When Phenomenal Skill Meets Phenomenal Will

What's going on my friends welcome to the Ryan Lee podcast where we love to keep these short and sweet for you just want to give you a nugget of inspiration and value to you Lee and today is no exception. Today's episode is entitled WinFanomenalSkill meets PhenomenalWill. Yeah yeah yeah winFanomenalSkill meets PhenomenalWill. My friends there are two kinds of greatness in this world. She got skill and you got will. Yeah PhenomenalSkill is the stuff you can measure. You know it's the quarterback who can throw a six-yard pass with accuracy. It's the surgeon who can make a precise cut that saves a life. Now it's the chef who can turn a few ingredients into a masterpiece. It's the basketball player who can do a 360 dunk like skill is trackable. I would argue skill is trainable. It's repeatable. You can usually point to where it came from. It was hours of practice. It was thousands of reps. It was long nights. It was early mornings. It's what people like Malcolm Gladwell have made famous as the 10,000 hour rule. It's the idea that if you put in enough time you can develop PhenomenalSkill and we admire that because we can see it. We can watch the highlight reel. We can read the resume. We can see the numbers. We can look at the stats but Phenomenal will. Well now that's a different story. Phenomenal will is a completely different story because you can't track that with a stopwatch or recorded on film. Will is invisible until life gets hard. It's the part of you that decides to stand back up after you've been knocked out. It's the coworker. You've seen this before. That just lost a loved one but still shows up to the office with a smile. It's the parent who's exhausted from working two jobs but somehow someway makes it to their kids game. It's the entrepreneur who's relentless. Who's heard no 50 times but keeps pitching their idea like it's the first time. Yeah that's what you start seeing as Phenomenal will. I think skill is what makes you capable. Phenomenal will is what makes you unstoppable. And the research backs this up. Angela Duckworth from the University of Pennsylvania. She calls it grip rights about it in her book. She defines it as this the combination of passion and perseverance toward a long-term goal. In fact in her studies grit consistently outperformed both talent and IQ as a predictor of success. In other words phenomenal will carries more weight than phenomenal skill when the game guitar. I mean we can all think of moments where skill alone wasn't enough because you can be skilled and still lose but when skill and will collide well that's when legends are made. Skill is like knowing how to run a marathon but will is crossing the finish line on a busted angle. Skill is given the presentation. Will is giving it again after your idea got shot down the first time. Skill is cooking the perfect meal. Will is serving it with joy even after a 14-hour shift. Skill is making the sale. Will is knocking on the next door after 20 rejections. Skill is hitting free throws in practice. You can do that all day but Will is draining them in the final seconds when a championship is on the line. Skill is writing the book. Will is rewriting the book after your publisher sends it back with edits. Skill is creating the product. Will is launching it again after the first version of the lot. Phenomenal skill gets you noticed. Phenomenal will makes you remembered. We've seen it in sports. Serena Williams clawing her way back from two sets down Michael Jordan playing through the stomach flu in the finals. Tiger was winning the 2019 Masters after years of injuries and setbacks. They all had skill for sure but it was their will that made history. Somebody that we were speaking at the same event. I was I was seconds from calling her friend and people be doing that sometimes just because you spoke at the same time. It's like let me tell you about one of my friends and somehow that's going to make me sound more important. I met this person. She seems like an incredible human being but we are not actually friends but I would say we are acquaintances and when we met each other we said hey high five and cheer each other on. But her name is Jamie Kern Lima. She is a young entrepreneur. She was a TV news anchor in her 20s and like a lot of people. She dealt with some real skin issues and most beauty products didn't actually help her deal with it. So she had the skill to see a problem and the creativity to solve it. So she started mixing formulas on her kitchen counter trying to create makeup that worked for real women with real skin. That skill but what she didn't know was just how much will it was going to take to get that idea off the ground. Every investor she pitched turned her down. Not politely either. Some told her flat out women won't buy makeup from someone who doesn't look like a model. Imagine hearing that not once but hundreds of times. So she and her husband maxed out credit cards couldn't pay themselves a salary and actually wondered how they would even keep things going. But Jamie kept showing up. She believed in that product more than the rejections that surrounded her. She kept pitching. She kept improving. She kept believing. That's phenomenal will. And then came the big break. She landed a meeting with QBC which if you're in the beauty world is like the Super Bowl. She got one shot just a few minutes of live TV to prove herself. She went on camera took off her own makeup showed a real skin and applied her product right there for the world to see an in 10 minutes. Everything changed. Products sold out. Viewers saw themselves in her story. They didn't want perfect. They want it real from there. It cosmetics exploded years later. Jamie sold the company to Luria for $1.2 billion and became the first female CEO in Luria's 100 year history. Now here's what I love about Jamie story phenomenal skill helped her make a great product. The phenomenal will help her survive thousands of knows. She didn't get lucky. She got gritty. And here's where it gets practical for you and me. You may not be building a billion dollar makeup company. But you've got something you're working on that requires will power. Maybe it's the classroom you lead. The team you manage. The business you're trying to grow or the family you're simply trying to hold together. Your will shows up when you walk into a meeting with the smile even though your last idea got shut down. Your will shows up when you keep applying for jobs after five rejections. Your will shows up when you keep serving people who may never say thank you. Your will shows up when you keep loving your family well after a tough season. And here's the best part. Phenomenal will isn't reserved for the elite. You don't need a platform or spotlight to have it. You just need a decision. Every time you decide to keep showing up even when it's hard you're building phenomenal will skill make it give you the ability to start. But will gives you the power to finish skill can open the door. But will is what keeps you in the room. Skill is how you play the game. But will is how you keep playing even when you're losing. So wherever you are today I'm going to encourage you keep showing up. Keep doing the work. Keep choosing the hard that helps you become who you actually want to be. Because when phenomenal skill meets phenomenal will you're impossible to be. My friends thank you so much for listening to the Ryan Lee podcast. If today's episode added value to your life or inspired you in any way shape or form I would ask you not to keep it to yourself share it with the friend and hey it would mean the world to me if you would take a moment to rate review and subscribe your support helps us reach even more people with these short and sweet nuggets of inspiration. 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