There are two ways to make a burger,
You can spend decades practicing and perfecting your burger,
You can pour your heart and soul into every burger that you make
Always being creative with the ingredients always innovating
and trying to make something that you are proud of.
Or you can make a fast food burger, where there has to be zero creativity
and it has to be something that can be made from
kid off the street with minimal training
and zero passion... and that is a necessity
not an option for scaling.. see tremendous success in business requires that you make the fast-food burger
There is just no way to scale the first approach
even if you end up making the greatest burger in the world
Even if every burger you make costs a hundred dollars each
you can only make so many burgers and you will
never get anywhere close to the amount of money
owner of a successful, fast-food business can generate.
This is just the basics of scaling and there is no avoiding it
So, it's not surprising that at the heart of every business book
is the idea that you have to make something scalable
in business to be very successful and that's all true
So in some ways it is weird to blame a business book for telling someone who wants
to learn more about business and the right thing to do
for success and in business. But here is the problem
A business book assumes.. that the reader is obviously
reading it because they want to succeed in business and in order to do so
you have to create something scalable
But in my experience, that assumption can be very wrong
And I don't think many times that a new business owner is even aware
of what he truly wants... Looking back at myself now
And observing so many others. I think that a lot of people want to create the first burger.. they want
to be passionate about something.. they want to be creative
They want to create something that they can be proud of
That is what they truly want and the only reason they do the business side of things
is to simply make a living
while they do something that they feel great about
in other words, for a lot of people, business is a means-to-an-end
and not the end itself.. now don't get me wrong
there are those in business for the sake of business
and for those people the advice is spot on. But I think
there is a huge chunk of people being given this advice
where if they sat down and analyzed what they truly want
This wouldn't be it... but so many people still follow it
because we are so unaware of what we want
and what our goals truly are and that can lead to
a lot of misery and unnecessary conflict down the road
Let me give you an example with FightMediocrity
and how scaling would usually be done
I started doing book summaries years ago and I
did everything by myself at first, which is very typical
once it started to take off I started to distance myself
from it because that is what you have to do to scale
because one person can only work so many hours a week
it got to the point where I didn't have to do anything anymore
the authors of the book started doing this script
and voices overs and the animations were done by an animator
and essentially I could completely remove myself at that point
by putting in a manager that would just coordinate
those two things and that is pretty much an
infinitely scalable approach.. obviously from one
business to another there are some differences
but that is usually what scaling looks like.. but that is when I started feeling
not so great about the whole thing
I remember one time starting a great relationship with a very
famous business personality and author
and shortly after I got a voice-over from him for animation
It was about a 7-minute long narration and I was so excited
to listen to it.. but at the end I felt so angry and horrible.. I had just been sent a 7-minute
advertisement for this guy's book. He basically
didn't talk of anything of value from the book which there
was not much of to begin with and the whole
7 minutes can be summarized into
"If you want to be a gazillion this is the only book you need to buy"
Now, I was super into Dale Carnegie back then so I would
write an email when I was angry and I would put it away
and come back to it a couple of days later and usually you realize
it is not the best thing to send.
But I remember I was so disappointed and angry because this
had already happened a bunch of times with other authors
that it overrode everything and I sent the email right away
and let us just say it was not very nice.
Needless to say that I never heard back from that guy and that bridge
was burned. As I have had time to get to know myself
more and start to understand what I truly want
I realize that business is something that I have always appreciated
but deep down, at least in this stage of my life, I think
all I want is to make the best thing that I can every day
something that I think is important and that I can
pour my heart and soul into, something that I can be proud of
even if that seems like a fleeting thing most days
and I have seen so many people that feel this way
what they really want to do is to wake up excited and make
the best burger that they can every day
and simply be able to feed themselves while doing it and not
create the next McDonald's.. so I guess the question to ask
yourself and bring some awareness to is..
"What do you truly want?"
Maybe your the guy that
loves the business side that likes to see the numbers grow every day like
a video game, that I admit, can be super fun
and if that is the case then scaling
and the negative aspects of it are the only way to go about doing that
this is not some judgement of what is better either.. It's about doing the thing that you truly want
and not what someone else has decided for you.. but maybe,
you identify more with the creative side and want to feed
yourself so you are forced to learn about the business side of things
and that is the only reason you are reading a business book
or seeking business advice. If that is the case
be very careful. Business books
and business advice automatically assume that your primary goal
is business.. and I guess that is not a crazy thing to do
but that assumption is wrong many times.. and it will
take you down the path of endless disappointment and resentment
and leave you conflicted and unfulfilled.
* music *
*Subscribe if you have not, thanks for watching*