How to Get Hired Where There Is Not Even an Opening

For some reason, almost every week (sometimes more than once a week) venture capitalists and private equity companies call me to talk about the various businesses I am involved in. I used to talk to them quite formally, the way average people like me talk to doctors, lawyers and bankers. I assumed (wrongly so), that I needed to be a little bit guarded, not share too much information and such. Do not ask me why I thought this way. I think it probably has something to do with the fact that when they call, they say something like the following: [Read more]

The Most Important Person You Communicate With is Yourself

“The mind can make a heaven out of hell or a hell out of heaven”

-John Milton

Several years ago, I was home after graduating from college and I met a guy who was friends with my girlfriend’s brother. He had graduated from Yale University a year or two before and was driving a truck all around Detroit delivering meat to restaurants. He typically drove this meat truck from 4:00am until noon each day. He got paid in cash at the end of each day by his boss. He had been the first person from the public school he had attended to go to Yale in [Read more]

Always Be Willing to Readjust

About a year ago, I was sitting in my office and a registered letter arrived for me. The letter was from a large financial institution saying they could no longer lend me funds to provide student loans, and they would stop lending to me within the next four weeks. I had grown my student loan company into a large business over the previous few years and was doing hundreds of millions of dollars in loans annually. From my office, I looked out and saw at least 10 very nice people whom I liked a great deal sitting [Read more]

If You Really Want Success, Go through Unpeopled Ground

In The Art of War, Sun Tzu says, “To go one thousand lives without fear, go through unpeopled ground.” To me, this means when you go forward, you should move through open space that is undesired or uncontested. When you move in this way, your movement will not be challenged by others and you will experience success. Several years ago, I was an asphalt tar contractor in Detroit doing very, very dirty work. It was strange to me this work was so profitable and so easy. Literally no one was interested in doing the job. One of my main projects involved heating up tar to 250+ degrees in a cauldron that I towed behind my truck, using a crack router to clean out cracks on roads and parking lots, and filling the cracks with sand and hot tar. When I was working for a federal judge in Michigan, I got a call from one of my customers, Tony Randazzo, who owned a giant apartment subdivision in Rochester Hills, Michigan. I’d filled all of the cracks in the apartment subdivision, charging less than half the going rate for this work, giving Tony an outstanding deal. For the next six months, Tony sent me a check every month to pay for the work I had done. Those checks ended up being more than I was receiving for my work with the judge each month. Keep in mind getting the job with the judge [Read more]

Play the Game by Your Own Rules

We essentially have two choices in our lives. First, we can be average. We can let the people around us mold us, and we can let society marginalize us, as we follow its so-called norms. Alternatively, we can take a stand, choose not to play by the rules, and simply do things in a way that makes sense to us. Applying this philosophy and career advice to your job search is a tremendously successful strategy, especially in a challenging economic environment. Let me share with you a story about one of the most incredible men [Read more]

Discover What You Do Best: We All Have Something

One day, when I was about 13 years old, I decided to spend the afternoon with another boy I knew from middle school. Spending the afternoon together essentially meant we would be riding our bikes around, visiting various stores and other kids we knew who were our age. We might also go into a convenience store or two and play some arcade games. The guy I was spending time with, Greg, had never been particularly good at anything, as far as I knew. His dad was a plumber and his mother was very religious, [Read more]

Look for the Cause

Everything that occurs in our world and to us has a cause.  The cause may not be immediately obvious, but it is always there waiting to be found.  The result of anything you see always contains its cause, and everything that happens is the result of either good or bad seeds that have been planted at some point in time:

• If some people are living in poverty and alone, spend some time with them and you will understand why they are in their situation. They are most likely in the position they are in not just (1) due to bad things that have happed to them, which were caused by other people (i.e., bad seeds), but (2) due to bad things that they themselves have done (i.e., planting of bad seeds), which have come back to haunt them. The condition they are living in is the growth that has occurred due to the bad seeds they have planted.
• If some people are living in opulence and are surrounded by people who love them, spend some time with them and you will understand why. They are most likely in the position they are in not just (1) due to good things that have happened to them, which were caused by other people (i.e., good seeds), but (2) due to good things they themselves have done (i.e., planting of good seeds) which have grown the persons rich and full lives. The condition they are living in is the growth that has occurred due to the good seeds they have planted.
• If some people have good careers and are happy in what they do, spend some time with them and you will understand why. They are most likely in the position they are in (1) [Read more]

Cheap Beer, Overpriced Chocolate, Being Visible and Approachable

For some reason, lately I have been receiving a lot of invitations from local stores to go and spend an evening looking at stuff–”new fall collections”, for example. It could be women’s shoes, beds, or other wares; however, the invitations just keep coming. They come by mail. The stores call our house. However, lest I think I am special, the stores usually advertise these same events in the paper as well, and promote these special events to the public at large, through their websites. I have only attended one of these events so [Read more]

The Importance of Trust and Access to Information

Two of the most important core components of my belief system are (1) having access to as much information as possible in order to make decisions and (2) dealing with people whom I trust. I think that trust and access to information, more than anything, can make your life function in an incredibly efficient and productive way. These are two of the guiding rules by which I live my life. I love utilizing information to make the best decisions possible. I also love, and in fact, demand dealing with people whom I trust. [Read more]

You Need to be Seen as the Cure

Since I live on the ocean, whenever I look out the window the first things I generally see are surfers, people on jet skis and so forth. After years of watching at a distance, and without my personally having any ability to stay standing on a surf board, I made the decision to purchase a jet ski in order to start enjoying the water. The first jet ski I purchased was on EBay and I believe I purchased it for around $500. The jet ski was an old sort of jet ski that you needed [Read more]

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