Musings from the CU Suite

Written by Anthony Demangone

The problem with some successful people is that they make success seem easy. Their elegance, skill, and performance makes it look so simple. They must have uncovered some trick. They must know the short-cut.  

They must know the secret to success.  

I came across two things recently that underscored something important.  There is no secret to success.

First, here are the words of Seth Godin. 

Here's a common mistake: make something amazing and figure that people will beat a path to your door.

Or go to a retailer or a sales rep or a middleman and expect that they will offer your product or service to their customers and let you keep most of the profit.

The beaten path isn't something that happens to you, it's something you build. It's not something convenient, it is, in fact, the primary asset of your organization.

Attention and trust are worth more than just about anything else, because they make it likely you have a chance to tell your story, which might resonate, which then leads to the beaten path. It's the last step, not the first..

And this came from Steve Martin.  Yes, that Steve Martin.  While being interviewed by Charlie Rose, he said the following. 

When people ask me how do you make it in show business or whatever, what I always tell them — And nobody ever takes note of it 'cuz it's not the answer they wanted to hear. What they want to hear is here's how you get an agent, here's how you write a script, here's how you do this — But I always say, "Be so good they can't ignore you." If somebody's thinking, "How can I be really good?", people are going to come to you. It's much easier doing it that way than going to cocktail parties.

Both Godin and Martin are talking about the same thing.  Success takes talent and time and devotion.  

If that's a secret, so be it.  But it isn't the secret that most people want to hear about.  But I think it's a good thing.  If there's no true secret, other than hard work, developing a talent, and devotion - the world becomes more of a level playing field.  

With that, have a great weekend, guys.