How to win any competition you enter

My first confrontation with the Continuum of Doers

Back in 2008, Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords author Perry Marshall posted job ads for two new positions. I wanted one of them. Yet these were not typical “send me your resume” ads. They were contests. And before you could even apply, Perry charged $25, non-refundable application fees to everyone who wanted in.

I will never forget how people reacted.

Faced with even a tiny obstacle, most people backpedaled. Check out some of their whiny comments:

 

 

 

A handful of others complained in agreement. Not me.

SWEET, I thought. “These guys quit before the race even started!”

But that was just the tip of the iceberg.

“Wait a second, I realized. This is a continuum within a continuum. If five people were angry enough to complain, what if dozens more just silently gave up? I might actually have a shot!”

Perry later estimated that hundreds would have applied without that fee. Instead just eighteen did: the ones who really believed they could win. Five were rejected for sloppy applications. The remaining thirteen were assigned an unpaid project, causing three more to drop out (weren’t so committed after all.)

Of the ten who completed their projects, six were merely “respectable” in Perry’s words.

Only four finalists of the starting eighteen did “excellent” work. I was one of them.

The winner was chosen by taking the “mini-products” each of us finalists created, offering them for sale to Perry’s readers, and hiring whoever sold the most.

The other three were professional copywriters aged 35 or older. One worked at Google. I was a 21 year old college kid with barely any experience.

I didn’t win. But I did make it to the final round when many better-qualified applicants (including an editor of newspapers, magazines, and books) couldn’t even crack the first. My skills didn’t take me there. My approach did.

Instead of pouting, I studied the winner’s work. I compared his strategy to mine and noted what he did better. Six months later, when legendary copywriter John Carlton held a similar hiring contest, I won handily.

Three years after that, Ramit hired me at IWT — largely because of my work with Carlton. All of these experiences, in turn, spawned The DIY Degree. I couldn’t have foreseen any of this in 2008. But in hindsight, a single contest that I chose to see differently sparked a series of life-changing events.

Like Steve Jobs said, “You can only connect the dots looking backward.” The complainers will never know where their dots might have led them.

Tragic.

Every barrier “thins the herd” for you

What does this all mean?

It means other people can be “better” than you on paper (higher GPA, faster lap time, stronger resume, etc.) without hustling, executing, or selling themselves to the top.

I pushed myself in Perry’s contest because I knew most people wouldn’t and that alone gave me a great chance to win.

I literally CELEBRATED the barriers (the application fee, the unpaid project, etc) for the drop-offs they foreshadowed. Every barrier was another chance to leave people in the dust.

You can use this framework to pump yourself up for anything, including the “impossible” competitions.

Let’s look at the continuum of professional baseball players.

In a given year?

• 2,000,000 kids play in little league

• 455,000 kids play in high school

• 25,000 kids play in college

• 1,500 kids get drafted by MLB teams

The craziest part? Not even the drafted players are guaranteed to make it. The adjustment to pro ball filters even more players out. Most of them “peak” in the minors, never stepping foot inside a big league batter’s box. In fact, at any given time, only 750 players are dressed in uniform on a major league team’s 25-man roster.

Of course, now that you know about the Continuum of Doers, you should know ability isn’t the only filter. Big leaguers aren’t just the most talented: they were also the hardest workers, emotionally stable, team players, likely had supportive parents, stayed clear of legal trouble, etc.

Put another way: plenty of sufficiently talented players wash out, clearing the way for less talented players to outshine them on less obvious (but still important) dimensions. That’s where your opportunity is.

Consider these examples:

• Getting into top schools. Every applicant has a perfect GPA. But how many can write an arresting essay on why Harvard should invest in THEM? Far fewer. Admissions officers actually complain about how imitative and cookie-cutter most essays are.

• Landing dream jobs. Everyone is a detail-oriented team player in search of meaningful work. But how many speak the hiring manager’s language to separate themselves from the pack? English majors don’t have to finish last if they understand this.

• Writing guest posts. “A-list” bloggers get pitched daily. But how many of those pitches are brief and specific and original and considerate of what’s in it for the blogger and do all the work for the blogger and align with the blogger’s audience? Hardly any.

Want more proof? Check out Ramit’s post on using tiny barriers to avoid kooks:

Before, I used to hand out my card and tell [prospective PBwiki interns] to get in contact. Maybe 10% would. (This is already a dismal follow-up rate for a group that self-selected themselves to go up and ask for someone’s card.) Now, I hand out my card and tell them this: “Yes, definitely! Here, take my card and get in touch. Just make your own wiki first and then email me. We can talk about what you’d want to improve.”

New response rate? Maybe 2%. When I ask them to do something really trivial (creating a wiki takes 10 seconds), in other words, 80% of the people who used to contact me drop off the face of the earth. But the people who do get in touch are far more interested and better qualified.

Of course they are. The 8% who didn’t follow through weren’t serious or assumed they wouldn’t get hired or both. The other 2% knew better. That’s the pool business owners hire from.

Do what it takes to be in that pool.

The Continuum of Doers in your life

One more thing: some people mistake this framework for the oft-repeated quote that “half of life is just showing up.” There’s legitimacy in that idea, but you can never control outcomes, only probabilities. So the Continuum of Doers is NOT saying you just need to show up. Rather, it says that if you?

1. Identify the specific barriers that trip other people up (it could be body language, the ability to meet deadlines, even the way you word emails)

2. Systematically improve yourself in each of those areas

…then your chances of succeeding are higher than you ever dreamed possible.

 

Jay Cross is the founder of The Do-It-Yourself Degree and helps thousands of independent learners graduate faster for less. His college acceleration strategies have been featured by Fox Business, Huffington Post, Popular Mechanics, Brazen Careerist, The Personal MBA, and UnCollege.org.