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Last year, a coach of mine said something I will never forget:
“There are two ways to build your business. Gradually, charging a bit more each year, until you finally reach your financial goals. Or — decide what you want your life to look like. Compute what that costs. Then become the person who can demand that amount. That way is much faster.”
This one idea profoundly changed how I go about everything I do now.
I spent 17 years on Wall Street. Most of my career. There was this unwritten rule in our business: you didn’t arrive last in the morning. You didn’t leave first at night.
It didn’t matter what you produced. It mattered that you were seen.
It was a silly game: who could stay in the office the longest? I remember sitting at my desk at 6pm — work done, inbox clear — watching the clock. There was nothing left to do. But I knew that I needed to be there in the off-chance the boss came by. Otherwise, my dedication would be in question.
That culture bothered me. It rewarded time over performance. Results somehow mattered less than hours. How did that make sense?
But here’s the thing I realized when my coach said that to me: I never actually left that culture behind. I just carried it into my own business. Work longer. Grind harder. Raise prices a little each year. Build slowly. Eventually, with some luck -- get there.
That’s the first road my coach described.
Most of us are on it right now.
We’ve been told to work hard. Put in the hours. Pay your dues. Sleep under your desk if you’re really a serious worker.
Social media is full of people whose entire brand is how hard they grind.
It’s a compelling story. It’s also mostly wrong.
Malcolm Gladwell popularized the 10,000-hour rule — the idea that world-class expertise requires roughly 10,000 hours of practice. But this wasn’t the whole story that the original researcher, psychologist Anders Ericsson, actually found. It wasn’t specifically about the hours. It was about the quality of the practice: focused, intentional, feedback-driven work aimed at genuine growth.
A 2014 meta-analysis in Psychological Science found that deliberate practice accounts for just 26% of performance variation in games, 21% in music, and roughly 1% in professional fields.
One percent.
The hours alone don’t make you better. But it’s easier to measure hours than it is to measure “quality”. And it’s easier to tell yourself to grind harder than it is to confront what is actually true: your limiting factor is you.
James Clear calls this the identity trap. In Atomic Habits, he lays out three layers of change: outcomes (what you get), processes (what you do), and identity — who you believe yourself to be.
Most people start from the outside. They set a goal, build a plan, then grind until they hit it.
The problem with that approach is that it’s exhausting -- and fragile. Goals easily get abandoned, and motivation can disappear. It gets too difficult to continue to grind, day in and day out, because you haven’t yet changed the most important variable: Yourself.
Identity-based change works from the inside out. Not “what do I want to achieve?“ but -- “who do I need to become?”. When your sense of self shifts, your actions follow naturally. You stop fighting yourself, counting hours, and worrying about the details that aren’t important. You just simply become.
That’s the real shortcut -- and the second road my coach described.
There will always be someone willing to grind longer than you. Charge less than you. Hustle harder than you. You cannot win that race. Because it has no finish line.
But absolutely nobody can replicate the specific depth of skill you’ve built, the particular clarity of your thoughts and voice. When you develop that — price becomes almost beside the point. You’re not competing anymore. You’re playing a different game entirely.
That’s what becoming looks like. Not doing more -- but being more.
This isn’t just philosophy, or flimsy manifestation talk. Neuroscience backs this up. Carol Dweck’s foundational work on growth mindset and neuroplasticity shows that repeated, identity-aligned actions rewire the brain over time. New neural pathways form. Old patterns dissolve. The person you’re becoming isn’t simply talk. It’s a biological reality being constructed through every choice you make about who you are. Day after day.
This is how humans actually change -- and it’s the fastest path to what you want in your business. And your life.
I wish I had understood this 25 years ago. Not because I wasted time — no time is ever wasted. But because I spent years optimizing the wrong variable. Counting hours when I should have been focused on becoming my fullest self.
You can grind if you want -- it’s definitely one path to take. But it’s way longer, and it’s a lot less fun.
So here’s the only question that matters:
Who do you need to become?
Decide that first. Then, with intention, take the steps to get there.
It’s faster than you think.
And it’s the only race worth running.
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