Who Am I, Anyway?
I'm sure that lots of people have been wondering what exactly possessed me to start feeding my blog into Facebook each and every day. The short answer: ego. But a more refined question might be to ask what makes me think anyone would be interested in hearing my opinions, thoughts on marketing, and business ideas. It's not as though I've ever pioneered a new invention in the marketplace or started a (success) company as an entrepreneur. Who am I to be offering my advice and ideas to anyone?
I'm nobody...but that's the point. If life and history have taught me anything about what it means to be successful, it's that one critical component is luck.
However you choose to define success, good luck must play a key role for anyone in attaining it. In business, we all seem to attribute major successes to the character of the person who pushed through hard times and came out on top, and so we listen to what they have to say in the hopes that their words will contain some nugget of wisdom that will lead us down a similar path. But I think that most of them were, in large part, extremely lucky. (In other words: "Individual results may vary.")
Even if you can attribute success to a person's character, Malcolm Gladwell makes a pretty good case in his book Outliers that often, a person's character is also determined by circumstances. Bill Gates worked very hard to be where he is today, but he was also very lucky, too.
If I ever were to start a successful business and then sell it for millions of dollars, I'm sure that, for better or worse, lots more people would start looking to me for advice. And if I manage to rein in the ego I mentioned at the beginning of this post, instead of wallowing in all the props, here is the first piece of advice I'd give to everyone: don't let my dumb luck lead you to believe that you should listen to me.
The successful are the fortuitous, so don't seek advice only from them. Don't let the past success of any teacher act as a filter that drives what lessons you choose to learn and those you ignore.
I'm nobody...but that's the point. If life and history have taught me anything about what it means to be successful, it's that one critical component is luck.
However you choose to define success, good luck must play a key role for anyone in attaining it. In business, we all seem to attribute major successes to the character of the person who pushed through hard times and came out on top, and so we listen to what they have to say in the hopes that their words will contain some nugget of wisdom that will lead us down a similar path. But I think that most of them were, in large part, extremely lucky. (In other words: "Individual results may vary.")
Even if you can attribute success to a person's character, Malcolm Gladwell makes a pretty good case in his book Outliers that often, a person's character is also determined by circumstances. Bill Gates worked very hard to be where he is today, but he was also very lucky, too.
If I ever were to start a successful business and then sell it for millions of dollars, I'm sure that, for better or worse, lots more people would start looking to me for advice. And if I manage to rein in the ego I mentioned at the beginning of this post, instead of wallowing in all the props, here is the first piece of advice I'd give to everyone: don't let my dumb luck lead you to believe that you should listen to me.
The successful are the fortuitous, so don't seek advice only from them. Don't let the past success of any teacher act as a filter that drives what lessons you choose to learn and those you ignore.