Why Success Looks Instant

Yo, yo, welcome back to the Feather Your Lifestyle Podcast Conversations on Lifestyle, Passions, and Hustles. My name's Chris. I am your host, and I'm super excited to be back here having the conversation with you. Episode 265 today, and we're following on from last week's episode talking about or where we finished off talking about overnight success. And I kind of wanted to dig into that a little bit more today, really focusing in. We're going to talk about Steve Jobs and give you some sense of a I guess a parallel to how does this apply to someone that most people would know in his story and his journey, that it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows. And when we look at someone wildly successful, what do we usually see? We see money, we see fame, we see confidence, we see polished interviews, we see the big wins that they went through. And we usually just see the outcome that the world presents to us. But we don't usually always see the reps that were put in over the time, over the 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, et cetera, et cetera. And I think that might be one of the biggest lies that we've been sold because we don't see all that, all the hard work that came into it. So I really want to make sure we dig into that today. That's the focus of the episode. That there will be uncertainty, there will be pivots, embarrassment, setbacks, rejection, reinvention, and that boring repetition in order to get to success. Success looks obvious in hindsight. It seems simple. It seems, why didn't I do this before? But it's messy in the real time as we figure it out and as we're trying to work through it. And that's why I want to talk about Steve Jobs today, because I think he's the perfect example. Now, if you enjoy these episodes, please jump down below, hit like, subscribe, you can leave a comment, you can continue the conversation. Please share it with someone else if you think someone else needs to benefit from this. We're gonna roll the intro and let's get into it.

Steve Jobs Gets Fired

So most of us will know Steve Jobs. I mean, he we know him from the guy that gave us the iPhone, the guy that was all Macintosh and Apple, et cetera, et cetera. But I think a lot of the time they forget a bit of his story. And I've got some notes here because I don't know it all in perfect detail, but a lot of us forget that at 30 he was actually fired from Apple, the company that he built. Imagine that, your own vision, your own company, and they tell you, you're out, you're gone, that's it, you're done. And that's no no sunshine or rainbow, right? That's that's that's identity shaking, that's life-changing, it's a big kick to the nuts. It's it's it's hard, right? And yeah, instead of quitting, what did he do? He reinvented himself. He pivoted, he adjusted, he went on to build another company called Next. He also bought into Pixar, he kept learning, he kept adapting, and he kept showing up, right? Years later, he comes back to Apple because they asked him, they realized they needed him. And he came back and he changed the world. Absolutely. And that's when he bought back the came in and he, that's when he introduced the iPhone as well. And what looked like a failure became part of his foundation. Now,

Version 20 Versus Version 1

let's just strip this back away, right? So what we're seeing is now version 20, not version one of himself. And I think this is really important that when you admire someone, you're usually seeing their 10th version of themselves, the 20th version of themselves. It could even be the 50th version of themselves. We're not seeing the first version because the first version of them, we we we weren't, unless you grew up with them from day one, at the start, they were awkward too. They were uncertain too, they were likely inconsistent too, they were likely underestimated as well. And you cannot be going around comparing your beginning to someone else's compounded middle or end. It just doesn't work that way, right? What I can tell you though is success will require constant adaptation, right? Constant adapting. And no one will ever win by staying rigid. We will have to pivot, we will have to evolve, we will need to fail to learn, we will need to relearn, and we will need to upgrade because what got you here won't always get you to that next place. Now, I've been experiencing this heaps. We've pivoted to eBay Live, and it's starting to become a key chunk of our business model simply because that's where people are, and that's the changing trend, and that's the demand, and that's where people want to be buying. That's the experience want. Now it doesn't, hasn't replaced our core business model, but it's becoming a huge component of it. Therefore, we've had to adapt, we've had to pivot, we've had to evolve, we've had to make some big mistakes, but we're learning, we're relearning, and we've upgraded to now have this as a key component of our business. It's going to happen again, it will continue to happen. That's just the nature of business. Think about AI and how that has taken over the world and how people have had to adapt with their jobs. You get my point. And

Pivoting Without Losing The Core

the point further to this is as you do all these things, as you are pivoting, as you are evolving, and we spoke about this last week, is the reps are never going to look special and sexy and amazing, right? The world will see the launch, the race, the keynote, the celebration. And we saw it with Steve Jobs, right? We saw all the things that he was able to achieve. But it wasn't, you know, we weren't seeing the 5 a.m. starts. We weren't seeing the failed drives that he did, the quiet doubts that he had, the practice, the repetition, all those different things. Because no one tends to clap for the reps until the reps become the results. And then we think, oh my gosh, oh my gosh. Right. And we can't keep idolizing these outcomes, but we need to actually really dig into the process. Instead of asking how did they get there, we want to be asking what did they keep doing when nobody cared? And that's where the gold is. That's that's the most important thing. It's one of the questions that I always like to ask is like, what was something that you did that slingshotted your business to that next level? And a lot of the time, people just say, just be consistent, be willing to learn, be willing to pivot, be willing to adjust. Because when people become arrogant and stuck in their ways, that's when things, you know, we get stuck, right? Because we get stuck in our ways and we're not willing to be flexible and liquid and fluid to be able to adjust and accommodate some amazing and amazing opportunities. Now, I haven't gone into super detail of Steve Jobs, obviously, but the fact of the matter is he he came in, he had ideas, people didn't like that because of the way he was doing things. They didn't want to trust his process. But then when he left and he went and did other things and Apple started to decline, they realized no, they need something back what it was originally, the core foundation, the dream behind it all, and what he envisioned to get there. And that vision required very strong ethics around how they approached doing their business in terms of the processes, the customer first, very customer-centric. And he was pretty detailed and very focused and cutthroat around how things would happen. And people didn't like that, it made them uncomfortable. But from that, we have now got a beast of Apple and what it's been able to continue to do and lead the reigns in that area of tech for years on beyond Steve Jobs after he passed. And that's that's my point, right? Is sometimes just because you're doing it a certain way, it's different to others, but you're getting the results, people, it's going to make people uncomfortable. But as I said, once you get to where you want to be, you start to get that success, you start to get the results. And the success is usually defined by someone else. Like I think, I think a lot of the time we are already successful, but there's this world position of what is success. And once the world kind of clicks on of what that is, all of a sudden you're the next best thing. But you're like, hang on, guys, I've been here for years doing this, right? We spoke about this last week.

Questions To Reset Your Mindset

So, look, a couple of questions I want to challenge you on is number one, is who do you admire? Who do you look up to? And what part of this story are you ignoring? And I think it's really important to dig in. I've listened to a lot of autobiographies of a lot of different individuals just to learn from it. And some of the ones have been like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and even Steve Jobs, I have listened to back in the day. But you can learn such things that you didn't realize what they had to do to get to where they are today. And even listening to Amazon's Journey, and that motivates me because there's times where I feel like I'm doing it wrong. It's not good enough. I'm not getting the results that the pressure suggests I should be getting. But when you look and hear about how these other people were building their businesses and their companies and what they weren't able to achieve for so very, very, very long, but then they did. And now that has exponentially compounded. Now, again, not to compare myself to Amazon, but it's good to have those those references to be able to remind you that if you are going after what you want, it's going to take time, it's going to take lots and lots and lots of reps and iterations and practice and repetition and quiet doubts and failed drafts, all those different things. And that's okay. Question two is are you comparing your day 10 to someone else's year 20? If you are, stop doing that. Get some realistic comparisons, all right? Where are you in your life? Sorry, where in your life do you need to pivot instead of quitting? Let me say that again. Where in your life do you need to pivot instead of quitting? I see a lot of people drop the ball, get out of it because they're not willing to adjust or change. It would have been easier to change because you've got maybe 30%, 50% of the infrastructure to be able to make the change rather than just give up completely. And what reps are you avoiding because nobody's watching? That's the that's the key one. If everyone, if if you had to show everything 24-7 of what you did, we would be very good. We would be doing the things that we're meant to be doing, right? But you're not doing it for them. Do it for you. You're watching, you're looking at yourself, you want to be a better version. So what are you gonna do about it, right? So

Stay In The Game Long Enough

look, before I close, let's let's just say this. The people you admire, that they weren't, they weren't lucky. Sure, maybe they had different opportunities that you didn't have, but they weren't necessarily special. They they weren't necessarily immune to fear, they weren't anything spectacular. It was just they stayed in the game long enough to continuously learn, adapt, go through the trials and challenges that they have to do in any person's life and journey. I mean, Steve Jobs, I mean, he unfortunately passed away with cancer. So like that's life. These things are still going to come regardless. But to become the person you now look up to, and maybe that's that's that's the reminder, right? You're gonna have to do this long enough to become the person you now look up to, right? And it it's it's interesting because if you look at who you want to be, and the difference between now and there is the gap. And that gap is usually just a big story of action and going through obstacles, going through challenges and going through all these different things. The unknown, that's the gap. And that's your reminder today is not to be impressed by the outcome, but be inspired by what the outcome could be by doing the reps of getting there. That's my encouragement to you. I'll leave it there. We've kind of done back-to-back episodes which kind of really click together. And I hope if you haven't listened to the episode before this, go back and have a listen because you'll see how it plays into this. But yeah, I would encourage you if you haven't listened or read or watched Steve Jobs' autobiography, go check it out. Understand who he was, what he did, what he achieved, and it will it will change your your mentality around how we go about actually achieving our dreams. Appreciate you being here. We'll be back here again next week, and I'll see you when I'm looking at you. Ciao, I'm gonna go.