Are these old enough to be “historical”?
John Williams is as “household name” as composers get. His film scores from the mid-70s to the present have worked themselves into the popular consciousness in a way little “classical” music can. It’s hard to imagine famous films like Jaws, Star Wars, and Indiana Jones without his music. Can you imagine Jaws or Star Wars with 70s pop disco soundtracks? Because that was an option back then. Captain & Tennille could have sung “Watch Out for that Fin!” instead of “Love Will Keep Us Together.”
But despite being America’s best-known film composer, John Williams holds a rather embarrassing title: the losing-est person in Oscar history, alive or dead. 46 times, John has been up for an award he didn’t win. He does have 6 Oscar wins for a consolation prize.
History Lied to You (Kind of)
Thomas Edison famously invented the light bulb. Only he didn’t. At least ten other inventors had demonstrated similar concepts prior to Edison showing off his. The problem with all these incandescent light bulbs was not whether they worked, but whether they could be made affordable for regular folks.
Look what we missed out on because Tommy E made something better.
Edison also experimented with different designs, but his first attempts all burnt out too quickly or required too high voltage electricity, impractical for widespread use. Edison and his assistants tested thousands of potential material combinations before finding a small handful that were both economical to produce and long-lasting. We give him credit for inventing the light bulb because he invented the first one that really mattered.
How Do You Define Success?
What do Tom and John have in common? They were both immensely successful in their field, despite their many “failures”. That’s because sometimes, success or failure is more about how you slice it. You can run an amazing business that wins few awards, but helps a lot of customers. You could easily have fewer plaques on your wall but many more happy customers than your competitor who did win all the awards.
Or maybe you don’t succeed in one category that you’re focusing on, but you succeed in another. The guy who ended up inventing Post-It Notes was trying to make a super-strong adhesive for the aerospace industry. His adhesive sucked for planes but was amazing for leaving sticky notes on just about anything else.
Who knew we’d want glue that only kinda worked?
It might be frustrating in the moment, but treating either of those situations like failures is just silly. John Williams lost many, many Oscars. If he had assumed that meant he was writing worse music than before, he’d have been wrong! And failing today doesn’t mean you’ll fail tomorrow. If your business strategy is sound, you shouldn’t change it. If Edison had stopped trying different materials for filaments after the first few hundred failed, he might actually have been a failure.
If you’re taking stock of the successes and failures of your business and want help seeing things from another point of view (so you can finally expand to your full potential), we should talk. We’d love to help you get there.