In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is King

Or: How to Be a Standout Without Being Superman

There’s this old phrase that keeps popping into my head lately: “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”

What a weird visual, right? But stick with it—it’s got a powerful truth behind it.

Basically, you don’t have to be the best in the world. You just have to be slightly better than the folks around you. And honestly? That’s not hard.

We’re living in an age where not trying is practically the default. Alex Hormozi et say that it has never been so easy to be great becasue it is so easy to be worthless. Everyone’s so distracted by dopamine factories like Netflix, TikTok, and fast food that it doesn’t take a superhero-level effort to stand out. It just takes a few basics. Like:

• Show up on time (wildly underrated).

• Follow up and follow through (aka: be reliable).

• Do a little bit of focused, deep work every day.

• Eat real food and move your body around a bit.

That’s it. That’s the bar. And the crazy part? That already puts you ahead of a lot of people.

Now add this: Read a few books on a topic, and suddenly you’re the “go-to person” in meetings. There’s that old line—“Read 10 books on a topic and you’re an expert.” You might not be technically an expert, but you’ll know way more than 90% of people in your orbit.

Jesse Itzler has another fun idea—spend 17 minutes a day learning something for a year, and boom: you’re elite in that field. It’s simple math. It’s consistency. It’s the “one-eyed man” strategy.

James Altucher has this concept called the 80/20 squared rule. You’ve probably heard of the Pareto Principle—80% of results come from 20% of the effort. But what if you double down? If you take 20% of that original effort, you get 80% of that original result. So for 4% additional effort, you get 64% of the additional result. You can do 4%, mate.

Even the idea of 1% improvement per day (the whole 1.01^365 = 37x better thing)? It’s kind of wild. And even if you only manage half a percent improvement daily? You’re still 6x better by this time next year.

Let’s zoom in on construction for a second, because that’s my lane.

Here’s what 0.5% better per day could look like:

• RTFC (Read The Flipping Contract). Seriously—just read it. Prime, sub, whatever. You’ll instantly know more than half the people on the job.

• Follow up on your emails. Not just read them—respond and close loops.

• Take extra trainings. Your company probably pays for access to platforms like LinkedIn Learning, RedVector, or Procore Academy. Most people stop after the mandatory HR videos. Do a couple more and you'll quietly outpace your peers.

• Talk to the folks in the field. Foremen, supers, trades—they want to share what they know. But very few PMs or APMs take the time to build those relationships. Be the one who does.

What ties all of this together is simple: most people aren’t doing anything extra. They’re sleepwalking through their days, half-checked-out. So it doesn’t take a Herculean effort to stand out.

All you have to do... is a little bit more.

Be the one who shows up, follows through, gets a tiny bit better every day. Be the one-eyed man.

Go get ’em, prince.