I encourage you as of this moment we share together to be in the magic business no matter what your business in the past has previously been. It’s better to spend the rest of your career pushing 10 masterworks, 10 Moonlight Sonatas, 10 Mona Lisas, 10 The Prophets, 10 Catcher in the Ryes, 10 Harry Potters, or 10 The Grapes of Wrath, or 10 The Old Man and the Sea. It’s better to do that than release 1,000 mediocrities. When you say to yourself, “I refuse. I hold myself to the highest of standards, like that great chef, like that masterful artist, like that chess champion, like that great designer, like the manufacturer of Ferrari or Rolls Royce,” or whatever luxury brand or high-quality item that really speaks to you, maybe it’s like a Patek Philippe watch, I don’t know. But when you start saying to yourself … And I also think of James Cameron, the great Hollywood director, and I also think of his former wife, Kathryn Bigelow, who produced, or I believe directed one of my favorite movies, Hurt Locker, which a lot of people say it’s the near-perfect movie. If you haven’t seen Hurt Locker, watch Hurt Locker, which also talking about movies makes me think of Citizen Kane and Orson Welles. Orson Welles was working on a movie, and his movies used to take forever because he always, again, you’ve got to work brilliantly and work fast. He didn’t do it. But Orson Welles, one of the greatest directors and filmmakers of all time, he said, “I used to take so long to do a movie because I wanted it to be so magical that I always got thrown off the set.” And that is actually what happened with one of the movies he worked on called, I believe it was Touch of Evil. So the film studio threw him off the set and said, “We don’t want you on the picture anymore.” And this is to me, unbelievable. And it shows the commitment of the true masters. Even though he wasn’t paid, he was no longer associated with the movie, it was his baby. And he did a roughly 60-page document that described in intimate detail, OAD, Obsessive Attention to Detail, how the movie should be shot.
And so my point is in a world that pushes mediocrity, I think there’s really two twin themes going on in the world today. And I want you to think about them. The mass mediocratization of humanity. It’s like brilliant, potentially brilliant people operating like cyber zombies and sheeple, and subscribing to mediocrity in the way that they work, the way that they create, the way that they produce, the way that they use their time, the way that they live. I’m not judging, I’m just reporting. And the second theme to think about is the collective de-professionalization of business. People don’t see themselves as craft people anymore. People don’t go to work super prepared as much anymore. You go into most shoe shops, or most hotels, or most restaurants, or most tech stores, and you say, “Oh, tell me about this.” They don’t have the product knowledge. Many years ago, people understood a job is only a job if you see it as a job. Your job is your chance to represent your good name. Your job is a chance for you to deliver world-class value to other human beings. Your job is a chance for you to go to the jagged edges of your past potential, and through doing difficult work and pushing magic, grow in character, grow in honour, and obviously grow in capability and performance. So it’s better to push 10 masterworks versus offer 1 million mediocrities.