A terrible weekend. This will be more of a rant post after forced interactions with regular people (partially self-inflicted for fun on Twitter). Spending time trying to volunteer was undeniably one of the worst decisions (0% ROI). The good news is a lot of conclusions were made in a short period of time including one startling one at the end. They involve thoughts on talent, how to make an impact, older vs. younger generations and funny enough, the size of our audience at this point. We knew we would spend a few days interacting with regular people and even took the time to troll people on twitter regarding some of these topics. No worries, we’re going to insulate ourselves again now that the few days have come to an end.
Talent: We’ve finally settled our own debate on hard work versus talent and concluded that talent wins. This of course refers to the area that matters: the elite. At the lower level or at the middle tier, hard work can beat talent because the difference isn’t that large. This is typically true in items that are complex such as basketball, football, soccer etc. Since the event requires more than just speed/strength, many areas can improve with hard work. This is in stark contrast to a single event. Since it is specialized, talent will take over at a younger age. In short, the 10,000 hour rule to become a master at something is simply false. Give a regular guy 10,000 hours and he won’t even make it to the top 10%.
We can scale this up to making money as well. Talent wins yet again. Businesses reward talent more than sports do (contrary to popular belief – look at serial entrepreneurs). A business with a competitive advantage or near monopoly can have a single person generating billions of dollars while doing literally nothing as his competition is eaten alive (see google search dominance, employees simply make sure the monopoly grows). While this seems depressing at first for any regular person who accidentally stumbles on this blog, the good news is that most people don’t even work hard. So you can still get ahead on pure grit alone, our estimate came in at around $150K. If someone worked 60 hours a week, that would be around $50/hour. A reasonable number as a single trade could earn this wage without a high IQ or specialized talent as of 2018.
How to Make an Impact: As you can see by the title, we think volunteering doesn’t make a difference. Instead it is better to try and make a micro-economic impact. The only way you can create an impact on a macro scale is if you’re ultra-rich (probably around the $100M marker). If you’re a well-off guy with under $10M or so, you should choose the people you help. Your time is limited and investing all of that time (R&D and SG&A costs) into someone with limited talents is not going to do the world any favors. Forcing Elon Musk to teach a class of kindergartners how to code is just not going to help society.
Instead, cast a net around the second or third sales funnel. Let the people with $100M+ in the bank try to throw out the massive net. You? You’ll deal with the people who survived the first 2-3 success hurdles. Trying to figure out where the person has talent is essentially a full time job. If you work in sales and realize that 2-3 people have a talent for this skill, then go ahead and help them. This will make you feel good when they succeed and you’re not trying to fix a completely run home. Think about it like a real estate project. If you’re relatively well off, taking in a few projects that need basic repairs is doable. Levering up and buying a broken down apartment complex with Section 8 housing… probably not a good idea. Be smart about how you’re going to make an impact.
Be Wary of the Generational Gap: A common thread between the old and the young. Older people believe the younger generation is privileged and lazy. No worries. The people who are 60 today, were in their 20’s during the 1980s/1970s and the same thing was said about them when they were in their 20s. Just take it as part of the game. Instead of trying to convince people who are older than you to turn things around in any way, put your effort into people who have the highest percentage chance of turning their lives around (people in their teens/20s/30s).
Similarly, younger people believe that older people are behind the times and are closed minded. This is exactly how a 20 year old thought back in the 70s and 80s as well (feel free to look into the free spirit/hippie movement, essentially the same thing as the EDM culture today). Since older people will unlikely ask you for help, all you need to do is find a source of rapport with a younger person that relates to the current culture. This isn’t difficult and you’re not going to bother with someone 20+ years younger anyway.
While the prior two paragraphs will seem obvious when we think about them, the conclusions are quite profound. First, we can see why generations tend to lose wealth over time. It is because the older generation passes on dated information on how to succeed in life. This type of information causes the younger generation to fail. The most obvious example would be education. Could you imagine telling your child to go study and get a job in accounting? Or to spend his time learning how to drive a car? You’d essentially waste a large portion of his time. Learning a skill that will be obsolete. Since we know that opinions become more engrained as we age, not only do they pass on this bad info… They force them to act on it! Unbelievable. It doesn’t end there. The people that pass on this information are likely unsuccessful as well since the average child is not being born into money/success.
The second item is just as interesting: don’t bother schmoozing with older guys. Instead of trying to fit in with an older generation you’re better off creating a product that forces people to reach out to you. This causes the social dynamic to change a lot. Smart older guys are always looking to stay on top of new technology and the way the world changes. So instead of trying to sell them on any sort of idea you’re better off creating something and having them come to you. Then you don’t have to sell them on anything. Why? Well the only time someone older than you will approach you is if they believe you already have something that will help them! Try and think of the last time you saw an older guy approach a younger guy for advice (it practically never happens) and when it does the sale is essentially done.
The third item is to skip new unknown topics. Since you’re trying to help the ~5% of people that have a shot at significant success, don’t bother with unknown topics. We do that here with our Q&As as a natural feature. But. It should be applied to life as well. Nothing is worse than advice from a 40-50 year old unsuccessful guy. Not only is the guy unsuccessful but he actually thinks his advice is worth something. Since younger people have a higher chance of being impressionable, they may mistake age for success… Not related.
Putting the Concepts Into Action: With the three main items out of the way: talent, micro and generational gaps, we can find a clean sweet spot to help if you’re feeling generous. It’s around 5-10 years. Going further than this makes it incredibly difficult to help since there is too much change to account for. The first step is to avoid helping people find a talent. If they can’t figure out where they have talent then you shouldn’t bother with them at all. If their talent is in a field where you’re extremely successful… you can proceed.
This alone has put you into a smile and nod position for about 95% of people. Instead of telling people what to do you simply smile and nod and say all of your success was pure luck. This makes it a lot easier. If you’re forced to, go ahead and tell them you inherited a million dollars from a dead relative. Anything to avoid further conversation on success with someone who has no talent. You’re not doing anything wrong. In fact, you are saving yourself time and they wouldn’t have a shot in the first place (saving them time as well).
Impossible to Misunderstand Implications: While the prior paragraphs are clear to us we’re going to utilize bullet points to drive home the rest of them. Despite the items making sense for successful people they will unlikely make sense unsuccessful people who accidentally read this article. So let’s begin:
- Talent is something where your potential could reach up to the 1% level and is not limited to physical speed, IQ tests or strength. It includes all of those items in a basket of goods. If someone is “pretty fast, pretty strong and incredibly accurate” they might make a good three point shooter for basketball. If this same person tried to compete in the Decathalon or 400 meter dash, he would be destroyed. Both of those events require extreme speed and extreme strength and does not reward accuracy. People who believe this is false can go teach Shaquille O’Neal to shoot three pointers, we’ll be waiting on the results (dexterity is without a doubt a talent that can only be learned to an extent – not rewarded in our society since the masses think it’s a learnable skill at the 1% level… Laughable).
- Talent is much worse for making money. We used sports since average IQ people will be able to understand the prior paragraph (low IQs, probably not). Talent in making money is largely around synthesis, numbers and sales. None of these can be “learned” to the top 1% level. If communication skills were possible at the 1% level, anyone could become a famous comedian. Instead the person has to figure out what level he comes in at for each of those items and figure out where they overlap.
- Talent for making money is by far the most annoying as well. Some people never get it and can’t make money online after 12 months of effort while others are profitable within a few months. Unsurprisingly the people who figure it out within a few months end up being successful. Instead of giving up entirely, if the task is failing, we’d look at *where* the task is failing. Perhaps the person simply can’t sell to the target audience (say women age 25-50). If the person fails at selling to all age groups, genders and ethnicities despite a wide array of products… we’re guessing there is a significant lack of talent.
- Hard work is still needed, it just depends on the result you’re getting. If it takes you thirty minutes to accomplish what someone else can accomplish in 1 hour… that’s solid but not great. It essentially means you’re twice as good as the average guy (which isn’t very good). If you get to a point where someone works all day long (8 hours) and you achieve more in 30 minutes…you’re absolutely talented. It means they can’t catch up to you even if they dedicated their life to that task. Hard work is only useful if it is applied to what you are talented at (Specialization). Otherwise the hard work is going to waste, digging a ditch with a spoon while everyone else works with John Deere equipment.
- Hard work should be effortless. This isn’t a contradiction. If you’re talented at something, it shouldn’t require a lot of effort to get the result. This is why we say talented people make things look “effortless”. Why? Because it is effortless… for them. Once you figure out the items that are effortless for you, you’ve found the item to work hard on. If you’re getting good results with little effort, the sky is the limit on the results you’ll get with significant effort. Don’t worry. When you get up the chain, there will be other people with the same level of talent working just as hard. You’ll find the competition to be fun
- Considering this blog has been around for around 6 years we have no doubt that all of our consistent readers understand these concepts. If you want to have some fun, try to describe these concepts to your peers and you’ll quickly realize how many average people there are in the world.
Encourage Hard Work and Know the Truth: People love stories about the underdog who overcomes all odds (unsurprisingly, we dislike these feel good movies as we think they encourage irrational behavior). They’ll read this article and find 1/1,000,000,000 who somehow succeeds despite their apparent lack of talent. That is great. They can spend their time betting on the 1/1 billion while you’ll spend your time betting on the guys with a 2.99/3 chance of success (Hello Mayweather McGregor!). The best way to do this is to encourage hard work. By doing this you’re telling everyone they have a chance (giving them hope) while saving yourself time (to look for talented people to help). It is not fun telling people they have no shot (it’s depressing actually if you decided to tell them the truth). So your best course of action is to tell them to work hard. It sounds a lot better and at least it gives them a shot at making $150K+ a year. Just remember… don’t invest your actual time in them. The return profile isn’t good and you’re not helping society advance. (Note: if any of your acquaintances always root for the “underdog” they are typically average people. This is because they associate with the underdog more “He’s kinda like me!” Psychological.)
If you find yourself in a situation where you’re forced to give advice to a large audience, we would go ahead and encourage you to lie. Bold face lie and promote hard work. Your downside is limited since it sounds good and your upside is positive since it simply tells people to try hard. From a micro level, you shouldn’t do this. Look for people with the correct skills and invest time here. In fact, this is exactly what companies do. They cast a relatively wide net with a basic filter for talent then hire the best talent they can get. In the public eye, they simply claim that they hire hard workers (the lie).
Impact on Your Life: This is really interesting. You’re essentially forced to live two lives. You’re forced to lie to regular people with the work hard myth and push talented people onto the right path.
Now… We’re going to tie two unrelated items together after a weekend of dealing with regular people. What we have learned is that communication with elite people does *not* improve your communication level with regular people. We just stated you’ll be communicating differently out of the gate depending on how talented the person is.
This was a big lightbulb moment. While we always wondered why there were rich people who had their lives run by their wives. And. We always wondered why some guys could be good with women and fail at sales… it all clicked. It is because they are different communication waves. To think this one through, take anyone you know who is good at being popular with regular people. Now ask yourself if he is able to generate a high income (typically not!). Similarly, find a guy who is good at making cash, but fails when it comes to dating. Now we see a trend… communication with regular people improves communication with women but does not improve communication skills with elite people.
This makes a lot of sense. If you’re meeting random women at a bar, restaurant, club, gym etc, it is much more likely that they are of normal intelligence. Similarly, if you generate a high income you’re generally forced to interact with high IQ and cunning individuals. This type of communication is just not the same at all.
Now this leads to an even bigger conclusion on the ideal way to sell – to the masses. Think about it like this. If you have a product that sells well to the masses, you’re improving your communication skills with regular people at the same time. This is a perfect cocktail. Your work causes your social skills to improve which also causes you to make more money! For once we settled a big debate: which market is better the high end or the masses? Our definitive answer is now the masses. In an ideal situation you run a business that sells to the masses since you can combine these skills with your regular social life. Eye opening conclusion for us and explains a lot about how the world operates. If your money making business targets the rich (that’s great!) just remember that the skills you learn there unlikely translate to communication with regular people. This explains why regular people view elite people as condescending as well.
This last section was a big leap but really helped us understand why the world view can be so different for talented people. It’s because the language doesn’t translate. If you decide to volunteer once (for fun), you’ll find that your communication dumbs down to bar/club level language. This is because it’s the easiest form of messaging. Similarly, that rich guy who has his life run by his wife… never learned the communication game. What happened exactly? He ended up finding a girl that dealt with his odd behaviors and he’s unwilling to lose her since it was so difficult to find a single girl in the first place! If it sounds far-fetched we’ll be on the look-out for guys in the same situation that are actually smooth in social environments outside of work (we went through our list and couldn’t find a single one).
Hopefully a lot of these points have stirred up some real life examples in your mind. If so, we think it is safe to say you should avoid the pain of dealing with regular people in the first place. Instead it is a lot easier to make an impact by making sure talent does not go to waste. Wasted talent is a tragedy, wasted time on helping un-talented people is also a tragedy and keep both of those thoughts in your mind (no need to say them out-loud… the regulars will yell at you since they want hope or an excuse for their current life position). With that said, we’ll go back to more positive posts and money related activities. We thought it was important to share all of this since we think we’ve finally solved the riddle (rich guys with overbearing wives) after watching regular day to day communication take place.
