Have you ever met someone who knew the outcome of a situation before it even happened?
They aren’t psychic or able to see the future. Instead, they recognize and learn from patterns, a skill that highly successful people implement, according to billionaire Michael Rubin.
Rubin is the CEO and founder of sports merchandise retailer Fanatics, a company that’s helped him amass a reported net worth of $11.5 billion. He credits much of his success at building and running Fanatics, which was worth $31 billion following a fundraising round in 2022, to pattern recognition, he recently told life coach Jay Shetty’s “On Purpose” podcast.
“It’s a really important skill in business, because I think it’s predictive of the future,” Rubin said.
As an example, Rubin explained how he vets potential employees — gathering data beyond their resumes and job interviews.
“If I like them, as soon as they leave, I go out and start calling people that I knew that we have in common to recognize patterns. To me, 50% is the interview and 50% is what I learn behind the scenes,” said Rubin. “Someone could blow me away … but you find out people don’t like working with them. Or you can find out that person was a little bit understated, but they’re a beast.”
Whether he’s making business decisions or playing blackjack, Rubin said he relies on the skill to make good choices: “Pattern recognition is everything. I use it in everything that I do.”
A skill for dodging potential problems
The human brain constantly processes patterns, helping you understand information, languages and even your own imagination. Relying on this skill to dodge potential conflicts and negative outcomes can help you think more critically.
Rubin isn’t the only one who swears by the skill. At Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting in April 2016, CEO Warren Buffett discussed a decision — driven by pattern recognition, he said — that he’d made to avoid investing in drug company Valeant Pharmaceuticals, which is known today as Bausch…
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