Stop Using Industry Standards If You Want to Win | Ep. 1006

I open by laying out the point of today: how I became number one across fields and how you can use the same playbook, backed by a portfolio at Acquisition.com doing $250 million a year and a book launch that set a Guinness record with $106 million in a weekend.

Stop worshiping industry standards; average is exactly what it sounds like, and I didn't get in this game to be average.

I sat with a big company that kept saying they were meeting industry norms, and I asked the obvious question: do you really wake up aiming to be middle of the pack?

You get what you tolerate, and the top job is setting the standard across everything—sales, margins, timelines, even how fast work gets done—then holding the line when comfort tries to pull you back.

A mentor once told me profit is unnatural; success is always under pressure from normal habits, so someone has to say we’ll grow revenue without bloating headcount and we’ll serve customers better with less.

One portfolio company needed fifteen reps; the plan was five a month, but we pushed to do it in one month with senior reps helping onboarding, unlocking roughly four million in profit in the next quarter because we raised the bar.

Winners don’t try the same lever endlessly; they attack goals from many angles until one breaks through, like hiring extra recruiters and flying new hires in for a tight three-day ramp.

It’s rarely that something ‘doesn’t work’; it’s that you weren’t skilled enough yet to make it work, and unless physics blocks it, those limits are mental handicaps your competitors cling to.

If you want to lead your market, use physics and math and work backward, while others try to sell you their excuses; hard problems are the openings that scare off the average.

Differentiation is survival, and the world drags you toward typical; staying distinct takes continuous energy, so pay the price and keep your edge.

The greats ask for reasons grounded in reality, not habit—show me the physical law that says we can’t do it faster, better, or with fewer parts.

When we set the record-breaking book goal, people called it unrealistic; we chose to dare greatly, build redundancies for power, internet, printing, and logistics, then pair them with a compelling offer and enough reach.

Apply this to your hiring, pricing, and cash flow: ask what truly prevents it, decide which cost you’ll bear to pull the future forward, and be less reasonable with stubborn conviction.

Reject industry norms, set your own bar, and keep pressing until you find or make a way—and if no one’s done it before, good; that’s your cue to ignore their mediocrity and go anyway.