Do you know who Ub Iwerks, Octave Chanute or Ronald Wayne is?
Probably not, but if I said Walt Disney, The Wright Brothers or Steve Jobs, I’m sure you’d have plenty to say. The first three names are advisors for the second three names (respectively). Sure, you know about the success of Disney’s ever expanding empire, The Wright Brothers becoming the first humans to fly, and Apple becoming the most valuable technology company in history, but you didn’t know about the advisors that helped them.
Ub Iwerks is the man that helped Walt Disney create Mickey Mouse after the previous animator took his characters and sketches and left Walt Disney in an acrimonious split. Walt had worked with Ub in a commercial art agency in Kansas City before he struck out west and created Disney. Without Ub Iwerks’ creativity and guidance, it’s possible Disney would be very different and Mickey Mouse never existed.
Octave Chanute was a brilliant self-taught engineer that created the aviation industry. Before he dedicated himself to flight at 54 years old, the idea of flight was haphazardly studied and worked on by enthusiasts and independent researchers around the world. Chanute worked to debunk false claims, collate research from around the world, and correspond with people that were trying to fly, like the Wright Brothers. Their glider was built based on Chanute’s designs. Without Chanute, man probably would’ve still flown at some point, but we might never have known who the Wright brothers were.
Did you know that Apple had three co-founders? Apple was founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne. Wayne was the tie breaker, or mediator if you prefer, between Jobs and Woz. Wayne designed Apple’s first logo, wrote their first operator’s manual, and most of the documentation for their products. Without his input and influence, it’s possible Apple would’ve rotted in the Palo Alto garage in which it began.
History is full of advisors whose names go unrecognized while the person they advised is infamous. It’s safe to say behind every monarch, world leader, or titan of business there were advisors that steered them along the way. They were brilliant, selfless, and vital to success which is exactly how you need to think about your role as The Advisor.
The Advisor is a pivotal role. While you see yourself as a business person, creator, or disruptor, your true role is The Advisor. Yes, you have a product or service to sell, but limiting yourself to that limits your success. Your product might be an elegant solution to a problem, even industry changing, but why would anyone believe you?
The mistake so many people make is putting the product first. Their focus is concentrated on what they created with whatever was available. As we’ve discussed several times, the focus is always your unlikely hero, the customer. If you create something amazing, but no one knows why they need it, then is it really important?
For all his faults, Steve Jobs knew this. He always believed in putting the customer experience first and working backwards from there. This insight was the genius and driving factor behind Apple’s rise and domination. Before Jobs put it so plainly, the technology industry was full of engineers that were brilliant, but couldn’t see how the technology could relate to, or be indispensable to, the average consumer. If you talked about bytes or coding languages or circuit boards, the majority of people’s eyes would glaze over and lose interest.
Engineers designed for engineers with little thought to the customer experience. I think the best example was the VCR. The younger generations might not fully understand the infuriating task of trying to program a VCR, but it was obvious from the manuals to its operation that it was designed by engineers with zero thought about the customer. Initially, computers and technology were headed down that same bleak path.
Steve Jobs and Apple changed all that. He was The Advisor for the untold legions of people that were interested in technology. They didn’t need to know the technical specifications or how the technology worked, and in most cases, Jobs didn’t know either. Steve Wozniack and the early Apple engineers took care of that. Jobs, The Advisor explained to the customers why they needed this new product. To tell someone they need something, sounds egotistical, but as the Advisor, he actually did know because the product was literally created for them.
Steve Jobs would ask these simple questions before Apple started designing a product:
- Where can we take the customer?
- What incredible benefits can we offer the customer?
From there, Apple would work backwards to the technology. Jobs was completely customer experience focused.
As The Advisor, this is your blueprint. Your focus is, and will continue to be, the customer. However, the last thing to focus on will be the product itself. Before they consider your solution, they need to have a reason to trust you. There are a lot of people out there selling. Why should they choose you to help solve their problem?
Your role as The Advisor consists of three foundational traits which form a pyramid. While they are all important, each trait builds upon the prior one and together all the traits are integrated. Like the peaks of mountains or the tallest buildings, our eyes tend to float towards the pinnacle while the structure beneath it gets little attention. As The Advisor, unlikely heroes may only see the apex, but the apex exists because of the strong, thicker layers beneath it.
The traits of the Advisor pyramid from base to apex are lived experience coalesced into wisdom, focused empathy, and the humility of an esteemed maestro.
Walk in Wisdom
“The only source of knowledge is experience.” –Albert Einstein
How did you get to where you are? Your history is the foundation of your knowledge. The experiences that brought you to this moment are your greatest asset because they’ve influenced your creativity, decision making, and vision. The obstacles along the way could’ve been mistakes, but that’s okay. Everyone makes mistakes and mistakes indicate action which is an important quality in The Advisor. Mistakes, pivots, and victories are how a quality advisor gains wisdom.
Ray Dalio, founder of the world’s largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, started his fund from his two-bedroom apartment in New York City in 1975. What drove Dalio to create his own hedge fund, only two years after finishing college, with only a bit of experience on the New York Stock Exchange?
Culture. Not even money. Money wasn’t Dalio’s primary goal. Before starting his hedge fund, he worked for a securities firm. Dalio’s primary complaint was the hierarchical structure of the firm. This rigid structure was the opposite of his experience in academia. The work culture didn’t mesh well with his personality. In the end, Dalio punched his boss after a catastrophic disagreement and quit his job. However, this potential mistake provided necessary experience foundational to Bridgewater Associate’s success.
Dalio wasn’t wealthy when he started. He’s a billionaire now, but he risked everything and was essentially broke when he started his hedge fund. Considering the product/service for hedge funds is profit, it’s amazing that his focus was on company culture. He took his experience and designed his fund around an inclusive flatter culture. Instead of hiring people solely based on their knowledge and skill, he made sure he hired people that fit the fund’s culture. The motivation wasn’t money, but money was a serious byproduct. Even beyond his hedge fund, his experience led to him writing his New York Times bestseller, Principles, an in-depth look at why culture is crucial to your life and business.
Take a minute and think back to the road you’ve traveled to this point. What were the obstacles and opposing forces along the way? Was there a critical point that alerted you to there being a better way?
Your personal history needs to reflect your values and how adversity has strengthened and provided you with a specific purpose. This provides real authenticity too. Humans are good at feeling when someone is fake. We have an innate sixth sense that acts as a warning system against these bad actors.
Your wisdom and authenticity needs to be visible across all of your marketing. Consider this earned wisdom as the foundation of your Advisor pyramid. You don’t have to give every person an in-depth narrative, but context for where you came from is crucial. You provide them with enough information for the unlikely hero to see why your experience has produced the necessary wisdom to guide them to the promised land.
The base of your role is built through wisdom gained by experience. Your experience provides the unflinching, immovable foundation for the other layers to soundly rest on. Your wisdom through experience is also the base because you’re pulling from all your life experience. The unlikely hero doesn’t need to know about every experience or where your insight came from which is why this trait is the base.
From this base, your Advisor pyramid begins to narrow as it ascends to the apex. The narrowing is the natural movement towards the visible apex which shapes your wisdom into determined focus and purpose. This enduring middle layer is your focused empathy.
A Focused Empath
“The best help you can get is someone who genuinely cares and knows how to help you get what you don’t even know you want.” ― Richie Norton
I’ve talked about empathy throughout this book. Empathy is a key to life, personally and professionally. However, in the case of The Advisor, the question is can you turn your empathy into tangible action?
While the world needs empathetic people, the world really needs people that can focus their empathy into achieving change. People with ideas are great. However, it’s easy to have an idea, but incredibly difficult to convert an idea into an action.
Think about The Wright Brothers. They weren’t the first humans to dream about flying. The dream of flight goes all the way back to ancient mythology and Icarus. Leonardo da Vinci dreamed of flight, studied birds, and engineered flying machine designs. While da Vinci is arguably the greatest mind in human history, he also lacked focus. For all his brilliance, he rarely finished his paintings or projects and there’s more unfinished thoughts and works than masterpieces.
Humans developed balloon travel. Science fiction writers wrote about flying or going to the moon. Before The Wright Brothers took flight, humans had dreamt and studied flight for thousands of years. The Wright Brothers had their Advisor, Octave Chanute, but ultimately they had the focus and determination to succeed where others failed. They empathized with all that came before them because the dream hadn’t been realized, but that provided an extra dimension and boost to their attempts until that fateful day on December 17, 1903, where they flew 120 feet for less than 7 seconds and changed history.
Focus is important. Channeling your empathy into one task is even more impressive. However, there’s a fine line between being a focused empath and obsessed. If your unlikely hero thinks you are obsessed, they might choose someone else. In our world, obsession seems dangerous, even rigid, but the real implication is that your obsession is about you and fulfilling your need. Obsessed people only care about a specific idea or object related to themselves. Yes, if their obsession yields results others can flourish, but others are not their priority. This is counter-intuitive to your role.
The perfect contrast is between the engineers and Steve Jobs discussed earlier. Engineers were obsessed with what the present technology could do and what they could create. They never considered who it could help or why it would be helpful. Steve Jobs, a focused empath (in this case), cared about what benefits he could offer the customers and where their product could take them. Jobs not being technically-minded fueled his empathy because he could place himself in the shoes of a non-technical consumer.
Without a doubt, Jobs was obsessed with a perfect product and ruled with an iron fist to achieve it, but his other role was The Advisor to the burgeoning technological masses to ensure they achieved their greatest dreams by using technology. In some cases, people were inspired by new technology and formed personal dreams, purposes, and goals. Jobs found their need, their victory beyond the horizon, and Apple created the technology to help them achieve it.
Your wisdom from experience is the foundation of the pyramid. Your focused empathy composes the middle layers between the foundation and the apex. This is the development of your purpose and how it will help your unlikely heroes. You’ve chosen from the vast halls of your experience, chosen a purpose that you know can help others, and have taken action to do so.
This ascendency ends at the apex. The tiniest and highest part of the pyramid, but the true attention grabber. This attention will determine whether the hero chooses you as their Advisor or someone else. The apex is being recognized as an Esteemed Maestro.
The Esteemed Maestro
“If you are the smartest person in the room, then you are in the wrong room.” –Confucius
I know what Confucius said, but the truth is sometimes you will be the smartest person in the room and that specific room is exactly where you’re supposed to be. When it comes to being The Advisor, how you present yourself in the room matters a whole lot more.
Not all Advisors are leaders, however, as The Advisor you are a leader too. When I talk about leadership, I’m not talking about the General on horseback in front of their army yelling, “Charge!” There are different types of leaders and different situations can require different leadership styles. In the case of leading as The Advisor, it’s less about giving orders and more about leading without identifying as one.
The perfect contrast is Satya Nadella and Elon Musk. Both of these men are brilliant. Their intellect and ability cannot be questioned. As the CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella has turned around the fledgling company from the outskirts of obscurity to a cloud computing and artificial intelligence powerhouse. Elon Musk has supercharged the electric car industry with Tesla, privatized the space industry with SpaceX, and started several other ground breaking entrepreneurial ventures.
As leaders, Nadella and Musk are very different. Musk is known to be a more autocratic and direct leader with high standards that drives his teams with a strong hand. Nadella has an empathetic and inclusive leadership style that emphasizes teamwork, diversity, and a collaborative approach to decision making.
The unlikely hero is looking to you for guidance because of your wisdom, understanding, and ability. The manner in which you present yourself to them matters. While Musk is brilliant, his approach is known to rub people the wrong way. There are times he clearly seems to lack empathy or understanding which doesn’t resonate with a lot of people. Musk’s leadership style underscores people are there for him, not the other way around.
Nadella’s leadership style feels like the polar opposite to Musk. He’s there to be successful, but he’s not there to dictate. While people technically work for him, it’s easier to feel like they work with him. He feels like a part of the team, not the person giving the team direction and then leaving. Nadella knows the bigger picture and thoughtfully guides his employees toward that future.
Quiet confidence and humility are crucial traits of The Advisor. There’s a humility to Nadella that Musk doesn’t have, but that’s a function of their other pyramid layers.
While Musk is known as a visionary and disruptor, he didn’t come up through the ranks of a company. He’s always been an entrepreneur which means he creates and people align with his vision or they leave. Musk doesn’t care as much about work-life balance in pursuit of innovation and has a much higher risk tolerance. While that’s admirable, it’s not always as relatable to a wider audience.
On the other hand, Nadella rose through the ranks of Microsoft from engineer to CEO. His path was through the company so he has experience at all levels of the company. This makes him more relatable with his employees. They know that he’s been where they are. They know he knows everything about the company. He’s one of them which we know psychologically bestows more credibility.
The elegance of your solution is the result of your brilliance. Your customers will benefit from using it and most likely recognize that. To an extent, they may silently be thanking you for offering them a way forward. Whether you thought about it before or not, you are leading them down the path to success. Don’t underestimate the power of how you present yourself. Whether we like it or not, people are more likely to side with a person who is humble, even when everyone recognizes their prowess.
To be esteemed is to be held in great respect, to be admired. Think about the type of unlikely hero you want to attract because how present yourself is the type of person you’ll attract. If you carry yourself like the smartest person in the room, you will attract people that are similar. If you carry yourself like there’s always something you can learn from other people in the room, you will attract those same curious souls.
There is an advisor out there for everyone, it’s important for you to recognize the people you want to help. The unlikely heroes that are like you when you started laying the foundation of your pyramid. Every person looks at the top of a pyramid and marvels, but we don’t all see the same thing. Each person sees what’s important to them and you need your status as an esteemed maestro to resonate with the onlookers and heroes that see you clearly and want your guidance, knowledge, and leadership.
Your role as The Advisor is critical to the Hero’s success. As The Advisor, it’s not about your product or service and their capabilities. Everything starts with the customer experience. For the hero to choose you as their Advisor, you need to demonstrate the wisdom you’ve gathered along the way, how your focused empathy turned to useful action, and why you're an esteemed maestro that will guide them to success.
Once they’ve chosen you as their Advisor, you can use your experience, empathy, and knowledge to provide a clear path to victory.
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