All Ears

I’ve made my living communicating. The first 20 years of my career, I rented my brain to Fortune 500 CEOs looking for guidance on branding or strategy. Just as a hit television show is a cocktail of production values and storytelling, a good consultant brings the peanut butter and chocolate of data-driven insight and storytelling together. The ideas and data are nothing unless you can articulate them in a compelling manner.

I didn’t hate consulting, but I didn’t love it. That’s fine — “do what you love” is bullshit. I did it because I was good at it. I spent most of my time on the road, unable to form or maintain enduring relationships, and it was fucking exhausting. Yes, it provided economic security for me and my family, which was (and should have been) my goal … full stop. But I spent the better part of two decades helping companies sell people stuff they didn’t need, and it felt increasingly meaningless. Actually, it felt like nothing … like it didn’t happen.

The Relentless Pursuit of Greatness

Within five or six years all I could think about was selling the firms I’d founded that helped other businesses sell stuff. The sales of Prophet and L2 provided economic security and blessed me with a new task — to be great, really great … at something. So I turned to teaching, and in 2002 I joined the faculty of NYU. Since then, more than 6,000 students have taken my courses. It’s been hugely rewarding, and, at the core, I consider myself a teacher. A very good teacher … but not a great one.

Despite clocking Cs in my high school and college English courses, sheer practice has improved my writing. First as a consultant, ghostwriting letters and press releases worth (optimistically) $1,200/hour. Since 2017, I’ve published a book about every 18 months (coming this fall). Good books, but still … real greatness eludes me. TV? Hands down my worst medium. I’m the Covid-19 of the idiot box, infecting and sometimes killing weak networks — Vice, Bloomberg Quicktake and CNN+. What network goes down next? Just look for my face.

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Πηγή: profgalloway.com