The Local Maximum Trap

For 198 editions, I’ve written about tactics, tools, leverage, and mindset.
But today, on the cusp of the 199th, I want to show you something hiding in plain sight something so simple, it’s almost embarrassing how few entrepreneurs actually exploit it.

Poor people don’t stay poor because of “lack of effort.”
They stay poor because they only ever encounter poor-person problems.
So they learn to solve those and naturally, the only buyers are people just like them.

Meanwhile, the wealthy get wealthier because they swim in a different aquarium. Their networks expose them to rich person problems , complex, expensive, urgent. Solve one of those, even accidentally, and you can build an empire.

Most entrepreneurs don’t fail because they lack ambition.
They fail because they only ever encounter local maximum problems, tiny optimizations inside tiny worlds. So they build features instead of fortunes.

The truth is painfully obvious and rarely acted upon:
Your income is capped by the sophistication of the problems in your proximity.
Expose yourself to bigger problems, and your earnings will rise to meet them. Stay at low altitude and the best you’ll ever build is a hill. Rise higher, into rooms where altitude is the norm and suddenly you can see entire mountain ranges of problems no one else even knows are there.

I want you to think about this for a second!

Cold drinks are 75% of Starbucks beverage sales , wild stat.

Do you think they are beating them selves up because they are NOT selling hot bitter drinks. No because they are chasing a profitability outcome. So why cant you chase the right outcome?

Think about this a little more, things aren’t what they appear to be. So why beat you self over what perfect vision you have for your self, so long as you can get to a profitable outcome by other means?

1. Nike is a brand storytelling company (that outsources the actual sneaker-making)

2. Coca-Cola is a distribution empire (not a beverage company)

3. Red Bull is a media company (that happens to sell an energy drink)

4. Apple is a luxury hardware ecosystem (not a tech company)

5. Whole Foods is an affluent-demographics aggregator (not a grocery store)

In the Sandhills of North Carolina, bees produce PURPLE honey. It’s the only place in the entire world where this happens. Nature is insane. Building a global product based on this could be the value unlock you have not tried yet. There are Riches in Niches as they say, so today in your journey to be different, you can start with purple honey..or perhaps some thing equally unique.

If you stand for every thing, you stand for nothing. Having a set of rules to live by, is boring. But it scales your life’s outcomes when you can develop your nonnegotiables early. Here are mine!

1. Celebrate people loudly and often. Admiration is free; stinginess is expensive.

2. Be the friend who follows up, checks in, remembers. Consistency > intensity. 

3. Assume you’re the host, even when you’re not. Introduce people. Guide the energy.

4. If it takes less than two minutes, do it immediately.

5. Always rise to greet people, a habit I owe to Zeeshan Ahmed and his mastery of personal impact.

6. Turn every relationship into a giving contest. Aim to out-give everyone.

7. If someone gossips to you, they’ll gossip about you. Distance accordingly.

This fantastic excerpt…from James Clears newsletter circa 2024. Some one recently shared it with me.

By making sure you don’t end up here:

YOUR NAME IS THE FIRST BRAND YOU EVER OWNED

Look around any city, any airport, any supermarket aisle.

You’ll see surnames turned into empires:

McDonald. Abercrombie. Fitch. Armani. Baskin. Robbins. Chrysler. Gucci. Hennessy. Hilton. Honda. Kraft. Lowe. Marriott. Maybach. Nordstrom. Porsche. Rolls. Royce. Versace. Wells. Fargo. Welch. Ford. Chanel. Cartier. Ferragamo. Bosch. Burberry. Boeing. Kellogg.

Ordinary family names that became global nouns.

Yet most people spend their lives wearing other families’ legacies,
driving them, drinking them, chasing them
while ignoring the one legacy they actually own.

Your name.
The one God handed you on Day One.

It’s not an accident.
It’s equity.
It’s brand DNA waiting for someone bold enough to activate it.

Every iconic brand started with a single decision:

“My name will mean something.”

No permission.
No pedigree.
Just conviction.

So stop worshipping their lineage.
Start building yours.

Because when you give your name weight, discipline, courage, and undeniable work behind it the world eventually learns how to pronounce it.

And that’s how a surname becomes a legacy.

Bonus! Thought of the week

A book as a bonus thought? What gives. Watch this video and understand what is/who is holding you back, excluding you and how? This book is widely archived through online projects and a must read to enhance your outcomes.

@maisonrickie

Today, we cover one of Bourdieu’s most famous ideas: that taste is a weapon of exclusion. Have you ever felt this way? Now that you see th... See more

Contrarian Take:

Skills are what separate functioning adults from the so called “helmet babies” the kids who grew up getting a trophy for inhaling correctly and wearing safety gear to cross a patch of grass. When childhood is one long participation award with no actual challenges, you end up with adults who are genuinely stunned to discover the world doesn’t hand out gold stars for showing up.

And now, those same kids now adults are being told by AI that they’re brilliant. This is your competition: people who are perfectly satisfied being reassured they’re already smart while never actually building anything.

In the next decade, the gap between outcomes will explode. Wealth differences won’t be 2× or 3× they’ll be 10× to 20× because a whole slice of the doom scrolling population will be too distracted, too coddled, or too busy seeking validation to notice the opportunities right in front of them.

If you see what’s coming and prepare for it, you have a once in a generation chance to outperform everyone around you, exponentially.