“First, I studied this subject at this university. Then, I entered the corporate world as a consultant for this firm – but my work life felt hollow. I took the leap, quit, and became an entrepreneur in this industry. By targeting 10X goals, always giving 110%, and seeking to generate value for others before capturing value myself, I was able to run a company that eventually went public. By following the same principles, you too will be able to do the same!”
Welcome to the world that 99% of business books inhabit: a discrete set of steps to get you from point A to point B.
A proven system. A reliable recipe with endless lashings of certainty.
The problem is, there are no recipes. Life isn’t a cooking show, and success isn’t a fancy dish.
What works for someone doesn’t work for everyone.
Hindsight is 20/20. Looking backward, it’s easy to connect the dots, craft the narrative, and see the obvious story. The story that feels predestined. The story that feels inevitable. The story that feels replicable.
But most of the time, that story isn’t replicable. Someone’s past usually won’t mirror someone else’s future. The real world isn’t that neat. There’s too much randomness, too many variables. It is, simply put, too messy.
But that’s not what the reader wants to hear, so they write something more seamless and sexy instead.
Recently, on a podcast, Audible founder Don Katz discussed the principles that led to his company’s success. The key, he said, is CULTURE. In his case, a culture formed around a set of core tenets called “People Principles.”
Principles like “Be customer obsessed,” “Imagine and invent before they ask,” and “Study and draw inspiration from culture and technology.”
What people often miss here is Katz isn’t telling you that these Audible principle will work for you as well, at all times and in all circumstances., like a magic spell.
The real takeaway is upstream from that: The successful founder built his company around principles. If you want to have a successful company, build it around principles too.
The same principles as Katz and Audible? Maybe, maybe not.
In other words, the most important principle is to actually have them in the first place.
Scary? Of course. Risk and uncertainty? Lots of ‘not knowing?’ You bet.
But it’s also liberating. A future written in somebody else’s book is rarely worth having.
