In case you are one of the many who routinely confuse luck and skill when reading about startup success stories, go read the story on CSI’s creator Anthony Zuiker in the September issue of Fast Company. Ignore all the comments about how innovative or edgy Zuiker is. Instead, focus on the following points:
- Zuiker “bounced through” nearly half a dozen colleges before finally graduating from UNLV in 1991. Not exactly the textbook recipe for a blockbuster career.
- “After college, Zuiker burned through a series of ‘menial jobs’ that cumulated in his driving a tram on the graveyard shift at the Mirage, for $8 an hour. “ According to Zuiker, “I was, like, I know I’m very talented…but I can’t ever really get a break.”
- Through a few connections from his college days, Zuiker finally got a “real job” writing a movie about the Harlem Globetrotters, but the project was never made.
- When Zuiker’s break finally did come, in the form of a meeting with Jerry Bruckheimer’s “TV guy,” Zuiker had nothing prepared until (quoting the article):
…one night before the meeting, my wife, who was pregnant, convinced me to stay home with her instead of sneaking out to play basketball.” They watched a Discovery Channel show about the murdered Los Angeles cheerleader Linda Sobek, whose case was solved after detectives found a hair lodged in the headrest of the car she had been in. “Right there, CSI was born,” Zuiker says.
There are a few points I want to make here:
1. Talent, like beauty, is widely distributed. Yes (if you agree with The Bell Curve), this distribution is increasingly concentrated over time to elite locales (Stanford, Harvard, etc.), but highly talented people continue to emerge from unlikely origins and histories.
2. In more cases than you want to think about, the person serving you your cappuccino (or ringing up your purchase, or taking your dinner order) is smarter, more creative, and more motivated than you. In this economy, this point is likely to be true more than ever.
3. Recognizing your “break” is not always easy, because your real “break” is rarely obvious. In Zuiker’s case, was it really the call from Bruckheimer’s “TV guy,” or was it the earlier opportunity he was given to write a movie that “failed” to go to production? Because it was that script that got him the call that led to CSI. Or was it watching the Discovery Channel with his wife?
4. Since identifying your “break” is so difficult, my advice is to retain a healthy self-confidence—and not to lose heart when luck falls onto others. In addition, however, one should have the confidence to recognize that for most, “big breaks” don’t ever come. In Zen meditation, it is said that, figuratively, you must continue to “polish the tile,” but without the hope of the tile ever becoming a diamond. Do good work; keep alert for opportunity, but don’t bank your happiness on having the stars align in your favor. Betting your happiness on getting that “big break” is typically a recipe for a lifetime of disappointment.