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Suneel Gupta on being backable: “The opposite of success is not failure. It’s boredom.”
There are some people you just want to bet on. There are founders you believe in. Writers who can get you to publish their books. Politicians who inspire others with their ideas.
This “it-factor” is an important quality for success. And yet, it can be hard to distill. It’s not charisma, exactly. It’s not excellence, entirely. It’s something more. Suneel Gupta has been studying this “it-factor,” and he’s just published a new book on the subject. It’s called Backable: the surprising truth behind what makes people take a chance on you.
Suneel’s got a lot of first-hand experience. He has helped build tech businesses. He has started and sold a company, Rise. He has run for Congress. And in the process, he has learned a lot about what inspires people to get behind a person and an idea.
Jessi has asked him to share his formula with us.
You can download the episode to hear about it, or listen to it below. Then, please, share your own thoughts and tag them #HelloMonday so we can jump into the conversation.
Here are some highlights….
On sharing your vision: “You want to walk into the room and share a high level vision and share what it could be. But not exactly how it has to be. The solution is something that you can come up with together. Those tend to be these backable moments when people come together and you start to do what I call flipping outsiders into insiders.”
On what it means to be backable: “As human beings, don’t we want to know that we made a difference? Don’t we want to know that we matter? That’s I think really at the core of what it means to be backable.”
On failing: “My mantra now is that the opposite of success is not failure. It’s boredom.”
On conviction: “Backable people take the time to convince themselves before they go out and try to convince other people.”
On improvement: “Most backable people don’t start out by being backable. They learn how to do that along the way.”
Office Hours: Taking your questions
What do you think it means to be backable? How can you become more backable? Suneel Gupta will be joining us this week on Office Hours. We’re going to go live from the LinkedIn News Page. So, follow the page and join us on Wed afternoon at 3pm EST to catch up on the big themes from this week’s episode, and discuss topics for future shows!(Hee
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