Warren Buffett, the Oracle of Omaha.
Elon Musk, the Technoking of Mars.
In the royal court of the U.S. economy, if Warren Buffett is the sagacious old seer, Elon Musk is the self-thrilling, jolting jester.
There’s so much to contrast about these men.
One is much quieter, for starts.
One is a wild risk-taker.
When you’re setting out on the road for success, there comes a point where you have to decide if you’re going to take the venerable road of savvy investment or roll the dice and see if you can ride the bucking rocket up into the clouds.
Far be it from me to sound like I’m praising one to the exclusion of the other — no, I think there’s a lot to be gained from listening to both men.
When you don’t have much disposable income, you can’t take a ton of ridiculous risks.
You need the basics.
You need to be able to find smart companies and investments that will grow and accumulate.
But there’s also a real value in being a trailblazer and seeking to shake things up.
If there hasn’t been a path made to where you want to go, I guess you damn well gotta put a man on Mars yourself.
But there’s another kernel of advice from both that I’ve run across, namely in how to manage your areas of expertise.
For instance, Inc.com ran an article discussing Buffet’s philosophy around domains of expertise, where he says this:
You don't have to be an expert on everything, but knowing where the perimeter of that circle of what you know and what you don't know, and staying inside of it, is all important.
Meanwhile, a former Paypal colleague, Jason Portnoy, credits Musk’s involvement in multiple projects with his success. He thinks the same is true for Peter Thiel.
I feel like they got a lot of benefit out of doing that because they would be getting exposed to different ideas, or solving different problems, or meeting different people… There was just all this stuff that they were interacting with. And then they would bring that back with them into the PayPal office.
This raises the question of what all should you juggle at once.
Should you focus in on one thing?
Should you give it all that you’ve got?
Do you stay in your lane and delegate to others as necessary?
Or do you do as much as possible, when it’s possible?
Well, I think there’s a real merit to this strength Portnoy sees in Musk.
After all, this newsletter is named after “lateral thinking.”
And one of the greatest ways to spur that is to get outside of your own lane.
In order to spark insights, you’ve gotta explore new avenues and bring back the solutions you can use.
Let’s say you run a team as a business manager.
In the meantime, you coach a soccer team.
What sort of insights might you get from cross-pollinating the sports side of your life with the business side of your life?
How might you coordinate a team the way a theatre director would?
How are the problems in different parts of your life alike?
How are they different?
But that is not to say we shouldn’t neglect finding our strengths.
Buffett is right - we’d be stretching ourselves too thin.
You want to make something new, right?
Do you need to know how to code, how to copyright, how to design, how to create an email list, how to recruit, how to ….
Well, a few of those will be important, but not all.
I first started trying to learn to paint because I had a concept for a TikTok series about landscape painting as an ode to rural life.
That hasn’t happened.
It was enriching — but I did not get to the end goal.
I’ve been swept up in a number of attempts at side hustles; I think we all have at one point or another.
First, I was going to do affiliate marketing for Gumroad courses.
That was a stupid, hype-filled bubble.
Then I thought I was going to get into KDP.
The way a lot of folks do it, they just create books they don’t even care about in order to drive sales.
I also thought I was going to get into print-on-demand shirt designing.
That proved to be too time consuming.
My passion wasn’t in any one of those things.
But here’s the kicker: I’ve learned valuable things from each of these.
Now I know the importance of finding my lane and doubling down.
But I also know the concepts behind affiliate marketing - namely, building something free that has value in itself that provides people a chance to get familiar with you so you can make sales, i.e. this publication.
I know how to optimize books to sell through Kindle Direct Publishing (watch and wait, my people, those will be coming).
And I know how to eventually print shirts. No specific plan there, but one of these days I’m sure I’ll come up with something.
Those are all now outgrowths of my business.
Right now they’re just sprouts.
But once this oak becomes tall enough, they’ll extend as well.
So those side projects are valuable, though you do have to condense — or so I hear.
And perhaps I’ve learned.