Leverage - Brought to you by Success

Have you ever listened to a speech from a well-known motivational speaker or watched a sketch from a famous comedian? Of course you have, the social media sites are full of these success-filled videos where well-known faces share their 2 cents on life or just try to make you laugh. So, I’m wondering if you ever think to yourself: ‘’His advice is good but nothing other than common sense’’ or ‘’How is that even funny, this joke/prank is so overused!’’. And then you perhaps think that you could jump in and do just the same. I mean, life advice is still life advice, isn’t it? A funny joke is still a funny joke regardless who tells it, right? Well, in my opinion, not necessarily. Why? Well, as Kevin Hart would say: ‘’Let me explain.’’

It's easier if I draw this…

So let’s say you are at point A. No show of success yet and therefore no leverage at your disposal. You might have tried and failed or you maybe haven’t started at all. That’s all okay; at this point, we are all the same, no success, no leverage and the endless sea of possibilities to choose from. Now, let’s say you’ve bought yourself a boat and started sailing following the path of this green line. You put in the hard work, get some help from the good weather, maybe hit a few storms and somehow get to the point B. You find a small harbour and proudly look back.

You’ve gained AB in the terms of success. You can say it’s been going well and are happy that your hard work is paying off. However, there are other sailors competing with you going after the same or the similar prize. They are as successful as you are but as there is so many of you, nobody can really stand out. So, your hard work brought you an AC amount of leverage. Your brand might mean something to someone, you may provide a slightly less good service to some of your clients and still get good feedback or you might just take a longer holiday as you know the inflow of work cannot completely disappear. Leverage feels good but you need to watch out because if you get deceived by it, the value of your success might start to depreciate and slowly disappear. Also, if you look carefully you can see that AC is a lot smaller than AB which means you need more success to have a smaller amount of leverage in your life. In my opinion, this discrepancy is due to the crowded market, a number of more successful sailors with bigger boats in the market, your lack of experience, etc. Some sailors settle here and live happily ever after and some strive for more and, therefore, buy a bigger boat and move on. In this story, we’ll move on with them.

After roughly the same amount of time and effort you get to the point D. You drift in that harbour with your boat bursting with pride from all the new success and take a sip of a well-deserved Martini, of course, shaken not stirred. Now you enjoy more leverage than before and rightfully see yourself climbing up ‘the food chain’. There is a group of sailors below you that try to replicate your journey or create a completely new one. There are also big cruise ships still powering through the sea above you. But, you are good. For the same amount of success you got maybe a little bit more leverage than before but, who cares, you’ve got money for a new boat or a better anchor. Let’s say you are still hungry and decide to go for a bigger boat.

As you start sailing, you realise something odd is happening. The success you are achieving might be bigger and more substantial but, that X-axis just refuses to fill up the way it used to before. It might annoy you until you look at the Y-axis, you suddenly realise that that sweet leverage is going through the roof. Wait, what happened? Suddenly DE from the success line is way smaller than the FG from the leverage line. I mean, you like that but, you still wonder what happened. Well, somewhere between point D and E on that green line 'someone' (your hard work) gave you a magic polisher that made your boat fly through those waves. Yes, you are better but, even if you make mistakes that would previously mean the end of your career, they are now not that important or, even better, people around you see them as positives. You reached a level on the green line that brings you exponential increase in leverage while the perception of success stays roughly the same or only marginally increases. Now you can experiment and even win from your failures. Maybe you put out an average song that still gets a hundred million hits on YouTube, or your comedy show is slightly less good than usual but still gets cheered by the media and the audience. Literally, everything you do turns to gold.

Reach that point, wherever that point might be for your profession, and use that leverage carefully because you now easily influence the masses and have the power that only a few people have. You maybe didn’t reach the chosen ones at the very top but, you still get to make some rules of the game. The possibility of your ship getting wrecked into pieces is lower and is defined almost entirely by you. However, don’t forget, even the cruise ships sometimes cannot withstand the rough sea and there is always a chance you’ll find yourself on the way back.

#Leverage #success #work #goals #ship