Another Billionaire's Brilliant Advice on How to Get What You Want

YOUTUBE  📚 THE READING LIFE  📚  PATREON

Read on The Competitive Advantage.com | Read Time: ~5 Minutes

📚 Hey, good morning! Time to win.

So I’m reading this great book right now by the billionaire investor Stephen Schwarzman.

It’s called What It Takes: Lessons in the Pursuit of Excellence - something we’re all in pursuit of here - and I want you to read this quote:

The italics are mine, but isn't that such a valuable insight?!

Figure out what's on the mind of the person who can give it to you.

A few things to say on this point:

One, you’ll have to make sure that you’re talking to the person who can actually give you what you want.

Sounds obvious, but it’s no use complaining to someone else about something your wife or husband did, when it’s actually them you need to be having this conversation with.

In a business context, most people within an organization are only empowered to say "No." You have to go the person who's empowered to say "Yes."

Second, it’s mostly about taking in the view from inside the other person’s head, figuring out what they want, what’s important to them, and what they’re seeking from the interaction or the deal, etc.

Being able to step outside your own narrow interests and going for win-win, contributing something of value to the other person - being of service. All this is so critical.

And if any of this seems basic, well that’s because it is. But how many people do you see actually putting this into action?

The bar is so low nowadays, you can literally just step right over it.

Your competitive advantage is to do the stupidly simple, obvious stuff that works, and that hardly anyone else is doing.

Stephen Schwarzman did do it, and now he has a personal net worth of $36,000,000,000 and AUM of $500,000,000,000. That’s insane. But it also didn’t come from being selfish.

It came from maintaining a stellar reputation in the financial services industry, going for win-win, and figuring out what’s on the mind of the people who have what he wants.

But that’s it for today.

As always, at the bottom of this email I’ll lay out everything I did today to move closer to my Ultimate Vision. This is to keep me accountable and to show you that I’m working as hard as I’m encouraging you to work…

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Woke Up: 12:30AM (meh)

Sleep Quality: 79% (this whole week I’m going to be in the nineties)

Pages Read: 80 (decent, but still need to crack 100 more often to hit my goal)

Workout: REST DAY (with some snow shoveling haha)

Work Completed:

Worked on Preparing My Upcoming Paid Community

Worked on the Next Book Breakdown

Worked on the Next Stairway to Wisdom Newsletter

Worked on the Next Few Reading Life Newsletters

Outlined the Next Few Medium Articles

Posted 1x on Instagram

Posted 1x on Facebook

Posted 2x on Twitter

Posted 1x on Threads

Posted 2x on LinkedIn

Posted 1x on YouTube Community Tab

Organized My Workflow and Systems a Bit

Worked on Upcoming Paid Book Promotion

Scripted My Instagram Reels and YouTube Videos for Next Week

Woke up much later than I intended today, but still rallied and got some good work done. Tomorrow I’ll wake up earlier, get more reading done, get a nice jump on the week ahead, etc.

There are a LOT of changes coming up this month and next, switching platforms (as painlessly as possible), launching my podcast (finally), opening up some more coaching spots, launching my paid community, while updating Time Mastery (my time management course) and keeping up with my posting schedule and reading goals…

It’s a lot! Like I said. But it’s funny…I just keep getting these massive dopamine hits from getting stuff done and getting paid.

Not a bad place to be! Going to bed now though.

So until next time…happy reading!

All the best,

Matt Karamazov

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