I've been thinking about survivorship bias.
I don't know if a particularly good definition for it.
I'll link to some stuff down below.
When it comes to talking about your career
often successful people
don't really understand why they've succeeded,
but they think they do.
And they overvalue certain actions that they took
that sort of fit their perception of themselves.
A lot of people telling you why and how they succeeded,
they don't really know.
Now I wanna talk about my career and talk about
some of the stuff I've learned so far,
but I don't wanna talk about
why I think things have gone well
'cause I don't really know but,
I think we all know when we screw up.
I think we all know when we make mistakes
and I'm really interested in learning
other people's hard lessons, the easy way.
So today I thought I would share three mistakes
that I have made in my career early on
back when I worked for other people
that may be helpful for you
wherever you are in your career.
First mistake.
I did not really truly understand the gap
between information, knowledge, and wisdom.
I was a rabbit collector of information.
I was frenzy at at times.
I would buy any book
any book on coffee that I could get my hands on.
I would troll eBay and like A books and used books,
sort of sellers online
for anything that had coffee in the title.
And I probably ended up
with a library of close to 200 books at one point.
And I read a lot of them.
And I thought
that this would give me an edge
that this would give me
you know, an advantage in my career.
It made me really good at trivia games to do with coffee.
And that was really it.
I had collected enormous amounts of coffee trivia.
It wasn't knowledge.
I haven't converted the information
into knowledge through practice.
And it certainly wasn't wisdom,
which comes with a function
of using that knowledge over a period of time.
It was just trivia.
And I think it's easy to fall into that trap.
And these days it may not be buying books
but it may be just which videos you've watched
who you follow on social media,
what blog posts you read
if people still wrote blog posts, let's pretend they do.
It's the kind of collection
of information without really the application of it
where in real learning happens.
And I got that wrong for a long, long, long time.
I don't necessarily regret.
A lot of the learning I did.
I like, I think it really deepened my appreciation
for coffee and the breadth and depth of coffee.
It's sort of hooks me
in a way that kept me in the industry a long time.
But I think I massively overvalued that information
'cause I haven't really worked out how to make it useful.
Second mistake.
I liked empathy for my employer.
Now, this sounds like a really weird thing,
but go with me for just a second.
In our careers early on in the middle, wherever we are,
we have our career goals.
And we will chase those down
and we will apply ourselves
through hard work and dedication to achieve those goals.
And that's a good thing.
I'm not saying that's a bad thing.
That's a good thing, but,
there's more than one pathway to achieving your goals.
And I did not really think about the perspective
of my employer often
when I was chasing down my goals.
This meant that there were often points
of friction times where we butted heads
where I felt I was just trying to do my job
to the best of my ability
and to pursue my goals.
And that I was frustrated with them because
they just played didn't understand that.
They lacked empathy towards me but in truth,
I lacked empathy towards them.
Their challenges, their needs.
And had I been a little bit smarter
I could've chased down exactly the same goals
in a slightly different way
that would have worked much more
in harmony with what they were after
what they were trying to achieve too.
I'm a little embarrassed looking back
at the way I behaved
how I acted, how I felt
because it was in many ways
incredibly selfish and inwardly focused.
And that's just part of, I guess
often being young, being naive.
And I was so embarrassed, you know,
I did at some point later on once I'd been an employer
call my previous employer to apologize.
I think I've talked about that before but
this was really it.
I just, lacked empathy
and I could have achieved my goals in a way quicker
way better way
that would have been way more valuable
to that employer to boot.
A lesson learned.
Number three.
I massively overvalued technical coffee skills.
Now the easiest examples of one of these
is gonna be latte art, right?
Like I thought latte art
was really, really, really important.
In truth, I attached way more value to it
because it made me feel good.
It's probably a separate discussion
about latte art to be had outside of this video.
But I would, you know
value these right technical skills.
Now the world of coffee has changed
and is changing all the time.
And certainly 10 years ago,
if you were in a coffee business
you were looking for people with coffee skills
with technical coffee skills that were very useful
at that time because they were somewhat rare.
What I didn't value, were other skills outside of coffee.
And I could have easily pursued other sort
of skillsets alongside things I was learning in coffee,
but I really just double down purely, purely on coffee.
Now, by the time I started my own business
I realized I had enormous shortfalls
in what I knew in my education
and my understanding around the world of coffee business.
These days I speak to more and more people who are hiring
and they don't just want pure coffee skillsets anymore.
They want coffee plus something else.
Be it marketing, be it finance, be it customer service.
Be it anything really.
Like the, there are more opportunities for you
if you have a slightly broader skill set.
I'm not saying don't learn about coffee,
absolutely you learn about coffee
and go as deep as you want to but,
don't do it at the expense of learning additional skills.
I think as the coffee world evolves
those additional skills make you incredibly desirable.
And you know, I regret perhaps being again a bit blinkered
a little bit focused at that time.
So there you go.
There's three mistakes
that I made pretty early on my career.
I'll talk about other mistakes I've made more recently
in the last 10 years in another video.
For now, I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Do you agree?
Do you disagree?
Am I being harsh to myself?
Am I being ridiculous
or maybe is there something to be learned
in all of these mistakes that I made?
Limiting your thoughts in the comments below.
As always thank you so much for watching.
Have a great day.