The secret to success...

... is secret for a reason

Today’s exercise is one of my favorites. I don’t remember where I first heard it, but it’s a great way to change your perspective:

An ambulance and a normal car collide with fatal repercussions. All 5 people in the two cars die on impact (2 people in the ambulance and 3 in the normal car). However, a 6th person dies because of the impact. What happened?

As usual, one possible answer at the end. There’s a lot of potential answers to this one. Try to skip past the obvious ones like “the cars hit a pedestrian” or “someone was pregnant”.

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Tell me why

(Ain’t nothing but a heartache)

Why would someone who’s figured out “the secret to success” - which often involves knowing something other people don’t - simply give it out as free advice on the internet?

Why would they package it in a simple, 20 hour course that you can get now for just $1499?

Why do the majority of truly successful people rarely give out public presentations or if they do, they’re mostly motivational rather than informational?

Because if you’d truly know something valuable that most people don’t, you wouldn’t just throw it out there. You’d keep it a secret.

During the California Gold Rush, you wouldn’t broadcast to the world a good spot that you knew.

Because you put in the time and effort (and had a bit of luck) to find that unique spot. And you know the resource is limited.

More often than not, people who have a secret about being successful keep it secret.

Because times change and the secret that you know today might be worthless in a few years. So you’d want to speculate it for as long as you can.

It’s why when it comes to advertising/marketing festivals, you’ll rarely see a campaign (or the real metrics) that truly skyrocketed a business.

Because why would that company want to show their competition a real blueprint for success?

Funny enough, it seems that one secret to being successful is making other people believe you can make them successful.

Or is it?

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Potential answer: The ambulance was carrying a refrigerated donor heart needed for an urgent surgery. Because of the accident, it didn’t make it on time/got damaged.