One current and one future Wall Street Journal bestselling author
A few days ago, I met Gary Vaynerchuk, whose book Crush It got on the bestseller list according to the Wall Street Journal, and it was great to hear what he had to say about various topics of entrepreneurship, social media, and how to work with one’s passion. He had a huge room on the second floor of the bookstore full of people glad to listen in during his speech and following question/answer session. There are a couple of points from the discussion that I would like to bring up here.
Patience Levels Separate Competitors
One of the concepts that Gary has brought up many times is patience. He pointed out that most folks aren’t patient enough to follow through on something like building their online venture, like he did with Wine Library or his book Crush It, and most members of the audience silently agreed that this was one of their main weaknesses. It was like Gary was telling the crowd “this is why you are failing”, and the crowd then knew the problem and solution were now in their hands, and was their responsibility. I completely agree with this concept. The person who quits doing something after 10 minutes might get no results, while the person who persists to complete that item in 45 minutes gets all the learning and glory that comes with completion.
How Can Patience Be Built?
Patience, like hunger, which I will speak about later, and specifically, enough patience to get something done, is only maintained by a small minority of people. Folks in this category look at others incredulously, wondering why they can’t continue a task for more than 10 minutes without resorting to some sort of leisure activity.
What Keeps You From Getting Stuck At A Point During The Process?
For those not in this minority group, with satisfactory patience in place, the route to gain patience is a difficult one. The key point of concern for those is when they spend 10 minutes doing something, and then quitting occurs. It is at that point that you have to look at what caused you to quit. Was it a distraction you allowed yourself to see or come into contact with? A big reason for built-in patience is having a routine that is free of most distractions and energy- absorbing activities. This leaves you the mental fortitude to use to take a task – from quitting at 10 minutes in – to taking it to completion. I have to stress that time is not the important issue, but that it is about how you spend that time. I just use 10 minutes and 50 minutes as an example to represent different points along an activity in a more obvious way.
People Have Their Set Standard Level Of Patience
If you have 10 random people start an activity at the same time, and progress through various difficult steps of it, you will see a spectrum of examples of patience. The same person who is more patient than another in that single example will completely outdo them in all their undertakings, because it will help them get further through a task, to the points where rewards arrive. I have long stressed the point that personalities are fairly fixed in place, and to supplement with similar material I read recently, Alex Shalman wrote an article, starting off with: “I strongly believe that how you do one thing is how you do everything.”.
Hunger Is A Vital Component
As far as having a hunger to do something, that is something we often say that someone either shows that they have, or lacks and is unable to synthetically. How do you make someone who has an orange reach for an orange? Gary said that younger folks are soft in comparison to those who are older, and that message was partly directed at the hunger that the younger generation may now lack. A person who has a lot provided to them has much less impetus to go and get more, as that drive and determination comes from an urge. For those who have less, that urge is more naturally there, while those who already have a life of abundance will have to search for the urges they have to get even more. Our minds work very poorly when we already have what we want to get by working on something. I also once wrote an article that had a part in it about what Arnold Schwarzenegger said about hunger.
I am looking forward to seeing what you think about these two key components of success. Can someone increase their hunger if they already have more than most? What holds someone back from having hunger to take on some opportunity?
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
Having patience and hunger togehter seems like a paradox. After all, in conventional thinking, how can you be patient when you are hungry? But managing this exact paradox and having these 2 traits together is what I suppose differentiates higly succesful people like Gary from the rest.
Eduard
Eduard: That’s a good point. These two concepts seem to be opposed to each other in some ways, as a hungry person is not who we would imagine as being patient at the time, and the same is true of the opposite. That hunger certainly has to be channeled into an outlet where patience is maintained, so that the hunger isn’t overbearing for others to deal with. This entertaining paradox is one we must conquer to reach a high point of satisfaction. Glad to hear from you.
Hi Armen, your post provided some great points from Gary Vaynerchuk who said that lack of patience is why we fail.
That is very true, because a lack of patience means lack of persistence, which leads to a lack of consistent improvement and learning. If we don’t have consistent improvements how can we ever succeed or even maintain it?
Anyways, I like how you connected to the lack of patience with the lack of hunger. And like Eduard said, they do seem to contradict each other.
While I do have to say that when you are hungry enough for a particular aspect in your life, especially in desperation/inspiration, great efforts will be put in with PASSION. And when you continually work on something with passion, there will be more senses of excitement than impatience.
I see impatience as the unappreciative and apathetic attitude towards our goals. Meaning probably the goal itself doesn’t really mean much to ignite a “fire” in us.
Anyways, i’ve written too long of a comment, thanks for the great post. You’ve nicely reminded me to be patient and persistent (which is one of my MAJOR weaknesses).
Steven
When you are not hungry are do not have to worry about an empty stomach, you will not be hungry.
Similarly, when you are too comfortable in your own skin, and do not have to worry about anything in life, you will not be hungry.
I think if we don’t have something at stake, we won’t be hungry for success. I think that’s what one of things Gary means when he compared the younger generation to the older generation.
Looks like I have another book to add to my Amazon wish list. I like the tying of hunger to patience. To take it quite literal, we often forget the patience it takes to feed ourselves these days, with fast food so close at hand. It takes much more patience to actually cook your food, and could you even imagine the patience it would take to grow your own food? Hunger would be the driving force in this, and patience would be the vehicle to get you there.
We must have both hunger and patience to reach our goals. Great post Armen, and thank you for sharing your experience!
This is sick! You actually met Gary! (I’m so jealous!)
I’ve already read his book Crush IT! and know exactly what you’re talking about. Keep on hustling, keep on trying, and keep moving forward towards your passion. This is why I love Gary.
I’m so happy for you. Glad to see that you met him and got inspired
Armen, this is the first time I’ve commented here, but I’m usually skulking around in the wings. I like what you do, my friend.
People aren’t patient because it isn’t natural. The easy way out is what’s natural most of the time. Patience takes work and self-scrutiny and it’s much easier to be angry and frustrated and lash out and watch reality TV.
But that doesn’t mean we quit trying. We are not everyone else, and that is why we are in control of our lives.
Great post, buddy.
Steven: Good call there. That lack of persistence sure does mean we cancel at some point, cutting off any chance of continuity.
Impatience is sometimes described as a good trait for people that want to do things quickly, but I don’t think they are impatient so much as pushing toward their goal. If they were actually impatient they would quit their big goal due to it taking much time.
Cool to hear from you.
Tristan: I hear you there. That does sound just right, and makes one wonder if they are at a disadvantage when pursuing a goal and having less at stake than someone else pursuing the goal who has less. It is a bit counter-intuitive, but is worth thinking about. Re-framing a situation to realize that the goal is worth making the “main event” looks to be the way to bring back that hunger, because no one wants to miss out on the “main event”.
Good call on the direct message about the younger generation.
Eric: The book sure does have some valuable points in it, especially for us in this domain. I can think of a few things off the top of my head that I gained from the material in it.
Your analogy about how there is fast food around is one I agree with. There is all this fast food around, when what we need to be doing is cooking. We have to make fast food the enemy of sorts, and slowly cooking food the item to partake in. It isn’t worth it to mess with “fast food” anyway. Since we always have hunger, if we cut out any chance of using “fast food” to satiate it, we will resort to the better nourishment, and that is what we have to do. Thanks for your thoughts.
John: Hey, yeah it was cool. I was excited too. I would say that one of the main things I gained by actually meeting Gary is a better sense of how he is crushing it. He’s whipping through the country doing things that haven’t been done, turning bookstores into his playground whereas other big authors hope for 20 people to be in the store for them at a time. You start to realize how much more he is pushing it than basically everyone in his domain, and the principles behind it are what he talks about regularly. Also, the fact that he could tell the audience their problems directly, and then leave them to work through what is holding them back(if they take the heavy initiative), is the kind of directness that I appreciate hearing.
Thanks for that and I think we are both relevant users of the material of his book.
Josh: Hey to you. It is nice that you pointed that out. I am switching to a “if I read the article, I comment on it” mindset now, because I have read so many articles that I left my thoughts out of.
Good point about it not being natural to be patient. That point about watching reality TV might seem like a joke to some readers, but that is almost exactly what happens. Frustration sets in for someone, and then quitting occurs, and then they head directly to watch a reality TV show, or some other item that won’t benefit them in any way. Creators of reality TV, and other related garbage, use folks weaknesses pretty well.
Thanks for that.
Twitter: alexshalman
October 27, 2009 at 9:49 am
Hey Armen,
My philosophy so far in dental school has been. It doesn’t matter if someone brings more brains to the table (a couple have photographic memory), no one is going to be able to say that they’ve outworked me.
So the people that are now saying that they don’t care how they do, as long as they pass and get their license, are going to take that same attitude out into the world. They’re going to say, “as long as I pay rent, car, jewelry, I’m done for the day.”
That’s where I plan to come in, create quantum leaps in my business, expand, and absolutely outwork anyone in my industry. AKA CRUSH IT.
Thanks for mentioning me a long side Gary. I’ve seen a couple of articles now that mention both of us, so I’m waiting for him to contact me so we can have a friendly chat.
Hey Alex.
That sure is a philosophy that anyone would be smart to absorb. That is pretty special stuff about the photographic memory also.
I agree with that about the person who goes to 20% or 40% of completion is the same person who goes to 20% or 40% completion in other activities. It took me a while to notice that, and your example is another valid way it shows up.
I hear you about the plan to outwork as described, and it is already visible with your article ranking 5th for the name of your school.
Glad to hear from you, and that friendly chat looks to be on the way.
Hey Armen,
It’s interesting that you bring up patience. Most people like to look at blogging as a get rich quick scheme and that’s because they lack patience. I’ve probably written a disproporationately high number of posts for the age of my blog, but I also think about it as the leg work for what I’m doing. I realize that it’s something that will take patience. You’re the 4th person to mention this book in all the blogs I read, so I may have to venture over to borders today and read through it.
Hey Srinivas.
They sure do look at it that way, and that is one of the things that keeps competition lower. Anyone wanting quick results loses steam. You sure are building a solid foundation.
It sure is a popular book right now, as Gary is spreading it throughout the country.
Thanks for your thoughts.