Early Adopters get the gold, while the majority are stuck with worthless pebbles.

13.5% of the population are Early Adopters. 68% are in Early or Late Majority.

Our brains are naturally wired to be in the majority. This was helpful long ago during a survival-based existence. Eons ago, those who left the tribe died without passing their genes on.

We come from the genes of those who stayed in the majority.

The Majority Successfully Survive, But Fail to Thrive

The problem is we've got survival in the bag now. This outdated brain wiring sabotages our pursuit of Profit, Purpose, and Peace in modern society. It creates a lot of suffering.

Luckily, you can override this faulty wiring and choose to become an Early Adopter.

How Adoption Progresses Through Groups

Each group takes its cues from the group before it.

• Innovators are copied by Early Adopters
• Early Adopters are copied by Early Majority
• Early Majority are copied by Late Majority
• Late Majority are copied by Laggards

Our brains are way too lazy to actually examine all the behaviors, tech, and tools available to us in order to make our choices.

We'd have to eat 30,000 calories per day if our brains ran off of first principles.

Ain't nobody got time for that.

So we follow the leaders ahead. We unconsciously copy the behaviors of people in the Early Majority or Early Adopters at best. The Early Adopters get the gold and we're left with the worth-less pebbles.

How can we skip forward to join the Early Adopters? You must get past...

The Moat Surrounding Early Adopters

Getting into the Early Adopters club is difficult. You can't simply be let in. There's a perilous moat. Here's how you encounter it...

90% of the people who look like innovators are fakers. They're about 10X greater in number and at least 10X louder than real innovators. That's the 90/10 Rule persistently enforcing.

Innovation attracts fakers because it creates an opportunity for them. Fakers can tell you what you want to hear when not bound by truth.

Meanwhile, real innovators are quiet. When they do explain an innovation, it may not make sense. It might even sound crazy. That's because it's bound by truth and reality.

And the truth is that innovations are necessarily counterintuitive to an aspiring Early Adopter.

That's the moat. 99% of innovation chatter is from noisy fakers who can't offer you real value. You have to find the 1% signal from real innovators and expect the counterintuitive early reality to seem weird at first. Then you need to know...

How to Get Past the Moat & Make It Worth the Risk

You have to take a risk and try following some alleged innovators. To make the risk smart and juicy, make sure the potential reward is 100x bigger than the risk. It's worth losing $1 a few times to eventually reap a $100 reward.

Sometimes, the rewards can be even bigger. Once you've found a real innovator you can keep following them through waves of innovation, generated outsized profits in each wave. Before you know it, the rewards are compounding.

Finding and following just one real innovator can positively change your life forever.

The steps:

1. Start looking for innovators
2. Look for those that introduce you to smart, juicy risks with 100X potential reward.
3. Try and perhaps fail (and learn a few things).
4. Repeat until successful. (You found a real innovator)
5. Compound successes with real innovators.

If you take $1 risk and fail with 10 fake innovators in a row, you've lost $10.

Luckily, if the 11th is the real deal, you gain $100. Those are great numbers... probably much better than any risks you've taken in the past few years, or ever.

Start looking! It's worth it.

Early Adopters are rare (13.5% of people).

Time and time again, Early Adopters get the gold while the majority are left with worthless pebbles.

Why aren't there more Early Adopters?

🧠 Our brains...

• are wired for us to conform to our surrounding tribe
• predict that going against the tribe equals death

We all know about adoption bell curves, aka the Rogers Diffusion of Innovation Curve.

Most people are in the majority. Shocking!

Most people won't adopt new thoughts, ideas, or behaviors until it feels like "everyone else is doing it."

All Brains are Majority Conformists

Our contrarian [genealogical] ancestors died when they left the tribe. We didn't get their genes. Their family tree stopped.

We got conformist genes from our [genetic] ancestors who did "what everyone else is doing." Like most behavior, this is unconscious. We do it without noticing.

Early adopters are the 13.5% of people crazy enough to override their conformist genes. Driven by curiosity, yearning, purpose, and who knows what else.

Early Adopters have an edge.

The Majority Have No Edge

By the time a new behavior is adopted by the majority (68% of people), it loses its magnitude of leverage. Once everyone is doing it, the scarcity is gone. The magic is lost.

It produces a smaller output and/or requires a larger input. Mediocrity abound.

Most business owners choose to use outdated, ineffective practices (and business assets)... not because they're better, they aren't. But simply because of a bug in their Unconscious Operating System.

Deep in the unconscious, there's a program saying true innovation = death, while conformity = survival.

As a result, 60% of businesses don't even make a profit. They just survive. Like their brain wanted them to. It's human nature.

Your competitors have this same bug. This presents an opportunity.

You Have a Choice

Statistically, you're part of the majority. That means your unconscious programs are optimized to survive and therefore fail [to achieve the outsized success that's within your human potential]. But, you can change this.

You can make a conscious decision to become an Early Adopter.

A business that generates profit for its owner(s) is a collection of business assets. These are the building blocks that, when combined, create profit.

These building blocks can be anything that's involved in creating profit for its owner.

Old School Business Assets Are Costly

Old school business assets include physical equipment, product inventory, vendors, locations and humans to perform work processes.

All of those business assets have a cost that is upfront, ongoing or both.

Old school business ownership is risky because it requires hundreds of thousands of dollars, or more, to start. You have to risk losing that money to get a chance at making a profit.

It often takes 5 to 7 years to break even. Among businesses that survive, only 40% make a profit.

In other words, there is unfavorable asymmetric risk:reward. For example:

• Risk
  • $600,000 (Startup Cost)
• Reward
  • Year 1: Loss
  • Year 2: Loss
  • Year 3: Loss
  • Year 4: Loss
  • Year 5: Break even
  • Year 6: $100,000 profit

This is asymmetric because one is bigger than the other. The $600,000 risk is bigger than the $100,000 reward.

It's unfavorable because the risk is larger than the reward.

It's even more asymmetric and unfavorable if you count inflation.

Here is a typical breakdown of the startup cost of business assets to hopefully carry you through to break even:

Debt Leverage

Old school businesses often use debt as leverage to reduce out-of-pocket startup costs. Debt is a double edged sword in that it increases total costs (interest).

Debt leverage gets people in the game who couldn't otherwise afford the table stakes.

It increases the chance of failure, but creates the chance of success for those who need it to start.

New School Business Assets Cost Almost Nothing [Digital Leverage]

New school business assets are different because they provide smart leverage.

Leverage is anything that makes big outputs from small inputs. Like the slingshot that little David used to defeat big Goliath.

New school business assets carry much greater leverage than those of the past.

While it may take only $10,000 to get a new school business to break even, the potential reward is unlimited.

Smart Leverage

The cost of generating $1,000,000 of profit is virtually the same as $100... when using smart leverage.

Smart leverage is costless. It increases the chance, magnitude and speed of success.

Why most people don't use Smart Leverage

Smart leverage requires you to be a contrarian and Early Adopter.
(most people aren't)

The Opportunity with Business Assets

The main functions of a business are:

• Exist
• Create potential value
• Generate leads
• Generate sales
• Deliver actual value
• Support buyers
• Generate/capture word of mouth

The majority of business owners are relying on the costly option.

This isn't because old school business assets are better. They're clearly worse, albeit comfortable and familiar.

Most choose comfort over bigger reward due to a flaw in our brains.

The good news is that you can override your brain's wiring and choose to become an Early Adopter.

This is a modern adaption of the Pareto Principle, aka the 80/20 rule. It states that roughly 80% of effects come from 20% of causes.

I've noticed that modern technology has increased the pace of change and innovation.

And innovation has, in turn, increased the gap from 80/20 to 90/10.

90% of things are:

• Unimportant
• A potential waste of time
• Making little to no difference

10% of things are:

• Important
• Worthwhile
• Making a difference

Cut the 90. Nail the 10.

Use your saved time on something fun!

It should not be an end goal, but rather a starting goal.

A life you own begins when you stop trading time for money.

It's About Time

Financial independence doesn't make you instantly happy. But it gives you the free time to figure out what makes you happy.

It's About Your Life

Your time is your life. Your life is not entirely your own until you've become financially independent.

In our society, you start out as a fractional owner of your life. Once you're financially independent, you are full owner of your life.

To stop trading time for money, you need Business Assets.

FAQ

What About Taxes?

Some might say you can never become full owner of your life because the government always collects taxes. But taxes collect money. Your life isn't made of money. Your life is made of time. Luckily, the government doesn't collect time taxes.

Your time is only taxed if you're not financially independent.

You can avoid that and fully own your life.

What About Money-Making Activities?

Most financially independent people still spend some time on activities that make money.

The difference is they aren't working because they need the money. They're working to create value for others. From which money is a side effect.