Last week I saw a young music star belting it out on stage in front of thousands of screaming fans. His confidence and comfort in the spotlight amazed me. It’s tempting to say “He was born different than me, that’s why he can do that and I never could.”. That might be comforting, but it’s not true.

Not long ago in New York City I visited a small music venue. I watched each singer take the stage for a set, and they were good. I was impressed but how much practice they already had, and how much more practice they would get before ever singing on a big stage. Hundreds of gigs, thousands of hours, that’s the back story.

Every mastered skill, everything that looks like a “gift” has the same back story.

Back to last week and the young star. I looked him up on Wikipedia during the performance. He started performing when he was 4 years old.

It’s not inborn, it’s practice.

I recently learned the story of a new friend who started and grew a new division in an established company. He made it a success in spite of challenging circumstances, less-than-supportive bosses, and less-than-plentiful resources. The essential ingredient in the mix wasn’t funding, a trail already blazed, or any external factor.

It was him. He was the essential ingredient.

He might not take credit, but I’m convinced his ingenuity, leadership, salesmanship, and especially perseverance made it work. With the character and ability that he had, almost any external challenge could be overcome. Without his character and ability, a small challenge would have been enough to derail the whole thing.

As I look back, this is true of me and my story. I didn’t start with any funding, a privileged family tree, or a “winning idea” handed to me. I didn’t start with anything except the character and ability that are in me. And that was enough.

This is true of you and your story too. It’s what’s in you, not any external factor, that will make the biggest difference.

I’d bet on a leader with proven character and ability any day. I’d never bet on a well-funded “sure thing” that lacked that kind of leader.

This is not about going it alone without a team or without a coach. It’s about the power of character to shape outcomes in ways that make external factors look weak.

When a customer says “We’ll place this big order, if you can rush it.”, sales usually feels pretty enthusiastic, because that means extra commission, and company growth.

When sales calls production to share the good news, production is not so enthusiastic. For production that means extra effort, and changes in plans.

My take on this classic tension: The entire company must be unified around giving customers what they want, subject to two limits.

1) Say no when saying yes to one customer will hurt another customer. Don’t say you’ll rush Tom’s order if it will make Jim’s order late.

2) Say no when saying yes will give away profit inappropriately. Don’t give a customer half price just to get the order.

Look for a way around those limits even if it takes extra effort or creative planning. When it’s possible and profitable for production to do what customer Tom wants and what customer Jim wants, no limit has been reached. Say yes.

Sales must advocate courageously for the needs of the customer, and at the same time show an attitude of respect for the perspective production brings to the table.

It’s our job to inconvenience ourselves to serve our customers well. Anyone who has a pattern of saying no to avoid extra effort doesn’t fit a culture of customer service and must change or exit.

In my companies we make plans for each year’s growth, but honestly, most of the growth comes from new ideas we didn’t foresee in our planning.

We don’t have a bank of awesome but unused ideas to copy/paste into the annual plan. When we come up with a great idea, we try it right away. That means at any given time we’re out of great ideas, but not for long.

By being curious and paying attention, by building on top of the last improvement, by listening to our customers, we always come up with another improvement idea.

If you don’t have a list of “10 things that will change the game this year”, that’s probably ok. Wade on into what you’ve lined up so far, and keep your eyes open all the time for insight, inspiration, and opportunities to improve. It’s amazing how a year of continuous improvement adds up to a big leap forward.

This cartoon is so me.

So much of what we fear can’t really hurt us.