Chad Silverstein argues that success comes from mastering your unique ability and taking small extra steps others skip. He shares how Simon Sinek gave him a coin and told him to rephrase his vision from future-tense to present-tense action, a tiny shift that changed his work.
Questions this video answers
Around 2012–2013.
Start with Why.
Chapters
So when Chet talks about you want to become the master of your domain, this is what I like to say is the unique ability. It's the things that you feel called to do in your life because you just have this desire to kind of move towards it. You like it, you're great at it. And being great at doing something, hopefully a skill and loving every minute of doing it is a gift. It's one that you should be pursuing. It's one that you shouldn't fight, you shouldn't go against your gut feeling when it comes to, you know, what you're going to spend your time doing all day long. You're going to work your whole life and mastering that skill. You have no excuse but to continue to learn and follow up on what you learn. I think that's the nuance, is that you can have a great speaker, you can go to a great webinar, you can read a good book, but being able to actually take the next step, which is where no one else will, which is what makes you distinctly different from everyone else, that's where the real magic happens, because that's when the opportunity came up that you wouldn't have gotten. That's when the extra learning and the nuance to the learning came about, because you took that extra step to go ask the question or to follow up with an email, or to go and watch one more video, write down what you thought. Well, you heard, follow up in some sort of manner so that it's not what everyone else is doing. I. I don't want to be like everyone else. So I don't know about you, but I always like to think that if you're not going to think that way, then you're just going to be like everybody else. So if everyone else is going to go to a great seminar and learn all this great stuff and then walk away and go home and do their thing with it, and you stay behind and you go up and you speak to the speaker and ask them a curious question, which most of the people may have had, but they just left because they wanted to ditch. That's such a small nuance, but that conversation could lead to who knows what. I had this happen to me with Simon Sinek. I was authoring my opus and Simon Sinek came to Ohio State and I just watched. This was a long time ago, 2012, 2013. I just watched his YouTube video on Start with why I bought the book. I was all about it, and I was authoring my opus. And I remember it started off with changing the perception of collections. So I went and heard him speak at Ohio State, and everybody laughed. And I walked up to the front of the room and I struck up a conversation, and I shared with him my Builds Elite experience. And I share with them my vision. And he sat back and he thought. And he gave me this little coin, this little silver coin I'll never forget. Said start with why? Kind of a cool thing he gave out. I think it was his business card. It was really cool and clever. And then he said. He said, change it to change the perception of collections from changing to change. Okay, that sounds a little weird. Why? He said, because changing is more past tense. Like change change. The perception of collections is. That's what you're doing. You're actually chang the perception. It's a call to action. The way he said it at the time, really, it. It seared me. And I remember walking away going, wow, like, that's a big deal. Could just change my vision. The guy just changed my vision. And I actually bought into it, and I liked it, and it did. I mean, I literally had this stamped on my wall, and I said it 10,000 times at my company, and I made sure everything I did aligned with it. And if I would have left that day, it also did a lot of other things that I'm not sharing. But if I would have left that, then I would have had that little nuance. It wouldn't have changed so many little things. I don't know. So just a little example I just thought of and follow up. Ask curious questions. Do a little bit more. If you're working out, do one more pushup. If you're calling people in your family, call one more person. Go the extra step and do a little bit more.
