The N of One - 80th Percentile in Three Things
The Story
CJ Gustafson’s framing of his own positioning, quoted in The Rebooting: “I’m probably in the 80th percentile for CFOs. I’m probably in the 80th or 90th percentile for writing. And I’m probably in the 80th or 90th percentile in business sense. You take those three things and stack them together, and my goal was to be an N of one” (Source 1).
He repeats the same logic on the What Worked podcast, talking about his career trajectory: “You learn what you’re good at, what you’re interested in and what you’re uniquely qualified to do. And like what I did was I stacked a bunch of those building blocks together or kind of smashed them together, if you will, to create kind of like a skew of one, which is what I’m doing with writing about finance and also trying to do it in a way that that’s somewhat entertaining” (Source 2).
The credibility position that comes out of the stack is what The Rebooting calls “peer-level footing.” CJ on the same point: “I’m a practitioner of the craft that I write about. My whole background is helping companies budget their resources to get the most money out of it. Along the way I picked up all these playbooks on how to budget for your business, how to figure out how many sales reps you have to hire, what metrics you should use to gauge success” (Source 1).
His advice on the What Worked episode to anyone thinking about starting a company is the same logic flipped into a question: “Having domain expertise in anything makes you incredibly useful, especially with AI now. Like how do I stack things that I’m good at, that I’m interested in and uniquely qualified to opine on, to create like a one of one” (Source 2).
The Rebooting frames why this is a structural advantage in B2B specifically: “In B2B, the ‘creators’ are peers. CJ has credibility as a former CFO that a journalist or analyst will not have. He knows the issues because he’s dealt with them. That peer-level footing is leverage” (Source 1).
Lesson for Creators
You don’t need to be the best in the world at any one thing. You need to be in the 80th percentile at two or three things that almost never appear in the same person. Eighty plus eighty plus eighty looks like a hundred from far away because nobody else is standing in that exact spot. CJ’s spot is the intersection of CFO experience, finance fluency, and a writer’s sense of voice. Pick the two or three blocks that are already in your hands and stack them on purpose. That stack is more defensible than any single talent because it can’t be cloned by hiring one person.
Related
- Mostly Media at Three Million With No Full-Time Employees — the economic outcome the N-of-one creates
- Niche Within a Niche - The Wet-Dog-Food Agency — Nathan May: hyper-specific positioning over general positioning
- An example of non-obvious idea — general principle of finding spots others won’t compete in
- Earned Credibility — the broader credibility theme this story sits inside
- Writing His Way to CFO — the same skill stack flowing in the opposite direction