Tiger, Bernie, and the Big Lesson of 2009
2009 will go down in history as the month that Tiger Woods became the 800-Pound Gorilla of the media in something other than golf. The most shocking thing about his fall from grace is that this sort of behavior from the ultra-successful has become almost predictable.
My wife once worked with very powerful developers of high-rises in the United States, mainly the Midwest. These were people who dealt in eight and nine-figure numbers daily, with huge risks on every project – and huge successes if they bet correctly. Because of Sherri’s position, I had the chance to get to know them on a level that few others did.
What I found was that these high rollers were always on the lookout for the next big challenge in every facet of their lives. Whether it was skydiving, baccarat, dangerous recreational drugs, or hitting on others’ wives just to see if they could get away with it, these were very powerful people that had to push the envelope in whatever they did. Their work lives were so borderline dangerous, their personal lives had to struggle just to keep up.
And I thought back to those days when I recognized the similarity they have to many of the celebrities, Ponzi schemers, and top sports figures that have fallen in 2009.
To them, being at the pinnacle of their game, there is a hunger to achieve something else in their personal lives that needs to be equally challenging. They’ve tasted the adrenaline rush of supreme victory in their careers, and their home lives are boring in comparison. So they spice it up – because others do it around them, because they can afford it, and most importantly, the temptation to achieve a sordid, secret personal victory on the other side of their lives is overwhelming.
“What can I get away with?” they begin to ask themselves, and start doing things that give them the same sense of danger, thrills and excitement they experience in their day jobs. They can afford to buy the necessary cloaks of secrecy they need to keep their dirty deeds under wraps. And so they go about building their skyscrapers, running their investment funds on Wall Street, and winning their green jackets in the light of day.
It’s the blessing and the curse of success.
As you contemplate the past year and look ahead to how you can be a more dominant player in 2010, I hope you’ll discover success in whatever way “success” is defined for you; that you’ll savor the joys of new accomplishment; and that you’ll recognize and resist the Big Lesson of 2009: that new temptations almost always come with the territory.
– Bill Guertin is CEO (Chief Enthusiasm Officer) of The 800-Pound Gorilla, a dynamic sales training and consulting company and author of the brand-new book, The 800-Pound Gorilla of Sales: How To Dominate Your Market, now available from John Wiley & Sons. Find more articles and valuable information at www.The800PoundGorilla.com, or follow Bill on Twitter at www.twitter.com/800poundgorilla.
