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Your Playbook for Going Big,

Creating Wealth and Impacting the World

Session 7.3: Peter’s Laws

Xponential Playbook 134

Session 7.3: Peter’s Laws

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The point is to trust your history. Plumb your past to plot your future. —Peter Diamandis

When we get stressed, how we react is everything. How do you react to stress? Sometimes we
react with fear when we should react with a mindset that looks for new opportunities. Life is always
unexpected, and it’s important to take the time to decide how you are going to react when things
don’t go as planned.
Over the years, Peter started to accumulate truisms that were important for
him to remember, and these became, collectively, Peter’s Laws: The Creed of
the Persistent and Passionate Mind. Whenever he did something successful
or did something that failed, he would write down what he learned. Having a
playbook that you can refer to for guidance and support—especially one that
you’ve created yourself—is essential to help you react to stress. What follows
are a few critical laws that have guided Peter in his career.
Law #1: If anything can go wrong, fix it. To hell with Murphy.
Success means being able to deal with failure, iterating, fixing and trying again. This fundamental
process and mindset drives all of Silicon Valley. Living life or running any company with Murphy’s
defeatist attitude—“If anything can go wrong, it will”—is a formula for disaster. The best
entrepreneurs are those who anticipate and take actions. When plans A, B or C fail, no worries,
move on to plan D, E, F… G, H or Z. Much of an entrepreneur’s success comes from their optimistic
mindset, powering persistent action and a refusal to give up. Sure, stuff goes wrong: expect it, learn
from it and, most of all, fix it.
Law #2: When given a choice—take both.
Society teaches us that when you’re given a choice, you have to choose one. Why? Why do you have
to choose? All throughout graduate school, I was told go to school or start a company. For me, the
answer was both… in fact, I started three companies while in grad school. Steve Jobs did the same
with Apple and Pixar. Elon Musk is running Tesla and SpaceX; he’s also chairman of SolarCity.
And Branson—well, Branson’s Virgin Group has started over 300 Virgin companies and built eight
different billion-dollar companies in eight different industries. So, I challenge you: When someone
says choose vanilla or chocolate, say, “I’ll have them both, please.”
Law #4: Start at the top and work your way up.
As an entrepreneur going after a bold mission, having to work your way through an existing
bureaucracy is the easiest path to insanity. Traditional systems reject bold thinking and despise
moonshots. This law is about giving yourself permission and freedom to build on top of what exists,
rather than being shackled by it. Choose the best of what exists, reject the rest and build your own
vision. Time and time again, today’s best startups disrupt existing industries because they start with a
clean sheet of paper. They have no expensive and out-of-date, legacy systems to drag from the past
into the future. Another way to look at this is our next Law: “Do it by the book… but be the Author!”

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Law #6: When forced to compromise, ask for more.
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Some say that life is filled with compromises, that you can’t always get what you want. But some
compromises are really a signal that you’re heading in the wrong direction altogether. And if you
follow that compromised direction, you’ll end up in a mediocre, unfulfilling and frustrating situation.
Being forced to compromise should be a warning to you that may have the wrong partner(s),
the wrong set of initial conditions and/or the wrong timing for your venture. Sometimes, if
circumstances are forcing you to reduce objectives you believe are rightfully yours, it’s time to stop,
reassess, and do a pivot—head out in a new direction… and ultimately, ask for more.
Law #7: If you can’t win, change the rules.
It often seems like society sets it up so you can’t win—the rules are written by someone else, for
someone else to win. Most people blindly follow the rules. But many social rules were created at a
different time for a different situation that may no longer apply today. So if you can’t win—consider
changing the rules. This is exactly what I had to do in starting my companies ZERO-G and the
XPRIZE Foundation. It’s what you’re going to have to do to impact the world as well. And, for those
who find out that the deck is stacked in such a fashion that you can’t change the rules, well that’s
where the next law comes into play… If you can’t change the rules, ignore them.
Law #8: If you can’t change the rules, then maybe you should ignore them.
I am not trying to incite anarchy here. But most rules were written during a different era.
(Remember when women couldn’t vote?) The incumbents also write rules so they can block
competition. Thomas Jefferson knew this. Some 30 years after the Declaration of Independence,
he wrote, “I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and
institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind... as new discoveries are
made…institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man
to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the
regimen of their barbarous ancestors.”
Law #18: The ratio of something to nothing is infinite.
You wouldn’t believe the number of people who talk about doing stuff, but never actually do
anything. They always have some excuse preventing them from starting. When I’m interviewing a
potential employee or partner, what he or she has already accomplished is most important to me.
The best predictor of a person’s future success is their past accomplishments. It doesn’t matter how
small their past actions have been—it only matters that they have taken action and done something.
Doing something rather than nothing is literally infinitely better. Charles Lindbergh said it well: “The
important thing is to start; to lay a plan, and then follow it step by step, no matter how small or large
one by itself may seem.”

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Law #21: An expert is someone who can tell you exactly how it can’t be done.
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When I announced the Ansari XPRIZE, many of the “experts” in the aerospace industry explained
to me how naive I was. In 1714, when the Longitude Board (composed of the world’s greatest
Royal Astronomers) saw a working clock built by watchmaker John Harrison to meet all of the
requirements of the Longitude Prize, they refused to pay him the purse because they were
absolutely sure it would be won by an astronomical solution. In a rather perverse twist, an expert
is massively disincentivized to promote someone else’s radical and disruptive solution, because if it
results in a wholesale change in their field, they are no longer the expert—they are now a has-been.
Some experts are therefore inspired and committed to keep that something exactly the way it is.
Law #24: Without a target you’ll miss it every time.
We humans are extremely good at hitting a target if we can measure our progress along the way.
We push harder and work faster if there’s a leaderboard to gauge our advancement and engage
our competitive spirit. This principle is the heart and soul of XPRIZE competitions, where we give
our competing teams a clear, measureable, objective target to hit. We put out our best effort when
aiming for the gold medal in the Olympic Games. On the other hand, there is nothing sadder than
a person who is lost, adrift, and unable to set their mind on a fixed goal. And there is nothing more
frustrating than pushing yourself harder and harder and not knowing what your target is and
whether your expended energy is paying off.
In this world of constant, increasing speed and abilities, agility is so important and the best
opportunities, including launching your vision, come with stress. The maxims presented are the ones
that have worked for Peter, but that’s no guarantee they will work for you.
Take action and create a list of your own. Adopt, adapt, create, steal, and borrow. Create an
external hard drive for when your internal hard drive is guaranteed to crash.

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Xponential Playbook 137

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XPONENTIAL ADVANTAGE EXERCISE
Create Your Own Laws to Guide You in Achieving Your MTP

Create your own law(s)

List 5-7 Significant Events, from each experience
# What did you learn?
Successes or Failures to support you on your
continued journey

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XPONENTIAL ADVANTAGE EXERCISE
Refine and rewrite your list of Personal Laws from the above chart:
Law #1:

Law #2:

Law #3:

Law #4:

Law #5:

Law #6:

Law #7:

Print them out or put them where you will see them as you continue on your journey. Be sure to
add new laws as you have more learning experiences as you execute your vision.
Share your favorite laws inside our private Facebook community.

Create your set of “laws” that help you react fast in times of stress or opportunity.

© 2016 SUCCESS Partners Holding Co. All rights reserved.