"How to Avoid Being Deceived by Big Shots: Quickly Identify Their True Strength in 3 Seconds"

This article is Lu Canwei's 123rd original piece.

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Throughout our lives, we always encounter many people. In 1990, a British anthropologist named Robin Dunbar proposed the "150 Rule," also known as Dunbar's Number. He believed that the upper limit of the number of people with whom we can maintain close interpersonal relationships is 150. This number includes familiar old classmates and colleagues, while the actual number of close friends is likely to be even lower, approaching single digits.

However, with the development of technology, our social networks have long surpassed this figure, especially since many are merely acquaintances. For instance, some people now have WeChat friends exceeding ten thousand, and some have multiple WeChat accounts. With so many people, how can we quickly identify whether someone is just bluffing or genuinely capable?

Bluffing

They like to use labels to showcase themselves.

They prefer to flaunt particularly impressive labels, such as prestigious universities, high-end positions in well-known companies, or connections with industry bigwigs. Almost no one dislikes slightly embellishing themselves; packaging a score of 100 as 120 is acceptable, but if it’s packaged as 1000, that’s a bit excessive...

When I was starting my business, I often attended offline events and met many self-proclaimed investors and corporate executives. Back then, with no experience in identifying people, I was easily fooled.

They give the impression that they can only demonstrate their value through external factors rather than providing value directly. They resemble the so-called experts on TV, who often need to make a "decision against their ancestors."

They have many ideas.

They frequently use jargon from the internet, such as empowerment, ecosystem, and especially recently, they often mention AI integration. However, the classic phrase from the early days of mobile internet was "SOLOMO," which stands for Social (social), Local (local), and Mobile (mobile), meaning social local mobility.

Yes, like Momo.

This classic scene was also featured in the American TV series "Silicon Valley." Of course, there was also the O2O era, during which everyone was talking about mobile internet entrepreneurship. In that time, it was rumored that having a concept was enough to secure funding, yet we only managed to obtain a small investment.

Many projects around that time failed to secure funding. The idea that concepts alone could attract investment was merely a survivor's bias; investors are not foolish; they deal in real money and will not squander it.

At that time, a big shot approached me about creating a social project aimed at blue-collar workers, which could help them find jobs and also build a community.

Well, I’ve heard of this project again in the past two years, but it has been renamed to "flexible employment."

That big shot claimed his company had resources, making it very advantageous to pursue this project. However, after a short period of collaboration, I found that there was neither money nor resources coming in, and I couldn’t even see a business plan. Every day, he just wanted to add whatever was trending to the project without knowing how to do it.

If this were now, I might have directly asked, if you have resources, why not set up a project team in your own company? Or you could outsource first to get the business running and see how the data looks. Or simply ask specific questions: how to acquire customers, what the customer acquisition cost is, what the monetization path looks like, and what our competitive barriers are, since technical capability is never a competitive barrier (for most projects).

If the other party gives you a feeling of being lofty and disconnected from reality, then don’t waste your time; after all, everyone is a product manager now.

Truly Capable People

Data

Yes, data is extremely important. If someone tells you how amazing they are, you need to see if they have data to back it up. For example, if someone claims they made billions, you need to check whether they are talking about a very large number of stores or just a few thousand or tens of thousands. The more precise the data, the higher the credibility.

How did they acquire customers? What is the customer acquisition cost? What is the business model? What are the conversion rates at each stage? If the other party cannot control the data of their own project, it can only be said that this person is either talking about someone else's project or is merely a participant without having truly managed it.

Those who genuinely manage their own projects are extremely sensitive to data. For instance, our former boss could deduce what happened just by noticing even slight changes in data and then quickly make decisions to adjust.

In the past, whenever it rained, offline order volumes would drop, but orders on delivery platforms would surge. Environmental factors are just one of the influences on data. Similarly, when we noticed a drop in orders in a certain city, after ruling out environmental reasons, we later discovered that the local mobile carrier had issues accessing our services.

Monitoring business data is also a crucial aspect of system stability because sometimes you may find that everything seems normal with the system, yet business data is plummeting.

Details

Details are also a very important aspect, especially when recounting one’s experiences. Having clear details about what has been done, such as how a project was initiated, what challenges were encountered, how they were resolved, and why certain decisions were made at the time, is essential.

If a person can describe their past actions clearly, it indicates a higher level of involvement in those matters.

We often encounter people who claim to be early employees of certain companies and say they worked on specific projects. If the conversation stops there, it can generally be concluded that their level of involvement in the project is not as high as they claim.

Expressiveness

In simple terms, it means being able to simplify complex matters. This is somewhat akin to the Feynman technique; when a person has fully learned something, they can express it in a way that others can understand.

If you find someone unable to simplify complex events, it generally means they haven’t fully grasped the matter or don’t understand it well, so they can only use jargon to gloss over it, leaving you with the feeling that you don’t understand because you’re not knowledgeable enough.

We can observe that some people speak humorously and are very down-to-earth because they have deeply engaged with and understood the matter, allowing them to speak with ease.

Moreover, capable individuals are never those who don’t read or learn; they are also very willing to seek advice from others in areas where they are not proficient. Thus, you will find that they seem to know everything and can explain things very clearly.

In Conclusion

You must remember that those who are far more capable than you will not pay much attention to you. If you find someone impressive but they don’t engage with you much, you can basically conclude that your level has not yet reached theirs, so strive to improve yourself.

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