On May 25 1981, a man dressed in a Spider-Man suit crossed Franklin Street in Chicago at just the right moment.
He had been scoping out the Sears Tower for several days. He knew the routines of the security guards. Right now, nobody would be there to stop him.
So he got out his two suction cups, stuck them to the black glass wall of the giant skyscraper, and started to climb.
It took him 7 hours, but he made it to the top. 110 floors, 1,450 feet above the ground. All the way to the roof of the world’s tallest building at the time.
The man’s name was Dan Goodwin. For his effort, he was arrested and fined $35. He also earned himself the nickname Spider-Dan.
That doesn’t seem like much of a reward. So what made Spider-Dan do it?
A few months earlier, Goodwin was in Las Vegas where he saw the MGM hotel burn down. In spite of the firefighters on the scene, 86 people died in the blaze.
The next day, Goodwin went to the fire marshal’s office. He had a proposal for how to rescue people from the top floors of burning skyscrapers by climbing on the outside.
“Have you ever climbed a building?” the fire marshal snapped back. “No? Then don’t tell me how to do my job.”
So Goodwin did a bit of thinking… a bit of practicing… and then on May 25th, he accomplished his audacious climb up the Sears Tower. Something most people, including experts like the fire marshal, would have said was impossible.
I’m not saying you can accomplish anything you set your mind to. I don’t believe that’s true, for you or for me.
On the other hand, most experts are full of mashed potatoes. An expert’s number one goal is to protect his own status and self-image.
You only have to go back 50 or 100 years to see how tons of experts in any field – whether scientists or politicians or educators — were dead sure of ideas we would find laughable or offensive today. The same will happen when people look back on today from the perspective of another 30 or 50 years.
Anyways, Dan Goodwin did all right for himself with his Spider-Dan role. But he could have been killed. And he did get fined $35.
In other words, the world can be a risky place. It makes sense to keep that in mind.
But when experts make confident predictions or prohibitions… well, my personal stance is to pay them no mind. Their job is to protect the status quo, and their own interests.
So here’s a suggestion: If you want to attempt something, don’t let adverse expert opinion stop you. You might succeed. And you might even get a cool nickname out of it, just like Spider-Dan.
By the way, I don’t pretend to be an expert. But I write daily emails nonetheless, mostly about persuasion and influence. If you want to get them, click here to subscribe.