When I Look in the Mirror - I see Elon Musk

"When I Look in the Mirror I see Elon Musk"

My Job Here is Done™ Transcript (for general use only – machine-generated and it may not be accurate)

Dave (00:00) Hey, who's your business hero?

Kelli (00:02) I don't have one.

Dave (00:04) What? Every entrepreneur and intrapreneur has a business hero?

Kelli (00:08) Nope, not me.

Dave (00:09) Well, okay, mine is Elon Musk, and I'm not afraid to admit it.

Kelli (00:14) I love Elon and I have so much respect for him.

Dave (00:19) Not enough to be your business hero?

Kelli (00:22) No, I can learn from him for sure, but I can also learn a lot from Sheryl.

Dave (00:26) Sheryl? Sheryl Sandberg, COO at Facebook?

Kelli (00:31) I think that's Meta now.

Dave (00:33) Yeah, you're right. It's meta now. She's awesome.

Kelli (00:36) Yeah, she's great. But I'm referring to Sheryl, who owns Sheryl's jewelry shop in town for, like, 20 years. She has a wealth of knowledge to share.

Dave (00:46) So Sheryl is your business hero? What book did she write?

Kelli (00:50) She didn't write a book. She's not like Batgirl, as far as I know.

Dave (00:53) So no big superhero of yours?

Kelli (00:55) No. I think you're looking at this whole business hero thing all wrong.

Dave (01:01) Maybe we all are.

Intro (01:03) Hi, I'm Dave. And I'm Kelli, and this is my job here is done. If you really want that next promotion or you're a rising star entrepreneur, we have some stories to tell that will absolutely help you. I've been starting and running businesses all my life. And I've worked for the man like a dog for decades. Together, we'll share stories, ideas, and notions that will help you absolutely soar past that cruiser sitting next to you. And if you're grinding forward with your growing business, we know where the landmines are. Let's find them. Hey, it's only about 20 minutes. What do you have to lose? Nothing or everything.

Dave (01:49) Well, hello, and thanks for joining us today. I'm Dave.

Kelli (01:52) And I'm Kelli, and welcome to the podcast. Before we get started, just a quick reminder that you can learn more about the podcast, listen to all the previous episodes, read our bonus blog material, and interact with us at our website, Myjobhere sdone.com and on Twitter at myjobpodcast.

This is the one about idolizing a business hero, wanting to be just like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, or Oprah and why picking one hero to emulate may be a really bad idea.

Dave (02:20) When I was, like, five years old, I wanted to be my hero.  At five it wasn't a business hero, it was Superman. I was so convinced that I could be Superman that I tried to fly.

Kelli (02:33) Oh, boy. So what happened?

Dave (02:36) As you could imagine, nothing good. I got on the Shed's roof next to our driveway. It was a little shed, like a little tool shed you put lawn mowers in and so on and so forth. I grabbed my favorite blankie, I just loved my blanket, and I wrapped it around my neck as a cape. Then I stuck out my arms and I screamed, look up in the sky. It's a bird. It's a plane. No, it's super Dave. I jumped headfirst onto the driveway and then was flown” by my dad in the Rambler station wagon to the hospital for stitches.

Kelli (03:14) So Super Dave went splat.

Dave (03:17) I would say splat is a good way of looking at it.

Kelli (03:20) Well, that right there explains just about everything.

Dave (03:23) Yeah. So getting to the superheroes and business heroes part of this, I hear very, very often from new and upcoming smart people, they say things like, I read the Jobs book and he was super impressive. He led with an iron fist. He took no shit from anyone.

Kelli (03:40) Yeah. He would fire people who couldn't explain their ideas quickly enough.

Dave (03:44) But he was sensitive and respected.

Kelli (03:47) These are all quotes from the book or soundbites from the videos that you watch to help keep things interesting.

Dave (03:54) And that's okay because that's kind of like the lure of the book or the video as they drag you into their life. But don't say you just want to be like him or her and follow that leadership style.

Kelli (04:06) Well, first, that won't work for you. You're going to fail, I promise. You'll make an ass out of yourself trying to fly like Superman.

Dave (04:12) I don't know if that was a dig.

Kelli (04:14) Yeah, you're smarter than that, right? You don't really believe in these soundbites and then use just the convenient ones to make decisions, right?

Dave (04:22) Hopefully not. We are not saying that Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or Ariana Huffington, Sheryl Sandberg, Oprah Winfrey, Mark Cuban, John Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, or even Elon Musk are not worthy of study, nor are we implying that you can't learn a lot from them. What we are saying is please don't strive to be like them. They are unicorns in the truest sense of the word. And you and I are just simply not in that league.

Kelli (04:49) Sorry. Not sorry.

Dave (04:50) Right.

Kelli (04:51) We think the advice to read books about quote unquote, and I'm making air quotes.

Dave (04:56) 1990s air quotes.

Kelli (04:57) Yeah. Those kind, “unicorns” is bad advice.

Dave (05:02) Well, first of all, when we say unicorn, what we mean is that rare find, something that's highly desirable but difficult to achieve.

Kelli (05:10) Like success or significant wealth.

Dave (05:13) Now, I think reading about unicorns is okay if you have the right mindset.

Kelli (05:16) There's nothing wrong with being inspired by someone's journey. The problem begins when you heroize that person.

Dave (05:22) Yeah. Trying to be someone you just simply are not. So what negative effects can come from that one is that you can start setting unrealistic and unachievable goals for yourself.

Kelli (05:33) Then you get discouraged by your achievements when they don't really match your hero's success story.

Dave (05:39) Right. And you begin to emulate that individual's personality traits instead of being you molding yourself to be kind of like that person.

Kelli (05:48) Then you get distracted by altering your own natural rhythm.

Dave (05:51) And basically, when you put that cocktail together, you're now faking it and you're now trying to be someone that you're not, and you're going to lose sight on the big picture. The goal that you're really after.

Kelli (06:02) Because you're so busy trying to be like someone else. The magic is within you. You don't need to try to steal someone else's magic. You have your own.

Dave (06:10) I'm going to talk in a little bit about how you can actually pull important things from the teachings of these people that you may or may not idolize. But first, let's do some success math and a warning.

Kelli (06:25) If your goal is to be a billionaire, please stop listening to us.

Dave (06:29) And we don't want you to take that the wrong way because everybody wants to succeed. But literally, if your mindset is I am going to try to be a billionaire or my goal in life is to be like Mark Zuckerberg.

Kelli (06:43) I don't think we can help you.

Dave (06:46) We can't. And actually the best way for us to help you is to tell you, please don't listen to us, because we're going to confuse you. Go on your journey the way you want to go on it and do what you think is right. What we've learned over our careers and lifetime is that that's too big of a goal.

Kelli (07:02) Do you know how many millionaires there are in the world?

Dave (07:05) Well, as a matter of fact, in preparation for this podcast, I used the Google. 56.1 million people in the world are millionaires. That's out of 5.3 billion people that are older than 20 years old all over the world.

Kelli (07:23) How about billionaires?

Dave (07:24) According to Forbes, 2755. Wow. So how many people are you competing with for those spots? Yes, let's see

Kelli (07:35) Do you have the calculator on your phone?

Dave (07:36) I got the calculator on my phone. I can do the math.

Kelli (07:39) I can tell you something. I tried that earlier and guess what? You get a number. It's a big long number and it has an E in it. I'm not exactly sure what that means.

Dave (07:51) Yes, I get the point. You virtually have no chance of being on the evening news in your Armani suit or sporting your Jimmy Choo’s love pumps.

Kelli (08:00) But how cool would that be?

Dave (08:02) But I don't want to discourage you. And neither does Kelli, we just are guiding you to aim a bit lower. And you'll find as you aim a bit lower, the competition that you'll face is not scary at all.

Kelli (08:17) What do you mean by that?

Dave (08:18) Well, if you were to go up against, let's just say, Warren Buffett, you would think to yourself, this is going to be a really hard trek.

Kelli (08:27) Yeah, I would think you would think that, yes.

Dave (08:29) But if you're going into business for yourself and you're going to start a new company or you're in a company and you're trying to climb that career success ladder and you look around you at who your competition is at that point in your life, these are just regular Joe's and James. As you start looking around, you may be saying to yourself, I actually am more cunning, creative, better, smarter than those Joe's and Jane's. And that's what I mean by the competition is not scary. You're not up against a unicorn. You're up against normal, smart folks, and all you have to be is just a little smarter.

Kelli (09:08) Be a little bit more realistic and down to Earth. You don't need to compete with Elon Musk to be successful.

Dave (09:15) So let's redefine goals just to be more achievable. One of the things that I've always liked is the concept of my goals are an arm's length and an extra finger reach away. Like I can almost touch it, but I can't make my arm grow anymore. I've got to do something that allows me to get that extra oomph to get that goal. And I want it so bad because I can just about touch it.

Kelli (09:42) I think it's great to have lots of smaller goals where you can have a feeling of accomplishment and incentive to keep on going. If you're constantly reaching for the stars, you only ever see stars, you won't grab one. Think a little bit smaller.

Dave (09:55) And unfortunately, when you start reading these books about these business heroes, you're given the impression that these stars are closer than they are.

Kelli (10:04) All you're seeing is the tip of the iceberg, not the shit show these people went through. That's all below the water, below the iceberg, the divorces.

Dave (10:13) The bankruptcies, failures, restarts all of that stuff.  You read, I started my company (before I was a multi-billionaire) in a garage.

Kelli (10:24) Well, everybody starts in their garage.

Dave (10:26) Everybody starts in their garage. Come on. There's nothing there to learn. Again, it's about reading the story of the life of the person. Does it relate to you? Can it relate to you? Maybe, but I'm not sure if it's the right time to start reading books like that when you're trying to grow your career.

Kelli (10:44) So if you don't start with these unicorn books or watching the unicorn videos, where can you start?

Dave (10:50) Well, we have two suggestions for you, and this may sound odd, but start local. One, identify just three local businesses that you know are owned by a person or a family and that have been running for 10, 15, 20 years. And just stop in, introduce yourself humbly and ask to speak to the owner. It's likely that person is there because they're working their small business and strike up a quick conversation.

Kelli (11:16) Ask them if you can take them out for a coffee or if they have time to tell you a little bit about their story.

Dave (11:21) I guarantee you anybody who has struggled to build a business wants to tell you about their struggles, their successes, their challenges, and their failures.

Kelli (11:32) And the second suggestion - Find a few start-ups that are less than a year old and do the same thing.

Dave (11:37) Yes, because you're going to get two sides of the story. When you talk to somebody who has struggled to create a successful business over a period of 5, 10, 15 years, there are war stories in there, and those war stories can really help you. On the other hand, when you talk to somebody who's just getting started, you're going to hear things like, I wish I would have never done this. I got divorced over this.

Kelli (12:01) I'm losing my shirt.

Dave (12:03) I have no money in the bank.

Kelli (12:05) My money is gone.

Dave (12:06) It's all gone. And I'm just hoping that tomorrow something good happens and you're going to get the occasional you know, I planned this out well, I was really careful. This is harder than I thought, but I am clawing my way up the ladder of success for my business.

Kelli (12:25) So what will you learn from this?

Dave (12:27) It's the right time in your business career to start at that level. These people that have done this are in the exact sort of quadrant that you're in right now. You're trying to grow a business or start a business. So talk to them, they are the ones that are going to give you what's really going to happen in the next couple of weeks, couple of months, maybe a year.

Kelli (12:50) It will be more relatable to your situation today.

Dave (12:53) Yeah. Because most of these books that you're reading for the superstars, they're going to talk to you about the layers of management that they control and the vice presidents and the directors. Do you have any of that at this point in time? You are the one that is leading the group entirely.

Kelli (13:09) Right. These new start-ups or these are local businesses. It's been there, done that for them. They started out where you are right now. They can offer you good tips.

Dave (13:19) And you can learn things from them that you can't learn from the superhero books or the video.

Kelli (13:25) If you want to get some tips on the art of interacting with people, go visit an old time barber shop or a single owner hair salon.

Dave (13:33) Yeah. Not the ones that are in the mall or the big chain store conglomerate.

Kelli (13:37) No.

Dave (13:37) Go find the local barber or the local hairdresser. Because these people work alone. They interact with people every day, and they had to come up with a way to be able to keep people engaged. Because you're not coming back because of the haircut. You're coming back because of the experience.

Kelli (13:55) Yes. And you establish a relationship with them. They know you, ask them their secrets.

Dave (14:01) Yeah. When you go in and you sit down in the chair for the very first time, you're going to be quiet. It could be 20 minutes of silence, of just hearing scissors and hair blowers going off.

Kelli (14:12) But that's not usually how it is, is it?

Dave (14:14) No, because these professionals understand that it is the relationship that is going to bring you back, not necessarily exactly the product or service that you're getting.

Kelli (14:25) And these people have figured out how to do it, which is why they are still around 20, 30, 40 years later.

Dave (14:32) Exactly.

Kelli (14:33) So we just gave you a few ideas of what we've done in the past that will help guide you on your new venture or career success pathway.

Dave (14:39) Yeah. And you can do it today. I mean, this is something that's very simple to do. You can identify three of these target businesses and another one or two target start-ups. And you can start that today.

Kelli (14:51) Let us know if you try it out and what you've learned.

Dave (14:54) Yeah, just drop it in the comments. We'd love to hear from you. I don't want to make this sound like coming from me or Kelli that we don't believe in reading books.

Kelli (15:03) No, I'm a big proponent of reading.

Dave (15:05) It is one of the ways where you can, at your pace, pick up very valuable tidbits, help, suggestions and so on and so forth. But you could be put into a position where you buy into the Oprah book club and you're just constantly reading and you're distracting yourself from what you really need to do and that is to concentrate on your business. Concentrate on your career.

Kelli (15:27) Here's another suggestion. Find yourself two or three guiding books that you think can help you.

Dave (15:34) Yeah. And in guiding books, what we're talking about is general, broad advice, something that you can apply every single day. We have our favorites.

Kelli (15:44) Okay. What's yours?

Dave (15:45) Mine is, “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie.

Kelli (15:50) So what's so great about that?

Dave (15:52) What's so great about it? It's life stories. It's not about Dale Carnegie as much as it is life stories told that can cause real A-HA, moments for everyone. It's a book that's been in publication for over 80 years and it still tops the charts. It's like number eleven on the all time list of Amazon books to this very day.

Kelli (16:12) Right. Everybody's heard of it.

Dave (16:14) And it's one of those books that is inspiring. It helps you with the way your mind can works to assimilate responses and actions to situations.

Kelli (16:25) And it sounds like it's not just for business because you're talking about how to win friends and influence people. So it's life in general.

Dave (16:33) It is just a general guiding principle book and my favorite to recommend because I don't really recommend books outside of this.

Kelli (16:42) So my favorite book is a little more focused. It's, “Why Smart Executives Fail and What You Can Learn From Their Mistakes” by Sydney Finkelstein.

Dave (16:52) Oh, I've read that book, too.

Kelli (16:53) Yeah. It's a great book and he's a smart guy. He writes for Harvard Business Review, HBR, and other business journals as well. Besides writing about the title of the book, Why Smart Executives Fail and What You Can Learn From Those Failures, he gives so many examples and talks about corporate mistakes and causes of failures and learning from those mistakes. It's all great stuff.

Dave (17:15) Yeah. You know, and one of the things that I have practiced over the course of at least the last 10 or 15 years when I'm doing consulting for businesses is I actually go in and say, I have learned about all of the mistakes that you can make and I've made them twice because I can't do anything simply. And it's kind of like this book, Why Smart Executives Fail and What You Can Learn From Their Mistakes. I can't tell you what you should do next. I can tell you where not to put your foot. Don't step there. Because if you, now look at that, you blew your toes off.

Kelli (17:51) Yeah, it's not a “how to” book. It’s what you can learn from other people.

Dave (17:55) And that's what you really want. That's what you're trying to get. You're not trying to emulate somebody else. You're trying to learn from them. And in a lot of cases, you're trying to learn from their mistakes. Goodness gracious, if you're even listening to this podcast, you have a great mind. You have an idea. You've got the inner gumption to go out and try to make your career better or your business better. You don't need any help on that. You just need the guidance to not make the mistakes. Be yourself first. Don't masquerade around as one of your heroes. It has never worked, and it never will. You have so many choices for advice, too many to sort through, in fact, and we've seen way too much advertising trying to influence career-minded people like you and you and you as you search for just the right amount of helpful tidbits.

Kelli (18:46) It can get really confusing fast, and worse, distracting.

Dave (18:50) Yeah. You really don't have hours in a day to waste, and in many cases, maybe not even minutes to waste. So what's the best way to catch a few A-HA and WTF moments?

Kelli (19:01) Our thought is to not waste your time reading lots of books as a first step. It will likely cause you to have unrealistic expectations that you'll need to recover from later.

Dave (19:10) Yeah, and we think that spending a little time with people you don't know, who aren't famous, who aren't in the 1% club yet. Those who have clawed their way to some level of success, they are your best mentors.

Kelli (19:23) Pick those three long time successful business owners and buy them a coffee and have a chat.

Dave (19:28) Yeah. And then after that, find three new businesses, go in, introduce yourself and speak to the owner.

Kelli (19:34) Visit an old time barber or a hairdresser and get a new doo. Listen to the way they interact with you.

Dave (19:40) Yeah, they are actually masters of the elevator pitch. Then consider a few books that fit your persona and your career objectives. By following this, we think, we actually know, that you will learn a whole lot more about how to make yourself better, accelerate your trek up the career ladder, and speed up your ability to help others with your own great advice.

Kelli (20:01) Thanks so much for listening today. If you like our podcast, please tell a friend about us just one friend or colleague who you think would enjoy the content and stories we share. Listen to my Job Here is Done anywhere and everywhere podcasts are available and for all the latest info and how you can work with us, check out our website. It's easy, myjobhereisdone.com

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