The Million Dollar Question

Man, what a memorable post.

I like to think about his main point of "people won't understand you" a little differently. Humans were originally pack animals, and it shows. You are nothing without your pack, but together the pack is strong. Modern life isn't nearly so simplistic, but we still have our packs, albeit a little more nuanced. The place we work. The neighborhood we live in. Our family. Our friends (who are probably drawn from work, neighborhood, and family).

Doing what Sebastian does seems to be a lonely path. You get to be the alpha, but only of a pack of one. I get this feeling when seeing a lot of executives interviewed - men and women who are supposedly at the helm of enormous packs, but in practice seem a lot more alone than one might imagine.

I'm not sure I buy it. I've met plenty of wealthy people who were happy to come home to a pretty normal family because their jobs are a constant source of novelty, stress and challenges. If one feels the need to stick out as part of one's identity, great, but it's just one way of living. I kind of like sticking out as a foreigner over here in Italy sometimes; it has its positive aspects. I certainly chose a road less traveled, but whatever, to each his own. For other things I'm happy to be pretty ordinary: I have a wife and two fantastic children and live in what passes for burbs over here.

Also, being a bit of a skeptic and contrarian, perhaps some of these people had other good reasons to say no to his plans. Without knowing their point of view, more about his proposals, and other particulars, maybe their inaction was sensible.

This is a great post, but what I really want to know is how to make a million bucks without Sebastian Marshall mentoring you and no real connections. Actually, maybe I start by trying harder to make connections.

"If you walk in the door at 10K per day, bet your bottom dollar people are going to listen to you."

Maybe. Or maybe they're just executives with enough clout and lack of scruples that they'll spend 10k per day of the company's money to have someone make pretty powerpoint slides in which carefully massaged data "proves" that a certain course of action (that will help the executive's career) is best for the company. And another 10k per day to have someone to take the blame if it has disastrous consequences or involves firing lots of people.

When I decided to embark on a new project this summer, I was at first held back by fear of failure. When I looked closer at the fear I realized that I could hack it by redefining my terms of success. Instead of defining success as making it big, I defined it as climbing up a steep learning curve. To do something new and learn from it, that's my definition of success.

And like that, the fear was gone. I'm now one month into my project, and I'm crushing it. Never been happier.