I just watched a short video (1 minute long), where Seth Godin interviews Gary Vaynerchuk. Gary answers the question, what makes someone indispensable. Wow. It's really something you should watch. Short and lot's of information. This is it, on Seth Godin's blog. What do you think. He's right isn't he? - Jens
I'm new here to this particular forum, but I've been involved in IM and other related forums for a little while now. In my experience it's always, always been in "finding that sweet spot" as Gary mentioned that I've achieved any level of success. How that translates in my situation, as Gary also mentioned, is setting yourself apart from the crowd. From day one I recognized that I had to be different to succeed, but I had a faulty understanding of "different". I interpreted different as "this guy teaches you how to do 10 things, so I need to teach them 15", and that would be my USP. I tried to set myself apart by doing more than the other guy. Bad move. For me the key to being different wasn't in doing more, but in doing better. And the fact is there was only 1 of those 15 things that I tried teaching people that I was really great at. So after a lot of hard lessons learned, I ditched the other 14, focused on just the 1 thing I did really well, and from there found my first taste of success online. Not sure if that makes much sense or not...I guess I'm just saying I love the share. Many thanks, Derek
It sounds very much like he's making the "follow your passion and wait for success" argument. If you pick that one thing you're really good at and wait long enough, you'll find success. I like the idea, but I don't entirely agree with it. I really do believe that it takes a certain level of intelligence and savvy to be able to even pick that thing, let alone find success. For example, let's say you are amazing at making creepy birthday cakes. While I'm sure there's a market for this, you need a fairly (unless you have unlimited funds or are among the luckiest of individuals) sophisticated business sense and the ability to execute a thought-out plan. People who've already achieved a certain level of success - such as Gary - find it somewhat easier to preach such an appealing, if too good to be true, idea. If you're interested in this sort of thing, I'd recommend Malcolm Gladwell's book "Outliers." It really delves into success and where it comes from. Can an individual truly be indispensable, or does luck play the biggest role?
Just wanted to echo that recommendation... Outliers is a GREAT book, but so is anything he writes. Derek
I agree with you. Gary has a point, and he makes it sound easy, but it's actually fairly hard. I tried blogging about my passion, animals and vegetarianism, but I couldn't do it. It worked for a few months, probably more like a few weeks, but then, I couldn't find more to write about. Even though I am passionate about it, I couldn't write about the topics. I think the same goes for other topics. Even though you're passionate about it, it might be hard to turn it into a business (especially if you're not an experienced entrepreneur). By the way, I have bought outliers, but I haven't read it