The Importance of Redundancies and the "Who Not How" Framework in Business and Life

Relying too much on one person or solution in your life or business is a recipe for disaster. People’s lives change unexpectedly, and if you don’t have backups in place, chaos could result. I best understand this idea through my personal experiences in business and family life. 

The Fragility of Relying on One Person

In business, I've witnessed firsthand how dangerous it is to rely solely on one person for key tasks. People are unpredictable. Their circumstances change, which might lead to them becoming unavailable, and when that happens, it can throw everything off balance. For example, relying on a single team member who knows the ins and outs of a particular process can lead to problems if they leave. That's why I always have multiple people trained for each role. Redundancies are key, allowing for flexibility and sustainability.

However, the clearest example of this principle in my life isn’t from business; it’s from parenting. My wife and I learned the hard way that relying on a single babysitter was risky. Over time, life changes for them—whether it's school, family issues, or personal commitments—and they become unavailable, which disrupts our routine. Our solution? Always have two babysitters. One can handle most of the hours, and the other can fill in when needed. This ensures we’re never left scrambling for childcare. 

Just like in business, in parenting, you need systems that account for life's unpredictability. Redundancies are the backup that helps you stay afloat when things don't go as planned.

Scaling and the “Who Not How” Framework

Building a system of redundancies directly ties into the "Who Not How" framework, a concept popularized by Dan Sullivan. It’s simple yet powerful: instead of asking "How do I do this?" ask "Who can do this for me?" We live in a world where information is freely available—if you want to know how to do something, you can look it up on YouTube. But that’s not where the real value lies. The key to personal or professional growth is finding the right person to do the job, someone who can do it better and faster than you.

This framework is not just for business but also for your personal life. Take babysitting again as an example. It’s not about how I can do it all myself but rather about finding the right people to take on these tasks, allowing me to focus on what I do best. It’s about leverage, whether that’s human capital or systems that save you time and energy.

The Power of Prevention

Benjamin Franklin’s famous quote, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure," fits perfectly with building redundancies. By putting the right systems and people in place early, you can prevent many problems. Think of it as building a strong foundation to withstand life’s inevitable disruptions.

The same principle applies in business. If you rely on just one system or one person, you're setting yourself up for failure. But by having backups and building in redundancies, you're safeguarding against problems and positioning yourself to scale efficiently. The “who” is the prevention. It’s the strategy that helps you avoid headaches and scramble-mode responses later.

The One Thing

Gary Keller’s book, *The One Thing*, also touches on this. The core idea is to focus on the one decision that makes everything else easier or unnecessary. In both business and life, this often comes down to asking yourself: what is the one thing I can do now that will reduce complexity later on?

Building a team of reliable babysitters is a prime example of this. It simplifies my life, removes stress, and makes me more present in my work and family life.

Conclusion

Success isn’t about trying to do everything in business and life. It’s about finding the right people, building systems, and planning for the inevitable by creating redundancies. The "Who Not How" framework and the prevention principle are powerful tools for achieving this. Whether it's managing your team or your household, the lesson is clear: surround yourself with the right people and always have a backup plan.

Focusing on who can help you achieve your goals'll free up your time and energy to focus on what truly matters—whether growing your business or spending more quality time with your family.

Takeaway: Stop trying to do everything yourself and focus on finding the right people to take on important tasks. Build systems and redundancies that allow you to thrive even when life throws you a curveball.

Our fragile world is built on backward incentives

"Show me the incentive, and I'll show you the outcome."

-Charlie Munger

This is a simple concept, yet possibly the most important thing to understand in 2020.

When we talk about a nation, a government, states, we are talking about complex systems, including millions of people.

The government includes hundreds of thousands of people carrying out the agenda of a select few. And while most working in these systems are trying to do good, they are stifled by the broken system itself.

News organizations have become agenda-spewing machines. You thought it was news? Ha. It's entertainment.

Politics is now the same thing. It's all optics. It's saying one thing then doing something else entirely or not at all. 

We can understand this by understanding the incentives.

A politician's primary goal is to protect his/her position. So he/she does things to promote being reelected while avoiding anything that puts that at risk.

If you understand how progress happens, you see how this is the antithesis to change for the better.

Change happens through risk, yet politicians avoid risk as much as possible. Hmm, seems smart.

This is why politicians are just placeholders. More than that, they are defenders of the status quo. So if you don't like how things are, look at those in power—they are the reason. (Especially those that are career politicians.)

This is why it is left to the entrepreneurs to make the world a better place.

In a free market, the entrepreneur acquires wealth by providing value to others. If the entrepreneur can't solve problems, he doesn't get paid. Period.

-

The government and politicians do not operate by the same set of rules. These people and institutions have little checks and balances. This game is played in private then uses propaganda and smoke screens to dupe citizens to what's really going on.

The" too big to fail" nonsense is one example of this. 

Big corporations take on massive risks then get bailed out when they fail. This is not a free market. The United States is not a free market. A free market doesn't have a controlled money supply, nor does it bail out morons that mismanage their business.

This is literally the opposite of a free market, which is why we've been inching towards socialism for years. In 2020, we are dangerously close to becoming another failed socialist experiment for the history books.

A free market punishes failure and rewards success. Through this never-ending process, things get better for everyone. This is how progress is made.

Progress is never made through governments. It is made through individuals or small groups that challenge the status quo.

Why have most governments failed throughout history? Because of the incentive problem and the lack of checks and balances. (This is also why socialism always fails, mind you.)

The United States used to be different, but then people started ignoring the constitution. In 2020, it looks like we don't even have one. And as long as the public keeps giving up freedoms, the US will become just another failed statistic.

Because governments don't have accountability, and those running them have little, both will always fail.

Each time any government does anything, it makes things worse. Again, this is because it is not operating in a free market. The government is the ultimate monopoly. 

This is why the cycle of boom and bust and crisis after crisis goes on forever. The thing about the United States is we have brought the entire world into our game through the domination of the dollar, making the entire world fragile. 

Think about that a second: we print money whenever we want, then we use it to buy products and services from other countries.

All they all fell for it, with most countries becoming addicts to our fake money and massive debt burdens.

If I told you I was going to pay you with prices of paper I printed in my basement, you'd laugh. Yet this is exactly what the US has done and does to this day.

This will not last. Everyone knows it. 

So the politicians keep kicking the can—the bill—down the street to the next generation.

This is why the young generation is pissed off. And rightly so.

But their solutions, like marxism or socialism, are not solutions. These will make things worse. For as bad as things have become, anything collectivist will be far worse. Any 8th-grade history book will show you why.

The solution is less government. Less regulation. A return to real money—gold/silver/BTC. Personal responsibility. No entitlements. No government intervention.

A truly free market.

It's only a matter of time before the house of cards comes tumbling down. 

It's only a matter of time before other countries wise up and stop accepting our fake dollars.

No intelligent person debates whether it's sustainable; they debate when it will happen.

While we can't predict when the "correction" or "reset" will happen, 2020 should show us that it is going to happen in our lifetime.

If you haven't yet prepared yourself and your family, please start now.

Why The Current Version of The Internet Needs To Die

I used to think that the Internet was our greatest invention and would bring prosperity and freedom of speech and equality.

I'm genuinely unsure at this point.

The current version of the Internet is defined by Big Tech monopolies that censor dissenting thought, that share user data with governments and other private institutions, and has become the opposite of what the Internet promised.

The current Internet is controlled by a few powerful corporations, and those powerful corporations are controlled by a small group of elites. These elites are best buds with most politicians.

Then there is the fact that many of these tech firms are run by consolidated groups of humans that think alike, many based in certain parts of California, and you see how political views seep into the actions these organizations take.

The very platforms founded on giving a voice to EVERYONE are now suppressing or outright banning those that think differently and challenge the status quo.

From an investor's perspective, these platform tech companies are great because they are monopolies. As much as I dislike government intervention in commerce, this is a case where I pray for a dismantling of these consolidated power centers in the hopes that a more decentralized and balanced Internet rises in the wake.

Here are some things you should look into to find countless articles:

• YouTube censors X

• Google censors

• YouTube bans

• Twitter bans

• Facebook bans

Now consider where you get most of your information. 

If you are young, you may not own a TV or have cable. So it's likely you get 100% of your "news" from social media platforms and whatever information they decide to serve you up. (They decide what you see. You do not.)

Now consider how most Americans get their information and how easy it is to manipulate views. A few clicks here, a few clicks there, a few ads sent to millions, a few removals citing some "TOS violation", and so on.

George Orwell is turning in his grave.

Fortunately, there are ways you can fight back. Seek independent sources of information. Like, comment and share ideas you believe in, especially ones considered counter-culture or counter mainstream. Support producers that challenge the status quo. Challenge bad ideas around cancel culture and other distorted views rooted in fairy tale land (go to Twitter to find these running amuck).

Finally, the most powerful idea we can hope to get to the masses is the idea that freedom of speech is the most important thing we must protect. As a result, whether we like it or not, we MUST respect the rights of those we don't agree with to share their message.

Instead, what most people do is hear something they don't like then proceed to attack the source of that information and then block and unfollow, and sometimes, call others to do the same.... all as a means of ego and belief protection.

This is human nature, sure, and is part of the reason we have this mess in the first place. So we must curb our natural tendencies to tribalism and Us vs. Them mentalities. The elite loves playing on these narratives. 

This behavior is how we get an ever-growing divide and polarization. If we keep this up, America will crumble. I genuinely wish I was exaggerating. 

We are already far down this path. I just hope we can find a fork in the road before it's too late.

The “New Normal” Is A Scam

"A man always has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason."

-J. P. Morgan

Who runs the government?

Men and women.

Before 2020, the effects of what the government did was limited in the typical citizen's life. It seemed like there was a healthy dose of checks and balances. Most of us could go about our business and pursue our dreams without much interference.

Then 2020 happened, and everything changed.

Millions of small businesses were forced to close while big corporations stayed open, raking in billions upon billions in profit.

Draconian laws preventing the freedom to worship and the freedom to assemble were enforced by cowards in a police uniform. (Parks and temples in New York have been chained up to prevent people from getting in. I kid you not.)

Hospitals were supposed to be overwhelmed. They weren't and aren't. The death rate has been going down every day even while more tests have been performed AND EVEN while those tests are extremely fault and show false positives all the time. No media is reporting on this because that will remove the air from their propaganda balloon. 

Epidemiologists, the same kind of "researchers" that gave us the obesity epidemic and Big Pharma and Big Food at the hands of their observational "research," cried BIG BAD WOLF.

These fools sit in a room and look at a bunch of data then interrupt that data in whatever way their bias leans. I kid you not; this is what they do. And most of the time, the research they look at is a joke and not vetted at all.

These fools try to apply mathematical models to nature, yet nature does not follow a nifty mathematical model. (Nassim Taleb, one of my favorite authors, calls BS on this in his book "Fooled by randomness.")

Now we are stuck in what the elite are calling "the new normal," which includes millions of people wearing masks and stepping to the side anytime another human walks by. 

A new normal is based in fear, and the control of the masses is always rooted in fear. 

The War on drugs, War on terrorism, now War on a bogey virus you can't see. What better form of mass control than convince people they should be afraid of their neighbors. This is exactly what the elite love: keep the public fighting amongst themselves so they ignore us, the true manipulators.

The government and the media BENEFIT from hyping everything. They are literally in the job of promoting fear because that is what gets them views, clicks, comments, and exposure, and thus, more power.

Something that happens every year, the seasonal flu, with 50-100 different coronavirus strains a year floating around the ether, was weaponized by certain individuals with certain agendas. 

And it's still happening.

Just wait for the end of July when much of the government benefits expire. 

We are going to hit a depression greater than the actual Great Depression. Millions will die... and this is the result of the reckless virtue-signaling absurdities at the hands of a few. 

And the elite will keep being the elite. The FED will keep printing fake dollars and give it to their buddies (the FED is a private bank with shareholders, btw.)

Will the individuals responsible be punished? Of course not.

There is a reason that cops so often get away with abuse of power, even murder: because they are foot soldiers for those in power. The system protects its own because it's primary incentive is to maintain its power.

The "good reason" for all of this is the virtue-signaling reason—let's protect people, how could you not care, have compassion, it’s just a mask, it’s just a couple weeks. 
The real reason is more complex, nuanced, and ultimately based on the familiar refrain, "never let a good crisis go to waste."

The only way 300+ million humans can be controlled by a small handful is through mind control. No government can physically control that many people, especially when those citizens are armed, as many in the United States are.

The word "government" means mind control—It Splits into two words: 1) (guvernare) meaning "to control" and 2) (mens or mentis) meaning "mind". (Source: Pete Tsim)

America let’s this happen because most of the 300+ million citizens get their worldview from a manipulated sources. Human psychology is so easy to manipulate. 

They did it in Mao's China, Stalin's Russia and Hitler's Nazi Germany. Marketers have been doing it for years since radio and TV, and print advertising took off.

This is why the current form of the internet—a consolidated and controlled and manipulated abomination—is the greatest threat to our species.

Our only defense is if enough individuals start voting with their dollars and with their attention. Stop giving power to platforms that censor. Stop stoking the algorithm for these politicians and celebrities. Stop letting bad ideas flourish without your own fact-checking. 

(These Big Tech monopolies are now fact-checking as if they are the ultimate harbingers of truth. LOL.)

If more individuals don't fight back, there will be nothing left to fight for.

 I wish I was exaggerating. I wish all of this was overblown. I wish it wasn't happening. And I'm sure every citizen in history beholder to tyrants wished the same thing. 

One way or another, wishing and hoping is a death sentence.

Censorship is Ruining America: Why every citizen must resist

"If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter."

-George Washington

Censorship boils my blood.

There's something about it that feels so wrong.

If you look to history, you have countless examples of how dangerous it is for a society.

The public was outraged about the potential interference in the last election. Facebook received the brunt of this backlash. Rightly so.

In 2020, YouTube and parent owner Google has been on a CENSORING tear.

I've seen countless YouTube channels removed. We are talking about years of work. One channel had a million subscribers. So now a million people don't have access to the information they want.

Another channel was removed yesterday: DAN DICKS CENSORED - The Press For Truth YouTube Channel Has Been PERMANENTLY DELETED!!!

I've watched a few of Dan's videos here and there. The guy is as uncontroversial as you can get. He's just reporting on what's going on. It's insane to me.

He's just one more case of personal political seeping into our society. These tech corporations are monopolies. The internet tends to reward winner take all situations. 

Peter Tiel, a billionaire tech investor and one of the founders of Paypal, writes about it in his book Zero to 1. He promotes investing and seeking monopolies. 

From an investor's perspective, obviously, you want to invest in mono;o goalies because that's how you get obscene returns.

But why are there monopolies laws? To encourage competition and prevent the abuse of power that comes from owning an entire sector of the economy.

At this point, this isn't about money; this is about IDEAS.

At this point, most people are getting their world views through one of these media monopolies.

Then there's the traditional media. It's all owned by a few corporations. Something like 11 dudes control all of the media.

And these platforms are being used to silence dissent and promote agenda.

These tech companies have hidden behind the "platform" argument: suggesting that they don't create the content and so they aren't responsible for it on their platform.

This means they shouldn't be censoring ANYTHING. Yet they do. This makes them a publisher. I genuinely hope they all fail. I hope they all get sued into oblivion. 

I hope we can create truly decentralized platforms that promote freedom of speech. Then let the market decide what ideas should win and fail. The market always decides.

A few employees from California should not have the power to silence speech. 

That's exactly what they are doing. Sometimes it's the algos doing it, ones written by individuals with certain political views. And other times its actual humans doing the censoring.

It's unbelievable that this is going on in broad daylight. And what is the public concerned with?

They are concerned that their neighbor is a harbinger of some bogey virus, even though we have seasonal flu every year, with 50-100 new strands mutating or coming out of the ether. 

Even though ~600k Americans die each year from heart disease—a preventable disease. 

Even though cancer claims 599k Americans a year. 

Even though 47k a year are lost to suicide (and this number has spiked in 2020 and will continue to rise as our economy crumbles).

I don't' see anyone banning soda and processed foods. I don't see people being shamed for loading up their cart at the grocery store with cancer and heart disease, causing corporate made and government-subsidized poison.

Maybe we should stand at the checkout lane and tell people what they can and cannot buy and eat. It's for the greater good, right?

You can't worship, and you can assemble, both fundamental human rights protected by our constitution. Yet you can protest as long as it's for a SPECIFIC cause.

These are literal strategies out of the tyrant's propaganda playbook.

I'm completely beyond myself that this is all going on.

Every American must:

1. Renew or get their passport

2. Buy as much gold and silver and Bitcoin as they can 

3. Stop using debt

4. Stop watching the news

5. Stop believing anything you hear or see until you research

6. Prepare your family before you are stuck 

7. Go outside, move, cook at home

Why don't people think for themselves? And how dangerous this is for our future.

"Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it."

Henry Ford

"Too often we... enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."

-John F. Kennedy

"The most fundamental attack on freedom is the attack on critical thinking skills."

-Travis Nichols

The masses' lack of critical thinking will continually crumble our society from the inside.

This has been happening for a while. 2020 is just one of those unforeseen outcropping of things that have been building for years.

You and I aren't going to change this. I don't think anyone will change it; it will collapse and be rebuilt, as all societies have done for generations.

The select few that might be willing to speak up and share unpopular ideas WILL NOT change the tide. As one that desperately wants to help, I realize this is the case. 

I'll keep doing what I can, but it still sucks.

What I've come to realize is the divide between those that think for themselves and those that think what they are told to think is ever-widening.

Polarization happens because humans are tribal creatures. We can see this byproduct of our ancestral nature everywhere.

Healthy humans vs. sick humans are further polarizing to the extremes (healthy getting healthier and sick getting sicker).

The gap between the wealthy and everyone else is further polarizing to the extremes.

Critical thinkers vs. non-critical thinkers are further polarizing to the extremes.

The political left vs. the right is further polarizing to the extremes.

The powerful vs. everyone else is further polarizing to the extremes.

The curiously intelligent and skeptical vs. those that blindly accept what they are told is further polarizing to the extremes.

All I can do is hope to help as many individuals as possible.

If I can help you think a little bit better, the implications for your personal life are life-changing.

Thus, an article like this is meant to get you a bit closer to the self-aware, critical thinking end of the spectrum.

You are then more likely to lead by example and influence people around you. If this happens enough, it could very much help stymy some of the growing divide in our modern society. 

As it goes with everything in life, the most important thing is for the individual to take personal responsibility for his or her life. 

That's all we can do. 

The Stoics knew this 2000 years ago—there's a reason that Stoicism has made a resurgence in recent years... it's more needed than ever.

Plank’s Principle: Science Progresses One Funeral at a Time?

"They (scientists) feel a lot of pressure not to contradict each other," "There's a lot of evidence that if you do that, it'll be negative for your career." -Elizabeth Iorns, the CEO of Science Exchange

In sociology of scientific knowledge, Planck's principle is the view that scientific change does not occur because individual scientists change their mind, but rather that successive generations of scientists have different views.

Informally, this is often paraphrased as "Science progresses one funeral at a time".

Throughout history, you will find millions upon millions of regular people putting their trust in politicians, future dictators, and other experts.

And what is a byproduct of this trust? Millions dead. Millions starved. Rights obliterated. Hyperinflation. Government collapse. Wars. Ethnic cleansing. Nuclear fallout. Just to name a few.

And I'm sure each generation thought it couldn't happen to them. They probably thought that these things only happened in "the old days." 

So they went about their lives, and then it happened.

Many German citizens were caught entirely off guard by the rise of Hitler. Before they could do anything about it, it was too late, and to even speak out was a death sentence. So they were carried along by a madman. German Jews suffered the same fate: few resisted, hoping things would get better... but then it was too late.

History repeats itself because human nature is constant.

Ignoring our evolutionary past is why we have corporations that make billions off sick care, pharmaceuticals, vaccines (yes this is big business), processed food, sugar-filled drinks, subsidized monocrops foods that strip-mine our environment and destroy human health, addictive technology that profits the more addicted one remains, and more.

I call these "accidental conspiracies;" they are a response to new environments and technology and not something any evil genius could have planned.

Now that the media, big medical, big pharma, big Food and Big Government all have their hands in each other's pocket, things that damage the health of millions have become "normal" even though they are not natural in any sense of the word.

And it is all propped up by a manipulated public.

Because these things have become widely accepted by the masses through years of indoctrination through TV, advertising, pop culture, even Hollywood, we now have a beast that gobbles up profit and power and uses both to protect the broken status quo.

"It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled."

― Mark Twain

It is your job, as an individual, to challenge the status quo. You must be a skeptic. Do not accept anything you are told. Investigate it yourself. Read the research. Understand the counterpoints and if you decide of a way to think, be able to argue both sides.

A startling heuristic I've been thinking about is this: nearly everything you are told by the media, the government, or big corporations is the opposite of the truth.

Mark Twain knew this in the early 1900s. Here he is again:

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."

If you go back through history and document every commonly held belief by the masses, most of which perpetuated by those in power, (governments, Catholic church, ruling class) you see a correlation that goes like this: the more people believe something the more likely it is to be wrong.

This is not something most people can fathom. It creates too much dissonance in their mind, and so they don't even broach the subject.

This is why it is always up to a select few that are willing to challenge the status quo and are willing to be ridiculed and ostracized for speaking the truth. 

It is always the few that grant the freedoms to the masses.

Be one of the few.

The Secret To Goals Is Inside Your Sock Drawer

The key to breaking or forming habits is found inside your sock drawer.

Why You Get Triggered: Thank Your Ancestors

When someone challenges your belief system, your brain goes into defense mode.

There are many reasons for this, but the base reason is the desire to stay safe.

You see, back in our hunter-gatherer days, our ancestors survived in small tribal groups.

To think the same was a mega survival advantage. To think differently was a liability. As a result, we easily succumb to groupthink and dogma.

To trust strangers could be a death sentence. Thus we have an innate distrust of strangers.

To casually stroll through the wild and not pay attention to every sound and ruffle of grass would surely be a death sentence after a while. We get negativity bias for this reason.

Finally, we cling to our beliefs because going back and forth on what you say could have threatened your status in the group. If your group couldn’t trust you to stay consistent and to contribute, you could be killed or kicked out (same as being killed).

This is why humans have such a hard time changing their minds.

And it’s why we so quickly polarize... we are tribal creatures... and we seek to fit the world into an easy to understand US vs THEM.

The Results of My 7-Day Media Detox

I haven't felt the desire to go into my feeds at all.

So in that way, I think it was a success.

I still plan to watch YouTube, but I noticed that I'm less likely to click on certain kinds of content.

I'm over the constant current events cycle and the mountain of personalities all talking about it. 

So when it comes to current affairs, I'll be taking a much more methodical approach—as I think everyone should.

I also might give up my feeds completely.

If I become a producer of social content, I can stick with just my content and the discussion around it. I'm sure I'll wander into some of my favorite content producers from time to time, but otherwise, I'll be sticking to being a producer rather than a user of social media.

I highly encourage you to try a 7-day media detox (longer the better).

To take it to the next level, don't log on to your accounts once for the entire 7 days.

That could be life-changing.

At the very least, it'll remove some of your current addictive habits around your phone and media use, which will be a net positive for your life.

How To Prepare For America's Uncertain Future: What To Do Now To Start Preparing

Media Detox Day 2

How did day one of my seven-day media detox go?

I watched one YouTube clip about statues being torn down. A friend sent it to me. 

I liked one picture, then caught myself and left my IG feed.

I posted a story but did not respond to any comments or read any threads or respond to any DMs.

What did I do instead?

I took a walk outside while listening to Civil Disobedience by Thoreau. I wrote two articles. I edited 2 YouTube videos. I processed my email. Chatted with some friends. Worked out. I slept. I felt better in every way. 

Now for day 2.

—

Quotes worth writing down and remembering:

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

-Edmund Burke (in a letter addressed to Thomas Mercer).

“If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a man.”

-Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience