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Alberto Crane lost his first 13 tournaments.
Three years.
Thirteen straight losses.
Every reasonable person in his life had a version of the same conversation with him.
“You gave it a shot. It didn't work. Time to do something else.”
Alberto kept showing up anyway.
Those 13 losses became the foundation for everything that followed: a UFC career, a world title, and a level of competitive durability most opponents couldn't understand.
Not because he was more gifted than the people who quit.
Because he was more unreasonable.
Find Your Edge
“Your edge isn't your idea. Everyone has ideas.
It's not your strategy. Strategy is everywhere.
It's not even your execution. Plenty of people execute.
Your edge is your unreasonable willingness to keep going when reasonable people quit.
Endurance isn't a virtue.
It's a weapon…and most people don't have the stomach for this war.”
That's not a pep talk.
That's a description of what's happening right now, in real time, across every industry.
The chaos is real. We are all at war.
The content and marketing playbooks that built audiences and grew agencies in 2021 are now actively working against you. AI is restructuring entire job categories before the job boards have time to update. The companies that dominated five years ago are confused and flailing.
…and the two most common responses are both losing moves.
The first: spread thin. More tools. More tactics. More motion. Less momentum. Revenue flatlines while everyone stays busy.
The second: double down on the old way. More pressure. Longer hours. Grinding harder in a direction that stopped working two years ago.
Then there's Easy Mode.
Easy Mode is the work that looks impossible to everyone else but feels like play to you. The thing you do that looks like cheating.
I started calling it that a few years back after one of the worst professional moments of my career.
June 2017. Elevate Conference. 325 people.
I was ten minutes from closing out the conference with a fireside chat. That’s when I collapsed. I turned to my fellow speaker and mouthed the words: "I don't have it."
I was empty.
I had been operating in the wrong mode for too long.
Saying “yes” to everything.
Burning the candle on both ends.
Taking on every task that needed to get done because “I knew what I wanted.”
This is Hard Mode.
…and I vowed never to allow myself to get to that place again.
From this experience, what I rebuilt wasn't more discipline or a better strategy.
It was a brutal, non-negotiable return to the work I'm actually built for…
…this work.
Reading. Analyzing. Creating. Teaching. Entertaining. Mentoring…Building frameworks... Connecting people to ideas…Helping others see around corners…
Elevate 2018: 825 people.
No collapse. All gas pedal.
I leaned into my amazing team, focused on my Easy Mode, and we created something truly special.
Your inbox is full. Slack is piling up. Client messages need a response yesterday. Typing thoughtful replies to all of it takes hours you don't have.
Wispr Flow turns your voice into clean, professional text you can send the moment you stop talking. Speak like you would to a colleague — tangents and all — and get polished output. Emails, Slack, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, whatever's open.
89% of messages sent with zero edits. Used by teams at OpenAI, Vercel, and Clay. Works on Mac, Windows, and iPhone.
Rogue Risk
I sold Rogue Risk to SIAA in 2022.
Specifically, they wanted the digital approach everyone in the insurance industry had called unreasonable for a decade, yet had produced the fastest-growing small commercial agency in the country in 2021.
🤔
We wrote over 1,200 accounts in under 3 years (during COVID).
None of it came from being smarter or grinding harder.
All of it came from being unreasonably persistent about the one thing that was actually mine to do…
…build systems, funnels, lead flow, sales scripts…basically support my people to THEIR best.
If I were selling insurance policies (not my Easy Mode), that success would never happen.
That's what chaos does to people who've found their thing.
It doesn't stop them.
It sorts them to the front.
Chaos reveals character.
What are you being unreasonably persistent about?
The thing that makes no sense to the people around you.
The thing that keeps pulling you back, even when the results aren't there yet.
The thing is that when you do it, it looks like cheating to everyone else.
That's your edge.
That’s your Easy Mode.
The chaos isn't asking you to pivot.
It's asking you to commit.
This is the way.
Hanley
───
P.S. My Easy Mode Coaching Program is for high achievers who are done wasting the years that matter most on the wrong problems. Click here to learn more.
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beehiiv
Over the last 10 years, I’ve tried every newsletter tool on the market (ConvertKit, ActiveCampaign, HubSpot, etc). Nothing compares to beehiiv. In a world where search and social media traffic become harder and harder to monetize, email remains the most fertile soil.
One brand built 30+ landing pages through Viktor without a single developer.
Each page mapped to a specific ad group. All deployed within hours. Viktor wrote the code and shipped every one from a Slack message.
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