need to make sure that being the second or third best is enough for you because maybe the third or fourth largest cleaning business in Frankfurt makes only $500k euros a year compared to $5 million for the first one (I don't know, just wanting to give an example).

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[MTF]

I think to phrase it differently and I agree with you, I don’t want to compete with the smart and brightest and the most hardcore people with insane work ethic.

Avoid a winner take all industry. For instance the business of search engine. Being second like Bing still sucks. Whereas other industries can have many more winners.

That is way better put than what I tried to communicate in some of my responses. Thank you.

 

[MTF]

Want to be better than average? Then wander into periodic imbalance, with periodic retreats into balance. This is pretty much how live, I have chapters of great obsession and imbalance, then go back to balance.

This is covered in The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan exactly in the same way. Is this where you got inspiration from or have you discovered this yourself as well?