How to Join the Top 1% of People in 2024

8 core ideas to help you rise to the top

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Being in the “average” category is a nightmare.

Your life will be hell. We’re at the start of a new year. It’s time to make your mark and stop falling for the lie that mediocrity is good. Average people get the leftover scraps.

They struggle. They fight. They ask for permission.

I want to challenge you to be better. To become a completely different person in the next 12 months.

I’m not some guru. Don’t idolize me. The reason why what I’m about to share works is because I’ve done it at an extreme level. I didn’t read it in a success book or by doing hanky panky favors for Richard Branson.

I’ve joined the top 1% when all the odds were against me. Most importantly, I’ve stayed in the top 1% for almost a decade now. That’s hard to do. Most people have a little success and then let it get to their head. This automates their downfall.

I’m not perfect or smart either. In my old life, I used to:

• Wake up at 5 AM and commute to the city

• Blame and complain about my job all day

• Attend useless meetings and feel drained

• Try to get manager jobs so I could get a 5% pay increase

Plus…

• I fell for get-rich-quick scams.

• And I lost $1.2M in a day because I didn’t secure my digital wallet properly

In 2021 I left this life behind forever. It rewired my brain and changed my lifestyle. The core idea that changed everything is this:

To join the top 1% you have to be different. You have to become a contrarian. Consensus is the birthplace of mediocrity.

Screw being normal.

The challenge with joining the top 1% is you have to learn from someone who’s already in that category. Too many people think they’ll join the 1% by listening to some free Youtuber who’s in the average category. Nope.

Here are the core ideas, frameworks, and mental models I used to join the top 1%.

1. The extreme focus of a madman

Every guru ma$turbates about how important focus is.

But they can’t actually explain what it means because they just stole the idea from Atomic Habits or some other widely read book.

I’ll give you a real example. Today my business partner Todd asked for a screenshot of my to-do list for an email he was putting together.

He wanted to know my “operating system.” He expected some fancy Notion system with an army of virtual assistants running it.

What I sent shocked him.

It was an Apple Notes checklist with a handful of daily and weekly habits. And one section that said “priority right now.”

My only priority for 2024 is to write a short eBook about money. That’s it. He couldn’t believe it. Why? Because it’s the type of focus a madman has.

I don’t have pissy goals or new year’s resolutions.

Nope. What’s allowed me to join the top 1% is extreme focus. I only have one big goal at a time. I didn’t invent this way of life. I realized after attending enough seminars over the years that the best in the world aren’t smarter than the rest of us. They just have ruthless focus.

Where focus goes, energy flows.

If all your focus goes to one place then the energy being injected is so extreme, it’s hard to fail at your one big goal.

I don’t want to achieve 24 goals for 2024 - LOL. I want to achieve one big goal that creates lasting success. I can’t do that if I’m a monkey jumping through other people’s circus hoops trying to do everything and please everyone.

Hyperfocus on one goal, or stay average.

2. Limit the time between idea and execution

I act so fast people lose their minds.

Today Todd said to me “Would you ever run Twitter ads?”

“Dunno dude. How much do we spend to find out?”

Todd: “$300.”

“Okay, let’s set up a test right now on the call. Location: USA. Ad budget: $300. Gender: any. Age: 35+.”

Within 5 minutes the ad was live. It generated 10 leads in the first 30 minutes. I don’t tell you this story to impress you. I tell it so you can see how important it is to stop overthinking everything and just take action.

You don’t know what you don’t know…so stop trying to guess.

Experiment. Hit post. Look at data. Ask practitioners (and pay them). When you do, it’s freaking easy to find the successful path to your goal.

Compare this way of thinking to a guy I met over email last week. He’s been thinking about starting an online business for 5 years. “Will you be my mentor?”

(Mentor = Free Therapist)

See what I mean? The delay from idea to execution is 5 years. In that time he could’ve made a few million and probably bought 100 Bitcoin. Yet he’s still in people’s email inboxes going, “Yo, can you help a brother out?”

When you try stuff at a rapid speed, you quickly learn what works – and more importantly, what doesn’t.

If I were him I would’ve sent 50 “will you be my free mentor” emails in a day. If I got a zero response rate then I’d instantly know this was a losing strategy and move on.

It’s not about being smarter.

It’s about fast action, at scale, followed by insight.

3. Know this one uncommon mental model

Average people get frustrated at the world.

“He’s so lucky.”

They can’t figure out how the game is played. I’ll give you the mental model that explains almost everything:

Incentives drive behavior.

Understand the incentive and you’ll understand how most things work. It’s what I’ve done with writing. I figured out what incentives writing platforms care about and then aligned my incentives with theirs. I did what was good for their business.

• On LinkedIn, I posted career content because it made their platform more valuable.

• On Medium, I posted medium-length essays and ruthlessly respected their curation and boost guidelines.

• On Twitter, I posted longer form content to help them increase the time their users spent on the platform.

If the world isn’t working in your favor, it’s because you’re focused on YOUR incentives and have become a selfish a-hole. Help other people get what they want and you’ll have so much success, no one can stop you. Seriously.

4. Increase the distribution of your ideas through non-needy networking

Looking smart doesn’t work.

Having amazing ideas doesn’t work.

Racking up more permission-seeking qualifications doesn’t work.

Being the best doesn’t work either. If that was the formula for success then everyone who’s ever been on a talent show like American Idol, Britain’s Got Talent, or The Voice would be rich and famous.

But if you’ve watched these shows like I have, you know there’s a lot of talented people who never get anywhere. Why?

They have zero distribution.

The way I changed this in my life was through what my friend Dan Koe calls “Non-needy networking.”

Distribution is a direct reflection of your network.

If you don’t take time to meet people with similar goals, you’ll have no one to share your ideas. And by ideas, I mean your social media content. Because without content you’ll likely never join the top 1%.

Content is a magnet for opportunities. It’s what builds trust, creates social proof, and can attract customers for your future monetization project.

The way you meet people online is by connecting without expecting anything in return. You start conversations or ask well-researched questions. And you wait as long as possible before ever asking for anything in return.

This is the backbone of my top 1% career. I have influential people around me who can boost my ideas and help me reach more people. With that sort of distribution, anything is possible – and it makes you unstoppable.

More conversations, fewer ‘asks.’

5. Get infected with the right mindset

I should’ve put this one first but it’s unsexy. 99% of people think mindset is bullsh*t or some toxic form of positivity. It’s not.

Mindset is contagious.

How you think drives everything you do in life. So if your mindset is built on bad beliefs, values and ideas, then you’ll sabotage your success before you even start.

I got my initial mindset from Tony Robbins.

I read his books, did his audio programs, and went to his live events. His mindset is infectious. It changed how I saw the world. I went from the unlucky victim to the personally responsible human with unlimited potential.

Once I removed these roadblocks there was nothing in my way. Finding the right people and ideas to pursue became easier.

The trick is to find the right mindset that you want to bleed into every area of your life. If you can’t find it then start with Tony’s. But whatever you do, if you’re not getting results in life, change your mindset.

Sh*tty thinking will never lead to success no matter how hard you try.

6. A love of discomfort

Wanting life to be easy is the hardest way to live.

I hate easy. I look for hard things because there’s almost zero competition. I want life to be uncomfortable because it means I’m pursuing the path of growth.

In the last year I’ve found…

• Marriage is hard

• Online business is hard

• Raising a 1 year old kid is hard

• Writing online and getting hate comments is hard

• Buying your first house with a $500k deposit is hard

• Taking stupid freaking noisy neighbors to court is hard

• Investing in Web3 when the markets are in recession is hard

… And the last 12 months have been my greatest period of growth ever.

Choose your hard.

7. Graduate from interested and passionate to obsessed

Some people think I’m a serial killer.

The level of intensity and seriousness I operate at is so wild that you might believe I was planning a murder instead of building a life.

This changed a lot in the last 12 months. I used to promote goals, passion, habits, and interests. Now I know these things are diseases.

No one who is “interested” has ever joined the top 1%.

Interests aren’t urgent. Passion isn’t infectious. Goals lack energy. Habits feel like a prison sentence.

The only thing that works is obsession.

My two obsessions are writing and financial freedom. It’s all I think about. They excite me. They make me come alive. People feel the energy whenever I talk about them.

The good news is it isn’t complex. Your obsession already exists, you just have to be bold enough to label it.

Once you’ve identified your obsession, all that’s left to do is go all in.

• Work on it after hours

• Join a cult of other obsessed people

• Treat your obsession like a religion

• Think about it night and day

• Act on it with urgency

• Never stop talking about it

• Post on social media about it

There’s no competition when you’re obsessed. It’s you versus you.

8. Know that no one is coming to save you

Politicians set themselves up as our hidden saviors.

They promise us they’ll fix the world. They promise they have a better way. They promise the current powers that be are evil and they’re better.

Employers aren’t much different. They promise us a realistic career that’ll make us happy. They promise a modest salary. They promise they are ethical.

Then we have universities. They were once hailed as the greatest thing on earth. They promised us bigger salaries and more opportunities. And now the DEI plague has been exposed (google it). People are questioning the entire foundation. I don’t have an opinion on the debate but it’s fascinating to watch.

The bottom line is nobody is coming to save you.

If an institution is positioning itself as moral and the solution to our problems, they’re probably lying. The institutions we should question the most are the oldest ones. Technology, AI, and the internet have forever changed their place in the world.

The only person who has ever saved me is myself.

Never outsource the responsibility for your life to a 3rd-party. Own or be owned.

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