Episode #175: ARE WE STRIVERS OR ARRIVERS?

Over the decades society has been flooded with the voices of “experts.” As a microcosm of society, the business community has copied and pasted this trend into their marketing. Social media is now the amplifier and new town crier for the personalities self-titled as “experts.” Let’s take a 5-minute break and ask some questions about this! How is this affecting us? How are we projecting to our customers? What are we messaging to our customers? Are we “strivers” or are we classifying ourselves as “arrivers?”

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:06

All right, Mr. Simple Show.

Speaker 2: 0:10

Hello everybody, and welcome to the Simple Biz 360 Podcast. My name is Jeff Mason, I'm your host, and we are coming to you from beautiful St. Louis, Missouri, half Coast studio. So if you live in St. Louis, you're looking for a place to, to record your podcast or, uh, a song, uh, get in touch with Matt Parker or Alex Dietrich here at Half Coast Studios. I'll be glad to help you. So we're in episode 1 75. We started this great adventure October, 2019, and, uh, we're in the middle of what we call a three business tips in five minute series. So we're really not gonna lay out three business tips today. We're gonna ask an overarching question and then dive into three points about that question to kind of just leave you with some thoughts. We, we call this, you see the little, uh, canvas behind me if you're watching this, you know, something to think about, right? So let's just think about this experts. What about, what about experts? And what about the overarching question? Are we strivers or are we arrivals? So let's take a look at this whole notion of experts. You know, we've been conditioned as a society for many decades now to just, um, listen to what's we're being told and kind of follow along and believe it and digest it and run with it. That the fact that, hey, this expert on tv, this expert on the radio, this expert on a podcast said this, that, or the other thing. And now we're gonna take that to the bank and we're gonna say, yeah, we're gonna follow that. And, and, and guys, in business, we're a microcosm of society. So the business operators in many cases mimic that. And the, the actual customer base as well has been conditioned to this. And so, you know, we, we have this culture now that is really saying, oh yeah, if you say you're an expert, I, I very rarely challenge that. Let's go, I'll, I'll, I'll take it to the bank and just think about some of the things we hear. Sometimes just, you know, you hear it in the background, you don't even think about it. Hey, tune in to channel four news every morning. You're so busy. Let us do the thinking for you. We'll tell you what you need to think about. We'll tell you what the news of the day is. And so, you know, we, we, that's the culture we live in. So, you know, our experts really experts. That's the first thing. So let's take a look at what, you know, what would even get us near to being an expert. Well, Anders Erickson did a study, uh, over in Europe, uh, in a, in a, uh, wanted to take a look at elite pianists, I believe, or violinists, excuse me, elite violinists, and compare them to, you know, basically, um, good or moderate, um, violinists. And what they really found in this study, and I'm paraphrasing it, cutting it down to, to a very short form, is that, you know, those elite people had to have at least 10,000 hours devoted to their mastery. And it was that level that they really realized the elite began to blossom. So as we, as we transfer that, you know, study and that finding over to business, you know, in many cases it's the same, same way, right? If, if, and, and, or sports. Look at sports, if you look at these great three, three point shooters in basketball, I mean, these people have over 10,000 hours in the gym. I guarantee you, you know, Carly Lloyd, I, I loved, you know, great, um, um, women's soccer player for the US National team, uh, world Cup champion a couple times. You know, she, uh, said that, you know, you could find her sometimes, if I remember the story, right? You could find her on a cold winter night in the dark shooting, you know, direct kicks into a gold mouth in Delran, New Jersey where she grew up. And I mean, you think about this, these people had way more than 10,000 hours devoted to this. So I guess my, my question is, you know, does that 10,000 hours equip you to become an expert? Well, it gets you closer, I think, but I just disagree with the whole notion of expert, because expert the term implies that you've arrived. And so that's my ultimate question today. Are we strivers or are we arrives? Meaning, are we constantly waking up, looking at each business day as a creative experience, embracing new knowledge and saying, Hey, I've got things to learn today, whether it's from an associate, a customer, or, you know, just the day itself, I've got a lot to learn. Or, or do we wake up and say, you know what, I've done this, I've achieved this. And whether I'm, I'm, you know, 6,500 hours into it, or I'm 75,000 hours into it, I've arrived, man, I am now an expert. So, you know, I, I don't know, just, I feel like that attitude is one that says, um, I, I'm done learning in a lot of ways. Whereas a striver says, you know what? I'm involved in active learning, so I just wanna leave you with that today. You know, um, who are you listening to? Who are you looking to for advice? How do you, how are you projecting yourself? Are you a striver or are you an arrival? So we're gonna dip back to a great loss and a shuffle tune 11th album, Allman Brothers Love it, written by Dickie Bets, um, back where it all began. So I think it's, uh, back where it all begins is by, uh, Dickie Bets. It's a great tune. Love it. And, uh, I hope you enjoy it. And guys, well, we'll see you in 168 hours. Thanks.