Imagine you are the leader of the global world with unlimited power. You are in power for however long you wish, you have access to unlimited resources. Some may support you and some may not, but your power is absolute. It may never reach a point where it’s truly threatened.

You can do anything. How will you spend your time? If all practical constraints were removed, what constraints would you impose on yourself?

This thought experiment explores the prize of power. That is, when you achieve the highest possible level of power, what do you actually do with it?

Before answering that, consider what we already know about power from some experiments:

• The Stanford Prison Experiment showed that ordinary people assigned to power roles quickly adopted authoritarian behaviors. Power changes behavior fast, even when it’s artificial.

• Milgram’s obedience studies found that 65% of participants were willing to administer what they believed were dangerous electric shocks simply because an authority figure told them to continue. People surrender moral judgment to authority, and those in authority tend to expect that surrender.

• Asch’s conformity experiments demonstrated that social pressure alone led people to give answers they knew were wrong, without any threat of punishment. Power doesn’t need force to bend reality for the people beneath it.

The throughline across all three: the situation is often more powerful than individual character. Good people are capable of harmful acts depending on context.

But these experiments studied power from below, how people respond to it. The more interesting question is what happens at the very top, when all resistance is effectively removed. That’s where this thought experiment begins.

Perhaps you’d talk to people, learn about society, and focus on making improvements. Perhaps you’d order the finest food and drink your evenings with whomever you choose. Perhaps you’d dismantle the power structure entirely because you believe no single person should hold this much. Perhaps you’d make everyone wealthy, deploy robots to handle all labor, and usher humanity into a permanent state of self-actualization. Perhaps you’d elevate religion because you’re uncomfortable being the highest figure in the room.

Maybe you enjoy holding power but have little appetite for its operational demands. So you build a team, capable and loyal leaders who handle the day-to-day running of the globe. You free yourself from the headache of operations and turn your attention toward personal passions. Or maybe you’re the opposite, the kind of person who wants to be in every room, managing directly, leading as visibly as possible.

Maybe you become obsessed with space. As leader of Earth, exploring the cosmos feels like a logical next frontier. You build educational systems, culture and resources around physics and space science. The mere possibility of a rival on another planet keeps you sharp.

Maybe you care about family, community, equality. You recognize that capitalism rewards profitability but leaves too many behind, so you use your unlimited resources and technology to ensure everyone on the planet lives well. Noble, or perhaps driven by that quiet nagging threat of a population that still doesn’t fully support you.

You’ll be given a thousand opinions from a thousand different people. Ultimately you’ll have to come to grips with what you believe and how you want to exercise what you have.

Unlimited power may actually feel powerless. With no enemy to defeat, no ceiling to break through, no obstacle demanding your attention, what exactly are you working toward? You may find yourself manufacturing threats, creating narratives, inventing problems just to have something to solve. Not out of malice, but out of necessity.

You manufacture purpose because power itself is purposeless.

This might be the most honest thing the thought experiment reveals. The prize everyone is reaching for may be empty at the center. Not because power is bad, but because humans are wired for pursuit, not arrival.

We’ve seen this in smaller doses. People who win the lottery often end up unhappy, spending through their winnings without finding what they were really looking for. The resource changed. The person didn’t. Or couldn’t.

Now step back into your own, less powerful shoes.

What’s the difference between that version of you and the version reading this? Would you behave much differently with unlimited power, or would your existing habits, values and tendencies simply get amplified? Would you become more yourself, or would the situation reshape you?

Maybe it all comes back to our character. To what you value and how you want to spend your time. Expanding knowledge. Building family and community. Sitting with the possibility that life may not have a fixed purpose, which makes the search for personal meaning all the more important. Leading with empathy while accepting imperfection in yourself and others.

The fundamentals of humanity feel like a sound foundation, whether you’re running the globe or just your own life.

What would you do…?

We often associate a clipped, cold style with high status, successful individuals, perceiving them as highly effective. However, for most, being short and concise, while beneficial for immediate speed, misses out on the long term dividends of warmth. People may forget your data, but they rarely forget how you made them feel. While expending the energy to be personal and warm takes effort, the return on investment can be profound despite not being immediate.

Many people tailor their warmth based on the status of the person they are addressing. If the contact is high-status, they invest the energy; if not, they remain neutral. This status-shifting is a dangerous game because it is easily detected as inauthenticity, leading others to extrapolate that lack of genuineness across your entire character. If you instead reframe interactions as human-to-human, operating under the assumption that every person is interesting and possesses a unique skill, you become more inclined to expend that social energy. By doing this consistently, you build a deep moat of relational dividends that can pay off down the road.

This isn’t necessarily an altruistic guide; it is a strategically selfish one. It recognizes that kindness and attentiveness is a high-output expenditure that is ultimately more profitable in the long run. It is a selfish investment supported by compassion, creating a net positive for both the individual and the community. So, next time you interact with someone, consider the energy cost of making them feel valued. You may not see an immediate return, but you have done your part in maximizing your position for long-term compound interest in the human market.

But in the world of commerce, the script usually flips. When you buy from a business, you expect value in return. Usually, this is a cold, transactional exchange. However, a rare class of business exists that possesses a moat so deeply embedded it is nearly impossible to disrupt. These are non-charitable businesses that behave as real partners in the community. They occupy a class of their own where the consumer feels more like a patron than a target. They enjoy the unique benefit of scaling without diluting because their growth is simply an expansion and expression of their core values.

To understand this class, lets review two examples: In-N-Out Burger and Costco. Both succeed because they balance functional excellence with psychological trust. In-N-Out relies on quality, affordability, and convenience. The burger is fresh, the price is low, and the drive-thru is efficient. But the soft pillars create the emotional bond. By employing a young, energetic staff in a highly visible workspace, they tap into the customer’s natural desire to support hard work. Their refusal to over-expand or franchise reinforces a family-owned ethos. When you spend money at In-N-Out, you don’t feel taken advantage of. You feel like your money is going toward those hardworking employees and a brand that refuses to compromise its soul for glory.

Costco follows a similar logic. Their functional pillars are variety, essentials, and bulk value. However, their strategic premise is what builds the trust. It is widely known that Costco caps its margins to keep prices low, making the majority of its profit from membership fees. You trust that Costco is acting as your personal procurement guardian, ensuring you get the honest best deal without question, always. Customers see the same long-standing employees for years, knowing they are treated with generous pay and benefits. Even when you are hit with a large bill at the register, you feel a sense of partnership. You are not just a customer; you are a member of an organization that is on your side.

If you frame business on a spectrum from low-end to high-end luxury, these Partnership Brands are playing a different game entirely. They occupy a space that allows them to maintain a durable moat with consistent growth and a fandom that advertises on their behalf. The key is that you cannot artificially manufacture this status. It is earned through the inputs: how you care for your staff, your quality standards, and your pricing integrity. You do it with unwavering values that remain steady even when tempted by short-term profit. Those inputs generate a specific output: a brand that people do not just use, they root for.

For most, it is a phantom tug of status. You feel a curious anticipation rooted in the confidence that the brand will deliver something “correct.”

But the moment the shoe is revealed, a high-speed collision occurs in your mind. Do the colors work? Is the shape right? This “gut feeling” is actually a calculation of resolution. You are subconsciously auditing the object.

• The consumer asks if it will make them look good.

• The noticer asks if it is technically and historically coherent.

• The visionary asks what new truth it is trying to tell.

Why do you like what you like? We are told taste is subjective, a mere preference. But if that were true, anyone could become a master designer by accident. The truth is that preference is a low-information state. It is a cocktail of childhood environments and social mirroring. Taste is a high-information state. It is the high-resolution perceptual skill of seeing the pixels of an object, its history, its math, and its soul and recognizing when they are in harmony. It is discernment at its best.

When all your peers admire something you find distasteful, you aren’t necessarily wrong. You may simply have a higher perceptual resolution than they do. You are seeing pixels of disharmony that their lower-resolution minds have smoothed over.

To understand taste, look at the wine sommelier. Through years of immersion, they have developed the ability to notice subtleties an amateur cannot. They have higher resolution. They see more pixels in the craft that are objectively true and can be agreed upon by other sommeliers. And they possess the vocabulary to articulate that discernment.

But the critic is not the creator. The sommelier is an experienced noticer. They have the skill to identify taste, which is essential. However, it requires a fundamentally different skillset to generate taste.

Let’s label the creator a visionary. Can the visionary exist without first being a noticer? No. Noticing is the prerequisite for building, but they remain separate skills. The noticer validates the present; the visionary dictates the future.

In an era where AI has commoditized cognition, taste seems to be one of the ultimate differentiators. AI is a machine that calculates the most likely aesthetic based on weights and averages of past content.

Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu argued that taste is a status game designed to create distance. Historically, the elite prioritized form over function to signal they weren’t bound by vulgar utility. Bourdieu tells us why the audience buys, but he doesn’t tell us how the creator builds. The visionary must work in a vacuum of internal taste long before the status game begins. They feel the shift before the rest of us do. They end up creating the shift.

One could argue if those visionaries with taste aren’t known then they aren’t tastemakers. But that would then imply that you can’t have taste if you don’t have scale. I would argue taste doesn’t care about scale as much as scale doesn’t care about taste. Something can be tasteful and unknown. Something tasteful can be scaled. Two separate tasks.

If there were a formula for the noticer, it would be:

Noticing Taste = Immersion x Duration

If there were a formula for the visionary, it would be:

Generating Taste = (Noticer skills) + cross disciplinary synthesis + strength of conviction

Discernment can be learned. If you spend time with people who love art, you will eventually see art with a clearer eye. If you learn the history of an artist, you add a new dimension of depth to your perception. Just because you can discern the art, it does not mean you need to like it. You can appreciate it even if you don’t like it. But becoming a creator of taste requires something more than just seeing. It requires conviction.

If your goal is merely to be a visionary with taste, you are focused on the wrong thing. To create something tasteful, you must seek truth and have a good sense across multiple disciplines. You must have curiosity. You must immerse yourself in your craft until you see the pixels others miss, and then have the creative confidence to build without any objective other than to satisfy your own high-resolution standard. The ultimate test of taste isn’t whether people like your work now; it is whether they are forced to copy it at a later time.

It didn’t used to be like this. There was a time when you could build quietly. Put your head down, make something great, and let the results speak for themselves. But the world’s gotten louder. And when everyone is building and launching and shipping, the best product doesn’t always win. The best story does.

That’s why more startups are starting to look like content machines. Not because they’re trying to “go viral.” Because they understand the new rules: if you want people to care, you have to entertain them.

Not in a gimmicky way — but in a way that cuts through. That builds emotional weight. That turns customers into followers, and followers into believers.

It’s not just a branding exercise. It’s structural. Distribution used to be a channel problem. Now it’s a narrative problem. You don’t just need awareness — you need affinity. You need people to get you before they’ve even tried the product. And the fastest way to do that isn’t ads. It’s media.

You’re not just selling a product anymore. You’re programming an audience.Look around and you’ll see it everywhere.

Duolingo’s TikTok is a better growth engine than their performance marketing.

Liquid Death became a $700M water company by acting like a record label.

OpenAI publishes product updates like Apple drops — with narrative, not just features.

Even SaaS founders are spinning up newsletters and YouTube channels to build trust before they build revenue.

The trend isn’t about ego or content for content’s sake. It’s about leverage. In a world where attention is expensive, media is the new CAC.

It builds trust, explains your worldview, and creates a gravitational pull around your brand. If done right, it becomes a moat. A vibe that can’t be cloned.

This is especially true for early-stage founders. The smaller you are, the louder you need to feel. Silence doesn’t scale. Stealth rarely protects. Invisibility kills momentum.

It feels like startups are media-first and product-second. Not because the product doesn’t matter — but because without an audience, no one gets to find out how good it is.

That’s not a license to fake it. The product still needs to be excellent. But in today’s landscape, excellence alone isn’t enough. You need narrative. Personality. Rhythm. An actual reason for people to follow along.

Because if you’re not telling your story, someone else will. And they won’t get it right.

As things move faster and competition gets tighter, the winners won’t just be better operators — they’ll be better storytellers. The best founders will build not just for the market, but with the market watching.

And the next breakout company?

It’ll feel like a show you can’t stop watching — with a product you end up loving.

Most brands spend their lives chasing relevance. They’re dropping new menu items, collaborating with influencers, riding cultural trends, launching splashy limited editions—all in the name of staying top of mind.

But there’s another, more rare path that a handful of brands seem to unlock. It’s not about staying relevant. It’s about becoming something even harder to shake: omni-relevant. Permanently embedded in the culture. Immune to the noise.

This is what I call anti-relevance—and In-N-Out might be the best example of it.

The brand hasn’t changed its menu in decades. They don’t spend on advertising. They’re not constantly reinventing themselves. Yet lines stretch at every location. Why? Because they’ve built something deeper than hype. They’ve built a ritual. A consistent, emotional experience passed from one generation to the next. And when something becomes part of the ritual of daily life, it transcends the need for constant reinvention.

Compare that to brands like Chipotle or Lululemon. Don’t get me wrong, these are great companies. They’re growing, they’re profitable, and they’ve built real loyalty. But they operate on an entirely different operating system. They have to stay current. Chipotle is constantly testing new menu hacks, launching loyalty perks, and trying to keep up with TikTok trends. Lululemon releases new SKUs weekly, drops collaborations, and leans hard into influencer-driven storytelling. They’re in a constant sprint to avoid staleness.

This isn’t a criticism, it’s the nature of their game. The categories they play in are noisy and competitive. Their customers are fickle. Attention spans are short. Standing still means falling behind.

But when a brand hits that rare level of cultural entrenchment, when the identity is so locked in that it becomes a magnet, everything changes. You don’t have to fight for attention because the attention comes to you. You grow not by shouting louder, but by showing up the same way, every time, and letting the legend spread.

Few brands get there, and even fewer stay there. It requires ruthless focus, a deep sense of self, and a very long-term view most leaders aren’t given the breathing room to hold onto. It’s easier to chase what’s popular than to commit to what’s timeless.

But the brands that pull it off? They don’t just win, they shape culture.

In a world addicted to novelty, consistency is one of the boldest moves a brand can make.

**10x it:**

Real success will come from those who can deliver a solution that’s 10x better. Being slightly better on one dimension just isn’t enough anymore. For example, your burger might taste better, but if it’s not also better in price, environment, and experience, it won’t stand out.

**Invent:**

Massive success will come from creating new ideas that haven’t been done—or from discovering something in a way where the second-best is a distant competitor.

**Examples:**

SpaceX is a good example for the Invent category. They reinvented space travel with reusable rockets, cutting costs and making space exploration commercially viable. By doing what hadn’t been done, they’ve created a massive lead that competitors struggle to match, pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in space.

$NVDA (NVIDIA) falls into the 10x category. Their lead in AI and graphics processing is so massive it will be increasingly hard for others to catch up.

Chick-fil-A is a standout and falls in the 10x category. How does a fast-food chain generate 3x the revenue of best-in-class operators? With an average unit volume (AUV) nearing $9 million, operating only six days a week, it dwarfs $CMG at $3 million and $SHAK at $4 million, both operating seven days a week.

COSTCO falls in the 10x category. They sell food but their real genius is acting as the best procurement manager for households. By maintaining a fixed gross margin and obsessing over delivering savings, they have an AUV more than double that of their closest competitor, Sam’s Club.

This leaves us with the choice: radically improve what’s already out there, or invent something entirely new. Either way, average won’t cut it.

The primary advantage of corporate ownership is greater control over the brand’s culture and quality. If maintaining a strong culture and high standards is critical—and the financial returns are great—corporate ownership is the better option. However, it requires significantly more capital, though you also retain all the returns.

Franchising offers the benefit of requiring less upfront capital. However, the notion that operations can simply be delegated to franchisees and you can do "less work" is misguided. It’s imperative to develop robust operational frameworks and training programs to ensure franchisee success, which directly impacts your success. Another advantage of franchising is the potential for rapid scaling, as it leverages others’ capital and outsources the General Manager role, one of the most critical positions in the company.

If you choose to franchise, I advocate for a geographically focused model, where franchisees are limited in the number of units they can open, encouraging them to be more hands-on. Franchisees seeking large territories who are not involved in day-to-day operations typically deliver poorer execution.

Ultimately it's a personal decision but one thing is true regardless: Every concept must start out as corporate owned as you need to earn the right to scale before selling your concept to others. Ideally, you prove out 10 locations in a few different markets. If all of those locations are humming you have options. If they are inconsistently working than you are not ready to scale.

From my perspective, this principle operates bidirectionally; optimal inputs yield desirable outputs.

This leads me to consider the role of incentive structures. Common output-centric incentive structures, tied to sales growth and profitability, empower management to strategize methods for enhancing these metrics.

However, incentive structures centered on inputs, like customer service and quality, exert a more direct influence on managing behaviors tied to specific inputs. This is particularly valuable when certain behaviors are crucial to the organization. The more vital a specific behavior is, the more beneficial it is to lean on input metrics.

In other words, output metrics prompt management to focus on achieving numerical targets without clear guardrails on how to achieve them. While one can argue that the 'guardrails' are our values and culture that we abide by, I'd argue that the inverse is more accurate: systems and structures actually influence organizational behavior, shaping culture.

On the other hand, input metrics provide a 'tighter' focus and encourage the cultivation of specific behaviors that contribute to overall performance. For example, if you incentivize someone based on customer service scores, they will likely be thinking about how to provide better service (which hopefully benefits the organization financially).

It's not that one approach is better than the other; it's about recognizing what's most important to your organization and choosing a blended approach that brings both business wins and culture wins.

Here's the link to Paul's paper: http://www.paulgraham.com/greatwork.html

The paper emphasizes the importance of following your curiosity and interests. It talks about how to identify what to work on and provides ideas on finding the right things to work on that are authentic to you. Here’s an excerpt:

The first two elements Paul highlights are crucial: aptitude and interest. I believe that aptitude + interest = passion.

I consider our greatest advantage as humans to be our uniqueness, which comes from our upbringing, experiences, education, friends, family, and more. We are each distinct, and we should leverage this to our advantage. Look to others for inspiration, not envy. Your best version of yourself embraces you and your interests without worrying about what others think. While it's easy to let the external world influence our thoughts and actions, starting from within gives us a better chance of choosing the right life's work. Ideally, this work provides us with fulfillment, mastery, and purpose. If we find such work, achieve these goals, and earn money from it, we reach a state of nirvana. This journey isn't always smooth. Sometimes, we get aptitude and interest right but struggle to monetize it. That's okay, but we should continue our search for nirvana.

My formula for Nirvana = Aptitude + Interest + Monetization.

I'm drawn to the word "legend" because I believe it signifies the highest form of self-actualization. Though the official definition of a legend revolves around extreme fame, my personal definition diverges from that. To me, a legend has a deep passion for their craft and is the best in the world at that craft. Occasionally, we encounter individuals who captivate us. Observing them in their element instills in us a sense of peace, inspiration, and confidence. We encounter a legend.

Think about that Sushi Chef who's lost in their work, displaying a quiet energy that strikes us. It's an energy rich with focus, simplicity, confidence, and fulfillment. They are immersed in their craft with intense focus and pleasure. Whether or not their craft is genuinely the world's best, in that moment, it feels like it is. You don't forget it. You leave inspired. They're doing precisely what they were meant to do. That, I believe, is the essence of "legend" status. These extraordinary individuals can arise from diverse vocational backgrounds, and encountering them is a rarity we seldom experience.

I consider this legendary status the ultimate outcome to aspire to, and Paul's paper provides a framework to get there. A legend doesn't work for others; they do it for themselves because of their deep love for it. They dedicate themselves to becoming the best and might choose to share their expertise or not. They've identified the painting they want to paint every day.

Throughout my career, I've interviewed many people, especially younger ones still in or just out of school, and a common theme emerges: a disconnect between their studies and their aspirations. Uncertainty is okay. What's not okay is feeling pressured to have everything figured out at such a young age. Unfortunately, the education system often perpetuates this misconception. It's crucial to acknowledge that finding your life's purpose at 20 years of age and sticking with it is rare. Even highly successful individuals often don't have it figured out.

It's worth noting that school might not be the ideal path to discovering your "Painting." To truly understand what picture you want to paint, you need to start painting. While school might initiate this process by helping you learn more about yourself and your preferences, more effective methods exist. Experience is key. Exposure to your interests, as Paul suggests, combined with the willingness to follow those interests until they wane, is how you unearth the right painting to create.

Everyone has advice for us. Advice is both good and bad. Transforming advice into useful guidance involves listening, learning, and then aligning it with your inner compass. The harmful approach is treating advice as truth. The only truth that matters is your own. Determining that truth centers on how you feel. Does it resonate with you? If it does, it's probably right for you. If it doesn't, it might not be. One caveat to being ready to know your truth is if you are ruled by your ego, often times without truly knowing it, which can cloud judgment and hinder you from being honest with yourself. Sometimes, only through challenging experiences can your ego be put in check and your internal compass reset. Once your ego is cleansed, it will be easier to see the truth.

While advice is plentiful, eventually, you must concentrate on what you want and believe is best for you and not worry about what others think. Another theme that can be detrimental to this whole process is thinking about step 5 when you haven't even taken step 1. While looking ahead and having foresight is good, it can hinder your progress. The better way to approach the process is to first determine if it feels right, then simply focus on the first step. Once you are done with the first step, the second step will become clearer.

How can you trust the "feel"? How do you know if how you feel about something is an authentic feeling or if it's just a short-term emotional response to something that sounds exciting but doesn't jive with your inner compass? The "feel" you can trust is the "feel" that's obvious and easy. When you think about it, it gives you energy. There are no blockers or energy you create to convince yourself of anything. It just is. It just feels right. You think about it with ease, you get excited by it, and you just know. If you haven't found that "feel," don't worry. It just means you need to explore and expose yourself to more things and perhaps more people. If you properly expose yourself to things of interest, eventually, it will click, and you will have found the "feeling" you are searching for, which acts as the compass that guides you to the right painting you need to paint.

Overthinking can be a killer. Overthinking can be the fear disguised as being thoughtful. Sometimes, we hold off on taking action on something because we are scared or unsure. We tell everyone we are being thoughtful and taking our time and rationalize this in our own mind every day. It doesn't feel good. We get in our own way. Sometimes it's so difficult to see clearly because we become more knowledgeable and that knowledge translates into what we think is the answer; practicality. Executing on a "feeling" may not be practical at all, but that's exactly why we should do it. It's a "feeling" that without a doubt is a pure feeling that we can trust.

It's better to move than not to move. When figuring out what to paint, it's better to take action than it is not to take action. I like what Naval says: “Impatience with actions, patience with results.” That means you should know it takes time to see results, but that shouldn't stop you from taking action today. Read up on what interests you, go to places you're interested in, talk to people you're interested in, or share your interest. Get moving.

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