How to break out of the pack

Introduction
Hi, Im Jason Nazar, CEO and CoFounder of Docstoc.com, one of the 500 most trafficked websites in the world. Our website gets 20 million visitors a month, and we proudly help countless small businesses find the legal and professional documents they need to grow.

Of course, I wasnt always running a profitable company of 40 employees in sunny Santa Monica. I had my share of aimlessness and mistakes, and learned a lot about success from failure. I want to share some of my revelations, but not just in relation to business. These stories are about the importance of being different, being exceptional.

It should take you about half an hour to read this, give or take a few minutes. Thirty minutes doesnt sound like much time, but my goal is not to waste it. As you will quickly understand, I take every moment of life very seriously.

In order to prevent wasting your time, all I ask is that you be a thoughtful reader. Dont shrug this off as inspirational hogwash, do yourself a favor and really consider the questions and lessons I bring to the table. They may not be useful to all of you; theres a reason there will always be a pack. But for
Adapted by Rochelle Balis from a speech given my Jason Nazar at Pepperdine School of Business

lorem those of you ready to break away, these are the same thoughts that led me ipsum

away from the norm, and on my own path when others thought I was crazy.

Zig Where Others Zag

You cannot do what everybody else does and expect meaningful results. If Einstein cant convince you, Im not sure who could. You cannot build a successful businesses unless you do at least some things distinctly from everybody else. In the nal year of my studies at Pepperdine business and law school, I came up with the idea for a document storage site called Docstoc. I started building the product, and I ended up skipping about 80 percent of my classes. No, Im not exaggerating. I didnt buy books. I didnt study. I was honest with everyone about how I no longer cared about my grades. Instead, I spent every waking moment working with a development shop in India that was programming the rst version of Docstoc. I spent every last dime I had in savings, put money on credit cards and took out student loans to pay it off. Undoubtedly, people in law school thought I was insane. It was pretty lonely doing things so differently from the pack. But I was condent that I had to take a different path in order to do something extraordinary.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results.

- Albert Einstein

We all treasure being unique, but really take a moment and ask yourself: how much time do you actually spend doing things differently than those around you? Im not talking about small differences, but fundamental ones. Different approaches lead to different results, and you will need these to succeed in business.

Sometimes it Helps to Think Less

Dont get me wrong, critical thinking is crucial to success. But sometimes thinking can actually prevent you from starting the business of your dreams. If I had known how difcult it would be to start, launch and grow Docstoc, I honestly might not have done it. I didnt know that I was going to be $60,000 in debt after graduate school. I didnt know that I would be working 18 hours a day, six days a week for two years straight. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. This reminds me of an old fable called Who Moved My Cheese? about a mouse and a little person. Every day, cheese shows up on their front doorstep, and they eat it. One day, their cheese is gone. The mouse decides to head off and look for new cheese. The person decides, Maybe if I come back tomorrow, the cheese will be here. Of course, the cheese never shows up, and he spends all day trying to understand why, sulking, whining and crying. Finally, when watching the mouse eat a new piece of cheese, the person realizes he needs to stop wasting time wondering where the cheese has gone. He needs to be like the mouse, and begin a search for new cheese. Sometimes thinking is the enemy of doing. When youre trying to break out of the pack, your biggest enemy is inertia. Thinking may hold you back from taking the plunge. Thought comes later, when you discover whats working, and want to improve on it. Most people who want to start a business think too much about how to be an entrepreneur, and not doing enough to become one.

The quicker you let go of old cheese, the sooner you find new cheese.

- Spencer Johnson

Zig Where Others Zag

Stop Talking About Yourself and Others

Eleanor hit the nail on the head with this one: only small minded people talk about people. How much time do you spend thinking about yourself? The money you want to make, the body you wish you had, the people you want to be in a relationship with. And how much time do you spend gossiping about other people? In my experience, thats the majority of what people think and talk about. But Ive also met a lot of incredible individuals, and I know that great people, great minds and great entrepreneurs talk about ideas. And then they take action on those ideas. As many of you know, Steve Jobs is famous for having a unique management style. For all his faults, he was always focused on the next big idea. He used to go on walks with his VPs and other people at Apple. Do you think Steve used these walks to talk about himself, or to gossip about other people at Apple? Or do you think he was talking about his next big idea for revolutionizing the music industry, cell phones, or lm? This was all he xated on; thinking up and then delivering the most captivating products people had ever seen. We spend too much of our time thinking and talking about ourselves and other people. Truly great entrepreneurs think about ideas, and then turn them into reality.

Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people.

- Eleanor Roosevelt

Repeat, Own, and Make New Mistakes

The quote below is, of course, former president Bushs famous version of Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. This can be boiled down to a simpler adage: Dont ever make the same mistake twice. This is a terrible motto, let me tell you why: throughout your life, youre going to make the same mistake many times over. Have you ever learned anything new the rst time around? If I tell you a new sentence in a foreign language, could you repeat it verbatim? If you play a sport that youve never played before, will you be a pro after the rst or second try? Of course not. You have to repeat things several times until you work through, internalize and grow from their lesson. Its no different for mistakes. Life is about making mistakes. You wont learn from your mistakes the rst time, you will make them a couple of times. Eventually you will own those mistakes, stop making them, and move on to new ones. When I rst started Docstoc, I made every mistake in the book. One of the biggest mistakes I made, one that took me several times to learn from, was not appreciating or complimenting my employees. In the beginning I held a high bar for excellence no one could attain. I never wanted any of my employees to feel like we had done a good enough. The rst day that we launched Docstoc, 40,000 people came to our website. My co-founder and all of the developers whod pulled all-nighters for months were ecstatic. They felt vindicated, like their hard work was all worth it. But I was upset. I wanted to reach 100,000 people. People in the company occasionally said things along the lines of you should compliment him on that or ease up a little bit, but nothing sunk in. Finally, one day my co-founder pulled me out of my ofce and took me for a walk. He told me I was being a jerk. You need to appreciate and validate our employees. He insisted. Your attitude is not sustainable, and it will not inspire people to work harder. That was the fourth or fth time Id hear this, but this was the most direct anyone had been about it. It nally got through, even though it took some time for me to accept and internalize.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me and you cant get fooled again.

- George Bush

Now I spend a lot of time making sure the employees in our ofce knows when they are doing well. Dont be afraid to tell your employees where they can improve, but offer that critical feedback with a note of validation. This wasnt my rst mistake, or my last, and Ive made peace with that. Forgive yourself for making mistakes; it comes hand in hand with doing things differently. Make a mistake as many times as you need to in order to never make it again.

A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.

- Mark Twain

You Should Be Uncomfortable

To break out of the pack you should be uncomfortable, and often. Any time you push yourself or stretch your boundaries, its uncomfortable. Its not comfortable to work out, or learn a new sport. Its not comfortable to push yourself academically, to wrap your mind around new topics and concepts. Setting yourself apart requires a commitment to growth. So Ive always purposely put myself in uncomfortable situations, which forced me to adapt and learn. There are two main ways that I stepped out of my comfort zone: Firstly, when I graduated from college I decided I was going to be a motivational speaker. I found a company that sent me to talk to high school students. This was a challenge for me because I wasnt very popular back in the day, especially with girls. Flash-forward to my career as a motivational speaker, where I was speaking to a gym of hundreds high school students on a daily basis. It was terrifying. One day I spoke at an all-girls school and realized that they were all clapping for me. Id never seen one girl cheer for me, let alone 600. It was incredible. Not long after, I made connections with people in various corporate positions, and moved into doing seminars on sales and business. I was in my early 20s and Id never had a job in my life, but I was telling these people how to get better at marketing and negotiations. My strategy was simply reading motivational books and regurgitating their lessons. Giving these speeches was extremely uncomfortable at rst, but after a while it became natural. The second challenge I took on was learning hypnosis. After $199 and a weekend class, I started telling people I was a certied hypnotist. I had the piece of paper that said so, but I had no idea what I was doing. Eventually, somebody asked me to host a show at their school, and I agreed. I walked on stage in front of 400 people for a large fraternity event, swallowed the lump in my throat, and started the show. And it went terribly. Just awfully. It was one of the most uncomfortable moments of my life. But I went on to do thirty more shows that year, until I felt condent with my act. The years I spent on stage and the self-assurance that it built, lead to the skills I needed to raise $4 million for Docstoc. You might not always know how these uncomfortable situations will help you down the road, but I promise you they will.

Forget 80/20, Its 99/1

Weve all heard the Pareto Principle: 80 percent of results come from 20 percent of what you do. Ill agree that this is true once youre successful; when youre running a large organization or company, 80 percent of the effects come from 20 percent of the work. But when youre starting an entrepreneurial journey and trying to create something that doesnt exist yet, 99 percent of your results come from 1 thing that you do. When youre kicking off a business, you need to focus on one obsession. When I was in law school, there were plenty of things to distract me, but all of my effort went into launching my product. Once I launched it, my goal was to increase trafc. When we had 10 million people a month coming to the website, I focused on prot. When I look back on the ve year history of Docstoc, I see only four major decisions I made that led to 99 percent of our success. In the light of those singular obsessions, everything else went by the wayside. Remember, when youre starting out you shouldnt focus on many things or 20 percent but one thing that is going to lead to success.

Most people have no idea of the giant capacity we can immediately command when we focus all of our resources on mastering a single area of our lives.

- Tony Robbins

Become a Critical Optimist

Fitzgeralds quote is a great one for influential politicians and CEOs, because it captures a key ability for exceptional leaders. The most successful people are simultaneously the most optimistic and the most critical. Lets use Walt Disney as an example. Imagine being an investor in the 1940s and hearing his pitch to create a land of puppet animals: There would be rides and people in animal costumes, and it would be the most popular attraction in the world. Youd think he was crazy. And many people did. In spite of this, Disney remained optimistic about the future of his vision. He was positive he could see things that nobody else could see. But if you read his biography and the words of those who surrounded him, youll also learn that he was very hard on himself. He was obsessed with improving, and was constantly critical of his own work. This is what great people do to break away from the group, they develop a binary ability to be aware of both their strengths and weaknesses. It sounds easy, but its surprisingly difficult to focus on both. Success requires the drive to improve, while also believing in your ability to achieve anything.

The test of intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

Kaizens: Lesson: Improve Every Day

Kaizen pioneered a management technique in Japan that revolutionized car manufacturing. It was based on the notion of continuous improvement. His approach became very popular in the late 80s and early 90s, and the United States began to implement it as well. Its simple, but potent: push yourself to be better, every single day. One of my favorite books is called, Talent Is Overrated by Geoff Colvin. He talks about gures throughout history who we believe to be the most gifted among us, like Mozart, Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods. We assume that these people were born with incredible gifts of athleticism or genius, which separate them from the rest of us. The research shows, however, that in many ways they are no different than their counterparts. What separates them is not their talent, but a systematic, disciplined approach to practice that pushes them beyond their boundaries. Jerry Rice was not the greatest wide receiver because he was more physically gifted than other players, but because he had an insane practice regimen. Every day, every week and every year, he pushed himself to do things that he couldnt before. Mozart wasnt simply a brilliant child. His father was an accomplished pianist and composer, and an extremely disciplined teacher. By the age of 3, Mozart had already practiced for more hours than children ve times his age, under such a rigorous schedule that it created what the world saw as a genius. This label doesnt give justice to his discipline. Many of us practice and do things that were already good at, and we get incrementally better it. Most of us dont push ourselves in completely new ways. This is the key to becoming a richer, more talented individual.

Ive failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.

- Michael Jordan

The Means Justify the End

Everyone is familiar with The ends justify the means. It sounds like the slogan of a successful person, because it involves doing whatever it takes to achieve a desired result. But I like to flip this maxim and live by its opposite: The means will justify the end. This adage is about doing things properly and really savoring the process. Do not dwell in the talks about flow in his book Delivering Happiness. He discusses passion and flow being one of the key components of being truly happy. Flow is when youre working on something with such deep concentration that you lose track of time. What activities do you get lost in? Reading? Working out? Writing? Brainstorming ideas? These moments are what the entrepreneurs journey is all about. They are what bring successful people fulfillment. My recommendation for those of you aiming to break away from the pack, is not to focus on the end, but the means. Find your flow, and the ends will materialize beautifully.

past, do not dream of the future, concentrate on the present moment.

The best entrepreneurs do this by working in flow. Tony Hsieh, who is the CEO of Zappos,

- Buddha

Self Improvement in Only 2 Questions

I worked as a motivator for years, and I decided that you could take all of the selfimprovement books, ideologies and seminars in the world, and boil them down to two questions. The rst was asked of me by my best friend when I was struggling to make a decision: What are you pretending not to know? Polonius is often quoted for saying to thine own self be true in Hamlet. Although Polonius wasnt the most honest character, those six words have resonated with people for centuries because we all have difculty being honest with ourselves. You cannot improve yourself until you confront the things youre avoiding. Maybe youre not working on what you really should, or theres an incongruity between the person you are and the person others see. Confronting the things you know but are pretending not to, this is the rst step to nding a deeper level of fulllment. The second question follows the rst: Why arent you doing the things that you know you should be doing? You know what to do. You know you should be eating well, working hard, helping others and improving your own life. Life isnt about guring out what to do, but guring out why you dont do the things you know you should be doing.

To thine own self be true.

Shakespeare

Dont Be an Extra in Your Own Movie

The Teddy Roosevelt quote on the right comes from his famous Citizenship in a Republic speech. In the speech he explains why a critic doesnt matter but the man hes watching does. The man in the arena is the one who, even if he fails, does so triumphantly by daring to do something great. If he succeeds, he knows a victory that no one else will know. It helps to think of life as a movie. Just like a movie, your life will end. No matter what you believe happens afterwards, this life is one complete work, with a beginning, middle and end. Really imagine this for a moment. Are you an extra in your movie? Did you just happen to be there while your story unfolded? Are the main characters other people around you? Too many of us are extras in our own film, and dont realize that we can shape it into anything we want it to be. In order to break out the pack, you need to step out of the background. Successful people take control of their own story, and become the director of their lifes work. Be the star, and make sure you get the glory when things go well. If you see life this way, you can shape your destiny to be anything that you want it to be.

Its not the critic who counts...The credit belong to the man in the arena.

Theodore Roosevelt

Change does not roll in on the wheel of inevitability, but comes through struggle.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

Changing the Pack

I want to end with a story about changing what it means to be normal. Theres an island in Japan called Koshima thats inhabited by monkeys, and surrounded by several other islands populated by monkeys as well. In 1952, scientists were running an experiment that involved dropping sweet potatoes onto Koshima. The monkeys loved these new and plentiful treats that fell from the sky. However, the potatoes were dropped in the sand, so they had a granulated texture and unpleasant taste. One day, a very smart money walked over to the ocean and bathed her sweet potato, and realized that it got rid of the bitter taste. Slowly but surely, some of the other monkeys followed suit. The older monkeys, however, were all set on their ways and didnt seem interested in changing. One day, when the hundredth monkey (they dont know if it was the 100th for sure, but for the purposes of the story well pick a number) washed his sweet potato, and the trend hit a sudden tipping point. Inexplicably, after this hundredth monkey started washing his sweet potato, every single other monkey on the island ran to the water and followed suit. And all of the monkeys on Koshima washed their potatoes from then on. Scientists wondered, what was it about that particular number of monkeys that caused a breaking point? And that wasnt the really surprising part. On an island a couple of miles away, separated by a large body of water, all the monkeys suddenly started washing their sweet potatoes in the water as well. When an idea or a movement becomes prevalent enough, it becomes part of our collective consciousness. This sudden shift determines the way we do everything. Just look at politics today. For the last 50 to 100 years, there havent been major pushes for democracy in the Middle East. All of a sudden, in a period of a year, countries throughout the Middle East that dont interact much or have significant trade relations are all simultaneously fighting for representative governments. Breaking out of the pack involves more than manifesting the things you want. Look at the larger picture: how to make an institution, a country, or the world a better place. In order to do this, you wont only need to move yourself, youll need to move the pack. That is a difficult goal, but an exceptional one. Take some time to really think about how you could be that hundredth monkey. What deed, or way of thinking or representing yourself, can move others and create a better collective consciousness. What steps can you take, not only to affect your own life, but thousands or millions of people around you? Thats my goal in life. None of these lessons are new. In fact, you may have heard them many times before. But as I discovered, sometimes it take five, ten or one hundred times to hear something until it really hits you. Remember that you are the main character, so dont make it a boring movie. Never stop being curious, being motivated, being uncomfortable. And dont forget to enjoy the ride.