What the water taught me about your competition.
I've been kitesurfing since 2012. At some point I hit a ceiling. The jumps got higher, the tricks got cleaner, and progress still slowed.
So I picked up a wing and a foil while wingfoiling was still brand new. Beginner again. Falling, frustrated, humbled by riders half my age. What the pros did back then felt just a few steps ahead.
Fast forward to today. 14-year-olds on the world tour throw triple rotations like it's nothing. The bar moved faster than I imagined.
Entrepreneurship works exactly the same way.
Forget the competitor you've been watching for years. The one that should worry you is the kid building an AI-powered business in your industry from a dorm room. No 40-year-old Excel processes. They start fresh with ChatGPT, Replit, v0, and Lovable, while many corporations still struggle to roll out ChatGPT.
If your industry is mid-transformation, get ready to have your mind blown and your ass kicked. I know the feeling. I've had both. The hard part is being willing to be bad at something again, long enough to get good.
Never plateau. Keep learning. The next wave is always coming, on the water and in business. And I never rode one alone: the right people next to me at the right time saved me whole seasons of trial and error.
The right people, at the right time, change everything.