I learned from Burt Gulick, a multimillionaire networking guru that he divided people into two basic categories:
- there’s 5% of people who know WHY they are working (the dreamers)
- there’s 95% of people who know HOW to work (the doers).
It was an interesting perspective for someone like me that had spent most of his career to that point completely focused on the “how” to get ahead in a corporate environment. He opened up a whole new way of thinking for me.
Talking about “dreams” was tacky stuff that “us corporate people” smiled at condescendingly…. “show me how to make the money” was where I was coming from.
Since then I’ve heard success defined as the progressive realization of a worthwhile set of dreams. There it is again. Dreams, hey?
What was he talking about with these 5% and 95% of people?
Well, there were a few home truths for me in what he said:
a) The 95% of the people who know HOW usually work for the 5% of people who know WHY, and that the 5% who know WHY make 95% of all the money. Wow! That got my attention.
b) That the 5% of people who know WHY spend good money on getting the best advice, while the 95% who know HOW listen to and take advice from each other’s opinions.
c) That the 5% who know WHY invest heavily in themselves, in their own personal development, while the 95% who know HOW spend most of their money on lifestyle and often “run out of money before they run out of month”.
d) That the 5% who know WHY invest consistent proportions of their income into compound growth generating investments making them independant of their income, while the 95% who know HOW spend most of their income on lifestyle, and remain dependant on their income to get by.
e) That the 5% who know WHY would retire in comfort and in style on their planned and preferred terms while most of the 95% who know HOW would retire below the subsistence line.
f) That the 5% who know WHY would work initially for someone else to learn the ropes while creating the means to get into their own business while the 95% often leave their career management to those that employed them until they were no longer required….
What a remarkable comparison; all very logical and probably quite easy to substantiate, agree? It certainly had a profound impact on my outlook on “the business of life”, and I have tried very hard over the last 15 years since I heard it to implement that transition. I assure you it is still work in progress, but has been extremely worthwhile.
Yet even once one is aware of this, how many of us actually convert that from “that’s a good idea” into implemented reality?
- Some might deny it, or start with wondering whether that’s even possible for them.
- Others believe it possible but wonder how they would go about achieving that transition.
- And a small group (namely the 5%) have actually begun the journey or are already a fair way down the track to achieving it.
Which group do you think you find yourself in?
I recently ran a soft skills training program for a group of leaders of the IT function of one of Australia’s largest entertainment companies. After many weeks of elapsed training modules, we ran a wrap up workshop using a recent post implementation review of a very major and visible project across the entire company. The purpose was to look at the learnings from that review and interpret them as to how they could have been even further improved with the benefit of hindsight learning of the interpersonal skills we had gained in the meantime. It turned out to be a truly remarkable way for them to “pull it all together” for themselves.
I kind of feel a little like that with this blog. How do you get yourself from being in the “95%” to living and working in the “5%”? Forgive me if I see this a trifle too simplistically, but what I’ve learned is that “truly living” and applying all the coaching concepts we have been discussing over the last 6 months would go a long way towards assisting us in that transition.
I would love to hear your view on that, and look forward to engaging with you on that conversation, perhaps even in a coaching conversation with you…. You can, you know?
