This short motivational talk (transcript) advises aspiring entrepreneurs to emulate people who are a few steps ahead rather than attempting radical, disruptive innovation. The speaker argues copying proven actions from those 2–5 steps ahead dramatically increases the chance of early success because beginners often lack advanced skills in sales, marketing, and execution.
So if you're looking for ways to make money or you're just starting your business, the fastest way to do that by far, is to find someone who's successful, find someone who is two, three, four steps ahead of you, and copy exactly what they did. Because the biggest issue that people do when they try to start a business is they think they need to become the next Mark Zuckerberg or the next Elon Musk. Where they go out, they think of this one crazy, innovative idea and, and they bring it to market and as a result turn ultra, ultra witch. But in reality, that's just not how it works, right? When you're first starting out, you probably don't have that much skills, right? Just being completely honest, probably don't have that much skills. You're probably not the most skilled salesperson or a skilled marketer. So the easiest thing to do is to take what is working, what is proven to work by the people who are 2, 3, 4, 5 steps ahead of you and copy exactly what they did. Because your chance of succeeding is just super, super high.
