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.
