Founders aren't the smartest or strongest, they just show up
Quinn Fukawa, building The most ambitious community on the internet., answers "Pitch it in ten seconds. Go." on 2026-11-08.
I've spent the last year and a half talking to the next and current one percenters of the world, and their success boiled down to one thing that every Jim Crow and DonnieMommy could relate to. Getting to meet so many founders and entrepreneurs, it gives you a lot of perspective because you begin to realize that they are not the smartest, they're not the strongest, they're not the most gifted individuals in the world and it's really grounding because of the fact that they made it. And it really took a lot of time to realize what got them to that point without being so much more spectacular than the next person. Because growing up, I was a student athlete. I played sports since I was six years old and one of the biggest things that really helped me... Like, Bet. Because... Bet. Because growing... Bet. Bet. Because... Bet. Because growing up, I was a lifelong athlete. I was a student athlete in high school. I've been doing sports since I was six years old, and I realized that whether I liked it or not, it was fundamentally a part of my life. And the things that I learned there are kind of the tools that I learned, the tools of discipline, the tools of working hard, the tools of problem solving. When they told me that the biggest... So when they told me... That. So when they told me that the biggest indicator of their success was grit, I sat there and realized, was like, this is something that I've done since I was a little kid. For everyone out there who goes to the gym, the hardest part isn't your aching muscles the next day or dragging yourself to the gym, it is consistency and grit. Showing up when you don't want to, showing up on the days where you had a super long shift and you rather just go home and watch TV. Showing up on the days where you'd rather just go home and sleep rather than go to the gym and grind. It's the grit and the tenacity to keep pushing past adversity and keep on that discipline and that route of I need to get better. I need to iterate. I need to find better ways to get to my goals. And that is the key for so many founders or anyone doing anything in life is that you will fail. You will go down the wrong path multiple times. There's gonna be so many times in life where you're sitting there with your dick in your hands and you're like, damn, I don't wanna show up today. I don't wanna keep putting in the work. But that ability to sit there with yourself and to realize that fundamentally, if you want to achieve something, it's going to take failing. It's going to take sticking with it because you never know. That next day could be the reason that you succeed. That next day in the gym or that extra day that you did every single week is probably the reason that you look like a sexy dummy mommy and that is what's gonna stop you from... I bet. And that is the thing that stops most people from being successful and it stops most people from becoming entrepreneurs. It's the ability to fail, get back up, and try again. And to keep consistently doing it every single day because these are things that nobody in their mothers could ever imagine doing. So you need to do that, and you need to have grit to succeed.
Posted on Threads.