Am I the only one not interested in taking advice from someone who has largely been massively successful? I always feel like these are the people who generally have nothing of real value to say, they just think they do because of their bias from their success.
I'm not 100% sure I agree, but I do think that people who have hit wild levels of success generally don't have advice that tangibly applies to most people.
Ironically, I'm going to mention Alex Hormozi (who is very successful), but he said in an interview once that he spent something like $150k to talk to Grant Cardone and thought "I'm easily getting my ROI on that now because Grant's advice applies to someone in my position, where I have $100 MM. 10 years ago, when I was broke, the advice he's giving me now would have just put me further in insurmountable debt."
Most ultra-successful people somewhat forget the baseline that most people live in. For example, if they were to "restart with nothing", they usually assume that "nothing" still implies a good credit score, housing, food, healthcare, etc. which most of America is really spending all of their time trying to fight to secure. This translates to the out-of-touch and generally vague advice they give.
Yes absolutely. It would be a great experiment to see what any ultra-successful person would do with even that massive leg up - which puts you in the top 10% of the US, if not the top 5%. And no, they aren't allowed to use any of their connections ;)
The ultra-successful, in my experience, are there because yes, they do have some strong, quantifiable qualities, but they also have massive, massive advantages. Not just being born into a home that gave them quality food, the best education, and all of the other things needed to be healthy in their developing years - but also the experience of their successful parents, the connections their family has, and many other things that I probably do not even know exist.
Some of these families that I know personally have it ridiculously well. Not only were they born with amazing portfolios, but they have great family jobs where they make $8k+ (after tax) every 2 weeks. And they get as much time off as they want - and you better believe they generally use it :)
Of course, they still find things to complain about - as do I.
There are a lot of brilliant and driven poor people. If they are lucky, they will get into the 10% or the 5%. If they win the lottery they make it into the .1%.
I think I actually learned this lesson from my failure to build a billion dollar startup with Labdoor (this story is in the post). We would've been better off raising less money and going for profitability earlier. Labdoor made it to the middle class the hard way, and I'm trying to help others avoid some of my pain.
Thanks Neil - I certainly do not mean to disparage your success or work done with your writing. I think part of my comment is driven by the need for someone on HN to post something cynical.
I think there is just some mental fatigue that happens when you read about other's success - maybe this is an unhealthy reaction, I do not know.
> I think I actually learned this lesson from my failure to build a billion dollar startup with Labdoor
Failing to build a billion dollar startup does not exactly disprove the “massively succesful” point that GP made. Unless your criteria for “failure” is completely ridiculous.
Yes, I feel more useful information would be a story from someone who failed a bunch of times, then finally found success, and what the differentiating factors would be in his particular case.
> Am I the only one not interested in taking advice from someone who has largely been massively successful?
I think of Kevin Systrom selling Instagram to Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook. Both success stories. Systrom went to high school at Middlesex, Zuckerberg to Phillips Exeter. I can think of many examples like this. Phillips Exeter high school starts at $47,000 a year, Middlesex high school starts at $54,000 a year.
So my best advice is have your parents give you $200,000 before you start high school so you can be off to a good start.
Or just, good food, decent connections, a good education, and general support during your most important developing years. That goes a huge way and almost no one has these things.
If someone has been massively successful, that means they know how to be successful. It must be the case they have something of value to say. How can you make the argument they have nothing of value to say?
First, I would argue that your statement is not true that successful people always or even generally or on the average know how to be successful. But even if it is true, because they are good at one thing (starting businesses) does not mean they have anything valuable to say, or that they can say it in a way that transfers value to others, or that they are good at anything else, really.
Anyway, you're attacking a premise I didn't put forward - I didn't say his advice was not valuable, I said I feel that way when presented with articles like these by wildly successful people.
Simple. Survivorship bias. HBS and other business journals have done many studies where they look at the key attributes of a successful entrepreneur and it's always the usual stuff like: hard work, persistence, willingness to take risks, etc. The problem is that if you surveyed the key attributes of UNsuccessful entrepreneurs you'd find the exact same attributes.
If somebody has been massively successful from nothing multiple times, it means they probably know how to be successful. If somebody has been massively successful once, it means there is a definite possibility that they know how to be successful, and also a definite possibility that they had connections and/or luck.
You’re getting downvoted because it’s almost always parents and their friends.
Pull like any tech big shot at random, their parents are rich and bought some part of their success. Gates’ folks had an IBM mainframe installed in his fucking high school.
Oh myGod, this kid Bill Gates is way ahead of the curve on computers.
IMO it's good to take the advice of consistently successful investors who seem to prioritize honesty. Warren Buffet, Charlie Munger, and Chamath Palihapitiya are my favorites. My reasoning is that you can't make consistently good investment decisions without having a reliable mental framework for how to look at the world.
For other classes of successful people it makes more sense to read a biography (or autobiography if you feel the subject is intellectually honest) of successful people to understand how they think and operate. Many of these people won't be looking to give advice, but it is worthwhile to learn from them. For instance you can read the biography of Rockefeller, Carnegie, Franklin, and listen to "How I made this" featuring Michael Dell, and see the threads that are common amongst them. You may then compare that to yourself and understand the differences.
IMO there's plenty of value in the article, but it's an example of something you should critically analyze and verify against other sources before acting on.
Someone once asked the Duke of Westminster for career advice: “Make sure they have an ancestor who was a very close friend of William the Conqueror.” At least he was honest.
Understand your motivations. There are plenty of detestable successful people that still have plenty one can learn from.
It is up to you to be able to filter good information from bad. Wealthy founders do share some opinions that will help you be wealthy. However you need to learn to discriminate between good advice and bad advice. Your blanket ban seems poorly thought out to me.
Bonus unwelcome advice: you appear to be using the word successful to mean wealthy. Perhaps deconstruct your worldview a bit.
I think it's important to take advice from a lot of people. It's up to you how to frame what to do with it or how much you think it applies to your current situation.
I'd just recommend not painting with too broad of a brush.
One of my favorite stories about Dabo Swinney, Clemson's football coach, came when he had just gotten the job and very few people had any confidence in him. ESPN rated him as a D+ hire at the time. He sat down at a coaches dinner event and a much older retired coach named Bill Curry was at his table. They struck up a conversation and Bill said, "Dabo, congratulations on the job! Can I give you 3 pieces of advice?"
And Dabo took out a pad and pencil from his pocket.
The advice was good, but the fact that Dabo was humble enough to actually take notes. Think about how much advice we just let go in one ear and out the other.
Now he's the best coach we've ever had and won 2 national titles.
Depends on your definition of all, successful, and lucky.
If you change successful to be defined as people like OP, I believe a large majority of successful people are extremely lucky. Probably over 99.9%. They owe their success to being extremely fortunate in a combination of many factors, not limited to:
- Where they were born
- Who their parents were
- What food their parents gave them when they were kids
seems like a not useful definition. If we go with this what is not from luck? Someone works hard? That's because they got lucky with the right genes and upbringing. They're smart, born to the right parents. If we go with this then everything in life is a matter of luck.
