Here's a beautiful but cruel law of the universe:
Even though there’s greatness within everyone, only a few actually rise to professional mastery.
That law is backed up by Price’s Law: “In any group of people, approximately 50% of the work is done by the square root of the total number of people in the group.”
In other words, a small minority are producing the majority of results.
Virgil Abloh said “The world produces waves. Surf or drown. You decide.”
These professional powerhouses, these beacons of positivity, these masters in the art of living… they’re the people who figured out a way to "surf".
We observe this firsthand when we place high performers in new roles. These winning candidates aren’t just 3% - 5% better than the people they’re up against. They’re not marginally edging out the competition; they're running circles around them, with style and charisma on top.
Surfers are obsessed with becoming exponentially more viable and valuable.
In doing so, they become well known, to the right people, for the right things.
How do they do this and what makes them so different?
One observation: they have a vision for their lives, and they calmly revisit that vision daily.
As they improve themselves, their ability to capitalize on those improvements also improves, as does their ability to help others.
Scary things are tackled regularly. Stuff that was hard 6 months ago is now easy. Energy is generated out of thin air. Information is distilled into takeaways. Actions are taken. Some actions fail. Confidence is built and new ideas are formed, then refined. Valuable things are learned, then shared.
When candidates show up this way, there is a huge shift in how they are perceived professionally:
Most candidates are viewed purely through the lens of how they meet the job criteria. (A hiring manager has a round hole to fill, and they need a round peg to fill it, for a reasonable salary.)
For surfers, that view is expanded: “this is not a job candidate, this is a force of energy.”
When a decision-maker meets a surfer, they begin to imagine all the different ways this person could contribute to the business, grow, and be rewarded accordingly.
Of course, surfers are human and fallible. They get tired, their kids get sick, they sit in traffic, they make mistakes and have bad days.
But they remain in control, revisit the vision, remind themselves of who they are, and get back to it.
Professional results and compensation packages aside, there's a bigger reason that surfers are admirable:
They're inspiring. They paint a relatable picture of what’s possible. This elite minority might be small, but everyone's invited to join it.
