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Barbara Corcoran, Law of Triviality and Strategic Advantages in Negotiations
Alex Brogan
December 26, 2024 • Read Time: 8 minutes
This edition is brought to you by GrowthPair
Good morning to all new and old readers! Here is your Wednesday edition of Faster Than Normal, exploring one short story about a person, a company, a high-performance tool, a trend I’m watching closely, and curated media to help you build businesses, wealth, and the most important asset of all: yourself.
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Today’s edition:
> Stories: Barbara Corcora and Uber
> High-performance: Law of Triviality
> Insights: Power of dreams
> Tactical: Strategic advantages in negotiations
> 1 Question: Sense of wonder
Cheers,
Alex
P.S. Send me feedback on how we can improve. I respond to every email.
Stories of Excellence
Person: Barbara Corcoran
Barbara Corcoran is a self-made real estate mogul and TV personality. She built The Corcoran Group from a $1,000 loan into a $5 billion empire. Known for her sharp business acumen and no-nonsense attitude, Corcoran now stars as an investor on ABC's "Shark Tank." She's invested in over 80 businesses on the show. Her success story is one of resilience and reinvention. "I had 20 jobs by the time I was 23," Corcoran says. "But the minute I was in real estate, I knew I had found my calling." Today, she's a sought-after speaker and hosts the podcast "Business Unusual". Corcoran's journey from waitress to billionaire exemplifies the power of grit and entrepreneurial spirit.
Key Lessons from Barbara Corcoran:
On resilience: "The difference between successful people and others is how long they spend time feeling sorry for themselves."
On being likeable: "People want to do business with someone they like. If people like you, they're going to want to do business with you."
On perseverance: "All the best things that happened to me happened after I was rejected. I knew the power of getting past no."
Company: Uber
Uber was founded in 2009 by Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp, two tech entrepreneurs who had previously sold startups for millions. The idea came after they struggled to get a cab in Paris. Initially called UberCab, the company raised $200,000 in seed funding that year. In 2010, they launched in San Francisco with just a few cars. Uber's app-based model disrupted the taxi industry, allowing users to easily request rides via smartphone. The company expanded rapidly, reaching New York in 2011 and raising $11 million in Series A funding. By 2014, Uber was operating in 100 cities globally and valued at $18 billion. Despite controversies, it went public in 2019 at a $75 billion valuation.
Key Lessons from Uber:
On blitzscaling: Move fast and break things - including laws. Uber expanded aggressively into new cities before regulators could catch up. They'd often launch without permission, banking on user growth to make it politically difficult to shut them down. As investor Bill Gurley said: "Uber is the fastest growing company we've ever been involved with."
On company culture: A toxic culture will eventually bite you. Uber's "always be hustlin'" mentality and "Hobbesian environment" led to scandals that damaged the brand and culminated in Kalanick's ouster. As one employee said: "It was a culture built on fear."
On branding: A slick brand can cover up a lot of flaws. Uber's sleek black cars and minimalist app design projected an image of sophistication that masked the often gritty reality of gig work.
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Accelerants
High-performance tool
⎯
Law of Triviality
The Law of Triviality, also known as "bikeshedding," was introduced by C. Northcote Parkinson. It states that organizations give disproportionate weight to trivial issues. "The time spent on any item of the agenda will be in inverse proportion to the sum involved," Parkinson observed. It's about our tendency to focus on easy-to-grasp issues rather than complex ones.
Understanding this law is important because it can help organizations avoid wasting time and resources on minor issues. By recognizing when bikeshedding is occurring, leaders can refocus discussions on more critical matters.
In your last meeting, did you spend more time on trivial issues than important ones? How might you prevent this in the future?
Insights
Michael Phelps on the power of dreams:
"The more you dream, the farther you get."
Tactical reads
⎯
> When looking for strategic advantages in negotiations
The Best Way to Win a Negotiation (Read it here)
> When assessing your management skills
How to Tell If You're a Great Manager (Read it here)
1 question
When was the last time you felt a sense of wonder and awe? What can that experience teach you about how to spend your time?
That’s all for today, folks. As always, please give me your feedback. Which section is your favourite? What do you want to see more or less of? Other suggestions? Please let me know.
Have a wonderful rest of week, all.
Recommendation Zone
⎯
Save 80% On Payroll With Skilled Offshore Talent
With GrowthPair, you can hire top-tier international marketers for under $10 per hour:
Organic and Paid Social Media Marketers
Email Marketers
Graphic Designers
Growth Assistants
GrowthPair vets and interviews thousands of candidates to bring you only the best. It’s, hands down, the easiest way to find top-tier marketers that are bottom-line friendly.
Don’t just take our word for it — GrowthPair is backed by Alex Lieberman (founder of Morning Brew), Demand Curve, Fiat Ventures, and more.
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