Why you always hear about it too late
Not luck, it’s access. Here's how to build your own.
This article is part of The Unseen, our work on decoding the systems and incentives that shape markets and opportunities.
It’s Sunday night.
The house is quiet. LinkedIn is open. And you see it again.
Another former colleague, someone you know isn't any sharper than you, announcing their "exciting new venture." The third one this month.
A familiar tightness settles in your chest.
You’ve done everything you were told to do. The degree, the promotions, the 60-hour weeks that got you to a respectable title. Your income is comfortable.
By any reasonable measure, you are a success.
So why does it feel like you’re running in place while everyone else is catching a wave? Why do you always hear about the big opportunities right after they’ve passed?
Because you've perfected a brilliant, and deeply frustrating, algorithm for being one step behind.
Sound familiar?
When a new asset class is whispered about in niche circles, you dismiss it as fringe nonsense.
When early adopters start posting quiet, consistent wins, you call it a fad and wait for more data.
When it’s on the cover of the news and your cousin asks about it at Thanksgiving, you finally decide it’s "proven" and start looking for the "how to get started" guide.
By the time you get in, you are buying the bags of the people from step one.
You have arrived, perfectly on time, to provide their exit liquidity.
Please don’t take it as a personal failing. It’s really a design flaw. You've been playing the game of salaries and job titles with ferocious effort, while the real game - the shadow game of information flow, was happening in rooms you weren't invited into.
After years of working with people at the top, I’ve had to accept a ruthless truth about how opportunity actually works. It's governed by a simple physics:
🔳 Information > Wisdom > Effort.
This little hierarchy explains the frustration of millions of smart, hardworking people. You are trying to win by maximizing the lowest-leverage input.
The work, then, is not to work harder. The work is to get into a better room.
Here's how you build your own door.
Project 1, Build Your Personal Fortress
Before you can explore, your home base must be unshakable. Ambition on a shaky foundation is just anxiety with a to-do list.
Your fortress needs two things:
A Cash Flow Skill: A tangible craft so refined it can reliably pay your bills. This is your economic engine. It’s the source of all professional courage. It is your power to say no.
A Co-CEO for Life: A true partner, a friend, a spouse, a mentor, who is aligned with your mission. This relationship is a force multiplier, giving you the emotional stability to take real risks.
With these in place, you stop making decisions from a place of need. You start making them from a place of strength.
Project 2, Develop Your Economic Weather Radar
The smartest people I know still fail when they run a brilliant strategy in the wrong season. You wouldn't plant seeds in a blizzard. Stop using boom-time tactics in a bust.
A Summer market is all optimism and cheap capital. The right move is speed, expansion, calculated risks. As in our previous discussion on "The Connector's Game," this is when building new bridges is easiest.
A Winter market is pessimism and tight capital. The right move is resilience. You cut risk, hoard cash, and focus on survival. In a winter market, not losing money becomes its own, very powerful, form of winning.
Learning to read the season isn't complex. Look at hiring trends. Investment flows. The general vibe. Does it feel like a party or a funeral?
As the Danes say, "Der er ikke dårligt vejr, kun dårlig påklædning"- there is no bad weather, only bad clothing.
Living in Shanghai during the city-wide lockdowns of 2022 was a masterclass in this. The founders who thrived were the ones who saw the winter coming and had the right clothes for the storm.
Stop trying to be the smartest person in the room. Your only job is to get into a better room.
Project 3, Become an Information Node
If you feel like you're on the outside, it's because you're acting like an information atom. The goal is to become an information node. This has nothing to do with slick networking.
You stop asking "What can I get?" and you start playing a more sophisticated game.
🔳 The Rule:
Map the Network: Identify 3-5 people who are already in the room you want to be in.
Listen with Intent: Consume their work. Read what they read. Understand the problems they are actually trying to solve right now.
Route Valuable Information: When you find something, an overlooked article, a new tool, a introduction to a non-obvious angel investor they should know, whatever solves their specific problem, send it to them. The note should be concise and expect nothing in return. "Saw this, thought of your project."
That's it. Do this consistently, without agenda.
A magical thing happens.
The network starts to recognize you as a source of value. Information, the currency of the shadow game, begins to flow back to you. Doors you didn't even know existed start to open.
You are invited in.
This, by the way, is the antidote to "pseudowork." It’s the difference between being merely busy and being truly valuable. It's the core of the fix for that feeling we've talked about before on being smart, capable, and completely stuck. Becoming a node is how you get unstuck.
The Conversation That Breaks the Spell
There's a reason the people in the room don't send out a guidebook. Admitting success is driven more by access than by solo genius is a threat to their own story.
But you don't need their permission. You just need to see the game for what it is.
Back in March, I had coffee with a former exec who’d been laid off. Standard story: restructuring, generous severance, time to "explore."
From my chair, I could see his world completely differently.
His deep job experience, knowing which vendors his old company overpaid, what technical problems they could never solve, it was a goldmine of insider intelligence. He was on his 6th-round interview for another job, the slowest path imaginable. The fastest path was to start a niche consulting firm and make his first client the very company that was paying his severance.
He was so focused on climbing the next rung of the ladder that he couldn’t see the elevator waiting for him.
When I laid this out for him, he was speechless. Last week, he sent me a bottle of nice whiskey. The note said, "I finally get it. My old job wasn't my career. It was paid research."
Your New Game
That story isn't about one person's success. It's about what happens when you see your own value through a new lens.
Imagine it's six months from now. You're at dinner.
Someone mentions a problem. The old you would have sympathized. The new you listens differently. You notice patterns. You start conversations.
Eighteen months later, when the opportunity becomes "obvious" to everyone else, you're not scrambling to get in.
You're already there. Waiting for them.
You’re not buying their bags.
You're the one selling.
If this piece made you think of a specific person, a friend, a former colleague who's too smart to be this stuck, forwarding this article is a powerful first move as a "hgh-value node." It’s an act of routing valuable information to someone who needs it.
And finally, for the conversations that can't happen out in the open, you can always send me a private message. I read every single one.
Hi!
I'm Yuehan. After a decade spent building businesses in both the West and China, I'm sharing my most valuable, road-tested lessons right here on Substack.
Since I'm starting from scratch on this side of the world, your support means a great deal. If this piece resonated, a restack or a simple ❤️ is massively appreciated.
