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Be an Overnight Success
My friend David Altshuler is one of the most recognized educational consultants in the country. If your college-age kid can’t decide whether to take a full-ride scholarship to MIT or Stanford or whether they should spend the afternoon locked in their room cutting themselves or trying meth, David is the guy you call.
David is on the speed dial of most therapists who deal with adolescent issues. When they need an expert to show parents how to help their kids thrive, they call David.
And when newly minted MSWs and PhDs are ready to open their own therapeutic practices, they call David.
“I want to do what you do,” they say. “I want to help families and kids. You make it look so easy. How’d you do it?”
The answer they all want is that all they need to do is do their best. Provide excellent service and help families, and their businesses will take off. They want the old movie line, “If you build it, they will come,” to be their storyline.
But the truth is it takes an awful lot of hard work to get to where David is. In addition to his advanced degrees, years of experience, and constant study, David has written 3,248 blog posts and seven books on helping kids thrive. He has also visited almost every accredited college and university in the United States and evaluated hundreds of therapeutic programs.
In other words, David became an overnight success after 40 years.
How can you be an Overnight Success?
My friend Bill Stainton is a renowned professional speaker and humorist. If you’re ever lucky enough to see Bill on stage, and you can stop laughing long enough to think about what he’s doing, you’ll be amazed at how he makes it all look so effortless. Bill’s so good on stage that many people who line up to chat with him after a talk ask the same question: “You’re so funny. You know, I’m funny, too. How can I be a professional speaker like you?”
Of course, Bill’s audiences don’t see the years of hard work, rehearsal, and study that got Bill to where he is today. They probably don’t realize Bill was in the cast of Seattle’s Almost Live!, the pioneering comedy show that earned him 29 Emmy awards and had a time slot that pushed SNL half an hour later. Or that Bill worked with Jerry Seinfeld, Ellen DeGeneres, and Bill Nye the Science Guy. Or that Bill has written for HBO, Comedy Central, and The Tonight Show. Or that Bill has been a hard-working member of The National Speakers Association and is an honored member of their Speaker Hall of Fame. All they see is the effortless stagecraft that Bill earned through his decades of hands-on experience.
In other words, Bill became an overnight success after 40 years.
Of course, Bill and David were highly successful long before they’d been in their respective careers for 40 years. As talented as they are, they were overnight successes after 15 or 20 years. However, the point remains: becoming world-class successes like Bill and David ain’t easy. It takes years and years of hard work.
How can you be an Overnight Success?
A man strolled down Madison Avenue in New York City when a harried-looking tourist approached him.
“Do you know how to get to Carnegie Hall?” the tourist asked.
“Of course,” the New Yorker answered. “Practice, man, practice.”