I say to my wife, “When I was young, my mom sent me to take golf classes. She insisted that golfing was a necessary skill for success – that I would surely be closing big business deals on the golf course someday.”
And she says, “That’s because your mom had a very different concept of success.”
It’s true. My mom certainly didn’t think my success would look like it does. Hell, I didn’t think my life would look the way it does.
I don’t play golf, and probably never will, but I took those lessons diligently, learned to swing a club. Today I don’t see success as a deal closed on a golf course. Today success is a company, my company, and tomorrow it might be different, but right now, today, I’m an entrepreneur, and this is my success.
Visions of success
In business, we measure success in dollars, in technology, and in influence. We measure in customers, in traffic, in monthly average users. We measure in people. We measure in deals, in connections.
Artists measure in change. In fans. In ticket sales, and record sales, and merch sales, and streams and views and Likes. In platinum records. In fame, or lack thereof.
This is not a vision for success, only a measurement.
Maybe your success is a flashlight, leading you through the dark to the stage. Maybe success is a trendy loft office space in Manhattan. Maybe it’s an arena full of screaming teenagers. Maybe it’s a lake home and a portfolio of diversified investments. Maybe it’s a Nobel Prize, or a maybe it’s a Grammy. Maybe it’s just a paycheck every week and a roof over your head.
It’s these ideas of success, these premonitions and visualizations and conceptions of an idealized life we strive for and chase and claw and scratch our ways toward.
What does your success look like?
