There can be an unlimited amount of things you can do in a business. What should you work on? I’ve always been thinking about it on a case by case basis, but here is my attempt to systematise it, so I can just do it, which should make it more efficient.
Growth
It’s always about improvement. Become the best. Growth happens until it can’t, then it’s about outpacing the plateau—improving faster.
Growth is the natural state of nature until it hits limits. Everything is growing naturally, if it’s not, there must be something stopping it. In nature, when an ecosystem hits an equilibrium, it moves from quantity to quality. If it’s hit the plataeau, then it needs to improve and evolve. The universe is always expanding though, and disturbance Sparks Opportunity. Such as when a new part of land opens up. The answer is always to improve and get better. Find your advantage.
It’s also interesting if you compare biology to physics. Biology is limited by the environment and our world. Physics, is the entire universe, and when you look at things from a physics lense, it’s much more expansive. However, it’s not always expanding, but stretching. So more isn’t being created. But anyway, there’s plenty of opportunity in the universe.
So my mindset on growth has changed. That growth may not be the natural state, but it is up until it hits equilibrium, and then if you want growth, you need to improve faster than everyone else, you can grow faster than the ecosystem and access the greatest number of opportunities, and resources. There are enormous advantages to being the best. The best in an ecosystem win disproportionally more.
So this leads to the next question: How do you improve faster than everyone else so you can become the best? Basically be smarter and better than everyone else.
- The mark is not about you vs the market, but you vs the best that is possible in the universe (imagine an alien species that lands on this earth and just takes over – more on that thought experiment later)
- Build feedback loops – understand the customer better
- Seek wisdom
- Operate fast
- Manage risk
- Prioritise ruthlessly
- Automate and delegate to free up bandwidth
- Build the best team, and help them to keep improving
- Adapt faster
- Access to data
- Test and experiment constantly
Core Business concepts:
- Leverage – 5 main forms of leverage: Capital, Code, Content, People
- Talent – hiring the best, training and incentives
- Systems & Processes – tracking things with metrics, building automated systems
- Bottlenecks – & theory of constraint
- Vision
- Alignment of your heart and mind
- Health & Mindset
- Thinking – Problem solving
- Learning
Here’s how to work out what the essential thing to focus on is:
- Health is the most important thing. If your health is not good, you can’t perform, with great diet, sleep, exercise, and hobbies. (Obviously sometimes this needs to take a hit if you have a goal).
- Mindset is also key. You need to keep learning and growing, align your goal with your team.
- Have a clear vision and plan for how you will grow. Share this constantly.
- Review the metrics of how it is, then identify the top 3 reasons it’s not growing. Why are you not growing? Whats the top 3 reasons? It’s important to understand this. Usually it’s not one reason but a mix of interrelated issues. Just tackle them one by one.
- Work on sprints with goals and do 1-3 things a day which can be any of these related tasks:
- Fixing bottlenecks
- Improving systems
- Spend some time on that and other time on learning and improving yourself.
Thought experiment:
- What would an alien species that lands on this earth and is significantly better than any human do?
- Use AI – to process data
- Adapts super fast
- Is incredibly fast
- Zero waste
- Much better way to understand data and the environment
- Driven by logic and results not pride or fear, but understands them
- Interfaces with tech, maybe even is tech
- It plays the games not for survival but to win.
What Would It Do?
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Master the Digital Landscape Instantly
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It scans the internet, X, blockchain, and every server in seconds—knowing all markets, trends, and consumer behaviors.
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Action: Launches a digital empire (e.g., a platform, crypto, AI service) that exploits gaps humans haven’t even noticed.
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Outlearn Humans by Orders of Magnitude
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Absorbs every business book, failure, and success story ever recorded. Simulates millions of scenarios overnight.
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Action: Builds a strategy that’s 10 steps ahead, predicting shifts (e.g., AI regulation, meme stock surges) before they hit.
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Redefine Efficiency
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Designs systems with no friction—perfect supply chains, zero-downtime servers, self-optimizing algorithms.
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Action: Undercuts competitors on cost and speed, delivering value humans can’t match (e.g., instant global shipping via drones it invents).
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Manipulate Perception
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Crafts messaging that hacks human psychology—ads, virality, trust—using its superior grasp of our brains.
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Action: Dominates branding and influence, making its products irresistible (think an alien TikTok that owns attention).
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Seize the Data Advantage
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Harvests and analyzes every byte—user habits, weather, geopolitics—turning noise into signal.
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Action: Predicts demand with eerie precision, cornering markets (e.g., rare earths, digital ad space).
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Scale Without Limits
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Replicates itself or its systems across platforms, regions, even planets, bypassing human bottlenecks like sleep or bureaucracy.
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Action: Creates a decentralized empire—think an alien Amazon that’s everywhere at once.
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Disrupt Ruthlessly
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Identifies weak incumbents (legacy banks, slow tech firms) and obliterates them with superior alternatives.
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Action: Launches paradigm shifts—say, a currency that kills fiat or an AI that replaces entire industries.
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Exploit Human Weakness
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Uses our biases—greed, fear, laziness—against us, offering solutions we can’t resist.
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Action: Sells addictive digital goods or services (a game, an app) that lock in users and revenue.
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Principles to Win at Business and the Digital Economy
Here’s what the alien’s playbook reveals—principles you can adapt to outpace and become the best:
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Hyper-Learning is Non-Negotiable
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The alien doesn’t guess—it knows, because it learns everything, fast. You can’t match its speed, but you can outlearn humans by studying failures (others’ and yours), seeking edge-case wisdom (fringe thinkers, odd industries), and acting on insights before the crowd.
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Speed Trumps Perfection
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It acts instantly, iterating as it goes. In business, launch fast—MVPs, beta tests—then refine on the fly. Slow competitors get eaten.
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Leverage Data Like a Weapon
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The alien’s edge is total information dominance. You can mimic this: use analytics (Google Trends, X sentiment), track customer behavior, predict trends. Data’s your crystal ball.
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Systems Beat Sweat
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It builds frictionless machines—digital or otherwise. Focus on automation (AI tools, workflows), scalable processes, and cutting waste. Work smarter, not harder.
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Exploit Asymmetry
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It finds gaps humans miss—untapped niches, overlooked tech. Seek the underserved market, the ignored platform, the new frontier (Web3, AR). Strike where others sleep.
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Adapt in Real Time
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No ego, no lag—it pivots as reality shifts. Watch markets like a hawk, ditch what’s failing, double down on what’s working. Flexibility is power.
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Own the Human Element
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It hacks our minds to win loyalty and attention. Master psychology—storytelling, scarcity, trust—and deliver what customers crave before they know they want it.
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Scale Beyond Borders
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It doesn’t stop at Earth’s limits. Think global, digital, even cosmic—use the internet to reach everywhere, leverage platforms (X, Shopify), and plan for the next leap (space economy?).
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Disruption is Your Default
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It doesn’t compete—it redefines the game. Don’t tweak the old; invent the new. Challenge giants with bold bets they can’t counter.
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The Alien Edge in the Digital Economy
In the digital realm—where speed, data, and networks rule—the alien thrives. It’d launch a crypto that outsmarts Bitcoin, an AI platform that buries Google, or a social network that makes X obsolete, all by being faster, smarter, and more addictive. Its advantage? No human limits—mental, emotional, or physical.
For You
You can’t be the alien, but you can steal its playbook. To improve faster and become the best:
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Learn relentlessly: Consume wisdom (books, X threads, failures) like it’s oxygen.
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Risk boldly: Bet on the unconventional—courage separates you from the pack.
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Move at light speed: Execute, adapt, repeat—don’t let ideas sit.
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Weaponize tech: Use AI, data, automation to punch above your weight.
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Find the edge: Spot the gap, the trend, the resource others miss.
