Concepts in Success: Glenn Beck

Glenn Beck. The man is a polarizing figure, to say the very least. Love him or hate him, one cannot deny that he is a very successful man. I believe that success seekers can learn a lot by both studying and applying some of the methods he has used in his own life.

Glenn Beck represents a wonderful dual application of both principles I had mentioned yesterday: hustling and leverage. His success is the product of an optimal synergy between the two that has propelled him to heights of which most can only dream.

To repeat what I stated in The Art of Leverage, hustling in the sense I mean it is not criminal and has nothing to do with scamming the people around oneself. Instead, it is the quality of putting unimaginable amounts of time and effort into developing a skill so that you are better than nearly 100% of other people. While others relax and spend most of their time engaging in all sorts of mindless diversions, you study, practice, and hone your skill. It's hard work. The end result is the ability to apply the talent you have developed to tasks as if it is simply natural to you.

You don't have to be born with a talent to be successful. You just have to enjoy doing it enough so that you're willing to devote inordinate amounts of your time doing it. This is one of the primary reasons why, in a previous post, I recommended doing what you love as the key to never working again.

Glenn Beck spent years upon years developing his abilities to speak and to connect with audiences. These are not easy talents to develop as most people do not enjoy embarrassing themselves in front of groups of people. One of the greatest benefits to the particular skill set that Glenn Beck has developed is that it has enabled him to develop a brand around himself. Branding is another part of what separates the successful from the ordinary. We'll cover that concept another time.

Imagine for a moment that Glenn Beck, armed only with his highly honed speaking abilities, operated solely on his own. During the course of a day he would have to research, plan out, and write both a radio show and a television broadcast. He would then have to perform both. Meanwhile, he would be responsible for writing and managing his news site The Blaze as well as several others. On top of that, he would have to sit down every evening to put in several hours of work on the various books he releases every year in between calls from companies seeking endorsements for their products. Let's be realistic here -- there aren't enough hours in a day to operate like this! He has the same 24 as the rest of us!

What Mr. Beck does, then, is leverage the talents and time of others towards these ends. He has people who hustled to become good at research to do his research, people who hustled to be good at production to produce his shows, and people who hustled to become good at writing to script his shows. He has extremely capable people managing his personal brand and overseeing every aspect of his business. He most likely has individuals that ghostwrite his books. It's more than likely that he compensates everyone within his organization quite well, as skilled talent tends to come at a premium. All he really provides is the skill and brand that hinges it all together.

There's nothing wrong with this. It's how the world works. Everything must be flawless in its presentation when you want to break through to the upper pinnacles of success. Everything must be checked, double-checked, refined, and perfected before others can see it. Solitary individuals haven't the time nor capacity to present such perfection, which is why they fail. Successful people know to develop a skill that makes them indispensable to an organization. They then set about to find the means to use that skill so that they might leverage others into doing the other tasks they need done. You can do this around any skill so long as it has value and so long as you are able to build a brand around it.

Master the concepts of hustling and leverage and you will go as far as your dreams will take you.