Unpopular Beliefs
#1: Get Rich.
Unpopular Beliefs
#1: Get Rich.
You should get rich!
And use those resources to help people.
The truth is that you can’t help anyone if you’re broke.
If you’re rich, you can be generous!
Just to be clear, being rich means that you have abundant resources.
Specifically, I’m talking about money or a money-generating asset.
Getting rich means owning as little “stuff” as possible.
I think you know what I mean by “stuff.” I mean depreciating assets. Things that take up space and get less valuable over time.
Owning rental properties or stocks that yield dividends are good examples of things that put money in your pocket, making them worthwhile to maintain or invest in.
Getting rich means being expensive.
Money is a great, non-biased way to measure value. If you’re expensive, you’re doing something that the market is deeming as valuable!
Getting rich means you can be generous.
When it comes down to it, money is a lot like oxygen. Without it, it’s difficult to survive–as a person or a business. I’m not talking about what’s right or wrong or what should or shouldn’t be.
I’m just talking about the way it is.
If you can provide oxygen to people who need it, you can change lives and improve the planet
Unpopular Belief #1: Get Rich.
2 Minute Action:
● Lookup a high-dividend index fund and make your first deposit.
● Call a friend in real estate and ask them what it would take to get into the rental market
● Look around 1 room in your house and pick 3 things that are taking up space without
adding any value to your life. Donate them.
● Raise your consulting fee, rent, subscription rate, or whatever it is you do for money.
#2: Don’t be a starving artist!
In his list of directives, Derek Sivers refers to this idea as pursuing “market value” instead of “personal value.”
I stole this concept directly from him.
This idea also builds off of Belief #1: Get Rich.
When I was in college, I spent a lot of time studying and training for what I wanted to do more than anything else: brain research.
I was studying the neuroscience of the developing brain! I wasn’t thinking about how much money I’d have later, or the value I was worth as a researcher. I was just thinking “hey, brains are really important and really interesting. I bet I could help a lot of people if I understood how they develop and how they work.”
I was sort of right.
It turns out, researchers can bring a lot of money for their institutions.
At Penn State, a top research institution, people are often surprised to find out that the amount of money researchers bring in far exceeds that of the football program.
It’s not even close.
The point is that what I wanted to do and what was valuable had a great overlap.
This is called “an opportunity.”
If you’re in love with the idea of being a starving artist, don’t be mad when you are starving and can’t help anyone else because you need to take care of yourself.
I got lucky here but in retrospect, I learned to go where the opportunities are.
If you are trying to help people, this can only lead to good outcomes.
Your hard work in combination with opportunity will yield a positive outcome.
Here’s an equation for success that I pulled from a book Michael Johnson (the Olympic gold medal sprinter) wrote:
Success = Hard Work (Talent + Opportunity)
The notable part of this equation is realizing that if Opportunity is 0, the whole thing nulls out.
What’s also notable is the understanding that Hard Work is the multiplier.
This means if your effort is distributed across many projects you’re less able to drive up the success of any one of them.
Focused, deliberate effort applied in a single direction can lead to a hefty multiplicative factor.
The tricky part is that I truly believe that if you want to develop personal value, you need to be good at lots of things.
Here’s the conundrum:
If you want to make a difference to the world, you’re going to have to build something the world values–not just something that you personally value.
It’s up to you to pick and adjust. It’s not that you can only do one thing for the rest of your life. It’s just that if you choose too many, you will have a hard time getting the flywheel moving.
In fact, it’s not always a good thing to make a career out of the things you really like.
Examples might include and are not limited to: sex, drugs, & rock/roll.
Unpopular Belief #2: Don’t Be A Starving Artist!
2 Minute Action:
Make a list of the things you love to do.
Make a list of the types of impact you’re making.
If you had to choose only 3 in each category, which would they be?
Great. Now pick one in each category.
Remember, each of these is fighting for its life for your attention and hard work.
You don’t have to decide your entire future in 2 minutes. But you do have to start with a change.
#3: Steal Other People’s Stuff.
Successful people have developed tricks of the trade, but they’ve also stolen and borrowed from other successful people.
Steal other people’s stuff is also another way of saying: Pick the traits and characteristics you admire and mimic them.
Imitate successful people.
Steal their strategies and tactics.
Remember that your customer, audience, client, patient, or student will only benefit if YOU succeed!
I’m not advocating for plagiarism.
I’m saying that you should take the concept, check it against your values, and investigate what’s useful about it.
And don’t just steal from people you admire.
As Derek Sivers says: “Find wisdom in your opponents!”
You already know everything from your side.
Understand your opponent’s side and you’ll have much more context, and possibly tools with which to succeed.
Even though this sounds easy, here is the difficult next step:
Discover how your opponent is smarter than you.
It’s not hard because it requires searching.
It’s hard because it requires humility.
Unpopular Belief #3: Steal Other People’s Stuff.
2 Minute Action:
Who is someone you admire and can call?
Take 2 minutes to ask them about their methods/strategies.
There are also a lot of books written by authors who just want to share. You are connected to a huge wealth of human knowledge.
If you don’t know where to find resources, email me or tweet at me.
(I’m @theCountDanilo, everywhere.)
Tell me what you want to steal and I can help.
#4: Say “Yes” To Everything.
But wait! You can’t say yes to everything!
If you do, you’ll just be overwhelmed and out of time!
This is true.
Let me explain why it’s helpful to do it anyway.
Say “yes” until you’re rich.
Once you’re rich, you can say “no.”
By “rich,” I just mean that you have the time and resources to spend your time as you want.
In the beginning, you’re going to be working on creating new opportunities and building new relationships.
When you have said “yes” to too many opportunities and you start to feel overwhelmed, it’s time to cut the bottom 20% of your work.
Kill the bottom 20% of your projects, relationships, whatever you’re spending your time on.
If you do this continually, the only way is up.
When you cut projects, you’ll want to take into consideration 3 things.
On this project, are you:
Making money
Feeling fulfilled/Making impact
Developing expertise
Cutting some of your work won’t be perfect.
You’re going to have to make tradeoffs between these factors.
Come to terms with this and the journey will be much more enjoyable.
By saying “yes,” to things you might otherwise reject, you’re diversifying–a major principle in investing. Over time, you’ll learn what returns on your investment and what doesn’t. This will also protect you from depending too much on one opportunity.
If you work for GE for 25 years and suddenly they decide to lay you off, you now have to find another job. If you develop multiple skills and streams of income over 25 years, it’s going to be a lot harder to knock you down.
Reinvest In Your Network.
“No one has ever said: ‘I’m too well-liked and I’m too well-respected–-I just can’t seem to make any money.’”
– Seth Godin
By showing your network that you appreciate and value them (by adding value), they will appreciate and value you.
This creates more opportunities and keeps you fresh in their minds when new ones arise.
You also have the benefit of a strong support network when things go sideways.
They will.
Recap:
Once you’ve filled your plate, you will already be in motion.
Then it’s time to cut the bottom 20%.
Then it’s time to add more to your plate.
Rinse. Repeat.
Over time, you’ll learn more about yourself, what you value, and what you love spending your time on.
At some point, you’ll realize that most of your time is spent doing what you love.
You’ve engineered this!
Only at this point will it make sense to start saying “no.”
Entrepreneur and author Derek Sivers calls this saying “Hell, yes!” or “No.”
The hard part is realizing that you can’t start here.
You can only end up here after you’ve spent the time doing things you don’t love.
You don’t get the luxury of saying “no” at first.
Unpopular Belief #4: Say “Yes” To Everything.
2 Minute Action:
Email/call/text an old colleague and tell them how they made a difference in your life.
Think of someone who asked you to do something recently. Not a favor like “can you drive me to the airport.” I mean more like “hey, do you want to start a really informal podcast about hunting?”
Say “yes,” and commit for a period of time. Have a rule about what will allow you to bail and agree on it with an accountabilibuddy.
If you’re not overloaded, add something to your project list.
If you’re overloaded, kill the bottom 20% of projects you’re working on.
#5: Trust Your Gut.
But what about evidence?
What about data?
What about expert opinion?
The idea here is that you’re believing in someone else’s abilities to understand your situation better than you.
Sometimes that’s really helpful.
In that case, you’d be following your gut to go with someone else’s.
If you’ve done this a million times before, you’ve probably developed what psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer refers to as a heuristic-based gut feeling.
The idea is that even if you can’t consciously articulate your situation, your brain has seen this so many times that it’s actually making you feel what’s different this time.
The fancy name for a cognitive shortcut like this is a “Heuristic.”
You already do this all the time.
Here’s an example of a heuristic you didn’t know you had:
Can you read this?
I cnduo’t bvleiee taht I culod aulaclty uesdtannrd waht I was rdnaieg. Unisg the icndeblire pweor of the hmuan mnid, aocdcrnig to rseecrah at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno’t mttaer in waht oderr the lterets in a wrod are, the olny irpoamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rhgit pclae.
This is a really basic heuristic.
Your brain is just making it all happen for you!
If you’ve done something enough times, Gigerenzer estimates that 80% of the time, your gut is accurate.
That is a really, really good chance.
But you have to have lots and lots of experience for this to work.
For instance, you’ve read enough Medium posts so that my jumbled-word example works pretty well for you.
If you were trying to read radar or ultrasound or something you’ve done with less frequency, this trick wouldn’t work.
As if being right 80% of the time wasn’t enough of a benefit for following this belief, here’s another one:
This will help you avoid regret.
Ultimately, a major motivator for people is avoiding regret.
We don’t want to get to our death beds and struggle with something we should or shouldn’t have done.
If you didn’t follow your gut, you have a much higher likelihood of regretting your decision.
If the expert was wrong, you can blame the expert. How were you supposed to know? You’re not the expert.
If you had a gut feeling and you ignored it . . . good luck getting rid of that regret.
If your wrong and went with your gut, well, you were just wrong. But at least you didn’t know the answer and pick something else.
Like many “rules” this one doesn’t apply in some situations.
The next card will walk you through a pretty scary example of an exception to this rule.
Please read carefully.
*Disclaimer for High-Stakes Decisions*
Remember the consequences of your decision in high-stakes situations.
Here’s an example of a flawed gut feeling:
In 1999 NYPD fatally shot Amadou Diallo in New York City. Police fired when they thought the young Guinean man was reaching for a weapon, but he was actually unarmed and digging in his pocket for his identification.
What happened?
Social conditioning creates non-conscious beliefs.
These beliefs are hard to identify because they’re non-conscious. That means you’re not aware you have them. This is the basis for racism, classism, sexism and a ton of other “isms.”
You hear about it from people who say “oh, I don’t see color,” or “I have friends who are x, y, z.”
It’s these non-conscious beliefs that produce the first impressions that can trigger flawed decisions.
It’s not your fault.
But you’re still accountable.
Just like the rest of us.
Unpopular Belief #5: Follow Your Gut.
2 Minute Action
Here are a few things that only take 2 minutes to do:
Is there someone in your life who just drains the energy out of you? That’s a gut feeling. Cut it off.
Make a subtle gesture of gratitude or kindness to someone you otherwise might not. This helps those around you feel safe and more like themselves. Others are less likely to make rash decisions or judgments when they feel like we’re all on the same team.
Phone a friend. If you have a high-stakes decision to make, call 3 experts.
#6: Get Famous.
Famous people are frauds.
Famous people are vain.
Famous people are selfish.
Influence is power.
We discussed how money can be useful in making change in my first post titled “An Unpopular Belief: Get Rich.”
Influence is just as powerful.
Marketers use celebrities to advertise their products.
Why? Because we trust them. We’ve built a relationship with celebrities over the course of their careers.
I’m including politicians in this, as well.
The more people you spread your message to, the more you can help people.
“The opposite of getting famous is hiding.”
– Derek Sivers
Mass media = mass communication.
Fred Rogers did it.
Jim Henson did it.
Sesame Workshop does it all the time.
Getting famous means mastering media and communicating your message.
Getting famous means being a practitioner of influence, not merely a wielder of it.
Unpopular Belief #6: Get Famous
2 Minute Action
What networks do you have now?
Instagram? Snapchat? Facebook? LinkedIn? Twitter?
For me, it’s email.
What’s your message?
Today is a great day to publish a random act of kindness or a resource that can help people.
And what’s great is that it doesn’t need to take more than 2 minutes.
#7: Be As Disloyal As Possible.
Yes, we can all agree that loyalty is useful in personal relationships.
But the rest of life is much more complicated.
There’s a difference between social loyalty, brand loyalty, and business loyalty.
Yep. This is the part of being a human that has helped us survive for so long as a species.
By trusting our neighbors, humans have been able to build societies that functioned and developed.
Strangely, it doesn’t always work the same for business or for building resources.
Opportunism often helps us get to the next level.
By seeking and seizing opportunities, we can move forward faster.
Being brand loyal doesn’t help you if the brand suddenly changes leadership and goes in a new direction.
Being loyal to a partner doesn’t help you if your partner decides to sell off their shares.
Being loyal to your previous statements or beliefs doesn’t help you change your mind with new information.
Choose the plan with the most options.
This helps diversify your options so that you can choose based on the changing context of the world.
As the backdrop changes, so will your decisions.
Unpopular Belief #7: Be As Disloyal As Possible.
2 Minute Action:
Tell your closest friends or your partner how grateful you are to have them in your life.
Tell your employer that you’re looking for more opportunities within the company and you’d like to know more about what it takes to get there.
Reply to this post! What’s something you believed as a child that you no longer believe, now?
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