3551: Show Success Before Asking for Help AND A Warning to Anyone Receiving Advice by Derek Sivers

[00:00:00] This is Optimal Living Daily, Show Success Before Asking for Help AND Beware of Advice, both by Derek Sivers of Sivers, S-I-V-E dot R-S. And I'm Justin Malik and welcome to Optimal Living Daily or Old, one of a few shows where we read articles to you. Today, two articles, both on the shorter side, so with that let's get right to them as we optimize your life.

[00:00:26] Show Success Before Asking for Help by Derek Sivers of Sivers, S-I-V-E dot R-S. I learned this huge life lesson from a secret document. Music publishers give a cash advance to a songwriter in return for owning half the future income generated from their songs. The publisher is betting that those songs will earn at least as much as that cash advance.

[00:00:55] I was working at Warner Chapel Music Publishing when someone stepped away from her desk. I noticed she had accidentally left out the private financial statement showing every songwriter we had signed, the amount of their cash advance, and how much they had earned. I secretly made a copy for myself then put hers back. I noticed a huge difference between two songwriters.

[00:01:17] One was a great writer, constantly delivering songs with great hit potential, super professional, and a great collaborator. She got her deal because one of the managers heard her and believed in her, but she hadn't had any success yet. Her advance? $15,000. The other writer was horrible. His songs were really bad metal that would make the worst metal band cringe. They were poorly recorded and terribly performed.

[00:01:45] But in the 80s, he had been in a band with a major rock star, so he had a partial songwriting credit on a song on a record that sold over 12 million copies. His advance? $500,000. The moral of this story? You have to make your own success first before you ask the industry for help. Show that you're going to be successful without their help. Show that you have momentum.

[00:02:11] If they want to accelerate or amplify your success, they'll have to pay to ride your train. If you approach them before you can show some success, then you'll have no negotiating leverage and will get the worst deal possible. Beware of Advice by Derek Sivers of Sivers, S-I-V-E dot R-S. Imagine that you hand someone your camera and ask him to take a photo of you.

[00:02:39] He does, but when you look at the photo later, you notice that he took a photo of himself by mistake. Imagine you've got a big question like, should I quit my job and start my own company? You go ask the advice of some successful people you respect. Because they can't know everything about you and your unique situation, they'll give advice that's really just a reflection of their own current situation. So let's look at some ways that advice is biased.

[00:03:07] Number one, lottery numbers. When successful people give advice, I usually hear it like this. Here are the lottery numbers I played. 14, 29, 71, 33, and 8. They worked for me. Success is based on so many factors. Some are luck, some are not. It's hard to know which are which. So which do you learn from? Number two, underdog opinion in their context.

[00:03:35] Someone giving advice doesn't want to say what's been said too much already, but he's basing that on his surroundings, not yours. So if everyone around him is quitting their jobs, his advice to you will be to keep your job. That advice has nothing to do with what's best for you. It's just the opinion that seems underrepresented in his environment that day. And number three, creative sparks. You ask, what should I do? Option A or B?

[00:04:03] He replies, zebra. He's treating the situation as an invitation to brainstorm, giving a crazy suggestion just to open up more options. Like an Oscar Wilde quip, it was meant to be mostly entertaining, maybe useful, and probably not correct. The problem is taking any one person's advice too seriously. Ideally, asking advice should be like echolocation. Bounce ideas off of all of your surroundings

[00:04:32] and listen to all that goes to get the whole picture. Ultimately, only you know what to do based on all the feedback you've received and all your personal nuances that no one else knows. You just listened to the posts titled, Show Success Before Asking for Help and Beware of Advice, both by Derek Sivers of Sivers. That's S-I-V-E dot R-S.

[00:05:01] And I'll be right back with my commentary. You know what I love about optimizing my day? Finding snacks that work as hard as I do. And that's why I love Wonderful Pistachios. It's become my go-to snack lately. Wonderful Pistachios is one of the highest protein nuts. Each one ounce serving has six grams of protein, giving you over 10% of your daily value. I love that Wonderful Pistachios is a complete protein providing all nine essential amino acids.

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[00:05:54] Whether you're running between meetings or optimizing your day, get snackin' and get crackin' with Wonderful Pistachios. Visit WonderfulPistachios.com to learn more. Thank you to Derek. Pretty eye-opening how much of a difference those advances could be just based on a songwriting credit. $15,000 versus $500,000. Sometimes talent and hard work just aren't enough on their own.

[00:06:20] It reminds me of when I first started this show back in 2015. It was much harder to get authors to let me read their work. Some would even scoff at the idea of narrating other people's content. But as the show grew and the years went by, I could point to actual numbers and listeners. And then all of a sudden those same doors became much easier to open. I think it applies to many different areas. Whether you're trying to get music or a book published, start a business, even change careers.

[00:06:49] Showing that you've already got some momentum gives you so much more leverage than just having potential. And as for the second article, I agree with the point about advice. I mean, I'm narrating articles giving advice pretty much every day. So it's something we really should think about. I think the main takeaway here is that we should gather advice from multiple sources, like this podcast with many different authors. But remember that we're the only ones who truly know our own unique situation.

[00:07:18] So with that, thank you for listening to the advice and being here all the way through to the end. Hope you're having a great day and I'll see you tomorrow, where your optimal life awaits.