What Would You Do If You Had 10X the Agency? [#70]

Every now and then, I come across an essay or article that hits so hard, I want to share it with everyone I know. 

That happened again last week when reading George Mack’s essay on “High Agency”. 

Since then, I’ve made two powerful realizations. They changed how I think, and how I approach my business. 

I wanna share those with you – so you can change the way you think, too. 

Let’s dive in. 🤿

What’s “Agency”? 

Who would you call to break you out of a third world jail cell? 

That person has a certain … something. A combination of abilities that helps them find solutions to basically any problem. That’s agency. 

Mack breaks it down into 5 “lines of code”: 

1. There’s no unsolvable problem: if it doesn’t defy the laws of physics, it’s solvable. We just haven’t found a way yet. 
2. There’s no “one” way to success: there are some techniques that work better than others, but you still have to figure out your own way. What worked for others doesn’t necessarily work for you. 
3. There are no “adults”. Even the greatest are deeply human and make stupid mistakes. 
4. There’s no “normal”. If you try and fit in, you’ll be forgotten. If you are your unique self, you stand out – and that’s a good thing. 
5. There’s only now. The past no longer exists, the future doesn’t yet. Focus on the here and now. 

Once you see those 5 principles, you can never unsee them. 

But this is just scratching the surface. I encourage you to read Mack’s article, and then come back to this one. 

What would I do if I had 10X the agency? 

Bootstrapping a startup is hard. It’s not working the way I envisioned it, even though I knew that it wasn’t going to be like I envisioned it. 

(Kind of like the Anchoring effect: even when you know you’re being anchored, it still works.) 

Recently, I’ve caught myself thinking in “victim mentality” at times. Why are these things happening to me? Why can’t it just be working? 

That leads nowhere. Victim mentality is the ultimate low agency move. 

Instead, I asked myself: what would an evil twin (or good twin, idk) that had 10 times my agency do? How would they go about building my company? 

The ideas started flowing.

I’ll spare you the details, but the result was: taking massive action. Whether it’ll work – unclear. But taking massive action and getting things into motion is always better than just sitting there idly.

If you were to invert it and ask what would the worst way to achieve results be?, the answer would undoubtedly be not taking any action at all. 

I finally have a word for what I’m hiring for 

I used to run a recruiting business for nurses to come to Germany. Now I recruit business generalists for startups. 

Curiously enough, the design of the interview guides for either business are very similar.

When hiring for nurses, we never interviewed for their medical capacity – we didn’t know anything about nursing, we were just an agency (see what I did there?). I do know a thing or two about startups, but by design, I’m not interviewing candidates through the lens of a particular startup. 

What I look for is exactly this: high agency. 

→ To learn a new language, find your footing in a new country, and embed yourself into a new working environment, you need high agency. 

→ To thrive in the chaotic startup world, where requirements constantly change and nobody has the capacity to micromanage you, you need high agency. 

Entrepreneurs are, by definition, high agency people. The normal solution would be to get a “stable job” (which I believe is a hoax), to live life like everybody else. So it only makes sense that they would want to surround yourself with high agency people. 

On building high agency

The good news is: you don’t need a graduate degree in agency to build it. No online courses. No permission slips. 

Just this: 

→ default to action: when in doubt, just do something. Don’t over think it. 

→ question beliefs: what would your 10X agency twin do? Would they hold the same belief? 

→ build proof points that you can do it: start small by making micro-decisions. Next time, you enter a restaurant, give yourself 60sec to look at the menu, then make a decision. It’ll work. 

High Agency might be the most important idea of the 21st century, Mack says. 

I think he might be right. 

Question for you:

Pick one problem you're currently facing. How would your 10X-agency-evil-twin approach this?

Do that.

Have a fantastic start to the week.

LFG. 🔥

PS: I’m currently evaluating to help people navigate their career transition into startups, especially in today’s job market. Would be a paid coaching service or digital product around it. Is this something you (or someone you know) might be interested in? Please send me a note! 

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