Getting There

As career occupies a big chunk of many people’s life, the question “Will I ever be a success?” haunts us most of the time. Despite the relative measure of success, many want to find their life’s purpose, leave positive footprints, and most importantly, be happy. One of the most affordable ways to build on success is to look for a role model and get inspired to work on your own. What Gillian Zoe Zegal did with Getting There is exactly that.

Through the thirty people whose life stories she covered in the book, I learned how these entrepreneurs, artists, architect, social workers, chef, and professionals came from many different backgrounds; some needed to experience disheartening childhood from personal loss, discrimination and bullying, or tough times getting through formal education whereas some others were lucky enough to find their passion early on and spend the rest of their life focusing to develop it. Some came from a rather poor family while some had a privilege to go to great schools and have no problems in paying tuition.

The common threads I found from these people are that they:

Outwork everybody else to exist today

From Michael Bloomberg (Bloomberg L.P. Founder, Former New York City Mayor) to Rachel Zoe (Fashion Stylist); from Anderson Cooper (Journalist) to Jeff Kinney (Diary of Wimpy Kid Author) they believed that the only reason they exist today is because they work hard. That all the achievements made were not because of luck, but by mere hard work. Bloomberg admitted to have been coming earliest to the office and going home the latest to be able to be where he is today. But that is not all, Anderson Cooper helped to see that being hardworking also means to work on the things people avoid.

For Jeff Kinney, it means working on the Diary of Wimpy Kid for more than 8 years –to present its first draft because he remember being told in the fifth grade by his teacher to “embrace excellence and not accepting praise for something he knew wasn’t great,” which later on helped him to be patience and keep improving his work before he let people see it. On that, however, Hans Zimmer (Lion King Composer) admitted that there are times when you need to accept defeat –where you came into a point that it just did not work and embrace it as part of the process.

Muhammad Yunus debunked the idea of a bank by inventing the microfinance concept; he started off with 27 dollars, but ended up helping millions of people on the planet with this approach. That did not come straightforwardly. He had to instill a new understanding, while challenging an Islamic thinking built on for centuries, that women shall be allowed to manage money -in fact they created welfare out of the money lent. This has proven to be enormously hard to do –which took them six years to reach their initial goal: to make women fifty percent of the borrowers.

Work around their competence

Warren Buffet set this point since the first few pages of the book, how he became successful because he worked on the areas where his strength lies, which is analyzing businesses. Apparently, this is something all thirty people shared in common. Though some needed to explore it and spent almost half of his/her life figuring out what he/she wanted to do, at the end of the day, they worked on something they knew they were good at, passionate about, and not having to drag themselves to work every day.

Nevertheless, it does not mean that you only work on something you already feel comfortable with and does not challenge the status quo. In fact, you need to keep exploring new things, which will only expand our options and help you with your future endeavors. Stacey Snider (Co-Chairman 20^th Century Fox) never predicted how her law degree from UCLA and experience working for an entry level in an entertainment agency would help her tremendously in choosing which script to be adopted into a movie.

So it is definitely okay to wander, just like Jim Koch (Brewer and Founder of the Boston Beer Company) who took a job as Outward Bound Instructor –where he basically guided people to hike mountains, completed his law and business programs at Harvard and became Consultant at Boston Consulting Group before he found what he eventually was set out to do: making his own beer.

And work does not always have to journey linearly, like what Helene Gayle (CARE USA President and CEO) believed in. Growing up thinking to help people through medicine, Helene finally completed her study also in public health. Later on, from focusing on combatting HIV/AIDS with CDC –where she dedicated her life to work towards positive change, she went to Gates Foundation to understand how the privately funded organization before she moved to CARE USA where she is currently working towards poverty eradication. She always believed that we can never really map life out in precision; therefore we might as well keep ourselves to new experiences, new opportunities, or even expand our options.

Believe in their guts and keep moving forward despite the hardships the face along the way

All kinds of troubles will only get in the way, most artists like Jeff Koons admitted being mocked for their works and there was nothing unique about that occurrence. J Craig Venter, PhD who was able to sequence human genome, or John Paul Dejoria (John Paul Mitchell Systems/Patron Spirits Company Co-Founder) were even fired after the tremendous achievements they made for the organizations they worked for.

It is so easy to get discouraged along the way, but the only advice these people gave was that we all need to believe in our guts, and keep moving forward.

None actually experienced luck after luck after luck, nor privilege after privilege after privilege. The only thing I read so far was that they encountered too many obstacles that would only break the spirit. Gary Hirshberg (Stonyfield Farm Chairman and Co-Founder) worked for the organic yoghurt since 1983, only to be able to make their first profit nine years later, pass Kraft in yoghurt sales five years later and become the world’s largest organic yoghurt maker six years after acquiring Brown Cow. If he decided to give up in the first few years, when they had USD 500,000 in debt and it seemed like there was no way out, there will certainly be no Stonyfield today. He and his co-founder stick to their mission and progressed through, even though it took years to finally pay off. 

So yes, at last, these inspiring people could only connect the dots backwards. No matter how they started, the adversity they went through along the way, when they reached the moment of success, they celebrated it with happiness. That, I guess, applies to us as well. There is no secret path to success, only hard work that will prevail.