The Only Rule of Success

I promise that I will state plainly for you – in ten short words – the singular Rule of Success before you have finished reading this Monday Morning Memo.Stay quiet and stay close. We are wandering into a dangerous area. To see the glittering truth of the Rule of Success, we must quietly sneak up on it.The North Star never moves because it hovers directly above the axis of the earth. If you draw a line from the South Pole to the North Pole and then extend that line 323 light years into space, it will touch the North Star.Your life’s goal is your guiding light, your North Star. This is why you are forever traveling northward as you pursue your dream.But there is a limit to north. That limit is called the North Pole.When you go beyond that limit, you are now headed in the opposite direction.This is the bitter truth that has been tasted by every person who has achieved their life’s goal:“You work your whole life to reach the summit. And when you get there, all the roads lead down.”Like every rule, North and South are finite and achievable.Like every principle, East and West are infinite and unachievable.You can travel east forever and never reach the end of “east.”“The opposite of a correct statement is an incorrect statement. But the opposite of a profound truth is often another profound truth.”Without intending to do so, Niels Bohr summarized in those two sentences the fundamental difference between a rule and a principle. The first sentence describes every rule. The second sentence describes every principle.The person who turns a principle into a rule is a fool.I call that person a fool only because their mind is not big enough to hold in stasis the contradictory tension that is at the heart of every profound truth.Did it ever occur to you that helping people get what they want is the foundational principle behind every business on earth?Do you want to be successful?This the only Rule of Success:“Find out what people want, then give it to them.”Jesus taught us the eternal principle behind the Rule of Success when he said,“Love your neighbor as yourself.”Remove “Love” from that principle, and you will have a similar principle that says,“It is always good to help people get what they want.”But here is the “opposite truth” of that principle:“It is always bad to help people get what they want when it would require injuring an innocent person.”In other words, removing “love” wasn’t such a great idea.People who worship at the altar of Ayn Rand always try to convince me that it is okay to damage naive, gullible, innocent people “because the only person that really matters is you, and you are not responsible for making other people happy. You are only responsible for making yourself happy.”Interestingly, that is exactly what Jeffrey Epstein believed.He died in prison for his belief, and his name has become a curse word.Bernie Madoff was only pretending to help people get what they wanted. He was perceived as “successful” for as long as he was able to sustain his con.Bernie likewise died in prison.Sam Bankman-Fried was a young fool who pretended to be helping people while he was robbing them blind.The courts took away the 11 billion dollars he stole. Then they locked him in a room the size of a walk-in closet where he will spend the next 25 years of his life.Removing love is never a good idea.– Roy H. Williams