TALENT ALONE IS NOT ENOUGH, so how do we break through?
TALENT ALONE IS NOT ENOUGH as we’re reminded by one of the world’s great literary giants James Baldwin.
I mean take the film Oppenheimer (2023) made by one of the world’s best directors Christopher Nolan. It reportedly cost $100m to make. But its marketing budget was reportedly between $65–100m. Endurance, haecceity and publicity is needed.
Talent does not pay the bills and its transient, meaning you might be a genius or be considered one, but beware of its diminishing index as time goes on or a new generation emerges.
The talented soul finds out at some point that humility is the key. That the apprentice or otherwise people you ignored at or felt were not in your orbit, are closing in to surpass you.
I once got asked by a student didn’t I mind sharing my ideas/ tricks because it meant they’d be better than me. I replied no, because I know so little, but that that’s the point. I’m literally willing this, and it happens every year. I said to one student as they bagged a foreign correspondent job from a network before graduating that tomorrow I will be learning about the world from you.
To truly make the triptych work, it’s Talent | Endurance | Publicity. Quite often any number of the aforementioned leads to the formation of a community. Your talent could attract kith and kin, but often through endurance being on the circuit. If not publicity will result in a community forming around your product/ talent.
Of course there are other variables. You could mention luck. Pragmatists would argue you engineer your own luck by endurance. I once had a couple of students engaged in an experiment I called the five percenters. That is for every CV you send out there’s a five percent chance it succeeds.
So if you send out a 100 CVs, the thinking, and I can’t quite remember when I first stumbled upon this some twenty years plus ago, five of the returns with a decent CV will result in jobs. We’ve tested it and it works.
Essentially it’s a numbers game. A numbers game of probability. Once you’re in the community talent now must translate into knowledge. You can divvy up knowledge into theory and practice.
As the saying goes from a dear friend. Practice knowledge will help you get the job or take off, theory will help you keep the job or grow. And theory isn’t the boring this is how it’s done. It’s the philosophy you build up from observing/ being trained by others to know what’s right and what works for you and your audience. It is what’s referred to as haecceity — the quality of thisness. The Kwa, the thing that makes it and you and audience’s tick.
Yet all along you need to make other people see it, and that art is the art of marketing, behavioural science, changing habits. If you’ve not watched Century of Self I would highly recommend. In the meantime here’s James Baldwin
