System for Winning Masterclass

A method for building more and more momentum, without the ad hockery

System For Winning

“When it pours it pours,” a client says.

He of course gets that’s the “wrong” phrase.

But it’s the right phrase for him.

He remembers what it was like the other way.

And now he ONLY wants to remind himself of how much more you can keep it pouring!

Stuck begets stuck

Earlier in his career.

When he was first building his business, he felt stuck.

“Actually, it was way worse than stuck,” he says.

“It was like I couldn’t get a win edgeways.”

He was working harder than ever.

“Hustling” harder than ever.

But it wasn’t enough.

And worse.

Feeling like nothing was working…

Like a car stuck in the mud, spinning wheels, he felt himself getting stuck more and more.

the hardest part to winning

System For Winning

A client had a huge breakthrough this week.

Something we’ve been working on for a while really clicked in him.

It’s f’n cool to see.

When after all the ways we’ve been triggering this, boom!

He could see exactly what he needs to do.

That’s the hardest thing

Knowing what to do.

Meaning, if you have a job and your boss says to you—do these 5 things and you will succeed.

OK, well, that can still be hard, because these things might be hard to do.

But by far the harder thing to winning is when you have no clue what to do.

When you’re looking at your goals, and you literally have no idea how to win at them.

See, a lot of the time I talk about pro athletes, but in some ways that’s an easy game.

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“How Many Times Did I Give Up?”

I lost count past two

Coz when I just think about it

I can never lose

Sings Livy Lee in…

“Bring It Home”

In most pursuits in life there’s no A for effort.

Sure, relative to not trying…

Or putting in our worst…

We should feel better about giving it our best shot.

But in many things, like driving home safely, what counts is do you get there in the end?

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“Take It To The Limit”

“You need to think smaller,” her boss said.

5 minutes later my friend was typing into google, When do you apply to business school?

3 years later she graduated HBS.

Today she’s building big.

There’s Nothing Easy

About dreaming big.

Waking up every day eye on the prize.

Taking actions that keep breathing it life.

Plenty of people pretend to encourage thinking big, but few do.

Even fewer teach you how.

All alone at the end of the evening when the bright lights have faded to blue…

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Sun’s Out. Guns Out

Working from home I’m often wearing a gun belt loaded with two pistols.

Glock 17 on my right.

M&P left.

Spare clips in front.

Neither shoot brass.

Just a laser I’m constantly drawing and painting targets left and right.

Practice How You Play

When I first started shooting with these retired SEALs I was surprised they carry hot.

Not just a holstered gun.

A round in the chamber; ready to draw and kick.

Back then I didn’t know anything about guns, nor get why someone would carry at home.

I still know jack about guns.

But I’ve quickly got skilled at shooting because I practice how I play.

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Goldman CEO’s Advice To Summer Interns—Translated

Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon knows about winning.

He’s well proven it in his own career, in the businesses he’s run, and now in the way he runs the firm.

He, deeply, gets what it takes to win, and shared some advice with summer interns.

Of course he’s being subtle, so let’s translate it…

1. Be yourself

We believe who you are makes you better at what you do. Share your interests and viewpoints with your teams – we value our people’s unique experiences and perspectives

Translation: Don’t be yourself, be your self the firm needs you to be. Be the version of you that leads people to like you—e.g. never say “I’m only here to make money”—gets people wanting to work with you and conveys you are the right “fit” for the team. Agree profusely with other people’s viewpoints and only supply your own when they’re acceptable to others and CLEARLY add MASSIVE value.

Example: “That’s a great idea. I really like the way you’re thinking about it. When I was in football camp I heard the coach say something as brilliant as that. I’ll crush this, then let’s figure out what more value I can add to the team.”

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WW John Wick D?

He’d kill the guy with a pencil.

That’s what John Wick would do.

It’s simple…

Sharp object. Fleshy inner ear. Shut down the brain.

Truth Is Always Simple

Movies have elaborate fight scenes.

No one who kills for living does it with kicks and punches.

Animals killing to survive hunt the fastest way to shut down the target.

Pencil in the ear. Claw out the eye. Whatever.

Poke your Adam’s apple you feel how weak it is.

Drive your forearm through someone else’s and they won’t get back up.

Truth is simple.

Fake Is Complicated

A client told me about the formula to prove the sun revolves around the planets.

It’s very complicated, but with enough complexity you can make anything seem true.

When they figured out the planets revolve around the sun, the formula got simple.

Doing What You Want is the same.

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What Rajs, Hedge Fund Scammers, And College Scammers All Need

That headline is my longest ever…

Coz that’s what I think Raj’s sentence should have been—longer.

The guy has the gall to come out of prison and still claim to be innocent in handing off insider secrets to the other Raj.

But that’s only the short of it.

The Long Is How Many Were Doing It

I don’t blame Raj and all the hedge fund scammers.

Like Lance Armstrong and the sport of cycling, to win a highly competitive game, you expect some to cheat.

Especially when the upside is so high, and the downside is so low.

Make billions of dollars with a tiny risk of getting caught and serving a short sentence?

Everyone on the inside knows this is how some of the biggest got big.

Maybe it wasn’t overtly “insider,” but their edge was non-public information.

College Scamming Is The Same

“Cheating” is a squishy definition.

Obviously you can donate a lot of money and get your kid into a school.

And of course there’s more than one organized racket out there.

Yet, where does the fine line of helping your kid do better in school end, and cheating begin?

Having a tutor is very reasonable, yet something poorer kids can’t afford. Nor a college admissions advisor.

Let alone the many who “brainstorm ideas” or “edit,” let alone straight up write your kid’s admission essays for them…

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Don’t Bribe Admissions, Give Your Kids What They Deserve

A System for Winning.

Someone asked me if I’m laughing at the miserable Chamath the Destroyer how do I feel about parents bribing their kids into school.

Well, of course I find it just as funny, and unsurprising.

Rich and famous people can buy near anything in our world, and anyone who thinks the school system is above bribery hasn’t noticed what “gifting” a building will do…

And I can understand where they’re coming from.

Everyone Wants Their Kids To Win

One of the hardest things for parents is feeling helpless they can’t do more for their kids.

How do you help your kids win in this rapidly changing modern world?

School has become more competitive than the Olympics so it’s not surprising parents would follow the example of Tonya Harding and bust a rule or two.

Of course we know helping your kids achieve something they fail to earn doesn’t help them in the long-run, but it heavily reduces the burden of actually being a parent…

And what more can you do?

Um, Teach Them To Win

Nobody teaches us to win in life.

Even in school which has a very obvious method for winning—a process for studying—and even more obvious winning skills—e.g. focus, speed reading, memory techniques—nobody teaches us how to win.

Instead we’re taught that life is a battlefield on which brute force wins—put your head down, work hard, sacrifice, give it all you’ve got…

Ugh, near everyone on this planet loses that way.

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Pathways To Success

Often people say to me something like—

“I know plenty of people who’ve achieved great success without doing what you say. They lacked clear goals. Had no path to success. Gave little thought to their process. Didn’t develop top skills. Have never trained their mind…”

It’s true. I know tons of those people. I used to be one of them.

Lacking A Path To Success

I elevated myself from my blue-collar background to Goldman Sachs, and succeeded on Wall Street with nothing more than the goal to do my best and working all the time.

I’d never read a self-help book. Never visualized a goal. Hadn’t laid out a path to success. Never focused on my process. Nor time management, mindset or other “crucial” skills…

That path to success was ultimately unfulfilling to me but it is by far the most basic and common in our society—study hard, get a good job, and work hard for the rest of your life.

If you look at two of the wealthiest people on the planet, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates, you see a different path to success.

And some might even conclude that we should all be dropping out of college and starting a tech company…

Dig deeper and you learn most successful people aren’t top executives or famous billionaires. The vast majority of millionaires next door are “small” business people, who found their niche and just kept working it.

Does this mean everyone should start their own business? Or skip college? Or get a top job and work hard?

Of course not…

Engineering A Path To Success

Knowing how other people have succeeded tells you little about creating your own path to success.

A novice gold miner can randomly drill a hole, strike gold, and become an overnight “success.” But what could you actually learn from them in creating your own path to success? Should you just go drill some holes?

Many Internet millionaires were spawned during the first dot.com bubble in the late 1990s. Yet few of them held onto their money into this century.

Even fewer founders could replicate their “success.” Such “Returns on Luck” account for most out-sized success in our society—

You didn’t need to be the best engineer on the planet to get rich working for Facebook; you only had to join early enough.

The difference between making partner at Goldman Sachs pre-IPO in 1998 versus 2000 was some $50 million. And just about anyone buying real estate with zero money down in 2006 looked like a genius, until 2008.

While there’s a lot to be learned from taking advantage of rich opportunities, herein lies the distinction between achieving successful results, and engineering your path to success.

Even the worst football team in the league will win a game every now and then. But the best teams, like Vince Lombardi’s Packers, build a systematic method to winning that they know will work time and time again.

Ultimately, the most successful people are less focused on results, and more focused on engineering a path to success.

What Is Success To You?

Much of what we consider success in our society is results-focused.

Sure, little Johnny now gets a Final Winner Trophy for running last in a race at school.

But in the real world, it’s the winners we celebrate.

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