Mark: The single worst piece of career advice is 'climb the ladder.' It turns out, the people who reach the top fastest—from presidents to tech billionaires—almost never do. They find a way to jump ladders entirely. Michelle: Oh, I love that. Because my entire life, that’s all I’ve heard. "You’ve got to pay your dues, Michelle. Put in the time, one rung at a time." It sounds so virtuous, but you’re telling me it’s a trap? Mark: It’s often the scenic route, let's put it that way. And that’s the core idea behind a fascinating book by journalist and entrepreneur Shane Snow, called Smartcuts: How Hackers, Innovators, and Icons Accelerate Success. Michelle: And Snow comes from this world, right? He co-founded Contently, a major media tech company, so he's seen this rapid acceleration firsthand. He's not just an academic; he's been in the trenches. Mark: Exactly. He wrote the book after noticing this pattern of rapid success and wanted to deconstruct it. He found that overachievers don't just work harder; they work smarter by finding unconventional paths. They find smartcuts—shortcuts with integrity. Michelle: Okay, "shortcuts with integrity." I like that distinction. It’s not about cheating the system, but rethinking it. So where do we start? How do you break out of that ladder-climbing mindset? Mark: Well, Snow starts with a really surprising piece of data about one of the highest ladders in the world: the path to the US Presidency.

Mark: You’d assume that to become president, you need to spend decades climbing the political ladder—House, Senate, then White House. But the data shows the opposite. The average age of a US president when they take office is 55. The average age for a senator? 62. Michelle: Wait, hold on. That’s completely backward. The top job is held by younger people than the job that’s supposedly the stepping stone to it? How does that even make sense? Mark: Because the best presidents weren't ladder climbers; they were ladder hackers. Think about it. Dwight D. Eisenhower had zero years in elected office. He was a five-star general. He jumped from the military ladder to the top of the political one. Ronald Reagan was an actor and governor. Abraham Lincoln had only a couple of years in Congress before becoming a prairie lawyer and then president. They didn't "pay their dues" in Washington. Michelle: Okay, that's interesting for presidents, but how does this apply to the rest of us who aren't planning a run for the White House? I can't just decide to jump from my marketing job to CEO of the company. Mark: This is where Snow introduces a brilliant, low-stakes analogy: a game played by bored Mormon college students called "Bigger or Better." Michelle: Bigger or Better? This sounds like something you'd play at a kid's birthday party. Mark: It’s simple. A team starts with a tiny, worthless object, like a toothpick. They go knock on a stranger's door and ask, "Can we trade this for something bigger or better?" Most people will laugh and trade the toothpick for, say, a pen. Then they take the pen to the next house and trade it for a roll of paper towels. Then the paper towels for a baseball cap. Michelle: I see where this is going. It's a chain of small, incremental upgrades. Mark: Exactly. And within a few hours, teams have traded a toothpick up to things like a canoe, a vintage stereo system, or even a motorcycle. The key insight is that people are willing to make a small, low-risk trade. No one would trade a canoe for a toothpick, but they will trade it for a slightly-less-valuable BMX bike. You're not climbing; you're making a series of lateral moves, or sideways trades, each one giving you a little more leverage for the next. Michelle: That’s a perfect example. It's like that story of the guy who traded one red paperclip all the way up to a house. He wasn't getting a better paperclip each time; he was jumping into entirely different categories of value. Mark: You nailed it. And that’s what the ladder hackers do. They build skills in one field, then they don't ask for the next logical promotion. They parlay that experience into a different, more powerful role on a completely different ladder. This is what Snow calls the "Sinatra Principle." Michelle: The Sinatra Principle? As in Frank Sinatra? Mark: "If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere." If you can prove you're a leader as a five-star general, voters will believe you can lead a country. If you can build a successful business, people will trust you to be a governor. You're transferring credibility from one domain to another. You're not climbing; you're teleporting. Michelle: So the first smartcut is to stop thinking about the next rung up and start looking for a different ladder to jump to. That’s a powerful reframe. But okay, so you've hacked the ladder, you've made a sideways jump. But you still have to build something. It feels like starting from scratch would be even slower. How do you build fast?

Mark: That question leads perfectly to the second part of the book: Leverage. And the key here is to find a platform. Snow tells the story of a programmer named David Heinemeier Hansson, or DHH. In the early 2000s, he was hired to build a web application. Michelle: A pretty standard tech story so far. Mark: But DHH was, in his own words, a lazy programmer. He hated doing the same repetitive, boring tasks over and over again—setting up databases, configuring files, all the grunt work. He thought, "There has to be a way to automate this." Michelle: Ah, the classic "work smarter, not harder" mantra of every good engineer. Mark: Precisely. So, on the side, he built a framework that automated all the boring stuff. He created a set of pre-built components and rules. He essentially built a LEGO set for making web applications. He called it Ruby on Rails. Michelle: It’s like instead of having to make your own bricks and mortar and windows every time you want to build a house, he created a prefab home kit. Mark: Perfect analogy. And he gave it away for free. Suddenly, anyone could build a complex web application in days, not months. And a few years later, a little startup used Ruby on Rails to build a prototype for their social media idea in just two weeks. That company was Twitter. Michelle: Wow. So Twitter literally stood on the shoulders of a "lazy" programmer who just wanted to avoid repetitive work. Ruby on Rails was the platform that let them skip all the foundational drudgery and just focus on their unique idea. Mark: That's the power of a platform. It multiplies your effort. But a platform is only half the equation. You also have to catch a wave. Snow tells the story of Sonny Moore. Michelle: I have a feeling I know this name. Mark: In the mid-2000s, he was the lead singer of a popular screamo band, From First to Last. They were riding the wave of that genre. But as that wave started to crest and fade, he saw a new one building: electronic dance music, or EDM. He left the band, holed up with his laptop, and taught himself how to produce electronic music. Michelle: And he became Skrillex. He didn't just ride one wave; he jumped from a fading one to a massive, rising one. Mark: Exactly. And what's fascinating is the research Snow cites. We have this "first-mover advantage" myth, but the data shows that pioneers often fail. One study found that 47% of first movers go out of business. The real winners are often the "fast followers"—the ones who let the pioneers make the mistakes and educate the market, and then ride the wave they created. Skrillex didn't invent EDM, but he caught the wave at the perfect time and arguably defined it for a generation. Michelle: So, you find a platform to build on, and you find a wave to ride. It’s about leveraging forces that are bigger than you. This all feels very strategic and clever. But what about raw ambition? Where does the big, crazy, world-changing idea fit in?

Mark: That brings us to the final, and maybe most powerful, section of the book: Soar. This is about what Google calls "10x thinking." The idea is that it's often easier to make something 10 times better than it is to make it 10 percent better. Michelle: Okay, my brain just short-circuited. How is making something ten times better easier? Mark: Because a 10 percent improvement means you're still playing the same game. You're just optimizing, tweaking, working a little harder. A 10x improvement forces you to throw out the rulebook and invent a whole new game. It forces you to go back to first principles. Michelle: That sounds like something Elon Musk would say. Mark: It's his entire philosophy. And Snow uses the story of SpaceX as the ultimate example. In 2008, SpaceX had failed to get their Falcon 1 rocket to orbit twice. They had enough money for one more try. This was it. The rocket launches, everything looks perfect... and then, minutes into the flight, the first stage bumps into the second stage after separation, and the whole thing is lost. A third catastrophic failure. Michelle: Oh, the devastation. I can’t even imagine. The company must have been finished. Mark: The team was despondent. They thought it was over. But Musk walks out, and in front of all the cameras and his heartbroken team, he says, "For my part, I will never give up. And I mean never." His vision wasn't just to launch a rocket—a 10% improvement on what NASA did. His vision was to make humanity a multi-planetary species. That’s a 10x goal. And a vision that big gives you the fuel to withstand total, soul-crushing failure. Just weeks later, their fourth launch was a perfect success. Michelle: That's an epic, billion-dollar example. But 10x thinking can't just be for rocketeers, can it? Most of us aren't trying to colonize Mars. Mark: And that's the brilliant counterpoint Snow provides. He tells the story of Jane Chen and her team at Stanford. Their class project was to design a low-cost baby incubator for the developing world, where millions of premature babies die from hypothermia. Michelle: So their goal was to make a 10% cheaper incubator. Mark: That was their first thought. But a traditional incubator costs $20,000. Even a cheaper one would be too expensive, require electricity, and need a trained technician. It was a 10% solution. So they went back to first principles. What is the absolute core problem? It’s not that babies need a glass box; it’s that babies need to stay warm. Michelle: A radical simplification of the problem. Mark: A 10x simplification. They threw out the idea of an incubator entirely. Instead, they created the Embrace Warmer. It’s essentially a tiny, high-tech sleeping bag with a wax-like pouch that you heat up in hot water. It stays at a perfect 98.6 degrees for six hours, with no electricity needed. It costs just $25. Michelle: Twenty-five dollars. That’s… that’s not a 10% improvement. That’s a 1,000x improvement in cost and accessibility. That is mind-blowing. Mark: That’s 10x thinking. It’s not always about more tech or more complexity. Often, it’s about finding the simple, elegant solution that completely changes the game. The Embrace Warmer has saved tens of thousands of lives.

Michelle: So when you put it all together, it’s not about finding one single magic bullet. It’s a pattern. First, you reframe the path by hacking the ladder and looking for lateral moves. Then, you amplify your effort by leveraging existing platforms and catching emerging waves. And you fuel it all with a vision that's so big—a 10x goal—that it forces you to be radically simple and innovative. Mark: Exactly. It’s a framework for thinking, not a list of tricks. And Snow's challenge to the reader is to find one assumption you're holding about your own path—the 'dues' you think you have to pay, the ladder you think you have to climb—and ask: Is there a 'Bigger or Better' trade you could make? Is there a sideways move that gets you there faster? Michelle: That's a powerful question to sit with. What's a 'ladder' you're climbing that might not even be the right one? It makes you question the very definition of progress you've been sold. We’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Find us on our socials and share your 'smartcut' ideas. Mark: This is Aibrary, signing off.