Tag: story

Episode 58: Beyond the Business

This episode is an interview that I gave to a local radio station on their weekly show, Beyond the Business. The show is about entrepreneurs in Charleston, their story, and what influenced them to do what they do today.

The hosts asked some good questions and we talked about growing up in Michigan, my education, and the work experience that I had prior to starting Praxis.  We also discussed how Praxis came about, some things I would change if I were launching Praxis today, and the Willing-To-Fail test for whether you are ready to dive into entrepreneurial waters.

This and all episodes are also available on SoundCloud, iTunes, YouTube, and Stitcher.

Sometimes You Have to Create a Chip on Your Own Shoulder

NBA great Stephen Curry has a chip on his shoulder.  It’s clear when you watch him play.  Even as he’s gotten better, it’s grown bigger.  This is what great performers do.  They play with a chip.

Steph is a great example of how the factual truth of a situation by itself does not dictate what kind of orientation we have toward it.  There are two stories about Steph Curry, both true.

In one story he was born with great genes to an NBA star dad and volleyball playing mom.  He grew up with plenty of money and access to basketball training facilities, coaches, mentors, and opportunities galore.  He honed his skills, went to a good school, played well, got drafted for good money, and continued excel with a great team and organization around him.

By this account, which is factually correct, he is one of the most fortunate people on earth.  How could this gifted athlete have a chip on his shoulder?

In another story Steph grew up with more pressure than most people could imagine.  His star athlete parents had done more than most kids could ever hope to in sports.  He lived under their shadow.  He didn’t grow as tall as he should have for basketball, and was too skinny.  Despite practicing the sport almost from birth, not a single major college was interested in him.  He ended up at a tiny liberal arts school.  He played well, but he was not fortunate enough to be on a team with any hope of a national title.  Despite his amazing shooting ability and NCAA tournament performance, Steph was questioned as an NBA talent.  He was seen as too small, and mostly just a shooter without a full range of skills.  He entered the league with virtually no hype compared to most future MVP’s.  He had to scratch and claw through a historically great Western Conference for the first several years of his career before making it to the finals.  When there, even though the team he led won, he did not get finals MVP.

By this account, which is factually correct, he is one of the biggest underdog greats in sports history.  How could this constantly overlooked late-bloomer not have a chip on his shoulder?

Steph can choose which set of facts to focus on and which narrative to tell himself.  Off the court, Steph is likely aware of the great life he’s had and thankful for it.  Remembering the best facts about ourselves is a powerful defense against self-pity.  Yet it seems pretty clear that, come game day, he’s thinking about the second story.  He’s not just happy to be there.  He’s got something to prove.

At Praxis we like to tell the participants at the start of the program these two bits of professional advice:

  1. Don’t take anything personally
  2. Take everything personally

The first is a reminder to think in terms of rational choice theory.  Deciding someone is wrong or out to get you is unhelpful for determining how to work around them.

The second is a reminder to stay sharp because no one cares about your success.  In fact, if you’re doing your own thing, they probably doubt you.  Good.  Use that.  Not with malice toward them in real life, but as fuel for the narrative you weave of your own hero’s journey.

See, we can all be like Steph Curry after all!  Now go watch some amazing highlight videos.

Story versus Status

From the Praxis blog.

I’ve written before that I like to ask people when I meet them, “What’s your story?”  It’s more interesting to me than typical questions about education, major, city of origin, job title, or sports team.  All of these things might play a part in their story, but story implies something much broader and more personal.  It’s the narrative of your past, present, and expected future.  It’s the drama of your own life as you see it playing out.

When I think of the most interesting and talented people I know, I think of their story.  I don’t think of their status.  “Oh, he’s a graduate student” is a status.  So is, “Married, salesperson, lives in Ohio”, or, “Studying business at USC”.  A status is a static snapshot of a handful of labels attached to a person based on some institutions or external standards.  It conveys nothing really unique that gets to the core of the person, or the animating force behind their actions and ideas.  There is no passion in it.  No sense of direction and creativity.

Your story is fun, entertaining, unexpected, and lively.  It’s the narrative arc of your life, your motivations, your goals, what wakes you up in the morning, and why you do what you do.  It’s not a summary of past accomplishments or even current activities.  It’s not a hobbies list.  It’s a description of the theme playing out in your world.  If you described the movie The Matrix with the typical cocktail party status approach it’d be a few bullet points like, “Guy quits job.  Trained in martial arts.  Solved agent Smith problem.  Reads code”.  Contrast that to the inspiring, unforgettable power of the same facts in story form.

If I sent you a few bullets on schools attended or subjects studies, would they be as compelling an intro as something like, “She’s the girl who is obsessed with word-play and since childhood has been trying to be a well-known writer”, or, “He’s the guy who left his desk job to climb mountains barefoot because he was so tired of all his health problems”, or, “She’s the girl who’s trying to figure out how to use design to improve people’s moods”?

You are living a story.  What is it?  The sooner you stop defining yourself by your status, the sooner you can spot the beautiful narrative you’re creating and communicate it to others.

Without Narrative, Vision, and Imagination, the People Perish

I had a friend who assured me sometime around 2000 that the internet wasn’t going anywhere.  He was a smart guy, and even worked in the tech world.  Still, he couldn’t foresee any way the internet could grow large and fast enough to accommodate demand, especially because there was no reliable revenue model.  He predicted it would skyrocket in cost and be used only by big players with a lot of cash.

Today free internet at speeds then unimaginable with content beyond the wildest dreams of that time is ubiquitous.  But he was not a fool.  He just lacked imagination.  It’s possible that the relatively high level of expertise he had with the technology actually made him less able to see beyond its current applications.

We can laugh at predictions like this, but how often do we have small imaginations about our own present and future?  We tend to overvalue the status quo because we cannot think of any other way.  The world is replete with examples if we open our eyes.

At the very time my friend was struggling to see a way companies could offer internet access for free broadcast television and radio were already doing it and had been for decades using advertising as a revenue source.  His focus on what was immediately before him prevented him seeing what was all around him.

We suffer not only from inadequately appreciating the present and the possibilities of the future, but blindness to the past as a clue to what is possible.  I listened to a recent discussion over whether a coercive government monopoly was needed to provide firefighting services.  For nearly twenty minutes there was back and forth as the discussants struggled to think up a viable business plan absent tax funding.  If left to decide roles for the state, this group may have concluded firefighting had to be one, as the free market just couldn’t do it.  The problem with this conclusion (like that of economists who claimed the same for lighthouses) is that for the majority of history firefighting was privately provided.

In order to make the world a freer, better place we need a combination of three things: narrative, vision, and imagination.

Narrative is our story about the past.  If we don’t have enough facts or we interpret them through an incorrect theoretical lens, our narrative about what was will be incorrect.  If, for example, we persists in the false assumption that firefighting and lighthouses have never been privately provided, or the American West was a violent and disorderly place before governments took hold, we will be incapable of accurately seeing present and future possibilities.

Vision is how we see the present.  Do we see harmony and assume that legislation is the only thing keeping mayhem at bay?  Or do we see the beautiful and complex workings of spontaneous order? Our vision will determine how comfortable we are with freedom.  Through state-colored lenses we will live in fear of the chaos around the corner and be reticent to allow our fellow man liberty to experiment, try, fail, succeed and progress.  If our vision expands and we begin to see the way individuals cooperate and coordinate for mutual benefit absent central direction we will welcome and embrace freedom.

Imagination is what we believe about the future.  It determines what we think possible.  If we zoom in too close to the problem at hand we get stuck and fail to allow for the unknown.  We don’t have to know what will be, or even what precisely is possible.  We just have to be humble enough and learn from the patterns of past and present that all our assumptions are going to be blown to smithereens by human creativity.  Don’t try to resist it.  Expect it.

Only when we have the right narrative about the past, the vision to see the beauty of the present, and imagination enough to allow for the wonders of the future will we have the freedom to create it.