Successful Blog

What The Wizard of Oz Taught Me About Business Success

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A Guest Post by Amy Derby

As a kid I loved the part of The Wizard of Oz movie where Dorothy’s having the ruby slippers made the guardian of the Emerald City say, “Well that’s a horse of a different color. Come on in!”

The other kids liked the lollipop dance. My mom liked the message that everything Dorothy ever needed had been inside her the whole time. I was fascinated with the ruby slippers, because at five years old I already felt it was important to ponder someday owning that one valuable thing that would make people want to invite me inside their magical world.

Sometimes we allow what we don’t have to define us.

Whether the thing we lack is money or a home or a heart, it’s easy to become so obsessed with what we don’t have that we think getting it will bring us all the happiness in the world. We set out on a path to get there – even if it’s the wrong one — and become determined to reach our goal at any cost. (Sometimes we even have to kill a witch in the process.)


BigStock: Ruby slippers

At 18, I bought a bunch of shiny shoes and entered Corporate America. Someone who promised she was a good witch held the glass doors open for me, and I got sucked in. Once inside I quickly woke up to the fact that I didn’t like what that world was made of. Flying monkeys, screechy munchkins, and green ladies who needed houses dropped on their heads gave me nightmares. I had flashbacks of elementary school, where every time someone asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, all I could visualize was the yellow brick road and the little man pretending to be a big bad wizard shouting “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!”

This wasn’t the dream I wanted to live after all.

Someone else’s yellow brick road might look like a promising path, but sometimes it’s just a really long way to get to where you want to go.

That doesn’t mean the path is worthless. I took everything I learned in my scary nightmare land of Corporate America with me to build the business I have today.

Just as I spent hours as a kid glued to the television watching The Wizard of Oz until my mother swore she would give our VCR away to some poor kid in China who didn’t have one, I spent many hours observing the green ladies and flying monkeys of big law firm life. I got to know a lot of different types of folks, and in doing so I made mental notes of everything they had and everything they lacked. I watched the ones who failed and the ones who succeeded — some of them did both — knowing that I wasn’t so fundamentally different from any of them. (After all, they grew up longing for magical shoes too.)

Watching them reinforced a few things The Wizard of Oz taught me:

You’ve gotta have a brain.

Scarecrow: I haven’t got a brain… only straw.
Dorothy: How can you talk if you haven’t got a brain?
Scarecrow: I don’t know… But some people without brains do an awful lot of talking, don’t they?

You’ve gotta have heart.

Wizard: As for you, my galvanized friend, you want a heart. You don’t know how lucky you are not to have one. Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable.
Tinman: But I still want one.

You’ve gotta have courage.

Wizard to Lion: You, my friend, are a victim of disorganized thinking. You are under the unfortunate impression that just because you run away you have no courage; you’re confusing courage with wisdom.

You’ve gotta have a home.

Dorothy: If I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again, I won’t look any further than my own back yard. Because if it isn’t there, I never really lost it to begin with.

And sometimes… it helps to have shiny shoes.

Dorothy: Oh, please! Please, sir! I’ve got to see the Wizard! The Good Witch of the North sent me!
Guardian of the Emerald City Gates: Prove it!
Scarecrow: She’s wearing the ruby slippers she gave her.
Guardian of the Emerald City Gates: Why didn’t you say that in the first place? That’s a horse of a different color! Come on in!

Of course, it also helps to know where you’re going and why you want to get there.

It helps to remember that there’s more than one path, and sometimes the best path is the one you pave yourself. Sometimes everything we need really is inside us the whole time. Other times, the stuff we need is only a friend (or a twit) away.

I left the corporate version of Oz in 2004. I’ve been paving my path since, building a business that helps other folks like me succeed — with the help of an awesome network of folks, many of whom I’m happy to call my friends. I can’t say I’m living happily ever after yet, but I’m a lot closer than I was. Meanwhile, I’ve given away most of the shiny shoes I bought, because I don’t really feel like I need them anymore.

What was your favorite book or movie as a kid? What lessons did it teach you that have helped you succeed?

Amy Derby is a law blog consultant and highly caffeinated social media addict who twitters — @amyderby — more than she sleeps.

Have You Tried the DO Strategy of Social Business Success?

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Relationships in Business

We’re not just tools and sticks. Business is inherently social. People add value to or interrupt the flow of every transaction we make. We interact with coworkers, our customers, our clients, our vendors, the person who delivers our packages.

How well we do at getting to our goals is our definition of whether we succeed.

I’ve been watching people who succeed. They have common traits. They know what they do well. They are focused on their destination. They’re saturation learners and more than anything, they DO what it takes to get themselves where they want to be.

Malcolm Gladwell talks about it in his book, Outliers: The Story of Success
on page 39 when he says

… the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he o she works. That’s it. And what’s more, the people at the very top don’t work just harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder.

They do the work.

I’ve been thinking about doing as a strategy for success. It’s got some research (like Gladwell’s) behind it. It also make plain sense. Try this for the next two weeks.

  • Do what you’re good at.
  • Do what you say you will.
  • Do it when you promise.
  • Do your homework before you ask question so that you don’t waste other people’s time.
  • Do it right the first time, so you don’t have to do it twice.
  • Do what you were asked, not what you think is better unless you’re 100% certain everyone will agree.
  • Do what’s right, what’s beautiful, what you know you’ll be proud of when you look back in 10 years.
  • Do own your missteps and mistakes so that bad spirits don’t linger.
  • Do care about the people touched by your work, your words, and all you do.
  • Do hold control for your success in your own hands.

I wonder if these are the “DOs” Nike had in mind?

Have you tried the DO Strategy of Social Business Success? What do you DO to succeed?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
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Rituals, Glituals, and Success – How Will You Turn Things on Today?

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FAIL NOT!!

This morning I got up.
I followed my path that gets things rolling.
I walked through the kitchen. Gotta have coffee.
I went to my office space. Gotta have connectivity.
I head on back to the shower. Gotta be clean and clear thinking.

It’s my ritual to hit the ground running.
I like the thought of everything firing up at the same time.

And every morning, I walk back through the kitchen, get my coffee, sit down at my computer. and start right in making the world mine.

Except today.

Today my ritual was a glitual.

My computer wasn’t running.
I forgot a critical key to success.
Whether it’s the coffee, the computer, or yourself …

You gotta turn it on to get things going!

How will you turn things on today?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

YES WE DO! How Will You Begin?

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Hope They Do Too

Last night at Open Comments we were sharing quotes. I came across one I like so much I posted it on Twitter as well. This is it.

Everywhere I go I find a poet has been there before me.
–Sigmund Freud

RobynMcMaster responded by sending me this: @lizstrauss You said “Everywhere I go I find a poet has been there before me.” It gave impression you were inspired to write poem.

and so for Robyn, for Lucretia Pruitt, who surely would have written far better sonnet had she chosen to, and for all of us, I did.

YES WE DO!
When, in wonder of new life in my arms,
I looked upon my sleeping son,
And called angels down to keep this heart unharmed
To hold him whole, what fate might come.
Passing time finds a boy to his full height
Earth-tied like me, his world light years from mine.
Far from my mom’s eyes on me at night
Audacious hope harbored also in her mind.
When I think upon changes in that short span
I forgive the broken promises and loved lost prizes
And hear a two-year-old’s “YES I CAN!”
From White Houses to world spaces of all sizes

The awe of “YES, WE CAN!” is “YES, WE DO!”
Hope lives in places where they love their children too.

–E Strauss 01-21-09

Success requires work to realize that hope.

How will you begin?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

What Determines a Creative Life? What Determines Success?

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Determination

“Square peg in a round hole.” That’s what people used to call it.

Even as a kid I knew it was a silly waste of time to put a square peg in a round hole. That was just plain common sense To make the peg fit, it wouldn’t be a square peg anymore. It would hurt the peg, and the hole wouldn’t like it.

What makes some people grow up to live highly creative lives? Is it in their genes — “the way the tree was bent”? Is a creative life determined by their experience?

Yet, what is astonishing is the great variety of paths that led to eminence. Csikszentmihalyi

Though the 91 creative people in the study that became the book, Creativity, had unique characteristics and traits that made them stand out. The life paths that led to their creative contribution were not particularly different from what you might find any group of 91 citizens.

  • Some were precocious. Some were prodigies. Some didn’t seem to stand out as children.
  • Some had serious hardship growing up. Some suffered the death of parents. Others had happy childhoods without incident.
  • Some were ignored. Some had guides and teachers who helped their development. Some had devastating experiences with mentors.
  • Some seemed to always know their calling. Some searched for years to find their path.
  • Some were noticed early. Some struggled for years to gain recognition.

Those same circumstances describe the people I call my friends, none of whom yet have changed the world through Creativity with a capital C.

 

It seems that the men and women we studied were not shaped once and for all, either by their genes or by the events of early life. . . . Instead of being shaped by events, they shaped events to suit their purposes. . . .

According to this view, a creative life is still determined, but what determines it is a will moving across time — the fierce determination to succeed, to make sense of the world, to use whatever means to unravel some of the mysteries of the universe. Csikszentmihalyi

 

Fierce determination to succeed.

Success doesn’t happen without giving ourselves over fully to what we’re pursuing. It’s not the barriers that stop us, it’s the way we respond to them.

If we’re determined, we maneuver over, under, around, or through them. It doesn’t matter how difficult the problem we stick with it until we innovate, create, or cobble together a solution that solves it.

ladder_over_wall_from_sxchu

Determination removes options other than success: We refuse to define our outcomes as:

  • the fault of our parents.
  • an imperfection in our environment.
  • the result of bad timing.
  • bad luck or bad karma.
  • something outside of us.

As determination to succeed is key to world-changing creativity, it seems to follow that determination and creativity are key to success.

How have determination and creativity contributed in your past success? What are you determined to accomplish now?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Find a Moment of Gold

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Put Gold in What You’re Doing Now

Yellow_Lily_by_Liz_Strauss

We’ve all had one — a moment of gold, a moment when the sun shines on us, and we’re something made of success. How we got there was part head, part heart, and a whole lot of determination that knocked down walls as we went.

In a moment of gold, some folks don’t understand what makes that moment so worth celebrating. Ah, to them, what we’ve some seems a small thing, but we know that the distance from point A to point B was not a straight or simple line. Math might always be. Life hardly ever is.

With all of the choices that move us forward, with all of the wishes and plans that our hearts hold, we need to be sure that we savor our accomplishments and celebrate our successes. Those golden moments are what propel us forward to make more spectacular things happen.

Stop a minute. Recall the sunlight. Find a moment of gold from your past.

What can you take from that moment to fuel what you’re doing now?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!