What are you GREAT at?
Not “what are you are capable of”? Not “what are you trained to do”? And certainly not “what are you experienced in”?
I just want to know, what are you GREAT at?
I ask that, because it is only the people who do what they are GREAT at who change the world.
Let’s take a brief look at three people we’re all familiar with: Ray Kroc, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.
Let’s start with Ray. What was he GREAT at? Making Hamburgers?
Burger King and Wendy’s both beat McD’s hands-down.
No, what Ray Kroc was GREAT at was creating efficiencies in a system that allowed his organization to sell “BILLIONS and BILLIONS” of mediocre - but highly profitable - hamburgers.
And with that one ability, at the age of 53, Ray Kroc opened his first McDonalds, simultaneously changing the way the world eats and transforming the global restaurant industry.
So, what about the super-nerd-cum-richest-man-in-the-country (and sometimes world), Bill Gates, and his counterpart and competitor Steve Jobs?
Well, Bill was decent in academics. 1590 out of 1600 on the SAT. That’s professor material.
And yes, young Bill was even pretty good at writing code.
But compared to Steve Jobs, Gates was only mediocre at creating a reliable, stable, powerful software.
Job’s much more reliable, and cooler, Macintosh came out months before Gate’s PC.
Why then, does Microsoft own 90% of the personal computer market? And why was Bill’s personal net worth six times that of Steve Jobs when Job’s died in 2011?
Because Bill Gates did what he was GREAT at: marketing and selling the idea of personal computing.
Job’s also did what HE was great at: Producing extremely reliable, innovative, socially transforming and, let’s be honest, sexy technology that changed the way we communicate, work and live.
Some people say that if Job’s were still alive, he’d now be worth as much or more than Gates.
Just think what the world would be like if Ray Kroc had kept selling Milkshake machines, Steve Jobs stuck with writing video games for Atari, and Bill Gates finished at Harvard, and became a corporate lawyer.
So . . . what are you GREAT at?
-Jimmy Harris