Find your horse. Sometimes it’s not that you’re doing something — it’s the thing that you’re doing that’s important.
The book, not the writer.
The horse, not the rider.
Richard Koch explains this idea very well in this article. Find the right horse for you and back it. You’ll be in for one heck of a winning ride.
“Don’t follow your passion”. That’s contrarian advice right there. Or is it?
In his commencement speech to the Columbia Class of 2015, Ben Horowitz demonstrates that not following your passion works. Because our passions, “like boyfriends”, can change over time, and we should follow what we’re good at.
Ben says that, “The third issue with following your passion is you’re not necessarily good at your passion. Has anybody ever watched American Idol? You know what I’m talking about. Just because you love singing doesn’t mean you should be a professional singer”.
That’s true. We’ve all seen it. This is 17 minutes of the best career advice I’ve seen for a while. Worth the watch.
This is an excellent commencement speech by Chris Sacca.
His last piece of advice — be your weird self.
That’s a great piece of advice. Your weird self is the one that requires no effort, has no pretence and wears a smile — most of the time.
Chris Sacca went from $4 Million USD in the hole to zero in 2005, and is one of the most successful venture capitalists today. He’s well worth the 28 minutes.
A repost of Richard Koch’s Law of Singularity article to remind myself and you, that sometimes there is only one way to save your business or brand.
One way.
And it’s usually really, really hard to do. So hard that some executives will put it off and put it off until it’s too late and they’re out of business.
If you’re struggling with a brand that’s not performing I recommend you read and then re-read the case studies in Richard’s article. They are an excellent prompt to finding the one way to kick start an ailing/failing brand.
Sign up for Richard’s blogposts here. Always a good read.
I’m putting this here as a reminder for when my children are older, but before they can beat me. The idea that practising one thing 10,000 times is better than practising 10,000 things once is an old one.
It’s called an apprenticeship, or putting in the work. I’ve used this discipline to this day, and it works. It can be boring at times, but if the goal is big enough, if you care enough to think “How could I do this better today” every day, you will be happy and you will win.
I enjoyed this letter from Pete Sampras to his 16 year old self. Writing such a letter would give you time to assess your life, see what worked, what didn’t, show you what’s really important and help you to move forward with pace and optimism.
Start writing one to your 16 year old self today.
