He’s right that it was mostly “basic stuff”, but he’s still not doing it. It’s “basic stuff” for a reason: while it seems really simple and obvious, he still needs to do it to be successful.

I was reminded of the Biblical story of Naaman the leper. When told what he needed to do to cure his awful disease, at first he refused because it sounded too simple for a great man like himself. (It’s a great story, btw).

Look, success is rarely easy. But sometimes we make it harder than it needs to be by overlooking the “obvious” things. Sometimes we’re trying to install a complicated triangle offense in a pickup basketball game with 2nd-graders. They don’t know how to dribble the ball, much less run the triple post.

You have to start with the basics, and keep working on just those things until you’ve got them down. Then worry about the complicated stuff. Details, details, details.

The great thing is that most people seem to make this same mistake. They try to fly before they can crawl. So if you get the fundamentals down, you’ll easily beat out other people — some of whom may even be more qualified than you — who are running around trying to launch some grand, complicated plan without “wasting time” on that piddly basic stuff. Without a foundation, they have very little chance of succeeding, no matter how talented they are.

Don’t get ahead of yourself. Don’t worry about what the other guy claims he’s going to do. Don’t worry about how good the competition could be if they just did the “basic stuff”.

You just make sure you’re doing all the basics right, and worry about the rest when there are no more “basic” things to master.