Harrison Barnes » How to Succeed

Weight Loss, Security Guards, Hard Work and Your Career

Harrison Barnes — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 05:01:38 +0000

In the Midwest, where I am from, many of the men and women there tend to start getting bigger and bigger, and wider and wider, when they hit their 30s. I am not saying they all do, of course, but there is a definite trend there that I believe is much, much more “pronounced” than in other areas of the country. On the block where I grew up, a group of these women got together and decided to do something about it by exercising. For hours each day, in a group of five or more, they would walk around the neighborhood in plus sized sweatpants with water bottles. Rain or shine, I would see them out there meandering around the neighborhood. It must have been a lot of work. In the winters, I would see them sitting on indoor bicycles at the gym peddling away while watching soap operas. However, when I saw these same women at neighborhood picnics they would eat all sorts of sweets, carbohydrates and other unhealthy items. It does not take a rocket scientist to know that exercise does not change anything if you do not change your diet. If anything, a lot of exercise might even make you eat more and gain more weight. For years I watched these women walk around the neighborhood without losing any weight. They worked and they worked and nothing ever happened. To me these women are a very good metaphor for what most of us do in one way or another with our careers: We may work a lot but we do not get anywhere. We do not get anywhere because we are not willing to do the “hard work” to get ahead. In the case of weight loss, the really “hard work” is resisting the temptation to eat when you are hungry, changing your eating habits, eating less, eating less satisfying foods. That is easier said than done–but this is where success or failure comes from in terms of losing the weight. It is not the amount of work you that matters … it is how hard you work that matters. Resisting the temptation to eat when you are hungry is much more difficult than walking around the neighborhood at 2 miles an hour while gossiping with your other friends. The skill and ability to fight the urge to eat is difficult and hard work. It is in hard work, though, that we get our real results. When I was in college, our fraternity used to have parties with 500+ kids every Friday night. They were a “for profit” enterprise and we invited the whole school, served cheap beer and used the funds from the party to subsidize the expenses of running the house. Since there were so many people at the parties, we used to hire a retired Chicago policeman to stand by the door in case there were any problems, fights and so forth. He would show up around 9:00 pm and stand in the doorway until about 1:00 am and then leave. He would not talk much and would stand there in cold, heat and all sorts of weather just waiting until the party was over. Despite being in his 60s, he was a large man and always carried a gun. He looked menacing and served as a deterrent for people getting out of control and trashing out house. At the end of the party, we would pay him $150 for his “security” services. He was more expensive than other guards we could have hired because he carried a gun. We thought it was “cool” to have a guy at the party with a gun and a good deterrent in case something went wrong. I was the Treasurer of my fraternity my junior year of college and used to be in charge of paying him. I thought that $150 seemed like a lot of money to pay him for standing around. One day I told him that I thought he had a pretty good job standing there doing nothing for a few hours. That was the only time I ever saw him get mad: “I’ll tell you something,” he said. “When you are my age you will not be spending your Friday nights standing on the porch of a fraternity house. I guarantee it.” I have thought about this statement numerous times throughout the years. He was right, of course, but I felt there was a lot more depth to what he was talking about than I was seeing. The policeman was working hard and making a major effort—working all Friday night—and yet he was not really getting ahead. However, there were not many other expectations for the policeman beyond standing there. He was not expected to engage in long division.

He was not expected to sell anything.
He was not expected to perform surgery.
He was not held responsible for the results of a marketing campaign.
He was not charged with helping people understand their problems.
He was not responsible for merging two companies together.
He was not responsible for giving complex stock advice.
He was not given complex tasks to think about when he went home that evening.

He was just expected to stand there. For the most part, he could think about what he wanted, when he wanted. No one was controlling his mind. Towards the end of his life—after a tragedy struck his business, my grandfather was a security guard and sat in a booth at the entrance to a factory every evening not doing much of anything. He just sat there and there was no expectation that he engage in any type of complex thought, movement, or likewise. He was just expected to sit there. After having had a rewarding and exciting career, his life suddenly changed when he was expected to do nothing. He died a short time after starting the job. Just about everything that you can do that is going to provide substantial economic and societal rewards is going to be difficult, taxing and hard work. It is going require that you remain focused and use your mind in ways that others do not. It may require that you take risks.

It may require that you think so hard that you get tired.
It may require you organize people to help you.
It may require you move far away.
It is going to require you do work that others do not want to or cannot do.

When I was growing up, I always heard about how doctors and lawyers made a lot of money. I never understood why. Now I do. Why do they do so well? Because they do work that others do not want to do and the work they do is hard. First, they have to go to school and stay focused for a decade or more. They have to sit through classes and do well in them. They have to take tests and study a lot. They have to do all this instead of working and potentially enjoying the fruits of their labor right away. Not only do they have to invest all of this effort in school, but they invest all of this effort and risk failing. They may not get into a medical school or law school. They may flunk out of medical school or law school. They may not pass their medical boards or the Bar Exam. All of this is tough. And it is risky. Second, they have to work very, very hard when they get out of school. In the case of a doctor, they may have to stay up for 48+ hours several times a week and be responsible for peoples’ lives while they are working. In addition, they need to spend years working for low wages before they even can get a decent salary. A lawyer may work 3,000+ hours a year for years inside of a law firm reading papers, filing things, being yelled at and more. The work is difficult and it is not easy. The work has a price. And even after all of this the lawyer is not guaranteed a good job, salary and so forth. The components that make doctors and lawyers highly paid are Hard work

Sacrifice
Risk
Using their mind
Always being available
Committing to something for a long period

…and more. This is far different from what the typical security guard is expected to do. Most security guards are just expected to stand there. None of the hard work, commitment, sacrifice and so forth is at all necessary. When the most successful people in the world go to work—whether it be Warren Buffet, Steve Jobs, or otherwise—they probably are not working longer hours than you or I are working. However, the quality of their time and the way they use their minds during work is going to be drastically different than the way we use our minds and time.

They are going to be more focused.
They are going to be engaged in complex thoughts and pushing their minds instead of daydreaming.
They are going to confront difficult issues and concepts instead of avoiding them.
They are going to be honest with themselves about what they are doing right and wrong.
They may force themselves into a difficult routine even if it is not comfortable.

The people who succeed are willing to work harder. It is like this with everything. The quality of the work you do is about how hard you think, the The most successful salespeople, for example, spend lots of time prospecting. They follow up with past clients. They send out birthday cards. They go out to lots of dinners. They make phone calls even when they do not want to. They take pains to make sure they have the best appearance and dress. They read and think about sales. They push themselves in ways that people who are not successful do not. In contrast, the person who is not successful may spend their time not being as “productive” and taxing their mind to the same degree. This is the difference. In your career, you need to do the “hard stuff” and make sure that you are doing what others will not. This is the key to success and it is going to make all the difference. You need to use your mind when others are not. You need to take risks when others are not. You need to be “on the ball” when others are not.

Consistency and Commitment Beat Brilliance and Talent

Harrison Barnes — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 05:01:03 +0000

When I was growing up in Detroit, I went to school with kids whose parents were the Chief Executive Officers of major auto companies and were in other high level roles. Sometimes I would turn on the television and see the same men I’d eaten dinner with at a friend’s house on the nightly news giving a press conference in Washington, or speaking about an issue of national importance. Another one of my friend’s father was the CEO of a major national bank and, by the time I was 13 or 14, I was smart enough to realize I could learn a lot from these men. I figured they must all be enormously gifted intellectually and have other skills which I could learn. In my spare time I read books such as Iacocca, about Lee Iacocca, and when the Publisher’s Clearing House mail came to my mother’s house I ordered Forbes, Business Week and a ton of other business magazines so I could impress these nationally important men and talk to them about their careers and what they did. I remember after reading a book about Lee Iacocca, and having spent months reading business magazines, I had the opportunity to speak with one of my friend’s father. He used to work for President Ford writing speeches, and he now worked directly for Henry Ford writing his speeches. Because I had read so much, I realized after about an hour, I knew much more than even he did about various aspects of his business. When I was 13 or 14, I dominated dinnertime conversations at my friends’ homes spinning off facts and figures and entertaining major figures in various auto companies. The more I talked about business with these men, the less I realized they knew. I could not believe men who might have gotten MBAs from Harvard Business School knew so little. I figured that, based on their lack of knowledge about arcane business facts, none of them must be all that intelligent. Most of these men were from all over the country and had joined, right out of school, automobile companies, banks and the other institutions they would one day lead. In at least one incident I recall, one man worked on an automotive manufacturing line in a factory during college. In another case, one of my friend’s father even went to a school called General Motors Institute (no longer in existence) which was a college run by General Motors. Every day, these men got up early and drove into Detroit. They came home late each evening. Once a year, they took vacations for a couple of weeks, usually skiing in Colorado or at a ski resort in Michigan. At the same time, most had wives who never worked and stayed at home raising the children and providing their husbands with the sort of environment that would enable them to succeed. By the time I met many of these titans of business and industry, they had been getting up at the same time to go to work and living the life they lived for over 30 years–more than twice as long as I had even been on the earth. And there I was sitting at their dining room tables uncovering how much information they did not know and believing they were stupid. The more I realized these men did not know about arcane business facts, the more I read. One thing I quickly realized was none of these men were angry, and all of them seemed to enjoy learning what they did not know from a child. In addition, there was a very gentle way about them because, despite the fact I must have looked like an idiot spewing forth various facts and figures, they never sought to correct me. They were always quite diplomatic in all respects. Just because I was aware of more facts and figures, it certainly did not mean I was more talented than these men. On the contrary, they were actually busy leading their lives and careers while I stood on the sidelines simply reading about it. Now some 20+ years later I can reflect on what was going on:

I certainly have never been on the evening news giving my opinions before the United States Congress.
I do not sit in the office of the President of the United States and give him advice about what to talk about in speeches and write speeches for him.
My actions and opinions are not mentioned weekly in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.

I now look at these men with profound respect because the lesson their careers hold is something I have certainly learned from, and you can too: Work ethic and consistency trump brilliance and talent. There are many people with a lot of talent, or who know a lot. These talented people may know more than the next person. They may be better socially. They may have a better idea of what needs to be done. They may have better educations. They may be better sales people. They may be more connected. But when it comes right down to it, none of this really matters if the talented person cannot simply “show up” and do the same thing over and over. The people who win and become the most successful are the ones who generally put in a massive effort over the long run. Nothing is more effective than being consistent. The Grand Canyon could never have been built by one giant flood. Instead, it was built over millions of years by a consistent flow of water that applied a small amount of pressure and erosion over time. So, too, it is with your career. If you are consistent, you will achieve a lot more over time than if you are not. Talent and brilliance have sex appeal. Talent is something that blows us away. Several years ago, I was sitting in the living room of my mother’s house in Detroit, and in the other room was a man who was providing one of the most brilliant analyses of the meaning of the world I have ever heard. The more this man’s mind worked through an idea, the more brilliant I realized he was. At the time, I was 27 and had been through college and law school. In addition to practicing law, I was also teaching in a law school. I had heard a lot of very brilliant men speak in my career, but the person I was listening to was incredible. As I listened to this man speak, I was firmly convinced he was the most brilliant man I had ever heard. After he left, I found out he had an extraordinary IQ and had received a PhD from Princeton. However, he had never applied his skills. Instead, he was living in a small $350 a month apartment and had lived there for years. He did not use his brilliance in his job and, instead, his talent went to waste because it was not being consistently applied. He had worked in multiple jobs in his career. What if this man had decided to spend his career writing? What if this man decided to spend his career teaching? He did none of those things and, despite incredible talent, nothing ever happened. We need to apply our talents. Talent is fickle. Sometimes talent shows up, and other times it does not. In contrast, being consistent requires a high level of tenacity. You need to keep plowing through. You cannot give up. Anyone can be a better performer in one thing or another for a short time. What really takes skill is to consistently perform over time. This is what my friends’ fathers were all doing. Imagine 30+ years of doing the same thing and climbing within the same organization. This consistent effort is what creates the best results and enables people to win over time. Only certain people are born with brilliance and incredible talent, but anyone can exercise their option to work hard. When we are consistent, we make small bits of progress on a daily basis. Making small daily bits of progress are what transform careers and lives. Anything you focus on consistently will make you better. Many people lack the ability to consistently focus over time, and instead believe one small flash of brilliance or talent will make a difference. This is almost never the case. Consistency and work ethic always trump brilliance and talent. THE LESSON Consistency and commitment trump brilliance and talent; the most successful people are those who put massive long-term effort into their careers. Only certain people are born with innate talent or brilliance, but consistent effort lies within the reach of anyone and is ultimately a much greater factor in success. Anything to which you apply consistent focus will show progress.

Have Trust in Others and Be Ready to Seize Opportunity However it Presents Itself

Harrison Barnes — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 05:01:06 +0000

Trusting people and being ready to take advantage of opportunity when it presents itself are two of the greatest skills anyone can have. My life has been enriched in so many ways by often trusting people I should not have and by being aware of opportunities. I have always been eager to trust people who do not appear to be trustworthy, because I know that in the act of trusting them I can allow them to see themselves as better people. It also feels good to show people that you trust them. Fundamentally, I have a belief that deep down all people are good. There are also a ton of people out there who society judges to be evil and unworthy of help. Many of these people are good as well. One of the biggest challenges many of us have is realizing that deep down people are in fact good. When you are taking a job, any job, you have to have faith and trust in your employer. You also have to trust yourself that you have the ability to do the job. The employer may tell you that they are planning on this, or planning on that. You should trust them. Regardless of where you are working, you are putting your trust in an enterprise and the people within it. This is something that is extremely important and that will serve you well if you are in the right organization. The opposite is most often the case, however. Most people do not trust their employers and, consequently, they paint themselves into a hole. Several years ago I came out of work to discover that a car had backed into my car and severely dented the back fender. The person who had hit the car was nice enough to leave a note. The note read something like: I’M AT FAULT! I WAS GOING TOO FAST!! BIG BUMMER! : ( PLEASE CALL ME AND I WILL FIX IT! A few days later I called the number the person had also left. The person was really chilled out and told me how they did not look where they were going and were “spaced out” when backing up. It took them like 10 minutes to relate how they did not look where they were going, should have adjusted their rear view mirror, felt horrible about it and how work was “stressful” that day because their boss was ”schizo” due to some issues with some bad laser eye surgery. They then told me to go and get a few estimates before seeing whether or not they wanted to report it to their insurance company. The first estimate I received was for around $5,000. The next estimate was for around $5,500. I called the person and they were understandably disappointed. “I guess I’ll just report it to my insurance company then!” they told me. A few days later I was in a shop suggested by the insurance company. The insurance company called me after the estimate and told me that they had determined there was about $5,000 in damage and would be sending me a check which I could do whatever I wanted with. The check duly arrived and I started to spend it on things other than the car. At the time I was living in a house that was no more than 500 square feet in Hollywood Hills. It was a house that was originally built by a child star Ricky Nelson because he was so popular and girls had been crawling into his parent’s home in Beverly Hills. His agents had determined that having a house literally perched on the side of a cliff with no windows facing the street would make this impossible in the future and give him the peace and quiet he wanted. (Ironically, Ricky Nelson would die in a private airplane crash years later and it was rumored he had set the plane on fire while smoking cocaine.). The house had incredible views of the City of Los Angeles. The only part of the house that was physically touching the ground was the front door and the rest of it was on stilts. When I had purchased it I had saved about $35,000 because I had the luck of having an inspector who was insane. He may have been senile, I am not sure. I am sure he was at least in his late 70s. “My god! This thing is going down it is not secure!! It also has gas lines going into it. One small earthquake and it is all over. It will fall off the cliff and explode!” Both the current owner and I were scared out of our pants by the inspector. Even though I did not have the same issues that made the house so attractive to Ricky Nelson, I was in love with the little house because it was what I could afford. I was not at all concerned about this. I figured that if the house really did detach I would have a very easy time making it out the front door before it rolled down the cliff. I had found him in the Yellow pages and did not even realize what a blessing it would be. I used him on another house a few years later and realized he was insane. I purchased a house that had been owned by a professor from CalTech. He tried the same thing and got called out on the entire situation and this was quite embarrassing for me and the inspector. I think he used the word “liquefaction” which did not go over well with a world famous geologist. A few weeks later the inspector sent me a letter saying he was retiring. In this particular instance, however, it actually worked wonders. “What if I take $35,000 off and throw in the big screen television?” the owner asked me. The owner was a developer who was not really that concerned about the house. The big screen television was huge. It looked like it was from the 1970′s. He could have offered me just this and I would have accepted the offer. But that and $35,000 was too much to pass up. “Sure, I’ll still buy it,” I told him. “I just hope there’s not an earthquake.” The house must have been directly over a fault line because at least a couple of times a month it would start shaking for no apparent reason, but it never fell off the cliff. One of my neighbor’s homes did, however. When I moved into the house in December of 1997 there was a rain storm that seemed to last two straight weeks. One rainy Saturday afternoon I was sitting in the house and I heard a bunch of helicopters and sirens. I turned on the news and learned that one of my neighbors homes had fallen right off the cliff. It also made the national news that evening. There was still an abandoned lot there a couple of years ago when I drove by. My girlfriend at the time was working at home and it tended to get pretty loud listening to her type away and talk to clients. The home had a small driveway and I figured the best thing I could do for her was to build her a little office on the driveway. I went to a local paint store where I met a guy named “Carlos.” I brought him over to the house. He had been standing in front of the paint store looking for work. I hired Carlos because he had a truck and most of the guys had paint on them. I did not want them riding in my damaged Porsche with paint all over them. When I got back to the house, Carlos explained to me that he was a painter and was not too experienced with building offices on driveways. I told him that sounded good to me and I could probably save some money then. We negotiated a rate for his work and then I took Carlos to Home Depot and we bought a bunch of stuff for the job. Over the next week or so I had Carlos build a box on the driveway that doubled as an office. Normally, it would have been cheaper to put a ready-made shed there but there were severe space limitations which is the reason for the small box. It was the most amateur piece of construction imaginable. It had windows going sideways, a roof made of tin, was painted crudely and more. What’s worse, I spent money on ridiculous things like special lighting, little paintings to go in the office and a sunroof!. The office was not more than 5×5. My girlfriend told me that I had built her “a box on the driveway.” At one point I realized that the office I had built her actually had a smaller footprint than my big screen television. The thing was that it worked. Moreover, it was on the driveway. Since she worked so much we agreed that in the event the house fell off the cliff as our neighbor’s home had, she would be perfectly safe. I am sure I found other uses for the money from the accident as well. Within a few weeks, however, I had spent all of my insurance money destined for the repair of my beloved Porsche. I was very disappointed in myself. I had accomplished something of significance, though, I put my girlfriend on the driveway and freed up over the half the house. It was probably a little dangerous putting her there but I figured she would be okay. The first night I moved into the house I heard someone pounding on my door at around 7:00 am. There had been a lot of loud noise outside for several minutes before the pounding began. I opened the door and a girl with an incredible amount of facial piercings looked at me directly in the eye and said “I’m seriously fucked the fuck up.” She appeared to be swaying on her feet. She was dressed in a jean jacket with patches from various rock bands on it. Her eyes were half closed as she spoke. I was very calm. “I see that,” I said calmly. “I will be right back.” Very slowly I closed the door and ever so lightly locked it and walked towards the phone inside the house. I called 911. I was one of the few people who had a cell phone in 1997. I had originally started using one in 1990 when I was doing asphalt work. Back then it used to cost like $500 a month to use one. It was expensive. I liked having one back then because no one had one and I had one for several years at that point. I stopped using one in 2000 when everyone started talking on them everywhere. Now I prefer not having a cell phone. That day I had to use a cell phone to call 911. I spent the first couple minutes of the call explaining to the operator that I was calling from a cell phone and that was why the number I was calling from was Michigan (where I got the cell phone). (If you have ever called 911 in Los Angeles it is really something. A recording comes on and tells you “Your call is important to us! We will be with you in just a minute! We’re currently serving another caller and will be with you in just a moment!” ” The recording then proceeds to play happy music like little ballerinas or something are dancing in the background.) A friend of mine, Eric, who was from Scotland had recently moved to the United States and was staying with my girlfriend and I. Eric had purchased a brand new little BMW convertible when he got here that I think I may have co-signed for it since he did not have any credit in the United States. The first night he had the car someone took a knife and cut the top off and carved up the paint to destroy the car. He was living in Venice at the time. It was really an outrageous thing to do to the car. I felt really sorry for the guy. He had gone to Harvard Law School and never had any money. The first thing he ever purchased for himself ended up getting destroyed. He had a huge deductible on his insurance and did not get the car fixed for over 18 months. Eric’s father was from Africa and had very white skin. He did not look black at all. “This attack was racially motivated,” he told me. At that point I did not even realize that his father was from Africa because he did not look the least bit black. He started wearing lots of African clothes and stuff after the attack and had become very sensitive to any perceived racial slight. “They are messing with my car again!!” Eric shouted when he heard the girl banging on the door. He got up ready to fight for racial justice. “Do not go out there!” It is just a messed up girl, I told him. Less than 3 minutes after I got done arguing with the 911 operator there were at least 5 or 6 police cars in front of my house. I walked outside in my bathrobe to explain to them what was going on and several of the police drew their guns and told me to put my face down on the ground. I was not sure what was going on. “Don’t you move pal!!” a police officer started screaming at me as he was frisking me in my bathrobe. I was lying face down in the street. I cannot imagine what my new neighbors must have been thinking. Eventually, the entire situation worked itself out. A woman showed up who was a “rape counselor” who looked very concerned for a few minutes and rushed towards the girl with a blanket. About 5 minutes into the intervention the rape counselor suddenly because very emotionally unavailable and walked away in disgust. Apparently, they thought the girl had been raped. Instead, she was just on some pretty powerful drugs. This was my first taste of living in the Hollywood Hills. It was my first night. Over the next year or so I would have many incredible experiences that would culminate in the sale of the house 18 months later. We would find needles and syringes on the street while walking our dog. On another occasion my girlfriend and I were getting in the car to go out to dinner and a couple of men in their 30′s, who looked like bikers, walked by our house without shirts on, in dirty jeans, carrying baseball bats. When my next door neighbor was getting ready to move he put his house on the market and we went and toured it. He was a journalist from Germany. Left out in the open in a small walk in closet was an industrial size package of latex gloves with 4 or 5 large bottles of Astro Glide next to it. I cannot even imagine what was going on. When I sold the house I sold it to an 19 year old kid who was a famous actor; he purchased it for his 30 year old boyfriend. One day I was at a bank in the Hollywood Hills area taking out some money and there was a man sitting in the parking lot in a late model, blue GM pick up truck with his wife. In the rear window of the pick up truck he had curtains which looked Indian. He was looking at the severe damage to my Porsche outside the window of his truck. Next to him was his wife, who was very large and looked pretty mysterious. The man had skin which appeared to have suffered an incredible amount of sun damage throughout the years. You could not see much of his skin, however, because he had a ton of facial hair. “I can fix that massive dent you have in your car in 15 minutes,” he told me learning out the window as I walked back from the ATM to the car. “Really, how would you do that?” I asked. The man started telling me how he and his ancestors were from Romania and had traveled throughout Europe as skilled metal workers for hundreds of years. He said that since he had been a young boy he had been a “miracle worker” with shaping metal and could fix anything. In between talking with me he would speak back and forth to his wife in some strange mother tongue I had never heard anyone speak before. I had spent the $5,000 from the insurance company and wanted to get my Porsche fixed. It was my prized possession. I also knew that this might be the only chance I had to get it fixed. “How much will you charge?” I asked the man. “No more than what you just took out of that machine,” he said smiling and picking his teeth with a toothpick. I love people who take advantage of opportunity wherever it presents itself. This man was a hustler but sometimes you can really benefit from being a hustler. If you can make a couple of hundred dollars doing nothing then all the power to you. Since I had spent a good portion of my life knocking on doors asking people if they wanted asphalt work, I knew how to hustle. I was enjoying meeting this man. Far too few people out there are always on the look out for opportunity. You need to be on the look out for every potential opportunity that presents itself to you. Just as this man was on the look out for opportunity, so too was I. “How about $200?” I asked. “I took out $300 but need to take my wife out for dinner tonight. I can only take out $300 a day and my credit cards are maxed out.” “Sure friend,” the man said. He wanted to follow me back to my house because he said it was not good for him to be working in public. I did not ask a lot of questions. The man did not look all that trustworthy. I have lived in Europe before and this man reminded me of the Gypsies I had gotten to know a bit while living in Spain. Come to think of it, it occurred to me while I was driving back to my house, this man and his wife were most likely Gypsies. When we got back to my house, the man reached into the bed of his pick up truck and grabbed a brick. He started rounding the edge of the brick by scraping it along the street. I had no idea what was going on. “Are you sure you know what you are doing?” I asked him. “Yes, I am a master metal smith …” he said. Within a few minutes he had shaped the brick and was now busy pounding away at the car with a hammer and had the brick positioned behind the metal. A couple of doors down I saw one of my neighbors come out of his house and start walking towards me. This neighbor of mine was pretty funny. He was a guy with a beard in his mid-50s who lived in a house similar to mine, but which was perched over a ravine and not a cliff. He was someone who did some sort of work for the music industry that involved him sitting in front of a bunch of equalizers he had set up in his living room (all over his entire living room) and mixing music into television shows. He was also about 350 pounds and had a massive beard. As far as I could tell, he smoked pot constantly. He would walk his dog down the street at 8:00 am smoking a joint. He was a really nice guy. A few months previously he had taken an illegal trip to Cuba (it was illegal for Americans to go there at the time) as a vacation. Since he had returned he had decided that he had some sort of solidarity with Fidel Castro and the Cuban people. So he wore these military green t-shirts constantly. He walked up to me and my car. “What the hell are you doing?” he asked as he watched the man pounding away at the car. “I’m getting my car fixed,” I told him proudly. There was also a touch of humor to my voice since the situation looked so strange. “Are you out of your mind? That is an expensive, exotic car. This guy is a Gypsy. He has no idea what he is doing.” He looked upset. As I looked at the car the dent had actually almost magically disappeared. In fact, with a little paint it would probably be as good as new. I could not believe my eyes. He had been working on the car for only a few minutes. Maybe he really did have a magical touch. “You better get out here,” the man said to the guy working on my car. “You have no business taking advantage of this kid!” What happened over the next few minutes was all a blur. The two men started arguing and they were screaming at each other for several minutes. My fat neighbor was telling the guy who had been working on my car that he was going to call the police. They were starting to scream at each other so loud several neighbors had gathered on the street. It was sort of a comical thing until the wife of the Romanian man got involved. At some point she had gotten out of the truck and came running towards my neighbor. She ran towards him and threw the contents of a pouch at him which appeared to be some sort of dust. My neighbor looked astonished and the argument stopped. “GOD WILL STRIKE YOU DOWN!!” she screamed at him. She then fell to her knees in the middle of the street and started screaming “GOD STRIKE THIS EVIL MAN DOWN!! STRIKE HIM DOWN!!!” She them started mumbling and rocking back and forth, and side to side with her eyes closed while screaming in whatever language she was speaking. My neighbor looked a little frightened but was smiling. “I guess you’re on your own!” he said to me and began walking back to his house. Both the man and his wife were now screaming at him in their native language. Within a few minutes they had gotten into their truck and taken off. I think they were worried they might be about to be imprisoned. Strangely enough, a few weeks later I heard that my neighbor ended up in the hospital. I never saw him again because I moved out of the neighborhood a short time later. I never found out what happened to him. After I had gotten my center back and my neighbors had all gone back to their homes, I went out and looked at the car. While it needed some paint where the work had been done, the dent looked entirely gone. The next week I took the car around to the shops I had taken it to initially and I was amazed. None of the estimates to complete the repair on my car were more than $350. It just required simply some sanding and paint. It was as if a miracle had been worked by the man who I met in the parking lot. I ended up getting a job that should have cost $5000 done for about one tenth that, and it turned out fantastically well. None of this would have happened if I had not been willing to trust someone and take advantage of an opportunity when it presented itself. So many of us are afraid to trust others and cannot take advantage of opportunity when it presents itself. You need to be ready for opportunity when it appears, and trust others. This is one of the most important skills anyone can have. I have spoken to the early employees of Google before. Some of the earliest employees reported it as a company with no business model for making money and zero revenue. It was disorganized and had leaders with zero management experience. But they trusted the company and ended up very, very rich. The same thing with Ebay and other great companies. Someone out of a patrician background looking for a stable company where they would be guaranteed a certain salary and have a massive level of stability would never have accepted one of these jobs. People did, and it paid off for them. Opportunity presents itself in strange ways. Generally, if there is a risk, there is going to be a reward to compensate for this. Every risk we take has a potential reward at the other side. Generally, the greater the risk you take, the greater the reward. Here, I made $4500 from taking a risk. I also took a risk when I purchased the house on a cliff. It was actually “ok” I found out later and I made over $70,000 when I sold it 18 months later. For someone my age, that was an incredible amount of money–especially since it was tax free. I took the risk of potential death and also destroying my prized car, but my risks ultimately paid off. So too is it with your life. You will generally only get ahead if you are taking risks. The greater the risk the greater the reward. I grew up in a city called Grosse Pointe, Michigan. The way most of the city is organized is that there are streets that run from Lake St. Clair and directly away from it. The farther away you get from the lake, the smaller and closer together the homes get, until eventually the homes are less than 1,000 square feet. On the lake, the houses might be up to 20,000 square feet a have yards that are several acres large. The goal of most people in Grosse Pointe was always to live on the lake. When I was around 18, I started an asphalt business where I would do work for people in the small houses and also in the largest homes. One thing I quickly noticed that was unmistakable was that the people in the giant mansions overlooking the Lake had always taken huge risks with their careers. They had done things like stake their life savings on buying a piece of land that they later turned into a cemetery, and then had taken risks like this again and again. A block or so from the Lake you might find successful doctors or lawyers. The farther away from the Lake you got, the less risk peoples’ jobs would have. When you got really far away, you would see people living in the smallest homes, having very predictable jobs, like working as janitors in the Post Office. None of this is to say it is bad to be a janitor. My point to you is that the more risk you are able to tolerate, and the more faith you are able to have when taking risks, the greater results you will have in your career. You need to be very aware that in the end you will have to take some risks and trust in the outcome in order to succeed at the highest level possible. THE LESSON Trust people, and take advantage of opportunities however and wherever they present themselves; these are the two greatest skills that anyone can possess. You must have faith and trust in your employer when taking a job, and recognize that opportunities will frequently present themselves in strange ways. Every risk has a corresponding potential reward, and you generally will only succeed if you are taking risks to get to those awards. Have faith in others and take as many risks as you can, because greater risks tend to offer greater rewards.

Scarface and the Passion of New Immigrants to the United States

Harrison Barnes — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 05:01:35 +0000

Scarface is a 1983 movie about a man who comes over as an immigrant from Cuba to Miami in the 1980s. Between approximately April and October of 1980, there was a mass exodus of Cubans to Miami from Cuba. During this short period of time, over 125,000 Cubans made the boat journey between the United States and Cuba. This movement occurred due to a massive downturn in the Cuban economy. The boat lift quickly began to have negative implications for President Carter when it was discovered that many of the exiles were people who had been released from Cuban mental health facilities and jails. The lead character in the movie is Tony Montana, played by Al Pacino. Montana comes over to the United States from Cuba with a checkered past. He arrives in the United States with nothing, and he gets his green card by killing someone in a refugee camp, which allowed him to gain favor with someone who is able to expedite his admission to the United States. His first illicit job in the United States is when he is offered the chance to pick up some drugs in exchange for cash. He was working as a short-order cook before this point. The small diner he was working for was across the street from a fancy nightclub. He watched the Ferraris and Porsche’s roll up at night and watched men exit with beautiful women. This was the lifestyle he wanted for himself. And when he was offered his first job, for like $5,000, he told the man offering him the job that the money was not enough. He managed to get himself awarded an even more difficult job. The man who offered him the job laughed when he gave it to him. He believed that Pacino was sure to die. But Pacino took it anyway. Sure enough, when he showed up at the job all hell broke loose. His brother was strung up and cut up with a chainsaw, but Pacino remained tough. Pacino eventually somehow managed to kill everyone and left a hotel (where the deal was) covered in blood and gunfire. That night, he delivered the drugs and money to the head drug dealer (whom he had not met before). The drug dealer took him out to dinner, and Pacino was there looking like a goof, an unbuttoned shirt, talking in ways which were entirely inappropriate, and so forth. Pacino asked the head drug dealer’s wife (the beautiful Michelle Pfieffer) to dance. She said OK. She told him he’s a pig while they are dancing. “You wait, you see . . . you’ll be mine,” he told her. “I’d sooner be dead than wind up with a boat person like you,” she told him. He did eventually marry her. And as the two were dancing that night, one of the drug dealers looked at the head drug dealer and asks: “Why would you have anything to do with that piece of garbage?” “Because a man like that will do anything for you. He’ll never quit. He’s that loyal to the idea of success. He’ll die fighting.” This is an incredible scene because in reality it is true. Montana is so dedicated to the idea of success that he will die fighting for anything. He desperately wants success and knows that he needs to fight and pay the price to get it. Montana ends up becoming obscenely successful and wealthy. Scarface is a fascinating movie because it shows the power of our will. In effect, it is also a story about everyone in America because we are all “boat people” to some extent who have come to the United States from other countries in search of something. The difference between us and Montana is how hungry most of us are. When new immigrants come to the United States, they are extremely hungry. Decades later, their children generally do not follow in their footsteps. The children of new immigrants typically are less successful than their parents, and the children of the immigrant’s children are even less successful. I am going to say something that a lot of people will find offensive, but I am going to say it anyway because there is some truth to it. When my father was growing up and in school he remarked to me that the hardest working kids in school were typically Jewish. This is something I have heard others say before. Many of these kids had parents who were recent immigrants in the suburbs of Detroit where I grew up. Their parents had grown up during a time when there was a lot of anti-semitism and they pushed their kids to work extremely hard in school. Newer ethnic groups typically do not have an “old boy” sort of network to rely upon and, therefore, their parents may push them to overcompensate in other ways. When I was growing up, this was not necessarily the case. The hardest working kids tended to be Asian in my school. The second hardest tended to be the Jewish kids, and the third hardest working, as a general rule, tended to be the white Christian kids. I do not think there is anything racist about what I am relating. I also do not think there is anything discriminatory about what I am writing. I think there is a pattern in what I witnessed and was completely obvious in the schools around me. The children of newer immigrants to the United States tend to work harder (as a general rule) than the children of people who have been in this country for a longer period of time. I am not sure that the observations I have should be made on religious or racial grounds—indeed, they are likely more appropriately made on the “recent immigration” grounds. More recent immigrants and their children tend to, as a general rule, be people who are more interested in working harder than people who are more established. A couple of years ago I was getting a haircut on Mission Street in San Marino, California. San Marino is a relatively wealthy suburb right outside of Los Angeles. The suburb has the distinction of having the best school system in Los Angeles and one of the best in the United States. There is a white barber there who has been cutting hair on Mission Street for probably at least 50 years. San Marino used to be a predominately Catholic and Protestant neighborhood. Now, San Marino is at least 50% Chinese, and the population of Chinese keeps growing. The barber and I were speaking one day and he made the following observation: “Before the Chinese started moving here, all of the white kids in the San Marino schools used to get As and Bs. Now they all get Cs and Ds.” I had heard other people say this in San Marino before and something similar to this. This is not a racist statement in my opinion. The truth of what he was saying could have been phrased without using racial overtones: “As a generality, recent immigrants to the United States work much harder than people who have been here longer.” This is true, I believe, and I do not think there is anything prejudiced in saying this. Sitting on my desk right now is the resume of a Russian woman whom I do not think has been living in the United States more than a year or so. I interviewed her about six months ago for a position with our company. She is an attorney and has passed the bar exam. When I interviewed her, I realized that she did not speak English very well and would probably not be a good fit because her position required her to interact with the public. Nevertheless, in the six months since I interviewed her, and after having interviewed probably at least 25 people for the position she is applying for, I cannot stop thinking that she is the best person I interviewed for the position. “I never fail at anything …” she said. “I work as hard as possible for you and company …” she said. “I really want job …” she said. “I am extremely loyal …” she said. I contrast this with many of the “native” Americans I have interviewed who have showed up for the interviews and asked me all sorts of questions about what I could do for them. They often acted coy and have had numerous jobs. They talk about leaving one job after another due to some dissatisfaction with their boss or the need for different experiences. They just do not seem hungry, and I know they likely will not do all that well. This is something I see all the time. An employer wants to hire people who are hungry and want to work hard. I emailed the Russian woman last night to see if she was still available to work. She hardly speaks English but is the best fit I have seen. I know that she wants to succeed and will do better due to this. We want to hire people who are hungry. Maybe your parents are recent immigrants to the United States. Maybe your parents’ parents were immigrants to the United States. At some point in your past, there was likely someone who came to this country and wanted nothing more to succeed. This is something most people have when they get here. They are escaping a class system of a different country or conditions where they could not rise in their own country. Perhaps they were surrounded by poverty. Perhaps they were not allowed to work in their chosen profession. There are any number of things that may have held your relatives back in their home country. People generally do not pick up and immigrate to another country if things are good and they have a lot of opportunity where they came from. Are you interested in emigrating to any country at the moment? Most Americans never leave America to seek greener pastures elsewhere because this is where they believe the greenest pastures are. You need to rekindle the spirit of your ancestors and get hungry. People who come to this country are hungry to succeed. They are also excited to succeed and do great things. They want to take on the world and become someone. This is a spirit that far too many people end up losing somewhere along the line. Usually, once a family has been here awhile, the successive generations end up getting lazier and lazier for some reason. This is just what happens. These families talk about how their relatives did great things in the past but never do any of those great things themselves. You need to get the spirit of the new immigrants to this country and get excited. You need to create a legacy now and realize what tremendous opportunities you have. These opportunities were not available most likely wherever your relatives came from 10, 50, 100, 200, or more years ago. They were excited for what you have now. You should be too. THE LESSON Recent immigrants exemplify the benefits of willpower, passion, and excitement in the way that they work so much harder for their goals than the people who have been here for most or all of their lives. Like most Americans, you need to rekindle the spirit of your immigrant ancestors and become hungry for what you want. The entrepreneurial spirit that brought people to America has often faded over time; adopt the fire and work ethic of new immigrants in order to achieve your goals.

How to Manage Crisis

Harrison Barnes — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 05:01:54 +0000

One of the scariest things for any of us is when we are in crisis. A crisis can be defined a lot of ways. It can be:

the loss of a job.
a divorce.
a traumatic injury.
a death.
the alienation of a loved one due to a fight or disagreement.
a severe illness.
or even your own impending death.

Crisis is absolutely one of the most challenging things that we face, and when many people are in crisis they simply cannot cope and therefore fall apart. The key to managing any crisis is to look towards the future while you’re inside the crisis. You always need to be thinking about the future and the fact that a better future lies ahead for you. Knowing that there is a positive future in the picture and that you can control the future is extremely important. Today I saw a man speak who recently had a horrible accident that left him paralyzed from the waist down. I have known other people who became paralyzed as well. Due to their paralysis, those people confined themselves to their homes and stopped living the lives they were capable of living. In the case of this man, he started diving, surfing and doing all sorts of things that he never did before he was paralyzed. Despite the fact that he cannot walk, he made his future bigger than his past. If you were faced with the prospect of paralysis, what would you do? Would you look forward to doing things you had never done, or would you decide you would make your future bigger than your past? In terms of your life, you are going to be faced with crisis at some point. You may be in crisis right now. If you have recently lost a job, or are about to lose a job, you may be in crisis. I want to give you a few words of advice about how to navigate the crisis of losing a job or any other crisis in your life. If you have lost a job, the first thing you need to do is start thinking about your future and where you want to be. If you are about to lose a job, you should do the exact same thing. You need to concentrate on the future and how you are going to make your future so much better than your past. Your future is going to be much, much better than your past because you have learned so much in your current or last position.

You know what employers in your industry generally like and do not like.
You presumably have dealt with more people and are now more proficient with people.
You know how to look for employers in your industry that are doing well.
You are more mature.
You know how to do your job better.
You know what aspects of your job you are good at.
You know what aspects of your job you are not good at.
You know what aspects of your job you enjoy.
You know what aspects of your job you do not enjoy.

Another incredibly positive thing is that you can start looking at other sorts of professions and jobs you may be good at. I have seen so many incredible transformations of peoples’ lives after they lost or left a job, that it is difficult for me to recount all of them. The number of success stories of people who have transformed their lives after losing jobs is inspiring. Many of these people I have even hired. So many positive things lie in your future if you lose your job. I know of a guy who hated practicing law and was fired from a law firm. He ended up going back to school and is planning on becoming a professor. He has never been happier. I know of another guy who was fired from a law firm and ended up becoming a recruiter. He has never been happier, is making more money, and is more well known than he ever was when practicing law. I know of a man who failed the bar exam in New York several times, lost his job with a big firm there, ended up moving to California and founded one of the most prestigious law firms in the nation. I know of so many people who were in crisis, who looked towards the future when they lost a job, and ended up changing the world as we know it. Lee Lacocca, for example, was fired from Ford Motor Company. He went over to Chrysler and literally saved the company. He became world famous in the process. He made the absolute best of a huge crisis. People who succeed when losing jobs are able to get a perspective in their life that the loss of a job would not normally force them to get. This incredible perspective they get is something that enables them to dramatically increase their options and long-term happiness. If you are in crisis then feel good about this. The crisis you are in is going to force you to reexamine your life, and see what opportunities are potentially awaiting you. You will now be able to get out of what may have been a rut. This is something that is incredibly positive and you should be happy about it. In a divorce, for example, people will learn a lot about themselves. They will learn the sort of mate they get along with and do not get along with. They will learn about aspects of themselves that one mate may not like and that they need to be with a mate who happens to like that particular aspect of themselves. They will learn how they want and do not want to be treated. If you are in a crisis in a relationship right now (and you believe it is not solvable), then look to the future and the fact that you will one day have a much better mate who appreciates you. If you are in a job right now that you do not like and are in “crisis,” then look towards the future and see that there is likely something out there that will be meaningful for you. Look towards the future when you are in crisis. I have been in crisis situations many times. I have been in these situations in my career and in my personal life. Whenever I find myself in a crisis I just do what I am telling you right now: I look towards the future. You can feel bad all you want about the present situation you are in. This is what most people do. In fact, a lot of people spend their entire lives feeling bad about their situation and the life they are in. For example, they find friends and other people who will listen to how bad their situation is, and they sit around talking about this incessantly. They wallow, and may eat or abuse food or something else, while feeling bad about their situation. They simply do not allow themselves to enjoy life because they focus on what is wrong with their life right now. This is a serious problems for many people. The thing about the future is that it is always getting better. Even if you are about to die, depending upon your religious beliefs, you may be about to go to heaven or some other incredible place. You can mourn your departure from this earth, but you can also look towards the future.

If you are sick, look towards the future.
If you did not get into the college you wanted to get into, look towards the future. Maybe you can get into a better graduate school than the college you went to.
If you did not get the job you wanted when you applied, do not give up. Look towards the future, because you may be able to work for that employer again.
The future is always improving.

Juan Enriquez, the founding director of Harvard Business School Life Sciences Project, has written extensively on the topic of the future. One of the most interesting topics he studies is that we are now in a position, using stem cells and other methods, where we can regrow teeth such as molars in a petri dish. We can regrow the ear of a soldier injured in battle. We can regrow a bladder. We are even in a position now, where we are working on artificial eyes. The future that Enriquez sees is one where we will actually be a different class of humans that he calls “Homo Evolutis.” This name signifies that our species is continually evolving. Instead of being content with being able to hear, like we do right now, through science we will be able to engineer ourselves to hear like bats if we choose. Instead of seeing things normally like we do now, we will also be able to see infrared if we want. We are very, very close to doing this because we are taking direct control of the evolution of our own species. These findings are profound and they signify to me that even if we are deaf, if we cannot see, if we are missing an ear, if we are losing a bladder, there is hope. There are incredible miracles out there for the taking and the most important thing we can do is look towards the future when we are in crisis. The future can always be better than the past, if we allow ourselves to focus on what is possible. You manage crisis by looking towards the future and what you can accomplish there, instead of dwelling on where you are right now. THE LESSON Crisis is among the most challenging things that anyone can face, and many people cannot cope and fail in the face of it. To survive in the midst of a crisis, look to the future; doing so will make you feel more confident about your current situation. Crises can force you to reexamine your life, and make you seek out potential opportunities. The future can always be better than the present or past, and focusing on the future can be incredibly positive and guide you out of what may have been a rut.

The Power of Perceptions

Harrison Barnes — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 05:01:17 +0000

In 1991 I purchased a four-year old Audi 5000 automobile for $2,500. When the car was new, it had been listed at $40,000. It was really beautiful inside. It had all sorts of electronic controls, powered everything, and it drove incredibly well. In fact, I can honestly say that the Audi 5000 was one of the nicest cars I have ever owned. In the entire time I owned the car, I had very few problems with it. The car was very comfortable in all respects and it cost me less than a much older, cheap compact car would have. As far as I was concerned, I had gotten the most fantastic deal imaginable. I drove the car for a decent amount of time and was always a little upset that I sold it. The car was very well made and one of the main reasons I was driving it was because I did not care what other people thought. You may be asking yourself how anyone could purchase such a great car for such a cheap price. It made a lot of sense at the time, since no one wanted to own an Audi 5000, which was considered “unsafe” and extremely dangerous by “everyone” due to a 60 Minutes episode called “Out of Control” which aired in 1986. Since that episode of 60 Minutes was broadcast, almost overnight the resale value of the Audi 5000 had been destroyed, and everyone was trying to unload these as quickly as they could. Anybody who wanted to could go out and purchase an Audi 5000 that was a few years old for pennies on the dollar. “Out of Control” was all about complaints of “unintended acceleration” of the Audi 5000 car. The show featured a distraught mother, Kristi Bradosky, who had run over her six year old son when the car had allegedly lurched forward in her garage without warning. On Monday, December 18, 1989, the Wall Street Journal ran a story concerning the scare that had been generated by the 60 Minutes episode:

If you’re the kind of driver who sometimes has trouble finding the brakes in your car, you should be driving an Audi. Last month, in 35mph crash tests of an airbag-equipped Audi 100, the mannequin in the driver’s seat suffered the lowest crash force ever recorded by the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration, NHTSA, in this kind of test. And yet, according to the Center for Auto Safety–a self styled public interest organization that sells its research to plaintiffs’ lawyers–the Audi 100′s predecessor, the Audi 5000, was as deadly as the Audi 100 is safe. It exhibited “sudden acceleration,” a fatal propensity to take off at full speed even as the terrified driver rammed the brake pedal to the floor. CBS’s 60 Minutes ran a devastating exposé of the Audi 5000. Audi customers fled. Lawyers cashed in. The American public was saved, yet again, from the perils of technology gone awry. Only one little noticed footnote remains at the end: There was nothing wrong with the car. The Audi story is by now, dismally familiar. “Sudden acceleration” accidents occurred when the transmission was shifted out of “park.” The driver always insisted he was standing on the brake, but after the crash the brakes always worked perfectly. A disproportionate number of accidents involved drivers new to the vehicle. When an idiot-proof shift was installed so that a driver could not shift out of park if his foot was on the accelerator, reports of sudden acceleration plummeted. But a story to the effect that cars accelerate when drivers step on the accelerator doesn’t boost television ratings or jury verdicts. And driver error is understandably hard to accept for a mother whose errant foot killed her six year old son. So with the help of such mothers, CAS and CBS knitted together a tissue of conjecture, insinuation, and calumny. The car’s cruise control was at fault. Or maybe the electronic idle. Or perhaps the transmission. 60 Minutes, in one of journalism’s most shameful hours, gave air time in November 1986 to a self styled expert who drilled a hole in an Audi transmission and pumped in air at high pressure. Viewers didn’t see the drill or the pump—just the doctored car blasting off like a rocket. Junk science of this kind moves fast. Real science takes time to catch up with this kind of intellectual cockroach and squash it. Government agencies in Japan and Canada, as well as in the US, conducted painstaking studies. The Canadians who are franker about such things, called it “driver error.” In America, where we can’t attach blame to anyone whose name doesn’t end with Inc., it was called “pedal misapplication.” And unsurprisingly, it’s not just Audi drivers who commit it. So, in the long run, the truth does come out. In the short run, the lawyers swoop in. Most soon recognized that they couldn’t prove any defect in the Audi’s engine or transmission. But our liability system today is a master of the bait and switch—the switch was to “pedal misdesign.” No doubt about it, the original Audi like other European cars, placed brake and accelerator pedals slightly closer together than is usual in many American designs. This allows the good driver to move faster between the pedals in highspeed emergency. Perhaps it also makes it easier for the bad driver to mix up the pedals. Nobody, including NHTSA, is quite sure whether, overall, the old Audi pedal placement was marginally better or marginally worse. End of case? Hardly. With Audi shellshocked and vulnerable from the earlier junk engineering claims, the pedal placement lawyers moved in. The 60 Minutes story starred a mother who had run over her six year old son. On the air, she insisted that she had had her foot on the brake the whole time. When her $48 million claim came to court in Akron, Ohio, in June 1988 the investigating police officer and witnesses at the scene testified that after the accident the distraught mother had admitted that her foot had slipped off the brake. The jury found no defect in the car. Trial judges in New Jersey and New York have overturned bad pedal design verdicts against Audi. Last July a federal court in Pennsylvania issued a summary judgment for Audi. And that should have been the end of Audi’s legal troubles. Except that it wasn’t. An appellate court reinstated the New Jersey verdict: an appeal is pending. The New York case was settled before retrial. A California jury returned a $3.5 million verdict against Audi on a pedal placement theory, after the plaintiff’s lawyers abandoned a sudden acceleration claim. Another appeal is pending. Today, Audi is reportedly defending itself in more than 140 different suits, and damage claims are in excess of $5 billion. Not that the aggregate claims have the slightest connection with reality, of course. At one point, a single demented plaintiff in New York filed identical $5 billion claims in both federal and state courts; both have since been thrown out. How about the US government safety report? In July, 1989, shortly after the report was released, Audi ran a hopeful advertisement titled “Case Closed.” “The case is not closed,” responded Robert Lisco, a Chicago plaintiffs’ attorney. “Those guys must be smoking something.” 60 Minutes never even acknowledged the final US findings, although it did grudgingly note identical conclusions of an earlier, blue-ribbon study, and then proceeded to rebroadcast inflammatory videos from the earlier segment. CAS denounced the government study and cheerfully cranked up yet another sudden acceleration smear, this one against Cadillacs. Lawyers for the “Audi Victims Network” brazenly declared that the report strengthened their clients’ cases. They may be right. The largest suit now pending against Audi is an Illinois class action, ostensibly representing 300,000 or so Audi 5000 owners. The charge? That because of the sudden acceleration controversy, Audi’s have lost resale value. Yes, sudden acceleration is real. A powerful engine kicks into gear without warning or reason. It crashes through a respected business, ruins the livelihood of hundreds of innocent dealers, and devalues the property of hundreds of thousands of bewildered car owners. The windfall goes to those who destroy and then successfully blame others for the wreckage. For heaven’s sake, where are the brakes?

As a consequence of the 60 Minutes story, sales of Audi’s in the United States collapsed. According to one account:

The show had an enormous impact in the marketplace. Sales of all Audi models in the US, which had peaked at 74,061 in 1985, plunged sharply after the 60 Minutes broadcasts. “It was a nightmare for the company,” says Thomas McDonald, former head of public relations at Audi’s parent, Volkswagen of America, Inc. “We lost billions of dollars in sales and revenues. Audi’s average annual sales of 14,000 cars from 1991 to 1995 were just 19 percent of its pre 60 Minutes peak.”

No one was ever able to duplicate the alleged occurrence of unintended acceleration with the car. Not a single person who filed a case against Audi ever won. Nevertheless, even to this day a perception still seems to linger in the marketplace that Audi’s are somehow dangerous and unsafe. What the Audi example teaches and has always taught me is that perceptions are one of the most important things to take note of. 60 Minutes, with all of its marketing might, was able to shape perceptions and the way people viewed Audi cars. Despite the fact that nothing was wrong with the car, 60 Minutes changed the way an entire generation of people perceived the automobiles manufactured by a particular company, and this almost destroyed the company in the process. One of the most powerful and important aspects of our careers and our lives is how we are perceived by others and how we control our own perceptions of those around us. People can use perceptions to their advantage or to their disadvantage. The most successful people are able to use perceptions to their advantage. After all, everything we may surmise about a person, a job, or any situation is based upon our perceptions. Often how something is perceived matters more than the facts surrounding it. For years I have opened the paper each week and seen various advertisements by American car companies wherein they try and compare their cars with German or Japanese rivals. For example, the company may have a chart that shows that the American car stops in a five foot shorter distance, that the car accelerates a little faster that its Japanese counterpart and that its JD Power Initial Quality Survey score is higher. I have seen these advertisements and their corresponding charts for 25+ years–and every single year American manufacturers have sold fewer and fewer cars in the United States. At the same time, the Japanese have continued to sell more cars each year. What is going on here, I think, is that people simply have different perceptions. The Japanese cars are perceived as better. The advertisers can throw around all of the facts and figures they want. People simply tend to have a better perception of Japanese cars. Perceptions matter more than facts. A couple of years ago my assistant was out purchasing me a little television for my bedroom. She called me from the store and gave me two options. One was a brand of television I had never heard of, LG, and the other was a Sony. She told me the LG one was bigger, had a nicer picture, and was a lot cheaper. I did not care. I told her to buy the Sony television. This was all because of my perception of the Sony brand. I had a much better perception of Sony than I had of LG, and consequently there were no facts that could change my mind–not even the fact that the LG model may have indeed had a bigger and better picture; and it definitely did cost less than the Sony model. Many people feel that their job search and the quality of the job they get is a battle of their résumé, and that their entire future depends on what is visible on their résumé. For example, people who go to the best colleges often assume they will get a much better job than those who go to lesser colleges. People who have the best work experience believe they will generally get the best job. There is a tremendous amount of truth to this reasoning; however, more important than any of this is how we are perceived. Perceptions matter far more than facts. When I was recruiting full time, I remember that I did not care as much about what was on someone’s résumé as who they were and how they were perceived. My greatest love in recruiting was managing how an employer perceived someone, which was always my greatest skill. Managing a perception instead of just the black and white characteristics surrounding a person was probably the most important thing I could do. I remember I met a girl once who was losing her job at a highly prestigious law firm in Los Angeles. I sat down with her and learned that she had grown up on a hippie colony with her parents, and that her father had some extreme beliefs about growing his own food and so forth. She had been rebelling against this lifestyle over the course of her entire life, and consequently she had become incredibly disciplined and motivated to succeed as a lawyer. This material made for incredibly interesting reading for the law firms that interviewed her, and I remember that her being perceived as someone who was “rebelling against the antiestablishment” went over very well. I remember writing a 15-page letter to the law firms about this aspect of this woman’s personality. What most recruiters would have done with this girl is send her around to law firms and so forth without managing her presentation–and therefore the perceptions of those that might hire her. She would have simply been presented as someone seeking a position at a new firm, a girl who had had a job at a good law firm and who had attended a decent law school. This would not have done her too much good, however. What the best recruiters do and what really changes everything around for the job seeker is when the perceptions of the employers about the prospective employee are conscientiously and properly shaped. There is a very good documentary on HBO about the disgraced Evangelical minister Ted Haggard. Haggard was a well known Evangelical leader who was the former president of the National Evangelical Association, representing 30 million Christians. He was also the Founder of the 14,000-member New Life Church. In 2006, Haggard resigned after a male prostitute claimed that Haggard had hired him numerous times for gay sex and used crystal meth with him. The fascinating documentary follows Haggard after being expelled from the Church as he moves from town to town looking for work. Unable to get a job, Haggard eventually gets a job as a traveling insurance salesman. Seeing Haggard go from a powerful man who is on top of the world and lecturing tens of thousands of people, meeting with American presidents, and being interviewed on major news programs–to someone whose entire range of possessions now fits in the back of a U-Haul truck was incredible. What makes the Haggard story so interesting is that it shows, like the Audi example, that everything is about perceptions. The public perception of Haggard was changed overnight when it came out that he did not represent what he stood for, having engaged in behavior that was considered immoral. The public perception of Audi was changed overnight when people started to believe the car was incredibly dangerous, because of a news program. Ultimately, the truth was that the Audi 5000 was among the top cars in terms of safety on the road. You need to realize the power of perceptions in your life, and to use them to your advantage. Aim to control, shape, and influence the perceptions that others have about you. Consciously work to create the image you will project to those around you. One of the most fascinating things to me about recruiting has always been what happens when a given law firm gets a bad reputation. The law firm may have earned a bad reputation due to a partner going to prison, or due to consistent layoffs, or something else along these lines. In most cases, the reputation is confined to only one aspect of the law firm. For example, out of 10 practice groups in the law firm, there may be a problem with only one practice group–not every practice group. What ends up happening, however, is that people often do not go beneath this skin to recognize that the true problems within the law firm are really confined to only 10% of the entire organization. What this means is that there are less applicants and therefore more opportunities available for people to get jobs at this firm, who might not otherwise get jobs there. This is all due to a poor perception about the firm that is not well founded. Perceptions are often far more important than facts. You will get a better job due to how you are perceived over and above how good your résumé is. You manage how you are perceived by the people you know, how you present yourself to the world and how your reputation will grow. The most important thing you can do in your life and career is make perceptions work for you. THE LESSON Perceptions matter more than facts; others’ perceptions of you, your perceptions of others, and how you control both are the most important aspects of your career. Realize the power of perceptions in your life and use them to your advantage. Aim to control and shape the perceptions that others hold about you by shaping the image that you project to the world.

Sympathy, Morale, and the Importance of Being Organized

Harrison Barnes — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 05:01:28 +0000

In every job I have ever had, I have been happy for the most part. When I was an attorney, for example, I liked many aspects of being an attorney. When I worked in the asphalt business, I loved many aspects of that business. Most people are able to find some level of enjoyment in every job that they do. What is interesting, though, is that in every job I ever had, there were always people around me who were more than happy to stop by my office and go out to lunch with me, just to give me the news that my job really sucked–regardless of what I might think of the job.

“It is really unfortunate that they are giving you so much work. You should not have to work that hard.”

“I bet you are starting to see that this is a really bad place to work. There is not enough work to do. I would not be surprised if it went out of business.”

“There is no opportunity here. I heard that someone was fired so they did not have to give him a promotion.”

“People make more money at our competitors. There is no reason to stay around here when they are not paying the top of the market salary.”

“I am going to get out of here just as soon as the economy improves. They do not appreciate anything we are doing.”

One after another, people would stop by my office, take me out to lunch, come up to me at parties and, in general, give me one news flash or another about how awful the place where I was working was. The fact was that when this first started occurring I actually really liked where I was working.

I thought the work was fun.
I liked the people I was working with.
I was excited about the income I was earning.
I liked working hard because I had enthusiasm for the work I did.
If I was not working hard at a particular time, I enjoyed having a short respite.

However, regardless of how I felt, there were commentators around me who would always appear and find a tremendous amount of fault in my job for me. This is something that happened in every single job I ever had. I would also watch these “sympathizers” approach other new coworkers at the firms, and change them from happy, enthusiastic and bubbling puppies into dour faced, angry and resentful people–in a short period of time. What kind of “sympathy” makes someone who was formerly happy become depressed? What kind of “sympathy” makes someone resentful, or hate their job? This sort of sympathy typically does not do anybody any good. The sympathizer is rarely a person who is effective in his own job, or in the world. If this person could do something about what he or she argues is a negative situation, the person would. You may notice that the sympathizer never helps you make the situation any better. Instead, the sympathizer makes you resent what you are doing and what you have. The only place the sympathizer is generally going to take you is to the unemployment line or, at best, another job–where you will undoubtedly encounter another sympathizer. Since I started out as a young attorney I now know many people who are partners in major law firms who have had fantastic careers. These successful people never listened to the sympathizers when they stopped by their offices. They walked away, having other things to do, or they simply avoided the sympathizers completely. I now read the legal newspapers, Wall Street Journal and other publications, and I see these attorneys who “walked away” mentioned regularly. The sympathizers that I knew have had careers that mostly border on tragic. Despite having gone to good law schools and having had experiences with good firms, many have done things such as:

working in five legal jobs and then taking a year off, only to end up in a career teaching pre-algebra in a private school,
working in the human resources department of a 15-person nonprofit company,
calling themselves “writers” and sitting around at Starbucks all day doing and publishing nothing.
becoming “legal consultants” and having no clients and trying to live on a couple of thousand of dollars a month (my personal favorite).

One attorney, after coming to the United States from Europe or Asia, burned through three jobs in three years and then ended up getting deported to his home country because no one would give him a job in the United States. Four years later I discovered on this person’s Facebook page that he is a waiter in Shanghai, who also repairs BMWs for a sports car dealership. There is nothing wrong with doing any of these things, of course. But these examples are all far different from making well over a million dollars a year as an attorney, working for the top performing companies in the world, and having a high profile career for which one is highly sought after, and is regularly mentioned in the media. My point is this: The sympathizers are generally lucky to be employed at all, whereas the people who “just walk away” from the sympathizers are by far the most sought out. Since we all rely on others for jobs, income and a sense of contribution, I believe that the person who can “just walk away” is the person who ultimately has the better career, and makes the most of his or her skills and talents. Sympathy with your coworkers and others is the surest way to create problems. You tell people their job is crap, that they are mistreated and that the conditions are bad–and what do they do? They get angry and no longer like their job. They go to work each day feeling bad about their jobs and at themselves for having to be there. Groups of workers may even try to “revolt” and “organize”, due to their newfound beliefs that the job place is extremely unfair. This is the history of communism, for example. Our entire world and many events within it have been influenced by one “worker revolt” after another against “unfair” working conditions, or unfair this or that. The results of these revolts are not always good. Case in point, is Russia better off for having been under communism? Did communism work for Russia? Moreover, is the American auto industry, which has been dying away, better off in the long run due to the incredible demands it experienced under unions? Is having no job available better than having many jobs available? Genuine, unselfish sympathy and unmotivated empathy are obviously of value in personal relationships; however, I am unsure if the type of “sympathy” discussed above is ever a good thing. I have an assistant in Las Vegas that has a friend who will not get a job because he makes more money on unemployment than he would make if he were working. He has gone out and applied for jobs and has even gotten them, but ultimately it makes no sense for him to keep these jobs. This does not make a lot of sense to me. So this fellow continues sitting around doing nothing, not being a part of society’s work force. Is this a good thing? I do not think it is. How much good does the “sympathy” of government unemployment payments do here? When I used to live in the inner city of Detroit many women I knew of refused to get married because they would not be able to get welfare if they got married. Accordingly, many, many women decided they had no use for a man in the household. What did this do for the children? How do you think this made the local men feel? Did this mentality contribute to crime? How much good does the “sympathy” of government welfare payments do here? Sympathy is something that can really hurt you. Society has rules and procedures, and if you follow these you will generally do very well and rise towards the top. If you sit around seeking sympathy and functioning on others’ sympathy, the opposite will happen: You will fall to the bottom. Sympathy is something that often destroys morale. The man on unemployment who does not get a job because he makes more on unemployment has low morale. The woman on welfare who refuses to get married and is raising four children by three different husbands probably has low morale. The person who likes his job and suddenly changes his tune due to the insincere “sympathy” of coworkers who plant negative ideas about the pay scale, working conditions and so forth–has poor morale. The person who jumps between jobs and never really gets anywhere because each new employer is “just as bad as the one before” has poor morale. I am not saying that there is no injustice in the world. There is. However, the people that have real skill in the world are the ones who have the ability to bring order to a situation and fix things. Companies and groups that have the best organization are typically the ones with the highest morale. If a company has good organization then the problems of having extremely low morale and other issues are less likely to become a problem. You should seek out companies and organizations that have the best organization. If you work for a company that is incredibly well organized you are more likely to do better than if you work in one that is not. When you drive down any decent-sized street in America you are likely to see a McDonald’s, a Starbucks and a number of similar chain restaurants. What is the difference between these companies and your average company out there? Once a McDonald’s is put up in any town in the United States you never hear about the place closing down due to low morale or an inability to attract and retain workers. You do not hear news stories about poor morale in the Midtown Manhattan McDonald’s, or the Starbucks under the Golden Gate Bridge. These businesses just keep humming along, and very few of them fail. This is mostly because these companies and their staffs are incredibly well organized.

Everyone knows what they are supposed to be doing.
Everyone knows when they are supposed to be at work.
Everyone knows exactly what is required of their job.
Everyone knows when their next review is going to be.
Everyone knows what their responsibilities will be if they are promoted.
Everyone knows what they have to do (and not do) in order to get fired.

You know when you go into a Starbucks how the coffee is going to taste, how it is going to be served and so forth. The experience is predictable. The people working there also know how to do their jobs due to a myriad of training procedures they have undergone, and the feeling you get from the average Starbucks employees is not one of horrible morale or job-induced anger. Instead, it is generally a feeling of excitement and pleasure to be of service. The reason for this I believe is due to how well the company and its branches are organized. Organizations that are well organized like your Starbucks, your McDonalds and your Wal-Marts, are usually also the most successful. They will be there with or without you. They keep going. The reason that poor morale is so difficult to infiltrate all the workers in these companies is because the processes and procedures of the companies are highly fine tuned and organized. If an employee is making trouble and not doing his job correctly, not showing up for work consistently, bad mouthing the boss, bad mouthing the company, not being productive with his time, taking unscheduled breaks and so forth, then the company will “eject” him very quickly, like a virus. When I see a résumé of someone who has been at a variety of well organized employers in the space of a short period of time I generally know that this person is like a “virus”, who tends to get expelled from the well organized system quickly. Your best hotel chains, your best restaurants and your best companies all use very good organization to keep morale high and to keep the company productive. Efficient organizations build good morale. Poor organization leads to poor morale. If a McDonald’s, Wal-Mart, Disneyland or Starbucks were not extremely well organized then they would have a variety of serious problems with internal morale. When I speak with people inside of law firms and companies who are extremely dissatisfied with their jobs, the one complaint I hear over and over again is how poorly organized the employer is. When people are promoted, demoted, or fired who should not be, and when one person has to do too much work, while others are not doing enough, such issues can all be greatly improved by concrete organizational procedures, which let people know where they stand inside the organization. Discomfort, insecurity and other issues creep in when people do not know exactly where they stand in an organization. In almost every instance where there is extremely poor morale in an organization, beneath this you will find a chaotic lack of organization. People just do not understand how things work, where they fit in and what their responsibilities are. When people understand exactly what they are supposed to be doing and what is expected of them, morale increases. In your career and life you have the following choices: First, you can be the sort of person who goes around undermining organizations, people and so forth with “sympathy” about their lives and working conditions. You can tell people how sorry you are about whatever is expected of them and their lives. In this process you will hurt others and create problems. Second, you can be the sort of person who is proactive and helps a company or group get organized and get procedures in place in order for morale to improve. You can be a champion for organization and in the process raise the morale of the company or organization you are part of. The better organized the company or group you are part of, the higher the morale will generally be. If you take this route, you will find that the people who resist your efforts are most likely the same people who like to find “sympathy” with everyone around them. People who go around giving sympathy are, most often, harmful people whose sense of power comes from grinding at the happiness and egos of those around them, and undermining organization. You will generally be the happiest and most productive in the best organized groups. The best organized groups are also much harder for people to undermine. A group’s strength is generally related to its ability to be organized. Pretty soon many of these so-called sympathetic workers may be out of a job. The company will simply close or go elsewhere, where the staff is more friendly and appreciative of the work. THE LESSON Sympathy destroys morale, and those who can walk away from sympathy often have better careers and make better use of their skills. Good organization is the most effective means of upholding high morale and productivity. Well-organized groups and companies are much harder for people to undermine, and their strength is directly linked to their organization.

The Better Your Product, the Better Your Life

Harrison Barnes — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 05:01:10 +0000

One day, when I was growing up, I had a pain in my foot and my stepmother took me to see a podiatrist. I had never heard of a podiatrist and I have never been to one since, but I remember hearing the most unusual story at the time about a girl who became a podiatrist. Several years ago, some friends of one of my parents’ had a daughter who completed a few years of college and was pretty out of control. She had gotten horrible grades, had gotten into all sorts of trouble, and seemed to be heading in the wrong direction. She was planning on going back for her third year of college when her father stepped in and told her he was not going to send her to school anymore, because he knew that she would just spend that time partying, goofing off, and being unproductive. At the time, she was getting a degree in English or something along those lines, which the father figured would not give her any real valuable skills. He had spent his life as an accountant and believed that it was always important to have a “valuable skill” of some kind. The man told his daughter he was perfectly willing to pay for her college, but would only do so if she spent two years going to a podiatry school. I recall being told that he chose podiatry school because the girl had always been very good at science and he knew she could pass the classes. More importantly, one of his accounting clients had attended the school and was able to pull some strings to get her admitted. The father’s client had set up a little practice doing podiatry and was making a very good living. The girl’s father figured the smartest thing for his daughter to do was to attend the school for two years; then, if she wanted she could go back to college for a few more years. I do not know what the requirements for going to podiatry school are now; however, back then the young woman was able to gain admission after only completing a few years of college. The message from her father was clear: “I do not care if you go back to college in two years once you have your podiatry degree, or if you want to go be a groupie in a rock band. All I know is that you need to have a valuable skill and you need to have the ability to support yourself.” To make a long story short, the woman went to podiatry school and I do not think she did particularly well or badly. After graduating, however, she got a job and within a few years was a very successful podiatrist doing well financially with a respectable job. I was reminded of this yesterday while I was waiting in line to buy a soda in a drug store. I saw a doctor who must have been in his 90s telling the pharmacist something about a prescription for one of his patients. The way I figured, he must have graduated from medical school in the late 1930s. Here he was, close to 70 years later, working and being productive. All of the knowledge that he learned in medical school provided him the foundation of a lifelong skill. I remember looking at the doctor with respect when he walked by. We respect people with skills. If we have a skill then we will always have opportunity. I have seen so many older doctors in my life, I cannot believe it. Almost all doctors I have ever known have been in their 70s at least. They are always working because they have really valuable skills that the world wants. Having a valuable skill, something that people are willing to pay for, provides you with a way to make a living–and it also gives your life a sense of purpose. I am going to back up a bit and relate to you a couple of stories I know about artists, musicians, and others. I know plenty of people who chose these paths for their lives. It is fascinating to me to see how their lives have turned out in terms of what they were able to accomplish with their skills. The first person is someone I knew when he was younger. He was an extremely talented artist. However, instead of just “being creative” and being an artist, he went to a very prestigious art school and studied graphic design, at which he really excelled. He did not have much of a choice. See, he was not on speaking terms with his father, and his mother and stepfather did not have the financial means to support him. He knew that he would need to look out for himself once he got out of school and that he did not have any kind of financial safety net. This young man did not so much concentrate on paintings or abstract art. Instead, he made sure to develop a skill that he could use in the world–something people would be willing to pay for. When he got out of school, he got a job with a couple of prestigious design companies. A few years later, he started his own design business and the business grew. This person has become wealthy and successful based on his skills. He is an artist, but he chose to develop his artistic skills in a calculated way, such that he would be able to earn a living. I have a tremendous amount of respect for this guy. The graphic artist is no different from the podiatrist I referred to earlier. The podiatrist was studying English originally, but her father realized this may not lead anywhere, so he got her involved in studying podiatry instead. He wanted his daughter to have a valuable skill that the world is willing to pay for. Your career and life revolve around precisely this one important aspect: having a valuable skill that the world is willing to pay for. The payment can be food, it can be money, it can be shelter, it can be goodwill. Whatever the payment, you must have a skill that others are willing to pay for and the skill should be enduring.

The ability to get along with people can be a commodity.
The ability to perform exceptionally well at a given athletic activity can be a commodity.
The ability to do given tasks and achieve specific goals, like sales, is a commodity.
The ability to cut hair is a commodity.
The ability to do hard manual labor can be a commodity.
The ability to wait tables can be a commodity.
The ability to write legal briefs can be a commodity.

Whatever it is, your ability to succeed in the world and in your life will be directly proportional in most cases to the perceived value of the product/commodity you are offering. So many people lose track of this idea, and this creates incredibly unhappy lives for so many people. If you do not have a valuable skill, the world is probably not going to have much interest in you. The example of the graphic artist is the best-case scenario. However, most of the examples of artists I have encountered in the past are not good examples like this one. Most of the artists I know are the children of rich parents; these are kids who never really worked hard in school and applied themselves. They decided that they would be artists when they realized this was something that they could do that did not require much academic acumen or other skills. Whether a singer, a potter, or a sculptor, most of the people I have known who became artists had parents who were able and willing to pay for their children’s artistic pursuits, in some cases supporting their children right into their 30s, as they moved from country to country in Europe, painting on the hillsides of France, or singing in obscure nightclubs. Since art is subjective, it is very difficult for people to judge bad art from good art and so we typically just say “they’re an artist” and do not judge the artist as being a good or bad artist–the way you might judge a salesperson’s performance, for example. I love music and I love art, but the truth is that most artists I have known do not have the skills to do what they are doing professionally. In fact, they have nowhere near the skill to do what they want to do professionally. Accordingly, what ends up happening to these people is that they get into their 30s and they become resentful and angry that they do not have the skills to get where they would like to be.

They become angry at society and do not understand why people are not buying their paintings or showing up en masse.
They get angry with their parents for not supporting them with more money.
A part of them often resents the path they took to become artists, as they see their friends who have skills purchasing houses, nice cars, and so forth.
They attempt to improve their product, but nothing changes for them professionally.

These are not nice things for me to say, but I have seen this situation repeat itself since I was young. The high school I went to, Cranbrook Kingswood School, even had a graduate program art school, and my grandmother worked in the library there for twenty-plus years, so I have had enough exposure to this stuff to know that failure is epidemic with artists, and it rarely works out. The problem with it “not working out” is that the artists never have money, rarely have health insurance, and many of them are just waiting for their wealthy parents to die so they can inherit some money and become “independent.” In fact, a large part of the “identity” and sense of importance derived by many of the artists I have known throughout the years seems to relate to the fact that their parents are wealthy. If they had some kind of valuable skill, none of this would matter. Do you think the girl who became a podiatrist at the insistence of her father is sitting around talking about how cool she is because her father was wealthy when she was growing up–while waiting for him to die? She probably never looked back once she became a podiatrist. She had a valuable skill and it has served her well. Having a valuable skill means everything to your survival and ability to enjoy a successful life. Fraud is when someone purports to be offering something of value (a high return on an investment, in the case of someone like Bernie Madoff)–but is not really furnishing anything of value at all. Criminal acts such as robbing a house or setting fire to a building are crimes because they involve taking something of value from someone without giving the person a corresponding payment, good, or service. When you are interviewed for a job, the employer is trying to decide how much value you offer and will furnish to the company. This is the essence of any job interview and it is exactly what goes on in the hiring process. The employer wants to know what skill you are offering, whether it is a strong or a weak skill, and whether or not it can be purchased for a good price. Your career will survive and thrive in direct proportion to the perceived value of the product or service you are offering. Sending out résumés and promoting yourself is all in vain if you do not have a valuable skill that you can sell to the market. Companies, individuals, and others will only pay if you are offering something of value. You need to find where the value is in what you are doing, and what you have to offer that is unique. Some people out there have unique and valuable skills that would boggle your mind. One of the most disturbing shows I saw recently was of people who clean up accident scenes after suicides and murders. This is a huge business and something that a lot of companies out there do, and it pays very well:

The police, the fire department and the crime-scene investigators who arrive at a crime scene perform crucial tasks in the aftermath of a violent death. But they don’t, as a general rule, clean up. Mopping up after someone who dies violently is the responsibility of that person’s family. And until recently, there were very few cleaning companies that would handle that kind of job, so the family members ended up having to do it themselves. If ever there were a situation begging for capitalism to step in and take over, this was it. Crime-scene cleaners charge up to $600 an hour for their service, and most people would pay a lot more. http://science.howstuffworks.com/crime-scene-clean-up.htm

Six hundred dollars an hour is pretty good pay. The show I saw about these people talked about what a good business this is and how great it pays. This is a skill. It is not a skill I would want to have, but it is something that supports people and provides them a good living. I had a professor in law school who knew someone who had started a bunch of Swisher franchises and became very rich. Swisher franchises are the ones who clean toilets in restaurants. This is not something I would be interested in but, again, it is a valuable skill and a service that people need. Not even the restaurants are interested in cleaning their own toilets. In the newspapers these days there is one story after another about towns around the United States that have been devastated by various factory closings. When an automobile plant closes, for example, the reason it is closing in most instances is that it is not offering a product that the public is willing to pay for. In the event that the plant is closing because it is relocating overseas, since American workers are too expensive, this simply means there are other workers willing to offer the same product (their labor) at a better cost than the American workers. I cannot tell you how many people I have met in my career and how many stories I have heard about people who lose a job in their 40s or 50s and suddenly have nothing to offer the world. One of the most astonishing instances of this came about when I was a legal recruiter in 2000. An attorney from a stellar New York law firm called me one day and wanted help switching firms. At the time he was earning around $275,000 a year, but now he was losing his job. The reason? The IRS had recently outlawed a certain type of financial transaction that this attorney had spent his entire career working on. He was more than 15 years into his legal career and suddenly he did not have a marketable skill. To me, this entire thing seems crazy, but the guy ended up not finding another job and moving back to England, where he was from, to do something else. He had a skill that suddenly became unmarketable. What does all of this mean for your career and life? You need to have a product, something of value that you are offering the world, which people are willing to pay for. You need to have a skill–and a good skill, one that you keep getting better and better at. Your product should have numerous characteristics such as longevity and marketability. The 90-year-old doctor is still working because people are willing to pay for his service. Your product can be morbid and unusual (like being a mortician) or it can be beautiful (like being a professional flower arranger). But whatever your product is, it must be something the world needs and is always willing to pay for. Once you have your product, the more of your product you can offer, the more efficiently you produce your product, the higher quality your product and the better you market and sell your product–the better off you will be. However, before you do any of this, you need to find and develop your product. If you do not have a product, you cannot succeed. So many people spend their lives and careers never settling on one thing. You need to pick something and focus on it, and go forward doing it to the very best of your ability. The better your product, the better your life. THE LESSON You must think of yourself as a product, something of value for which people are willing to pay. Your career will thrive in direct proportion to the perceived value of the product you are offering, so you must present yourself as something that the world wants and is willing to pay for. Pick something, and focus on doing it to the best of your ability. The quality of your product will determine the quality of your life.

Concentrate on Your Product

Harrison Barnes — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 05:01:45 +0000

When I was growing up, I used to spend most weekends with my father. Like most fathers I knew, my dad loved to watch sports. Football was always on during the season, and he always seemed most interested in college sports. I have always been amazed by college football because of the high level of enthusiasm that students, alumni, and others have for it. My mother went to the University of Michigan, my father attended law school there for some time, my grandfather went there, and my grandmother got a master’s degree there as well. My grandparents liked the school so much that they both donated their bodies to the school when they died. (We had a secondary small memorial ceremony for them six months after they died, to bury the ashes that were returned to us by the medical school.) Because my family was so excited about the University of Michigan, I was always hearing about Michigan football during the season. I even went to a few games at the giant stadium in Ann Arbor, and I saw football fans get really out of control. People drive around with flags on their cars, bars are packed with people during each game, and there is overall a tremendous amount of enthusiasm and support for all the Michigan teams. Our next-door neighbors used to hang a giant Michigan flag on their house. When I moved to California, I still could not escape Michigan football. I moved to Pasadena, and since Michigan seemed to be playing in every Rose Bowl, I would again see the crazed fans driving by my office and home with flags on their cars. And of course I went to the Rose Bowl to watch my home team play ball. Before each game, stealth bombers would fly over the stadium, which was extremely thrilling to watch. In all my years of working in the legal industry in California, I have met only a few people who went to Michigan. It is a great school with an awesome law school and many other great programs; however, when I think of the University of Michigan, what first comes to mind is football. For people who grow up in Michigan, attending the University of Michigan is a wonderful thing. Typically attendees have proven themselves as top-performing and exceedingly dedicated students. The most spirited new students typically move to a suburb of Detroit and hang a giant flag in front of their houses, outfit their cars with little flags, and then travel to Ann Arbor to go to all of the football games each weekend. When I got into Michigan, I was excited, but not nearly as excited as I was about getting into the University of Chicago. You see, I had played football in high school but was not that good of a player. In fact, I sat on the sidelines virtually the entire season. The thought of being reminded of football every day really did not appeal to me; it struck me as a depressing reminder of my years as a benchwarmer. You are probably wondering what any of this has to do with your career and your life. In reality, this has just about everything to do with your career and life. Michigan, like any institution, has a variety of products that it could be known for. It could be known for how smart its students are. It could be known for its strength in math and sciences. It could be known as a school that spawns a lot of important politicians–as Harvard does. It could be known as a place where offbeat humanities types attend–like Reed College. However, what most people think of when they think about the University of Michigan is football. Just football. Football is so important to a school like Michigan that the donations from its alumni increase dramatically when the school does well in the football season. Therefore, the school goes to great lengths to recruit for its football team. I chose to go to the University of Chicago largely because when I thought about the school, I thought about academics–learning and studying. These were things I was much better at than football, and that appealed to me much more. A funny thing about the University of Chicago is that it once had one of the greatest teams in college football–until the president of the school, Robert Maynard Hutchins, abolished the team:

Not only did Hutchins buck the dominant trends in philosophy and instruction, he also challenged higher education’s emphasis on intercollegiate football. Hutchins abolished the university’s football team in 1939 because he believed students needed to focus on scholarship and Chicago should play football only if it could remain competitive with major athletic programs. This was a momentous decision as the Maroons were a founding member of the Big Ten Conference and once a national powerhouse under the famed coaching of Amos Alonzo Stagg. In fact, Stagg, who had retired from Chicago in 1933, had been the first coach in the nation to be a tenured professor, and his large athletics’ budget was exempted from normal institutional review. Even as late as 1935, Chicago’s Jay Berwanger became the first Heisman Trophy winner, but by 1939 Chicago’s scoreboard indicated that the glory days had passed, including a 61–0 loss to Harvard. Therefore, despite the legacies, and partly because of them, after much debate the university dropped football. http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/2520/University-Chicago.html

Today, there are few people who would think of the University of Chicago and not think of academics and scholarship. This happened because President Hutchins looked at the school and what its product and image should be, and decided that the emphasis needed to be on academics rather than sports. Every school produces a certain product. For example, there is a high proportion of professors and others that come out of the University of Chicago. Michigan’s product is almost certainly more likely to be a football fan, or great athlete, than a professor. Because Michigan’s predominant product is football, a lot of the school’s reputation rests upon having a solid and good football product.

What would happen if Michigan suddenly had no football team?
What would happen if Michigan’s football team started losing all of its games?
What would happen if there were a huge ethical controversy surrounding Michigan football?

If Michigan football went to hell, a lot of things would change within the school. There would probably be decreased alumni contributions and all sorts of other issues. The school would no longer be known for the same sort of product, which would have a corresponding impact on the school. Similarly, imagine if Chicago decided it were going to have the best football team out of any college in the United States, and went to extraordinary lengths to recruit players and promote this goal? What sort of effect do you think this would have on the school? I am pretty sure that the academic people at the institution, as well as all the alumni, would be pretty upset about this. It would not go over well. The reason I use this example is that every company, every person, and most schools have a particular product that is very strong, for which they are known. Companies and other organizations thrive on their ability to have a strong, defined product. In most instances the successful organization becomes known for one specific thing, and for doing this one specific thing especially well. When an organization tries to have multiple products that are beyond its sphere of influence, things usually go badly. For example, what if Apple, the maker of the iPhone, MacBooks, and so forth, suddenly decided that it wanted to get into the business of manufacturing all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) with the Apple logo on them? Say, in addition, Apple decided that ATVs were where its future was, and that it was going to put a lot of energy into manufacturing ATVs from this day forward. First of all, the ATVs would probably not be very good because Apple does not have decades of experience manufacturing these machines, the way it does in making computer devices. In addition, its core customers would suddenly feel alienated and would likely stop buying many of its core products, so the company would suffer in this way. Apple would be guilty of manufacturing the wrong product and forgetting what business it was in. When I was in college, I had a girlfriend who was one class year ahead of me. She was exceptionally creative, smart, and funny, and she had a great overall personality. In her final year of college she interviewed with major advertising agencies and did very well. It was difficult to secure these interviews and callbacks with major advertising agencies, but she was able to pull it off easily. The advertising agencies loved her. Yet she ended up taking a job with CBS in the summer, instead of a job with an advertising agency. What the advertising agencies saw in this woman was her creativity, sincerity, and the ability to relate to all sorts of people, while being nonjudgmental, and constantly coming up with useful, new ideas. At the same time, she was also interviewing with investment banks and other similar employers. Her friends were all getting jobs with investment banks, and she was getting the cold shoulder from the investment banks. The interviewers would come in very well dressed, professional, and so forth–and always be rude to her. The advertising agencies, on the other hand, were very nice to her, and they would come in much less judgmental and even a bit frumpy.

The advertising agencies did not like my girlfriend’s friends, who secured jobs with investment banks–but they really liked my girlfriend.
The investment banks really liked my girlfriend’s friends–but they did not like my girlfriend.

“They do not like me because I am too vulnerable and not bitchy enough,” my girlfriend told me one day. “I need to change,” she said. She was visibly upset about the fact that the banks would not even invite her back for an interview. I knew why this was occurring: She was too much of a free spirit, and too likable. She did not project the sort of authority and confidence that a banker needs to project. A banker is just a different person and a different product than my girlfriend was. She was perfect for advertising because she was flexible, creative, fun-loving, and the sort of person who would come up with a variety of creative ideas and concepts for the advertising agency. Her friends were the exact opposite. They were uptight, inflexible, and suspicious of creative thinking. They would have been horrible fits for an advertising firm. My girlfriend did decide to try to change. She turned from one of the nicest people I had ever known into a “bitch” virtually overnight. It did not suit her at all because deep down she was not the person she was trying to be. She was trying to be a different product–and more like her friends who got jobs in the investment banks. When she tried to be bitchy, it just did not work out right. Because it was not part of her natural personality, she was often incredibly rude to people and burned bridges. Unfortunately this whole transformation ended up alienating me too, and a wonderful relationship that had looked like it was headed for marriage, was soon over. All because she tried to change her product–and who she was. One of the worst things a person or a company can do is lose sight of what its product is. My girlfriend, for example, decided that she wanted to be a different product and it simply did not work. Organizations and people lose sight of what their product is all the time. The idea of what is your product is something that is of profound significance to your career and life, and losing sight of your product is one of the greatest causes of failure. For several years, I have run a legal recruiting firm, and I have hired and managed close to, if not more than, 100 recruiters over the years. In the legal recruiting field, the product is the candidates who the recruiters represent and send out to law firms. There is really no other product besides the people that the recruiting firm represents. Due to this product being a person, in order for the recruiters to earn money, they need to:

have good products, and
have a lot of high quality products, and
have customers (in this case the customers are law firms who are willing to hire the candidates)

In order to be a successful recruiter, the recruiter needs to have a good product–and to have many products they can sell. As long as the recruiter ensures this and nothing more, he or she will generally be in good shape. However, it is very common for recruiters to forget what their product is. They may spend their days talking on the phone, and not sending candidates out to law firms. Or they may go out to numerous lunches and have all sorts of meetings with attorneys and others, but never send out a product. None of what they are doing is really related to what their business is about–even though they may think so. They get incredibly distracted and stop concentrating on their product. It is very easy for me to tell when a recruiter is going to fail. All I need to do is examine how many products they have (i.e., candidates), and whether or not they are doing anything with these products (i.e., sending the candidates out to law firms). Assuming the recruiter is doing this, the person will rarely have problems making placements–and a good living. It is as simple as this. One of the most unusual cases I ever observed of a recruiter failing was an extremely talented recruiter at our firm several years ago. He related well to the people and candidates, who liked him very much. However, this recruiter never sent a candidate out to a law firm unless he was nearly 100% confident that the law firm would interview his candidate. He did not want to get rejected by the law firm. Because of this one characteristic, the recruiter probably only made 20% of the placements he could have made. In this case, the recruiter’s failure to produce was more related to his ego (his not wanting get rejected) than anything else. Because the product of his efforts was so strongly tied to his ego, this particular recruiter did far worse in his job than he could have done. You need to keep your product in clear view at all times. There is nothing more important than the product you are offering, and you need to know what that product is. Imagine, for example, if you were a professional rock star and then you decided that your true calling was also to be a painter and a public speaker. The odds are that these other products would unnecessarily occupy your time and also make your original, highly valued product (a rock star) suffer. This exact sort of thing is extremely common and happens more often than you might think. You need to know what your product is. You also need to be working for an organization that has a product and knows what it is. I personally have made a number of mistakes in terms of not understanding our companies’ products in the past, and this has hurt me and the people inside the organization. Several years ago, our company was doing incredibly well in the student loan business and I hired all sorts of people for money-losing products that were unrelated to student loans, such as educational seminars and other things. The new products were unrelated to what the company’s strength was at the time, and they did not endure. Every company and organization needs to know exactly what its product is and make sure it is promoting the right product. Our strong product in this instance was “student loans”–and we should have stuck to promoting this only. An organization or person cannot be strong when it is trying to promote the wrong product. Random products or a lack of concentration on the right products leads nowhere. Everything is about supply and demand: What products can be exchanged that have economic value? The money coming into a company generally comes in due to some sort of product or service being offered, which must be of some value. The money does not flow in due to the gossip at the water cooler, the long lunches, the screwing around with ideas that the company will never use, the Internet surfing, and so forth. The product itself comes from something that is important–a need that people have, which the company can fulfill in a unique way. You cannot succeed without a product, or without offering a product that people want. Never lose sight of what product you are offering, what your strength is, and what makes you unique. Concentrate your efforts on delivering the product, and delivering it effectively–not the distractions that will inevitably emerge along the way. THE LESSON Knowing your product is crucial to your career and life. Just as you must have a clear sense of your own product, you must seek companies with a strong sense of their products. Random products, or lack of focus on the right product, can be disastrous for businesses and individuals alike. You must not only have a product, but a product that people want, so concentrate on your product and its effective delivery.

Help and Promote Expansion

Harrison Barnes — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 05:01:28 +0000

Whenever I speak to other business owners and ask them how they are doing, one thing I hear over and over is the following: “Things are going well and we are expanding.” In fact, I hear this statement so often, it is difficult to believe. It is as if the people believe that the only sign of a successful business is if it is expanding. The funny thing about this is that I get this response even when I know the opposite is really what is occurring. Companies state they are expanding even when they are laying people off. Today I read a press release from a company that was in the process of mass layoffs and it mentioned that the company was still in the process of growing and expanding. I read the following recent story about layoffs at another company:

Word has been spreading that there were mass layoffs… CenterNetworks has the story, saying they’ve received several unconfirmed reports that there have been mass firings at the company’s New York City offices. The story also points to several comments on Twitter, including some from an employee who posted comments from the conference room where the layoff notices were given. Product Manager Derek Tumolo also posted on Twitter that at least eight people were fired, but other rumors are suggesting the total is much higher. There also are reports of visibly angry people on the street and security guards stationed outside the company’s headquarters. Further, a comment from “Tucker” left on Cheezhead’s own article notes, “Not sure if this story still holds true. Heard that …. massive layoffs just this morning. Seems really contradictory to what they say in the Crain’s piece.” We’re keeping our ears open for more official information and will update this post accordingly. UPDATE: After requesting a confirmation or denial of the mass layoffs, we received the following statement from Lou Casale [COMPANY NAME REDACTED]…: While demand for our service remains strong and we continue to grow, we regularly assess our business and the economic environment around us to ensure we remain a healthy, strong, growing company. Given the current economic environment, we have made some adjustments, which includes a reduction in workforce. [COMPANY NAME REDACTED] is taking these steps to position the company for long term. http://www.cheezhead.com/2009/04/15/layoffs-at-theladders/

The company at issue is a good company. It is just like most companies in that it is trying to portray constant growth in the face of hardship. There is something about the concept of growth that is incredibly important to people, which is why people talk about it on an ongoing basis. Even when companies are laying people off, they talk about the fact that they are expanding. This entire mentality seems extremely strange to me–that we are so focused on growth and how large an organization is as a measure of its success. A couple of years ago our company had more than 750 employees. The managers in the company seemed very excited about the number of employees we had and the fact that we were growing so rapidly. Interesting to me is the fact that at that time the company was not all that profitable–not with so many employees. In fact, many companies and their managers seem to believe it is more important to be expanding and growing than to be profitable and to have a company that runs like a tight ship and is built for long-term stability. We are programmed to believe that expansion is the most positive thing and that not expanding is equivalent to dying and contracting. Here are some instances where we see evidence of this mentality:

Religions talk about the fact that they are gaining followers and take great pride in this.
Companies talk about their expansion, and take great pride.
Groups talk about how they are getting new members and are therefore becoming stronger.

There is a belief out there that if something is expanding, it must be good, and if it is not expanding, there must be something wrong with it. Businesses are generally either growing or contracting. It is very rare that any organization just remains the same. And businesses that seek to remain leveled are usually really contracting. Expansion is always considered the most positive thing. We expect companies and organizations to be growing because this indicates that the organization is well received in the world. In order to expand, an organization, business, or government generally needs to have a product, ideology, or service that is in demand. Providing something that is in demand brings the opportunities to expand. There must be at least some positive public response to what an organization is offering, and due to this positive public response, more people are interested in joining, purchasing, converting, and so forth. There are numerous products, organizations, and ideologies out there that are very good but that, for whatever reason, have been unable to expand. I spend a lot of time in Malibu, California, and in my time there, I have had the opportunity to meet numerous extremely wealthy people–people who live in homes that are worth $25 million or more, fly around on private jets, and have vacation homes all over the world. Most of these people sell some sort of product, service, or ideology. Yet it is not just that they sell a product, service, or ideology; it is that they have been able to dramatically expand this product, service, or ideology. The service might be a little pizza, hair shampoo, a restaurant, a tequila, it might be a type of radio station, it could be a religion (my next-door neighbor has his own religion), beauty products…. It could even be a law firm. Whatever the product, service, or ideology is, the person has managed to EXPAND its reach to more locations and more people throughout the world. It is rare, for example, that the people I meet who are superrich, with their private jets, and so forth–have a product that is just sold in Los Angeles, or even just in California. Instead, these people have created a way to market and sell their product throughout the country and, in most cases, the world. Generally speaking, it is not the product itself that is that great. Rather, it is the ability of the entrepreneur(s) or business owner(s) to take a small local demand and expand it to a larger market. This is where the real skill lies. I like to spend time in malls because inside of malls you can see the products and services that have managed to expand. In most cases, these products or services have originated in large cities like Los Angeles and New York. The reason I think this is the case is that rent is extremely expensive in larger cities, and businesses need to do their work extremely well and efficiently to survive in these markets. Those that are able to survive in the largest markets are most often the services, products, and ideologies that are best able to deliver using exceptionally well executed organizational methods. It is the ability to expand that product, service, or ideology that is most significant, not the offering itself. Anyone can open a steakhouse that serves steaks and salads. Not everyone, however, can open a Ruth’s Chris Steak House, with outlets all over the country. Expanding requires tremendous organization and skill. A budding religion cannot expand unless its leaders have incredible organizational and management skills. A service cannot expand unless its leaders have organizational skills. It is the ability of the company to organize its product and service that is most significant in business, politics, and life. If the business organizes properly to meet the demand for what it has to offer, the company will grow stronger and will be more likely to survive. If it does not organize properly to meet the demand, then it will likely die off. Countries are another example of organizations seeking to expand and grow. So are groups that support ideologies such as democracy, socialism, Islamic fundamentalism, Christianity, Communism, Mormonism, and so forth. Through expansion, each group believes it can increase its influence, and therefore its power. Wars are generally fought by groups seeking to expand their influence. Wars are generally won when the ideology that the war seeks to expand is met with enthusiasm by the people the war is against. When the ideology is met with indifference or hostility, the war is generally lost.

It would be very difficult for an Islamic nation to take over the United States because the majority of the United States is not Muslim and most people have no interest in that ideology.
It would be next to impossible for Americans to go into a Muslim country, for example, and conquer it. The “American ideology” simply would not sell in a predominantly Muslim country, just as the “Islamic ideology” would not sell in the United States.

Each of these hypothetical examples could be viewed as an attempt to “sell the wrong product in the wrong place.” If, however, there were a huge demand for Islam in the United States due to the ideology being accepted by most Americans, then it might be relatively easy for an Islamic country to take over the United States. Back when the British were colonizing many countries, before the British government would arrive on the new land, Christian missionaries often showed up and converted people in the country to the new religion. When the British government eventually showed up, the people were much easier to colonize and to win over, because they had already converted to a common religion. Islam, Catholicism, capitalism, democracy, and other methods are all ideologies that have generally expanded and been successful in their expansion in cases whereby the product/ideology was appealing to the audiences that they expanded into. Russia, for example, very quickly converted to capitalism, when it became an option. The people were ready for this shift, and they wanted it. It would be very hard to make a comparable switch in the United States over to communism, however, because the substantial majority of the people in the country are not ready for and do not want it. In Nazi Germany, when the Germans marched into some of the first countries they took over, they were met with little resistance. The territories conquered arguably were people of “Germanic” descent and they shared similar social philosophies with the Nazis. It was only when Germany attempted to conquer areas that did not share its political or social philosophies (such as France) that it started to get into serious trouble. Without an audience interested in what Germany was “selling,” the Germans were destined to lose the war. So too was it with the Romans, the Ottoman Empire, and other governments and ideologies throughout history that have come up against the wall in their attempts to expand into places where they were not welcome. So too was it with the United States in Vietnam and in Iraq. When any organization or ideology is expanding, there will always be forces in the market that want to slow down the expansion or to stop it completely. These forces are generally competitors and others who are accustomed to working under one ideology, or business model, and are trying to protect their territory. Therefore, you will see:

Dictatorships attacking signs of democracy.
Communist countries attacking democratic countries.
Small businesses attacking large businesses as impersonal.
Large businesses attacking small businesses as inefficient.
Companies that make handmade products attacking those that mass produce them.
Companies that use “natural” ingredients attacking those that do not.
Organizations that employ well-trained workers attacking those that do not.

Organizations and individuals are constantly doing everything in their power to find and create demand in order to spur expansion. At the same time, there are constant forces out there trying to slow the expansion. The entire world of business, politics, and religion is a tension between expanding and contracting. Certain things expand while others contract. When something is expanding, it is growing and when something is contracting, it is considered to be dying. If a product or ideology is considered to be beneficial and in demand then it will be poised for expansion. If a product is not considered to be beneficial, then it will not be poised for expansion. In business, companies are continually reinventing themselves in an attempt to come out with products and services that are considered more beneficial. Religions are also continually reinventing themselves to appear beneficial. The Catholic Church, for example, has made many changes in the 20th century in an attempt to continue to appear relevant. There is a giant struggle amongst religious groups–and many types of organizations–over being relevant to people and not being relevant to people. What does all of this mean to your career and life? In business, religion, and politics, nothing is ultimately more important than being on the side of expansion–not contraction. All types of organizations want people around them who are going to help them expand.

When you see the résumés of strong managers, they often discuss how they “grew” a division.
Candidates for a chief executive officer, chief operating officer, and so forth always talk about how they have “grown” a department, for example.
The résumés of salespeople always mention how a candidate has increased sales and performance.
A candidate for a marketing job might emphasize the role his work played in helping a company or product expand.

Employers and all organizations are interested in those who can help them expand and grow. Everything for employers is about expansion. Everything for most religions and political parties is about expansion. Life is about expansion and to most of us, the very ideas of expansion and growth seem necessary to our survival. True expansion only occurs when there is a genuine demand for the product or ideology seeking to expand. Many people can create demand for a product or service by virtue of their skill; however, this is generally “artificial demand,” which does not really “hold” for the long term. For example, after September 11, 2001, General Motors sold a ton of cars with its “Zero Percent Interest” and “Employee Pricing” sales, which were advertised aggressively. While the public may not have been as enthusiastic about General Motors cars compared to other cars on the market, GM was able to expand in a quick and short-term manner, with aggressive advertising. In order to expand, most businesses must keep the phone ringing and people coming through the door. Advertising is one way they accomplish this goal. If you go to almost any town in the U.S., you will probably see a billboard for a personal injury attorney somewhere on the road. I have yet to encounter a decent-size town where I do not see this. Some of these attorneys who advertise on billboards are excellent attorneys; however, many of them are not. Despite being horrible attorneys, these are the most recognizable attorneys in the cities and towns in which they live, and they are therefore considered the top attorneys. It is all because of the “artificial demand” they have created for their companies through use of the media. Good services are able to expand easily and to hold their expansion. For example, McDonald’s is a fast-food restaurant that people seem to really enjoy. This fast-food restaurant went from one location to tens of thousands over the years, and very few of them have closed. When the business expanded into new markets, it discovered there was a genuine demand for its products. Other restaurants that attempted such expansion may not have been so lucky. The reason for this is related to (1) the popularity and demand of the product (often based on a perception of value), and/or (2) the ability of the restaurant to manage its expansion. Business is about expansion. Expansion can occur when the product is so good that it catches on virally (such as Google did–in a very short time), or it can occur through advertising, whereby the perception of demand and value can be artificially boosted (as in the GM sale after September 11 example). Your job, in every company or organization that you work for is to be on the side of expansion. The more you can contribute to expansion and growth, the more job security you will have. The more you can show potential employers that you can help them expand, the more likely it is you will be hired. One of the most important keys to securing and holding a job is being on the side of and assisting with expansion. The more you can assist with expansion and can be seen as someone who will make this happen, the better career you will have. THE LESSON You will greatly benefit your career by helping and promoting your company’s expansion. A common belief is that expansion is fundamentally positive, and a lack of expansion is fundamentally negative. You must be on the side of expansion rather than contraction in every area of your life. All employers seek people who will help them expand, and the more your ability to contribute to this expansion will provide you increased job security and a greater likelihood of being hired.