If You Want Success, Emulate It
Swallow your pride and steal from others
Most people can trace their respective journeys back towards a singular point — a moment in their lives where they thought to themselves, “this isn’t good enough. I am better than this.”
My moment came halfway through dinner rush.
I was spending my days frying chicken and my nights writing screenplays and stories that nobody would ever see. I was miserable, I wanted more, and I knew I was better than this.
So I took to online forums read a little bit about this strange concept called Freelance Writing. At the time, I thought it was a way for people to pay you to do the kind of work they hate to do. After about a year, I only partially agree with that sentiment.
Regardless, I set out to find my first freelance job. I told everyone that I was a screenwriter for hire. I even set up an account on one of those bidding sites. I spent every evening bidding — telling my personal tale of woe without a single portfolio piece or finished product to my name.
And I got no responses. Why would I have?
I was aimless.
I had no idea what I was doing, only vaguely told people the value they could gain by hiring me, and expected success to pour through the door. The only person that did hire me gave me one week to assemble 90 pages of material — paying a grand total of $0.002 cents a word.
(That is not a typo. And yes — I did it.)
I didn’t know any better. I was trying to reach my end-goal without a plan — I was aiming for success by blindly tossing whatever I could at the proverbial wall and seeing what stuck.
It didn’t take long for me to change up my strategy.
I stopped being bull-headed and looked around. I sought out writers that were either successful, or successful at presenting success. I looked to their portfolios and their endless discussion of SEO and marketing techniques and cultivating a niche and all that good stuff. So basically —
I stole from them.
And I stole a lot.
My website was based off of a lifestyle writer I enjoyed. My portfolio was built from a guide posted to a freelancing subreddit. My pitch letters were — at times — direct copies of example pitches, and my first Skype meeting was conducted while I looked at a cheat sheet for budding freelancers.
Guess what happened?
I got to work. I pitched and I pitched until clients wanted to talk to me. My second job paid better than the first my a factor of 46. Also not a typo!
Who says cheaters never prosper?
If you want to succeed, swallow your pride and start stealing.
It doesn’t matter what you’re trying to do — whether you want to be a freelancer or an entrepreneur or a better person — other people have done it, and they’ve done it better than you ever will.
Why would you ever let that expertise and knowledge go to waste?
Too many people go too far with the idea that they must “carve their own path in life” in order to be proud of what they accomplished. But the truth is, it doesn’t matter whether or not you read a guide or emulated somebody else’s strategy to gain success. It’s still your success.
Nobody’s pathway to success is the same because everybody defines success in their own manner. For some people, a six figure income will make them happy. For others, the freedom to dictate your own hours of the day is enough to quality. It doesn’t matter much to me which option you’ve chosen.
If you’re struggling to succeed at whatever field you’ve chosen, ask somebody who already did. Swallow your pride, wipe all desires of originality from your mind (which doesn’t exist anyway), and ask.
It’s even easier now that we have the Internet. Almost anyone you can think of can be contacted these days. And the worst thing that could happen is that you never hear back from them. In which case? Oh, well — you can see what worked for them and what didn’t from a distance as well.
I am in no way advocating theft of intellectual property, website design, or anything of the sort. When I tell you to steal, I want you to steal the concept, not the content.
Order exists for a reason. Websites look similar to each other because that’s what works. Headlines on Medium can ride the bleeding edge between honesty and clickbait because that’s what works. Besides —an article that resonates and is true to you is too valuable to be undermined by a poor title.
Make no mistake — your pathway to success is unique. But it’s not unique because you re-invented the wheel, built a game-changing startup, or created a new way of thinking. We can’t all be Steve Jobs.
It’s unique because it’s yours. These are your successes — your failures. Take pride in the fact that you’re working hard and trying to build something from nothing. Not many people do that anymore.
Take a look around every once in a while — look at people near your level of success and accomplishment. Look above — look below. Analyze them. Talk to them. Uncover something new.
But most importantly, don’t limit yourself to exactly what other people do. Just as much as “bucking the trend” is limiting to your success, so is “only doing what everyone else is doing.”
The answer is balance. And it always has been.
