There is a fantastic story told by bodybuilding legend Arnold Schwarzenegger:
I’ll always remember the first time someone asked me questions in the gym. It was about their legs. They said they couldn’t grow, and they wanted to know which exercises to add to their routine to hit the thighs. First, I said, “Let’s see your squat.” And they said, “My squats are fantastic. I can squat 405.” They got the weight on their back and lowered it approximately 2 inches, and came back up. That’s when I learned that people have a habit of looking for the next big thing when they haven’t spent any time mastering the simple thing in front of them.
I have seen the same thing play out over and over again in startups and corporations around the world—people get excited, start something, mistake early progress for mastery, and move on. The startup founder mistaking the feedback from their first customers (who are all family members) as proof that they have achieved product/market fit. The executive looking at the “exponential” user growth, ignoring the fact that the absolute numbers are tiny.
If life were a video game, we would cheat our way through the first few levels and the first real boss fight, just to say we achieved mastery. But we are far from it. True mastery is found when we hone our skills over and over again until we are truly good at it. We keep refining, gathering, and incorporating feedback, understanding that it’s a process, that the journey is what makes us great, and that there will never be a moment we are “done.”
Cherish the simple, the basics, the foundations. They are what you will build your empire on.