The Difference Between People Who Succeed and Those Who Don't
(Part One, Edited)
Ric Thompson interviews Kevin Hogan
Ric Thompson: Kevin, because there are a number of different
things that you are very well-known for, let's kind of
focus in on just the general area. Let's say I'm an entrepreneur
or I'm in selling and I'm just getting started. I haven't
really broken through yet.
Maybe I'm even a little bit stuck, like I said, at $30,000 to
$35,000 a year. I'm not starving to death, but I am definitely
not happy, and I've definitely got a lot more potential in front
of me. What would you say? What are your thoughts on that?
Kevin Hogan: Let's start out here: Imagine that you're
fairly new in business - maybe even five years in business - and
you haven't quite 'made it' yet. Why is this?
You've read all the books, even the ones that matter, like Think
and Grow Rich. You've read the books and it's still not happening.
What is missing?
There are a million books that say, "Here's what this successful
person did, and here's the model. You go and do this. You start a
software company and you get on everybody's computer in the world. If you can just get on everybody's computer in the world and make
them all give you a dollar, you'll be a billionaire."
Of course,
this is true, right?
Then there's Coca-Cola. You can sell everybody a bottle of Coke.
You're going to be wealthy and get people "hooked" on your product,
and that's a cool thing. Then you go out there and you try to sell
your product, your idea, your patent, your trademark, or your
invention and you do all the things exactly like the books say. It's
like you have it in your mind and you do all this stuff.
You work hard, you're up all night, you're sweating, and nothing
happens. You think,
"That can't be possible because I did exactly what I was supposed
to."
What is "Success"?
For the sake of this interview only, let's measure "success" in
terms of dollars accumulated. Next go 'round we talk about love,
happiness. I'm only measuring success today in terms of wealth,
income that is collected for the accumulation of wealth purposes.
There are a lot of other things that are important to be successful
at: being happy, having a great family, love, and all the things
that we can't measure so easily, but we can measure money. That's
a measurable commodity.
Are you familiar, Ric, with the books like Built to Last, Good to
Great, and some of those titles? Do they sound familiar?
Ric Thompson: Absolutely, sure.
Kevin Hogan: That's where I started researching your question. I
started to read stuff like that. The good thing was that the
books are actually a few years old, so I was reading these books
about companies, what things these companies had in common, what
made them great, and how they got there. An interesting thing
happened; over the following three to four years those companies,
after the books were published, turned out to actually not perform as
well as the rest of the companies in the United States did.
They actually tended to under-perform. Here I had all these
companies-including companies that had been great for 25 to 50 years,
like GE, General Electric, Johnson & Johnson, Proctor & Gamble, tons of companies -
and all of a sudden they under-perform. They had all the attributes
of being excellent and amazing. They were doing everything right,
and then everything went to heck.
Why? Why is it that these companies are now actually showing losses
on their statements? What is going on here?
And this is the crux of your question, because companies are made of
people.
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