Free Solo

This past week, the world watched in awe as Alex Honnold climbed Taipei 101, a 1,500-foot skyscraper in Taiwan, without ropes, parachutes, or any safety gear.

Climbing the building alone and without equipment—known as free soloing—left viewers frozen in anxiety. Commentators debated his altered amygdala, the part of your brain that processes fear. Online reactions called it the greatest human athletic achievement in history.

As I watched, my reaction was different.

“This will be a cakewalk for Alex.”, I thought.

I was impressed but not anxious in the least.

Of course the climb was dangerous but Alex had already performed the greatest human athletic achievement in history.

In 2018, I watched Free Solo, the Academy Award–winning documentary of his free solo ascent of El Capitan, a 3,000-foot granite wall in Yosemite National Park.

El Capitan is nearly twice as tall as Taipei 101. The rock face is unpredictable. In several sections, Alex hangs on by little more than shallow indentations on the granite wall.

The producers hired professional climbers as cameramen. There are moments so nerve-wracking that even they had to turn away.

By comparison, Taipei 101 offered consistent surfaces, predictable geometry, and inches of ledge at every move.

Alex made both feats appear magical while the rest of us questioned his sanity and whether or not he’s actually human.

Where “Magic” Actually Comes From

From the outside, Alex looks superhuman.

The fear we feel watching him isn’t the fear he feels.

It’s the fear we would feel in his place, without his years of training and experience.

There lies a tremendous confidence gap between our perceived difficulty and his experienced effort.

This gap creates the magic.

A similar gap exists when we use products and services that feel magical.

Anyone who remembers the first iPhone or iPad can recall everything from the packaging to the effortless touchscreen. You felt like someone had granted you superpowers.

If you want your product or service to feel like a superpower to your customers you must close the confidence gap for them.

Mind The Confidence Gap

A product feels magical when it collapses perceived effort into an effortless outcome.

Not only because it’s fun or surprising, but because it eliminates the distance between intention and result so completely that the user wonders whether the hard part even happened.

This is the Confidence Gap.

The smaller the gap between what the user expects something will take and what it actually takes, the more your product feels like a superpower.

There are three ways great products close this gap.

Invisible Complexity

The product does many hard things while the user experiences one easy thing.

During his Taipei 101 climb, Alex had to navigate rounded architectural protrusions known as “the dragons.” To clear them, he launched his body upward in what looked like a single, effortless move.

What we didn’t see was the precise coordination of every bone, muscle, tendon, breath, and hip angle required to make that motion work.

Great products do the same thing.

They absorb complexity the user expects to endure.

Examples:

• Stripe - "Add payment processing to my website" sounds like months of technical and compliance work. Stripe delivers it in 12 lines of code.

• Uber - Coordinating drivers, payments, routing = invisible. The user clicks a few buttons in the app and sees "3 minutes away."

• Shopify - Global commerce, tax logic, hosting, inventory, and fulfillment collapse into “Start selling online.”

The magic isn't simplicity for its own sake.

It's that the product absorbed complexity the user expected to endure.

Success Metrics

• Number of steps from problem to solution

• Time-to-first-value (TTFV)

• Percentage of tasks handled without user awareness

If happy customers can’t describe how it works, you’re doing it right.

Mind Reading

On a free solo climb, hesitation can be more dangerous than movement.

Alex often isn’t deciding what to do in real time. He isn’t weighing options or debating grips. Every sequence has already been rehearsed until the next move presents itself automatically.

What looks like instinct is really preparation eliminating choice.

Great products work the same way. They don’t ask users to think in moments where thinking creates friction.

They anticipate intent and act on the user’s behalf.

Examples

• Amazon 1-Click Purchase - The user intends to buy. Amazon removes the entire checkout ceremony.

• Netflix - You don’t have to search what to watch. You’re offered what you’re most likely to enjoy.

• Google Search Autocomplete - You haven’t finished typing, and the answer is already there.

The magic is in what the product doesn’t ask.

Every extra decision drains your customer’s mental energy.

Success Metrics

• Number of decisions required to reach value

• Drop-off rate at decision points

• Time spent “stuck” between actions

If users move forward without pausing to think, your product is reading their mind.

Disproportionate Outcomes

The most unbelievable part of Alex’s climbs isn’t the height.

It’s how little visible effort it appears to take.

Years of preparation compress into a few hours of calm, controlled movement. An outcome that feels wildly disproportionate to what we’re seeing in the moment.

That’s why it feels unreal.

The best products create the same effect.

Small actions unlock a result that previously required time, money, or expertise far beyond what the user just invested.

Examples:

• Google Maps (early versions) -Two addresses in, turn-by-turn directions out, instantly and for free. This used to require a dedicated GPS unit or printed MapQuest pages.

• ChatGPT (first use) - You ask a vague question. You get a coherent, structured, useful answer.

• Robinhood (early days) - Opening a brokerage account once took days of paperwork. They made it a 90-second flow on your smart phone.

The magic is in the gap between what the user thought was possible and what just happened.

Success Metrics

• First-session “wow” moments (measured via surveys or activation events)

• Viral or word-of-mouth triggers (“You have to try this”)

• Reduction in alternative costs (time, money, expertise previously required)

Superpowers exist where outcomes feel outsized relative to effort.

The Next Step

Most products and services aren’t magical.

They work by making the customer do the work.

Most optimize for functionality while ignoring effort perception.

They add features without removing friction.

Alex Honnold’s climbs remind us that magic doesn’t come from eliminating danger.

It comes from eliminating effort.

Years of preparation, practice, and risk management collapse into calm, controlled movements.

From the outside, it looks impossible. From the inside, it feels routine.

That’s the experience your customers want.

Close those confidence gaps, and your product stops feeling like a tool and starts feeling like a superpower.

My goal with The Leap is to provide you each Saturday with the knowledge, tools and lessons learned to help you get started and keep going toward building your future. 

Whether you are making the leap to startups, solo-entrepreneurship, freelancing, side hustles or other creative ventures, the tools and strategies to succeed in each are similar.