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How Not To Achieve Business Success
the key to achieving business success
...is to be good at it.
Are you tired of smug successful people expanding their fame and success by publishing articles about how to become successful?
And it all comes down to this: be really good at it! How helpful is that, really? Oh yes, they mix it up with lots of catchy turns of phrase, like "Fail your way forward" suggesting that they made lots of mistakes along the way. Did they really? I kind of doubt it. I think their mistakes are just little post-it notes on their unstoppable march to a destiny of success.
Thousands of blog posts tell us how to build a blog into a revenue generator, and yes we eat it up: the best ways to go laughing all the way to the bank on one blog post per day. Can you stand a guy who says having a job is dumb and he's making $40000 per month on his $9 blog while he spends time with his family? Let's face it, I can write, but I can't write like that; my strengths lie elsewhere. And please stop telling us to create income generating systems. It is insulting! Don't you think we will, just as soon as we figure out how?
Hanging on every word of Joel Spolsky (my favorite software industry inspiration) is no better. As he exposes his journey of building a software startup into a success he makes it all sound so sensible and straightforward. Does that help me? No, not a bit. It has been interesting to watch but nothing that he did has worked for me.
Some people might say Joel is an inspiration to them. Knowing about him may indeed be an inspiration, but that is different from following his advice or trying to do what he does. I hope I am failing to be perfectly serious here, but might I suggest that the things that worked for these people were likely specific to their strengths and the specific opportunities they encountered along the way?
What is ridiculous too is the thousands of get rich books and schemes on the market that make the authors richer, complete with TV infomercials full of laughable customers prepped and glamorized to help you make believe they're the next Donald Trump.
Oh yes, and Donald Trump and his advice to "love what you do." Mr. Trump, do I love buying and selling companies and real estate? No I don't. Okay fine, it is valid advice if you read the small print, but my rant is this: who are you, Mr. Trump, to tell anyone how to be successful?
Oh yeah sure. Follow these 10 steps, get organized, be consistent, unlock your potential, blah blah blah. If we could really do this beyond 10 minutes of motivated euphoria, wouldn't we already?
When I was ten I climbed onto the roof of my house (where we weren't allowed) with my bad boy cousin Todd while my parents were away. And we were talking about how to jump down onto the balcony which was an 8 foot drop from the eaves (nothing dangerous). Well we were both hanging from the eavestrough when my parents drove into the driveway. My cousin bravely dropped but I didn't dare and no matter how he tried to convince me I was too petrified to let go. So my dad found out where we'd been (and he "rescued" me too).
But in case you missed the point, yeah my cousin was able to do it; he was successful in dropping to the balcony undetected. But so who was he to try and tell me I could do it? He was the brave one.
What I am saying should be completely obvious at this point (if I could write worth anything): who are successful people to tell you and me how to be successful? They're successful, so in that respect they're not like us. And therefore they can't tell us how to be successful.
In fact the specific thing on which they are lecturing us is precisely the thing on which they have nothing in common with us!
You and I can be successful but let's not look for instructions from the juggernauts of success. Seriously, would you ask the most popular kid in school how you can be popular?
All these success messengers truly defeat the purpose of achieving success. They distract us. They reinforce the fact of what we don't have, they remind us of what we are not: successful.
So I am going to do myself a favor and tune them out. And I invite you to do that too. And yes, I am the right person to suggest you do that because I am just like you, I have been completely unsuccessful at it.
see discussion at Joel's forum:
http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz.5.465377
note by original poster Ben Bryant, 15 Mar 2007 15:29:00 -0500
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