Hard Truths You Should Know Before Becoming Successful: A Seven Part Series - Part 5
Welcome to week five of my mini series from Benjamin Hardy, the Bestselling author of Willpower Doesn’t Work. The series highlights important concepts for success in both your business and personal life. For your convenience find Week #1, Week #2, Week #3, and Week #4 here.
Today we look at five new hard truths about the journey to success. Enjoy the read!
1. Don’t Wait To Start
If you don’t purposefully carve time out every day to progress and improve — without question, your time will get lost in the vacuum of our increasingly crowded lives. Before you know it, you’ll be old and withered — wondering where all that time went.
As Meredith Willson has said — “You pile up enough tomorrows, and you’ll find you are left with nothing but a lot of empty yesterdays.”
I waited a few years too long to actively start writing. I was waiting for the right moment when I’d have enough time, money, and whatever else I thought I needed. I was waiting until I was somehow qualified or had permission to do what I wanted to do.
But you are never pre-qualified. There is no degree for “Live your dreams.” You qualify yourself by showing up and working. You get permission by deciding.
Life is short.
Don’t wait for tomorrow for something you could do today. Your future self will either thank you or shamefully defend you.
2. Don’t Look For The Next Opportunity
The perfect client, perfect opportunity, and perfect circumstances will almost never happen. Instead of wishing things were different, why not cultivate what’s right in front of you?
Rather than waiting for the next opportunity, the one in your hands is the opportunity. Said another way, the grass is greener where you water it.
I see so many people leave marriages because they believe better relationships are “out” there. In most cases, these people start new relationships and end them the same way the previous relationship ended. The problem isn’t your circumstances. The problem is you. You don’t find your soul-mate, you create your soul-mate through hard work.
As Jim Rohn said, “Don’t wish it was easier, wish you were better. Don’t wish for less problems, wish for more skills. Don’t wish for less challenge, wish for more wisdom.”
3. If You Can’t Solve A Problem, It’s Because You’re Playing By The Rules
“There is nothing that is a more certain sign of insanity than to do the same thing over and over and expect the results to be different.” — Albert Einstein
Convention is where we’re at. Breaking convention is how we’ll evolve, which requires a gargantuan quantity of failure.
If you don’t have the grit to fail 10,000 times, you’ll never invent your light bulb. As Seth Godin has said, “If I fail more than you do, I win.”
Failure is something to be prized and praised. Failure is feedback. Failure is moving forward. It’s conscious and exerted effort toward something you’ve never done before. It’s incredible.
“The person who doesn’t make mistakes is unlikely to make anything.” — Paul Arden
4. How You Set Up The Game Is More Important Than The Game Itself
“People may spend their whole lives climbing the ladder of success only to find, once they reach the top, that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall.” — Thomas Merton
Too many people are playing the wrong game — a losing game from the onset — and it hurts like hell. It’s how you ruin your life without even knowing it.
More important than playing “the game” is how the game is set up. How you set up the game determines how you play. And it’s better to win first, then play.
How does this work?
Start from the end and work backward. Rather than thinking about what’s plausible, or what’s expected, or what makes sense — start with what you want. Or as Covey put it in 7 Habits, “Begin with the end clearly in mind.” Once that’s nailed down, then dictate the daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly behaviors that will facilitate that.
Jim Carrey wrote himself a $10 million check. Then he set out to earn it. He won the game first, then played. So can you.
5. Don’t Publish Too Early
At age 22, Tony Hsieh (now CEO of Zappos.com), graduated from Harvard. When Tony was 23 years old, six months after starting Linkexchange, he was offered one million dollars for the company. This was amazing to Tony because less than a year before, he was stoked to get a job at Oracle making 40K per year.
After much thought and discussion with his partner, he rejected the offer believing he could continue to build Linkexchange into something bigger. His true love is in building and creating. A true pro gets paid but doesn’t work for money. A true pro works for love.
Five months later, Hsieh was offered 20 million dollars from Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo!. This blew Tony away. His first thought was, “I’m glad I didn’t sell five months ago!” However, he held his cool and asked for a few days to consider the proposal. He would make this decision on his terms.
He thought about all the things he would do if he had all that money, knowing he would never have to work another day in his life. After reflecting, he could only devise a small list of things he wanted:
A condo
A TV and built-in home theatre
The ability to go on weekend mini-vacations whenever he wanted
A new computer
To start another company because he loves the idea of building and growing something.
That was it.
His passion and motivation wasn’t in having stuff. He concluded that he could already afford a TV, a new computer, and could already go on weekend mini-vacations whenever he wanted. He was only 23 years old, so he determined a condo could wait. Why would he sell Linkexchange just to build and grow another company?
A year after Tony rejected the 20 million dollar offer, Linkexchange exploded. There were over 100 employees. Business was booming. Yet, Hsieh no longer enjoyed being there. The culture and politics had subtly changed in the process of rapid growth. Linkexchange was no longer Hsieh and a group of close friends building something they loved. They had hired a bunch of people in a hurry who didn’t have the same vision and motivations they had. Many of the new employees didn’t care about Linkexchange, or about building something they loved. Rather, they just wanted to get rich quick — purely self-interested.
So he decided to sell the company on his terms. Microsoft purchased Linkexchange in 1998 for 265 million dollars when Hsieh was 25 years old.
A similar concept emerged in a conversation I had about one year ago with Jeff Goins, best-selling author of The Art of Work. I asked his advice about publishing a book I want to write and he said, “Wait. Don’t jump the gun on this. I made that mistake myself. If you wait a year or two, you’ll get a 10x bigger advance, which will change the trajectory of your whole career.”
Here’s how it works. With 20K email subscribers, a writer can get around a $20–40K book advance. But with 100–200K email subscribers, a writer can get around a $150–500K book advance. Wait a year or two and change the trajectory of your career (and life).
This isn’t about procrastination. It’s about strategy. Timing — even a few seconds — could change your whole life.
These are some powerful quotes and ideas to consider as you go about your day today. Stay tuned for two more weeks of this seven part series. Share your comments, critiques, and discussions below, or get in touch directly with me at: skrawitz@savills.ca.
Have a great week,
-Stan Krawitz