The harsh truth is most people don’t meet their “potential.”
Especially those working in groups.
The Ringelmann effect is a teamwork problem where individuals become increasingly less productive as the group size increases.
This is also referred to as “social loafing“
Assuming that “someone else is probably taking care of that.”
Loafing is a lose-lose.
❌ The individual is not happy because of unfilled potential.
❌ The company is not happy because of “wasted” resources.
On the other hand, consider when Instagram was bought for $1 billion by Facebook when it only had 13 employees. No room for loafing around.
So what’s the solution?
First add accountability to get more leverage.
As Naval describes, “Embrace accountability and take business risks under your own name. Society will reward you with responsibility, equity, and leverage.”
Leverage comes in three main forms:
- Labor (people work for you… this is cost money and often time)
- Capital (money… also expensive)
- Code or Media (newest, no marginal cost of replication, least expensive)
What does “business risks under your own name” look like in practice?
Nathan Barry is a perfect example of this.
He’s the founder of ConvertKit, a company doing $40M in annual revenue.
But of course, that’s not where it started.
It started years ago when Nathan was learning and sharing everything he knew.
It’s cool to see his principles in the background on his old videos:
“Work in public” and “Teach everything you know.”
He created accountability under his own name and multiple forms of leverage.
- Code → building his software company
- Labor → hiring help to build the company
- Media → publishing videos and content (under his own name)
He did this for YEARS.
Even when no one was watching. (or so it seemed…)
Until something happened.
Slowly but surely, it started working.
Through the process, he became a super-connector and built a successful business.
Okay, now time for YOU to implement accountability + leverage.
You can check out this thread on 13 tips to switch from consumer to creator, or here are my favorite 2 in order to get started.
- Teach What You Just Learned → Create a new 30-minute event every Friday that says, “What did you learn this week?”
- Decide Before You Start → remove the guesswork by deciding what you’ll work on before starting.
How will you build your leverage?