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Why Studying Exceptional People Doesn’t Help Us

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Process vs Result

We all have a desire to be significant. Yet few of us feel we are creating the rules that will get us there. So we study “exceptional people” to find rules for success. But we almost always miss the one rule that makes them successful; struggle.

While we idolize our hero, too often we lose sight of what got them there. With very few exceptions, it wasn’t talent, but struggle. Is it possible that deep commitment to the effort it takes to get to your Big Why is what actually creates meaning, joy and success?

Joy in the Journey
Are we too focused on the result achieved by “exceptional people” to understand how they got there? Why do athletes, music heroes, and business people who are already at the top of their field and financially secure keep going? Why don’t they retire as soon as they get there? Is the result their focus?

I believe it is because they have found the secret (such an over used term) of success. They understand that meaning and joy are not found in the destination but in the journey, and that love of the process of persistent struggle is the key to joy.

Love the Persistent Process
How did your star athlete get to the level they are at? By persistent struggle on the weight machines, on the track, and daily work at perfecting their craft. Relentless, consistent, persistent struggle. And a deep love for that process. Yo Yo Ma, world famous cellist, once told my daughter “The key to becoming a world class musician is to learn to love to practice; to practice every day as if you’re sitting on stage at Carnegie Hall for your debut concert.”

Do you love the Persistent Process, or are you focused on the result? Measure the result, but focus on the process and building your mental muscles through it. Learn to love the process and the ongoing development of both your craft and your business.

You will find the most meaning and joy in having made it through the tough times and having created success by loving the Persistent Process of getting there.

Your heroes didn’t get there by talent. They got there by learning to love the process of getting there. Take the things you learn from them with you into the real world, get beat up, fall down, get back up a little stronger, and do it again. Build your mental muscles one at a time, but relentlessly. Unfailing commitment to the process of getting there is the only thing that will get you there.

No Exceptional People, Just Exceptional Commitment
We get what we intend, not what we hope for. Intend to embrace the process in order to get the result. Don’t read books marveling at people who have achieved great things. Don’t study their result. Marvel instead at the fact that these otherwise very common people were dedicated and sold out to the long process of getting there, no matter their circumstances.

Circumstances don’t make me who I am. How I respond to them does. Respond with tenacity and commitment to the long view. That will get you there! Do what it takes to build a business and a life of significance!

Joy is not found in the destination, but in the journey. Love the journey, the Persistent Process, and success will follow.

We don’t know HOW to get where we’re going.

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Neither do you.

A few years ago the Fortune 500 CEOs were all surveyed and ask this question:

“What is your greatest fear?”

The #1 answer – “I’m afraid I will be found out to not know what I’m doing.”

I’ve started seven businesses. None of them have crashed and burned (yet), but I got out of a few because they were bad ideas that weren’t going anywhere, and in some cases barely breaking even. A couple made decent money and grew well, and we sold one to the largest company in that particular industry. Right now we have two businesses growing internationally, one of them on four continents that has the potential of changing the game for small and local business owners worldwide. It grew 392% in the last four years.

But…
So it’s nice to be able to claim a decent track record: to date – so far. And yet I have to be honest and say that when it comes to getting where we want to end up, I have no idea what I’m doing. But I’m pretty comfortable with that, because I’m just as sure you don’t, either.

Utter Clarity by Groping Our Way to the Light
I do have a pretty sane assessment of where we are (most business owners don’t), and I know with Utter Clarity where we want to end up, but I have no grand plan to get from where we are to where we want to end up a few years from now. The journey is not mapped out and the path ahead is full of Intuitive Guesses yet to be made. It’s not going to be easy, and there is no such thing as going on auto-pilot and watching this business fly itself.

Just like the Fortune 500 CEOs, I’m making this up as I go along. But since I don’t have nervous investors, unlike them, I don’t have to pretend I know what I’m doing. I can say, “I don’t know” out loud.

It’s okay to not know how we’re going to get all the way from where we are to where we want to be. In the real world, business owners don’t become successful by a grand vision, a genius scheme, a fail-safe product, or a five-year business plan (also known as voodoo & fortune telling). As Bill Hewlett of HP said, they had no business plan in the early days when they got moving, they were just being opportunistic and doing whatever they could to grope their way to the light.

As We Go, Not Before – The Intuitive Guess
We will grow this business not by having it figured out, but by figuring it out as we go. We will not get to Utter Clarity by digging a canal, lining it with concrete and floating to our reward, but by a thousand changes in a thousand directions, relentlessly doing whatever we have to, adapting however we must in order to get to our ocean.

All we get to know along the way is where we are, where we want to end up (Utter Clarity), and an Intuitive Guess at what we should do next to get there. And we’ll be “wrong” a lot (we already have been)– that’s how we’ll find out what we should really be doing. We’ll get our maps when we’re done, just like any explorer.

You’re going to do it the same way. Welcome to building a business. Stop trying to figure out HOW to get all the way from where you are to where you want to be. Know exactly where you are, and get Utter Clarity about where you intend to end up, then make one short-range decision that you think might help you get to the end game. Take the feedback the world will give you from making that decision, and do it all over again.

A Thousand Little Hows, Not One Big How
Don’t waste time trying to figure out how you’ll get all the way from where you are to where you want to be – as if there is one big “how” that would answer that. Get Utter Clarity about where you want to go, then be comfortable asking a thousand little “hows” along the way to get there. You don’t have to know what you’re doing. You just have to know where you’re going. That’s enough. Anything more would spoil the adventure anyway.

Three magic words: “I don’t know”.
Use them often. They will guide you to the next little “how”, and all the way to where you want to be.

Why shelf-help books only help your shelf

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Expert-itis & Other Diseases

“That book was great! You should read it.”

Beware the pursuit of knowledge.

The great majority of business books (and other non-fiction) are really just “shelf-help” books. They help your shelf look better. But they don’t change anything. Why?

I get a lot of business book recommendations from people. When I do, I usually ask them how they have used the book to push their business and/or their own life forward. What I’m really asking is, “Did this book transform something, anything, or was it just intellectually stimulating without changing anything?”

Head vs. Heart
We’re addicted to intellectual knowledge, which is only one of the two kinds of knowledge we find in most dictionary definitions of knowledge:
1) Intellectual knowledge – knowledge of the head.
2) Life/experience knowledge – knowledge of the heart.

The ancient Greeks had two words for knowledge:
1) Gnosis knowledge of the head – the pursuit of information
2) Epignosis – knowledge of the heart – the pursuit of transformation

Too many books are based in gnosis, which, by itself, does nothing to make us successful. The reason we’re addicted to gnosis, is that head knowledge makes me “feel” more equipped to deal with my business, without having to actually do or change anything. It’s cost-free.

Consumers flock to the 3-easy step diets, the magical-millionaire website promises and the business book that claims it will get you a 4-hour work week. Educational institutions are the worst perpetrators of this lie – you’ll be richer tomorrow because you know more (gnosis).

Most seminar leaders know you will pay more for a seminar with a 3″ binder and 6 CDs than a simpler one that will change your life.

The Trenches of Transformation
The best business books aren’t informational, but transformational. Very few come from the trenches of transformation, where someone took big risks, put themselves out there, worked hard, sweated through it, and lived to write about it. I pay a lot more attention to people who have done what they are asking me to do, who are sharing from their experience, not from their head knowledge.

When I was in my early 20’s people told me I should be writing books. As I was formulating my first book of knowledge created in the ivory tower of my mind, I met a guy who had written a successful book when he was in his late-20s. He told me he had learned so much through experience that he realized his book was a load of hooey. But since it was in print, he would live with that mistake the rest of his life.

After that meeting I vowed to not write until I had experienced transformation and knew with my life (epignosis) that it could transform others, too. As a result, I didn’t publish my first book until I was 56. The most gratisfying thing about that book – it was named #1 Business Book of the Year not for volume of sales, but “for impact”. And people who read it don’t say, “that was interesting”, but “that changed the way I do business.”

Stay Away from Gurus and Experts
Research shows most people don’t get past page 18 of every book they buy. That makes perfect sense to me because we are not naturally cognitive, we are naturally intuitive, and we know in our hearts that the “3-easy steps” book we bought won’t give us the success it promised.

Are you reading shelf-help books or transformational books? Please recommend your transformational books to others here – thanks!

“Experts” & “Gurus” Won’t Help You Succeed

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Get an advisor, not an expert.

“Everything that can be invented has been invented.” Charles H. Duell, commissioner, US Office of Patents. 1899

The problem with experts and gurus is they already know everything. If you ask them for help, you’ll often get stale, static advice based on a narrow view, bad assumptions and old ideas. How do you find good advice? Get an advisor, not an expert.

“The telephone has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.” Western Union internal memo, 1876.

“Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.” Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.

“There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home.” Ken Olsen, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp. 1977

Advisors vs. Experts/Gurus
An expert or guru already knows everything, which usually makes them a terrible place to find help. An advisor knows the only way to get to a good plan is to start with a bad plan and work constantly to make it better.

Never use an expert or a guru. Here’s some “advice” on how to find an advisor instead:

Look for an advisor who:

  1. Doesn’t have 12 easy steps to success. That expert/guru has no idea how to succeed.
  2. Sees possibilities, and understands that almost no new business is going to land on the product it will make money at right away. It takes 5-10 iterations to find the money-maker. An “expert” will tell you how bad your idea is. An advisor will help you get from your initial idea to the money-maker.
  3. Doesn’t start by seeing if the numbers work. The numbers almost NEVER work early on. It’s about resolve and commitment first, the numbers second.
  4. Helps you test your resolve to somehow make it work in the face of great odds and your mother’s voice in your head telling you not to take risks.
  5. Leads you to gain clarity about the end result you really want.
  6. Gives you tools to keep that end result directly in front of you at all times to effect every decision you make.
  7. Promotes a sane assessment of where you are right now – doesn’t blow smoke about the gap between where you are and where you want to be.
  8. Helps you define the next few steps to get from where you are to where you are going.
  9. Doesn’t confuse you with defining every single step between where you are and where you want to go. Don’t do a Business Plan – it’s a huge waste of time. Just know clearly the end result and the next few steps to get there.
  10. Keeps you focused on three simple things – 1) Where am I? 2) Where do I want to go? 3) What are the next few steps?
  11. Keeps you from doing useless and endless research about what could happen if you ever did something.
  12. Gets you MOVING and helps you plan as you go – Implement now. Perfect as you go. (not Implement now. Never perfect; or “Perfect now. Never implement).

I’m a big fan of Outside Eyes on your business. Get advice, just don’t get it from people who have it all figured out. Find somebody who says they’ve made a lot of mistakes and knows that life is more like a stream than a canal – it’s messy and flows all over the place on the way to the ocean. Business is the same – it’s messy and flows all over the place on the way to success.

People with easy answers haven’t faced the hard questions. Get an advisor, not an expert. You’ll be much more likely to get where you’re going.