I’ve just read 1/3 of this book which seems to be quite popular here.
This thread has nothing to do with @mikecarlooch, I’m just quoting his post above because that’s the final straw that made me get the book.
As far as I see, this book is absolute poison for the entrepreneur. It argues against the “myth of meritocracy”, and instead says that success is both a matter of luck and hard work. And the key to using this is tapping into your “unfair advantage”… those circumstantial factors that can’t easily be replicated by others, that are ultimately the effect of luck.
It further argues that keeping the perspective of luck in mind will help you be more compassionate towards the less fortunate, and more compassionate to yourself when things don’t work out.
Suffice to say that for any winner this is absolute poison. First of all, when you fail, you don’t need compassion — you need to fix yourself so you don’t fail again. No excuses.
I don’t tolerate failure of any kind. I don’t need to be compassionate when I fail, I need to be pissed off so that I fix it. This has been the key to my success so far, but I think the two authors of this book, who have written it more to fit into the cultural climate (formed by losers) and promote their own business, would rather tell you that I was blessed with a gigantic IQ, good education, young sexy fit white male, bla bla bla. Furthermore, it seems that the authors have been the beneficiaries of luck themselves — and their own success WAS in fact a matter of luck.
Well, I can’t say that same about my success so far. No luck here — I just forged myself through years of hard work and willingness to do so much work as would be nauseating for the average human being. I recently hired a COO and they were utterly amazed at how much I could do alone. They wouldn’t believe that one person would be able to do the work of several departments at a larger company. It’s just that most people’s standards are so low. And I’m talking about smart people who have leadership positions in some of the largest companies in the world. Their standards are low.
So it’s no wonder if one of those people attains success that they attribute it to luck — because truth be told, if it wasn’t for Lady Fortune they’d be broke. But a real winner will never attribute their success to luck, except maybe as a political move to help losers feel better about themselves.
This is because a real winner is able to identify opportunities and apply tenacity and determination to get what they want. So don’t let anyone tell you that you need “luck” to be successful. It’s a lie, created by those who have never created anything by themselves, and have instead relied on their status, network or connections to achieve whatever fragment of success they have achieved thus far.
What ultimately matters is your work and willingness to succeed. You don’t need any connections, network or whatever “unfair” advantage to succeed. In fact, that’s the beauty of capitalism — you can build yourself from scratch, if you’re willing to outwork your competition and provide real value.
Unfortunately a lot of what passes for success is actually the result of luck — people whose only “merit” is their network and access. Such people aren’t used to hard work, because they’ve never worked hard (although they would consider what they do very hard work). Their success is merely the result of politics — being in the right place at the right time, with the right connections. If you have that, and you apply a non-lazy, average level of work, it’s true that you can be successful. But that’s not a winner. A winner crafts their success by themselves.
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum:
Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.
