Welcome to Things I Wish I Knew Earlier Sunday!
Here are 3 ideas I found to spur your creativity this week.
Ignorance Tax Is The Premium You Pay When You Do Not Know How Something Works
When I got off the bus in Leon, Nicaragua for the first time in 2017, the locals overwhelmed me.
More than a hundred people yelled and waved their hands. My Spanish sucked, so I had no idea what any of them were saying.
All I knew was that I needed to get to the hostel I booked. But I didn’t know where it was. The address was scribbled on the most recent page of my notebook, and that was the only thing I had going for me.
A cab driver waved me down. His young son worked as our translator, and he agreed to take me to that address.
I threw my backpack, filled with everything that was most important to me in the world, into his trunk. Off we we went into the chaotic streets of Leon.
Twenty minutes later we pulled up outside my hostel.
The driver told me that it would be $20 for the ride. This sounded high to me…but all my stuff was in his trunk. What was I going to do, negotiate?
I paid him.
Later I found out a ride of this kind would typically cost $1 USD.
And THAT, my friend, is what we call ignorance tax.
It is the perfect name for the tuition we pay to learn in the school of life, AKA the school of how things actually work.
Ignorance tax is the cost of learning something new.
Sometimes we pay in money. Other times we pay in time.
But we always pay.
Better to pay early and put what we learn to use.
“The biggest threat to all entrepreneurs is that they are ignorant of what it takes to be successful at whatever the next level is for us.” -Alex Hormozi
Here’s a short video of Hormozi talking about ignorance tax.
What Looks Like Work To Everybody Else But Feels Like Play To You? That Is A Competitive Advantage
The best example of this idea is this very newsletter.
I love writing it. I love capturing, organizing, and sharing great ideas.
And I make my living as a real estate agent. How many other agents spend time capturing and sharing ideas like this? I don’t know a single one. Most agents put people on auto-generated emails and move on with their life.
But this newsletter is read by more than 2900 people every single week.
And that is a competitive advantage.
So, let me ask you, what looks like work to everybody else but feels like play to you?
Spend some time with this question this week. If you can answer it, you can revolutionize your business and life.
I plucked this idea from an excellent conversation between Chris Williamson, the host of the Modern Wisdom podcast, and Joe Rogan, which you can listen to here.
We Survive Death In Two Ways: Spreading Our Genes And Spreading Our Ideas
Dan Koe’s new book The Art of Focus moves from the broadest possible lens on reality all the way to how to build a one-person business, and this is one of the early ideas.
The notion that we survive death by spreading our genes is not new.
In fact, it’s probably the oldest idea. You are made of genes, and you have children who inherit your genes and propagate them into the future.
Straightforward.
“Conceptual reproduction is the drive to spread the ideas, beliefs, and biases that make you, you.”
Why do you fight so hard to prove your football team is the best, the republicans are better than the democrats, and your home town is better than anywhere else to live?
Conceptual reproduction.
This is where creative people thrive.
We spread our ideas because we identify with those ideas. Spreading our ideas is like sharing ourselves with others.
If you want to survive death, figure out how to share your ideas.
If you do, who knows how long your “life” will be?
After all, we are still reading Plato’s ideas, and he shared them more than 2400 years ago.