# 10: From Dishwasher to Millionaire — Writing Biographies, Learning about Entrepreneurs
Story behind the Passage
Today, I am violating a rule — actually, two of them. Since I was not too strict about defining my own rules when I started blogging more than a week ago, it is no drama. The first ‘unwritten’ rule is that I am writing about startup and entrepreneurship books. Well, in the case of Samu Haber, whose book the blurb above describes, that is only partly true. The Wikipedia entry says that he is an entpreneur but most people probably know him as a singer. This takes me to the second rule I violated. The reason why I had to look up details about his life on the web and why I am only giving you a blurb and not a real passage from his book is because I have not read it! Is this still bearable for you, dear reader?
Let mey explain why I have decided to write about this book despite all these ‘violations.’ The general reason behind is that whenever I feel I have to write about something NOW, I have to do it right away — if it is at all possible timewise. If I postpone it, I can still write about later, but the words do not flow that easily anymore. So, in this case, I could have waited, ordered the book, read it, and then — what? Maybe I would not even feel like writing about it anymore. Or, even more likely, I would have too many thoughts about it and therefore lose my original motivation. How did I learn about this book if I have not read it?
I watched a news show during lunch today (yes, I belong to this TV generation… Does that not explain a lot about how I have turned out?!). There was an interview with Samu Haber. Up to that minute, I had no idea who he was. But when they started talking about his autobiography, I started paying more attention. You all know how it works: People write a book, they market it, and all of a sudden people think they are famous. What I am going to discuss today is exactly this logic based on what I learned about the connection between success and biography writing. All this has a lot to do with how I ended up developing a method that helps startups be more successful without writing a book. Does that sound strange? Well, let me explain…
My Learnings
“Teetering on the edge of the abyss, risking everything, and reaching multi-national stardom.” Everything I am going to share in the passages that follow is going to be based on a very limited experience as a ghostwriter and biographer. I did four books with entrepreneurs in 1,5 years and three of them have not been published so far. The funny and certainly confusing thing is: The reason why I quit doing this is exactly the reason why books create value. The minute when I learned why clients wanted a book and what types of clients there were, I decided to not exclusively focus on this anymore and move on to teaching the real value behind the book.
This value is related to the dramatic arc reflected in the sentence above. In short, it is nothing but the familiar struggle of a hero who rises from dishwasher to millionaire, thereby experiencing several challenges. If you pause and think for a moment — that in and of itself is nothing special about celebrities. All lives are like this. Our lives are rollercoasters. The difference is just that some look a little more scary than others with all these upside-down loops and steep falls. But it also depends on how closely you look to determine what scary means.
So, the story itself is not even the point, that is what I am saying. But the fact that the story is the one of someone who has made it to the top, to “multi-national stardom,” turns it into a special one. This makes the person visible and gives him/her the legitimation to actually share the story. Why? The book market itself answers this. The celebrity status of the author is decisive for the acceptance of the book on the part of the publishers. And they think in terms of market size. Do you want to know what is at the top in Germany when it comes to genres? Self-help guides (see below). They make you learn how to… do whatever you want to do — stop smoking, lose weight, make a fortune. Now think of why you read a biography like this one? Yes, you also want to learn how to become or do whatever the life story can teach you.
In short, one might easily add up the first and the third category of the graph. If biographies are also about learning certain skills, you can just as well put them in the same category as self-help books. I would even go beyond all this and say that all books are biographies of some sort. This is what the 19th- century writer and public intellectual Ralph Waldo Emerson said about this:
“There is properly no history; only biography.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
To pull these different thoughts on this one sentence from the Amazon blurb together: What I am saying is that every person could theoretically write a biography and a good storyteller can tell this tale in a way that it equals the dramatic arc that is described above. Still, not everybody decides to write one. This is where it gets interesting.
“His passion for music has been the constant that kept him sane throughout.” This is the key sentence in the passage — at least for me. The “constant” is what you might call a red thread, like a winding and sometimes steep path in a rough and wide landscape. This is exactly what makes a book a piece of art that people actually enjoy reading. They can cling to something and they know that it leads them somewhere. Depending on the genre, it can lead you to finding a murderer (mystery), to a romantic love affair (romance), or even to death (biography). The tricky thing is that this constant only reveals itself retrospectively. I cannot resist quoting Steve Jobs at this point.
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.” — Steve Jobs
The tricky thing is that somebody has to be that “you” whom Jobs is talking about. And in the case of biography writing, there are different options. If you are writing an auto-biography, YOU have to be the person who figures out the thread. If you want it to look like you are the author but you cannot write it, you get the help of a ghostwriter. The third option is that of a biography written by a professional author about a person that might still be alive or dead already. Overall, in the latter two cases, the person writing the life story is different from the person who has lived this life. This is where it gets even more interesting. And you will see what this has to do with business, success, and assessing clients.
Based on my learnings so far, the reason why people do not write their own biography or some other book about their business is not that they cannot write. I mean, we are not talking about dyslexia here but what most people will tell you who hire a professional ghostwriter or biographer is: “I do not have any talent for writing… I hate writing… I have no time at all… I have never done this before, it will take me ages…” These are all understandable reasons, no doubt. And most of them are probably “true.” There is one reason, however, which I figured out in the course of my book writing projects with clients, that is missing from the list because clients hardly ever mention it: THEY HAVE NOT FIGURED OUT THEIR OWN STORY. In other words: The “constant,” this thread, is missing.
When I study the story of a company or a person, that thread is essential. It is the key to understanding the entire story; like the missing piece of a puzzle. For me personally — and that is just me, I have no idea about other writers or biographers — that piece is what allows me to write the story in the first place. Before, I do not start. Usually, this is a moment when I am two thirds into the research process. During this time, I am like a dog. I keep sniffing, I feel restless. I know, I need to learn more, read more, ask more questions. But then, all of a sudden, this heureka moment happens when everything makes sense. This is what I mean by “constant.”
The reason why I am describing this is because, from what I have seen so far, many people never get there. They never understand their story as a whole. And I am not judging anybody for doing this or not. But it has impact on their storytelling and –writing ability and practice. It determines not only how their story might be told — by them or others. It determines whether they want to write a book in the first place and what they want to achieve with it. Let us boil it down to the group of people that I work with: entrepreneurs. According to my reflection, there are roughly three groups of them when it comes to books.
I. Not (very) successful: They want to write a book in order to become (more) successful but they cannot write it themselves — They sell less than they could. They have not figured out their story, they cannot tell it authentically.
II. Successful: They do not want to write a book because they are successful and thus busy— They know how to tell their story, they sell a lot, they see no purpose in writing and if they do, many of them can do it themselves.
III. Highly successful (usually older): They have figured out their story a long time ago which is why they do not think or talk about it anymore— They sometimes end up writing a book (with or without a ghost) but the idea for doing so often comes from others, e.g., journalists, publishing houses.
Understanding this logic made all the difference to me. Actually, group I would be very promising candidates as book clients, right? After all, most people are not as successful as the very top performers and they need someone to help them get there. By the way, this is exactly why the market of ghostwriters is booming these days as there seems to be a stark increase in “medium-successful” people publishing a book. For me, however, this was not desirable anymore. For me, entrepreneurship truly is about value creation. And I am convinced that the knowledge of an entrepreneur in a book is valuable but only if that entrepreneur first becomes very successful! And this is where I figured out what I had really helped the people with when writing books with them, witout even realizing it at first: I had helped them figure out their story or, at least, they had hoped I would help them with this. Why is this important?
“… this exclusive autobiography is Samu’s true story.” If you have read any of my previous posts, the factual truth of stories is not that important when it comes to their impact — for those telling them and the ones reading them. Let us assume, however, that the story Samu in this case presented is true according to his standards. His answer in the TV interview at least suggested this. He said something like (I am paraphrasing from memory here):
“Writing a biography is a very big decision. You make everything public — the ups and the downs. And if you decide to write it, this is the only way of doing it. You have to tell the entire story.”
Even though Samu is only 44 years old at this point, for me, this means one thing: He has figured out a great deal of his story. Sure, you can say this is a mere assumption and all this is about marketing only. Yes, absolutely, I do not know the guy. But based on what I have learned from others — and about my own story and the story writing for others — this urge, even the ability to tell and/or write down your story, only kicks in when you are done with much of the processing and reflecting and doubting, i.e., you have figured out the “constant” in your life. In his case, that constant is said to be music. If you transfer it to the life of a company or individual entrepreneurs, you can replace the word constant with value proposition or USP. In sum, it means: your strengths. This is where my tale about biography writing and business fully unfolds and it explains why I am now very much focusing on learning from stories as opposed to (just) writing them.
Figuring out your definite strengths forces you to also see and accept the weaknesses. That is what “truth” is all about. This clarity allows you to connect the dots, to use Jobs’ words. According to my mini theory above, this thread allows you to tell (or even write) your story without much difficulty. After all, why would you need anybody else to do it? My thesis, again, is not that you do not know how to write or use the proper words. My thesis is that you do not truly want to do so due to a lack of courage to face your true story. But only this process of facing it, of fully getting it, brings clarity and the natural flow of storytelling that you need to get the message across. Wait a minute — is a “true” (as truly as our memory can cheat us) story a good story?
Yes, I strongly believe so. Truth in the sense of being honest to yourself creates authenticity. Authenticity, according to my definition, is nothing a person can really judge or even notice about him-/herself. All people that claim this, usually lack it, at least to a certain extent. But others feel when a person has given up all bullshitting and “self-optimized” storytelling. Telling one’s story in this authentic manner does not even take too many words. It can be simple because you can focus on what is important because you have decided that it has become part of you. And this sells — more than any fabricated tale. Hence, I decided to support people, especially entreprenurs, to get to this point quicker instead of wasting time with creative storytelling assistance.
Again, this does not mean that everyone who has reached that point does not need any people who help with writing or speaking. But it is a completely different place that these people are in. And for those who write or otherwise assist with storytelling, it is a different kind of value they create. After all, this is the most important thing as an entrepreneur: “expectations management” as I once learned. Both customer and service provider need to be clear about the value that should come out of a project. For me, the real value of writing is not writing as such. That is only my value and my pleasure. But the value that I can help create with this activity of writing is learning. That requires two things: 1) people who truly want to learn — about themselves and their company. 2) a clear communication about these expectations on both sides.
You see, writing biographies teaches me a lot about people. Whether they are dishwashers or millionaires — all life stories deserve to be told and read. But the book does not “create” the story — the story is there in the first place. Truly seeing it might take time and assistance — the telling then becomes the easiest thing in the world.
Reflection Questions
1) Do you read (auto-)biographies? Which “value” do you associate with this genre?
2) “From dishwasher to millionaire” is a saying that is characteristic of the U.S. culture of entrepreneurship. Do you believe in this? Does this phrase exist in your culture?
3) If you were to write a biography now, what would be the title?
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