Chat GPT Founder Sam Altman’s 13 Powerful Rules for Business

Many people can tell you how to be successful, but not everyone knows from their own experience. How do you determine whose advice to follow and whose advice to ignore? A simple rule is this: listen to the talk of those walking the walk. If someone has achieved the exact result you are aiming for, listen to what they have to say. If not, proceed with caution.

Sam Altman is successful by definition. In an article he originally wrote in January 2019 Altman, CEO of Open AI, shares 13 maxims on how to be successful. Altman is the former president of Y Combinator and CEO of Reddit, and now the CEO of both Loopt and Open AI, a company that Raised $1 billion in funding in 2015 and whose Chat GPT product became the fastest growing consumer application in history after reaching an estimate 100 million monthly active users just two months after launch. By comparison, it took Tik Tok nine months to reach this level, and Instagram more than two years.

After observing thousands of founders in his various roles, and being one himself, Altman brings out these 13 thoughts on how to achieve extraordinary success.

1. Improving exponentially

Altman thinks that most careers are linear and that most people “get bogged down in linear opportunities”, but that you should “strive for your life to follow an ever-expanding trajectory from upward to the right”. and “build your own.” In practice, this means that “as your career progresses, each unit of work you do should yield more and more results.” Never stop, never stop. Hire and outsource to increase your output.

To keep aiming higher, Altman said it’s helpful to “focus on adding another zero to what you define as your measure of success — money, status, impact on the world, or whatever,” saying that you don’t have to hurry. your projects. It’s better to take your time and find the project that, “if successful, will make the rest of my career look like a footnote.” How to do this in practice? “Be prepared to pass up small opportunities to focus on possible incremental changes,” Altman added.

2. Have almost too much confidence

Believe you cannot, and manifest inability into reality. Believe the opposite and become unstoppable. Altman said the most successful people he knows believe in themselves “almost delusional”. They persevere because they are sure they are onto something. They suspect they can, so they do.

But it’s not just about thinking positively and winning big. “The more ambitious you are, the more the world will try to bring you down,” Altman said. You will be dealing with naysayers and pessimists. You’ll hear all the reasons why it shouldn’t work. He distinguishes between self-confidence (which you want) and self-deception (which you don’t), explaining that “the search for truth is difficult and often painful”, but also necessary.

3. Learn to think independently

If you do what everyone else does, you get what everyone else gets. And very often that is the square root of not much. The big wins come from narrowing everything down to what people really want, and how that will manifest in the future, and going from there. Like Elon Musk solving problems, Altman said, “It’s fun to think from first principles and come up with new ideas, and finding people to share them with is a great way to get better at this.”

Come up with your crazy ideas, hang out with people who help you explore them, and go down rabbit holes until you invent the next tool people can’t wait to use. “The next step,” Altman added, “is to find easy, quick ways to test these ideas in the real world.”

4. Get good at ‘selling’

You can’t just come up with ideas and hope they take off. Altman said you “have to be able to convince other people of what you believe.” Steve Jobs had the talent to convey his vision on stage and gather superfans. Warren Buffet and Jeff Bezos’ letters to shareholders are widely read, including outside investors in Berkshire Hathaway and Amazon. If you think that sales and communication belong in a separate department, you are wrong.

“The best way to be good at selling is to really believe in what you’re selling,” said Altman. Create a service or product that you are insanely proud of, that you know the world will love. Another lesson from Altman is to “show up in person when it matters.” Throughout his journey, he was “always ready to get on a plane”, which he says served him well.

5. Make it easy to take risks

Altman advised that you “cover your basic obligations” and then “make it easy to take risks.” Cover your living expenses and place bold bets with everything else. “Most people overestimate the risk and underestimate the reward,” he said. But the big rewards go to the people who can afford to take the wild leaps.

Don’t let your lifestyle stop you from playing the hand that could secure the jackpot. “Keeping your life cheap and flexible for as long as possible is a powerful way to do this,” says Altman, who knows that comes with compromise. What is the level of lifestyle you could happily maintain while pouring everything else into your big idea? Determine your plan and execute it.

6. Focus

By focus, Altman doesn’t just mean working firmly with tunnel vision, shutting out the world. The focus he swears by happens long before that point. “Almost everyone I’ve ever met would benefit from spending more time thinking about what to focus on.” Don’t just act, think. For a longer period.

Altman not only believes that “it is much more important to work on what is right than working long hours,” but he also knows that “most people waste most of their time on things that don’t matter.” We go on autopilot, checking off tasks and plowing through actions without thinking if we should be doing them at all.

7. Work hard

“Extreme people get extreme results,” Altman said simply. So be extreme in your work. Eschewing the popular anti-busy rhetoric of tracking your energy and taking plenty of time off work, Altman explained that “work stamina appears to be one of the biggest predictors of long-term success,” and that “hard work [at your maximum possible impact] should be celebrated.”

It’s refreshing to hear a successful founder admit that he’s spent a long time building his business, and Altman advises that this practice start early. “Hard work is like interest,” he said, “and the sooner you do it, the more time you have for the benefits to pay off.” Forget wasting your twenties traveling and partying, go hone your craft and get on with those moonshots.

8. Be brave

Boring companies do not appeal to the imagination. Not only will you not be excited to get to work, but other people won’t be inspired to help. The downside is also true, Altman said. “If you’re making progress on an important problem,” he said, “you’re going to have a constant tailwind of people willing to help you.”

His advice is to “follow your curiosity,” because “things that seem exciting to you will often seem exciting to other people.” Hearing someone rave about their invention is contagious. You feel obligated to participate. You help them and you make those introductions that can make a difference.

9. Be on purpose

Altman believes that “humans have a tremendous ability to make things happen,” but said that “a combination of self-doubt, giving up too early, and not pushing hard enough means that most people never get close to their potential.” Don’t be that guy. Similar to having almost too much self-confidence, you need to be aware of what you want to achieve.

There is always a way and it doesn’t have to be complicated. “Ask what you want,” Altman said. Don’t pray for people to find you, don’t hope to get chosen, just ask the question and be amazed how often the answer is yes. Altman also thinks optimism is the key to success, adding that he has “never met a very successful pessimistic person”.

10. Be hard to compete with

Too much competition and you end up in a race to the bottom, so find unfair advantages and put them to work. “The best way to get tough competing is to build leverage,” said Altman, which he says could come in the form of “personal relationships, by building a strong personal brand, or by doing well. be on the cutting edge of several different fields.”

What do you have that sets you apart? What are those strengths that have taken you years to accumulate? Following others is a trap, so don’t fall for it. “If you do the same as everyone else does, it won’t be hard to compete against you.” Your differentiator should be more than price, so think carefully about what it is before moving forward.

11. Build a network

Building your network starts today, with “help[ing] as many people as possible.” Altman said that, over a long period of time, this has led to his “best career opportunities and three of my four best investments.” Karma is a long-term gift that keeps on giving, and Altman is “constantly surprised how often something good happens to me because of something I did ten years ago to help a founder.”

Network equals traction, in Altman’s story. He said the size of the network of really talented people you know often becomes the limit to what you can achieve,” and he finds those talented people by asking himself, “Is this person a force of nature?” when he meets someone new.

12. You get rich by owning things

“Hardly anyone in the history of the businesskinda.com list has gotten there on a paycheck,” Altman said. “You really get rich by owning things that quickly increase in value.” Forget the monthly retainer and commission bonus, it’s all about the stocks and the stock options. Own more to accumulate more wealth as you build your wealth.

Altman wants you to own “part of a company, real estate, natural resources, intellectual property, or other similar things.” Somehow “you have to have equity in something, rather than just selling your time.” While you absolutely must buy other people’s time, you can’t buy your own.

13. Be internally driven

Altman’s final lesson separates those who are internally and externally driven, which he says is a key characteristic of the most successful people he knows. His internally driven friends, “do what they do to impress themselves and because they feel compelled to make something happen in the world.”

Whose approval are you trying to win? Answering this question matters to your future because “it’s hard to be wildly successful at something you’re not obsessed with.” Be obsessed, be extreme and do “excellent work in areas that are important to you.” It really is that simple.

Understand how to be successful by observing and listening to people who are. Whatever your version of success, it makes sense to internalize the guidance of those who are a few steps ahead on a similar journey.