On Starfish, Dreamers and the Oddballs Who Actually Succeed

Possibly the strangest bio you’ll ever read.

I died once. Flat line screaming. Code blue, code blue, the doctor yelling for the paddles as I watched from above. Make what you will of that, it’s only what happened afterwards that matters anyway.

First, I hugged my child like there was no tomorrow, because there almost wasn’t but for the grace of God and a doctor who didn’t give up on me.

And then I quit my job and started my own business. Because if some doctor wouldn’t give up on my life how dare I, then?

Make no mistake, the point isn’t quitting a job or starting a business.

It’s that we can’t connect the dots looking forward. Can’t predict which way the winds will blow. We can only adjust the sails accordingly. And also?

No one ever promised us tomorrow.

One day, my phone rang and the call display said Forbes. I was so stunned I stared at the phone and almost didn’t answer in time. Can you even imagine letting that call go to voice mail? I grabbed it.

Me. Bare feet and blue jeans. Just some nobody working from home in nowhere, Canada. It was surreal, but it would happen again and again. The New York Times. ABC News. HGTV. Boggles my mind, still.

The day Oprah’s producer called, that got me. My hands shook. Silly, I know. We’re all humans, we all put our pants on the same way. But still.

People think that’s the important stuff. I promise you, it’s not.

One morning an old man is walking on the beach. He sees a young boy, standing on the beach pitching starfish into the ocean.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

The boy explained that the tide leaves starfish on the beach, and if they don’t get back in the water before the sun gets too hot, they’ll die.

“But son,” the old man says. “There’s thousands of starfish on the beach. Tens of thousands. Look around you. You can’t possibly make a difference.”

The boy bends down. Picks up a starfish and throws it in the ocean. “For that one, I made a difference,” he says.

Listen. Here’s the thing. Most people fail. Dreams die hard. Most books never sell more than 200 copies. Most websites lose half their visitors in seconds flat. Most businesses don’t last 5 years.

Starfish as far as the eye can see.

Jim Rohn once said success and failure are not single cataclysmic events, but just a series of right or wrong actions, repeated day after day.

Nowhere is that more true than marketing. Nowhere.

Most people think marketing is the hawking, pitching nonsense that has its roots in the direct response world of commemorative plates and how to make money schemes. Fake scarcity on a download. Come on.

I promise you, that’s not marketing.

The oddballs who succeed are the ones who understand that when you do what everyone else does, you get what everyone else gets.

Two weeks after that first call from Forbes, my phone rang again. My client. Laughing and crying at the same time. So many orders, they couldn’t keep up. They wouldn’t have to sell the farm. Wouldn’t have to throw in the towel.

I made a difference for that one.

People are too often impressed by the wrong things. Names instead of connections. Doesn’t matter if it’s Forbes and The New York Times or Instagram and Medium.

They’re all water.

This may be possibly the strangest bio you’ll ever read. All of this, it’s not who I am. It’s just what I do.

Who am I, then? I don’t know. How do you describe a human being? By what we like? Then, I suppose I am made entirely of coffee, chocolate and words. I don’t think that does a body justice, does it?

But that kid throwing starfish into the ocean? That might be close.

Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

P.S. Struggling on Medium? Get my Top 25 Medium Tips here