Why Would Anybody Want to Be in a Fair Fight? Creating your own advantage

April 11, 2011

Create your own advantage!

If you have trouble discovering an innate advantage—or if what you find doesn’t seem advantageous enough—you create an advantage. The top 1 percent we surveyed and studied did not always have size, beauty, or remarkable demeanors (some were downright obnoxious and a bit hard on the eye), but they all had advantages they used to help them be successful. These advantages were often not innate but things a lot of people might have. The top performers just identified the potential advantages and, if they did not have what they needed to create them, went out and got it.

Creating an advantage is not easy, especially if you have no talent, but it is always possible. Just think about people you’ve worked with over the years: unimpressive, untalented, and eventually in charge.  As you read this, look around you. What does success look like? What do those successful people have that you don’t (other than success, obviously)? Chances are they have more than innate advantages. Try to discover some learnable behaviors or positioning strategies that you could duplicate. Is there an education level that can’t be maneuvered around? Is there training or certification needed?

As you look around, remember that it’s important to know the business culture you’re operating in. You must see business for what it really is: a place where fairness falters, where even the seemingly undeserving win. The terms “fair fight” and “level playing field” have little business in the business world. The bottom line in the real business world is that fairness rarely raises its ugly head. A fair fight means you are unprepared. Heck, I could lose a fair fight. I personally like my fights lopsided in my favor and my opponents minimally skilled and easily defeated.

Let’s be really honest: You want a fair fight only if you believe that equality is more important than personal success or if you are bored with how easily you’ve been winning your fights. When I first started to hear the advantages of the most successful, it did not seem right that they were successful regardless of talent, skill, or education. But I realized that the people who are willing to overcome everything in their path (like a giant lack of talent) because of their desire for their goal were as deserving as anyone else.

Viewing business this way requires a willingness to step away from traditional norms of fairness—to understand that “unfair” fighting does not mean unscrupulous or dishonorable. It means thinking critically about some business practice, personality trait, or personal strategy and then methodically employing it to your advantage so you stand out from others and win. Creating a phony Facebook account for a person who is competing with you for a promotion that clearly states his dedication to Hitler is definitely unscrupulous. However, making sure you discuss your love of the History Channel in the interview with your Nazi-crazed future boss is not. You knew what he valued and got excited about his favorite subject. And you used your thought-to-be-useless knowledge of World War II to get the promotion.

Read more from motivational guest speaker Garrison Wynn’s best selling book: “The Real Truth about Success: What the top 1% do differently”


Get-over your overnight success theories

January 25, 2010

Response to The Washington Post “On Success” question about Scott Brown’s stealth success?
Q: How often do achievements like that of the newly elected Republican senator from Massachusetts seem to materialize out of thin air? Do you believe in the concept of overnight success?

Most overnight success is about working really hard for a while – or, in some cases, most of your life! – and then having one action or set of circumstances throw you over the top. We don’t track people in their careers when they’re doing nothing special. Why would we? Still, most people like the idea of overnight success because we can just wait for someone we’ve never heard of to emerge to a position of success and then we can say, “This guy came out of nowhere and now he’s big time; maybe I can do that even though I have no experience and I’m the living embodiment of mediocrity!”

My point (and I’m pretty sure I just made it, but because I’m a professional speaker I’ll do it again) is that, to a great extent, overnight success is a myth. It’s more than extraordinarily rare for someone to be working at Burger King one day and running for governor the next. Even VP candidate Sarah Palin was an actual governor, not just a housewife we found in the wilderness! Now, maybe the entertainment world can fool us because some singer we’ve never heard of competes in a contest and suddenly has fame and success. But none of those people started singing yesterday. … OK, clearly some did, but Simon Cowell or some other mean British guy usually crushes their dreams before their lack of talent can infect the public.

As far as Brown goes, he may be someone to watch; he has some presidential qualities about him (which means he is not goofy or overtly fake and looks like the winner of a central casting call for politician-looking guys). If he works hard for a few years and plays his cards right, he might eventually become an overnight success in the White House.

Read more from “On Success” pannelist at the Washington Post


Oh, the drama! Failing to acheive your goal! – Washinton post “On Success” response.

December 22, 2009

Q: What’s the right response when you come tantalizingly close to success but fail to achieve your goal? How hard is it to recover from heartbreaking setbacks like the ones the Washington Redskins have endured in recent weeks? How often have you experienced reversals that tested your own spirit?

The lowdown on losin’ it

Well, let’s be honest: The most common response to failure when you’ve just missed your goal by an inch is to freak out, followed shortly by whining and complaining that life is not fair. (There may be profanity involved.) While this might not be the best response, it is the common one, based on the many anonymous answers I’ve heard to that question.

If you are a passionate, creative person, (like a motivational speaker) it could be difficult to recover because you have a high propensity for dramatic reactions — that is, a low lose-it threshold.

In the course of my company’s research, we’ve found that very successful, driven people or people who care deeply about something have a tendency to overreact. (Just read the comments on my post about Tiger Woods titled “Paying for fame.”) It seems to be a rare (and kind of dull) group of people who can consistently separate the data from the drama and react in what people keep telling us is an appropriate manner.

If you are a Redskins fan, the appropriate response is to put your foot through your television! I know how you feel: I’m a Houston Texans fan (as in we’ve never had a winning season and we’re the first team in history to do so with a No. 3-ranked offense two years in a row). It’s hard to recover from heartbreaking setbacks; but let me just say that if a football team tops your list of disappointments, then your life must be fantastic!

I have had my share of personal setbacks; in fact, back in high school, football was involved. I once threw eight interceptions in one game. My dad said it had to be a record. (Thanks, Dad!) If I had died sometime during my junior high football days, they would have built a statue of me in front of the school. Unfortunately, I lived just long enough to suck!

That high school football experience became a strong learning point, though. I was well liked by my teammates and learned that if your relationships are strong enough, you can survive the blame, even if your response to failure is, um… a failure.

Read more “On Success” answers


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