#031 – The Ferrari Paradox & Bamboo Trees

Welcome to the Five to Thrive newsletter

Bringing 5 interesting ideas to your inbox every Thursday morning to ignite your curiosity and drive your growth.

read online on my website 

read time 3 minutes 

#031 at a Glance:

• Quote that will get you thinking: The greatest danger for most of us.

• Podcast you should listen to: Spotify Founder & CEO, Daniel Ek.

• Framework: The Ferrari Paradox.

• Mental Model: The Gregarious Growth of Bamboo Trees.

• Tweet I liked: What makes you extraordinary.

Quote that will get you thinking:

Podcast you should listen to:

The Diary Of A CEO: Spotify Co-Founder & CEO, Daniel Ek

Daniel Ek is a Swedish entrepreneur who started his first company in 1997 at just 14 years old. He eventually dropped out of college and founded the online marketing firm, Advertigo, which he sold in 2006 in a multi-million dollar deal to the Swedish company Tradedoubler at 23 years old. Coming out of “early retirement”, Daniel co-founded Spotify alongside Martin Lorentzon in 2006. He is still the CEO today.

Expect to learn how he overcame being an introvert to be one of the world’s leading CEOs, how people worry more about failing than succeeding, why hard work can’t always beat talent, why the idea of success through university is outdated, why he found being rich depressing, how Spotify nearly collapsed 4 times, and much more.

Absolutely loved this one.

Listen or Watch on Spotify here. Listen on Apple Podcasts here. Watch on YouTube here.

Also, if you want to get a bit more of an immersive look into the Spotify story, I highly recommend you watch “The Playlist” on Netflix. It’s a 6-part series that tracks the origin of Spotify and the incredible hurdles that Daniel and his team had to overcome. It remains one of my favourite things to watch on Netflix.

Framework:

The Ferrari Paradox 

I actually came across this whilst listening to the DOAC episode with Daniel Ek:

The Ferrari Paradox is this idea that everyone who aspires to buy a Ferrari thinks to themselves, “Oh, one day when I’m in this Ferrari, everyone is going to look at me. They’re going to look at this Ferrari and be amazed at me and my success.”

Yet, everyone who is actually looking at the person in the Ferrari is not even thinking about the individual at all. All they’re really thinking about is how much they want to be sitting there.

So there’s this paradox which exists:

See something that is hard to achieve (i.e. a Ferrari) → believe it will serve to elevate your status in the eyes of others → work tirelessly to achieve it → eventually achieve it thinking that it will make you more respected and liked → discover that people are not even thinking about you, but instead dreaming about themselves being in the Ferrari.

This idea reminded me of something I learned from Chris Williamson a few months back: People often confuse ‘difficult to achieve’ with ‘desirable’.

Fascinating stuff.

Mental Model:

The Gregarious Growth of Bamboo Trees

For many species of Bamboo Trees, they undergo a process known as gregarious growth.

This means that they can spend up to 5 or 6 years growing underground as rhizomes. Very incremental yet instrumentally important developments of the root system below the surface.

Then after this period, they shoot up and in a matter of weeks – after years of no visible growth – they can grow 30+ metres into the air and continue to grow thereafter.

I feel like in many ways, many of you reading this, including myself, are within that initial phase. Laying the foundations and undergoing incremental growth below the surface, not visible to many. Working tirelessly for the long-awaited and inevitable explosion out of the soil and into the sky.

In many ways, just like the bamboo plants, we have to “earn” the right to grow to soaring heights through significant periods of quiet and seemingly invisible growth, only for it to compound tremendously later on.

I really like that.

Tweet I liked:

That’s all for this week, thanks for reading!

Grateful for your support.

Stay hungry, stay humble, & stay curious. ⚡

Do you think someone else will enjoy reading Five to Thrive? Forward them this email!

Was this email forwarded to you? Subscribe to receive them in the future!

Have some feedback or would like to get in touch with me? You can email me at [email protected] or find me on Instagram, Twitter, or LinkedIn.