Running Up Sand Dunes
"Difference itself was making me come first" - James Dyson
There was no one to teach me how to run. There was no dad to tell me how great I was, and it became a very introverted kind of obsession with me. Herb Elliot was a big name at the time, so I read a few books about him and discovered that his coach had told him that the way to develop stamina and strengthen the leg muscles was to run up and down sand dunes.
The act of running itself was not something I enjoyed. The best you could say for it was that it was lonely and painful. But as I started to win by greater and greater margins I did it more and more, because I knew the reason for my success was that out on the sand dunes I was doing something that no one else was doing. Apart from me and Herb, no one knew. They were all running round and round the track like a herd of sheep and not getting any quicker. Difference itself was making me come first.
This quote in Against the Odds is one of the best, most useful quotes I've ever found. In a few sentences, James Dyson gives us the prescription for victory. Stand out by zeroing in on the few things others can't or won't do.
Run up sand dunes. What brilliantly simple advice. It made me wonder: "what sand dunes can I run on as an entrepreneur?"
In an interview with Runner's Magazine, Dyson shared more of his mindset that led him to focusing on those key actions that will set you apart:
What I've learned from running is that the time to push hard is when you're hurting like crazy and you want to give up. The moment you should accelerate is the moment you're the most tired. The beginning of the final lap is the testing point, and so I found that to be in life.
Success is often just around the corner. You might make a discovery. You might call it obstinacy or determination. It almost made me sort of relish that moment.
I see it as an opportunity, that point where if you know you can get through that bit, you're going to make an important discovery that someone else might have made except they gave up, because they couldn't get through the difficulties. I got that from running.
How to speed up your growth
Today's post is an exploration of what sand dunes look like for entrepreneurs. Those sand dunes tend to be narrow and specific. In sports, the competitive edge the #1 player has is microscopic, but the leverage point on that single action is so high that it produces an outsized outcome for the top players and their teams. Case in point:
Track (100m): Optimal force in the first three steps matters more than reaction time. (i.e. sand dunes help with building that power).
Basketball: Mastery of deceleration on drives creates space where none seems available.
Soccer/Football: Frequent off-ball scanning builds a faster internal map, leading to better decisions.
Hockey: Micro-adjustments in blade angle on first touch shape play before opponents react.
Tennis: Perfectly timed split-steps allow faster recovery and control of the rally.
Climbing: Subtle, efficient weight shifts conserve energy and unlock harder moves.
MMA / BJJ: Dominating wrist control early dictates the entire flow of the fight.
Swimming: Races are often won underwater through efficient, hidden dolphin kicks.
An obvious difference between sports and entrepreneurship is an open-ended (infinite) game, while most sports are close-ended (finite). Motivations and end states for the game vary, but the underlying principles for outpacing yourself and others are the same:
Identify the one action to take that will set yourself apart
Never stop refining #1 over time to keep the improvement rate above competitors. Advantages don’t last forever so you need to always look for what others don’t do.
Running up sand dunes is deliberate, self-induced pain to accelerate your growth. Hard numbers and tracking data helps, but you can't boil down your success as a founder to metrics. Entrepreneurship is not a race.
As a proxy for ‘winning’ as a founder, let’s study what drives most success/failure rates across a wide population of entrepreneurs.
1. Committing and sacrificing willingly as a way to reach your purpose
The psychology of commitment reveals a stark mathematical reality. Corporate research tracking thousands of ventures found that 70% commitment yields only 20% chance of success, while 100% commitment jumps to 75% probability. This isn't motivational rhetoric but empirical fact—partial commitment creates partial results, while total commitment transforms probability curves. James Dyson produced over 5,000 prototypes over nearly 20 years. Maybe he would have chosen plan B if that was available. But his commitment eventually helped him prevail.
The mechanism works through what psychologists call "commitment devices"—creating situations where the cost of quitting exceeds the pain of persisting. Studies show this leverages our natural sunk cost bias productively. When entrepreneurs invest everything, they free cognitive resources normally reserved for backup planning.
2. Learn to enjoy the mundane details, the tedious stuff that comes with managing people, plans and products
Details are everything, and micro-management in teams can actually be favorable if the founder provides unique insights and input to the key areas of their business. Micro-management across the board is destructive. But a founder needs to know each detail of their business, so the correct level of micro-management is not 0%, but also not 100%.
Conscientiousness predicts entrepreneurial success more powerfully than any other personality trait, according to a University of Minnesota analysis spanning 100 years of occupational research. But the relationship between perfectionism and performance follows an inverted U-curve—moderate attention to detail improves outcomes by 20-30%, while extreme perfectionism correlates directly with business failure.
The science reveals why detail obsession works: it creates compound quality advantages invisible to competitors focused on big moves. Studies show startups with robust quality control systems achieve 20% higher customer retention, while those neglecting operational discipline face 82% failure rates from cash flow problems alone. The key is systematic attention rather than random perfectionism—creating detailed procedures that others can execute while the founder maintains strategic oversight.
There is beauty in repetitive boring tasks. Jumping in a cold plunge intellectually trains you to do the hard things without blinking.
3. Learn from and study other founders of all types to augment your own experience and learning
Entrepreneurship is not about passion or intuition. It is about counter-intuition, making the right decisions in messy, unclear situations. Making decisions as a founder is not about what 'feels' good. Being a founder is more about counter-intuition. Entrepreneurship, just like any worthy endeavour, usually requires you to do things wrong the first time to be able to do things correctly eventually. Ultimately, to go from initial failure to eventual win depends on your ability to improve what you do from learning from experience - yours and anyone's.
Successful entrepreneurs learn differently from typical business students, according to research published in Organization Science and Strategic Management Journal. They exhibit superior "vicarious learning"—the ability to extract actionable insights from observing others' experiences. Studies of 460 life-science companies found that founders with "apprenticeship experience" at successful firms were the most statistically significant predictor of scaling to 50+ employees.
Contemporary research reveals similar patterns—entrepreneurs who worked at companies before disrupting them show 30% higher venture survival rates.
The learning mechanisms involve both intellectual and social capital acquisition. Successful entrepreneurs develop sophisticated "opportunity prototypes"—mental models of ideal businesses—through diverse exposure. They practice "co-active vicarious learning," actively engaging in reciprocal knowledge exchange rather than passive observation.
Studies of 132 small business owners found that those engaging in deliberate practice—systematically identifying and improving weaknesses with focused attention—achieve significantly higher success rates. The research emphasizes learning speed: entrepreneurs must compress decades of experience into months through systematic study of others' successes and failures. Where did Dyson find out he should run up the sand dunes? By studying and modelling another runner - the best one - looking specifically for what worked for him, what set him apart.
4. Leverage ideas and insights that are contrarian and true
By running up sand dunes, Dyson discovered a secret insight he could use on his competitors. As a founder, define your worldview and highlight areas where you diverge from the common view. Why is that? How can you test your differing views easily and often? Contrarian thinking correlates powerfully with entrepreneurial breakthrough success. Research by Bellezza, Gino, and Keinan found that intentional nonconformity leads to enhanced perceptions of status and competence, explaining why contrarian entrepreneurs gain credibility despite initial skepticism. Studies of 1,761 participants revealed that entrepreneurs high in "need for uniqueness" resist majority influence and pursue ideas others dismiss.
The best way to be contrarian is to be authentic and use your unique viewpoint to see things others can't, methodically exploiting gaps between your predictions and the consensus predictions.
5. Ask better questions
Asking questions is more important than answering them. The ability to ask better questions predicts entrepreneurial success more strongly than traditional intelligence measures. Research analyzing 1,761 participants found that curiosity exceeded self-efficacy, autonomy, and risk propensity as a predictor of entrepreneurial outcomes.
Two types of entrepreneurial curiosity drive success: I-type (pleasure of discovery) and D-type (uncertainty reduction), both moderating the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and venture creation.
In fact founders who drive innovation are not the best problem-solvers. They are problem-finders, like Da Vinci. Research shows that identifying worthy, meaningful problems first before solving them exist is what drives breakthrough innovation.
The quality of your questions defines how accurately you assess your decisions. Studies show entrepreneurs using structured questioning methods like the "5 Whys" achieve 40% better problem resolution rates.
Steve Blank's customer development model shows that systematic customer questioning reduces startup failure rates by up to 60%. The key lies in question quality—avoiding leading questions, focusing on actual rather than hypothetical behaviours, and relentlessly asking "why?" to reach root causes.
Stacking Dunes
Total commitment unlocks cognitive resources normally wasted on backup planning. Microscopic attention to quality creates customer loyalty and superior execution that compounds over decades. Systematic learning from others compresses lifetimes of experience into months. Contrarian thinking identifies opportunities while competition remains blind. Better questions reveal problems worth solving.
While no advantage is permanent, stacking sand dunes helps improve success rates, the cumulative result can be powerful. Case in point:
"70% commitment yields only 20% chance of success, while 100% commitment jumps to 75% probability"
"Entrepreneurs who worked at companies before disrupting them show 30% higher venture survival rates"
"Systematic customer questioning reduces startup failure rates by up to 60%"
"Founders with 'apprenticeship experience' at successful firms were the most statistically significant predictor of scaling to 50+ employees"
Lastly, staying power is also a sand dune in and of itself. Operating on a 10+ year horizon and staying in the game for as long as you can reduces competition to a fraction of potential rivals over time.