Business Insight Zone

Five years ago, advertising executive Paul Arden published a chutzpah-laden little book titled It’s Not How Good You Are, Its How Good You Want to Be: The World’s Best Selling Book. Arden’s recent death sent me back to the bookshelf to give the book another look. Here, for your reflection, are some key tidbits from the book, which is written in a highly aphoristic style. Emphasis added.

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Nearly all rich and powerful people are not notably talented, educated, charming, or good-looking. They become rich and powerful by wanting to be rich and powerful.

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You must develop a complete disregard for where your abilities end.

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People who are conventionally clever get jobs on their qualifications (the past), not on their desire to succeed (the future).

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If you are involved in something that goes wrong, never blame others. Blame no one but yourself.

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Give away everything you know, and more will come back to you.

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Don’t look for the next opportunity. The one you have in hand is the opportunity.

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When it can’t be done, do it. If you don’t do it, it doesn’t exist.*

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Being right is based upon knowledge and experience and is often provable. . . . Experience is the opposite of being creative. If you can prove you’re right, you’re set in concrete. You cannot move with the times or with other people.

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Start being wrong and suddenly anything is possible. You’re no longer trying to be infallible.

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Don’t give a speech. Put on a show.

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Rough layouts sell the idea better than polished ones.

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Don’t be afraid to work with the best.

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* This one may need a bit of explaining. He’s saying that, if people tell you that something can’t be done, there’s no sense trying to convince them; you just have to go out and do it so you can show them. He uses the example of Orson Welles, who couldn’t get real funding for Citizen Kane until he had already shot a goodly chunk of it. Until then, the idea wasn’t real.

Category: Books,The working life