The Gift of Belief

The quiet power of believing in someone

“The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches, but to reveal to him his own.”

— Benjamin Disraeli

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The Gift of Belief

For many of us, we were fortunate to have a father who saw what we could be long before we could see it ourselves. Thank you!

This spring, Paul McCartney released an album called The Boys of Dungeon Lane - a record looking back at his Liverpool childhood, the years before the Beatles and the world knew his name.

In 1961, he was just one of those boys.

Then, a young man named Brian Epstein walked down the steps of a damp Liverpool basement club called the Cavern. He was twenty-seven and ran the record department of his family’s store. He had no experience in the music business; no contacts, no track record, and no reason to be there except a customer had come into the store asking for a record by this local band.

What he saw on that stage was four scruffy young men in leather jackets, playing too loud, swearing between songs, eating on stage. The group was unpolished, unprofessional, and unremarkable by most measures.

He went back upstairs and decided he was going to manage them.

Within months, he was telling anyone who would listen - record executives, journalists, his own family - that this band was going to be bigger than Elvis. People laughed at the assertion as major labels passed on them. One of the biggest, Decca, allegedly turned them down with the line, “Guitar groups are on the way out.”

Epstein didn’t waiver.

He never wrote a song or played a note on a Beatles record. He didn’t teach Paul to harmonize or write. He didn’t have anything to do with the words to Yesterday or the riff in Day Tripper. What he did was simpler, and harder. And maybe more important.

He saw something before the rest of the world could.

There’s a difference between seeing what is and seeing what could be. Most of us are pretty good at the first one. We notice the rough edges, the missed notes, the resume gaps, the talent that isn’t quite there yet. We’re trained to assess what’s in front of us, and what’s in front of us is usually unfinished.

But the people who shape lives don’t stop there. They look at someone in the raw and see what could be with some polish and belief. They look at a five-song setlist in a basement club and see a sold-out stadium.

This is one of the most underrated forms of influence. We tend to celebrate the teachers who taught us and the coaches who trained us. Those people matter. But often, the person who changed our trajectory the most wasn’t the one who taught us anything specific. They were the one who looked at us and said, in one way or another, “I see what you don’t see yet.”

Their belief became fuel before we had any of our own.

When someone treats us as if we are capable, we begin to act capable. When someone speaks of our future with conviction, we start moving toward it. Their expectations quietly raise the ceiling we live under. Sometimes people even borrow belief before they have their own.

The Beatles didn’t need Epstein for talent; it was already there. They needed someone who could see it before they fully could … and who wouldn’t stop until they believed it, and the rest of the world could hear it.

There is someone in your life right now who is closer to something than they realize. A student, a young coach, a new teacher, a co-worker, a child, a friend, a spouse, a loved one … someone who hasn’t yet caught a glimpse of who they could be.

You can be their Brian Epstein. You just have to be willing to see something they can’t see yet, and to say it out loud, and to keep saying it until they start believing it themselves. It’s the greatest gift you can give that person - the gift of belief.

“There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.”

— Edith Wharton

Connecting this quote to the story. Epstein reflected his belief back at the Beatles until they, and the world, could see it.

This week’s Chasing Influence tip: Look for one person whose confidence hasn’t caught up to their capability, and tell them specifically what you see.