What's Your Superpower?

You have one or two superpowers. It's time you double down on them.

The superhero is a recipe.

Required ingredients include pain or obstacles in the past (Batmans's parents), an alter ego (Clark Kent), and usually a seedy city in which you live.

But what is the most significant ingredient for a superhero? A superpower.

Think Spiderman's web-slinging, Wolverine's claws, and Batman's, well, um, deep voice?

And in business, there are superpowers. Here are a few that come to mind:

Creating Connection - The ability to connect people & roles, problems & solutions, causes & effects. Leads to a master networker and a stunning ability to solve things while making it look "easy" because you simply match up two pre-existing elements.

Directness - A blunt, take-it-or-leave-it attitude immune from nearly every outward pressure. Leads to boldness and an unwavering pursuit of a goal. Little time is wasted "reading the room" or worrying about how you'll be perceived.

Culture-Building - Bringing a tribe together to accomplish incredible goals. The ability to seek out, secure, and retain the "right kind of people." Leads to environments in which everyone is well-aligned and connected.

Intense Focus - The ability to sit down with a problem and work on it for hours or even days until it's finished. Little regard for comforts like food or sleep. Leads to challenging issues being solved, and also being late for nearly everything.

Tolerance for Suffering - Able to outlast the competition no matter how hard it gets. In fact, the harder it gets, the more enjoyment it engenders. Leads to a "cockroach" type mentality and a baseline knowledge that, in the end, you will always come out on top.

A Mayoral Disposition - Spends endless hours "shaking hands and kissing babies." Constantly working the phone, always up on the latest intel. Leads to others continually asking for referrals and connections to others.

Experimentation - Tries endless models and strategies until one "sticks." Not afraid in any way to attempt new things and quit that which is not working. It leads to a chaotic beginning but a fantastic ending once the "right" opportunity is discovered.

GSD - The ability to immediately spring into action and get stuff done. No planning required. This is the person you call first when you need help. Leads to production and results in a very short amount of time.

Vision - Ideas and dreams come easily; conveying them to others with excitement and conviction is second nature. But doing? Not so much. Leads to a clear picture of what the future holds.

But here's the point: no one has all these, and the most successful have just one in spades.

The secret is to know your superpower and double down on it.

Then, surround yourself with people with different superpowers, starting with your opposite.

Have vision? Find a GSD.

Enjoy being "the mayor?" Recruit someone with directness that will say the hard things when they need to be said. Because you likely won't. Because mayors like to be reelected.

So, what's your superpower? How can you develop it further in 2024?

And subsequently, what is your team missing?

I’d love it if a few more folks read this newsletter. Might you consider forwarding it to someone you think might benefit from it?

Books of Note: I just finished the tome that is Tim Ferriss's Tribe of Mentors. I read one profile a day for about a year. My key takeaway? Almost all “successful” people meditate, and Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning is the most popular book among Tim's crowd. Might need to pick that one up…

I’d love a follow over on X (Twitter) and Linkedin, as I post things there that are either too brief for the newsletter or are just entertaining things I come up with over a responsibly-sized serving of Blanton’s.