A short YouTube monologue (speaker: Sam) arguing against the myth of the lone genius and urging creators to build on others' work. Using examples from visual art (Picasso, Rembrandt), music (The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Michael Jackson), sports, and business (Bill Gates, Art Williams), the speaker emphasizes adaptation, staying current, and learning from competitors rather than inventing entirely from scratch.
Let's see if we can get rid of a fake idea. And guess what that idea is. The idea that the great people are like Moses on the mountain. They're up on the big mountain. They commune with God, they do their inventing. They get the big. The lightning bolt comes in out of the sky. They have the big aha moment. Aha. And then they come down the hill proudly carrying their tablets, the new invention. And the crowd go berserk. I can't believe how great, what a genius you are, folks. That's not how invention happens. Happens by degrees. You don't. Very little of it is total creation out of nothing. It's basically adapting and developing. It goes back to all of the artists. We have all of these artists in history. The Leonardo's, Michelangelo, good old Mike, Mike Angelo. Have you ever been over to Florence and seen his stuff? Very nice. And then you have Raphael all through the Vatican and all those museums over there, folks, these guys, great artists, the Rembrandts and all these. But hey, they came out of a school of. They came out of communities of artists. They came out of. They. They knew what each other were doing. They stimulated each other. One would get an idea, one would come up with a new way of painting or this, and the other a design or whatever, and it would be copied. That's the way it all always has done. Like, just take British rock in the 60s. Where did that come from? That was all out of London. A lot of them got excited about the blues and they were. They were all playing and stimulated. Hey, the Beatles knew everything the Stones were doing. I mean, they talked. They were at lunch together, they were breakfast, they were in the pubs together. They knew when Jimi Hendrix went over and played the Palladium the day after, or may have been the same day that The Beatles released Sgt. Pepper's Heart. Heart Club Band, the big Sgt. Pepper's album. That was a song that Jimi Hendrix used to open his set. And the Beatles were in there listening. Because anything that new that anybody else came up with, everybody else came up with right off the bat. And look at the costumes that Jimi Hendrix wore after that when he came back from London versus when he went over there, it affected He. He was dressing like he was a member of sergeant Pepper's Heart Club Band. This little out, uniforms and outfits. Same with Michael Jackson. Where do you think all that stuff came from? And like Picasso, we think of Picasso, Original genius. Wow. So different than everybody else. Hey, Picasso had different periods. Picasso was a guy. He was like corporate espionage, you know, he Said, you know, you don't want to do it illegal and be stealing and everything. But why do you think these corporations keep up with each other? Why do you think countries have so much spying going on? It's they want it, countries do it. So you don't want to be conquered by the other guy. But I mean, they know what anything that comes out, they've known about for years because they have their spies everywhere and they learn, they stay ahead of the game. But Picasso, he had an eagle eye for every different style that came along. Now obviously he was genius. He was complicated. Any different style, he went through his different periods, his blue period and whatever. But he would latch onto it. He would see something new and he would make it his own. There's nothing wrong with that. It's how you progress in the world. What it is is this. What it is, is you can't look at it is not stealing. Ideas are a dime a dozen. It's what you do with them. That's how the things develop so fast now because you can get access to what everybody's doing on the the web. And you got to stay current just because you're number one Today, if you take off, everybody's going to copy. It's just like the NFL. If you have a number one team going through the NFL, they're undefeated. You see it every week, undefeated. They're unbelievable. They're running these plays, but then they have a game, they have a close game, somebody figures out how to slow them down, this, that and the other. Guess what happens. Whether they lose or not. They've been scoring 40 points a game. All of a sudden they only score 20 points. Guess what? Every one of the other 30 teams in the league watched the films and dissect it. And every one of those teams is going to be ready to copy and use the same techniques next time they play the super duper team. That's why it's so almost impossible to stay undefeated, because everybody learns something every week new about how to beat you. And you got to be stay fresh. You got to be progressing and developing your own self and kind of keep, keep some secrets. So this is all about, it's not stealing, it's staying relevant, staying current, keeping a competitive edge. The president, founder of our company, Art Williams, way back when he started out, he was a high school football Coach in the 70s in South Georgia. Two years high school football coach of the year. His assistant coach, who, who also wound up joining the business, Lou Miller, used to say when they'd have an off Week they had a big game coming up. They would sneak over and watch practice from the other team, and sometimes they're crawling through the grass because they didn't want them to be spotted. Bob Turley, when he was a pitcher with the New York Yankees, he learned how to spot tells from the opposing pitcher. From the dugout, he could tell if he's going to. What he did before, he's going to throw a fastball, a curveball or whatever. And they had a system where he could relay that, that to Mickey Mantle. Mickey Mantle had a competitive advantage every time he went to the bat, to bat, in fact, he would not go to. He wouldn't, he would not hit unless Turley was in the dugout feeding him signals. And as a result, Mantle knew what was coming. Now, with most batters, maybe that didn't make much of a difference because they couldn't have hit it anyway, but that was the edge Mantle needed. See, folks, people are beating you. People are hit. Look for what they're doing to get ahead. Look for how they're beating you. Learn from the best, that's how. From Picasso, all the way through today. What it is, you look around and you get inspired. See, there's a certain arrogance that comes and says, I'm only going to use my ideas. I'm going to think of everything myself. That's. That's arrogance. That's not humility. See, it's a certain humility to allow yourself to look around and be inspired. You take even the top rock stars, they know everything that's going on in music. And if they see something they like in rap or in heavy metal, they're going to pull a little bit of that in because it keeps them fresh. You might not ever even be able to tell, but it's going to be. They know because they're looking for inspiration themselves. Everybody gets tired of the same old thing. Bill Gates, folks. Gates, his first software with Microsoft, great programming genius, was based off. He invented the language. BASIC was the software. BASIC was an idea that a kid down the hall in the dorm at Harvard came up with. Gates didn't come up with basic. He developed basic. He took the concept and made something happen with it, folks. That's the way the world goes around. It's not for the people who could sit around and come up with ideas. It's for the people who could look at the ideas that are out there and. And develop them into something powerful. So don't sweat the small stuff. You know, you're not going to. This is not you know, of course, you don't steal and reach into someone's basement and pull out stuff. I mean, you don't have to do that. Just look around, see what's the freshest stuff, what the new ideas are, the new trends. That's what they do in the fashion business and everything else. Look for the new trends, look for the sizzle, the excitement, the new. Then grab it and see if you can make it new. And then open up a whole new direction in your life. That's what Picasso did. That's what the corporations that stay on top did. Don't have to be Moses on the mountain. All right, if you have any stories on that you'd like to share, or if that just makes you mad and you want to argue, if you want to do that, just stay home. But anyway, make your comments. Give me your comments. I'm@ydell on winning.com. feel free to subscribe if you haven't already. Go do something big. Maybe one day they'll be calling you Picasso. Sam.
