You Can Beat 99% of People by Doing These Simple (Overlooked) Things

And the power of only focusing on one thing.

Image credit-Midjourney

Success in any field is child’s play.

But the gurus love to complicate it. And management consultants can’t wait to take a simple concept like AI, and make you pivot your entire business out of fear.

99% of people chase trends. They have their precious attention manipulated. They’re unable to decipher simple from complicated nonsense.

I don’t blame them either.

AI has filled the internet with sludge. Fake photos, fake people, fake writing, fake customer support, and fake videos. It’s hard to tell what’s human anymore.

Let’s go back to the human formula for success that’ll never change.

Doing more than you’re paid to do

If you’ve ever owned a business or worked a job, you’ll know that most businesses are lazy (same with employees).

They don’t do what they say. They deliver substandard work. Or they take your money then lose all interest in you.

Early in my banking career, I learned to do the opposite.

When one of my colleagues went on holidays they asked me to take care of their clients. All I had to do was answer their calls/emails. So I did.

These clients were high rollers. Some of the biggest tech companies in the US. Every customer I spoke to, I tried to overdeliver. If I told them I’d get an answer in one business day, I’d do it in one hour.

If they had a problem, I’d also help them solve a related problem they never asked about. I invited these clients to coffees and lunches. I brought them to tech events in the area.

I actually gave a sh*t about them.

When my colleague returned from holidays his inbox was full. Not with work that didn’t get done or complaints. No. With compliments of all the work I’d done.

He was wowed. He’d never seen anything like it.

So he started telling everyone he worked with, including all the big bosses. My reputation exploded overnight.

Everyone suddenly wanted me to help with their clients. As a result I got offered all sorts of promotions. My income tripled in the coming few years.

Doing slightly above bare minimum was so rare, it made me some sort of hero lol. People in modern society don’t expect it because the norm is to be cheated, lied to, and abused by people in business.

Don’t just do what you say you’re going to do.

Deliver slightly more than people expect.

Non-needy follow up

Life is full of asking people to do stuff, even if you don’t work in sales.

All day long I get pitched crap in my direct messages on every social media platform. I ignore all of it and don’t respond.

I can’t remember even one person in the last 5 years ever follow up on a request they had of me.

Not one.

Imagine if you followed up every ask at least once. You’d probably get more yeses. Now imagine if you’re a crazy person like me and follow up 4-5 times. That’s the difference.

The default answer to every first request is no or zero response. If all you do is ask once, then you leave a lot of yeses on the table. We ask once because we’re fearful. We’re scared to follow up because will get rejected or even blocked.

But what the top 1% know is people are busy and if you want someone’s attention you must earn it.

Ask more than once.

Real-world connections over online connections

I have a lot of “connections.”

But when a family member died none of these connections or followers cared. None of them sent me flowers or a nice message to see if I was okay.

The world is full of shallow relationships that sound cool but mean nothing.

The truth is I have about 10 people in my phone who I can call if I need help. They’re the people I prioritize. The top 1% focus on human relationships in the real world, not millions of meaningless influencer relationships in the digital world.

Doesn’t mean you don’t have online friends. It just means you take people you meet online and bring them into the offline world. You can’t do that with millions of people, so it forces you to focus on the small few who you resonate with.

Real versus fake relationships.

No headphones

The physical world is a wasteland.

Everywhere I go I see people wearing headphones or AirPods. Their avatar appears in the real world but their brain is in the digital world. They’re not present.

The smartest people don’t wear headphones. Read that again.

They’re present. They’re alive. They’re in touch with nature. They leave their homes. They sip a coffee without a Joe Rogan podcast blasting in their ears.

If you don’t wear headphones you have a huge advantage.

Plus, you won’t get the incurable hearing condition, tinnitus, (that I have) from having headphone speakers so close to your ear drums all day.

Switch off … to turn on beast mode.

Being early to appointments

I’m a freaking nerd.

I show up 30 minutes early to every appointment. Why? I care about other people, and I’m organized. I respect people’s time and my time. And I expect that there will be hassles with every appointment so I plan ahead for disaster.

This is uncommon.

Lateness is now acceptable by most people. Everyone’s running around like coke addicts trying to get an unlimited amount of tasks done with their new AI chatbot, and a clogged-up Gmail calendar.

In my grandma’s day, people showed up early.

They made small talk at the cafe. They asked how the grocer was going. They smelt the fresh air. They got ready for a meeting and thought about what they were going to say. Nowadays, everyone’s so manic they have no clue what date or time it is.

Practice doing less so you can be early to the few commitments you say yes to.

Face-to-face communication instead of direct messages

When I got my first cellphone in 1999 it pissed me off.

Everyone started texting each other. I prefer to hear someone’s voice. It’s just faster. When you talk to people face-to-face or via Zoom you’re more likely to build rapport.

If all you do is text you’re no better than a robot. Text isn’t faster. Ideas get lost in translation. And personal relationships are destroyed.

I remember being on the dating scene and meeting women who only wanted to text all day. I hated it.

I just wanted to get to a coffee shop, share a bagel, and find out if she was the woman of my dreams, so I could put a ring on her finger and a baby bun in the oven. So many potential prospects failed. They just wanted to text.

The top 1% build rapport through small talk.

The power of only focusing on one thing

Having more than one goal is a nightmare.

Yesterday my book publisher emailed me. “Yo Timbo, when are we writing this book?” I felt anxious right away. I’ve been avoiding the topic.

I love writing books, don’t get me wrong. But my one focus right now is my writing academy. It’s where I’m making a difference.

One student quit smoking and drinking while writing with me for a month. Another student burst into tears when they discovered writing was what they should have been doing for the last 30 years.

These experiences are transformational. They transcend writing. I have no clue how I’ve managed to create something like this… all I know is I don’t want to stop.

It’s addictive being a leader. It’s addictive seeing people win.

So if I write a book I have to take attention off this one goal and risk splitting my focus. The unlimited power I’ve created inside my academy may die off if I do this. That’s why I can’t bring myself to write a book.

Choose one goal and go all in. Success takes enormous energy and you won’t have enough unless you channel it toward one goal.

Remember what country people come from

When I meet people for the first time it often feels like they don’t care about me.

They either forget my name or the country I’m from within seconds. The top 1% are different. When I met Gary Vaynerchuk he took the time to talk to me about Australia and remember my name. This subtle difference made me feel like he cared.

The little details about people can build strong human bonds.

When you remember little details it shows people you give a damn. That you’re not listening so you can figure out what you’re going to say next, but you’re listening so you can ask more about them.

Our hometown culture is a great basis for a conversation. It tells more about someone than any other question we could ask them. And if you also were born in the same country or have at least visited, it gives you a huge advantage.

Remember the details. Repeat them back so people know you’re listening.

Say please and thank you

I read a book called “Cheeky Monkey” every night to my 1 year old daughter.

It’s about a monkey who has to learn hard lessons about manners. The more he learns good manners the more successful he becomes.

I want my daughter to learn good manners because it’s a lost art. When you go to restaurants all you see is people treating service workers like slaves. It annoys me.

Good manners make you memorable because so few have them.

It’s the right thing to do and it shows you have gratitude for what others do for you. It’s especially important when someone spends money with your one-person business, because most businesses will never do that.

Dare to say please and thank you at every opportunity you get.

Be generous

Selfishness and entitlement are also at all-time highs.

Generosity is so rare. Using what little you have to be kind to others is what makes the world go round. If no one was generous, the world would have already transcended into world war, and we would have nuked ourselves into oblivion.

My grandma spent most of her life in poverty. In her later years, she spent a large portion of the money she had to buy wool and knit sweaters for children in Africa.

She told no one.

No virtue-signalling, no selfies, no high-fives with African babies. Nope. She just quietly did what she thought was right and tried to be generous.

She’s the reason I’ve worked on a project that helps people in third-world countries for the last 5 years. I, too, have no website or social media posts about it. It just happens in silence for the people who need it. Public charity is just status-chasing in disguise.

Doing the right thing is always the right thing.

One final top 1% skill

The default when stuff goes wrong is to blame and complain.

The top 1% I’ve spent time with don’t do this. When their backs against the wall they use the rare skill of resourcefulness to get their way out of a blackhole.

Instead of asking “what else could go wrong?” they ask “is there another way?” And guess what… they find a way! Where there’s a desire to find a way, a path will appear. Most downsides are opportunities in disguise.

Find resourceful people and superglue yourselves to them. Then become a resourceful human yourself that focuses on solutions, not problems.

That’s how you beat 99% of people without a degree or $1M in the bank.

Tell me which of these simple things you loved the most and why in the comments.

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