Environment Dictates Performance
You can't do it outside the environment — change environments for an hour or two a week
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 94%
Priestley's saying, and the practical escape route for anyone stuck in a soul-draining job or circle. Entrepreneurship is an environment thing: you do it inside an environment and it is very hard to do outside one. The instruction isn't to blow up your life but to change environments for at least an hour or two a week — entrepreneur meetups run every night of the week in every city and every day of the week online. The counterintuitive follow-on is social shedding: the moment you step into the new environment you stop resonating with your old circle, and they will mock you under the cover of a friendly roast, because if you change, it holds a mirror up to them. The prison work makes the point sharpest — the entrepreneurial spirit was identical, only the available role models differed.
Origin
At 21 Priestley was drinking in pubs when jive dancers turned up; he asked how they did it, was told to come to dance classes, and was doing the full routine by the end of the first two-hour session despite believing he couldn't learn it in three months.
Core principles
- 01Environment dictates performance.
- 02You can only do it inside the environment, not outside it.
- 03One or two hours a week in a new environment is enough to start.
- 04Social shedding is the predictable cost — misery loves company.
- 05The mockery is a defence: if you change, what does that say about them?
How to run it
- 1
Pick one new environment
Find an entrepreneur meetup, group, mentor or online event and commit to one or two hours a week inside it.
Pro tip In every city in the world there are entrepreneur meetups every night of the week, and online events every day.
- 2
Show up before you feel qualified
Go in even though you're certain you can't do the thing yet — the environment supplies the norms, the partner and the moves.
Pro tip Priestley thought he'd never learn the routine in three months and had it inside two hours.
- 3
Expect and absorb social shedding
Anticipate the jokes from your existing circle, recognise them as identity-protection rather than judgement, and decide who you're willing to let go.
Watch out The resistance usually arrives disguised as a friendly roast, which makes it easy to mistake for harmless.
- 4
Reconnect around values, not geography
Use the shift from geographic to digital community to build a circle chosen on shared values, purpose and mission rather than proximity.
In the wild
Priestley saw dancers at a pub, asked how they did it, and rocked up to a class where it was completely normal to dance — music on, grab a partner, do the moves.
→ He performed the whole routine by the end of the first two-hour session, twenty years on he still remembers it vividly.
Working with the charity Key for Life in prisons, Priestley found a lot of the young men were entrepreneurs, but the only successful entrepreneurs in their environment sold drugs.
→ Shown an IT services company or a book publishing business instead, the same spirit would have gone there — the spirit was constant, the environment was the variable.
Common mistakes
Waiting to feel ready before entering the room
The capability is produced by being in the environment, so waiting until you have it outside the environment means you never get it.
Reading friends' mockery as evidence you're wrong
It's misery loves company — an attempt to hold your identity in place, not a considered assessment of your decision.
Is it for you?
Best for
People institutionalised in a corporate job or a circle that doesn't support what they want to build.
Not ideal for
Those already embedded in a high-performing peer environment aligned with their goals.
From the transcript
“I have a saying that environment dictates performance.”
“You can't do it outside of the environment. You can only do it in the environment.”
“There's this thing called social shedding, which I've never actually shared with anybody before”
From the episode
The Money Making Expert: The Exact Formula For Turning $100 Into $100k Per Month! 10x Your Income Without Working Harder! The Waiting List Hack That Will Make You Millions!
Daniel Priestley