Page 37 - Sorry, We're Not Hiring Any Visionaries Today

CHAPTER 6
I’m not the architect, but the reality is that what I was able to do was to move needles forward that I felt needed to be moved.
Other people joined me, but 30 years ago, skateboarding was basically males under the age of 20 street skateboarding. Pretty much every single magazine was exactly that. I thought: “We need other types of skateboarding. We need other types of riders.” When I did that, I had a website, a book, a magazine, a television show, and movies. It all accumulated and created this pivot, this change within skateboarding.
I base my success on how far and wide my ideas spread and how many other people I can help spread their ideas. That’s my thing, that’s my high.
Social Style is a behavioural model that helps us to understand our domi- nant driving motive be it Recognition, Acceptance, Respect, or Control. Irrespective to which is the dominant true independence and freedom are only achieved when we cut our reliance on others to provide that need.
You know how you said you like data and you like to simplify and categorize? So for me, it’s not so much that I bring chaos to order. For me, it’s more like: I see this problem, and I see a path to where you can actually have a wonderful existence and let me show you all these crazy ideas that can work. I keep firing and firing, and it’s not something that I can turn off.
ANDREW: One of the common stories you hear from people who went into business was that there were all these so-called “experts” who told them that their new and unique business idea was terrible and would never be successful, but they ignored these experts and went on to tremendous suc- cess. Stories from the founders of Google, Apple, FedEx and so on. These founders often say they created their business because they didn’t know it would be impossible.
When you decided to launch your magazine, you were also probably told that it was a dumb idea and that no one would buy it, but you didn’t know it was impossible, so you did it anyway. Does that resonate with you?
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