The marketplace pays for mastery. A lot of people say, “Well, I want more money,” but my question would be, “Are you pushing mastery out in the marketplace?” Makes me think of Steve Martin, the legendary comedian. He was asked by a young comedian, “How can I be like you, as famous and rich and successful?” And Steve Martin thought about it, and he looked at the young comedian and he said, “Be so good at what you do, that they cannot ignore you.”
Why are fabled actors in Hollywood, the great ones, paid fortunes? Because so few people can
produce what they do. Why are the great Vegas performers paid kingdoms of prosperity? Because they’re so good at what they do. You see, so many people want the rewards of mastery, but they’re not willing to make sacrifices that mastery requires. So few people are brilliant and genius great at what they do.
Please remember that the marketplace rewards mastery. The marketplace will always pay you
for supreme quality. Be a virtuoso of what you do. Yes, it takes time. Yes, it takes patience. Yes, it takes mentorship. Yes, it takes practice, but today’s a great day to start. You’re going to get to the end of your life anyway. Why not start the process of virtuosity today, so when you get to the end of your career, or the end of your life, you are truly BIW, best in the world, at what you do?
That will not only make you a lot of money, because your service is so scarce that people are
willing to pay you a fortune for it, it will also give you so much joy. Because few things are as powerful as the pride and joy you will feel on pushing beautiful work out into the world.
So, it’s really worth thinking that… I see so many victims and so many ordinary producers in
difficult times, or when there’s a lot of competition, or when there’s industry disruption and they just complain, and they say, “Please help me,” and, “I need handouts and I need help,” and it’s like they’re so entitled, and they’re behaving like such victims. Then I see, even in difficult times and recessions, or in industries undergoing major disruption, and there’s that one entrepreneur and that one leader who says, “Okay, what served us to get to here will no longer work as we go forward. How must we pivot? How must we reinvent ourselves? How must we rebrand ourselves? How must we recreate the user experience?”
Here’s a great question. What value can I bring to my marketplace that no competitor is
currently bringing to the marketplace, and how can I bring that value to the marketplace in a form that absolutely stuns and delights the customers of that marketplace? If I were you, I would continue to be asking myself not, how can I be good? Because what Steve Martin replied to the young comedian, was this, “Be so good at what you do that they can’t ignore you.” And my loving challenge to you is become so good at what you do that we literally cannot take our eyes off of you because, you are so genius great at what you do.
Huge GCA, huge gargantuan competitive advantage. So many people don’t study anymore. Most people go to meetings unprepared. Most people don’t keep their promises. Most people don’t underpromise and overdeliver. Most people don’t study a little bit every night, so they get better at their craft. Most people don’t optimize their work every day by stretching and making a mini optimization that, over time, leads to a whole new level of craft. Most people don’t have a mentor. Most people haven’t read every book ever written on the subject of their work. You ask most people, even so-called professionals, you scratch a little under the surface, and you realize that their domain knowledge is superficial.
Please remember that, once you get to mastery, which you will if you stay patient-focused,
committed, you don’t get distracted. You don’t give up too early. You don’t chase every shiny toy that life presents to you. You will reach a place of mastery. Research has been done at 3.44 hours a day practicing one skill over time gets you to mastery. 3.44 hours a day. Anders Ericsson was the preeminent researcher in the field of exceptional performance. He was at Florida State University. He is the one who came up with the now famous 10,000 hour rule. It’s been popularized by a number of authors, but it really comes from Anders Ericsson’s research exceptionalists. Chess champions, great violinists, great footballers, and what he found was this. He found that it took 10,000 hours, or the equivalent of 10 years, at 3.44 hours of practice a day, before the first signs of genius presented themselves. Everyone says, “Oh, Mozart. Great composer.” Most of Mozart’s early compositions, when he was a little kid were mere curiosities. He wasn’t born into genius. It was because his father was a piano teacher and his sister was apparently more gifted than Mozart, but Mozart from a young age was giving these concerts to high society, in Salzburg, Austria. And he kept on practicing until after 10,000 hours, he started doing these compositions where people said, “Oh, you’re a genius.”You look at the Brazilian footballers. It’s the culture. A lot of people in the poor areas, the favelas, their only way out of poverty is through football because their heroes got out of poverty through football. So, so many children there, all they do is play football. By the time they are 11 years old, they’ve touched the football millions of times. Of course, they’re going to be brilliant. You look at the Beatles. Oh, they were genius grade. Do you know how many shows they played, year after… They were playing every single night in dirty concert basements. One of the greatest seductions is we witness a genius grade performer at the full height of their powers, versus looking at all the years of anonymity. There’s a term I teach in my mentoring methodology to the Titans and the heavyweights, and it’s 20 years of anonymous, or 10 years or 15years where no one knows who you are, but you’re steadily practicing and exploring and training and reading and studying and optimizing. Then you get to such a place of skill, the world says, “Oh, you were born with that.” No, you weren’t born with that. Beckham bent the ball like Beckham through practice. So the marketplace will pay you when you push magic and mastery.