Yesterday, the Golden Globes happened and as usual, the Hollywood types decided to use their night of congratulating each other to lecture the rest of the world on morality and “celebrisplain” politics to their simple-minded audience.
Gone are the days when someone heard their name called, stood up in their finest clothes, thanked their manager, their co-stars, their director and their parents and just left the stage with an air of real humility and dignity. Now, they use their “platform” for trite activism and have confused the podium for a pulpit.
As a rule, I don’t take moral guidance or judgement from people who make obscene amounts of money playing pretend for a living. Their industry is corrupt and debauched as we’ve seen and many of the people wearing black dresses were complicit or intentionally ignorant to what was happening purely for personal gain.
They are hypocrites of the highest order.
The big news story was Oprah. Good for her, she’s had an exceptional career and her contribution to the field of entertainment is largely unquestioned despite the dubious nature of her involvement with both Dr Phil and Dr Oz who are charlatans that she has profited off immensely.
I have to say, the idea of Oprah running for President is ridiculous.
Let me correct that, like most celebrities of her stature, she would have a monstrous ego and be surrounded by sycophants who’d tell her that she’d be the best President ever in the history of Presidenting.
You’ll note, I never mentioned the word “winning”.
I think she could win. Easily in fact.
Most voters are simpletons and pick the name they recognize the most.
However, I think Oprah would struggle as President and I also think she’s probably smart enough to realize that it wouldn’t work for her.
Being President is hard. Really hard.
You need to be able to look down the barrel of a camera and tell an outright lie. I’m not talking about a small fib or a little white lie, I’m talking about barefaced lying. And sometimes, those lies are for no other reason than to serve your own political best interest.
How would Oprah handle that aspect of the job? That doesn’t align at all with her very well crafted persona. I’d go as far to say that she’s too honourable for the job of President.
She would be responsible for ordering drone strikes on poor people halfway around the world in an effort to not spill any “valuable” American blood, but to still kill the “baddies”. In some cases, those drone strikes will kill innocent people.
Worse than that, she might have to order hundreds of thousands of Americans into battle to fight a war that she may not even fully understand or agree with the rationale of. Thousands of Americans coming home in body bags.
How would she handle international politics which often has nothing to do with “the best outcome” but is a dance between countries trying to actively exploit each others’ weaknesses for nothing other than political point scoring?
Trump is a sociopath, I don’t think the role would phase him. Put his competence to do the job aside, that’s subjective, I think everyone agrees that he’d have no trouble with any of the above and in fact, would probably derive pleasure from it.
In simple terms, I don’t think Oprah could handle the job personally or emotionally – she’s too decent of a human being. I don’t think she’d be willing to step THAT FAR outside of her comfort zone to do the job properly.
Which leads us around to small, online business owners…
Most people who struggle and fail in building and running their online business, in my experience, have problems stepping outside of their comfort zones and doing the stuff that’s hard for them.
This manifests itself in two ways:
1) They simply ignore the parts of the gig they dislike and consciously decide that those things aren’t “that” important
2) They outsource the stuff they don’t like and then promptly ignore it
We’re all guilty of those things on some level. I’ve talked extensively about how I’ve ignored growing my email list because I had a blinkered view and let myself down. Focusing on list building isn’t “fun” and so I rationalized it as “not that important” or that I’d get around to it at another stage.
Other people don’t like “tech” and just outsource everything, but then their website falls apart or is never delivered and they wonder why they keep failing at that aspect of their business.
You need to go into things with your eyes wide open and accept responsibility for the outcomes no matter what. Everything is your fault.
Oprah wants to be President? No problem, it’s not all giving poor people healthcare, it’s also dropping bombs on towns in Yemen and assassinating villagers in the Pashtun region of Pakistan without telling the Pakistani government. You don’t get to give debt relief for student loans without raising taxes somewhere to pay for it.
Same in your business.
You don’t get to be successful by just doing the fun stuff. It’s not all webinars and counting your PayPal sales figures. You have to set up robust accounting systems, monitor and make sure they work and figure out how the membership plugin works with WordPress and your shopping cart. And while you may not DO those things yourself, you need to oversee them and make sure they bloody well work or you’ll pay the price down the line.
Business is hard. It’s uncomfortable.
And from that, when you do it well, can come a hugely rewarding experience.
But it won’t be easy, you’ll have to earn it.