It’s better to push 10 masterworks versus offer one million mediocrities. 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. 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 maybe it’s whatever luxury brand or high-quality item that really speaks to you. Maybe it’s a Patek Philippe watch, I don know. 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 favourite movies, The Hurt Locker, which a lot of people say it’s the near perfect movie. If you haven’t seen The Hurt Locker watch The 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, again, you 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 want 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 A 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 did with the movie, it was his baby. And he did a roughly 60-page document that described an 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 are really two twin themes going on in the world today. And I want you to think about them. The mass mediocrity of humanity, it’s 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 deprofessionalization of business. People don’t see themselves as craftspeople 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 honor, and obviously grow in capability and performance. So 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. I know you get my point. It’s better to do that than release a thousand mediocrities.
