Being smart is not an advantage, doing things is

NOTE: This article is still a draft. I would love to hear your feedback on it!

"You don't have to be dumb to work here, but it probably helps"

How many times have you met people who were absolute idiots, and yet are much more successful than you?

I've met a lot of people like that.

And it used to makes me furious. Why is this guy so stupid but still makes 100x more than me?

I always identified as a smart person. I wasn't school smart, but I was "system smart". I'm great at optimizing things and figuring out how things works.

This was always something I was proud of. Especially when I started making money online. I remember thinking how much better I was than those all the other people.

Considering how smart I was, surely in just a few years I would be a millionaire.

And yet, almost 10 years later, I'm still not a millionaire. I'm much closer than I was back then for sure, but still not there.

The more time passed, the more I started to see other people succeeding where I failed. And worst, some of them were complete idiots. Like, "Can't even make a proper sentence" idiots.

But somehow, those guys were still able to make it. And they were doing well!

That's when I started to question my beliefs.

If those guys were so stupid, and still managed to make it, then surely "Smart" was not the not the most important quality, was it? Or was I just not as smart as I thought?

What else could it be? Luck?

It's tempting to think so. Luck is an abstract concept, you can't measure it, so it's the perfect excuse to justify other people's success, and not take responsibility for your failures.

And for a time I believed it.

And then, my friend Marc who started Indie making around the same time as me, started to make a massive boatload of money.

And he did it with things I had the ideas for.

• I had the idea of a course to learn to code fast for a while. Since I learned in 2 months and then made 20 apps, it was "part of my story", so that was the perfect fit for me. I just needed to become better at coding to teach it.
• I thought of doing a AI landing page generator. After all, I come from marketing, I know what makes a good landing page. I just didn't had time yet.
• I wanted to make a marketing-first analytics tool, but I was busy with other projects
• I wanted (and tried) to have a successful Youtube channel since I was a teenager. But I didn't knew what to talk about and didn't had the time
• I was (one of) the first to use the term Ship Fast and was known on Twitter for moving quickly but I never thought of using it to name my company

But here is the thing. All those things, they were in my head, Fugazzi, it doesn't exists. I was waiting for the "right" moment to do them. A coding course? No I need to learn more about coding first. A marketing-first analytics tool? No there are already some analytics tools available, and who am I anyway. I need to sell my project first to have credibility.

Marc, on the other hand, gave zero shit and just shipped them.

The result: He's now a millionaire link to twitter post. Twice.

And it's not just the first time! I was one of the first to think of the "AI agent for customer support" before ChatGPT was even a thing. Mentioned here

At some point, I even started to be angry. Why were all those people more successful than me even tho I had the same ideas?

Eventually, I found the answer to my question.

Because they did the things. I was just thinking about them and finding excuses.

And on the other side, when I just "did the thing", it worked out pretty well for me:

• Make Logo AI: Got the idea an evening, launched in 48 hours, made $20,000 of sales and sold it for $65,000 3 months later.
• Talknotes: Wanted a project I could grow using ads, was the right fit, launched in a week. $70,000 of sales and sold it for $200,000 one year later
• Maker Ads Guide: Noticed people were asking for FB ads course reco on Twitter, thought they might be interested if I was the one making it, did a pre-order page and made over $100,000 of sales since then
• Scribvet: A Talknotes customer of Talknotes told me it would be nice to have an app specifically for veterinarians, I launched without knowing shit about not knowing anything about the industry, grew it to $1,000 MRR and sold it for $25,000 after
• Generate Ads AI: The app was failing, thought of doing a Lifetime deal where users bring their own API key, but thought it was a terrible idea because most people don't know what an API key is. Decided to just do it anyway, and it made $10k in 48h

Other:

• Scuba Diving: Was scared to go into the sea, decided one day that "Fuck it, we ball" and booked a scuba diving discovery session for the same day, and then got 2 scuba diving certifications in a month, dive with sharks and in caves
• Driving motorbike: Was too scared to drive bikes in Bali. Started to think driving was "not for me", then decided that fuck it, I'm getting my motorcycle license. Tryharded for a month and got it.
• Youtube: Was always my dream. Decided to just try making one video about a good story (Talknotes exit), video made over 100,000 views and got me 10,000 subscribers.
  • My channel got demonetized quickly after, I thought I would get shadowbanned, didnt wanted to release videos, but then decided not to give a shit, release a video anyway, and it's my most viewed videos

In all those cases, I either didn't gave a shit and did the thing without thinking, or ignored my fears and objections and did the things anyway.

Being smart is not an advantage. Doing things is.

In 99.99% of the cases, you won't succeed on the first try. But you'll get feedback. Maybe you have to improve your messaging. Maybe you have to add some features.

Whatever it is, the only way to know is to launch and measure.

Launched something on Twitter and got crickets? It's feedback! Maybe your video sucked, maybe your product sucked, maybe you just didn't have the right timing.

But you can only know that if you launch.

And you can only launch if you ignore the "smart" voice in your head that tries to calculate the possible outcomes and try to minimize the risk of failure.

Thinking about the thing is not doing the thing. Planning the thing is not doing the thing.

If you want to do the thing, do the thing. Then if the thing fail, it's ok to reflect on it.

How to know what thing to focus on?

I think that's one of the reason I'm stuck. I get overwhelmed with too many things and I end up doing nothing.

https://x.com/nico_jeannen/status/1920018285552402552https://strangestloop.io/essays/things-that-arent-doing-the-thing