I Fired My Billionaire Mentors, and My Business Grew to $2M
The N+3 Rule: My simple system for decoding the playbooks of those three steps ahead.
You know the routine. It’s 11 PM, and you’re deep in a YouTube rabbit hole. Another interview with a billionaire at Davos or as a keynote speaker for a pay-to-play business conference. They’re talking about "thinking in first principles," "disrupting paradigms," or the existential weight of managing a $100 billion company.
You close the tab feeling vaguely inspired, thinking you’ve just done some valuable "micro-learning."
Let’s be honest. You haven’t learned anything. You’ve just been entertained.
Consuming advice from people 100 steps ahead of you isn't education; it's escapism.
It’s like trying to learn how to ride a bike by watching a Formula 1 driver. The physics are the same, but the context, tools, and immediate problems are so different that the advice is functionally useless.
I scaled my business from zero to $2M in revenue. The single biggest unlock wasn't a grand vision or a piece of esoteric wisdom from a titan of industry. It was getting brutally honest about my stage and consuming information that matched my immediate goals - not someone else's champagne problems.
The Mentor Paradox
My first job out of grad school, I had two mentors. One was a Senior Partner, a legend who managed a 5,000-person division. Our conversations were about golf, macro-economic trends, and 10-year strategic roadmaps. It was inspiring, sure. But did it help me figure out how to get my project unstuck, scale my team, or navigate a tricky conversation with my client? Not once.
My other mentor was a Senior Associate, just three levels above me. He wasn't a legend; he was just really good at his job - a fantastic manager. He taught me how to navigate politics at the firm, how to hire and manage great people, and how to deliver massive value to clients on-time and under budget.
He gave me the cheat codes for the level I was actually playing.
The partner was 100 steps ahead. The associate was three. Guess whose advice got me promoted three times in three years?
This is the principle that matters. You don't need mentors in the stratosphere. You need guides for the terrain you're about to cross.
I call it the N+3 Rule: Find the people and companies who are just three tangible steps ahead of your current state (N). That’s where the gold is.
Here’s the framework to put it into practice.
Step 1: Get Brutally Honest About N (Where You Are)
You can't find your next step if you don't know where your feet are. Most people are vague about their current position. "We're an early-stage startup." "I'm a growing creator." This is too fuzzy. Get specific and quantitative.
My N:
Revenue: $2M ARR
Team: 6 full-time employees
Go-to-Market: 100% word-of-mouth, founder-led sales.
Biggest Problem: My time is the bottleneck. We can't grow unless I build repeatable systems for marketing, sales, and delivery.
Your N might be:
Revenue: $5k MRR
Team: 1 founder, 2 freelancers
Go-to-Market: Posting on X
Biggest Problem: Going from first 10 customers to first 100.
Write it down. No vanity metrics. Just the ground truth.
Step 2: Map Your Next Three Milestones (N+1, N+2, N+3)
With a clear picture of N, define the next three meaningful milestones. Don't just pull numbers out of the air. Think about what each milestone unlocks.
My milestones:
N+1: $3M ARR. Unlock: Build a repeatable marketing engine beyond word-of-mouth. Have a predictable lead generation system.
N+2: $6M ARR. Unlock: Hire a dedicated salesperson and an operations lead to free me from day-to-day firefighting.
N+3: $12M ARR. Unlock: Establish a leadership team that can run the business without my daily operational involvement.
Each step represents a fundamental shift in the business, from me doing the work, to me building the team that does the work.
Step 3: Build Your N+3 Dashboard
Now, stop watching interviews with the CEO of the $12 billion company. Your goal is to find and obsessively study the companies and founders who are currently at your N+3 stage ($12M ARR, in my case).
They have solved the exact problems you are about to face. Their solutions are relevant, recent, and accessible.
Here’s the tactical part:
Create Private Lists: Go to X and LinkedIn and create private lists. Name it "N+3 Mentors" or "Future State."
Identify Your Targets: Find 10-15 companies that fit your N+3 profile. Look on industry lists, funding announcements from a few years ago, or LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Find the founders, CEOs, and heads of product, technology, marketing, and sales at these companies.
Add Them to Your Lists: This is your new, curated feed. It's your real-time MBA.
Study, Don't Just Scroll: Watch what they do, not just what they say.
Hiring: What roles are they hiring for right now? That’s your future org chart. If they’re hiring their first Head of Customer Success, it tells you when they decided to specialize that function.
Marketing: What channels are they using? Are they running podcasts? Publishing case studies? How do they talk about their product? Their positioning is a masterclass for your future self.
People: How do the founders talk on podcasts (the smaller, industry-specific ones, not the giant ones)? What problems do they discuss? Their last year's problems are your next year's problems.
Reassess this list every 6 months. As you grow, your N+3 target will shift. The people you follow today might not be the right guides for you in a year. This is a living system, not a static list.
Inspiration vs. Instruction
Does this mean you should never listen to Jeff Bezos or Sara Blakely? Of course not. Listen to them for inspiration, for long-term vision, for thinking about the shape of a market a decade from now.
But don't confuse their stories for a user manual.
The art of building is knowing the difference between inspiration and instruction. Instruction is what gets you to the next level. And the best instruction comes from the people who just got there.