How to Be So Profoundly Stupid You're Bordering on the Edge of Genius

Have you ever come across somebody so stupid — with so much money and such a good life — that you cannot even conceptualize how someone so mentally deficient could be so successful in every regard?

I have. And I've thought about it a lot.

Here's what I've noticed: when you look at billionaires and multi-millionaires, they tend to fall into one of two buckets. They're either hyper-intelligent or a complete idiot. There is basically no one in the center. No one of average intelligence. You're either completely stupid or an absolute genius.

I'm going to explain exactly why that is — and how you can use it.

The Bell Curve Nobody Talks About

You've probably seen the IQ bell curve meme. Most people sit at 100 — dead average. Then you've got the geniuses above 130 and the truly not-intelligent below 70. The punchline is that the guy in the middle is the one who's miserable, while the people on both extremes seem to be thriving.

Why? Because the people on the far left and the far right of that curve arrive at the same conclusions. Different justifications, same action, same result.

The guy in the center overthinks himself into paralysis.

The VSL Problem

I tell people running agencies, B2B businesses, or any kind of service offer that they need a video sales letter — a VSL — on their website. It's a simple video explaining what you do and what your offer is.

People come back with excuses. I don't know what to say. I don't have the right camera setup. I need the script approved. I need 20 to 30 takes.

It's nonsense. And it delays results by months.

Here's what actually happens:

• The genius says: I'll just film a quick video explaining what I do.

• The idiot says: I'll just film a quick video explaining what I do.

• The average intelligence person says: I need perfect scripting, lighting, a copywriter, a hook rate analysis, and an editor before I can publish anything.

The genius and the idiot both ship. The average person stays stuck — relegated to mediocrity indefinitely. Three months of delay is three months of significantly better results that never happened.

The TikTok VSL Nobody Would Have Thought to Test

I was talking to a girl launching her own course. She asked me about VSL setup but mentioned she only knows how to edit Reels and TikToks.

That reminded me of a conversation with a guy who runs a TikTok agency. He was running split tests — sending TikTok ads to a sales page with a VSL. His test: a normal horizontal VSL versus a vertical VSL edited exactly like a TikTok.

The result? The vertical TikTok-style VSL won — by a lot. Now it's all he does for TikTok traffic.

Here's the thing: you could only arrive at that idea if you were either a genius or had absolutely no idea what you were doing.

The genius's justification: These people are arriving from a vertical video format. Invoking continuity should increase conversions.

The idiot's justification: This is all I know how to do, so I'm just going to do that.

The average person's justification: Let me just make a different horizontal video because that's what VSLs are supposed to look like.

Different reasoning. Two of the three get the right answer. One stays stuck in conventional thinking.

The 10-Second Fix That Solved a Huge Problem

I was running a placement offer — recruiting, placing, and training commission-based cold emailers inside of businesses. The positioning said commission-only, which was accurate for the emailer's compensation.

But when prospects found out there was also an upfront recruiting fee, they lost their minds. We kept having the same conversation over and over. The team wanted to overhaul the VSL — rewrite the positioning, reshoot everything.

I decided to try to be as absolutely stupid as possible.

I put a single line of text directly under the application button:

This is a recruiting offer and there is an upfront fee.

Ten seconds of work. Problem gone. Never had that objection again.

And the cost per call on YouTube ads? Unchanged. No impact on conversions whatsoever.

So stupid it was brilliant.

How to Apply This to Your Life

Sometimes when you're stuck, you're not thinking too simply — you're thinking too hard. The elaborate justifications you're constructing to do X, Y, and Z before taking action are the problem, not the solution.

The fix is to tune your IQ either up 30 points or down 30 points. You can go either direction.

If you don't think of yourself as a genius, try becoming actively more stupid. Strip the problem down to its most embarrassingly obvious solution. You will probably arrive at the same conclusion the genius would — just from the opposite direction.

Same thing applies socially. The guy who talks to every girl at the bar? The genius version says more conversations means higher probability of a good outcome. The idiot version says she was pretty, I wanted to talk to her. The 100 IQ guy in the center talks himself out of it entirely.

Both extremes win. The center loses.

The Takeaway

Don't be average. Average intelligence in business — the overthinking, the perfect conditions, the analysis paralysis — is what keeps you stuck.

Become considerably smarter or considerably more stupid. Either works. Just don't stay in the center.

The center is where mediocrity lives.