In December 2005, I started my first business. I was 17, and my baby was 6 weeks old.
I called myself 🧚🏻 The Cleaning Fairy, advertised in the local paper, and walked around affluent suburbs with a stack of flyers in the pram, dropping leaflets into letterboxes.
Within a few weeks, I had a regular roster of homes and offices. I charged $40 an hour, ordered custom t-shirts, and kept careful accounts, my mind boggling at the incredible success I was experiencing.
Then, in January 2006, my best friend came over, her university syllabus in hand. She was planning her degree, and picking her papers. My jaw dropped as I flicked through the pages, looking at the subjects on offer. I had no idea university could be so cool! Philosophy? Sociology? Politics? Media? Why had I never heard of this?
I didn't have the required entrance qualifications for university, I lived an hour away, and I was busy with my new baby and cleaning business. But from that moment, my mind was made up - I was going to uni.
And go to uni I did. I convinced them to let me enrol on the basis of my grades, shut down my business, claimed the maximum Student Allowance to pay for my petrol, and buckled down.
My family thought I was mad - I was earning more in my part-time business than most of them were in their jobs, and I was only a teenager! Why would I give that up? But I did it anyway.
What are the big leaps into the unknown you've taken that have changed your life?
The decisions that had unlimited upsides and uncertain outcomes?
Chances are you made a few leaps before you have the maturity to understand the gravity of the choices you were making - going to university, selecting your career, choosing a life partner.
I've got a few of them. Going to university. Leaving my safe policy job to start my own business in 2014. I had no freelancing work lined up, and no money in the bank... but an inkling that freedom would beat corporate life any day.
In 2017, I moved to Wellington, to chase government work. It took 2 years before I broke through, but by then I'd written my first book, started public speaking, and levelled up my business. How did I do it? I joined a business mastermind in Australia in 2018 that cost $25,000 a year, when I was barely breaking even. Another uncertain leap that shifted my world forever.
If you'd told me in 2005, fresh out of foster care and a scared teen mum, that I'd run a successful business, travel the world, speak to thousands of people on stage, write books and have people following my advice (?!), I wouldn't have believed you. Not because I didn't think I was capable, but because I didn't even know those things were an option.
Sahil Bloom calls it the Luck Razor. He says: choose the path with the largest potential for possibility.
Nicholas Taleb calls it antifragility. He says: Choose the option with positive asymmetry - if you win, you win big; if you lose, you lose small.
All of these ideas are about selecting options for your life that prioritise expansion of your horizons. University is one such option. Business is another.
Why prioritise expansion, instead of trying to predict the best move? There's two good reasons.
"For most people, the fear of losing $100 is more intense than the hope of gaining $150.” - Daniel Kahneman
People are inherently loss averse. The prospect of potential losses loom much larger than potential gains, and we stay small and safe for fear of losing what we already have.
The problem is: we don't calculate the risk very well. We overestimate the chance of unlikely events like natural disasters (which is why we pay through the nose to insure our house) and underestimate the chance of likely events like temporary disability (which is why we neglect to insure our health.)* We don't know what the option with the highest potential upside is.
It's like that old cliche: The more you know, the more you realise how little you know. You can't possibly understand the options out there until you dive in.
Until I read that syllabus, I didn't know you could study more than law, medicine, accounting or engineering at uni. Until my third year at university, I didn't know policy (my career path) was even a thing. And you can't, until you get going.
It's the same with your job. Until you started, you had no idea what was involved. Making assumptions about a path from the outside is a poor strategy - which is why prioritising options that offer you the potential for expansion is smart.
One of the most powerful ways to expand your life is to put yourself in situations where you're a small fish in a big pond. Being the least experienced or knowledgeable person in the room blows your realm of possibilities open. University did this for me, and I've tried to find opportunities to do that since.
In November 2022, I travelled to Phoenix, Arizona to attend the Genius Network conference. It was a room full of multi-millionaire (and some billionaire 🤯) entrepreneurs running incredible businesses and making big moves. I met people like Marie Forleo, Gabor Mate, and Dr. Benjamin Hardy (pictured). It was insane.
And I was a tiny. little. silly. baby. I had no idea what I was doing. I did not fit in. I still would not fit in. My imposter syndrome ran RAMPANT. But watching what those people were doing and witnessing their conversations blew my world open, nudging the edges of what I considered possible.
In Why 10X Is Easier than 2X, Dr. Benjamin Hardy (my mate from above!) talks about the concept of finer distinctions.
As we lean in to learning something new, we notice and understand things we couldn't see before. I've noticed this since I started learning more about writing fiction.
Now, I read every book with a different understanding of the choices the author is making, how the story is constructed, and what techniques are being used. It's like when you get your first houseplant. To start, 'plants' are a category of their own. Within 3 months, you're fingering the leaves of people's Monsteras, wondering if they're getting enough water.
If we stick at this, we get closer to mastery. Basic ideas and steps become automatic, as we operate with more precision, quality and expertise over time.
You don't know how good you are, until you lean in, learn and make increasingly finer distinctions. You don't know how good you can be, until you try, It all starts with a leap - which you've done before. You've already made uncertain leaps, at a time when you had far less knowledge, understanding and safety. So, why stop now?
Til next week,
A
* Source: Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman