The Rule of Everyone

The Rule of Everyone is simple: if the barrier to entry is low and everyone is doing it, the value is already gone.

Every day, people sell something — image, service, identity, products, trust. It's constant. When something becomes common, its power fades. When access is too easy, competition becomes crowded. What everyone knows rarely builds leverage. It builds noise.

Picture a pyramid — the top is narrow, the bottom wide. Most people gather at the bottom.

Jobs are for everyone. Ownership isn't. Scrolling is for everyone. Designing platforms isn't. Advice for everyone is leverage for someone else. Ask why.

When an opportunity spreads widely, supply increases fast. Demand doesn't always follow. Margins shrink. Early movers capture the most value because they act before the crowd shows up. Latecomers fight over scraps. Early dropshipping in 2018 — the first movers made real money. When everyone piled in, the space flooded and returns collapsed. Scarce insight creates high leverage. Mass knowledge creates average results.

If everyone could play like Ronaldo, what value would he bring? If your skill is common, why should anyone pay for it? Value requires barriers. When those barriers disappear, so does your advantage.

The crowded path isn't useless — it can teach you fundamentals, show you how the game works. But it's not the destination. It's the training ground. Use the crowd to learn. Then leave before you become it.

“Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.”

That moment you see everyone moving in the same direction and assume it must be right — your brain short-circuits, logic takes a back seat, you follow. That's herd psychology, and it's the second reason people get average results.

Mass participation leads to average outcomes because most people copy — few innovate. Safety feels like comfort, but not all safe havens are safe. When a path feels comfortable because the crowd is on it, it's probably already saturated. Safety often signals mediocrity.

Our brains are wired for social proof — thousands of years ago, if the tribe moved, you moved. Today that instinct works against you. Imitation feels like a strategy. Activity feels like progress. Herd movement masks saturation — by the time the herd is visible, the edge is already gone. FOMO seals it.

The cost of following the herd: delayed entry, compressed margins, zero differentiation, wasted time, wrong mentors.

How to use this

• —Recognise when you're in the herd — ask if you chose this or followed because it was visible.
• —Use the herd to learn, not to lead — it has infrastructure, playbooks, mentors. It's your bootcamp, not your destination.
• —Develop an antithetical skill while the herd chases the visible thing.
• —Position yourself at the edge of the herd — not last to join, not first either.
• —Build a filter: visibility test, scarcity test, timing test, differentiation test, exit test.

Start reasonable. Learn in the herd. Then become unreasonable.

Knowledge has a shelf life. Powerful insight starts private — a few people understand and act on it, capturing value early. Then it leaks through courses, content, algorithms. Once mainstream, the edge is gone.

The lifecycle

• —Innovation Trigger — a small group discovers something, asymmetric advantage.
• —Peak of Inflated Expectations — word spreads, excitement peaks, early adopters and first newcomers arrive.
• —Trough of Disillusionment — reality hits, hype doesn't match results, many latecomers still arriving unaware the peak passed.
• —Slope of Enlightenment — real understanding forms, but thousands are now in the space, edge diluted.
• —Plateau of Productivity — knowledge becomes standard, taught everywhere, zero competitive advantage.

You're probably entering at Stage 3, 4, or 5 — hearing about something on TikTok when thousands already know it.

Example: ChatGPT. Nov 2022 launch, few users, real edge. Dec 2022–Mar 2023, prompt engineering becomes a known skill among a small community. Apr–Jun 2023, tutorials everywhere, millions join. Jul–Sep 2023, hype peaks then reality sets in. Oct 2023 onward, mainstream — every company has a policy, universities teach it. By late 2025, knowing ChatGPT provides zero advantage. The people who entered Stage 1 are years ahead — not competing on “knowing ChatGPT” but on what they built while others were skeptical.

How to stay ahead

• —Listen for whispers, not echoes — niche forums, builder threads, research papers, not TikTok and mainstream YouTube.
• —Enter at Stage 2, not Stage 3.
• —Extract value before the plateau — don't wait for mastery, build something with the fundamentals immediately.
• —Build a personal radar — read upstream sources, ask where this will be in six months.
• —Build optionality — don't go all-in until you see clear traction.

“In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind there are few.”

You now understand: crowds destroy value, the herd keeps you mediocre, and knowledge decays. So — how do you position yourself ahead? Not luck. Deliberately placing yourself where others can't see yet, before competition shows up.

Three positioning strategies

• —Be early — enter before the majority knows something exists. Requires listening upstream. Feels lonely and uncertain, but when you're right, you're playing a different game. (Blockchain builders in 2017 vs. 2021 — but the trap is staying too long after it saturates.)
• —Be different — while the crowd optimizes for the same thing, optimize for something else. Creates asymmetry — you're not compared directly to the crowd.
• —Be positioned in an overlooked niche — every field has blind spots, valuable but invisible to the crowd. Specificity is precision, and precision commands leverage.

Three traps to avoid: positioning too broadly (“I help anyone succeed” is not a position), positioning on false scarcity (information gets copied — position on something harder to copy), positioning too early (build first, then position).

The positioning framework

• —Identify your asymmetry (rare knowledge, unique experience, distinct network, uncommon skill stack, different perspective).
• —Identify an underserved market — specific enough to serve well, not necessarily huge.
• —Create a distinct offer — specific, defensible, valuable, clear.
• —Build the moat — knowledge moat, network moat, experience moat, credibility moat, content moat; build at least two.
• —Commit to the position — it takes 6-12 months to establish, 2-3 years to own, 5+ years to be untouchable. Most people quit after 3 months.

“In a crowded marketplace, fitting in is failing. The way to succeed is to find or create an uncontested space.”

Culture moves fast, and the cycles keep accelerating — a trend that took 2-3 years to peak a decade ago can now peak and decline in 3-6 months. By the time a trend hits your feed, you're at week 10-12 — already late.

The cost of chasing trends

• —Time fragmentation (constantly restarting).
• —Skill dilution (shallow skills in many areas instead of deep skill in one).
• —Positioning erosion (you're the AI expert this month, the crypto expert next month — no one knows who you are).
• —Exhaustion, zero leverage.

Why culture moves fast: algorithm amplification (surfaces novelty), copy culture (viral ideas get diluted by copies within a day), attention scarcity (a zero-sum game — new trends kill old ones).

The trap: building on trends vs. building on principles. A coach who only teaches “how to use ChatGPT” has a 12-month window. A coach who teaches “how to develop rare skills and position them for leverage” — that principle survives every technology shift.

How to use cultural speed to your advantage

• —Build on principles, not trends (ask: if the trend disappeared tomorrow, would my work still be valuable?).
• —Use trends as illustrations, not foundations.
• —Stay one level upstream — teach how to think about something before everyone's teaching how to use it.
• —Build evergreen content, reference current culture.
• —Know when to move — a trend deserves a 6-12 month timeline, get in, build, extract value, get out before the plateau.

“Fashion is something that goes out of style. Style never goes out of style.”

You've learned five principles intellectually. But knowing and doing are different — the principles live in strategy, the application lives in daily choices.

Every day you make small decisions about what to learn, create, and build — and they compound. A month of chasing trends: scattered, unfocused, dozens of half-finished projects. A month of the positioning filter: substantial depth, clear positioning.

Three daily-choice categories

• —What to learn (herd choice: learn what's trending; positioning choice: learn what fills gaps in a framework, 70% upstream / 30% visible).
• —What to create (herd choice: chase trends for likes; positioning choice: 80% principle-based content, 20% trend-based illustration).
• —What to build (herd choice: quick wins on sand; positioning choice: deep work on rock, adds to the moat).

The hardest part is saying no. Every exceptional person said no to everything else.

The positioning filter, before you learn/create/build anything

• —Alignment — does this move me closer to my position?
• —Timing — early or late?
• —Decay — will this matter in 2 years?
• —Opportunity cost — what am I not doing if I do this?

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”

Edges don't last forever. Every competitive advantage has a lifespan.

The five stages of an edge

• —Discovery — few know, high uncertainty, maximum potential.
• —Quiet Adoption — results proven, community growing, still shared with a few hundred.
• —Visible Adoption — articles, influencers, thousands want in, margins compressing.
• —Saturation — taught in universities, textbooks, courses everywhere, prices collapse.
• —Commoditization — completely common, what once commanded premium prices now costs $15 on Udemy — but a new edge is already emerging elsewhere.

The trap: people discover an edge, get results, build a brand — then stop moving. They keep selling the same thing after the market has moved on.

How to navigate it

• —Monitor your edge position (stage 1-2 indicators = go all in; stage 3 = start exploring next edges; stage 4-5 = you should have already moved).
• —Start the next edge before the current one dies.
• —Build your positioning on principles, not specific edges — a principle-based position survives every edge cycle.
• —Build your moat on what's hard to replicate (your perspective, audience, body of work, network, systems — not your tactics or tools, which are easy to copy).
• —Create multiple streams from your moat as it matures (service → knowledge product → community → published thinking).

Red flags it's time to move

• —Commoditization of your own pricing.
• —Mainstream players entering (universities, corporations, huge YouTube channels).
• —Your information now available free everywhere.
• —You're teaching and no longer learning.
• —Declining excitement.

The biggest edge isn't having an edge — it's knowing how to find the next one. Develop that skill; everything else follows.

This series itself is at Stage 1-2 right now. By 2030 these ideas will be everywhere too. That's okay — ideas are meant to spread. The people who understand this now will have already moved to the next framework.