(originally published 8/2/2016 on my personal LinkedIn page)

A few years ago, my wife introduced me to a band named The Lumineers.  They were already a pretty big deal at the time, but had not yet gotten big enough to play their eventual performance on Saturday Night Live.  It was an exciting time to get to know the act, especially for people who had watched them hone their skills in the tiniest venues that the city of Denver had to offer.

For several years Denver was our adopted home, and one thing that it never lacked was live music.  While we would occasionally pay the price for shows at the iconic Red Rocks Amphitheater, free performances were always available.  Some of our favorites took place in the streets.  Sometimes a small band would be set up in the corner of a coffee shop or local bar, playing their tunes for a crowd that could fit in a mid-sized sedan.

In an interview that I saw recently with The Lumineers, they talked about their days playing in these tiny places, where often times the “audience” members were people who would rather have enjoyed their cocktail, coffee, or conversation than the live music.  It was exactly this challenge that led the group to incorporate stomping their feet, clapping their hands and screaming “HEY!” into their songs.  Their song “Ho Hey” was even the number one rock song on the Billboard charts for 18 weeks.  They had to disrupt the audience, in order to get them to even pay attention to the music at all!

Over the same period that the Lumineers were stomping their feet in local bars, at least once a year musical performers were trying to be heard in a much larger venue.  Denver’s Mile High Stadium (where the NFL Broncos play) was one location that hosted the first round of tryouts for the American Idol reality show.  They needed space like this because easily ten thousand performers from all over the region could come to wait in line and hope that they could sing well enough to be among the tiny percentile of contestants to go to Hollywood.

Regional auditions took place like this in cities all over the United States every year.  Each of them could involve over 10,000 hopeful participants.  In the end only one would win, and maybe a couple more would enjoy a little bit of fame (and only a fraction of winners ever made the SNL stage).

While I don’t begrudge anyone their chance at stardom or their pursuit of “the impossible dream”, I worry about how many people don’t truly understand their statistical improbability of being one of the lucky few.  I wonder how many people want to be the famous performer but would never stomp their feet in just one coffee shop in order to get there. 

All too often, I hear people begin to describe their dream future with the words “When I hit the lottery…” when there are countless others ways (with much better odds) that a person can fund the future they have always envisioned.  Habits like saving and investing are the foot stomps and “Ho Heys” of working every day towards eventual success.  Unless you happen to be standing exactly where fortune’s lightning bolt strikes, you should understand that the path to your best future starts with repeatedly performing the acts that are not rewarded with immediate glory.  That part comes later.

Hope is not a plan and luck is not a strategy.  After you have accepted those hard truths, you are one giant step closer to developing a real plan, and a true strategy.  Once those are in place, it’s just a matter of doing what so many seem unwilling to do.  Show up every night and start stomping your feet!