The 8th Lesson I Left Out

What I Learned From Being Around The Top 0.01%

Sharran Srivatsaa

Feb 01, 2026

My YouTube video on the 7 lessons I learned from the top 0.01% just took off.

Here are the 7 lessons:

Lesson one from my parents on the only thing you can control
Lesson two from Dave Matthews on why the rules don’t work
Lesson three from Elon Musk on the Stanford question
Lesson four from Issy Sharp on one simple word
Lesson five from Goldman Sachs on the magic cocktail
Lesson six from a billionaire on the $100 million realization
Lesson seven from Alex and Leila Hormozi on money

But there’s an 8th lesson I wish I’d included.

It explains why all the other lessons work. It separates people who talk about greatness from people who achieve it.

That lesson is preparation.

Most people don’t know what that actually means.

They think it’s just showing up early or reading a few notes. Let me show you what real preparation looks like and give you a way to use it in your own life.

Work Hard vs. Work Smart. Meh.

You’ve heard it a million times: Work hard and work smart.

Preparation is working smart.

You do the thinking, the research, and the practice before the moment arrives. When everyone else figures things out in real time, you already know what to do.

Let me give you some real life examples.

Kobe Bryant

During Team USA training camp, Kobe called a trainer around 4:30 in the morning. He did conditioning drills until 6. Then he lifted weights until 7. Then he shot baskets in the gym until he made 800 of them.

All of this happened before the team’s official practice started.
Freaking savage.

By the time his teammates showed up for the first drill, Kobe had already done more work than most players did in a full day. That’s the Mamba Mentality everyone talks about. He won games because he prepared at a level that made the game itself feel easy.

But, it’s not just in sports….

Warren Buffett

When students would ask the legendary Warren Buffett about how to prepare for a career in investing, he’d always answer it the same way…

He would hold up a stack of annual reports and say, “Read 500 pages like this every day. That’s how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest.”

Most people look for hot tips and the easy button while Buffett goes to the office and reads until he knows more than everyone else.

Decades of reading gave him better judgment than his competitors.

Here’s the weird part: nobody thinks reading is sexy. It’s boring. It’s slow. But Buffett turned the most boring activity into his biggest advantage.

The difference is important to know…

Squeezing In More

The best work earlier, longer, and more deliberately than everyone else.

Kobe designed his schedule to fit three training blocks into a day because most pros only managed two.
Buffett has read vastly more than the average investor for decades.

While a little talent is definitely helpful, the unfair advantage is how much of your life you turn into preparation that nobody else sees.

My Weekly System

I have a ritual I call “review-preview.”

Every week, I review the past week, then I preview my next two weeks. I go through every appointment on my calendar and ask two questions:

What can I do to prepare for this meeting?
If I had to replace this meeting with a memo, what would I write?

Then I write at least one page of notes or bullet points for each meeting. Sometimes it’s an agenda. Sometimes it’s the key points I need to cover. Sometimes it’s just my thinking on paper.

I store it in the calendar entry. When the meeting starts, I open it and it makes me feel ultra-prepared. Most importantly, it helps me to contribute in a way that makes everyone’s time useful.

I’d love for you to try it…