From dream to achievement is many steps, do you have what it takes to get there?
From “The Art of Doing: How Superachievers Do What They Do and How They Do It So Well” (Plume/Penguin)
For our book, “The Art of Doing,” we interviewed over three-dozen Superachievers in business, entertainment, the arts, tech, science and sports, about how they do what they do and discovered that talent is just the beginning. It’s what you do with that talent that matters. Find out if you have what it takes to be a Superachiever.
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At 21 years old, Brandon Stanton–the creative force behind the immensely popular photo blog Humans of New York–had flunked out of college, was kicked out of his parent’s home, was doing drugs, working at a dead end job at Applebee’s and living in his grandparent’s basement in Atlanta, Georgia. He was also convinced that he was going to write a bestseller and he wasn’t wrong.
‘This guy was dancing for tips on the sidewalk. I asked him to try and put all his skill into a single move, and this is what I got.’ Brandon Stanton, “Humans of New York”
When Brandon Stanton’s photo project of the Big Apple’s interesting characters grew beyond his original vision, he followed it straight to bestsellerdom.
[Our original article on Brandon Stanton ran in Fast Company last Fall. Recently Brandon was at SXSW for a book signing for his best-selling book, Humans of New York, and a talk on everything he’s learned about audience building, crying alone in his bedroom, the magic of social media and the difficulties of standing out in a world where everyone has something to “like” and “share.” Brandon himself says that he thinks he “has some special insight into building a large following around a new idea. But may have just gotten lucky, and could be completely full of shit…”]
At 21 years old, Brandon Stanton—the creative force behind the immensely popular photo blog Humans of New York—had flunked out of college (earning a combined score of zero on his five courses). Kicked out of his parent’s home, he was doing drugs, working at a dead end job at Applebee’s and living in his grandparent’s basement in Atlanta, Georgia. He was also convinced that he was going to write a bestseller.
Stanton described the unanimous reaction of his friends and family at the time: “They all said, ‘What the hell is wrong with Brandon? What a loser!'”
When we interviewed superachievers for our book, we wanted to know how they had achieved their incredible success but in our conversations with them, something kept coming up that surprised us.
When we interviewed superachievers for our book, we wanted to know how they had achieved their incredible success but in our conversations with them, something kept coming up that surprised us. As we dug into the chronologies of these people’s lives and careers, we found that even more than their triumphs, it was failure that actually shaped their stories of success. What is failure? What’s the science behind it? Is there an art to it? Why do some people collapse in the face of it while others actually profit from it?
We’ll be speaking at SXSW Interactive Conference, Austin TX, March 10th
What happened to Momofuku’s David Chang before he became a foodie god? What drove Zappos’ CEO Tony Hsieh to create one of the world’s greatest company cultures?
The high achievers we interviewed for our book failed more because they tried more. And because they tried more, they’ve been able to succeed at goals that they may have never imagined possible for themselves. In our talk at South by Southwest Interactive ’14 we’ll discuss some of the science and art of failure—everything from frivolous failures to 9/11—to find out how some people collapse in the face of failure while others use it as motivation.
