These inspirational tales are plucked from a Seth Godin ebook, Insubordinate: Linchpins Everywhere You Look, Vol. 1 (the book jacket for Linchpin is to the left). In case you are unfamiliar with Seth Godin and/or his term linchpins: Linchpins are the people who make a difference, who ship, who do, who disrupt—in a good way. As Seth likes to say, “Go! Make something happen.”
You can read my first post on three linchpins who turned business on its head here. This post is about three people who didn’t wait for someone to tell them to do something—they just went out and did it.
Chip Conley
Chip runs the largest chain of independent hotels in California and is a successful author. Seth met Chip in business school a few days after classes began. Chip left Seth a handwritten note in Seth’s mailbox that said he heard Seth was an interesting guy, and would Seth be interested in joining his brainstorming group?
They met every Tuesday that year, along with three other people, to spend five hours brainstorming new business ideas. “If you had been in that situation, first week of business school, would you have taken the time and initiative to set up a group like this? For the five of us, it transformed our entire business school curriculum and experience. It was literally life changing. And it was easy to do.”
The takeaway: Initiative is a rare skill, and thus a valuable one. No one told Chip to do this. No one gave him authority or permission. He just did it.
Jacqueline Novogratz
Jacqueline Novogratz is a true visionary, someone who saw what was needed and set out to create it.
She founded Acumen Fund, “a groundbreaking nonprofit that invests in entrepreneurs in the developing world. These companies end up employing hundreds or thousands of people and make a profit by engaging the poorest people on earth in trade. ‘Trade, not aid’ creates a positive cycle, one that promises to cure deep-seated chasms of poverty.”
The takeaway: Like Chip, Jacqueline didn’t wait for permission; she just went out and did it. It wasn’t guaranteed to work, but she took the risk, stuck with it and made it work.
Jay Levinson
If Jay’s name rings a bell, it’s because you know him as the author of Guerrilla Marketing, one of the most influential marketing books ever published.
Jay’s background is in advertising. He knew how to write, he liked to write, so he took a few clients to pay the bills, and worked at becoming a writer. Like Chip and Jacqueline, he didn’t wait for permission to do something, he just set out to do it.
After Guerrilla Marketing was published, it became a minor hit, so he worked to make it a major hit, and with Steve Lewers turned it into a series.
With a successful book under his belt, Jay was asked to speak and to co-author more books. Jay isn’t a natural public speaker, but that didn’t stop him. He decided to learn how to speak, and he got good at it. He also created a platform that made it easy to find talented co-writers, so he could continue to write seminal business books.
The takeaway: Jay decided what his future would be, and he made it real.
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