Copying Successful People Won’t Make You Successful Too

People who aspire to greatness love to dissect the lives of successful people to figure out what makes them so great. We read articles with headlines like “These 5 Billionaires All Do The Same Thing Every Morning” and “10 Secrets From 10 Top Writers”, believing if we can model our lifestyles after the lifestyles of billionaires that we too can become wealthy and live the life we want.

Sometimes reading these kinds of articles is worthwhile. We learn about important ways we can structure our days or use our money to achieve our goals. Often, however, we take it too far. We commit the amateurish mistake of assuming we can replicate the results by replicating what we observe.

We can indeed learn a lot about being successful from the people who went before us, but we can’t guarantee we’ll be successful too just by copying their lives. There’s a lot more going into their life than just what you can observe on the surface.

For example, consider that many artisans and experts in their field make snap decisions in their work. They eyeball measurements, let their “inspiration” guide them, and do things to their product because it pleases them. They produce elegant, fabulous work.

These experts are indeed producing fabulous work, but if an amateur did the same thing — tried to rely on instinct and assumptions instead of validating their market or learning hard skills — it would be a disaster. Their work would consistently be a mess and make no money.

As Malcolm Gladwell explains in Blink, successful people can make split-second decisions because they spent years refining their instincts. Their subconscious mind analyses all this information as they come to their split-second decision.

In Blink, Gladwell explains this principle with sculpture assessors. These assessors look over sculptures museums want to display and tell the museum if they are original or fake before they make a bid. In addition, museums use carbon-dating methods. Expert assessors were able to identify fabricated sculptures even more often than the carbon-dating method. Often, they couldn’t even articulate why they knew. They just did.

But you and I, dear reader, are not sculpture assessors. If we read a few internet articles on sculpture and then tried to guess whether a piece was original or fake, how often do you think we’d get it right?

This fallacy bites us often when we’re trying to reverse-engineer success. We read that someone famous started microdosing, and suddenly, half the internet is convinced microdosing is the key to unlocking your true potential, forgetting Mozart wrote his symphonies before LSD even existed. All because microdosing worked for a few people somewhere on the internet.

Not to mention, a lot of the things billionaires do are adapted to being a billionaire. They wake up at 5 every morning, but they also take private jets and schedule one-on-one time with their financial advisor.

If you try to live like a millionaire when you’re not a millionaire, you may sometimes do wise things, but you will also frequently do things which make no sense for you and are a dangerous misuse of resources. For example: Spending $3,000 on a mastermind class when your business only makes $200 a month.

Millionaires didn’t live like they were millionaires when they weren’t millionaires. They lived like people who were on their way to becoming millionaires. There’s a big difference.

Another reason we often can’t reverse-engineer success is the market is always changing.

Consider Benjamin Hardy. He had a stratospheric rise to success over just a few short years. Many people are trying to reverse-engineer his success. They’re studying his most popular articles, analyzing the structure, sentence composition, subject matter, date and time published, and many other factors.

Hardy is a great writer, of course, and he worked hard for his success, but it is also true that many unpredictable and uncontrollable factors went into his success.

1. He joined Medium at the right time, right when they were experiencing stratospheric growth themselves. A small volume of content plus hundreds of thousands of new readers led to more traffic for Hardy.
2. His kind of writing was in demand at the time. What is fashionable and effective in online blogging changes every few years. A few years ago, short sentences and paragraphs were very popular, especially when used in a listicle. Now, longer paragraphs and more thoughtful headlines are becoming popular. Sometimes you have to be writing in the right style at the right time to be successful, and Hardy was.
3. He was in a position to do the work required. His mental and physical health were up to the task, and his wife and family were supportive. If he was disabled, had an ailing parent to take care of, or faced other challenges in his personal life, it would have been harder to get the work done. Not impossible, mind you, just harder. Maybe it would have taken a few more months. When it comes to timing platforms for growth, even a few months can make a huge difference.

This list isn’t to say we can’t be successful like Hardy. I’ve staked my entire life on the bet that any one of us can. But those of us who reach Hardy’s level of success aren’t going to do it by doing what Hardy did. The market is different now.

Those of us who will reach Hardy’s level are the ones who will adapt.

Last but not least, for every millionaire you can find who wakes up at 5 AM and reads and goes to the gym, I can find you three who wake up at 12, only watch YouTube videos about Trump, and have a beer belly the size of Jupiter. Yes, only getting your education about the from the alt-right and treating your body like rubbish will stunt your growth in many ways, but that hasn’t stopped the countless number of white men who do that from becoming millionaires.

Sometimes, becoming a successful millionaire has nothing to do with working hard or cultivating good habits. Sometimes people become millionaires because they were in the right place at the right time.

None of which is to say we should stop trying to learn from billionaires. Looking to the successful, whether Bill Gates or Benjamin Hardy, is a great way to educate ourselves about how we may be keeping success away and what we can do to get better.

But we can’t rely on reverse-engineering their success. We’re different people in different situations. What got them there won’t get you there. You must carve a new path for yourself.

So while you’re doing everything you can to learn about successful people, remember to take it all with a grain of salt. Some of that advice may end up holding you back.

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