The third prong of the Good to Great model involves the translation of that at which you are best in the world into something at which you can make a lot of money. In the corporate world the goals are to:
- Maximize profits;
- Accelerate growth; and
- Create a sustainable competitive advantage.
And so to it is for you and your personal professional business. Again, this will be personal to you. How hard to you want to work? How much money do you want to make? When do you want to retire? Stuff like that. This process can be tailored precisely to your needs.
Find the Driver:
I attended the Festival of the Little Hills yesterday. It was a lovely day. Very relaxing and for a person who studies passion, it is on display in spades. There were rows of booths with artisans of varying levels of expertise, all displaying their wares for the passers by. I stopped to speak to a particularly wonderful glass artist, from whom we purchased a few items, and I asked her about her work. She was clearly passionate. From what I could tell, her work was extraordinary.
After she explained in detail how she does what she does, I asked her why she sells at shows like this. “That’s easy,” she answered, “I love the people.” She has a shop back home, sells through quite a few retail outlets around the country and sells quite a bit over the internet. She considered that she probably does not need to do this, but this is how she got started and this is one of the things she loves about doing what she does.
As we spoke, however, she also pointed out that these shows drive people to her website, which takes them to the stores that sell her items, and from both she makes a great deal more money than what she will take home from this weekend. In her mind, these shows are the driver of her economic engine.
In the end, she comes because she loves standing with me, talking passionately about her art, and selling me just what my lovely wife was looking for. That drives her passion and HER economic engine. That is what we are all striving for.
Follow Through:
I met the number one professional dart player in the United States over the weekend. I did not even know there was such a thing as professional darts. This guy can knock a dime off your tongue from 10 feet away, with a dart.
You could never in a million years get me to stand there with a dime on my tongue so he could show off.
“Oops, one more time. Sorry about that chap. The medic here will fix that right up. You’ll be talking again in no time. Next?”
How did he practice? How many people have holes in them because he had not quite perfected the feat? Even Meadowlark Lemon missed his patented half court half hook every once in a while.
He is incredibly passionate about darts. He plays with darts all the time, reads about darts, watches darts and travels the world participating in professional dart throwing competitions and exhibitions. The way his wife rolled her eyes confirmed this. As a result, he has become the US Dart Champion and is ranked in the top five in the world. He has found his passion and is best in one world and working on becoming best in a bigger world. Two prongs accomplished.
Does this drive his economic engine? He makes a decent living, but he has not yet channeled his passion and the fact that he is best in the world into truly driving his economic engine. His wife holds down two jobs. He has no sponsors, no agent, no commercial endorsements, no line of darts or dart shirts, and otherwise does nothing besides winning dart competitions. Unlike the glass artisan from the fair, he has never followed through to cause his passion to drive his economic engine.
Tiger Woods makes millions playing golf. That drives his economic engine, but the REAL MONEY comes from sponsors, endorsements, appearance fees, etc. It comes from the follow through. As you become best in the world you need to follow through and say to yourself, in the words of Cuba Gooding, Jr., “Show Me the Money.”
All I could think about as I spoke to the dart champion, were all the opportunities he had to make money using his expertise in the dart world. What should he do to cause his dart throwing to accelerate his economic engine? He has the driver. He needs the follow-through.
It reminded me of the movie with Tom Cruise and Paul Newman, “The Color of Money.” Paul Newman was the Hustler, reborn from the 1960s film about a pool shark who tried to defeat Minnesota Fats. Newman tried to explain to Cruise that one makes money in pool, not by winning tournaments, but by sharking pool and playing the competitions behind the scenes. That is how one drives the 8-ball economic engine. Tom Cruise had the passion and drive to be best in the world, but he missed that critical point.
How do you turn that into money!!!
Finding the Money.
The next several blog posts will assume that you have:
- begun the iterative exercises required to figure out what you are passionate about; and
- created your culture of discipline necessary to become best in the world.
If you have not, START. If you are not going to start, stop reading this blog as it is a waste of your time. You will remain one of the modestly paid worker-bees the rest of us need.
As Chris Draft of the St. Louis Rams recently pointed out,
“If you are not a Superstar, from the moment you make the team they are trying to replace you.”
Who is Chris Draft, you ask? My point, and his, exactly.
You can make yourself a Superstar, but remember, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods and Albert Pujols work harder than everyone else in their professions. Sam Walton pointed out after WalMart was promoted as an overnight success,
“We were an overnight success that was over twenty years in the making.”
Quotes are close but may not be exact.
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