When I was back in music school, one of my teachers always said something to the effect of, “one of the best ways to become a better musician is to live a fuller life. Your life will inform your music in a way that practicing never will.”
Now at the age of 18, a statement like that sounded pretty silly. Especially since we were supposed to be locked in our practice rooms 4-6 hours a day. At that point, practicing (and coffee) was pretty much our life.
But as I got older, I realized just how much truth there is in that statement.
When you go out and live your life at full speed, you learn things. And all of those experiences get mixed up into a big ball… a ball from which you extract wisdom… wisdom that other people might not have… and wisdom that you can’t learn from a book.
In the music world, you can hear the difference between a musician who’s lived life and one who is just trying to play music.
Your life informs your music. It colors it and it adds substance that people can hear. Your unique set of experiences makes your music special and unlike anything else in the world.
I think the same is true in business.
You can read a lot of books, buy a lot of courses and fill your head with a ton of knowledge.
But just how valuable is knowing stuff?
I’ve found it’s a whole lot more valuable for me to go out and experience new things. Then when I come back to my business, I see things differently… more clearly.
And my business decisions are affected by the experiences I’ve had outside of the business world.
Oddly enough, my business grows because of it.
Because it means I don’t end up doing the same stuff everyone else is doing. And I don’t end up thinking like everyone else thinks.
In business, those two things are huge assets.
Knowledge in books can only help you so much. After all, so many of the business books out there today are full of undistilled information. They’re full of unchallenged and untested ideas.
Maybe they’re good ideas, or maybe they suck. Doesn’t really seem to matter. After all, you can’t really challenge the author when you’re sitting in your living room reading his book. And he’s most likely not interested in hearing you anyway.
I recently read a comment about undistilled information that pretty much sums it up.
In Empire of Debt, Bill Bonner (of Agora) writes…
Undistilled information, on the other hand, is nothing more than noise–newspaper headlines, TV babble, cocktail chatter, the latest innovation, the latest business secret, the latest fashion. It is public information, backed by no real experience or private insights. It is not useless. It is worse than useless, for it misleads people into thinking they know something.
I used to think I knew something about marketing and business.
Silly me. I chalk that mistaken belief up to youthful indiscretion.
Turns out, it’s a whole lot more fun and profitable to be upfront and admit that I don’t know much and then start from there.
Success in business is about making smart choices (not assumptions), then correcting your mistakes and moving forward… fast.
It’s about hustle.
Once you become an “expert,” things begin to go cloudy. Because you start thinking, at some level, that you know it all.
So what’s the best business advice I can give you right now?
Get out of your business and live your life.
Then come back and get to work. You might be surprised at the new opportunities you see all around you.
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