Succeeding by Helping Others Succeed (Blog)

[Savage]

Use this thread to discuss the following entry from Steve Pavlina's blog:

Succeeding by Helping Others Succeed

[supertom]

I dont think theres enough for everybody to be successful. Helping others succeed only increases competition.

[magi13]

organized competition comes to mind. :3

[cnwoods]

Steve, I love this post. I'd love to know who those other people are that you've watched grow to make it - I might find some great new blogs to follow. Any chance of posting a list?

With you absolutely on how impatient people are these days. I joke around to some of them and say "I bet you're the kind of person who taps their feet while waiting 30s for the microwave to heat your coffee, aren't you?".

Sadly, they all say yes.

Makes me wonder if these rushed people would ever stop to appreciate the time and/or money that came with success, even if they got it. What do you think?

[WhiteCrow]

Originally Posted by supertom

I dont think theres enough for everybody to be successful. Helping others succeed only increases competition.

Nice mindset of abundance. :P

Steve I really liked this post. It really gave me a strong feeling of care from your part. I really got the feeling that you want all of us to be happy and succesful, and it strikes me as beautiful. I wish you the best!

[Roger246]

Excellent post!

I think that helping others is a great way of finding your own happiness. I recently wrote a post about this called "Goals and Happiness".

It is great if also you can make a living doing helping other, but that is just icing on your happiness cake.

Roger

[changingbetter]

Thank you Steve,

It's a very empowering article!! thank you

[bluedragon]

I think if everybody would do better and have more success, then the differences between people's financial situations would become smaller (there wouldn't be people who have enough money to buy a whole country, and there wouldn't be so many people who are poor. So competition is good.

[newmark]

Originally Posted by supertom

I dont think theres enough for everybody to be successful. Helping others succeed only increases competition.

I think this is very true if we copy each other, but if we find our own way it doesn't have to be like that.

[Plato]

Originally Posted by cnwoods

I joke around to some of them and say "I bet you're the kind of person who taps their feet while waiting 30s for the microwave to heat your coffee, aren't you?"

I do pushups while I wait for the kettle to boil. I heartily recommend it!

Originally Posted by supertom

I dont think theres enough for everybody to be successful. Helping others succeed only increases competition.

How successful do you have to be in order to be happy?

Originally Posted by bluedragon

the differences between people's financial situations would become smaller

Does it diminish a person if somebody else has more stuff than them?

[theknightwhosaysni-NI]

It's true that you don't need to be an expert to teach things, especially when writing free content on the internet.
This is because in any given field, the everyday man is not interested by learning things at an expert level. Most people want to learn things in fields where they are beginners.

The more deep and complicated the content is, the more targeted and narrow the audience will be.

If you teach things at an expert level, you're going to be interesting for the very few people who already have a well advanced knowledge in this field.
If you teach things on a more basic level, the audience is going to be much wider.

I think it's true for any field. Wether it is physics, learning a new language, learning a new habit, or even personal development.

Take physics for instance. If an expert decides to give Phd level classes for free over the internet, it's likely that his audience will be very narrow, due to the complication of the courses.
On the other hand, if one decides to make articles with pictures and easy explanations about the latest discoveries of physics, much more people will be interested in reading the material.

I'd even say that it's a challenge for experts to make their content accessible to a wide audience.

[aphorist]

Originally Posted by supertom

I dont think theres enough for everybody to be successful. Helping others succeed only increases competition.

That comes down to whether or not you believe success to have material properties. Do you think there's only a certain amount of success to go around? Is there a base figure that we're all conserving by moving around it as a mean value?

How do you measure success? If my goal is to help others succeed, then by helping you to start helping others I've succeeded in one instance. Then, everyone you help, I've indirectly helped. Isn't that double success for me?

[firefly]

Steve, this post was a great synchronicity for me. I started my own blog just two weeks ago and yesterday I was thinking about the best way to gauge my progress in growing the site. Hits? Subscribers? Income? Then I got home from work and the answer was in my feed reader: strong value!

Do you have any method for goal-setting based on "strong value" feedback? I'm sure it's less of an issue at your level, but for Level 1 characters any guidelines are helpful. Would you throw out timetables entirely and just focus on getting one strong value feedback, then ten, then fifty? It really is too bad we can't have a pop-up screen that says, "Congratulations! You're now Level 10!"

BTW, I'm surprised that you had trouble accepting a teaching role at first, but I'm glad you shared that. It's very encouraging.

Thanks so much for posts like these. While starting up my site I started going back to some of your posts on entrepreneurship and blogging. Your Create and Deliver formula has really helped me approach this work with a good mindset. I don't have a lot of content to deliver yet (this is the first time I've publicly mentioned my blog), but I'm getting there!

Thanks again and yes, you can consider this strong value feedback.

[scarcarnage]

Thanks for the post Steve. For a while I've been concerned with the same issue. "Why would anyone listen to what I have to say about personal development if I'm not a millionaire? Just because I've spent the last 10 years of my life studying this stuff, doesn't mean people will take the time to listen."

But lately I've come to realize that it doesn't matter. Everyone can learn from anyone. You can learn an important lesson on passion from a 7 year old kid better than you can from a motivational guru.

Reading this article reminded me that someone somewhere will be helped by what I write about regardless if I'm a millionaire or not. Not sure why I keep thinking no one will listen to you unless you have a ton of money. Anyhow, I will keep writing away. Keep doing what you do man. Thanks again.

------------------------------------------
Kevin

[waystogrow]

Always remember, "Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach, teach physical education." - School of Rock

Think about your past and the people who have excelled in sports, sales, business, relationships, etc. I have personally noticed that the people who are at the top of their game weren't necessarilly the best coaches. Of course this isn't always true. For example, it isn't necessary for you to be the best basketball player in order to be the best coach. You will have to understand the rules, fundamentals, and be able to demonstrate enough skill so that people will believe you're not teaching on theory. (Nothing worse than learning from somebody who has never done what they're teaching). Once you get passed that the skills to coach basketball are very different from playing.

Steve, I really appreciate the work you have done and I am glad you were blessed with this gift. Thank God you weren't the best game producer ever otherwise you may never have explored this arena.

[Judge]

I would have to say that attemtping to find success by believing that you must 'give to get' is grounded in fear. Since seperation is an illusion, then you are only ever really helping yourself and in fact giving to yourself.

The strongest value you can add is by way of helping yourself, not from a selfish POV, but from a self centered POV. As you are the center of the universe, then everything revolves around you, so you are never giving to others to get something back, but giving of yourself to yourself.

As there are no others, everything you do to help 'the others' must be something you sense is important for your own growth. What seems missing from the whole, must be provided (perceived) by the whole.

It's a subtle difference, but it's important.

The strongest value is adding the seemingly missing pieces.

Judge

[ROTFLMAO]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

Use this thread to discuss the following entry from Steve Pavlina's blog:

Succeeding by Helping Others Succeed

I want to say, thank you for having the courage and committment to live up to your potential. You inspire me and give me the tools to do the same.

Sending good thoughts your way.

[Adrianne]

In my experience, helping others to grow and succeed has really helped me to do the same. Recently as I've stepped more publicly into this role with more people I find that I access a good amount more motivation and inspiration within myself for my own growth and success. Before maybe it seemed more like I was doing growth or pursuing success more for my own benefit and this was not nearly as motivating or enjoyable.

[ArthurHung]

A beautiful picture summing up this post pretty nicely.

I will admit though, I don't always find being generous easy. Sometimes when you're doing your best for other's (and yourself at the same time) benefit, you get some truly tough negative feedback from reality. That's when you have to push yourself past your best, and give a little more.

That little more when you think you have nothing left to give but you give it anyway, whenever I'm able to bring it out though, comprise of some of the most salient experiences of my life.

[suziecheel]

Hi Steve,
Great post, and I just love that 2 of the articles that bring great traffic are not on personal development but recipes

Sharing what you know and who you are seem to underly so much here on the web.

Being genuine and intimate are great

[Bing Wu]

I guess that means I am old enough to work in PD so long as I'm providing value to others :-)

[seeker5]

Steve thanks for the post! I guess I've felt that way too - that I felt I wasn't a big success yet so I couldn't really talk too much about stuff I've learned on the way. I'll make sure not to think that now.

Originally Posted by theknightwhosaysni-NI

Take physics for instance. If an expert decides to give Phd level classes for free over the internet, it's likely that his audience will be very narrow, due to the complication of the courses.
On the other hand, if one decides to make articles with pictures and easy explanations about the latest discoveries of physics, much more people will be interested in reading the material.

Wow, that's an interesting way to look at it Knight! I like that, thanks .

[armyqt]

Thanks for this article. The following really resonated with me:

It isn’t necessary to be some kind of uber-guru in order to help people. You don’t have to make a ton of money, find the perfect relationship, or achieve your ideal physique before you’re able to contribute. You can start by sharing what you know, which is probably a lot more valuable than you give yourself credit for.

I just started my own blog on spirituality and the law of attraction and your entire article was very encouraging for me. My main focus is to provide value and build a good readership first and foremost. That takes times, but I'm in it for the long haul. Thanks again for this uplifting and encouraging post.

[eternomi]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

What can we say about a motivational speaker who talks about success but whose greatest success is being successful at speaking about success?

I see no problem with this, as long as the speaker is honest.

I see plenty of problems with it, even if the person in question is honest and has nothing but the best of intentions.

When your own success is directly and intimately tied to the "expert information" you are dishing out, it's a problem. You may be completely honest and have no intentions of cheating anyone, but the value of such information cannot stand on its own. It is a fairytale. I love to read postmortems and biographies. If these stories make you more successful, more power to you. On the other hand, I am not interested in self-fulfilling prophecies.

Are you just expressing your own opinions, feelings and theories? That's fine. Just tell me so. Don't leave out the "I think"s and "in my opinion"s for stronger writing. Or if you want less clutter, fine, but do tell me when something isn't yours. Have you independently discovered the same things as someone else? Cool, and you'll have the war stories to go with that as well, do tell them. Are you inspired by someone else's material or trying to explain things more clearly in your own words? Great, but don't pretend you came up with it all on your own. Are you a collector of great information? OK, but show me your references.

Btw, there is nothing wrong with delivering information from external sources. That's what reporters and journalists do. We all have to initially learn things from others anyway, right? But, if this is the case, you need to stop pretending and reveal your sources.

Now, do you see the problem with self-perpetuating guru-dom? You pretend you are the guru, convince people that your stuff is worthy, sell your stuff and achieve success, but that success presumed your guru-ness and the value of your information to begin with! People paid attention to you because you supposedly knew what you were talking about, but that's not what happened. You just hoped and believed and prayed and crossed your fingers. Or, more likely, you took someone else's tested, worthy stuff and made it your own (and hid the original source). I don't have a problem if you are honest about whose material you are promoting. If you are pretending it is all yours when it's not, then I have a huge problem with it.

If your degree in your field came from a school or independent program, then your diploma will give me a hint as to where you got your material. If you are self-taught, then list all your references on your website, or tell me your own stories and results. Don't just spew stuff left and right, and expect me to believe in your guru-dom.

Are you having trouble getting attention by promoting others' material? Sorry, that's not my problem. Don't be a leech then. Come up with your own worthy stuff and convince me it's good. Will it take time? Of course! No quick 12-steps to millions on this path!

(p.s. When I said "you" above, I meant in general, not just Steve.)

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

Do you think I spent years training to be the brown rice guru? You don’t need to be a guru to write articles like that. It’s not that difficult to share what you know.

It's just a recipe for God's sake. It's not like anything serious is at stake! But if you got it from the Top Chef cookbook, I wanna know about it!

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

It isn’t necessary to be some kind of uber-guru in order to help people. <...> You can start by sharing what you know, which is probably a lot more valuable than you give yourself credit for.

I agree. Just make sure you tell me what is truly yours, what you got from elsewhere and we'll call it even. If not, then I'll assume it's all fiction and judge its value based on that.

[VernonL]

I agree that there is plenty of resources to go around. In this day and age when the world as a whole is getting smaller and people are looking for more the possibilities are almost endless. Just my 2 cents worth for what it's worth.

[mgsanity]

Hello, I'm new here.

I was just wondering if there is a term for the phenomena of the "self-perpetuating niche", or "Those who can't, teach"... I've tried googling those words along with many others like "inbred markets" and have not come up with anything.

For example, say someone invests time learning how to write music then learned there was greater market in teaching how to write music than actually writing music.

Or say someone goes to a trade school to learn digital photography, then discovers there's more money to be made teaching what they learned (digital photography) than being a photographer. Maybe a student of this teacher realized the same thing and instead of pursuing a career in being a photographer, decides to teach digital photography. And on and on and on.

Or for example, someone want to start an online business selling items in a certain niche. One day this person realizes there is more money to be made selling information on starting an online business, search engine optimization, etc..than actually selling goods in their originally intended niche.

They are basically teaching what they learned on the way. They have made their journey the destination. They have made their original destination someone else's (their students') destination.

I'm basically just asking if there is a term for this phenomena. Steve says in this blog that this a perfectly acceptable business niche (and I'm inclined to agree), but I'm wondering what the big picture is. I'm basically just researching this phenomena and what's it's ultimate impact on a niche is. What it can say about a market when most of the money being made in it is through teaching it.

I hope no one took any of this the wrong way..I'm just searching for information.

[mgsanity]

I guess networking marketing could be included into the above. At least from my knowledge of it.

[spirit4711]

Originally Posted by mgsanity

...
They are basically teaching what they learned on the way. They have made their journey the destination. They have made their original destination someone else's (their students') destination.

I'm basically just asking if there is a term for this phenomena. Steve says in this blog that this a perfectly acceptable business niche (and I'm inclined to agree), but I'm wondering what the big picture is. I'm basically just researching this phenomena and what's it's ultimate impact on a niche is. What it can say about a market when most of the money being made in it is through teaching it....

For me it's prettty simple: it's about providing value. You can choose to provide value to do something yourself, or to teach others to do something (or both, actually). There's nothing wrong with 'only' teaching.

Whatever you choose, if the market doesn't perceive it as valuable, you won't sell.

[brendannz]

Yep, if you can't do what you're teaching then you're really preaching, which is different, I think.

I like Steve Pavlina more than the other motivational people, because he seems more honest in what he teaches, and you get the feel for his computer game business and his life.

I sometimes wonder about these other motivational speakers who come from backgrounds of being completely broke in every sense of the world, then they turn their lives around and become multi-millionaires as motivational speakers..

I'm thinking of starting my own blogging soon.. and looking for ways to give value, generally, regardless of how much money it brings..