![[Pasted image 20250319191618.png]] Two years ago, launching a successful e-commerce business meant mastering digital marketing, understanding supply chains, crafting compelling product descriptions, and building a brand from scratch. Today, an entrepreneur with determination and an LLM can transform a product idea into a functioning store in hours, complete with targeted marketing strategies and optimized customer experiences. This isn't just about doing things faster, it's about fundamentally changing who can succeed. Intelligence and access are no longer barriers to success. We've reached a point where your ideas can become reality in an afternoon if only you'd dare to try. ### The Old Path to Excellence It used to take years of dedicated work, hands-on experience, finding the right mentors, and following a prescribed track while you built expertise through trial and error. If you could match all these criteria you likely had advantages to access, intelligence, networks, mentors, and money. Now an LLM can provide 3/4s of what you need. Frameworks for testing new ideas, guidance on creating minimum viable products, and a judgement-free zone to ask whatever question comes to mind no matter how simple or complex. ### The Ferriss Formula Two decades ago Tim Ferriss proposed a shortcut to success. He suggested that the world was full of mentors ready to help you excel in whatever field you chose as long as you would take the time to reach out to them. His theory was simple, just below the world's elite was an endless supply of athletes, performers, and businessmen who were leagues beyond our current capabilities but only a few notches below the best in the world. Yet, because they weren't household names, no one sought them out. Tim Ferris knew their lack of fame made them accessible and far more responsive. While those at the top were overwhelmed with messages, individuals just a few tiers below rarely appeared in the spotlight despite their extraordinary skill. Their knowledge was essentially "second to none." To a beginner, the gap between them and the very best was imperceptible, but the advice they could offer towered above what was available to the average person. By strategically connecting with these hidden experts, you could accelerate your progress, achieving better results faster and with less effort because you had someone who knew the pitfalls and understood exactly what it took to excel. ### The AI Advantage All those advantages Ferriss urged readers to take advantage of maps directly onto todays landscape of LLMs, with a few subtle differences. AI is instantly available—no emails to send, no responses to await, no awkward networking necessary. While LLMs can't generate truly unique insights at the cutting edge of human knowledge, they represent a synthesis of thousands of hours of human expertise. More than enough for most people to dramatically elevate their skills and understanding. The accessibility advantages are transformative. Your AI advisor stands ready 24/7, capable of adopting the persona of virtually any professional you can imagine. Perhaps its greatest strength lies in its lack of human judgment. You can ask 'stupid' questions or make mistakes without fear of embarrassment, creating a truly safe space for learning. When you hit a wall, you can immediately start prompting your way through it, exploring different approaches until you find what works. Unlike even the most generous human mentor, AI offers unprecedented breadth of expertise, allowing you to access knowledge across multiple domains simultaneously. This combination of availability, patience, and versatility creates learning opportunities that were unimaginable just a few years ago. Of course, there is a limitation around networking. Unless you publish and share your efforts no one will ever know the work you're doing. In the age of social media, this should be one of the easiest things to do. ### The Great Equalizer We're witnessing a technological shift in the democratization of excellence. The barriers that once prevented talented individuals from reaching their potential are crumbling. In some ways they're already far gone. I'm hopeful for a world where expertise is no longer gated hoarded but distributed, where limitations to your growth are about your curiosity and persistence rather than your access and privilege. The playing field will never be truly equal, but AI has tilted it more in favor of the dedicated learner than perhaps any technological advancement before it. The question is no longer whether you can access world-class knowledge. It's what you'll choose to do with it.