You Either Win or You Learn
I continue to say that I have been incredibly fortunate in life. Lucky to be in San Francisco for the last 2 decades during the start of the massive ongoing technology boom. Lucky in the friends I have and to be surrounded by so many smart, successful and good people around me and around the world.
Consequently I’ve learned much just from being in their proximity. Remember, you become “average of the 5 people you spend the most time with?” Being around them you see barriers broken and their thought process that got them to where they are at.
Many of them started with nothing. Some being immigrant kids or even straight fresh off the boat new immigrants. Yet they were able to build big businesses or very successful careers in investing and creating. Not discounting luck & timing as a small part of this. There was also a clear correlation to crazy hard work ethic. But besides thinking long term, I believe a big part of this was due to their attitude and Mindset. A willingness to take the initiative, to risk and try new things all the time. This is the core idea of “Either Win or Learn.”
The point is that you benefit either way, whatever you do. Take a swing and you can potentially create an amazing business or whatever it is you are trying to accomplish. As hockey superstar Wayne Gretzsky’s said?
"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take."
If it does not work out, which is most of the time btw, at minimum you learn something new.
The point is that if you keep swinging, you will be moving forward over time. And you build muscle memory to keep pushing forward.
This is not what we learned growing up or in school aka “child industrial indoctrination camps”. In school and most of the working world, we are trained to get straight ‘A’s which means following the rules and not taking any risks. (I’m not talking foolish jump off the bridge risk btw). We were taught that making mistakes is a bad thing. That it is better and safer waiting for other people to tell you what to do. Taking the initiative is not worth it.
I should note this is on purpose because our present school system in most of the “developed” world is a legacy of industrial age. This is where people were trained and prepared for factory work or joining the military. Places where everything is top down hierarchical and you take orders.
Maybe this made sense for people to thrive in that old world. But everything has changed. We are entering the “Knowledge Age” and the old school system is pushing an obsolete mindset (as well as a crazy & intolerant woke religion in most western world schools). One that has not served the people well, based on growing income and life inequality we see across the globe these days. I think Peter Thiel had something right with his Thiel Fellowship where he gave money to university students to drop out and start a business.
I remember that old joke “A students work for B students, who run companies started by C students.” In my extensive experience, this definitely seems to be true. Your mindset really matters.
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