Pixar broke new technological ground when they released the first Toy Story movie. Moviegoers were amazed not only by the computerized animation used in the movie, but were also enchanted by the unique story to go along with it. After raking in $360 million in revenue, they could have easily sat back and took it easy on their next go around. Instead, they created A Bug’s Life, which brought in about $1.5 million more in revenues than Toy Story did.
26 Academy Awards, 7 Golden Globes, and 3 Grammy’s later, Pixar hasn’t taken a single movie “off” and continues to wow viewers of all ages.
In the book Liar’s Poker, Michael Lewis runs into a problem when one of his colleagues goes out of his way to take credit for a new type of bond that Michael Lewis came up with that ends up making the company a great deal of money. He ends up getting all of the praise at the time, while Lewis has to sit back and wonder how all of this happened. The problem was that the next time the company was in a pinch, they looked to the deceitful colleague and he didn’t have any bright ideas–Lewis did.
You can fake your way to success once, but it’s pretty tough to replicate.
So, you basically have two options…
Wait around until you get lucky and succeed, and then ride that wave of success as long as it will take you.
Or, bust your tail over and over again to prove that your success isn’t a fluke–it was a result of your hard effort and desire to succeed.
The choice is yours…what’s it going to be?
