Winner’s Upgrades 🏆
Look dumb.
Ask for help.
Make it easy for people to say yes.
Did you know that asking your neighbor about the best spots around is still the fastest way to get all the essentials you need? Faster than trying to read all the Google reviews? (That's how I find good dentists, hairdressers, all the best spots for walks anywhere in the entire world with no fail)
When we think of “winners,” we picture perseverance, grit, discipline.
Superheroes grinding late at night.
Brilliant minds who figured it all out. Alone.
But when you actually study achievement, you find something different.
You find people who are quick to say:
“I don’t know. Can you show me?”
“Can I hire you?”
“Can you help?”
That’s the first step to accelerated learning:
Extreme openness to admitting you don't know.
The faster you can say “I don’t know,” the faster you can learn.
And the faster you learn, the faster you grow. "I don't know" is a magnet for learning.
How many times last week did you say, “I don’t know”?
How many times did you step into a room where you weren’t trying to be the smartest person?
Where you chose learning over looking like you’ve got it all together?
There are libraries of wisdom and solved problems walking all around you.
We say we don’t need to reinvent the wheel…
Yet the higher we rise, the more we try to.
We white-knuckle our way through tech, strategy, relationships, operations.
Instead of reaching out to someone who already solved the very thing we’re stuck on.
Truth:
There’s someone out there who holds the answer to 90% of your current roadblocks.
You just need to ask.
And then there’s this move, the most powerful way to help people say YES! to you:
Asking, “How can I re-shape what I offer so it becomes easy for someone to say yes now?”
Not: “How do I make them see the value of what I already made?”
That flexibility? That empathy? That ego-free shift when you are meeting the world where it is, not ordering it to change?
That’s how things start to move.
Like Ryan Holiday says,
Ego is indeed the enemy.
Not because it makes you look bad, or do bad things.
But because it slows you down.
Success is rarely about being the smartest.
It’s about learning faster, asking better, staying flexible to find the middle way.
So, where in YOUR life is ego slowing you down?
Where are you clinging to pride when you could be accelerating progress?
In the end, the world doesn't care how smart you look, it cares about results and value delivered.
