← Impact Podcast, Mentorship with Eddie Wilson
Impact Podcast, Mentorship with Eddie Wilson
57 - Stop Waiting for the Breakthrough | The Truth About How Winners Actually Win
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Welcome to the Impact Podcast. I'm Eddie Wilson, here to help you visualize what others cannot see, create opportunities where others have failed, and push you to build empires where once there was empty space. Let's embark on this journey together and make a difference in this world. Welcome to the Impact Podcast with Eddie Wilson. This is my favorite time of the week. And welcome. I love this hour that I get to sit, prepare, think about what I'm going to deliver. And. And for the next 20 to 25 minutes I get to spend with you is one of the most gratifying things I get to do. I get so many people that ask for some mentorship or some help with business or structure leadership, and this is when I get to sow back into you. Most people are waiting. They're waiting for the one deal. They're waiting for the one hire, they're waiting for the one idea. They're the one moment that changes everything. They're waiting on the silver bullet. They're biting their time. They're. They're literally working in business, waiting with this expectation that something is going to happen. This special person's gonna walk through the door and everything's gonna change. This one customer is gonna come in and love what they do and make a purchase. They're. They're gonna get known or they're gonna get exposure, whatever it is. Most people are sitting there waiting and they're waiting on the silver bullet. The silver bullet is this concept in business where people believe in a majority when the polls are taken, a majority of business people and, and, or people in life believe that success is gonna come in this one singular moment. It's called the silver bullet, the silver bullet theory. But I wanna tell you something, that statistically speaking, that mindset is exactly what's keeping you stuck. Because the truth is, is there is no silver bullet. Very few times in human history has there been just this exceptional moment or this exceptional person that walks in and changes everything. The fact of the matter is, is that there's not one silver bullet, but there's massive amounts of lead bullets. And if you don't understand the difference, you're going to spend life waiting while somebody else is quietly, strategically, and intently winning. In this episode, I'm going to talk to you about this idea of the silver bullet. I love Ben Horowitz book and I've recommended it probably about as much as I've recommended Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday. But I have recommended this book. It's called Hard Things about the hard things. Ben Horowitz who is a prolific business people and investor, talks about a lot of fantastic concepts where he really is trying to convince the reader that it's okay to just do the hard thing to to instead of look for all the shortcuts, look for the opportunities. Trying to get rich quick or trying to find success fast. He is pushing this narrative that everything takes time and that there is no silver bullet. As a matter of fact, in his book, he says there is no silver bullet. We're going to have to use a lot of lead bullets. It's this concept of, you know, if you're thinking about war, you're thinking about battle. Oftentimes you're thinking about, like, this one shot that wins the war, right? Like this one silver bullet that takes out the dictator. But the fact of the matter is it took 10,000 lead bullets in order to actually win the war. What Ben is actually saying in this book, and I definitely would recommend it, is he says there's not one single decision that saves your company. There's not one hire that fixes your culture, and there's not one strategy that ever guarantees success. It's just decisions over and over and over again. And most of those decisions and are small, inconsequential decisions. Some of them are wrong, a few of them are right. But stacked together, decisions become unstoppable. And this is the idea. And the idea didn't really start with Horowitz. It actually started with a book by the name of the Mythical Man Month. And it's a guy by the name of Fred Brooks who wrote this book years ago. And he said, and he really developed this concept. And I believe that Horowitz actually took the concept from him. He said, there is no single development that by itself promises even one order of magnitude of improvement. Translation, no breakthrough is actually coming to save you. There isn't one thing that's going to come to your rescue, only progress. And progress over time creates habits that create success. So let me give you a historical story to anchor into, and then we'll unpack this a little bit. So if you go back to World War II, most people know the turning point of World War II was what we called D Day, where we sent a massive amount of forces. We put all of our emphasis on the beaches of Normandy, and we see the tide of the war turn. And this is when the Allied invasion of Europe happens. It's when all of the Allies get together and we invade Europe to take back Europe from the Nazis. And most people think of D Day as the turning point. But if you think about it historically, if you research historically, we see this as one massive moment. Every single day on D Day, people go back to the beaches of Normandy. They celebrate the successes and the sacrifices that happened there. Soldiers that were there on that day have went back by the year. But the fact of the matter is, is this one decisive victory didn't change the outcome of the war. It wasn't a silver bullet. It wasn't like we went in and we conquered and then everything changed. What actually happened was it was just one bullet in a war won by thousands of bullets, won by thousands of them. Before that day, there was actually years of intelligence gathering. Why did we pick that beach? Why do we pick that moment? Why do we pick that day? Well, it was years worth of intelligence gathering. It was countless small battles across Africa and also Italy. We, we had, there's a lot of fighting that happened before this battle, relentless bombing campaigns. We were bombing incessantly before this day actually came. And then logistics and planning on a scale that the world had never seen before. The Allied invasion of Europe was a logistical brilliant maneuver by this group of people. And after D Day, well, it wasn't over. It was inch by inch movement across Europe. It was taking back every little town and city and hamlet and supply chains. They had to function properly. We had to make sure that, that the, the Nazis didn't create separation our supply chain. We had to make sure that we get the troops, supplies and food and ammunition and, and, and help. Thousands of decisions made daily by commanders and soldiers. Think about it. There were literally millions of people involved in this war. And thousands of decisions had to be made on a daily basis by commanders and soldiers. And the Allies didn't win because of one perfect move on D Day, although it was one of the most heroic, monumental feats we'd ever seen. The Allies didn't win because of one perfect move. They won because they kept firing relentlessly. Even when it was messy, even when it was hard, even when it was uncertain, even when it felt like nothing was working fast enough. The days turned into weeks. The drudgery of what was going on there in and all over Europe. And that's the reality of winning. That is winning. And if you can settle into the narrative of winning is not a silver bullet, but thousands of lead bullets. It changes the mindset by which you operate. If you think about your relationships in the same way that it's not a special date or a special moment, it's not the wedding day, that is the crowning achievement that then changes everything. It's not the birth of a child. It's literally the drudgery of the day to day and staying with it. It's perseverance. So the application. I want to bring this back to your life, right, because we're talking about silver bullets, we're talking about D Day and World War II. But to your business, to this current season, you're sitting there thinking, I just need the right hire. I just need to hire this right person that can help me with my finances or help me with sales and marketing, or help me with product delivery. I just need the right deal. If I just could get out there and sell and find the right deal, or if I just had the right strategy, I'm just, you know, I'm a percentage off in my strategy. And if I just fix the strategy, you know, it's like we have a coffee business and oftentimes you get. I get enamored. And I know that some of our leadership gets enamored by the craft of the coffee. And you want to believe. You want to believe that when you. When you roast that perfect bean, and that perfect bean turns into its ground and turned into the perfect brew, the perfect cup of coffee, that. That literally is going to change the coffee landscape globally. Everybody's going to love you for that, that cup of coffee. But the fact of the matter is, is it's not. It's. It's a friendly smile by a barista a thousand times a day. It is the consistency of making sure that the milk is specifically the right temperature. It's. It's making sure that the consistency of. Of your syrups or your flavors, your taste or what the people expect every single time they walk in. It's not a silver bullet. It's not the perfect cup of coffee. It's literally 10,000 lead bullets. It's. It's the baristas day in and day out. It's consistency. It's making sure the store is clean. It's making sure that you open up on time. It's making sure that. That everything. It's. That the bathrooms are clean and that everything is presentable. It's a thousand lead bullets. You don't need the right hire, you don't need the right deal. You don't need the right strategy. What you need is more bullets. You need the ability to fire more bullets. You need the ability to get more reps. You need more conversations. You need more attempts. You need more iterations. You need more swings. The greatest batters in history and baseball are not the ones who stepped up in a moment's notice and hit the grand slam. They're the Cal Ripkens. They're the Alex Rodriguez's. They're the. They're the ones that literally just day after day after day after day, they gr. They. They were in the grind of perfecting the swing. And when it came time to actually swing, they had already done it 10,000 times. It was just muscle memory because momentum is just that. Momentum doesn't come from perfection. It comes from doing similar things and perfecting them over time. It's not about a big change. It's not about a big swing. It's not about the grand slam. It's about doing the right thing every single day. It comes from volume. Winning comes from volume. This is where most people lose. I would. I coached basketball for a few years, and it was one of my favorite times of life. My youngest brother, Levi, it was one of his years in high school. I had the chance to. I was invited to come back and coach at the. At that high school. And I went back and I coached for, I think, three years. And we won the state championship year number two. And it was just. It was a really, really fun time of life. It was a really cool experience because I got to coach my youngest brother and we just had an exceptional team. But one thing that I would do every single time is at the end of practice, we would sit there and we would just shoot free throws over and over and over and over again. And you think, like, how, how well or how much better can you get somebody at free throws? And the fact of the matter is, is when you, statistically speaking, make a person shoot an average of 75 to 100 free throws a day, and you do that over a prolonged period of time, you're going to increase their percentage not by 50% or 60%, but typically by 10 or 20%. But the fact of the matter is, is, is. It's, it's like, it's like, it's like Moneyball, right? It's like, it's the statistical analysis and making sure that you're gaining that 2, 3, 4, 5%. Because most basketball games when you're doing well and you're playing well, are not lost or won by 15 or 20 points. They're one, lost or lost or won by five or seven. So if you, statistically speaking, can increase your free throws by 10%, right? Then you win again. It's 10,000 lead bullets. Most momentum doesn't come from perfection. It comes from volume. This is where most people lose. They fire One shot with the expectation of all success riding on that shot. And if it doesn't work, they stop. And when people stop, it's typically a telltale sign of a lack of character, a lack of discipline, and the lack of perseverance. It shows a weakness if you can only do something, muster up enough to do something one time, and if it doesn't go well, you bail out. It just shows weakness. That's a weakness that's. In a lot of humans. The ones who win are the ones who fire 10,000 times, the ones that try over and over and over and over again. So there's an internal shift I want you to consider, because as you're thinking about this, every one of us have those areas of our life where we just want it to happen in perfection we don't want to put the time and effort into. But the internal shift that has to happen is not just a strategy shift. It's an identity shift. Okay, so it's not just strategy, it's identity. Because when you stop looking for the silver bullet, you stop becoming fragile. You know, I just, you know, reference the fact that when you try one time and it doesn't go well and you bail out, it shows a weakness or a lack of character, a lack of perseverance in you. And what happens is you become a fragile human being, a fragile person. And so in business, it's. If it doesn't go well, then in the highs and the lows, it's the. It's the mercurial ups and downs. It's the emotional roller coaster that we've all been on with people who have a weak mind. It's like, you get stuck, and I want to push you and admonish you to not allow yourself to live within that context, to make sure that this isn't just a strategy shift for one time. Like, okay, I'm gonna get under the weight. I'm gonna do it two or three or four times. Like, no, Shift your identity. Stop looking for the one singular thing that gives you success, and realize it's going to take 10,000 iterations. Stop being fragile. You need to stop believing that everything has to go right. Perfectionism is oftentimes the enemy of success. Everything doesn't have to go right. It just needs progress. You have to realize that I don't need this one thing to work because I'm going to keep going. And until something does, when you are sitting there hoping for the best, you need to re identify as somebody who will stay under the weight until success comes. That's power. And ultimately, that's freedom. Freedom takes away this mindset or this idea that if this doesn't work, then we're all doomed. Freedom is. I'm going to give myself to this until success comes. That's how businesses are actually built. This is what is missing in the American public and the American business public today is that most small business owners do not give themselves enough Runway. They get highly emotional because they're typically visionaries by nature. And they don't build the business because they don't get under the weight. It's not one moment, but it's thousands of small, often invisible decisions, decisions that you don't even think about that the average person wouldn't even recognize. And it's thousands of them. So here's the close. Here's your question. Are you waiting on the silver bullet? In any area of your life, business, success, you're waiting for somebody to discover you. You've been doing social media now for six months or a year. You've got your own podcast and you've put out four or five or 10 episodes, and you're waiting for that one moment. One thing that Charlie, who helps me with my podcast here, we talked a lot about in the beginning. And he said, eddie, in order for you to be successful on the podcast, you're just going to have to commit to doing it every single week, no matter what the result is. And Charlie had built a really, really successful podcast where he talked about the paranormal. And it's super fascinating. Really, really great podcast he built. And he would. He just like, I was looking at the amount of episodes that they put out and how consistent they were. And that's what he said to me. He said, if you want to be a successful person at putting together a podcast, you. You just have to do it every single week, literally every single Tuesday, I jump into the studio, I build a podcast. Oftentimes, if I don't, if I'm not going to have time to do it the following week or the week after, I'll do two in a row. And that's because I believe and I've bought into this concept that it's 10,000 lead bullets. And in the beginning, I had a hundred people listen. Then I had 200 people listen. Then, you know, over a year later, after just doing it consistently, it wasn't like I had some breakthrough moment. I think one of my podcast, I think, had about 7,000 downloads. And I thought that was the biggest thing ever on YouTube, right? Like 7,000. I was crazy. And then it just Kept growing and growing and growing, but it wasn't like I was growing a million at a time. Finally, about 14 months in, I hit the million downloads mark over all of my episodes. It was like. It literally was. I think it was 60 or 50 some episodes before I ever hit the million download mark. And that's because it takes 10,000 lead bullets. So if you're out there and you're building your social media or you're building your podcast, stick with it. It's not a silver bullet. Nobody from NBC is all of a sudden going to come in and see that you're doing this amazing thing and then give you a platform and be like, hey, let's put you on, you know, on this show. Or ESPN is not going to show up and be like, hey, I love your commentary. Let's go ahead and do it right. Like it is iteration after iteration after iteration. Are you still waiting on the silver bullet? Are you willing to forego the silver bullet and pick up the lead bullets? Because the people in this world who win, they don't wait for the perfect shot. They just keep firing one more time. The people in this world who win are not the ones who wait for the perfect shot. They're the ones that keep firing. I want to leave you with this because I hope this is a paradigm shift for you. I hope it's not just a strategic. Well, I need to implement that a little bit more in my sales or implement that more in my business. This is an invitation to shift your identity. Some of you have given up too soon. Go back to the ideas that you've had. Go back to those things where you decided to bail out. And I guarantee some of those ideas were great ideas. And if you just would have stuck with it, it would have won. It would have been successful. You know, in this season of Life, I've been kind of going through, and maybe a lot of you have seen what I've been putting out. But I've. I've been talking about how the. The fact is, is that I was called the king of exits, and people had referred to me as the king of exits. And I've decided to really push back on that, because the exits, in my opinion, were the thousand lead bullets, right? Like, the exits weren't who I wanted to be. Who I want to be is somebody who builds character in other people, who builds other leaders. I want to bring people with me. I want to find success for them. I want to bring orphans into a place where they find success. I want to bring business leaders into A place where they find success. And the fact of the matter is, is that exits were never the mission. They were just the outcome of thousands of lead bullets. Most people see the exits that I had, but they don't see the failures that I had. They don't see the thousands and thousands and thousands of hours. You know, Malcolm Gladwell says that in order to be an expert in anything, you got to put 10,000 hours in. And no one saw the 10,000 hours. Very few people saw when I was sitting at a desk late at night in my twenties, thinking and dreaming and working and pushing when everybody else had gone away, nobody saw the, you know, I, I came into corporate America very young and my boss said, Eddie, he said, in order for you to be taken seriously because you're so young, you need to wear a suit and tie every day. Well, all my counterparts, they might have wore dress clothes at the business I was in, but they never dress dressed to that level. No one saw me go get a, you know, I mean, my parents did and a few people around me, but I went and got a. I could not afford the suits that he told me I needed to wear to be successful or be taken advantage or to take advantage of the opportunity. I literally had to go get a job at a suit store to get a discount on the suits. I then bought the suits at the suit store and then went and worked my second job in order to be taken seriously in my early 20s and I was competing with 40 year olds, 50 year olds because that was who was successful at that work. But very few people saw that. Very few people saw me working at a mall, at a suit store until 10 o' clock at night just so that I could afford the very thing that I was told could be successful. And by the way, none of it matters, right? Like all of us have to go through it. That shouldn't be a moment where I'm like, pat me on the back because I did these things. And honestly, you should be waiting on the pat on the back either. The fact of the matter is success comes to the diligent. Success comes to those who are dedicated, who are willing to get under the weight over time. They're willing to persevere. And in the end, that is the game. That is what you have to do to be successful. It's what's missing in so many people's lives. It's what separates the winners from, from the losers. And so today I admonish you, I encourage you, I push you, I implore you to stop looking for the silver bullet and just get ready to fire 10,000 lead bullets and I guarantee success and a win for you. Thanks so much for being a part of the podcast and for listening today. Love to connect with you further. And you can connect with me on social media at Eddie Wilson official on any of the social media channels.