In fact, pretty much whatever you want out of life is yours for the taking.

• When you see people who are in a state of perpetual unhappiness, they are most often listening to the negative voices in their heads–those voices that tell them they cannot achieve their goals.
• When you see people who do not enjoy what they are doing for a living, they are listening to the same voices.
• When you see people who have bad relationships, they are listening to the same voices.

Pretty much anyone you know who is in a state of perpetual unhappiness and is not living up to what he or she is capable of, is someone who is listening to the negative voices. The better you become at ignoring the voice, the better off you are going to be. The challenge of shutting out these negative voices is present in everyone’s life, and in some ways, this is the test of our lives. Prisons, for example, are filled with people who have listened to this voice–and doing so has gotten them into serious trouble. Conversely, when we observe a Buddhist monastery, or any group of people that has set itself apart from the world in an effort to live a holy life, we are generally observing a group of people that has successfully tuned out the negative voices. Historical characters who have left significant religious impacts on the world, like Jesus for example, are people who taught and practiced lives of not listening to the voices. What are these voices doing? The voices:

• Push us to do the things we should not be doing, even when we know we should not.
• Tell us to walk past a piece of trash without picking it up.
• Tell us to eat something we should not, even when we are dieting.
• Tell us to pass along a rumor about someone, even when we do not know if it is true.
• Tell us to cheat by doing something the easy way, instead of the correct way.
• Convince us that the easy way of doing something is okay because no one will notice.
• Tell us that there is nothing wrong with cheating if no one notices.
• Tell us we do not need study when we are taking classes.
• Tell us there is nothing wrong with spending more money than we should.
• Tell us we do not need to practice to be good at something.
• Tell us there is nothing wrong with using drugs even when we are addicted.

Anything you know that you should do, that you do not do, is the product of these voices. All of our destructive and harmful actions will generally be justified by these voices. The voices are very good at telling us it is okay to do various things we know we should not. Throughout our entire lives, we are in a constant dialogue with these voices. When people dominate the voices, they have very productive, happy, and meaningful lives, and when the voices dominate them, people have very unproductive, unhappy, and not meaningful lives. If you talk to most people about their lack of success and fulfillment in the world, they will point to something and someone else as the cause of their unhappiness. Most people believe that their greatest enemies are other people, society, their company, and so forth–not the voices they listen to on a daily basis, which exist inside their very own heads. Most people never realize that they are their own greatest enemy in the world. Most of us are controlled all the time by these voices. How many people do you know who spend the majority of their time overcoming this voice so they can get better and better? Something I have found the more I have studied success and looked at the most happy and successful people out there, is that happy, successful people have the greatest self-awareness of this voice. They make the study of their own mind and their weaknesses a major part of what they do. They are constantly training themselves to be stronger and stronger, to realize and overcome their weaknesses. Instead of being complacent, they are continually improving themselves in everything that they do. When you learn to overcome the voices, you have incredible potential and can accomplish great things. I went to watch a boxing match in Las Vegas last night between Floyd Mayweather and Juan Manuel Marquez. I sat a couple of seats away from Arnold Schwarzenegger, and as I sat there watching the fight I began to think of these voices and the power of ignoring them. Both the fighters and Schwarzenegger himself have excelled at this in order to attain great success. Before we left for the fight, my wife and I were waiting for a friend of hers to get ready, and we were all watching the television show The Biggest Loser. In this show, people who are a hundred or more pounds overweight all struggle to lose their excess weight. They are forced to diet, exercise, and change their lifestyles. In the episode I was watching, the participants were all taken to the doctor and were told that they were morbidly obese, and that if they were to keep up their lifestyles, they would all die early deaths. What was so interesting about this show was that the people on the show had, thus far, always struggled against the inner voices, yet the voices had continually won. As a result, the person had become heavier and heavier over the years. The TV show essentially deals with people confronting these voices and doing everything in their power to beat the voices. Throughout the show, people were crying and saying they couldn’t do it. Sometimes people quit. People’s bodies are so out of shape that many of them end up getting sick when they start exercising. The show is fascinating because it depicts how difficult it is for people to win against the inner voices, as well as the damage these voices can inflict on our lives. Last night, looking at Arnold a few seats over, I could not help but think about how much his life has been defined by not listening to the negative voices and by overcoming them. As most people know, Arnold came to fame as a bodybuilder and then became an actor. His work as a bodybuilder inspired an entire generation of men. When you read, watch, and learn about Arnold, you learn about the incredible power available to us in having discipline. One of my favorite Arnold quotes is the following:

A beginner does eight repetitions of a certain exercise with his maximum weight on the barbell. As soon as it hurts, he thinks about stopping. I work beyond this point, which means I tell my mind that as soon as it starts aching it is growing. Growing is something unusual for the body when you are over eighteen. The body isn’t used to ten, eleven, or twelve reps with a maximum weight. Then I do ten or fifteen sets of this in a row. No human body was ever prepared for this and suddenly it is making itself grow to handle this new challenge, growing through this pain area. Experiencing this pain in my muscles and aching and going on is my challenge. The last three or four reps is what makes the muscles grow. This area of pain divides a champion from someone who is not a champion. That’s what most people lack, having the guts to go on and just say they’ll go through the pain no matter what happens. I have no fear of fainting. I do squats until I fall over and pass out. So what? It’s not going to kill me. I wake up five minutes later and I’m OK. A lot of other athletes are afraid of this. So they don’t pass out. They don’t go on.

He is saying that pushing through the pain is what makes him grow. Not listening to the inner voices that make the average person quit is what makes Arnold improve and grow. I wonder what sort of life Arnold would have led if he had been like most people, just listening to the voice that urged him to quit? Most people never reach their potential because they listen to the voice that allows them to quit–usually just when they start to grow. How many people push through when they get to an uncomfortable state like Arnold? The secret to having the most successful life and career possible is to push through and ignore the voices that tell us to cut corners, to not do things the best they should be done, to not see it through when things get difficult, and to not do the absolute best that we can, in everything we do. In the legal profession you can spend up to $1,000 an hour for an attorney. Since an attorney who does work for $100 an hour is capable of doing the same sort of work that the $1,000 an hour attorney does, one might ask why would anyone possibly spend $1,000 an hour for an attorney? The biggest difference between the $100 an hour attorney and the one who charges $1,000 an hour is most often the discipline of thought that that $1,000 an hour attorney exhibits. There are always going to be some other differences, of course, but for the most part, when you pay $1,000 an hour for an attorney, this person is not going to cut corners; he or she is going to do the most difficult things instead of the easiest things; he or she will do more thorough research and will be more certain of their decisions; he or she will be right much more often than wrong. What you find in the legal profession is no different than what you will find in any profession, product, or service. For example, the car that costs $100,000 as opposed to $10,000 is likely to be more carefully put together, with more attention to detail. It is like this with everything. The more thought, discipline, and work it requires, the more valuable it is likely to be. If people were to set out to dream up ways to limit you in your life and career, what they would most certainly do is arouse that negative inner voice within you. They would tell you that it is okay to leave at 5:00 p.m. and finish the project in the morning although it is due at 10:00 a.m. and is very important. They would tell you it is okay to overeat and to not take care of yourself. They would tell you that it is okay to have several drinks every night, despite the fact that it makes you ineffective at work the next day. They would tell you that it is okay to steal if no one notices. They would tell you that it is okay to lie to people when it is more convenient than telling the truth. They would tell you that you should do whatever seems to benefit you the most right now, and whatever feels best to you; never mind others and the long-term consequences of your action. The course of your career and life will be largely determined by how well you resist these inner voices. You can reach incredible heights of success the more you learn to resist the voices. When you are applying to jobs and are pursuing your career, it means you can give 200% effort–not merely 50%. This means you apply to every single job you can find; you call to follow up on applications; you apply a second time after being rejected the first time; you make sure you research every job in the market; you initiate mailing campaigns and do everything you can to make sure you market yourself as effectively as possible. On the job, it means you work extra hard, do not take shortcuts, and continually work at improving yourself. You make your mind tougher and healthier along the way. You develop more and more discipline. You push through the pain zone. People who reach great heights of success and have the most fulfilling lives are those who are not afraid to go farther than others. They ignore the voices that tell them to take the easy way out. They choose to listen to another inner voice–one of discipline, which tells them to push through and to do all things the best way they can be done. You need to listen to the other voice inside of you, which pushes you to the greatest heights and helps you ignore the voices that seek only short-term gratification. By doing this, you will unlock the secret to unlimited potential. THE LESSON When considering your capabilities, nothing is more exciting than imagining who and what you will become in life. To do this, however, you must quash the negative voice in your head telling you to compromise or take the easy way out. When you see the people who are in a perpetual state of unhappiness, they are most often the people who listen and succumb to the negative voices in their heads.

I want to enjoy everyone I know, everything I buy, and every idea I come into contact with to the fullest. I feel that we need to really appreciate what we have to the absolute fullest. A few years ago, I was taking private pilot lessons and was very close to getting my pilot’s license–and then I stopped. It has been at the back of my mind for some time that I have not completed this training, and that I need to do something about it. Accordingly, I drove to the airport to sign up for classes and complete my training. If you dream of doing something, you should never stop close to the finish line. This is what most people do. You should always push through and hit your goal. The Camarillo Airport is a small airport that is about a twenty-five-minute drive from where I live in Malibu. It is sort of in the middle of nowhere, about twenty-five miles from civilization on all sides. I have always loved going to airports and walking around them, and this airport was no exception. Camarillo is not a commercial airport. It is mainly for people who own airplanes and fly for recreation. Since I live on the beach, I see lots of airplanes towing banners and advertising beer, new movies, and so forth, to the people sitting on the beach. All of these airplanes seem to originate from the vicinity of the Camarillo Airport. The flight school at Camarillo is right next to an “executive” airport hangar. So, I decided to go inside the hangar and look around. There was a woman in an office next door and she gave me a tour of the hangar. I spoke with the woman at some length about the airport. She told me that people like the airport because it is low-key and other people do not see them coming and going. She said lots of stars and very important businesspeople fly in and out of the airport regularly because it is more private, away from the “buzz” of Los Angeles. When I got inside the hangar, I was amazed. I saw a collection of around twenty-five airplanes that cost about $3 million each. I could not believe there was a collection of these airplanes right there. In addition, there were several jets, some of which were quite large. “Whose airplanes are these?” I asked. “They are various people’s airplanes. Most of the people fly them rarely. That floatplane right there belongs to Kenny G. He likes to fly out of here and go landing on lakes.” “I do not understand,” I said. “I do not either,” she said. “Can you charter them?” I asked. “Not these airplanes. These are owned by private people. Some of them have their own pilots, whom they hire whenever they travel, though.” As I looked around, I saw what was essentially a huge parking lot of multimillion-dollar airplanes that are very rarely used. It seemed amazing to me that so many people had these dreams of flying, yet their airplanes were grounded and hardly ever used. I wondered how many hangars like this one must exist throughout the world, wherein people’s once magnificent dreams of flying sit parked and waiting. One of the most important things you can do is to go after your dreams. Your dream could be something materialistic like owning an airplane or a boat, or it could be spending your time (or life) with a certain person. What happens, however, when someone achieves his or her dream? Regardless of how your life has gone, I am sure there are many dreams you have already accomplished. But, once you achieve your goals, what then? What you see with airplanes, you also see with boats. I grew up spending a lot of my childhood in marinas around Detroit because my stepfather operated a boat business. People would make all of this money and would purchase an expensive boat, and then end up taking it out only a few times a year–or less. It never made any sense to me. Why would someone spend all of this money on a boat if they had no plans on using it? I imagine the person dreamed of owning the boat for some time and was very excited about it. Then they got the boat and forgot about the fun they could have with it. As the dream of owning a boat was fulfilled, the boat somehow became less interesting or desirable to the person who bought it. We have all had the experience of starting on the road to fulfilling our dreams. To me, the airplanes I saw at the Camarillo Airport represented people who pursued their dreams and ended up reaching them. There are people who do everything they can to reach a goal, to get somewhere that they think is going to make them happy, and then when they get there, they do not appreciate it. They are not happy because their lives have not really changed the way they had hoped they would after achieving their dream. While all people do not live out their dreams by accumulating boats and airplanes, some do exactly the same thing with people. People dream of being close to another person, and often fulfill this goal. A marriage is a perfect example of two people coming together due to what is, in most cases, a dream one or (hopefully) both of them had. Someone told me recently that each year 5% of the adult population gets married. However, despite this percentage of people getting married, more than half of these people end up getting divorced. What happened to their dream? When I see couples fighting and deeply unhappy with each other, it really depresses me, because I know that neither person’s dreams are being fulfilled any longer. Over some time, the people’s wishes to spend their lives together suddenly fall by the wayside. Several years ago, my wife and I were driving someplace with a couple who, a few years previously, had appeared to be deeply in love. The story of how they met and how their relationship developed had been a real source of inspiration to me when I had first heard it. The man had dreamed of being with the woman for a long time and had sought her out for quite a while before she had agreed to go out with him. Soon they were married, but within a few years everything had seemed to change. The man had forgotten what his wife had once represented to him, or at least he was forgetting this more than he should have been. We were sitting in the backseat and the man was driving. The man was saying things to his wife like: “If you do not shut up, you stupid bitch, so help me god I am going to smack you!” He sounded extremely serious and determined in his tone. The woman was crying and shouting various insults to fuel her husband’s fury. There are certain fights that couples have that, when you witness them, you see they are at a level far beyond “normal behavior,” and you may accurately estimate that, as a result, the couple will thereafter divorce or be spending several unhappy years together. This was one of those fights. I did not get involved, but the fight disturbed me to quite a degree, especially since I knew how important both the man and woman were to each other. Nevertheless, they seemed to be in the process of throwing away their dreams. Couples often end up doing a lot of damage to their dreams and lives together. Usually this happens as a result of taking each other for granted, and the people within the couple decide to just throw it all away. When you see boats, exotic planes, and people who had once been the focus of someone’s dream suddenly being ignored and treated poorly, it is very sad. It is as if people reach a point where they do not appreciate what they have accomplished and the fact that they have fulfilled their dreams. If you fulfill your dreams, nothing is more important than being incredibly grateful for what you have done and enjoying the results. The person with the airplane should be getting out and enjoying the airplane. The person with the boat should be enjoying the boat. The person with the friend or spouse they one day dreamed of having, should enjoy his or her partner, and be eternally grateful. There is no use in having a goal or a dream if you do not enjoy and nurture the result when you finally achieve it. Simply put, if you achieve something, you should make the most of it. Far too many people reach a goal and then stop caring. This is the worst thing you can do, because deep down you will never appreciate any goal you attain in the future. Never allow your dreams, goals, and aspirations to sit on the sidelines. Cherish these things while you seek them as well as once you attain them. You need to enjoy what you have now in order to live your life to the fullest. THE LESSON Cherish your dreams, goals, and aspirations both while you are seeking them and after you attain them. If you dream of doing something, never stop short of the finish line. There is no point to goals or dreams if you do not enjoy and nurture the results once you achieve them; if you achieve something, you should make the most of it. If you stop caring once you achieve your goals, then you will never truly appreciate any of the goals you achieve in the future.

• get promoted
• get a better job
• or find themselves in a better life

as a result of doing more than was expected of them.  The harder you work—and the more you do than is expected–the more you will attract the attention of your superiors and the sooner you will find yourself in a better life. In the case of my job as a garbage man, my hard work attracted the attention of my superiors at first in the wrong way—but then it paid off. In my job as a garbage man I was surrounded by men whose entire careers had been based on not doing more than was expected of them.  In contrast, I was of the belief that I should always do more than was expected of me.  This belief is something that I owe every success I have ever had to. In academics, this means studying more than is expected of you. In the work world, this means doing more than is expected of you in many, many ways.  When I was in college, if a teacher told us we had to write a paper of a “minimum” of five pages—I would write a thirty- or forty-page paper. “Why are you writing such a long paper,” my classmates would always ask me. “Because I want to get an A,” I would tell them.  And when I wrote such long papers and put so much effort into them, I always got As (often the only A in the class) when everyone else turned in their five-page (or maybe six-page) papers and got Bs and Cs. I even saw many people play with their margins to get to over five pages. The practice of law (which I did for some time) is like this to.  I remember one of my first insights into really great lawyering came when I was clerking for a judge.  I started to notice that the best lawyers from the best firms did very small, imperceptible things that other attorneys would not. For example, if they were sending you a bunch of pages paper clipped together they might put a sticky note between the paper and the paper clip so the pages were not marked with the paperclip indentation. This is, of course, excessively anal but it is an example of the smallest of details that the best attorneys do not miss. Their work is proofread meticulously. They are on top of just about every single thing they are doing to an extraordinary degree, and no detail is too small. In contrast, the work of average attorneys would be proofed far less carefully and contain far more errors, typos, and other sorts of things.  Forget about a sticky note so there is no paper clip indentation… Whether it is working as a lawyer or as a garbage man, there is always a way to do much more than is expected of you in every profession. There is no job where you cannot do more than is expected of you. You may not immediately see the results, but over time you will.  No supervisor misses their hardest and best workers.  You will soon find yourself promoted, given raises, given bonuses, and more. You will be offered a supervisors job eventually. Or you will be hired away by an astute competitor who sees how much you are giving and knows they can channel your energy. “If I give more than is expected of me, won’t I be used and taken advantage of?” you may ask. There is a remote chance of this occurring. But human nature is to give back in response to receiving. This is how it works 99% of the time. It is just a law of the world. I have seen so many attorneys get better jobs by giving more than is expected of them.  Other lawyers notice and hire them away. They rise up the ranks of firms. They attract clients who also see their devotion. They get to the top fast. It is like this in every profession. There is no other thing that has given me more in life than performing more than is expected of me.  Let your competitors in your job slack off and put in half-assed efforts.  A few years from now you will be living the dream while they are stuck or moving backward. If you are not doing your absolute best and withholding your best work, you are only prolonging your present situation and are dooming yourself to a life of mediocrity (for your abilities) or, at worst, failure. Resist the urge to do only what is expected of you.  Give all you can to everything you do and you will succeed. THE LESSON In every job, there is always much more to do than what is actually expected of you; by dong more than expected, you will attract the attention and respect of your superiors and find your life improving. When you withhold your best work, however, you only prolong your current situation and confine yourself to mediocrity. Put everything you can into all of your work, resist the urge to only put in the expected effort, and you will find your life and career approving accordingly.

Conversely, some of the greatest powers you personally have in your own career and in business are relationships. Relationships are a powerful force that you can use to your advantage in your career. Inefficient and top-heavy organizations are everywhere, and they become this way mostly due to the power of relationships between the people working there. People often get hired and stay employed–due almost entirely to their ability to connect with their employer–and develop strong relationships at the workplace. I would go so far as to say that probably 20% to 30% of the people inside of most organizations are not actually needed at all. These people are kept employed and are allowed to collect salaries, benefits, and so forth because of the power of the relationships they have developed inside the organization. Others like having these people around and will protect them. This is a good, safe position in which to find yourself.

I used to defend companies when they were sued for employment discrimination, wrongful termination, and so forth. I defended more of these cases than I can even remember; they are a dime a dozen. Generally, when people lose their jobs, it is because they did not have solid relationships within the company, people did not like them, and so forth.

Furthermore, people often lose jobs because they are not protected by others inside of an organization. One of my parents worked for years inside of a major American company, not doing much of anything, because my parent was protected by someone high up. It was due to this relationship that this parent was able to keep their job for so long. There is a constant tension between efficiency and inefficiency inside of organizations, and often relationships can win out over purely rational business-based decisions.

As any business grows, a protectionist sentiment develops, as employees protect each other and do their best to honor various relationships. It is for this reason that most companies generally cease to be competitive within the market or go out of business altogether. In reality, draconian cutbacks, harsh management, and cold and calculating number crunchers are the ones who ultimately save companies and organizations. At the same time, these sorts of people are also typically the greatest enemy of relationships in organizations.

I have been deeply involved in the legal profession for most of my career. Back in the early 1980s, most law firms in the United States and throughout the world dealt with what was called the lockstep compensation system. In effect, this was a system of compensation wherein people were compensated more money for each year they worked at their law firms, regardless of their productivity, the amount of business they generated, or other criteria. The idea was that the older attorneys had paid their dues within the law firm by being there for the longest amount of time. Other law firms simply had compensation systems that were less formal, and might be decided through committees, for example. In this case, it was possible for the firm to determine individuals’ salaries based on the quality of their relationships with superiors.

Starting in the 1980s, consulting firms began to come into law offices, and they started to mix it up. The consultants showed the law firms that they could increase their profitability by rewarding the highest producers based on their individual productivity, instead of paying everyone based on informal compensation systems. The consultants set up point systems and other measurements of productivity within the law firms. Before long, a sea change occurred inside of the legal profession, and numerous attorneys ended up losing their jobs or taking massive hits in their compensation. The relationships inside of the organizations became drastically de-emphasized and, instead, the decisive factor became numbers and other quantifiable items. This change is still occurring in law firms, and it has been devastating to numerous attorneys, specifically to those whose lives and careers have revolved around their ability to create relationships within their organizations. Law firms, however, have had to undergo this restructuring in order to survive.

I have the most hands-off management style you can ever imagine. Throughout the years, I have employed numerous managers whom I have given near complete discretion to make all sorts of hiring decisions without my involvement. In watching how these people have hired new employees, I have learned that people hire the kinds of people they like, relate to, and want to spend time with outside of work. I have seen this in most companies, firms, and other organizations I have observed throughout the years.

Several years ago, I hired a human resources director who had experience in working for a large multinational organization in a hiring capacity. On one of his first days of work, the two of us had lunch and spent some time together. While I am not sure how it came out, the man told me that he really liked thin women with giant breasts. I did not think much about it at the time; however, I did find it somewhat humorous, considering this fellow was an older man with a real professorial sort of demeanor. I filed this information away in the back of my head and forgot all about it.

I met with this man by phone and in person once a week, and during these meetings, I told him about various people that the company needed to hire. The company was growing very quickly at the time and this person was generally hiring several people per week. Each evening he would take home tons of résumés, review them, and hire people the next day. Because our company was spread over three buildings in Pasadena, I did not meet, nor did I see, all of the people the guy was hiring. In addition, I was traveling a great deal, so I was not in the office as much as I would have liked to be.

At some point, I was in the office and I took a look around. I immediately realized that the man had hired nothing but thin women with large breasts. In addition, the more I watched this story unfold, the more I noticed that the women he had hired all seemed to fawn all over him, understanding that he liked feeling validated constantly by women.

Was this a bad thing? I am not sure. What I do know is that, from what I understood, all of the women were pretty good at their jobs–at least to begin with. As time went on, however, it turned out that a few of the women were not performing very well. One, for example, had spent the majority of her time cutting and pasting outfit combination ideas into a Word document, instead of working. When her horrible work ethic was brought to my attention, the human resources director said:

“She is the most valuable person in this company,” and he did everything he could to defend her, although she was clearly not necessary to the company’s functioning. The human resources director fought with everything he had to keep this woman around, due to a perceived connection that he shared with her. This is just a minor example of the power of relationships in business.

I remember another employee who had a real leaning toward a certain type of employee. The person that he seemed most interested in hiring and protecting was always of the same race, sex, physical build, and other characteristics. When people that this person hired did not do well on the job, they too were defended blindly and with a great deal of gusto, despite being poor performers.

I have also seen people kept on who literally had no work to do, because they were considered valuable to the company. In the past our company has had entire departments staffed when one person could have probably handled the work. A manager often grows protective of his employees, because of how the relationships with them develop over time: “We could never do without these people!” they may say. However, this usually could not be further from the truth.

Getting a job, advancing in your career, getting business, making the sale, and more–it is all about relationships. The better relationships that we form, the better off we are. When you are being interviewed for a job, your success often has more to do with the connection and quality of relationships you have with others than anything else. People want to work alongside those with whom they feel they have a connection–not necessarily with those who they perceive will do the best job.

One of the most interesting things about job interviews is that many times there is a favorite for a certain job–before everyone has had a chance to interview. That favorite could be someone who is a friend of the person making the hiring decision. Or it could be someone who made a great impression on the interviewer before you got to the interview. If you are interviewing after that person has interviewed, it means you have come into the interview at a distinct disadvantage, because the interviewer may have a sense of loyalty to the person he or she has already interviewed and favored; in this case, the interviewer does not want to like you too much. What ends up happening in these sorts of interviews is that a great deal of “professional formalities” generally occur, and you will notice that you are unable to make any sort of meaningful connection with your interviewer. This clamming up on the part of the interviewer is generally a very bad sign. In order to get a job, get business, and reach your potential in anything, it is extremely important that you make a personal connection.

If you cannot connect with the people you want to hire you, or the people you want to do business with, then you are not going to have an easy time getting work. You need to break down the walls of professionalism between you and others and make sure that the person relates to you, likes you, and feels a connection to you. There is nothing more important than this.

A danger in business, in your career, and in your job search is professionalism. Many people have a profound belief that they must be extremely professional in the business world–with employers and with others–at all times. While I am in no way against proper decorum, there is a real danger in acting too professional. This is because always being hyper-professional will keep others from feeling connected to you. If you cannot relate to people and build strong personal relationships with them, you are generally not going to do well. Relationships can be built in many ways, but they exert so much influence over our day-to-day careers and lives that without any sort of connection, we are often quite lost.

I absolutely hate it when people in business try to act extra “professional.” I dislike being “professional” in business a great deal as well. Professionalism can act as a wall that potentially prevents you from getting that job, promotion, or business. If you actually have a real shot at getting the job or position, you will know it because your interviewer will most often let down his or her guard, confide in you, and make the connection. However, if the person you are dealing with actually does not want anything to do with you, he or she will not be willing to reveal much to you and will try to keep his or her distance. The lack of personal connection will most probably either get you into trouble now (i.e., you will not get hired) or later (i.e., you will be let go in the future).

An employer’s lack of genuine interest in you makes it incredibly difficult for you to get the job, to get ahead, and to accomplish what you are seeking to accomplish. You need to be able to relate to people and connect with them at work, in interviews, and elsewhere. The more connected you are, the better you will do.

THE LESSON

The influence of relationships can inhibit business growth and lead to disaster. At the same time, however, relationships constitute your greatest assets in your career. All aspects of your job search and your career depend on the relationships you cultivate, so you must strive to form the best relationships possible. You must engender affinity and genuine connections with those around you to achieve success.

• Have you ever known someone whose friends and acquaintances are always getting sick?
• Have you ever known someone whose friends and acquaintances are always having accidents?
• Have you ever known someone whose friends and acquaintances are always getting in trouble?
• Have you ever known someone whose friends and acquaintances are always in crisis?
• Have you ever known someone whose friends and acquaintances are always having financial problems?
• Have you ever known someone whose friends and acquaintances are always losing their jobs?
• Have you ever known someone whose friends and acquaintances are always unhappy?

I have, and I do not think there are a lot of coincidences when it comes to people and the misfortunes that plague their lives. There are, quite simply, people who will generally make those around them unhappy and create problems. While it seems to be a paranoid sort of assertion, I firmly believe that whether or not the people around us are validating or invalidating us is a large cause of our success or failure in life. This also goes for organizations. If you are in a good or bad organization, this can have a tremendous influence over what happens to you. One of my greatest sources of pride is the number of positive stories I could tell you about my former employees. Good things have happened to many of them in their careers after being with me for some time. The fact that good things happen to people associated with a given organization or person reflects well on that organization or person. Conversely, I know of law firms in which nothing much ever happens for the people who leave, and, in most cases, they experience one failure after another following their departure. Much of this has to do, I think, with the level of support the people may have received in their previous positions and the messages they have carried forth into their lives by virtue of this association.

• Did they learn to believe in what is possible?
• Did they feel validated?
• Did they develop confidence?
• Were they able to learn and incorporate a message about their own validity in the world?

If you are spending time with a person who is invalidating your efforts and your life, the odds are you will be negatively affected. Similarly, if you are around someone who is constantly validating you and giving you approval, you may benefit tremendously through your association with this person. The same thing goes for the organizations that we are part of. There are people out there who tend to better the mood, health, and general well-being of those around them, and there are those who do not. I am going to list a few examples of this; some of them may be upsetting and may even relate to you personally, but nonetheless they merit review. I have known of many people throughout the years who were closely connected with someone, whether it be a parent, mate, or someone else. The person they were connected with had a huge fear of the person leaving them, and therefore their personal interest was in keeping the person down, making sure that the person did not improve, or change, to such an extent that they could ever leave them. A parent who does not want his or her child to go away from home may feign all sorts of illnesses to keep the child around and may also discourage any of the child’s efforts at self-improvement. For example, if the child gets into an excellent out-of-state college, the parent may encourage the child to stay home and go to a local community college, for various reasons, instead of finding a way to make the child’s upward mobility to a better school a reality. A parent who has the need to feel superior to his or her child may also keep the child down in subtle ways. In personal relationships, a man or woman may discourage a mate from trying to get a better job, looking better, and so forth, for fear that this might lead to separation and abandonment. This person might relay negative feedback about his or her partner’s accomplishments but hold back positive feedback or information that is likely to be helpful. The objective of such people is to keep other people down. People can hold you back by direct means, and they can also do so through indirect means. For example, a friend or significant other who does not compliment or notice the positive things that you do, or who always finds fault in the positive things that you do, can have a very traumatic effect on you in the long run. Making you self-conscious of your faults and always pointing these out can also be a seriously negative influence. Relating about nothing other than negativity, impossibility, and so forth can also have a very negative effect on you. If any of this sounds familiar to you, it is probably time to evaluate your relationships. In most sports, there is something called the home team advantage, which means that when a team is playing at home, it tends to perform much better than when they play away. When a team is at home, it is encouraged and cheered on by people, and is supported by the spectators, whereas visiting teams are often booed. Consider this explanation from Wikipedia:

In most team sports where the concept of home and away stadiums is found, the home team is considered to have a significant advantage over the visitors. Due to this, many important games (such as playoff or elimination matches) in many sports have special rules for determining what match is played where. In association football, matches with two legs, one played in each team’s “home,” are common; it is also common to hold important games at a neutral site. In many team sports in North America (including baseball, basketball, and ice hockey), playoff series are often held, with a nearly equal number of games at each team’s site; as it is usually beneficial to have an odd number of matches in a series (to prevent ties), the final home game is often awarded to the team that had the most success over the regular season. In some sports, this tends to be a huge ace in the hole, such as basketball, where historically the home team in deciding games has won 78 of 97 games, up until the second round of the 2007 NBA Playoffs. Home field advantage is especially pronounced in NCAA Division I American football, where teams like LSU, USC, Ohio State, Penn State, Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, Georgia, and many others win consistently at home. Many college football stadiums also have nicknames that represent the loudness of the stadium. Autzen Stadium, home of the Oregon Ducks, has been nicknamed the “Autzen Zoo” because of how loud it gets, and Kyle Field, the home of the Texas A&M Aggies has been nicknamed the “12th Man” because of the loudness there. That can be attributed to the fact that many of the largest football stadiums in America are college stadiums, such as Michigan Stadium, which seats 107,501, about 35,000 more than most NFL stadiums. However, teams that are nearby may have less of a home field advantage. Such examples may be UCLA-USC or Cal-Stanford, where the visiting team’s fans often equal or exceed the home crowd and the only effect the visiting team has is they have to wear their road uniforms and play on a nearby field. Sometimes during bowl season, a team will happen to play a bowl game in their home stadium and sometimes be designated as the visiting team in their own home stadium, and thus, receives the home field advantage despite not being the home team. On the high school level, where schools often share stadiums, when the co-tenants play each other, one school manages to pick up a not so rare, but advantageous road game in their home stadium. On the professional level, several teams either get to play road games in their home stadiums or play a road game nearby. When the Jets and the Giants of the NFL meet, whoever the visiting team is gets an extra game at their home stadium. A similar situation occurs when the Lakers and Clippers of the NBA play each other. Other series where teams get to stay close to home on the road include: (NFL) Raiders-49ers, Ravens-Redskins (MLB) A’s-Giants, Dodgers-Angels, Mets-Yankees, Cubs-White Sox, Cubs-Brewers, Orioles-Nationals (NHL) Islanders-Rangers-Devils, Ducks-Kings, Oilers-Flames, Senators-Maple Leafs, Canadians-Senators, and in the NBA, Knicks-Nets, Kings-Warriors and Lakers-Clippers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_advantage

The home team advantage is one of the most important concepts in sports and it is a proven factor in how well teams do. If this concept applies to teams, how do you think it can apply to everyday life? There are people who support us, validate us, and make us feel good, and this helps us do well more often than not. There are also people around us who fail to support us, and this hurts us. When a team away from home scores a goal, people boo or do not make the team feel validated for its efforts. When the team away from home does something wrong, people may cheer. The psychological message transmitted is that people only approve of the team away from home when they are doing poorly. Many people associate with people and groups of people who treat them like they are not the home team; others associate with people who treat them like they are the home team. Your success in your career and in your life will in large part be determined by whether you are living, working, and associating with a “home team” crowd or an “away team” crowd. When I was in high school geometry class, after the first exam, our teacher drew a giant circle on the blackboard, representing the shape of a horse-racing track. He then put little dots in several places along the track and said something that I will never forget:

“This is where you all started in the race, but everyone’s position can change. Some of you will pass one another at some point, and the person who is in first right now may not keep running and may end up in last place. Conversely, the person who is in last may keep running, training, and trying to do better and may end up in first place. You need to realize that the race for the best grade will take all semester, and just because you are one place right now, this does not mean it is where you will end up.”

This is a really simple example and the teacher was talking only about our geometry class at the time; however, it is a metaphor that stands true for our lives. People begin the race in a certain place, and then some people end up doing much better than others, and this is just how it works. The race keeps going and just because someone starts the race in first place does not mean he or she is going to finish the race in first place. When you trace the cause of someone with a lot of potential falling behind in the race, when you see sickness and ill health, when you find people not trying hard enough, when you see failure and despair, generally somewhere along the line you will find someone who has been negatively affected and otherwise discouraged by people somewhere along the way. It is an absolute fact of life that the company you keep will have an effect on what happens to you. In athletics, it is common for some players to be extremely good at a sport despite not being tall enough (in basketball), big enough (in football), and so forth. What generally separates these players who do not have all the physical attributes of success is the sheer determination and self-belief inside of them. Having heart and drive can make all the difference. Heart and drive are what push people to the top of any profession and any job. If you are going to reach your full potential, you must possess heart and drive. This is something that wins races, despite any uncontrollable obstacles that may arise. Heart and drive can be killed, though, if they are not supported. The best thing you can do for yourself is to put yourself in a position where you are supported, where you have the home team advantage. Having the home team advantage is something that can help you win in the game of life.

• Discover what you want!
• Have a positive attitude!
• Create big goals!
• Have discipline!
• Follow through!
• Believe in yourself!
• Keep trying, even when you fail!

Virtually any self-improvement book you may read and any self-improvement seminar you may attend will give you some variation of this advice. I am not criticizing any of this advice, because it works and can help people become very successful. These are concrete, guiding principles that have been proven over many years and in many cases. For example, if you do not follow through with whatever you are seeking to achieve, then it is unlikely you will ever amount to much; you need to follow through. If it were my decision, I would make sure that all schools instruct people about these various principles of self-improvement, because they are so incredibly important. Far too many people are nowhere near reaching their potential because they do not understand the basics of self-improvement. There is a real difference between long-term success and short-term success. Familiarizing yourself with the principles of self-improvement can help you advance in your career and life for a while, but they are not the be all and end all of what it really takes to succeed in the long term. When the economy is good, the people who follow general self-improvement advice can always do well for a time. For example, they can more easily get jobs and, depending on market conditions, get one raise and promotion after another. There is nothing wrong with this; however, to experience consistent and long-lasting success, a completely different set of skills becomes necessary. Real self-improvement and self-development has nothing to do with you. In fact, the people who really end up succeeding in their work are usually those who believe that becoming better means the following:

• helping others discover what they want
• helping others have positive attitudes
• helping others create big goals
• helping others have discipline
• helping others follow through with their goals
• helping others believe in themselves
• helping others keep trying even when they fail

It is like this in every industry and every career path I know about. If you name any profession, I will point out how becoming good at the profession requires you to put others first, and how the more you do this, the more success you will find. Currently, we are in a horrible hiring market for attorneys. One of my jobs is running a legal recruiting firm. Over the past several months, I have seen numerous recruiters fail at their jobs. Many of these legal recruiters got into the business initially because they wanted to make money; they liked the lifestyle associated with being a recruiter, and they had lots of other reasons for choosing the job, all of which revolved around them. These recruiters tend to be suffering the worst in this economy. Conversely, the recruiters who got into the business because they view it as an outlet to help others have continued doing incredibly well. Most likely this is because the best attorney candidates can sense whether their recruiters really want to help them. The attorneys trust these recruiters and flock to them. The self-improvement we seek starts with helping others. Making everything all about ourselves is a huge epidemic in our society, whether one analyzes people in politics, sports, business–or just daily life. I love watching politics from the sidelines. The longer you watch politicians, the more you realize that a lot of them are crooked and are only in it for themselves, not to help others. The politicians are often, it seems, more concerned with getting bribes, steering lucrative contracts to friends, and otherwise benefiting from their position of power. Instead of being concerned about their constituents and society at large, they are often more concerned with making sure that their own needs are met. There will always be scandals such as those with the former Illinois governor, Rod Blagojevich, because the idea of “self-improvement” for many people means enriching themselves at others’ expense. Not too long ago, I met a guy who owns a sports book casino. Since he is taking millions of dollars in bets a day during the sports season, he told me that he and other casino owners have learned that there is a ton of graft and so forth in college sports, for example. It is not uncommon for college football games to be fixed. The casinos can often pick this up due to betting patterns. When games occur that appear to be fixed, the casinos will usually observe players making ridiculous errors and appearing to throw the game. In these cases, the athletes are obviously more concerned with themselves than their team or fans. The same thing happens in business. Many executives get to high places in business and suddenly you see them doing all sorts of things that are more about them than about others. Whether it is an executive doling out stock options that are backdated or some other misdeed, executives are continually under fire for being more concerned with their own “self-improvement” than helping the people around them. This is something I see all the time with high-ranking executives and others: They simply care more about themselves than their customers, coworkers, or anyone else. The key to your own success is simple: Nothing you do in your life is about you. You simply cannot succeed in your life if you believe it is all about you. It is never about you and never will be about you. Ignoring this concept can be dangerous and can crush your chances of success. Your goals and aspirations need to be far greater and larger than focusing solely on your goals and what you want. Whatever you are seeking in your life, you will only find it when you are working to fulfill the goals and aspirations of others. Detroit is a fascinating city to me in so many respects. There was so much wealth there at one time, which was brought about by the automobile industry. Now, over the past five years, homes there have gone down in value by up to four times, as industry and the economy have suffered due to the weakening state of the auto industry. In reality, though, the city has been collapsing for years and has been going downhill for my entire lifetime. One of my first memories is when, in the early 1970s, Detroit started to proclaim itself “the Renaissance City,” and the Renaissance Center was built in downtown Detroit. The idea was that the city was on its way back, experiencing a revival. The problem with this, however, was that the city was not really going to come back. I believe a switchover had occurred in the psychology of the automobile companies in Detroit, from focusing on “what can we provide to the people” to “what the people can provide to us.” Simply stated, the automotive companies became insular and more concerned with their own needs and wants than with providing an exceptional product and service to the American public. Throughout the United States, there are all sorts of towns like Atchison, Kansas, which grew up and thrived at one time due to the railroads coming through. When the train diminished in importance and other forms of transportation became prominent, these towns lost a great deal of their wealth and became shells of their former selves. Detroit is another one of these towns too, and there are countless others. If these towns had been more concerned with what they could give, instead of what they could take, then my thought is that they would still have prospered, no matter what had happened. Lately, I have been reading lots of articles in newspapers, magazines, and so forth about people who formerly had high-level jobs in investment banks and similar “big” employers, who are now doing things like working in restaurants, or in sporting goods stores for close to minimum wage. “I was making $150,000 a year, and now the best job I can get only pays $11.00 an hour!” is the sort of statement you read in these articles again and again. The articles are always the same and they drone on about how the person at issue can no longer afford to go out to eat, how they are selling their house, and how they are so frustrated that employers are not responding to their applications. I have a ton of sympathy for these people. The employment market is bad; however, I often notice there is a problem with the psychology of the people I am reading about when I study these articles. The problem is that, more often than not, the people complaining about the job market and their employment situation are focused on themselves and their woes–instead of being focused on what they can provide for others. In fact, a lot of these unemployed people might not have lost their jobs or had difficult times finding a new job if their focus had been 100% on others. These sorts of articles lead me to question the ultimate value these people were providing, to begin with.

• In almost every case, when people lose their jobs, they are not focused enough on their employers’ needs.
• In almost every case, when an employer goes out of business, it was not focused enough on others’ needs.
• In almost every case, when people have a difficult time finding a job, they are not focusing enough on another’s needs when they are interviewing and putting together their application materials.

Nothing you do in this life is all about you. Your career is not all about you. The company you work for is not all about you. Your family is not all about you. Your friends are not all about you. It is always all about the other person. Your life and the opportunities out there are so much larger and all encompassing than you. Most people spend their time asking questions about themselves and pondering over themselves. They ask questions about what they can do to be better, questions about their goals, questions about their future. Constantly looking within one’s self can actually get in the way of success. You are one person and the world is made up of billions of people. You are always going to find more answers and more satisfying answers when you look outside of yourself instead of inside yourself. When you provide value, help, and support to others, this will provide you with more spiritual, psychological, financial, and other benefits than any other self-improvement concept out there. The way to achieve your greatest potential, and to truly help yourself, is to start helping others. THE LESSON True self-improvement actually has nothing to do with you, but everything to do with helping others towards their goals. Remember that nothing you do in your life is ultimately about you. Your goals and aspirations must be larger and greater than focusing solely on what you want; helping others will provide you with more spiritual, financial, and psychological benefits than any other kind of self-improvement.

• They would have questions about the proper sorts of candidates to send to law firms.
• They would have technical questions about different law firms.
• They would want to know various company procedures and so forth.

I would happily share and teach all of this information; however, in the weeks and months that I would train each new recruiter, I really was never all that concerned with fundamentals. For example, I knew that the recruiters would learn about various law firms in due course. I knew that I could teach them how to present candidates to law firms most effectively. What I was most concerned with was something far deeper and more significant.  There was one thing that I knew would either make or break these recruiters and determine whether or not they succeeded. By the time each recruiter was done being trained, I knew and could tell many, many things. I knew if they would succeed at the job. I knew if they would last at the job. What I knew, all came down to one thing: Whether or not the person believed the job was about them—or was about others. The more the recruiter truly believed the job was about others, the better they did. “None of this is about you,” I would always tell people.  “It is 100% about others and has nothing to do with you.” Less than 30% of all the recruiters I’ve hired, worked on, and trained ever “got” this.  A few people understood this naturally (most do not). My training would generally hit the new recruiters with this message from multiple directions and in unexpected ways. I might have them read self-improvement books where this was an underlying (but not direct) message. Generally, sometime during the final week or so of the training, I would try to deliver them this message in a serious way. I might bring it up in the evening while we were sitting by a fire and there were no interruptions. I felt the message needed to be taken in, pondered, and slept on. The reason for this was that I felt the message was incredibly important and something that needed to be absorbed and fully understood. In fact, I felt the message was the most important career lesson the person would ever receive. When recruiters “got” this message, their career and life changed. They would very quickly start doing exceptionally well and making all sorts of placements. They would be referred to others. Their entire career would just get fired up in a real hurry.  People who understood and practiced this mantra almost universally did very well. The power of this message was so strong that two recruiters working together in the same office might have results that were 180 degrees different. One recruiter might have fifteen people interviewing at one time and be making placements at a rapid clip.  Another recruiter might be lucky to have anything going on at all—despite having access to the same resources as the other recruiter. It is all about the other person and never about you. What does it mean when I say people believe the job is about them? It means people are focused on their needs and wants.  They focus on things like

• How much money they make
• Working too hard
• Giving too much of themselves
• Whether others in a similar job are making more money than them
• How others in their company are doing compared to them
• How much free time they have
• Hobbies and pursuits outside of work
• How they are perceived by others
• Not being taken advantage of
• The prestige of other people they are working with
• The quality of their benefits

People who are focused on themselves spend a lot of time worrying and thinking about stuff like this. In fact, they generally spend just as much time thinking about these sorts of things as they spend thinking about their jobs and the people they are serving.  When someone is focused on things that have nothing to do with serving the people they are working for, they get predictable results. When a job is not about you, everything changes.  If a job is not about you:

• You take time to prepare an exceptional work product.
• You see things from another person’s point of view constantly.
• You think about the other person’s needs while you are working and not your own.
• You take the time to meet people and form alliances.
• You communicate with people in a way that they can tell you care about them.
• You write articles, give speeches, and do all sorts of things that people focused on themselves do not.

The world provides rewards (money, status, and so forth) in direct proportion to the value you provide. You will simply provide more value to others when you are focused on giving and concerned about the welfare of those you are working for. There are essentially three types of people and businesses out there: Those that over deliver, those that deliver what is expected, and those that under deliver. People who over deliver generally believe the job is about others.  People who under deliver generally believe the job is just about them. In your current and past jobs, you certainly have been promoted, let go, or remained stagnant based on whether you over or under delivered.  In terms of the businesses you frequent and like, the odds are very good that you are most comfortable with those which over deliver. Your personal success, like the success of most businesses, comes down to whether you over or under deliver. In my job, I speak with people who are unemployed and have lost jobs all the time.  I also speak with people who are incredibly successful all the time.

• The one constant I have noticed when speaking with the most successful people is that they make “over delivery” incredibly important in their work.
• In terms of speaking with the most unsuccessful people, they make under delivery the most important thing in their careers.

The laws associated with making money, getting ahead, and being successful – all really do come down to over and under delivery.  Most people who believe that a job is about others, over deliver.  Most people who believe the job is about themselves, under deliver. Do more than expected, work harder,  give more, and you will simply do better in life. There’s really no question about it. In your career, one of the most important things you can do is to get a reputation for over delivering as opposed to under delivering. Everything in your career and life—and how you will be known–generally comes down to whether you over deliver. You need to be focused on what other people want and need. Being focused on the needs of others and not yourself is crucial in any pursuit. I love reading biographies of incredibly successful people. I like doing this because studying the lives of successful people teaches me lessons that I can teach others about their own careers. Most biographies start out in the person’s childhood and then go from there. One of the most interesting parts of these biographies is reading about the work ethic of the people. The great successes are always are people who over deliver and are concerned about others.  They can see what other people want and could use and make this a priority. I also love reading stories about successful companies.  Successful companies also get the reputation for being focused on others and anticipating others’ wants and needs. To truly reach your potential, you need to over deliver–be focused on others and not yourself. THE LESSON You are rewarded in direct proportion to the value that you deliver, meaning that you have to deliver in order to reach your full potential. You will provide more value to others when you are focused on giving. People who under-deliver view their jobs as being primarily about them, while those who over-deliver see their jobs as being about others. Strive to develop a reputation for delivering rather than under-delivering.

• One man had originally been a financial trader with a bunch of Ivy League degrees. He made his fortune by selling some trading system he had developed for $10 million or so.

• The other man had been an attorney with an impressive pedigree as well. One day, he won a huge settlement and made around $5 million.

Both men were in their 40s, and after these major career victories, each of them quit their jobs and bought gas stations on the New Jersey turnpike. These men did not know each other and were of no relation, yet they both ended up migrating into the same profession. How does one transform from being a person with incredible qualifications to a person who simply owns a gas station on the New Jersey turnpike? From what I understood, these guys were incredibly happy after leaving their careers and taking on new positions as gas station operators. Running a gas station that sees a lot of business can be very profitable. Most gas station operators make around 10 cents a gallon in profit from every gallon of gas that they sell. In addition, they make a lot of money on the concessions that they sell inside the shop. Also, a lot of customers pay with cash, and the gas station owners often do not declare and pay taxes on their cash sales. Owning a gas station is much different from being a Wall Street lawyer or trader. You report to work in jeans, not a suit. You often work with people who are not highly educated. Selling refreshments and gas is something, it would seem, that almost anyone could do. Why, then, did these men both plan such a drastic change in profession? Here are some likely possibilities:

• They wanted to be happy.
• They enjoyed working in the gas station.
• They could earn decent money in the gas station business and could maintain a high quality of life.
• They wanted to be independent, and having their own businesses allowed them this independence.
• They realized that much of what is going on and is expected of people in the working world is just complete nonsense.

The idea has always fascinated me: If you could rise up through the ranks in your company and become incredibly successful, hypothetically making enough money to retire–would your very next move be to purchase a gas station? Most people would probably not do this. Instead, they would choose to keep on doing exactly what they had been doing before. It takes a lot of courage to walk away from a prestigious job to do something viewed as much less prestigious. One of the most interesting things that I have seen in all my years in the recruiting industry, and as someone who has personally hired hundreds of people, is that many people out there seem to have been brainwashed into doing certain types of jobs and living certain types of lives. Most often, these people want to have the jobs that are considered the most prestigious, which pay the most, and are perceived as offering the most security. At the same time, the people who end up following all the rules to obtain careers and lives like this are often the most unhappy. If you have a job or are pursuing a certain career primarily because you think you should, or because others think you should, you are making a huge mistake. You need to understand that if you keep doing this, you are never going to be truly happy. You need to be living the life and having the career that makes you happy. The voices that you hear inside yourself, which tell you to pursue a certain profession or be a certain thing, are often not your own voice. They are the voices of your parents; they are the voices of your peers in school; they are the voices of the people you associate with at work. Around a year or so ago, I hired an investment bank to raise capital for one of the businesses I run. Despite the fact that the bankers have not yet raised the amount of money I am seeking, it has been an enjoyable year working with them so far and I have learned a lot. In addition, these people have raised awareness of our business in the market, simply by talking to certain key people in the industry. They have done a good job, and I have certainly learned a lot by watching how they operate. I have noticed that the venture capital firms I am dealing with have been laying off lots of people. So have the investment banks. Since I chose to raise money at an inopportune time, the offers I have received so far have not been all that good. One deal that I was hoping would go through ultimately fell apart because the investors could not come up with the money. Nonetheless, I feel good about having at least gained some attention in this market. Meetings with venture capital firms are fun and educational because the firms are typically run by pretty strong businessmen who know how to make deals happen. I have enjoyed speaking with these people because they have made me question many of the assumptions I have had about the businesses I operate. A couple of months ago I received a voicemail from someone at one of the venture capital firms, asking me to call him back. I was enthusiastic and assumed that he had called to make me an offer. Perhaps our company expansion would quickly come to pass. “I have been very impressed with your business,” he told me. “As a matter of fact, I cannot stop thinking about it. I do not think our firm is going to be able to get you the money you are seeking, but I would really like the opportunity to work with you,” he said. Given his enthusiasm, I asked the man to send over his résumé–and it was very impressive. In fact, it had all the right schools and all the right previous jobs leading up to the present one. Since he seemed so enthusiastic about working with me and my company, I invited him to come and meet with me in person. “Are you actively looking for a job?” I asked him. “No. In fact, if this is what you think, then I am not even sure it makes sense for me to come down and interview with you. I am just very impressed with the business and feel like it is a natural fit for me.” After having a few meetings with this fellow, I started to get the sense that he was probably looking everywhere he could for a job, and that he had probably been laid off. In addition, I got a distinct sense that he actually had no interest in me, or the business in particular, and was really more concerned with making sure he stayed on a certain track, wherein he would be making a certain amount of money per year and in a job that had a certain level of prestige. While it was unspoken, I also understood that he was extremely unhappy in his current job and did not feel comfortable doing it. Finally, this man voiced to me that his real interest and desire was to start his own business. This was clearly what he was most interested in doing with his life, no matter where he worked along the way, acquiring all the necessary skills. There is nothing wrong with any of this, of course, but it was not what he had represented in his initial conversations with me. Notwithstanding all this, I liked the guy. At the same time, I also realized that he was confused and did not really know what he wanted to do with his career and in his life. Many people, like this individual, end up getting “shook up” at some point and do not necessarily know what to do. This is often more problematical for people who have the best backgrounds, because they believe and have been taught that they need to be and operate on a certain path. While this guy was probably making at least $200,000 a year in his previous position, I decided to take a chance and I made him an offer to be a consultant for six months at $10,000 a month. During his time as a consultant, I told him, he could basically work on whatever projects he wanted to, as long as it helped our company. I told him to try to create projects and tasks for himself that he would enjoy. After the six months, if he worked out and was enjoying the job, I would be prepared to make him a more permanent offer. I made the offer on these terms because I knew that whatever job the man ended up taking (whether with me or someone else) it would be experimental and might not be something that would last for very long. As a side note, there is an obvious danger in hiring someone who wants nothing more than to have his own business. Namely, if you are training him in your business, he could possibly become a competitor. Several years ago, I had two legal recruiters working for me who I knew wanted to start their own businesses. Since I did not want to compete with them in the United States, I started telling them every time I spoke with them that Asia was the best place to be a recruiter, and this would be a great business to get into over there. Incredibly, when they eventually started their own recruiting businesses, they were both dedicated to recruiting in Asia. It was among the most humorous things I have ever seen, and these two recruiters are now currently handling almost all placements in Asia (10,000+ miles away from where our company concentrates its efforts). I figured this man might have had a lot to teach me and vice versa, and that this would be the best way to proceed with him until he figured out what he was going to do. I was pretty confident he would not take the offer and I was right. A few days after receiving the offer, he called me and declined. The reason was that I was not offering enough money, or any stock options, or other types of perks–things that he typically would have expected. “It sounds to me like you are at a real crossroads in your career. You are going to need to decide if you want to be a bureaucrat or an entrepreneur,” I told him. He knows that he has a choice to be one thing or another. He knows that he is at a crossroads. But my guess is that he will stick with doing exactly what he was doing before and will spend his entire life and career in a role that is not satisfying to him. Life is too short to be doing things you do not want to do. You should be doing what you want to do, whatever is in your heart. Maybe this means owning a gas station–maybe it does not. It can be anything that you enjoy. If you do not yet know what it is that you enjoy doing, you had better get out there and find it. As Marsha Sinetar says, “Do what you love; the money will follow.” THE LESSON It is important to have a career that makes you happy, rather than pursuing a career simply because you or others think that you should. Life too short not to be doing the things that you really want to do with your life. If you do not yet know the kind of work that makes you genuinely happy, you need to go and find it.

• They worry about their appearance.
• They worry about how they will describe past jobs and moves.
• They worry about their experience.
• They may worry about their education.

All of these are valid worries (and may be important to the employer) but none of them are as important as the emotional motivation behind the employer’s hiring you. Emotion is often irrational, and employers often hire people for irrational reasons. In fact, our entire economy runs on irrationality. This may seem like a bold statement, but look at it this way: In virtually every news story I have read about when unemployment is high, something is always mentioned about how companies and other organizations are “doing more with fewer people.” Many of the stories mention things like companies doing just as much business (yet being more profitable) with 25% of the workforce. More recently, news stories have mentioned ”record corporate profits” because companies have staffed down and are doing the same amount of work with fewer employees in response to recessionary conditions. This indicates to me that something else is going on when employers are in hiring mode. A rational and unemotional organization would only hire as many people as it needs to do the work. It would not hire more people than it needs to do the work—and it certainly would not hire four times as many people as it needs to do the work. There is, of course, the need for extra employees in case someone leaves. There is the need to make sure people are not overworked. But there is absolutely no reason for any company to have four times as many employees as it needs to do the work. (Forget about four times as many employees … there is no reason to have 25% more employees than is needed to do the work.) Overstaffing is a complete waste of any organization’s money and resources. If this is the case, what is going on?

• In good economic climates, companies may be enthusiastic about the future and therefore want to hire more people—this is emotional.
• In good economic climates, more work that might not even be necessary is allowed to be done—this is emotional.
• In good economic climates, companies may want to see their offices and factories full of people—this is emotional.
• In good economic climates, friends and relatives of people are hired more readily—this is emotional.
• In good economic climates, people who are not productive are kept around—this is emotional.

Hiring becomes more of an emotional function for many employers than a rational and business-oriented function. For a few years, in my own company, we had a man who was consistently working massive amounts of overtime. It got to be so that his overtime was so excessive, I spoke with his supervisor and told him that overtime had to stop. Then I spoke with his supervisor again. Then I spoke with him again. Then I spoke with him again. This went on for more than a year. Finally, I told the supervisor that if the overtime did not stop, I would fire the guy working overtime. To my astonishment, the supervisor said: ”Boss, he has three kids to feed and a house. You need to let him work overtime.” The supervisor was telling me, essentially, that his emotional connection to the employee overrode the company’s more pragmatic and business-oriented reasons (saving costs) for limiting his hours. I could list countless examples of these sorts of emotional connections and how they come into play in the workplace. There are so many emotional connections that virtually every company is far more inefficient than it should be. If you are smart, you should realize that these emotional connections and emotional alliances are almost as important as your professional performance at work. These emotional connections are important in your getting and keeping a job and just about everything you do in your professional life. Make the most of your emotional connection and realize that emotion is the dominant force in most professional settings.

• First, there are those who are out there doing this or that and making things happen. These people typically put in years to perfect their craft, whether they are lawyers, actors, sports stars, businesspeople–or whatever. These people are actually doing something with their careers and lives. Their sense of self-importance and achievement comes from what they do. They are committed to getting things accomplished.
• Second, there are those who sit around writing about, talking about, and gossiping about those who are doing things in the world. Those who cannot do things or make things happen in the world are generally the ones who are best at writing, talking, and gossiping about those who are making things happen in the world. Writing, gossiping, reviewing, and passing judgment on people who are actually doing things is often a cheap shortcut to a sensation of power for those who lack the discipline necessary to do and create something that has worth. In reviewing, criticizing, gossiping, and so forth about others, the person can experience a fleeting feeling of importance.

When I was eleven years old, in February of 1981, the only television in our Detroit home was in my bedroom, and one time in the wee hours of the morning my mother and my four-year-old sister came into my room and watched Prince Charles and Diana get married. I have vague recollections of images from this wedding coming through as I tossed back and forth, incredulous that my mother and sister were disturbing my slumber all over some wedding spectacle. They both were so incredibly enthusiastic about the marriage. It seems funny to me that a single mother and her daughter would be watching this in the suburbs of Detroit, thousands of miles away from where the wedding was taking place. The marriage ultimately did not affect them in the least. Nonetheless, there they were, a little girl and her mother, glued to the television and watching a prince get married. As the years progressed, I would see one magazine after another arrive at our home with Diana on the cover and one rumor or another about her marriage. I would turn on the television and each day there was some gossip show that had a segment about the marriage. From the moment that marriage occurred, it seemed not a week went by wherein I did not hear some noise in the background about what Diana was doing. It was incredible to me that people could be so interested in one person. It was ironic, it seems, that Diana was eventually killed while she was in a car racing away from photographers. The public’s obsession with Diana is something that ultimately may have contributed to her death. Even today I see magazines in my house with her picture on them now and again, or I turn on the television and from time to time see a story about her. The public continues to be interested in Diana. Most of the world figures are never going to be like Princess Diana. Most of the public at large is never going to be an important politician, actor or actress, businessperson, and so forth; instead, what we often do is sit around and gossip, review and pass judgment on the people who are actually out there doing things in the world. The most popular magazines out there are magazines like the National Enquirer and Us Weekly: these are magazines that are continually gossiping, maligning, and generally discussing the lives, careers, successes, and failures of others. Why the intense interest in what others are doing? Why are people so fascinated with what others are doing and achieving in their lives? In my career I have seen the exact same thing: There are people out there who are doing and achieving things and, on the sidelines, there are those who spend the majority of their time as commentators on the people who are involved in doing things. This is a pattern that exists in every firm, company, and organization I have ever been involved with. It also is something that I have heard people talk about and have witnessed as a consistent pattern in any organization as well as the candidates I have worked with as a recruiter. Since I am also an attorney I will share with you some more of my insights into this. Several years ago the most popular legal site on the Internet was a site called Greedy Associates. This website was basically dedicated to associates inside of law firms who would gossip about people at their own law firms, and would disclose (sometimes maliciously) the financial states of affairs of various firms. Over the past ten years, the websites that have replaced Greedy Associates have all grown popular essentially by spreading rumors and bad news throughout law firms. Lawyers for the most part are not interested in flocking to websites for lots of positive information. Instead, their interest lies predominantly in going to websites where they can read about bad things that are happening to various employers. I started one of these websites myself, JD Journal, and was surprised by how much traffic the site got and by how interested lawyers are in this sort of news. I hate to say this but it is true: The great majority of people out there are incredibly interested in what others are doing–even more than their own lives. It is much easier to criticize and gossip about others than it is to achieve anything of significance in our own lives. To achieve something of significance requires an incredible investment of time and energy; it requires dedication; it requires risk; it requires believing in ourselves and overcoming obstacles. Conversely, gossiping or maligning others can usually be done very quickly by simply logging onto a gossip site or blog, sending an e-mail, or making a phone call. I want to also note a fact that is pretty subtle, but is an important one: The people who are most interested in gossip and so forth are most often the people who lack the dedication necessary to achieve anything of significance.

• Inside companies and organizations these people are the ones who feel alienated because when they do not do an assignment correctly they are told so.
• They are generally the ones who leave earliest, come to work the latest, and get the least done while they are at work.
• They are also the ones who are most likely to not get promoted because they do not put in a good effort.
• They are the ones who are disloyal and who easily find fault within their organization, and with the people working inside their organization, and with the products or services of their organization.

Lacking the dedication to do good work, the faculties to fit in with their coworkers and so forth, these people instead decide to turn their efforts toward gossip and criticism. When an employer is looking to hire new employees, one of the worst mistakes the employer can make is to bring in people like this. Just a few bad apples like this can easily destroy the whole bunch. In fact, it is precisely this fact and this attitude that can lead to the destruction of entire companies, governments, and so forth. Good organizations are experts in removing bad apples--and keeping the good ones around. For the past several years I have been involved in the property business, and I rent out office buildings, store fronts, executive suits, beach houses, and also premium beachfront real estate. My favorite business is the one involving premium beachfront real estate. The reason I enjoy this is that the clients I deal with tend to be big names in politics, show business, and so forth. It is not uncommon for a premium property I am renting out to an international celebrity to be surrounded by hundreds of paparazzi, and to have helicopters buzzing overhead all day while a certain famous person is there. Most celebrities do not want this attention and manage to slink into the property unobserved while they are on their vacations. However, there are some who prize this attention and find ways to alert the press when they are there. I have always been very good about being extremely discrete when a celebrity is staying in one of my premium properties. I never talk about it; I never tell anyone who is there, and I simply allow the celebrity to do his or her thing. However, a few months ago one extremely famous celebrity was staying in this premium beach house and had extreme demands for attention. This person had just finished filming a movie and the studio was putting him up for a one-week vacation. The actor wanted extreme privacy, and the reason was that he and his actor friends wanted to spend the entire vacation in the nude. Now, I do not know why someone would want to walk around nude for an entire vacation with a bunch of other men–but this was what was on the itinerary. The maid was astonished by this, but she simply did her job and reported the nudity to me later. As this man and his friends walked around the house nude every day, I went about my business seeing him on the covers of magazines, on television, and on billboards as I went about my day-to-day business. On the final day this nude actor and his friends were scheduled to presumably put their clothes on and get on a private jet to go back to whence they came, but the actor declared that he was staying another day and, on top of this, he refused to pay for it because “the maid had worked too much and the gardener had come” while he was staying there. This luxury property requires a lot of gardening, and after the gardener had come for an hour or so one day, all hell broke loose, and we had to get him out of there. The problem with this guy staying an extra day was that on his “extra day,” a bride from England was scheduled to come to the house with various armies of wedding planners, lighting designers, and so forth to set up for a large wedding scheduled to occur there. The actor flat-out refused to leave and got on the phone and told us that there would be “bizarre behavior” if the bride tried to enter the property while he was there. He was referring, we assumed, to the fact that he might be walking around in the nude. I was a little taken back by this, and the entire episode seemed just a little too much to believe. I had a serious problem on my hands because I knew that if the bride were unable to get into the house I could be subject to multiple lawsuits from her and countless wedding vendors. I finally decided I needed to take drastic action. I called one of the actor’s many assistants, who was also on the property: “If he is not out in an hour, I will call the police and every gossip reporter I can find and have him removed from the house.” I never would have actually done these things; however, after I made the threat, within fifteen minutes the man left. He knew that the press would have had an absolute field day with this episode if it had gotten out. I ended up letting the man stay an extra night as a courtesy, and the bride was able to get in with all her people at the appointed time. In the end everything worked out just fine. The reason everything worked out was that the actor was terrified of the press and how things would look to the public. He knew it would be a public relations and overall massive disaster, and people would talk about this the world over. I was able to quickly and painlessly solve the issue just using the power of gossip. It is something I am not proud of, but with my back against the wall I used it to great effect. I realized that my threat to use and create gossip came from a place of weakness. It was the best I could do and, while effective, it was admittedly pretty pathetic. The most powerful and influential people in the world are people like the actor I threatened to eject from the rental house, like Princess Diana, powerful businesspeople, and others. These are the people who make things happen and who are actually out there doing things that captivate the public attention. The people who live lives of significance are not the people who talk about and watch those who are making things happen; they are the ones who are accomplishing things. People who feel the need to gossip and malign others are usually coming from a place of weakness. There is nothing strong about gossiping and talking negatively about others. When you are coming from a place of strength this type of behavior is just something you do not need to engage in. The strongest people out there avoid gossip and avoid maligning others because it detracts from their ability to move forward. You should be focused on doing and not talking about those who are doing. THE LESSON Focus on what you are doing, not what others around you are doing. There are people to take action towards their goals, and then there people who sit on the sidelines and comment on the first group of people. People who are mostly interested in gossip and watching others usually lack the confidence and determination to take action themselves. The most successful people go account and accomplish things rather than sit back and watch others make things happen.