You Are Never Too Good to Stop Learning

I once read an article inWired magazine about a guy who had developed an airplane with foldable wings that you can tow behind a car. It was a long article, and I was very interested in this airplane because at one point in my life I was studying to be a pilot. As I read the article I realized that this particular guy was having a ton of fun. He was trying to develop something that would revolutionize aviation and was really trying to change the world with his airplane. It was an exciting article, and I had read previous articles about this guy and his airplane at least one or two times before in other magazines. Apparently the airplane, called “The Icon,” would be going into production very shortly and selling for $139,000. This new airplane was predicted to change aviation for private pilots and make the skies accessible to the world. When I read this particular article, however, something completely amazing happened. I realized that I knew the guy. In fact, I had spent a couple of days with him only three or four years previously when I had decided to pursue a master’s degree at Stanford Business School. I had gone up and enrolled in Stanford Business School and met him during a weekend orientation for new students. We had actually become friends and spent a couple of days together. At the time he was older than me, around 38, and I was in my mid-30s. Incredibly, in the few months I had been reading about this airplane and this guy, I had not realized it was him. After picking out a dorm room, getting various textbooks from the school, and putting down a deposit on my tuition, I decided that I was no longer interested in going to business school. I thought that there was nothing the school could teach me that I did not already know about business, and that the businesses I was running would suffer too much if I went away to school. How arrogant that was of me at the time. Imagine believing that you are too old and know too much. Imagine how limiting this can be. You need to be constantly learning and stretching yourself. In addition, you need to take advantage of every opportunity to learn that ever presents itself to you. Had I gone to Stanford Business School, I realized I might be doing something with the guy I met up there. Who knows what could have happened? Every time I look up in the sky and see an airplane flying by, I will remember the value of education and the things you can do with it. You can develop airplanes or do tons of other things that will literally change your life when you pursue education with vigor. Education is about the most important thing you can do with your time. Another thing about education is that it does not matter how old you are. You can get an education at any time. Regardless of your age, if you keep learning it is going to change you. There is simply nothing more important than education. The guy who developed the airplane and was now marketing it was 38 at the time he enrolled in business school. It is never too late to pursue your dreams. Most people, at some point in their lives, decide that they have learned enough. This is a huge mistake. There is so much power in knowledge. Knowledge can empower you to become better, faster, and stronger in everything you do. It is astonishing to me that so many people go through their lives making the same mistakes over and over and over again. Many [Read more]

Share What You Know

Every interaction you have with another person is a chance to make a difference in that person’s life. Every piece of information you have about the world is unique to you and the more you share this information with others, the more others will share information with you. In addition, when you share information, you will be sought out by others. I’ve noticed many, many people are extremely concerned about protecting every single piece of helpful information, such as a certain way of making a sale in business, a good source of information, a contact who can get things done, or a special method of doing something. The people and the companies that do the best, I have noticed, are those that do everything they can to share information. In fact, they empower people by sharing information. By doing this, a reciprocal pattern is developed. When there is useful information these people should know about, they are told about it as well. The most important thing you can have inside a company and at work is information. You may be working for a company right now that is about to file for bankruptcy and lay off all of its employees. If you had this information you could be looking for a job. There may be an incredible position opening up in your company for which you’re qualified. If you had this information, you could start communicating and getting to know the right people inside your company. The benefits of having the right information are huge. Your work colleagues will seek you out to give you information if you start sharing information with them. You need to proactively be a source of information and never try to protect information. Every piece of information you put out in the world will come back to you with more information. The information others give you could save your career, or get you a raise. There are so many benefits to having access to the right information it’s hard to list them all. Information tells you what to do in order to get ahead. The only way you are going to get access to this sort of information, however, is if you get a reputation for sharing information yourself. A couple of years ago I learned Mark Victor Hansen, the author of the book Chicken Soup for the Soul, was holding a three day business conference at the Westin near the Los Angeles Airport. A couple of people who’d written books I enjoyed were scheduled to be there and I was eager to attend. When I got to the conference I immediately noticed huge rows of tables in the halls where vendors were set up, selling various courses. I’d arrived at the conference a bit early and walked from table to table talking to the vendors. In most cases, they were selling courses that cost anywhere from $495 all the way up to a few thousand dollars. The conference was organized so that each speaker would speak with the audience for about an hour. The topics the speakers discussed were about things like ”How to double your business in 90 days” and ”How to make everyone in the world buy your products.” After a few hours, I quickly realized each of the speakers was offering the audience a small bit of information, but basically they were not giving us any substantial information whatsoever. They were only giving the audience a little taste of what they knew. Each speaker would get up and tell the audience how smart he was and how valuable what he knew was. Then he would give people in the audience a small peek at the knowledge he had. This took about 40 minutes of the speaker’s time. Then, for the next 20 minutes, the speaker would launch into a sales presentation about CD ROMs of him talking on tape, exclusive access to [Read more]

Builders and Destroyers

Several years ago, I wrote an article for BCG Attorney Search called “Builders and Destroyers”. In this article I discussed the two types of people one may encounter inside a law firm: (1) People whose mission it is to build and improve things around them, and (2) People whose mission seems to be to tear down, criticize, and damage the whole. In reviewing the financial crisis this past week, and in thinking about my own career and life, I come back more and more to this belief and its importance in the business world. Organizations [Read more]

Your Life Is Controlled by Your Decisions and Your Commitment to Them

Over 20 years ago, I was at a relative’s house in the country, and he made a crazy statement (which he appeared to believe) that all Japanese were Jewish, and that was why they were in the process of controlling all the car manufacturing in the world just like they were controlling the entertainment and banking industries. My relative was a truck driver in his 50s, and he made this statement as if what he was saying had a certain level of profoundness to it. Under normal circumstances, when not involved in “intellectual” debate, he was a very nice man and good father. The statement was offensive [Read more]

The Importance of Disconnecting from Your Work

Some of the happiest, most well adjusted, and most effective people I know are also people who have a profound ability to disconnect from their work. They can disconnect rapidly and put themselves in another state of mind which does not involve work. People who come to mind include Richard Branson, who set records in balloons, captains of industry who leisurely golf their days away, men in bars who slap each others’ backs while drinking martinis and making deals, or CEO‘s of companies in their early 60s who run marathons. One of the most important things you can do for yourself is learn to disconnect from your work. Many people never do this, or don’t know how. You see these people walking around with telephones in their ears wherever they go, getting up from dinner to talk on the phone, screwing around with their Blackberries at any given moment, and, in general, working every second of the day. I have a secret for you: The most important and successful people never behave like this. The most important people simply do not work when they are not working. If you are working all the time, you are not being nearly as productive [Read more]

Find the Best Target Audience for Your Skills

When I was about 13 years old, my parents sent me to a small, private school. Children from the wealthiest families in the Detroit area attended there. The school was unusual in that it went out of its way to assist the wealthiest students and seemed to pay less attention to others. I was friends with one of the wealthy kids, and the headmaster actually used to go over to help him with his homework. Despite the difference in the way the wealthier kids were treated, there were some extremely good things about the school. Upon entering [Read more]

Never Measure Yourself against Perfection

When I was in high school, one of the happiest kids I knew was an excellent athlete who I’ll call Bill. He was very intelligent and always had the best looking girlfriends. He eventually ended up marrying his high school sweetheart. Bill was from a relatively small town in Michigan, and he ended up going to our private boarding school, where he was surrounded by a lot of very high achievers. I think the type of people he met there really must have changed his perspective. Some of the kids he played baseball [Read more]

Smash Through Whatever Ceiling You Are Seeing by Concentrating on Your Largest Reward

When I was about 12 years old I went to look at BMWs with a relative of mine. We spent several hours in the dealership. My relative was trying to figure out if there was a way to get a lower lease payment on the car. Negotiating with the people in the dealership took him a very long time. We were in a not-so-great area of Detroit, and I could see my relative was trying to get a good deal, and was feeling like a big shot in the process. For most of us, buying a car is among the most significant events in our lives, and for this relative it was no different. He was someone who had gone to all the right schools, played by the rules, and continually held jobs for a long time. About two hours into the negotiation, a couple of men pulled up in a giant, brand new BMW. The stereo was blasting and the car [Read more]

You Are Not Entitled to Anything

One of the greatest traps people fall into is believing they are entitled to something based on what they have done in the past, or are capable of doing. An even greater problem is believing you are entitled to something for nothing. Incredible as it may seem, most of the people I have seen in the working world throughout the years have an improper sense of entitlement. Rather than helping you, a sense of entitlement holds you back. Anyone who believes he or she is entitled to something – a parent, an employer, a union, a government, [Read more]

Look for the Cause

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

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

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