Why Weirdos Outperform Normals (thanks Kirk W. for sharing)
Posted by:
Michael Lazerow
My kids think I’m weird.
I talk in weird voices. I come up with weird games. I listen to Phish.
I like when they call me weird.
Weird is good, I tell them. Normal is blah.
You don’t want to be blah. Blah is boring. Boring people are forgettable.
I like weirdos.
They are interesting. They have crazy ideas. They have passion.
Weirdos separate from the pack. Weirdos change the world. Weirdos lead. Weirdos make us think.
When did weird become so weird? Why does the Merriam-Webster dictionary define the word so negatively? (“a person who is extraordinarily strange or eccentric.”)
We should teach our kids to be weird. Weird like Gary Vaynerchuk.
I had the opportunity to spend this weekend with Gary and his immediate family – his wife, Lizzie, his daughter and his parents.
Gary once offered to pay my kids to be Jets fans.
He hasn’t missed a PLAY in a Jets game in 30 years.
He comes over and goes right for the Fritos. And walks around the house with them.
He texts me just to tell me that he loves me. That’s weird. And I love it.
Gary is one of my close friends now. Weirdos seek each other out. And we stick together once we find each other.
Being a weirdo has worked out well for Gary. He operated 7 lemonade stands by the time he was 8. He retired from lemonade retail at 10 and turned to baseball cards. He was a New York Times and Wall Street Journal best-selling author by the time we was 35.
Gary launched an ecommerce store before you had ever heard such a thing existed. Gary helped invent online video thanks to a wine show that attracted 100,000 viewers a day.
1 million people follow Gary on Twitter and many more in real life.
Gary often appears on TV – Jimmy Fallon, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, MSNBC, CNBC, CNN and NPR, just to name a few.
His latest company, social media agency VaynerMedia, has more than 200 employees and awesome clients, like Pepsi, Campbell Soup and others.
Gary thinks he’s going to buy the Jets one day. I won’t bet against him.
Most important to me … my kids love Gary. Gary is weird. Weird is good.
Further down the weird spectrum is James Altucher.
The first time I met James, we had breakfast at the Red Flame diner in New York. He ordered French Fries and a vanilla milkshake.
That’s weird.
Not as weird, though, as James wanting his daughters to be lesbians and drug addicts.
James doesn’t attend weddings and is the only guy I know who has screwed Yasser Arafat out of $2 million, and then lost $100 million himself.
James has admitted he is guilty of torturing women.
When the president of Chile asked James if he would like to be run over by a tank, James said no thanks.
You’re probably thinking two things: (a) how am I friends with James; and (b) there is no way James could be successful.
James is one of the most successful and content people I know. I wish I spent more time with him.
He was a world-class champion chess player. He made a fortune in the hedge fund business. And he is a prolific investor and writer.
James was one of the first people I spoke to about Buddy Media. He had recently sold a startup of his own, Stockpickr, to TheStreet.com. I wanted him involved.
James invested. And made a lot of money. Most Normals would never have invested in an app company built on a college social network started by a husband and wife team whose most recent company was selling golf stuff.
I love James. James is weird. Weird is good.
Meet Peter Thiel. Peter is very, very weird.
I first met Peter at the former Clarium Capital office in New York. We were meeting at lunchtime. I walked into his beautiful office overlooking Central Park.
We sat at a round table right in front of his desk. Or at least I remember it being round but I could be wrong.
His staff set the table — for one. The server brought out lunch for Peter. And then a drink. And didn’t offer me either.
I thought this was weird but was not even one bit annoyed. I was just happy to be talking to Peter. He’s brilliant.
Peter studied 20 Century philosophy at Stanford. Normals don’t go to Stanford, in the heart of Silicon Valley, and study modern philosophy.
Like James, Peter is a wicked chess player, a national master, to be exact. What’s with chess? I can’t stand the game myself.
Peter pays kids not to go to college, invested in a company that bioprints meat for human consumption and thinks death is a problem that can be solved. But while we’re alive, why not form independent ocean communities with their own laws and political system?
This all sounds weird, right? Maybe to all the Normals.
But remember …
Facebook seemed like a pretty weird idea when Peter made the first outside investment in the company, netting him close to half a billion dollars in gains.
Paypal seemed like an even weirder idea when Peter founded the company, which was eventually sold to eBay for $1.5 billion.
Buddy Media was just weird enough for Peter to invest personally.
Speaking of which, I just saw Peter earlier this month in Austin at SXSW. He barely recognized me, which is cool because we haven’t spent that much time together.
Come to think of it, he still hasn’t said congrats or thank you for the amazing outcome. Only in Silicon Valley, the home of weird, can you make someone a few million dollars in less than 5 years and not even receive a simple thank you.
If someone made me a few million bucks, I’d donate $100,000 to their favorite charity. Or name my next born after them (as long as their name wasn’t Herbert or something like that). Or maybe write a thank you note, at a minimum. Actually, I’d probably just send a text. But maybe I’m not weird enough.
Am I upset? No. Because I understand where Peter comes from. He’s a weirdo. Very smart weirdo. I love him for it and we need more Peter Thiels.
And we need more Cindy Gallops.
Cindy is half-British and half-Chinese. She was born in the UK and grew up in Brunei.
Cindy was the head of BBH, one of the world’s largest ad agencies, before retiring to change the world.
Her project IfWeRanTheWorld.com is trying to turn the world’s good intentions into collective good actions.
And she has turned her love of having sex with younger men into one of the most talked aboutTEDtalks and a new business to reinvent the porn industry, one crowd-sourced video at a time.
I love Cindy. Cindy is weird. Weird is good.
Gary, James, Peter, Cindy and other weirdos I know share a few common traits that propel them to reach their full potential.
Weirdos see the world as a blank slate for them to paint their masterpiece. Forget marching to their own drums. They make up their own instruments. Forget thinking outside the box. They don’t see boxes. They see circles and horizons and trapezoid.
Weirdos don’t see anything as impossible. Anything is possible. Just give us enough time.
Weirdos are contrarians. They think differently and act even more differently. Normals try to fit in. Weirdos stick out without really trying.
Weirdos aren’t driven by money. Money is a destination. Weirdos are all about the journey.
Weirdos don’t care what others think. They only care THAT they think and want to change HOW they think.
Weirdos come in all shapes and sizes, colors and countries. And they’re not new to the tech industry, or industry in general.
Weirdos thought it made sense to get on the Mayflower from England to settle in a new land.
Weirdos thought we should get rid of slavery.
Weirdos insisted that women should also have a vote.
The world would suck if it weren’t for weirdos.
Instead of trying to get our kids to fit in, we should help them celebrate why they are different.
Let’s start to teach kids to embrace weird. Weird is good.
And let’s not stop until weird is normal.
A Tale of Two Coaches…Which one are you? (shared by Kirk Weisler)
A Tale of Two Coaches…. Which one are you? There’s more to coaching than sharing your expertise. The way you communicate that expertise is as important as the knowledge itself.
(excerpt)=
I also occasionally played golf with another friend. I’ll call him Frank (not his real name). He was a good deal older than I, but a great golfer-even better than Victor. But the two were complete opposites when it came to coaching.
I still remember the last time I played with him. On hole number three, I sliced a drive into the deep rough. Certain it was unplayable, I dropped my club to the ground, and sighed.
“Well, that was a helluva shot,” Frank grumbled. “You didn’t finish your swing. You just kinda … kinda gave up on it.” He then frowned and snorted.
With that, he stepped up to the tee box and pinned his tee and ball to the ground in one seamless motion. Then, without so much as a practice swing, he blasted his ball straight down the middle of the fairway.
It was picture-perfect. Just like on TV. Speaking to no one in particular, he announced, “That’s how it’s done!”
He stood tall.
I felt small.
Unfortunately, this scenario was typical. Frank was always quick to point out my faults. If I happened to hit the ball well, he would say something like, “Well, you got lucky on that one, didn’t ya, kid?”
Not surprisingly, I always played my worst golf when I played with Frank. He chipped away at my confidence, and my performance unraveled as the game progressed. He made me want to quit.
In reflecting on these two different coaching styles, I realized I have a choice in how I lead.
I can either focus on what my teammates are doing right and thus increase their confidence, or I can focus on what they are doing wrong and thus increase their self-doubt. Both styles have an impact on their performance. And both have an impact on my effectiveness as a leader
(Take 3 minutes and read the full blog…it’s wonderful.)http://michaelhyatt.com/tale-of-two-coaches.html#more-20811
Happy First Day of Spring!!
Spring is one of the four conventional temperate seasons, following winter and preceding summer. The specific definition of the exact timing of “spring” varies according to local climate, cultures and customs. At the spring equinox, days are close to 12 hours long with day length increasing as the season progresses. Spring and “springtime” refer to the season, and also to ideas of rebirth, rejuvenation, renewal, resurrection, and regrowth. ~ From Wikipedia
I Want to Look More Closely At….(post by Kirk Weisler)
I want to look more closely at our words and our tendency to be critical of things we can’t imagine. ( This is a revised review of a T4D from 2008 that I felt the need to revisit)
We were having a family discussion about why some kids and adults seem to find it necessary to tease, berate, call names or bully others. I was impressed with the reasons my kids came up with which follows.
- They are insecure
- They don’t feel good about themselves and don’t want anyone else too feel good either
- They feel threatened in some way by the person they are attacking (lot’s of possibilities with this one – Jealousy & Envy
probably the leading causes) - They don’t like themselves
- They don’t really understand who they are
After a good discussion about how what we say to others and how we treat them is much more a reflection of us than anyone else I felt a renewed confidence in my children’s ability to respond to people who are critical of them…or just critical in general.
It’s been my experience that people who have the strongest sense of who they are spend the least amount of time talking critically of others, or worrying about what others may think.
Part 2 –
Recently someone criticized a political candidate that I admire in many ways calling him a phony. I asked the critic on what grounds did he consider him a phony. His reply, “Nobody has a family like that, they’re all a bunch of fakes.”
“Like what?” I said, probing for specifics.
The critic referencing a recent interview he had watched responded, “You know, that they all don’t all get along like that. Who has family discussions without talking over one another, acting all respectful and stuff? Families just don’t look, talk, or act that way…they were a bunch of fakes.”
I knew immediately the video clip he was referring too… it was one of main reasons I identified with the candidate. What my friend was calling phony, was to me, a living reality. What he couldn’t fathom as being real, is how I would like to think, my own family culture operates “most” of the time. But since what my friend saw was so far from any reality of his own life experiences, he couldn’t bring himself to accept that it could be genuine. In his mind families really could not act and communicate in that manner. In his mind the only explanation for it was it must have been a phony. He saw the world not as it was but as he was. Or more accurately he saw the world differently than I saw it. But my concern wasn’t so much that we each saw it differently – it was in considering what is lost to us and our potential when we close in our minds because we are convinced that we are right.
As I was pondering on these 2 thoughts – an idea came into my mind that I have tried to capture below.
What we can’t imagine or envision as a reality in our own lives, we often dismiss as a fanciful fantasy or phony in the lives of others. In so doing we stop ourselves from not only seeing another potentially better way, but of becoming better ourselves. ~Kirk Weisler
Friends
Positive Inspirational Quotes ( PIQ)
5 ways to avoid workout burnout
The first few days of a new workout routine can be magical, but much like a thriving relationship, an exercise regimen requires attention and creativity to maintain its allure. True, any exercise is better than no exercise, but who wants to always hit up the same ol’ treadmill?
Remember, the healthier you are overall, the better chance you have of avoiding eye conditions like hypertension and glaucoma, which often result from larger health issues. Mix up your workouts to help avoid gym boredom, and give these 5 activities a shot!
Roll with the punches
We’re all about the “no hitting” policy, but that doesn’t mean we can’t channel our frustrations into a punching bag every now and then. It’s a great way to improve agility, balance,
circulation, and general fitness. With proper precautions and protection, you can enjoy a stress-relieving, heart-healthy workout.
Get your yoga on
Throw a twist into your yoga routine by trying aerial yoga, Cy-Yo(cycling and yoga combined), or floating yoga on a paddleboard if you’re feeling particularly adventurous. Even small scale changes, such as moving your routine to the backyard or a different room in your house, can be invigorating and help you avoid the workout doldrums.
Bounce around
If you just so happen to have a trampoline hanging around, put it to good use and get jumping! If not, scope out the alternative workout scene in your neighborhood for a trampoline dodge-ball or cardio class. While an excuse to burn calories and improve muscle tone is reason enough to get jumping, the fun factor is also a plus.
Cross train it up
This approach is especially good for those who enjoy structured and compact workouts. Push your normal workout boundaries by letting your instructor guide you and your classmates from squats, to sprints, to weights, to whatever he chooses. Be forewarned: you’re in for some sore muscles the next day!
Swirl the pounds away
Hula hoops are no longer just for kids, although you can use the little ones as an excuse to squeeze in a wacky workout. Grab a weighted hula hoop for extra resistance and fat-burning power, and get swirling. The best part about this activity is you don’t have to leave your house (or your TV!).
post from –http://www.vspenvisionnewsletter.com/2013/03/5-ways-to-avoid-workout-burnout/#.UT9yBtY4uAU
Stepping Stones
Positive Inspirational Quotes ( PIQ)
