Sometimes, success is just about showing up and doing your best.  Sometimes, it’s also about doing something illogical that seems right at the time.

I follow Seth Rudetsky on Facebook because he is endlessly entertaining and reminds me of my theatre days.  I read his article on Playbill.com today and the following story inspired me.

I also got to interview Amanda McBroom who wrote the beautiful song, “The Rose.” Turns out, the way the song came to be is bizarre. Amanda was a singing actress when she wrote the song, and not a songwriter. She was driving home and heard a Leo Sayer song on the radio (so ’70s) about love. She thought, “That’s how he sees love, but not me.” She began to think about the many different views of love and the song just came to her. She went into her house and wrote it all down. I asked her about the signature vamp at the beginning (the two notes making an open fifth) and she said she did that because she’s not a very good pianist and it was easy for her to play just two notes! That night, she played “The Rose” for her husband and he asked, “Do you know what you just did? You just wrote a classic.” She played it for some more friends and that was that. Well, turns out, one of her friends worked in the film business and played the song for a film executive who was trying to get a theme song for the Bette Midler film based on Janis Joplin. The crazy part is, Janis Joplin was known as “The Pearl” but the film couldn’t get the rights to that name so they changed it to… “The Rose”! And Amanda’s song, purely by accident, happened to be named “The Rose.” How crazy is that!?!?! Turns out, the film executive didn’t like the song, but Bette Midler did and it became a world-wide hit. But, because it wasn’t written expressly for the film, it wasn’t nominated for an Oscar. But, Amanda told us, it did pay for some major renovations for her house so it’s all good!

Amazing, right?  It reminds me of how I got my first book deal.  I was the 22nd coach to call a reporter from Money Magazine back in 1996 by her request to talk about the NEW, emerging profession of personal coaching.  She did not need to interview me by the time I had reached her but I recommended that she speak to a client of mine who got great results to round out her story from the ‘buyer’s’ perspective.  She did.  My client was told that they would be back in touch with her to schedule a photo shoot. By the time they had contacted her, the story had changed hands and the new reporter was trying to make sense of the story she had inherited. My client kept raving about her coaching experience where she had gone from making $50K a year to $500K  year in 18 months. The story ended up being a feature about she and I—ONLY. That feature launched my coaching company with 350 callers on a waiting list and began my writing career.  Two of those callers were publishers who bid each other out to get my debut tome.

In a time when so many people are trying very hard to create results in their lives and businesses, it’s a good time to be reminded that sometimes it’s not about effort at all.  Just do your best, the unexpected, the generous, the nutty and have a great time doing it.

Tags: 199§, Amanda McBroom, happy accident, Laura Berman Fortgang, Money Magazine, Seth Rudesky, The Rose

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 28th, 2009 at 4:28 pm and is filed under Life, Money, Work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.