As I write this you may have seen the story of Ted Williams. He was a guy that over the past few days has gone from being homeless,  living on the street and sleeping in some shrubs to being inundated with offers of work. Why? Because he has a great voice. Actually let me rephrase that – he has an amazing voice that puts the slickest radio announcer to shame.

Don’t believe me? Take a listen for yourself

So is his voice the reason I’m writing this post? Well as much as it is a great voice, actually no. What I wanted to write about is the reaction to this story.

I first saw this story in the feel good news segment at the end of a cable news sh

ow. It did its job -  I felt good. But over the past two days the story has changed . Williams has gone from being discovered to being exploited and now being attacked.

At first everyone came out and the support for him was positive. He has gotten over 8million hits on that video above as I write and still the majority of people have felt endeared to this story of redemption. But for the news networks its not good enough for them to show the same story for a second day. So after having been flooded with offers, sites like the Smoking Gun have pointed out that surprise surprise Williams had a drug and alcohol problem which had also entailed problems with the police and going to jail. Does this really surprise anyone and more importantly does it really take anything away from the feel good story?

Howard Stern and some other commentators  have gone on to claim that the whole thing is a set up and the guy is a fake. It seems many people are trying to point out everything wrong with this story rather then appreciating that the guy got lucky and got a second chance. Good luck to him, he took action with his sign (see pic) and put himself out there. He dared to do it.

Ted Williams putting himself out there.

Some people want to destroy

There are two ways to gain people’s attention  -  either build something up or pull something down. Some people like to make it their mission to pull down others, point out flaws and dig for faults. In the online world they are known as trolls, but don’t be fooled  – they exist everywhere.

In my own seminars when we have an audience of around 500 people I often hear from my promoters about a few people who sit in the back and criticize what ever I’m talking about and claim that they know it all and could teach better than me. Very rarely will any of these trolls come up or challenge me in person, but they will try and infect as many people as they can at the back of the room and they take great offense when people there to learn tell them to shut up.

I’ve seen the exact same thing in other peoples seminars such as Tony Robbins, Harv Eker and Frank Kern. These trolls are more focused on pulling others down rather than trying to build something up.

You need to put some people out to attract others in.

See anytime you put yourself out there in public you are going to get people who come along and try to pull you down. Its part of the game and the fact is that if you aren’t getting some trolls then you probably aren’t pushing hard enough. I know out of every audience I speak to that roughly 2-5% of the people there will vigorously dislike me and what I have to say. Guess what?  I wouldn’t have it any other way. See if I tried to please that 2-5% of the people who don’t like it, I would end up losing the 35% of people who are my hard core raving fans.

There are always going to be people who don’t like you and want to criticize you just for the sake of it, whether you are a speaker, a blogger, someone trying to make a change at work or even a homeless guy looking for a second chance. What ever you do don’t let it stop you.

photo credit: quinn.anya

I remember a time when I was talking to a small business owner in Asia and asking him some questions about his business. He told me that he bought a certain product from his supplier at about 80 cents and then he sold it for $1.60. I congratulated him and said it was very good that he was making a 100% mark up on what he was selling. Very quickly he turned and told me that, no he only had a 50% mark up. When I pointed out the he was actually doubling his money and had a 100% mark up, he kept pointing out that I was wrong and the mark up was only 50%. No matter what i tried to do to convince him otherwise, he disagreed. I began to make the mistake of thinking this guy is stupid and I could feel that I was getting annoyed at his lack of math skills.

As the conversation went on, one of his sons came along and listened and laughed at our conversation. His son had a very good education overseas and quickly agreed with me that it was a 100% mark up. Not matter what we did to convince his father, the father though we were both stupid. Eventually I had to laugh at the situation and let it go. As i did that, something occurred to me. He was the one making the money. He was the one taking action and even if he didn’t describe in the correct academic way, he was the one getting the results he wanted. From that day on I realized that being smart had a lot less to do with being successful than I had ever thought.

So if intelligence isn’t the answer, what is?

At school we are taught to value intelligence as if it is gold . I suspect that most of us were taught to value it too much. Time and time again when I meet people who have achieved much success in life (both financial and non financial), their success hasn’t come from a great deal of intelligence, its come from the consistent actions they have taken, not from any large source of intelligence.

Look at most self made millionaires and a common theme that you see in many of them is that left school at a young age. Its true that most of them kept learning in the real world after they left school, but I think you would be hard pressed to find one of them that claims they were one of the smartest people in their industry. Many of them would claim though, that they were the ones who took action when other people stood still out of fear or out knowing better. You often hear them say things such as “I was too dumb to know that it wouldn’t work, so I made it work.”

Action Beats Smart

Time and time again when I meet people who are getting results that they want in life, they aren’t the people who are the smartest in the room. They are the people who implement the fastest. It surprises me so often that its not the people who talk the big talk and ask in depth and complicated questions, its the quiet person who comes up after the seminar and says “these are the 10 things I am doing and these are the results I am getting, what can I do next?”. These are the people that I love to talk to, because I know if I show them one small thing that they can do to improve their business or life, they will implement it. They won’t argue whether it will work for them or not. They won’t argue that their situation or location is different, and that that means that what works for others won’t work for them. They Nike it!! They just do it and more often than not they get the results they wanted. I think we all do this when we are achieving in our life.

Even the smallest bit of action will beat immense knowledge with no follow through.

What action have you taken today?

My challenge to you now is what action have you taken today that will take you closer to your goals. What action is getting the most traction in your life. Don’t let the quest for more knowledge or the self perceived belief that you aren’t intelligent enough stop you from taking small actions that will lead to big results. People (often including myself) are looking for the magic strategy or information that we think we need. Nine times out of ten the strategies we need are out there and easy to find, they don’t require a great deal of knowledge but they do require action.

I continually aim to remind myself of this. Re-starting posting to my blog is an example of action that I have needed to take for a long time, yet not followed through on, because I thought I needed to learn more about writing and blogging (and wordpress and plugins) and getting smarter. I was wrong!!! I needed to be posting and getting it wrong and learning from doing, rather than from reading or listening to others. So here it is my first post. I am sure that they will get better the more that I write but at least now I have taken the action, posted this and even have 3 more posts coming along the pipeline.

The Obsession of Passion – What you gives you OCD, will often give you your success.

People often ask me at my seminars, about how they find can find their true passion and often my answer is something along the lines ‘you will know it when you find it, so keep trying new things till you find it’.

While this may often seem a short and succinct reply to a truly in depth question, the simple fact is that most people don’t try many new activities once they become an adult.

Adam Savage is known to many of you as one of the presenters from the Myth-Busters show on the discovery channel. I am a fan of the show and the fundamental ways they test assumptions to see what actually is myth and what is plausible.