The ONLY way to ever Succeed at Anything EVER

Is to not have an "only" way :)

I’m going to do something incredibly stupid today - try to teach you a bit about nuance.

This is not a smart move for reach and marketability.

The more you present things as “black or white” to your audience, the more attention and buy in you get.

The more you simplify - and even better, oversimplify - the more money make.

In general.

However, if you take this harder approach, you’ll get better results for your customers and you’ll have a unique lever in your business… the ability to present a more accurate reality to your customers and the skillset to help them better navigate through that reality.

Even if it doesn’t help your business, it should help you. The better you can truly understand what’s going on, the more accurate the decisions you’ll make.

To start, let me present a scenario. Say there is a weight loss program out there. To 1% who take it, it’s a miracle. Rapid and large amounts of weight loss with little to no effort. To 90%, it does nothing. To the remain 9% it makes them gain 10 pounds.

Question - is this an effective weight loss program?

…

…

The answer…

…

…

Depends.

To the 1% who it works well for, it’s the best program on the planet. For most people, it’s a waste of time and to a few people it’s harmful - worse than doing nothing.

Yet how it plays out in the real world is this - because of how impactful it is to those 1%, it will soon be the latest, greatest weight loss craze. People will swear by it and soon become dogmatic over it to the point where any counter-evidence is instantly disregarded.

Fights in social media comments will ensue and…

Everyone will become righteously indignent.

Lack of nuance.

It is possible for something that is a net overall negative to still be a useful positive to a select few.

As a pragmatist (which works great in business!) your goal is not to try to prove a method right or wrong but to find the way to put the right method to the right user segment.

We’ve been done this road before.

In the 1950’s, American schools tried to systematically eliminate left-handedness. It’s true that for 90% of people, the right hand is the “right” hand.

But 10% get the same result using the exact opposite approach.

Waking up early is good for about 90% of the population. Disastrous for the remaining 10%.

And if you’re caught in the middle, what are you supposed to do? Better to teach people how to find that time zone in which they thrive than to coerce them until the “best” one.

I get it though - to parse choice means additional cognitive demand. Which is why the model I’ve been teaching lately is this…

just add one.

It’s simple. When faced with what appears to be a binary decision (this or that) - add a third choice.

Instead of “wake up early or be a loser” add “…or consider an alternative way to be productive.”

Instead of “work hard or fail” add “find ways to make work not feel like work”.

Instead of “take big risks or stay small” add “or learn how to arbitrage risk”.

And so forth.

Your first webinar won’t be a big hit or a colossal flop. It will largely go unnoticed. Your youtube channel won’t be good or bad at first… it’ll just be forgettable. If you close that next client or not your life will be mostly the same.

And isn’t that wonderful?

When you measure success in inches - with nuance - the pressure to succeed subsides. With less pressure there is more freedom. More freedom allows you to move forward with more creativity. Which leads you to more success.

And by the way if you think more success leads to more happiness… well there is nuance to that as well. :)