How To Unleash Your Full Potential

To accomplish something great, author Matt Higgins says you need to toss your Plan B overboard and burn the boats. “You have to give yourself no escape route, no chance to ever turn back. You throw away your backup plans and your push forward, no longer bogged down by the infinite ways in which we hedge our own successes.”

You’ll learn plenty more about what it means to burn the boats, how to unleash your full potential, and how to tear down your barriers to achieving success in Higgins’ new book, Burn The Boats – a business-advice and self-help book.

Five of the most powerful takeaways are these according to Higgins:

1. Trust your instincts and reject conventional wisdom: We are the only ones who know the full extent of our gifts, and the paths we are meant to follow.
2. Proprietary insights are the keys to game-changing businesses: you don’t need a unique project to start an empire, just an intuition all your own.
3. Your deepest flaws can be fuel for your greatest triumphs: Your shame and trauma can be the assets that drive you, not the anchors that weight you down.
4. Act on the lightning, don’t wait for thunder: A flash of opportunity is first glimpsed long before the unmistakable tipping point of evidence; if you wait to act until others validate your vision, it’s too late.
5. Embrace crisis: What initially seems unendurable may turn out to be the catalyst that takes you to the next level and unlocks your full potential.

Higgins is co-founder and CEO of private investment firm RSE Ventures and a lecturer and Executive Fellow at Harvard Business School. He was a guest shark on ABC’s Shark Tank seasons 10 and 11.

 

Matt Higgins

Today, Higgins shares these insights with us:

Question: What is the ‘Burn the Boats’ philosophy? 

Higgins: Forget Plan B! This is the biggest takeaway, and the foundation of my entire book. Research bears it out – even the mere contemplation of a Plan B statistically reduces the probability Plan A will ever materialize. The reason is energy leakage. When I say the phrase “Burn the Boats,” many people reflexively recoil at the idea, confusing total commitment with risk mitigation. 

These are not mutually exclusive concepts. In fact, they are inextricably linked. You can’t commit when you haven't processed the worst-case scenario and made provisions for it. Burn The Boats teases apart the excuses we make to ourselves that hinder total commitment and illuminates the internal and external forces that impede risk taking. I break down the archetypes of naysayers in the corporate setting that stymie innovation – for example, the Withholders who deny praise in order to destabilize rising stars, especially those who are wired to be pleasers. 

But I didn’t want to write a book that is thought provoking but not actionable. I interviewed 50 different founders, athletes, artists, activists, NFL coaches and celebrities, many of whom I have mentored and advised – from billionaire Marc Lore to Scarlett Johansson – to illustrate strategies for total commitment. 

Question: You say you can predict CEO failure based on one thing. What is it?

Higgins: Winners are iterative creatures. The best leaders make course corrections before they have no other choice. I believe I can forecast the success of an individual leader based on the amount of time it takes for them to change direction when the outcome is objectively inevitable. The ones who resist making those decisions – who won’t cannibalize their own hero product or won’t terminate the toxic star employee – tend to be insecure and driven by ego or other impure motives. The best leaders demonstrate a rare mix of confidence and humility – the confidence to abandon their own bad ideas quickly and the humility to admit they were wrong in the first place. 

Burn the Boats is based on the idea of ‘perpetual pursuit’. What do you say to those who think it sounds more like a recipe for ‘perpetual discontent’? 

I say, think back to when you felt most alive. Was it the week after you achieved the impossible or the week before? Science knows the answer because the topic has been studied extensively. It’s what marathon runners and Olympians know too well: the achievement never lives up to the pursuit. Success and contentment are built on striving; achieving at even the highest level doesn’t obviate the longing. The sooner we accept that fact, the happier we will be, and construct a life built upon a commitment to perpetual growth – and burning more boats! 

Question: You tell your students to think about who they want to be, not what they want to be. Can you explain the difference? 

Higgins: I find that when people are professionally dissatisfied, it’s not because they made the wrong decision when choosing a job; it’s because they failed to ask the right questions at the outset. These are the existential questions that frame the best choices. Am I a creator or an executor? Do I thrive in ambiguity or structure? Do I want to spend my day thinking or doing? 

Question: Why is collaboration in the workplace not always a good thing? 

Higgins: Collaboration for collaboration’s sake leads to regression to the mean, the lowest common denominator likely to upset the least amount of people. That works for mundane undertakings, but birthing exceptionalism is a lonely endeavor. 

By definition, revolutionary ideas and products are meant to be rejected long before they are embraced. And time spent prematurely cultivating buy-in and fostering consensus just amounts to energy leakage. 

That’s why I tell entrepreneurs to be careful who you consult with your nascent dreams. Innovation needs time to achieve escape velocity and build up enough momentum to withstand forces of resistance. If you consult skeptics and cynics early in the journey, the idea may never have a chance to get off the ground. I believe in consulting pragmatic optimists during the launch phase of an idea and saving the skeptics for more sturdy iterations. 

Question: How does organizational hierarchy train us to accept terrible working conditions and crush entrepreneurial spirit? 

Higgins: Forget "paying your dues." There is no preordained sequence to success. Incrementalism squanders potential. The greatest spoils go to those who refuse to follow the typical roadmap and consider making bold step changes. 

We are conditioned to believe that our careers must unfold like layers of sedimentary rock, one built on the next. I believe the opposite: before falling in line, consider stepping out altogether and making a step change: a break in progression that does not necessarily flow from previous experience. 

I had never taught a day in my life before I spent a year creating a new course at Harvard Business School. But I knew I had it in me, and before settling for anything less than the best business school in the world, I took a run at it. I mentor people all the time and this is the number one assumption I challenge. These conversations have led to many amazing stories of accelerated growth that I cover in the book. 

That is not to say experience and expertise don’t matter. Of course, they do. I just argue that we tend to erect barriers to our own progression before first considering if we might be able to vault over the bar instead.

Thank you to the book's publisher for sending me an advance copy of the book.