Hello Dear Friend,
Bienvenidos to Things I Wish I Knew Earlier Sunday from Colombia!
Here are three ideas to ponder in the coming week.
The eternal problem we all face our entire lives is we don’t know enough
The outcomes we get in life are downstream from our choices.
We make decisions based on the information we have gathered thus far. And if you knew more, you would make better decisions, fewer mistakes. You can’t do a lot about what you know today, but you can know a lot more tomorrow if you use today correctly.
This is the basis for Warren Buffett’s famous quote:
“Go to bed a little smarter every day. That’s how knowledge builds up. Like compound interest.”
Buffett has been one of the wealthiest people in the world for longer than I’ve been alive, and he spends 80% of each workday reading.
EIGHTY PERCENT!
How insane is that?
But you don’t have to read. Watch videos. Listen to podcasts and audiobooks. Talk to people with more experience than you.
Whatever you do, if you go to bed a little smarter every day, then life will get better and better with every passing year.
The eternal problem we all face our entire lives is we don’t know enough.
A large online following signals more authority than a PhD
The university system that served humanity for millennia is dying.
And the internet is her murderer. I ran a poll on my X account a few weeks back to learn whether a PhD or a large online following signals more authority. More than 60% of respondents chose a large online following. This is only 30 years after the internet emerged into our lives and less than 20 years since its widespread adoption and use.
The university system emerged as a result of the information revolution brought on by the printing press in the 15th century, and we are living through an information revolution of our own today.
In a world where information is abundant, people don’t have to go to universities and pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to educate themselves.
Instead, they can go to their favorite online teacher and learn on their own time at their own pace. For free. And therein lies the opportunity. According to Goldman Sachs, the online Creator Economy will grow to half a trillion dollars by 2027.
Regular people like me and you are building incredible businesses by sharing their unique perspectives and knowledge.
I believe this is the biggest business opportunity of our lives.
A large online following signals more authority than a PhD.
To create more opportunities, create more collisions.
The quantity and quality of opportunities you are exposed to over the duration of your life depends on the quantity and quality of collisions you have with other human beings.
Collisions are when you bump into new people, which makes collisions the starting point for every relationship.
Opportunities come from relationships. The clichéd advice “it’s not about what you know but who you know” is true because of this fact. Well, kinda true. It’s about who you know, yes. But it’s also about what you know. What you know just doesn’t matter when you don’t know the right people who need that information.
I learned long ago that relationships themselves are the greatest asset. And the highest performance often have an abundance of relationship assets.
If you want more opportunities, create more collisions.
Here are a few ideas for creating more collisions:
- Travel to unfamiliar places. This is part of the motivation for Whitley and I being in Colombia as I write this. Just yesterday we took a street food tour and met a nice couple from New York City. Who knows what might come from those new relationships?
- Move far away from home. My good friend Matt (who I met by studying abroad in college and with whom I still maintain a relationship to this day) grew up in Huntsville, Alabama. He and his (now) wife Kimberly moved to Denver 7 years ago. Now he is one of the top real estate agents and appraisers there. They are surrounded by friends and both earn far more than they ever dreamt possible before moving.
- Artist’s dates. This idea comes from the Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. Go do something fun just for the sake of doing it with no need to get something from the experience. Check out that museum you’ve always wanted to see. Hike that trail that’s been calling you. Do something random and fun.
- Change jobs.
- Start a business in a new, unfamiliar industry.
- Attend networking events. I promise there are at least twelve of them going on in a 10 mile radius around you at this very moment.
- Pick up a new hobby or skill. Hobbies and skills bring people who share in them together.
To create more opportunities, create more collisions.