2-3-4 Friday: How to be exceptional? Don’t be.

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Over the past 5 years of running a business, I’ve had two complete teams break up in front of me.

I’ve had to tell people, sorry I can’t afford to pay you. I’ve seen friends stop being friends because I couldn’t provide a better business for them.

I’ve had to tell people, you’re not good enough, please go.

I’ve had interrupted sleep.

I’ve drawn an average of $800 for the past 3 years.

Why do I say this?

Because my first advice on being exceptional, is…

Don’t be.

Because you can’t live with the cost.

Having an above average salary, with benefits, and the occasional perk is not that bad.

I’ve come to see that alot of people complain, but not enough people actually are willing to live with these costs.

So in a tongue in cheek way, don’t try to be exceptional. Because it’s too costly, and frankly, it may not pay off.

Not everyone is going to be the next Picasso, or Steve Jobs. 

But I've realised that if you can be quite good at a few niches, and combine that to form a single superpower, that can be incredible. 

Let me give you the example of Tong Yee, who is an organisational development (OD) consultant for the likes of OCBC Bank, the Ministry of Social and Family Development, and many others. 

He likes to share that he failed his national exams 2 times, before eventually passing. When he eventually became a General Paper tutor in Singapore's schools, he didn't think he was that good at it. 

But he got interested in emotions, and later systems, and slowly found a gift for understanding emotions. 

He combined his gift for teaching, his understanding of language, and his strength in emotions, to do something that few others could do. 

To sense what was wrong with systems, and intuitively shift it to a place of health. 

How do you do this? It's first being aware of where your top 3 strengths are. This is not new. Gallup's StrengthsFinder has been preaching that for years. 

What I think is often not said is how important it is to iterate on those strengths, and many different gigs. 

People see Tong Yee today as a great consultant, but they don't see the times where he went into private tutoring for the General Paper, how he set up the civic centre and consultancy Common Ground, how that eventually closed, and the failures in between. 

If you don't try, you don't know. 

So try where you think there are some intersections between your different strengths, and watch what happens. 

1 talk

Focus + Action = Exceptionalism

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But if you do want to be exceptional, here’s why you might want to consider it.

In July 2022, shortly after COVID, I went to Johor, to a friend’s preschool to get someone to trial the kitbag that we had imported from the U.K. I was desperate to get someone to try it. We had gotten a grant, and we needed to show that there was traction.

But in Singapore, no one wanted to try it.

So all we could do was to go to someone who would be willing to try it.

In Johor, I remembered looking lovingly at the $2 burger, and deciding to skip it because I couldn’t afford it.

When I arrived at the preschool, sweaty, I was even more scared when they told me.

Okay, you can lead the class and try the toy.

I was surprised that they trusted me, a 27 year old, to even do that. I had no training, beyond a flimsy social work degree. I had to speak Chinese. I sat there, perspiring, as 30 expectant faces looked at me, expecting me to work my magic with a kitbag I wasn’t too sure about.

I was a disappointment. They never invited me back.

But as I sat on the bus home, I laughed. It had been a disaster, but I had, for the first time in my life, convinced someone outside of my own country to give me a chance - with nothing but my own name to back it up.

People talk about exceptionalism as if it were something special that only super people were born with.

It’s not.

Exceptionalism is a skill you hone.

Over the years doing business, I’ve come to see that this crowd of business owners that we put in rarefied air, are humans like you and I are.

They also eat and shit.

There’s nothing special about them, beyond the fact that they took action on what they focused on.

So I would take entrepreneur Shane Melaugh’s words and say,

It all boils down to focus

and action.

Focus + Action = Exceptionalism.

Choose something you’re great at to focus on, and take action on it.

John

Live Young, Live Well - Work Your Love