Gentlemen,

If you’ve played blackjack, it was probably $25 a hand.

By nights end, you may have made a hundred bucks or, more likely, lost a hundred.

I’ll bet you’ve never played a blackjack hand that ended up making you $7 billion dollars.

This man, Frederick Smith has.

Here’s the story of delusional persistence, self-belief, and a blackjack hand that changed the world, a company, and a man.

It all started with a term paper at Yale in 1965 about a business idea. Fred Smith submitted what he believed to be a marketable and profitable idea, however, the professor graded it a C(ironic given the company did $80 billion in revenue last year).

A handful of years later, Fred smith founded a company based on the idea in his term paper and began working ruthlessly to bring it to market. Within years, he raised $10s of millions to fund the project and invested his entire net worth.

His company was not a dropshipping or ecomm brand - he was creating an entire industry. The amount of risk and work it took from him and his team is incomprehensible to most people.

The massively expensive operational costs of running the business burned through available funds quickly and eventually left the company with $5,000.

Yes - roughly $80 million to $5,000 in only a few years. Such is the nature of creating an industry.

Fred pitched to one last investor as a hail mary, but was denied, leaving him and his company essentially helpless. He thought the company was going to go under. He thought his dedication to that point was fruitless...

On his way home from the pitch, he went to Vegas. For what reason, only Fred knows but the result changed the world.

Rumor has it that he started with a few hundred bucks and left Vegas with $27,000…

In Fred’s words, “The $27,000 wasn’t decisive, but it was an omen that things would get better.”

It was enough for him to keep going. Enough for his company to keep going. Enough for them to not quit.

It was a blatant representation of the power of momentum. A single millimeter of forward momentum that led to a centimeter. That centimeter turned into an inch. That inch turned to a foot, that foot to a mile, and that mile turned into FedEx.

One of the largest companies in the world that employs nearly 200,000 people and has produced a personal networth for Fred Smith of nearly $7 billion.

The lesson here is not to put all your hope in the casino or to risk your last dollar on a game of cards.

The lesson is two-fold.

1. EVERYTHING STARTS WITH BELIEF.

EVERY SINGLE THING YOU SEE WAS ONCE AN IDEA HELD IN THE MIND OF SOMEONE WHO BELIEVED IT COULD BE BROUGHT FORTH INTO THE PHYSICAL WORLD.

Buildings, roads, cars, phones, computers, pens, even your pants. Everything you see.

These things did not exist.

Someone had an idea.

That person believed the idea could come to be.

They worked and channeled their energy toward bringing the idea to fruition.

Those things now exist.

This is the nature of creation.

Fred Smith believed so intensly in his idea that people literally thought he was delusional. They thought he was unrealistic. They thought he was out of his mind.

They were right. And Fred was ok with that. He was unrealistic. He was delusional.

HE WAS CREATING SOMETHING THAT DIDN‘T EXIST…

Delusion in the eyes of others is a prerequisite for such activity.

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.“ - George Bernard Shaw

Fred Smith is an unreasonable man and that’s why FedEx exists and why he has $7 billion and they don’t.

2. Momentum is everything

It started with an idea. Action was taken on that idea which enhanced the belief that the idea was possible.

More belief led to more action.

More action to more belief and so on until the belief was reality.

If you never stop moving forward, you will win.

You will reach the destination and you will bring forth the idea. It’s an inevitability.

Pause… I can’t make this up.

As I was writing the previous sentence a FedEx worker just delivered a package to the coffee shop I’m at…

Coincidence? Absolutely not.

I don’t what that means, but that wouldn’t have happened if Fred gave up. That man wouldn’t have the job he has and be able to provide for him and his family. The person recieving the package wouldn’t be getting something they might desperately need.

All because Fred Smith had an idea, was delusional in his belief that he could bring forth the idea, because he didn’t mind getting called crazy by people who could not see his vision, and maybe because he played a solid hand that night in vegas.

Incredible.

All of us won’t have the idea for the next FedEx but we do have ideas. We have things we desire to create.

We have visions we desire to bring forth and dreams we want to realize.

I’m here to tell you, with Fred Smith as my witness, that you can bring them forward.

You can create, in real time, the life you want to live.

Belief and action, friends. That’s the recipe.

Onward & Upward,

Nolan

Share this newsletter HERE

Connect on Instagram HERE