Business Lessons Learned from Eddie Van Halen
The late, great Eddie Van Halen was a guitar legend. To millennials, he might just seem like a traditional old-school rocker. But ask any Gen Xer, and you’ll hear about the greatest guitarist of a generation; a guy who reinvented the very idea of guitar. I have fond memories of Tom Richards, a high school classmate and band mate, taking weeks of time to learn to play Eruption for an 80’s Tribute gig we played in front of the entire school. Tom aced the lesson, taught me how to finger tap and do volume swells on my own guitar, and the show turned out to be epic.
A few years ago, in Popular Mechanics, Van Halen described just how he became such a virtuoso.
As a poor kid growing up in California, he had to tinker and tweak to get the sound he wanted without investing in things like a distortion pedal and a router.
He offers a glimpse at a lesson he learned early on from his dad: “If something doesn't do what you want it to, there's always a way to fix it.”
Business leaders know that playing into the status quo is no way to become a legend. Real leaders—thought leaders—see things differently.
If they can’t get the effect they want from the tools they have, they invent new tools (and sometimes, find new people to use those tools).
