CHAPTER 9

DISRUPT A CULTURE; LEAVE A LEGACY

Egypt, 1479 BC. Thutmose II passed away. His son, Thutmose III, will be pharaoh one day, but not yet. He wasn’t old enough to rule. So, as was tradition, until her stepson was of age, Hatshepsut, the half sister and wife of the late Thutmose II, stepped in to help rule, as a regent. This was a common tradition, the appointment of someone older and wiser who would act as a temporary ruler for a short time until the true ruler was capable of claiming his or her rightful place.

And that’s where Hatshepsut’s rule should have ended—as a small dash, maybe simply an asterisk, in the annals of Egyptian history—the wife, half sister, and stepmother who managed to keep the throne warm between her husband’s and her stepson’s powerful reigns. But it turns out, she had other ideas . . .

From the moment she was declared regent, Hatshepsut found herself caught in an odd gap between great religious power and nothingness. She’d been acting as the God’s Wife of Amun for years. It had been her job since she was a young girl to “awaken” the god Amun every morning in his holy temple.

After becoming regent, she was on the verge of being too old to arouse Amun, so her religious duties would pass to her daughter. Then when her stepson came of age, she’d lose her regency.

But during her regency, she did something perhaps no other woman in history had done—she claimed the throne, fully. Not as regent, but as pharaoh.¹

There were multiple problems with her ascension, besides her sex. For one thing, her stepson had already been named king, and this was a well-known fact across Egypt. Second, the kingship officially passed through the gods, typically from father to son.

She was far too clever to assume she could just brush these points to the side as trivialities. Instead, she used her knowledge of the deep truths (the gods) to reveal that they, along with her father (previously a pharaoh), had chosen her to be king. Clever indeed—who can argue with the gods?

By some accounts, she propagated an occultic narrative, the sort that whetted the religious appetites of the Egyptians—writing on some hieroglyphics that, apparently, her mother had been impregnated with the seed of the gods, so Hatshepsut was literally conceived by the gods. On official sculptures, hieroglyphics, and engravings, she predated her kingship to the day her husband passed (which was about seven years before she declared herself pharaoh), matching it in time to that of her stepson’s kingship. In other words, she erased time itself, and backdated her own rule to prove her legitimacy, as if to say, “I was never regent, but always king.”

To handle the problem of her sex, she even bent the rules of Egyptian language (there was no real word for “queen,” for instance). Eventually, she even adopted a masculine image in many of the drawings and sculptures—not to deceive, but to show strength and legitimacy.

It’s hotly debated, but some consider Hatshepsut the first female pharaoh. What’s not debated? That she was one of the most powerful pharaohs, male or female, in Egyptian history. She was instrumental in developing many of the greatest Egyptian monuments, in particular, the great temple complex Deir el-Bahri (“the monastery of the North”). She led her country through a relatively peaceful period, and she expanded trade with East Africa and the Mediterranean, importing all sorts of things—among them, ebony, gold, wood, myrrh, and exotic animals.

In the end, she was a political genius and a master of religious affairs, and she can be found on every scholar’s list of “the greatest pharaohs.” But you probably haven’t heard much about her—ironically because that’s just how powerful she really was.

After she passed, someone (likely Thutmose III) removed her likeness from many of the writings and histories, most notably from the list of kings.

She was one of the greatest female pharaohs who ever ruled.

CULTURAL DISRUPTORS

Today society is obsessed over a singular type of disruption: the disruption of business via technology.

Whenever someone says “innovation” or “disruption,” we immediately think of a young solopreneur using technology to run a business from her home. While lounging in her pajamas and eating avocado toast, the disruptor upends a monolithic incumbent all from the convenience of her MacBook and homemade latte.

But if we pull back the curtains on history, disruption isn’t just about business, and it certainly doesn’t only come through technology.

Disruption is about an upheaval of the status quo, wherever it exists:

•   Shakespeare disrupted the arts and society by bringing the elites and the masses together through stories.

•   Henry Ford disrupted the process of industrialization by utilizing the assembly line.

•   Mahatma Gandhi disrupted colonialism through his peaceful methods.

Hatshepsut did something deeper than oust a company. She disrupted a culture.

Cultural disruption sits at the peak of everything we’ve discussed—it’s the ultimate play, describing how one individual can implant themselves so deep into the hearts and minds of a community, that their next move, however audacious, changes how we view life itself, social norms, and even political balances of power.

These types of disruptors will outlast the technologies they invent, or the powers they fight. They even outlast their own time on earth, because once they leave, the patterns of our minds have altered so much that the rest of us continue the work they started. Disruptors like that don’t truly die when they take their last breath; instead, they live on in the haunting of our own decisions and activities.

In this chapter, we’re going to explore what it takes to disrupt a civilization, to change the very air that’s breathed, and to change the way life is lived. How do you do this?

1.   CREATE A VINCE CARTER EFFECT. If you want to disrupt a culture, you’ve got to do something so powerful that it outlasts your own activity. When Vince Carter won the 2000 NBA Slam Dunk Contest, he inspired a generation of Canadian basketball players.

2.   USE THE POWER OF STORIES. Sleeping Beauty, Batman, Thor. These all inspire, because they’re engaging, shareable, and magical. If you want to inspire a generation, get really, really good at telling stories.

3.   INVITE OTHERS IN. To disrupt a culture, you’ll need others. You’ll need to spread your ideas from person to person, and you’ll need to surround yourself with other innovators, to draft off the power of those around you.

4.   FOLLOW THE MAYA PRINCIPLE. Hatshepsut was ambitious but careful. She set her sights on the moon, but then she took it slowly, finding the most disruptive, yet tolerable, idea. She was willing to push the envelope, but not beyond what those around her would allow. Likewise, we’ve got to find a way to think big, but not too big.

While in 2022, most are studying the Bold Ones who are challenging technologies, I believe the real game we should all be playing is the one Hatshepsut started thousands of years ago:

How can we disrupt the universe?

THE VINCE CARTER EFFECT

I’m taken with how Vince Carter utterly overtook the 2000 NBA Slam Dunk Contest.

At the time, as Carter pulled off moves the world had never seen before, every dunk was like watching a futuristic basketball game. The most iconic move came when Toronto Raptors’ player Tracy McGrady passed the ball to Carter, who put it through his legs and finished with a thunderous one-handed slam.

I’ve watched the entire evening on replay dozens of times, but I actually missed watching it live—I was a teenager at the time, and I was out with my family. So I had whipped out the VHS player to videotape the episode, old school.

When we came back home, we kept hitting rewind, as time stood still while Carter laughed in the face of gravity.

While Carter disrupted the dunk competition, his resulting legacy disrupted a generation: Youngsters from around Canada began leaping toward the basket with a fierceness no coach could have inspired. Carter spirit descended on Canada, from Halifax to Victoria, as kids began dunking, spinning, and flying toward the hoop.

Canada’s a country of only 30 million people, but after Carter’s performance, we produced a disproportionate amount of impressive NBA players such as Jamal Murray, Andrew Wiggins, RJ Barrett, and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.²

In the 2021–2022 season, there was a total of twenty-five Canadian players in the NBA, with four more added in the 2022 draft, two of whom were drafted in the top ten.³ By then, Canada’s national team bragged that it had the most NBA players on it, second only to the United States itself.

That’s the Vince Carter Effect: the creation of dozens of basketball godchildren.

By the time he retired, Carter had never won an NBA championship, nor did he become MVP. Instead, he alley-ooped for the next generation of Canadian b-ballers.

How can we all create our own Vince Carter effect, where our ideas don’t just start with us, but outlast our own activities?

For starters, we’ve got to do something visual.

I’m all for words, but if you want to implant your idea into someone’s mind, you’ve got to do something everyone can see. Scientists have conducted thousands of hours of research on the power of visual cues. If you check out the scientific literature, you’ll find dozens of papers that include terms like “retinal ganglion cell” that discuss the power of human visual recognition. Basically, all the science supports what journalists have known for years, that a picture truly is worth a thousand words.⁴

Recently, a colleague we’ll call “Randall” was trying to get ahold of a Fortune 500 company, one of the top general merchandisers in America. He’d cold-emailed them several times to pitch his idea. Of course, he got no response. So he started slow-dripping pictures of his product to them. He got responses from two directors

That’s the power of visuals. I’m all for excellent copywriting, but you can stop people in their tracks with a mind-bending visual appeal.

Hatshepsut incarnated herself, her ideas, and her reign by creating various visuals including dozens of hieroglyphics, tombs, temples, the Sphinx of Hatshepsut, and at least four obelisks. She commissioned the largest obelisk in the world (“the unfinished obelisk”) and had others placed at the temple of Karnak.

One of them is 3,500 years old and still standing.

Take your disruptive idea, whatever it is, and wrap it in a visual. Here are some ways you can do that:

•   GET THEM ON-SITE. Is there a way you can connect your disruptive idea to something people can visit, not just read about? There’s a reason you remember all your field trips from school, and very little of what the field trip was about. Can you bring “them” (whomever you’re trying to convince) to the factory floor, to the headquarter building, or to wherever the magic happens? I can describe the Mona Lisa all day, but there’s nothing like standing a few feet away from it at the Louvre. If you can’t get them in the door, stream it or make a video of it and send it to them.

•   BORROW THE VISUAL TEAM. If you aren’t the visual aficionado you wish you were, swap some work with a coworker or a colleague. Trust me; graphic designers and videographers are usually stoked that someone recognizes their chops, so pet their ego, and bring them in. It’s a lot easier to take your coworker out for coffee than it is to learn Adobe InDesign.

•   THINK YOUTUBE, NOT WORD. Look, I get it: In some industries you need charts and lots of math to convince head honchos. Or so people say. When I first joined Deloitte, all my comrades were pitching our clients with lots of numbers in black and white that said, “My idea is awesome, and here’s why, with revenue and profits to back it up.” They’d compile a genius plan; then “paint” it with a bunch of lingo and drop it inside a 30-page notebook. After printing it off they’d hand the colorless, word-heavy document to their clients. Not my team—when we pitched, we often made video presentations of our ideas. Our advice wasn’t necessarily better, but all our clients thought it was. They were so enthralled with our presentations, we got yesses when my colleagues heard no, simply because we used video when they went traditional. A visual representation of what you’re doing is always worth the extra effort.

USE THE POWER OF STORIES

Skyler Irvine, CEO of RenzlerMedia, once said this on a call, “The story is always the most valuable.” I totally agree. In fact, I say it like this:

The most powerful person in the room is always the storyteller.

From comic book superheroes to Cinderella, from the origins of the universe to the Origin of Species, from Batman to Band of Brothers, stories become the iconic ideas that inspire, unite, and rally humanity.

In The Woman Who Would Be King, author Kara Cooney lays out exactly how Hatshepsut was able to overcome her womanhood to transcend to a place few, if any, women before her had dared to go.

Hatshepsut tapped into the power of story.

Consider her origin narrative about how the god Amun had visited her mother to conceive Hatshepsut. In the hieroglyphics, we also find supernatural tales of how the gods supposedly chose Hatshepsut. She didn’t need to bother with reality, because the legends themselves were so engaging, she’d captured the imaginations of her constituents.

The greatest stories don’t just provide the needed inspiration, but offer a touchstone, a point from which people can add to create their own story inside your universe.

Consider the most successful game creators, comic book writers, and authors: They all create macro cosmoses so large, that there’s room for not only their own stories, but the stories of others.

•   Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) is an entire world of gameplay that encourages players to each build their own characters. D&D created the platform; others leap from it.

•   Comic book creators design such detailed and expansive characters, places, and powers, that dozens of writers, artists, actors, and directors can keep adding, expanding, and re-creating for decades.

•   Writers such as J. K. Rowling, J. R. R. Tolkien, and George Lucas develop such captivating stories, that there’s a whole genre of work called “fan fiction” created by others.

When well executed, these stories are often so extensive we call them “universes,” and you can find this type of ever-expanding universe in business as well.

The company Salesforce, whose flagship product is a customer resource management tool, has created its own universe: Its software platform is so ubiquitous that numerous third-party businesses offer Salesforce add-ons. Annually, Salesforce hosts its Dreamforce conference where hundreds of companies and over 170,000 people often gather to connect . . . It’s like Comicon but for a sales software platform.⁵ Salesforce has created a universe so large, it’s a breeding ground for others.

If we want a lasting legacy in this world, we must create a story that captures others’ imaginations, and simultaneously inspires them to create their own stories inside of ours.

If you want to know how to create a story, read a book on Greek gods and goddesses, or check out the Star Wars series, and apply what you’re learning to the tale you’re trying to tell. Particularly, you’ll need these elements.

SHARE A BAD-ASS ORIGIN STORY

Your storytelling starts with why you’re doing this, how we all got here, or why this is important to you. Clare Potter was a fashion designer who started in the 1920s. She has a remarkable backstory: She was a horse rider, and she was tired of having nothing to wear. That was her origin story, which became the springboard from which she created some of the world’s first female riding outfits. Later she was instrumental in creating the women’s two-piece bathing suit, the precursor of the bikini.⁶

What’s your origin story? What ticked you off, why did you start this, and what was the moment that this idea became critical for you?

NAME THE VILLAIN

In May 2022, Crumbl cookies cofounder Jason McGowan released a Twitter thread he titled “The Billion-Dollar Decision,” telling his followers that in 2022, Crumbl would do $1 billion in sales. The Twitter thread was an iconic rags-to-riches story, detailing how the cofounders could barely afford the $300-per-month rent originally, and nearly closed up shop; and then, voilà, a few years later, they were the epitome of the American dream.

Everything was going fine until, Crumbl believed, two of its competitors committed trademark infringement. So Crumbl sued the two competitors. One of the companies being sued, Dirty Dough, rapidly created a villain out of Crumbl, seizing on its big corporate bad guy status and turning the public against Crumbl. Dirty Dough founder Bennett Maxwell told Utah Business:

Apparently, this billion-dollar company, Crumbl, is threatened by a startup with only a couple of locations to make a federal case out of rainbow sprinkles and rectangular boxes.⁷

Then, in a LinkedIn post, Maxwell added this:

Watch out Grandma, you better throw away those sprinkles or you will be Crumbl’s next victim.

Oh, and then he released a picture of potential billboards that said things like, “Our cookies don’t crumble with competition.”

Maxwell successfully painted Crumbl as the large, billion-dollar corporation trying to copyright grandma’s cookies and stifle competition.

The public backlash was almost instant.

Dirty Dough had successfully created a corporate villain, named the villain publicly, and rallied everyone who likes cookies, competition, or grandma.

I was on LinkedIn at the time, typically known for its professional behavior, and the comments and the tags directed at McGowan and the rest of the Crumbl team were pretty vicious.

You don’t need to attack a real company to name a villain (although that was pretty effective). You need to name the villain you’re after: If you’re innovating to overcome inefficiency, call out inefficiency. If you’ve created a process that will save thousands of wasted hours a year, call out waste. If your idea will stop pollution, call out pollution. Name that villain, and rally the followers.

MAKE IT MAGICAL

In Inception, Leonardo DiCaprio’s character, Cobb, builds a team whose mission is to plant an idea deep into someone else’s mind. Others believe it’s impossible, but Cobb knows it can be done, if you travel deep enough into the person’s imagination.

If you want to penetrate someone’s mind, you’ve got to infiltrate that person’s imagination. When Carter dunked one-handed after passing the ball between his legs, it was hard to miss. Every time I remember that dunk, it’s a little more fantastic than what actually happened. My imagination creates an echo chamber and combines it with the game of telephone. When I share that story, it gets exaggerated, just a tad:

“Did you see Carter’s one-handed dunk?!”

“I know! I swear he flew.”

With your story, start with something a bit magical. Without Carter’s gravity-defying jumps, no one would have imagined that he could nearly fly. Initially, he planted the thought. The best stories always have something a little magical, something just out of the ordinary about them, to spice everything up.

Take gum commercials, for example. They often show attractive, young people chewing gum, then meeting the person of their dreams. Apparently, the gum’s a magic potion. Sure, we don’t really believe that the stick from Trident will help us find true love, but I mean, it can’t hurt to try, right? The commercial plants the idea; our minds do the rest.

Connect the product you’re creating, the service you’re providing, the content you’re delivering, or the process you’re pioneering to something one notch out of the ordinary. Then go ahead and plant the idea that the blog you’re writing about marketing and sales coming together could totally change the way corporate culture runs. Be a little edgy the next time you’re advocating for your team to branch out into a new line of business: “Think of how many zeros in revenue this could create.” Go for it. Make it a bit magical.

KEEP IT SIMPLE

Simplify; simplify; simplify. Far too often we make the stories too difficult to understand and digest for our audience. We can’t name the villain, the solution, or the problem in layperson’s terms.

Simplicity is difficult to achieve, but easy to share. Complexity is easy to achieve, but hard to share.

If you want to tickle people’s ears, make the pitch smooth, seamless, and simple: “No restaurant in Canada is serving this kind of food. We’ll be the first.” Or “Project management in construction is wildly inefficient. This new process could save millions.” Find the hook, drill it home, and, to repeat, keep it simple.

INVITE OTHERS IN

To basketball fans born before the 1980s, the name “Michael Jordan” is synonymous with “the greatest basketball player of all time.” But when my nephews, born after 2000, think of Michael Jordan, they look down at their feet, at their Air Jordans. To them, Michael Jordan is the shoe guy. If I asked them about him, I’m sure they’d have some vague recollection that he played basketball. They’d probably even note that “a lot of people think he was really good.” But in the end, it’s the shoes that matter to my nephews.

MJ transfigured from the GOAT of the court to the god of footwear. His kicks are so legendary, people are still wearing them, whether or not they’ve even seen him play. He built something more viral than his “product,” basketball.

Cultural disruption isn’t easy. We’ve talked a lot about building a fan base thus far, but there are two more concepts to keep in mind:

1. BUILD SOMETHING MORE VIRAL THAN YOUR PRODUCT

Just as MJ did, try to build something that outlives a fascinating product or service. Remember the “sexy angle” we talked about in Chapter 7, with the drones? That went viral. What can you release that can outshine and outlast your core offering?

Hatshepsut built some of the worlds’ greatest obelisks, and people still visit them to this day. Her laws, decrees, and political influence may no longer prevail, but she built something so lasting, we can’t forget her.

2. SURROUND YOURSELF WITH OTHER INNOVATORS

Secondly, if you want to inspire cultural disruption, you’ll need help from those around you. I like to tell my team, “Never show up to a battle without an army.”

In his book Wanting, author Luke Burgis talks about mimetic desire, a concept originally developed by French philosopher and polymath René Girard.

Burgis and Girard both posit that our innermost desires often aren’t ours at all, but that we’re simply mimicking the desires of others. We want the Ferrari because Joe wants it. We want the scholarship because Angela has it. I’ve watched as my son picks up a previously discarded truck, lying on the floor near a group of other children. Suddenly that truck is the object of every child’s desire.

If you apply this to how to disrupt a culture, you’ll find a huge upside: Once you start innovating, you’ll ignite the innovation desires of others. They see how the marketplace rewarded you, how the industry recognized you, and they want the same. This is the kind of innovation fire you need to start, be a part of, and champion, if you want to truly disrupt a culture.

In the best way possible, innovation is a contagious, dangerous game. And like any infectious organism, it spreads in proximity.

It’s one thing to read about Walt Disney, but I’m sure it was quite another to be in the room with him while he talked about animating Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. I bet the room became a crucible of innovative ideas.

That’s one reason Silicon Valley pumps out so many awe-inspiring technologies—the valley is a hub of innovative tech, and it just keeps attracting more innovators, like a magnet.

You can also look at Russell Simmons’s TV show, Def Comedy Jam. When he put together black comedians from across the country to challenge and excite each other, a who’s who of the world’s greatest comedians emerged: Martin Lawrence, Chris Tucker, Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle. I could go on with iconic names for paragraphs.

If you put our mimetic desires in a room with other contagious innovators, the results are contagious, as we each challenge and inspire the best in each other.

FOLLOW THE MAYA PRINCIPLE

Elisha Otis first introduced passenger-safe elevators in the 1850s. At that time, elevators were run by elevator operators, often called “porters.” The porters were in charge of operating the elevators for passengers, ensuring that an elevator stopped correctly on each floor. Without a trained and strong porter who could operate the original heavy levers, the elevator could miss the floor you were attempting to stop on, or it could move before someone was fully aboard. The porters were vital for safety and efficiency.

By the 1900s, automatic elevators began to hit the market—these required no elevator operator to safely maneuver. But there was a problem—people wouldn’t use the automatic elevators. In many cases, they simply refused. They were so accustomed to having a porter, they couldn’t imagine the elevator just magically “stopping.” What if someone’s foot gets stuck? What if the door closes early? How will we open the door when we get to our floor? So for almost half a century, elevators continued to operate with porters, for no reason except that people weren’t ready for automatic elevators.

But then someone came up with a hack, a trick, to get around people’s hesitancy. An automatic speaker with a recorded system was installed in each elevator. The system instructed passengers how to operate the elevator themselves. As Steve Henn put it on NPR’s Morning Edition in 2015:

There was a soothing voice piped out of the speakers when you walked inside. “This is an automatic elevator. Please press the button for the floor you desire.”⁸

Pause for a second to consider how entirely unnecessary this system was. Did the passengers really not know which button to push for their correct floor? I’m fairly certain every person going to level three knew that the button with the big 3 on it was most likely the best option. The problem was fear. People needed something, an in-between step, to help bridge the gap between porter-operated elevators and automatic elevators. So, wisely, a simple hack was introduced. A soothing voice that gave instructions.

If you’re going to do something big, sometimes it’s necessary to mask that innovation with the most disruptive, but still acceptable, idea people can handle today. The idea is actually backed by science, and it’s called the “MAYA principle.”

“MAYA” stands for “most advanced, yet acceptable.” It means that when you’re introducing a disruptive idea, technology, or process, you want to offer the most outlandish version possible, but it still has to be palatable to your audience.

When Hatshepsut rose to the throne, she did so as a co-heir; she tied her female kingship to the male kingship of her stepson. Was she more powerful than he was? Absolutely. Was she a greater pharaoh than he was? Undoubtedly. However, if she had simply thrown off the old ways and spat in the face of tradition entirely, she likely would never have been successful. She was daring, but not crazy. She pushed the boundaries, but not past the breaking point. She used the MAYA principle. As author Cooney said:

As she had done all her life, she moved deliberately, step by step, claiming new titles and names when she thought the time was right, never pushing it beyond what those around her could tolerate.⁹

There are myriad ways to bring a brighter future into the present in a seemingly safe way. For you, the Bold One, these safety mechanisms may seem unnecessary—and you’re probably right. But they help others take a step into disruption, and they give you a jump-start in getting your idea off the ground.

People of the old guard may have a problem accepting an edgy idea—they just can’t wrap their minds around it. Why not help them by adding in a traditional feature? For example:

•   CERTIFICATIONS. Third-party recognition does a lot for people of tradition. Let’s say you want to open a new channel partner income stream. Your boss is hesitant. Why not get a channel partnership certification, just to make your boss feel safer? There are numerous places online you can go to get certified in just about anything. Does a piece of paper make you a master at something? No, but others don’t need to know that.

•   LEGAL STAMPS OF APPROVAL. Especially in large corporations, you can run ideas by the people in your legal department to get their sign-off. In the same way a certification makes people feel confident in your abilities, when a lawyer says, “Go ahead,” others around you feel safe to proceed.

•   KEEPING JUST ENOUGH OF THE OLD PROCESS. Sometimes you can keep just enough tradition to make everyone feel comfortable while introducing a virtually new idea. For instance, if you want to use a new AI-driven hiring process, perhaps you can instill confidence with your HR department by keeping some of the old questions from the manual interviews. Later, once you’ve proved that your AI process is actually better at reducing discrimination and finding the best applicants, you could drop the old questions.

•   SAFETY BUTTONS. There is another thing that the automatic elevator disruptors did to make everyone feel safer. They added in “the biggest calming device ever invented, a big red button that said, stop.”¹⁰ These buttons helped give people a way out. In Never Split the Difference, author and former FBI hostage negotiator Chris Voss shows that giving others the power to say no is exactly what you need to do to get them to say yes. It’s the counterintuitive argument that we so often miss. When people feel in control, they think clearly and they’re more likely to engage. When you trap them into saying yes, they’re simply looking for a way out. So offer a “safety button” to your team, your boss, or whomever you’re trying to convince. A back-out-anytime-you-want clause, a money-back guarantee, or a “no pressure, here’s the offer” pitch will actually perform far better than the traditional assumptive close, especially when dealing with disruption.

The illusion of control gives people the sense of security they need to try something that they perceive as dangerous.

THE RESURRECTION

Joseph Campbell’s seminal work, The Hero’s Journey, recounts the steps that every hero in every great story takes. One of them, about three-fourths through his journey, is this—resurrection. Once the hero comes back to life, he changes the game. He may have had victories—or in our case, minor disruptions—before his death, but after he dies and comes back to life, he’s endowed with new, supernatural powers.

Hatshepsut died around 1458 BC. She was a disruptor while she lived, but she’d have to resurrect herself to become a goddess.

And she did.

Hatshepsut was perhaps Egypt’s first full-fledged female pharaoh, but she certainly isn’t Egypt’s most well-known female ruler. That title belongs to Cleopatra, who came about 1,500 years after Hatshepsut.

But here’s the thing, Cleopatra isn’t Cleopatra without Hatshepsut. Who knows if Cleopatra would ever have made it to her throne without the rise of her predecessor? Hatshepsut disrupted a culture, an entire civilization. She’d captured hearts and minds, implanting herself into the very imagination of her civilization. Perhaps unknowingly, her life was a stepping-stone for the most famous female ruler in Egyptian history. If we take it a bit further, perhaps Hatshepsut’s pursuit of the throne paved the way for all female leaders since then. She might just be the Bold One who created such a universe in which there could be a female head of state, CEO, or founder. “If Hatshepsut did it, so can I” may have been Cleopatra’s thoughts. And how many people has Cleopatra inspired?

It took 1,500 years between Hatshepsut and Cleopatra, but in 2022, there will be 26 female heads of state across the globe. There absolutely could (and should) be more, but perhaps there wouldn’t be as many without Hatshepsut as inspiration.

When you sacrifice yourself on the altar of disruption, your legacy isn’t contained to your last move; instead, it continually reverberates in their next move.

Bold Ones don’t wait for permission, for anyone to invite them. They take their place at the table, or they build their own. They find a way in, a way around. Along the way, they inspire others; they infect the marketplace with new methods, new systems, and new products. They discover, create, fail, repeat.

The world doesn’t make room for Bold Ones and their ideas; Bold Ones reshape the world as needed. When you first picked this book up, you already had an idea, a thought, a crazy desire. Something keeps you up at night—in the deep throes of the internet, in the chat rooms. You’re interested; you’re looking; you’re searching. Inside your cubicle, you know how to improve the processes. You see inefficiency that can be removed. You believe in the reshaping of an industry.

It’s time to jump, to make a bold move, one that requires taking a chance. Put some skin in the game, and make a little noise. Likely, when you do, you’ll find others who’ve been thinking the same things all along. When you do ruffle some feathers—and you will—just remember what Oscar Wilde said:

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.

SECRETS OF THE BOLD ONES