Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Lessons - The Power-Ups That Built My Empire | Eric Siu - Author of Leveling Up (Worked with Amazon & Uber)

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Lessons - The Power-Ups That Built My Empire | Eric Siu - Author of Leveling Up (Worked with Amazon & Uber) · Success Story with Scott Clary

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  In this lessons episode, explore how cultivating habits and mental models can serve as powerful
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  tools for success. Discover why iteration often outperforms the pursuit of pure originality,
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  understand how adopting an apprentice mentality fosters growth and resilience,
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  and uncover how endurance and mindset shape the ability to navigate setbacks and achieve lasting
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  results. Let's break down some of the lessons that you've learned over your career
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  that you speak about in this book and there's a few that I can't remember. There's 15 different
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  chapters and there's a whole and there's like a lesson per chapter. So for the value of people
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  listening, pick your favorite ones that you want to speak on. I don't know which ones you'd like
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  to touch on but I'm sure there's a few favorites that you love and we can go into those and unpack
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  what those are and how those can help you succeed. Yeah, totally. So there's 15 power-ups in the book
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  and power-ups to me are again like I mentioned. There are either habits that you cultivate or
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  mental models such as understanding things like second-order consequences and things like that.
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  There are different tools that you can go around collecting just like you would in the gaming world.
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  Now, I talk about 15 in the book. It's just a very beginning. There's a lot more than 15 power-ups
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  in the world and you have to, there's positive power-ups and there's negative power-ups,
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  right? If you eat too much fast food, then you end up, you know, your body goes in a different
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  direction, right? And so one of the chapters is titled Thevery. And I think there's a
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  there's a lot of cognitive dissonance around it because us as human beings, we like to think
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  I'm original, right? We hold this thing to be very sacred. And I think it's important to understand
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  that even Apple, the most valuable company in the world, you know, when Steve Jobs came out with
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  the mouse and the graphical user interface, guess who he stole it from? He stole it from Xerox,
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  right? And so he even him, he said in life, everything is just a remix. And when you think about
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  SpaceX and Elon Musk's rockets coming back to Earth, the rocket design is still fundamentally
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  the same foundational design as from the 50s or the 60s, right? The big difference is they come
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  back to Earth. And so, you know, Picasso himself has said that, you know, everything in life,
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  I mean, great artists steal, right? And so it's like, oh my god, I don't want to steal, I don't
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  want to be a thief, but like reality is those of you listening to this podcast right now,
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  you're trying to get at least one nugget from it and you're trying to apply it to your life.
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  And so life is just, you're going around collecting all these nuggets and then maybe you're making
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  a 10 to 30% iteration, right? Like that iteration for bringing the rocket back to Earth,
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  that's a massive iteration, right? It's not easy to do by any means, but he had to combine,
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  you know, Elon and his entire team had to think about, okay, you know, what are all the dynamics
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  that are at play and how can we make this work, right? So there's a game within itself there.
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  So my point is, you know, I think the sooner people let go of the pressure of having it be
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  completely original, the easier it's going to be for people to kind of move on and make the
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  best version of themselves, which is in itself, you know, very original. We're all original,
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  we're all kind of one of one. Yeah, and I would say that to constantly think that the things that
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  we have to do in life or take to market or like, let's look at it from an entrepreneurship lens,
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  if you want to, if you want to do something that's slightly outside of whatever your nine to five
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  is or if you already are trying to take a product to market, there's sort of two ways you can go
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  about it, right? You can go for that blue ocean where you're taking something to market that's
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  never, ever been done before or you can just iterate in an existing market and be wildly successful.
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  So there's something to be said for not making life harder than it has to be for you either,
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  right? And you'll still be successful, you'll still be revered and you'll still be like,
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  you're not, you're not, like you said, not thieving in a bad way, but just iterating on what people
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  have already done. And I think that's something that also probably lends a little bit of insight to
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  your apprentice mentality, learning from others as well. It's not obviously in the same context,
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  not thieving, but it's not like just learning and iterating, but it's also making sure that you don't
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  have to go through all the failures and that other people have already learned from, right?
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  Yep, totally. I mean, so it's, you know, the apprentice mentality is really just, you know,
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  understanding that you're never going to be too high on yourself or never going to be too low on
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  yourself. It's understanding that, you know, you can have strong views, but you should just hold
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  them very weekly. And if you're presented with new data and new information to be ready to
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  adjust on the fly, because the more ego that you develop, the more, the more you're going to be
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  stuck in your ways, but the world's evolving so quickly, especially with all the stuff we see,
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  with technology. So it's, so apprentice, apprentice mentality, I don't want to get it twisted. So
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  it's not, it's not just you going out towards and going finding mentors and getting people to help
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  you out. It's truly, I understand what you're saying now. So it's, it's just having this, this humble,
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  this humble persona that allows you to accept learnings from other people, right? It's more than
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  just finding mentors. Okay. Okay. I mean, like, you know, when I, so for example, I've been hanging
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  out a lot in clubhouse, but when I, when I go into the rooms, you know, I try to listen and I try
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  to be the, the idiot in the room, right? So when I approach things from an idiot, kind of a,
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  or apprentice, I'm not going to say, you know, apprentice are idiots, but like I'll take it even
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  further, right? I'll use an extreme word to say, Oh, look, I'm not so smart. I have a lot to learn.
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  But, you know, sometimes I'll see people join the room and there's a lot of bravado, there's a lot
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  of ego, and you can tell they're closed off to listening, they're closed off to learning. It's,
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  it's my way or the highway. In some cases, they might be large influencers. And, you know, but,
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  you know, they haven't learned to kind of a, maybe they might have had the apprentice mentality
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  at one point, but they haven't dialed it back and, and kept that habit going, right? They haven't
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  cultivated or, or more so, refresh that habit over and over. Yeah. And, and that, I think that the
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  most successful people, at least the people that I've found in my life that are the most successful
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  that could be worth multi-million, or billion dollar plus in total net worth, those are the people,
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  like when you do speak to them when they constantly have successes and wins, you can see that the
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  second they implant themselves into into a group that they immediately just like they just want as
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  much information as possible. And I think that the people you're speaking about, I think it's
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  probably a little bit more prolific on clubhouse just because if clubhouse in some of the rooms,
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  not all of them, on some of them, and I know you're like, I watch all your stuff, I follow you on
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  social. You're always on clubhouse, always speaking about clubhouse. I think that there's a lot of
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  people that kind of flex on clubhouse a little bit more than they should. And that doesn't help
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  anybody, right? It's, you know, it's not going to, it's not going to help them, but I think they put
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  a ceiling on their success 100% because I mean, yeah, I love sharing the numbers, right? You know,
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  when I'm in clubhouse, but I don't do it to flex and I always try to preface that like this is
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  not to brag. This is just saying, hey, this is what's possible, but it also takes this amount of time
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  to get there. So I come from a position of trying to be transparent, but teaching as well, but
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  I think to your point, when you're just flexing about, oh, you have, you know, you bought this company,
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  this public brand over here, and then you took this company public or whatever, you know,
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  how helpful is that really? Or are you just, is that more ego than anything? Like, how helpful is
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  that generally? It's not going to help many people who want to do something more with their life,
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  or you know, start a sidehouse. So like they're not, most people are not trying to take a company
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  public. Most people are just trying to do better at what they're doing, right? They, you know, maybe
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  IPOing is a plan for some, but I think the majority of people would learn more from a chat with you
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  than somebody who just lists off the company to take in public, or, you know, the success they've
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  achieved is great. It provides credibility, but it doesn't actually offer tactical or tangible
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  insight or lessons that somebody can take away, right? Like you mentioned that nugget. People
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  list no podcasts. They want to nugget. They want to, they can take away and they can do tomorrow,
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  really. If you just keep flexing, it's not going to help anybody. And I think that that's something
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  that those, you know, it's almost like those are the people, even if they have had success. I prefer
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  not to learn from them just because I know that where their heads at, where their minds at,
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  is not in the place where they're going to accept other points of view, accept other opinions.
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  And actually, it's funny because you see people that were wildly, wildly successful, you know,
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  the monetarily successful or what otherwise. And over the past 20 years, they become irrelevant,
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  right? Those are the people that just, they, they had success and they became completely irrelevant
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  because I think they never had this. I've never heard of frame this way, but apprentice mentality.
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  That's a very, very, very smart point. Now these, these, these, these level ups, these, these powerups
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  are these mindsets or are some of them actual behavioral items or like daily routine items that
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  you can, that you can do to sort of accomplish that 1% day over day. Yeah, some of it is,
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  is mindset. So we have one on endurance, right? So that's really, you know, how much pain can you
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  take because any level of success you're hoping to achieve, you know, pain is a prerequisite,
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  right? I think people tend to run away from the pain, but reframe your mind into running towards it
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  and getting through it, right? You know, there's a lot of people like when you're thinking about
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  starting a new business or whatever, you know, you go through imposter syndrome, that's part of,
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  you have to endure that. There's the startup, the startup kind of, you know, that one or two or
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  three years that it takes to get things going, right? Just things don't work out the right way
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  initially. Things don't go as planned. Maybe some type of pandemic hits like just things don't work
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  out, right? But it's you have to learn to endure. And so I learned a lot of that from poker,
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  having to endure, like sometimes you have swings where you lose for could be three, six,
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  12 months at a time and you just have to learn to deal with it and then be patient and choose
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  how you how you react to that, right? So some of its mindset, some of it would be, you know, habits,
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  but, you know, it's what they say, the cliche you hear over and over is, you know, oh, it's all
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  about mindset at the end of it that you hear from a lot of kind of self-development people.
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  And it's actually true. It's how you're programmed at the end of the day. That's how I like to
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  think of it. You know, what type of information are you consuming? And that's really going to program
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  you. That's going to guide you. Who are you hanging out with, right? That is your programming,
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  and that's going to say how you decide to do things in the future.
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  Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you
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  never miss an episode. And if you want to dive deeper into this conversation, check out the links
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  in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.