I've Been Thinking a Lot About Capacity Lately.

"When you don't know what to do, build capacity" - Alex Hormozi

I've been thinking about that idea for a bit now. Usually we are searching for this great idea, the right business to start, the right product to create, the best skills to learn, etc. We use it to procrastinate. People who want to become content creators stop themselves because they haven't found their niche. Some want to start a side gig but spend months "researching". Others want to start a new career but keep waiting for the right one.

It's all the same thing.

"Motion" is a term I've also been thinking about a lot. Back to the inertia analogy, it's easier to keep moving when you were already moving than to start moving when you were stagnant. You already have momentum. Building capacity is a momentum builder.

I'm barely online in the sense that I don't always know what's trending in the way everyone does but I heard a lot about Lagos Life, the game. I've seen the headlines, heard the gist. It sounds like a "God when" for most people but I can't help but think deeper than that. Yes, she made a viral game and raised money but the reality of it seems like a nightmare. You do a thing for fun, drop it and all of a sudden your thing is everywhere. How do you even handle that? How do you even know what to put in place to take advantage of the situation? How does that grow into something sustainable? How don't you crumble from overstimulation?

Capacity.

I watched an interview she did with Fisayo Fosudo and before I saw it, I assumed she was one of those Twitter tech people that just talk a lot. But as I watched it, I began to form an opinion of this person is acting like she has been here before. The speed of updating features, the unstressed vibe, a planned trajectory, refusal to sell for $100k because this is apparently a billion dollar product, etc. Half of that just sounds like someone who has audacity. The other half is a clear example of preparation meets opportunity. This wasn't her first business. It wasn't her first app. It wasn't the first thing she had built.

It's why when I saw she raised money a few days after that video that I wasn't suprised. She had everything already set up in such a way that an investor would accept to put money down.

For many people, the worst thing that could happen to them is the thing they want to happen.

Assuming she was just a regular person who vibe coded a viral game, how do you handle attacks? How do you handle crashes? Outages? How do you handle the unending requests for feature updates? How do you even know how to handle a conversation with a potential investor? If an investor wanted to give you $100k do you even have a business incorporated? Can your account even accept the amounts? Can you even evaluate the financial value of your own business? If no to all these questions, do you at least know how to get the solutions to these things? Or have connections that do?

Imagine a successful attack now leaks millions of user data. Or she stored ATM card information unencrypted and now people's accounts are compromised. Imagine an investor reached out to her and it's a personal account she gives to collect the money.

In general we need to move past the "God whens" and start asking ourselves questions like "If God actually answered my prayers would I be able to handle it?" If the answer is no, then we need to ask what capacity looks like and go build it.

Capacity could be skills. It could be knowledge. It could be experience. It could even be your network. In the Lagos Life example, she says she has cofounders. How do you already have cofounders in an app you apparently built overnight?

Capacity also builds confidence, both in you and the people you want to work with or patronize you. When I watched the video, I concluded that even if this Lagos life game doesn't amount to anything, she would just go and build something else. The virality just sped up the process of her end goals.

For most people, the slow burn is the less exciting but better path. You can make all the mistakes without the stakes. You can get stretched in sustainable ways. You can be indecisive without the world ending. You can experiment. You can operate on levels just above your capacity and keep stretching as the levels slowly increase.

And the irony of waiting for the perfect moment, idea, or opportunity is that ideas are inherently worthless without execution. But also, thinking you need the perfect idea is already a place of scarcity. Ideas, possibilities, opportunities and moments are all over the place.

They're just easier to see when you're in motion.

That's all for now. Hope you enjoyed it.

À la prochaine 😊.