Last week, I was in Miami and had dinner with a very successful entrepreneur.

He runs a recruiting business for AI startups, 8 years into the journey, doing $65M a year in revenue and is aiming for $100m+ next year. Completely bootstrapped.

I drove over to his house and we did some two-way coaching. I gave him some tips to improve his LinkedIn. He helped me on a business problem I've been wrestling with recently.

(Side note: this is how I tend to approach more successful people. Find something I can offer them - usually personal branding help.)

I was telling him about Saywhat, my content, and my exec branding business. How I am the bottleneck and it feels incredibly hard to find people as good at creating content as me, so I’m still involved in everything.

He quickly poured a bucket of cold water over that:

"You’ve got an imaginary scarcity mindset."

It was a helpful slap in the face. His point was simple:

The world is full of incredibly talented people. Finding them is not hard. Convincing them to join you is.

That's imaginary scarcity: a made-up shortage of something the world actually has plenty of.

An imaginary scarcity mindset can show up everywhere in your business.

Talent: "I can't find anyone as good as me at X."

Translation: I haven't gone looking properly, or I haven't given anyone truly exceptional a reason to join me.

Money: "I can't afford to invest in growth."

Translation: I'm scared to spend, so I'm telling myself the money isn't there. I’m scared to make other compromises for growth.

Time: "There aren't enough hours in the day."

Translation: I haven't decided what to cut, so I'm pretending the constraint is time.

Opportunity: "There's no way to break into that market."

Translation: I tried a few times, it didn't work, and now I'm calling it a closed market.

The pattern is always the same: you make up a constraint and rebrand it as a fact about the world.

The thing about imaginary scarcity is that it’s hard to spot on your own. He could see mine instantly because he had fallen into the same trap years ago.

He'd already sat where I was sitting, told himself the same story, and eventually realized it was BS.

So if any of this sounds familiar, try these two things:

Find someone who is 2-3 years ahead of you. Buy them dinner, pay them for coaching, whatever it is.

Tell them what you think is holding you back and let them tell you which parts are real and which parts are your own mental gymnastics.

And in the meantime, write down the sentence you keep repeating.

"I can't find anyone." "I can't afford it." "There's no time."

Then sit with it and ask yourself: is that actually true?

See you next week,

Will

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