Hip Hop Tips for Success

Not being a hip hop fan, I had never heard of Chamillionaire. But something he said really stuck in my mind.

I heard him giving a talk at Stanford University as part of their Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders series. The series is recorded in a set of podcasts which is available to the public via iTunes and focuses on technology leaders and strategies for starting up and running technology driven companies.

He was an early adopter of social media and internet technology, creating a following for his music outside of the record industry by engaging with fans online and making his songs available for download online long before other musicians caught on. This gave him the fan base to then move into the big time.

What stuck in my mind though was not so much his story of how he used social media - it’s not so unusual for outsiders to build a name for themselves using blogging, Twitter and MySpace etc which then enables them to break into the mainstream, as I’ve blogged and written about elsewhere.

What stuck in my mind was this:

He always knew he would be successful. When people asked him how he could be so sure, he said that it didn’t matter what he did, he was going keep on doing whatever it took until he found the thing that he was a success at. He started out trying to make it in basketball but found that he was not getting as far as he wanted to as a basketball star so he tried something else. Eventually, he came to hip hop and made a huge success of that.

What interests me about this is that he was not attached to the specific outcome eg becoming a superstar basketball player but rather a general outcome of being successful at what he did. He might have thought of himself as a failed basketball player but that did not even seem to enter the equation. For him, it was just something that was not the right fit for his talents - so he moved on and in so doing, found something that was a perfect fit for making him successful.

So, what might be the take away from Chamillionaire for the rest of us?

There is a time for specifics of course but a looser approach can sometimes allow us to explore possibilities and options that we would never otherwise consider.

Looking at the success that you want in your life or business, what would it look like if you were less specific in your definition and envisioned a more general picture of success? (For example, thinking less in terms of “I want to be a lawyer” or “I want to expand my business to that specific locality or district” and more in terms of “I want a job where I am respected as an expert and rewarded well for my skills” or “I want my business to reach those clients who would most benefit from my services”.) What does that open up for you or your business?

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By the way, the Stanford Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders podcast series, available free from iTunes, are a terrific series of lectures and interviews with many of the world leaders in technology and business. Even if you’re not a techno-geek, the insights are relevant for anyone considering starting up a business or who is interested in what it takes to drive a company forward, including personal stories and also, fascinating perspectives on how to pick yourself up from business failure.

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ZenGuide is evolving - I now offer business and career development coaching, of which social media consulting forms a small part.

Photo: from Stanford’s ecorner website, with thanks

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