#44: There are no "playbooks", just trial and error
But why it's still important to work hard and learn from other's success and mistakes.
Hey friends,
Welcome to the 44th edition of the “Level Up Ladder” newsletter.
This week’s action tip: set up one goal for this year and take action toward reaching that goal.
1/ A few updates from my side
It was a long week, and I didn’t have too much time to relax, but I’ve accomplished a lot of stuff.
I finished the Digital Transformation course in the MBA last week, and it provided some deep insights that I plan to apply to my strategy at work in the next few months.
We also went out to probably my favorite restaurant in Bucharest, which is Noua Bar, and had a delightful dinner with Cyrus, a friend who works in Deloitte UK and visited us last week.
As my back injury had almost healed completely, I went back to the gym after more than a week, and that got me very excited.
As working out is an integral part of my life, missing it for a few days even messes up with my concentration and overall well-being, so I’m glad to have the opportunity to start working out again.
I’m also very excited as I bought tickets to Hyrox Valencia, in November. HYROX is a CrossFit-like competition that is the latest hype. HYROX consists of a 1 km run followed by one workout, repeated 8 times. The workout is something like sled pulling, burpees, rowing, and such. I am going with some friends from the gym so I’m sure we’re gonna have a blast.
Going to a HYROX competition was on my goals list for this year so I had to find a way to do it. It’s the third time in the past few months that I’ve been trying to get tickets so I’m very happy to have succeeded.
If you’re curious about how my system for goal-setting looks and how I track it, send me a reply and I’ll write about it in a future newsletter.
2/ There is no “playbook” for success
Last weekend, during class, we were talking about some business book recommendations, and some of them were biographies or stories about successes. From Netflix’s story to Ben Horowitz’ (he is one of the biggest venture capitalists in the world) and Microsoft’s rebirth when Satya Nadella joined as CEO.
And the discussion got me to a revelation: “There is no playbook for winning”.
No matter how many autobiographies you read about the greatest athletes or the most successful businessmen, it won’t guarantee your success.
What’s even more discouraging is that even if you work as hard as they worked and you do the exact things they did, you might fail miserably.
There are famous stories about Kobe Bryant putting in a workout at 6 AM, before the team’s workout, Michael Jordan shooting hundreds of free throws before going to bed or Cristiano Ronaldo staying long after his Manchester United colleagues finished training to practice his free kicks.
These are all given as examples of hard work and resilience.
Let me tell you a secret: thousands of people have done it too.
Don’t you think there are a lot of people who work their a**es off to become the best at their game?
Don’t you think there are a lot of people who wake up in the morning, read 50 pages of a self-help book, take cold showers, and practice meditation but still have an average life?
If you read Reed Hasting’s biography on how he founded and led Netflix, and you do the exact same steps with your company, you will probably fail.
The reason is that most people’s or business success is dependant on a lot of factors. Of course, the discipline is there, but there is also about “being the right person at the right time” and a very high amount of chance.
You can’t reinvent another Netflix, as we are no longer in a market dominated by VCRs, with slow internet connections and no smartphones.
If you want to become the next Netflix, you need to think about a future that no other people are already imagining. If you think about it, most inventions revolutionized the world not because they were “upgrades” of something that already existed, but solutions that were not expected at all.
No one in the 90s would have dreamt about having a “cassette rental” embedded in their TV
Imagine asking your grandma in the 80s, when she was writing postcards from her vacation, that she could send a type of “mail” to anyone in the world before falling asleep, and that person would receive it instantly.
Telling a Woodstock participant that they could listen to any song in the world, instantly, no matter where they were
Innovation is disruptive and it cannot be predicted.
What can we do?
We understood that following the same steps that they followed will not guarantee success, so what’s the solution?
As they say in painting, you start by copying, learning the skill, and then coming up with your unique touch.
Before becoming a brilliant abstract painter, Picasso was a very good “classical” painter.
Success is unique and deeply personal.
Read the biographies. Take the online course. Listen to the podcasts.
Do the work.
And then, apply that knowledge to your own conditions and the market conditions.
Tailor it to your personality and your aspirations.
Try things, fail, try again, fail again, and so on.
In the end, it’s all about figuring things out by yourself.
Learning every day.
Trying new things.
Being passionate about what you do.
3/ Recommendation: Secta.ai
I was watching one of my favorite LinkedIn creators on a podcast last week and he was talking about an AI solution that uses the photos you upload to create beautiful, professional headshots.
I tried the solution and I like the results. I uploaded around 50 selfies and front photos of myself and in a couple of hours, they provided a couple of hundred portrait photos.
An example of the ones I got:
I won’t lie, most of them are not good and some of them are plain ridiculous. But I did manage to find at least 50 which are very nice, and better than my previous photo sessions. So I now use them across my social media.
Since some of my LinkedIn friends asked me about this, here is a link to the tool, it’s 49$.
One important thing is that the results will be a lot better if you provide as many quality photos as possible (they say around 40).
They also offered me a few 50% coupons for my friends, so if you want one, let me know and I’ll send it to you (I have no affiliation).
Thank you for reading, and let me know if you liked something in particular in this newsletter.
Until next time,
Leo
P.S.: If you want to read my content daily, don’t forget to follow me on Linkedin.
P.S. 2: If you want to take your productivity to the next level, check out my extensive Productivity course that can accelerate your career.