Note: The beginning reads almost like self help. It has a point to it though.

I'm a businessman. One person you'd do well not to ignore is Charlie Munger, who partnered with Warren Buffett for something like 50 years and is the less famous, less rich billionaire of the two. He's likely read more books than anyone alive today, at least out of those who also achieved major success.

Anyway, a great quote from him that I'm going to paraphrase (I heard him say it in person) is:

The best way to get what you want is to deserve it."

Not the easiest, nor the quickest. But the best? Surely the best way to get something you want is to deserve it.

How do you deserve a gladiator body? Self-employment? Wealth? Power?

Success in life can come in many forms. It comes to lucky people, to hard working people, to average people. And it may also not come to people who objectively might deserve it.

But as an individual, aligning your actions with that of someone who deserves what they want is the best route ahead. It takes time, but everything worth doing takes time. Look ahead to what you want and reverse engineer it.

Reverse Engineer The Girl

A lot is written here about how to succeed with women. Everything has been very helpful for me, mainly because of how amusing it is to interact with the world with a sort of playbook that not everyone has.

But what is it the makes you deserve the HB9 in your yoga class? Or even just the girl you matched with on Tinder?

To accomplish these ends, we pound the table on a few major things here: Amused mastery. Lift. Abundance mentality. Etc.

Women have a good idea of how to do this. They get in the best shape they can. Their mentality can be summed up as guys are all chasing sex, almost as a solo mission, or at least so they seem to believe. So they try to have the most sex appeal they can.

On our end, we have distinguished the AF/BB. One is for excitement - experimenting in the bedroom. The other is for convenience/use - the guy who picks the girl up after the frat party at 3am. We've defined our goal: AF. But what is it that an alpha actually brings to a woman's life? I'm not trying to get into the discussion of "what do women want", to which everyone invariably responds "who cares, they don't even know" type of banter.

Let's take a step back and think about it.

Car Shopping: A Good Metaphor

Ok so you have what seems like an unlimited budget for someone your age. You were born into a pretty wealthy family and as a birthday gift, you get to pick out a car. We're not talking unrealistic cars (>$200,000), more just that in your early twenties, having $30,000 cash to buy a car is pretty awesome.

You start going to different car lots. Most of the cars look the same. It's 2017 after all - all the car companies are putting time into EPA bullshit rather than creating a fun driving experience in the car marketplace.

Toyota doesn't have a small car with an engine larger than a lawn mower - but they try really hard to sell you the one with a sport trim. You laugh and walk out.

Subaru has a car you'd like but apparently not at this lot, so they instead try to sell you one of the cars that looks like a copy/pasted version of everything else on the road. You decline and wonder why they wouldn't find a way to get you the car you were interested in.

You get to Honda and there's a car they only sell in stick shift (which you don't know how to drive), but the engine sounds like you'd want an engine to sound. And the car comes in brighter paint colors than the other nonsense you've seen, even on the same Honda lot. The driver doesn't try to sell you the car - he simply shows you what it's capable of. He drives you around the lot, accelerating quickly, playing music loudly, and giving a sense of what you're paying for.

So you play it over in your mind - do I want the safe car that everyone else has? The one that's a little (10%) cheaper and gets me from Point A to Point B? Or - since I have $30,000 I can spend here - do I want something more like the sporty Honda you don't know how to drive yet?

It's a good metaphor, but this was my actual car shopping experience for my first vehicle (minus the cash in my pocket). Naturally, I bought the Honda. It has character and I beat most cars at newly green stop lights. It's a ton of fun to drive. And it didn't cost me $80,000.

This Is What Alpha Means, To Me Anyway

Women all have $30,000 in their pocket. Some have more, but the point is they all have $30,000. To them, most guys look like the Toyota with sport trim. And their average day is a bunch of skeezy auto dealers trying to sell them something they don't want.

Women are shoppers. We know this from what they do with their free time to how they are with dating. And they have a seemingly unlimited bankroll in their early twenties.

They all will still get from Point A to Point B as many times as they'd like. The only difference is the quality of the car they're driving. And most people aren't trying to create an awesome driving experience.

As a marketplace, most of the competition is lazy. Nobody lifts, everyone sort of keeps to themselves (which is really strange to me), nobody reads, and everyone under 35 is underemployed. Most people seem unhappy to me. Not really unhappy, they just have a sort of general malaise.

Keep in mind: your competition isn't everyone. It's mostly just to be in that top 20%. You don't have to be an $80,000 Tesla or $65,000 BMW. You just need to be a unique, $24,000 Honda. And own every aspect of who you are.

Takeaways:

  1. Reverse engineer your goals by deserving them. Don't sit around worrying about how much others have and align your actions with what you care about.

  2. Don't bother with driving the $80,000 Tesla on day 1 - know that the $24,000 Honda is more than enough/appreciated.

  3. Women are driving from Point A to Point B regardless. Don't try to sell them a car they aren't going to buy.