Sick Crows, Your Attitude, and Being on the Winning Team
Over the past week I have been witnessing something extremely unusual in my backyard. There is a crow outside, who appears to be ill – he’s not doing well at all. The crow appears to be infected with West Nile Virus. He wanders around appearing drunk, frequently falling over. He stands in one place most of the time. The interesting thing about this crow, however, is that all around him, there are a multitude of other crows cackling and cawing at him, almost as if they are supporting him–cheering him on. So many crows perched high up [Read more]
The Fear of Rejection and Your Career
In the legal recruiting realm, a recruiter typically needs to introduce a candidate to more than one law firm in order to get the candidate an interview. You could have a candidate at the top of their class from Harvard Law School practicing at one of the ten largest firms in the United States and they could be rejected by numerous law firms. Why?
- Maybe partners in the law firm do not like Harvard Law School graduates.
- Maybe the law firm does not like the person’s last name.
- Maybe the law firm had a bad experience the last time they hired someone from one of the those top ten law firms
- Maybe the law firm would prefer to hire someone related to someone in the firm.
Several years ago I got a call from a law firm after sending them a really strong labor and [Read more]
Yoga Blue
The Tight Spot
Several years ago, I was running a company I thought would soon have thousands of employees. Things were going exceptionally well and I was enjoying myself and my job in all respects. Anticipating continued expansion, I started purchasing all sorts of commercial real estate. My belief was that I would soon have thousands of employees — and having the commercial real estate would save me a great deal of money in the long term. One building I purchased I’m confident could have held at least 1,000 people.
But then the real estate market changed in a big way. Nowadays, one of the buildings I own in Pasadena costs me about $70,000 a month to keep open. Currently only three small tenants occupy it and collectively generate just a few thousand dollars per month in income for me.
Things are not going all that well.
Before that, my largest ground-floor tenant in this commercial building left with zero notice. They tore up the floors, ripped out the lighting, and even helped themselves to several toilets and sinks. They hadn’t paid rent in months. I’m really not sure what was wrong with these people.
Prior to leaving, the tenants got an attorney, a young graduate from Pepperdine University, who sent me threatening letters — the air conditioning hadn’t been on one weekend so the tenants lost business, and this constituted a good reason for them to walk away from a cumulative rent obligation of $750,000.
The market the building is located in continues to decline. In some sort of real estate Armageddon, businesses are going under on both sides of the street. So here I am with a $70,000-a-month nut, a gutted space, and a seriously deteriorating situation.
These days I work on the other side of town, in an office building in Malibu. As an antidote to the anxiety about my real estate issues, I’ve been going to yoga during my lunch hour for the past several weeks. Stretching for an hour seems a far more productive enterprise than eating sandwiches, and I’ve come to truly enjoy it. I’m much more effective after lunch with so much of the stress melted away. Exercise and stretching. It’s a very good thing.
After yoga, a truck outside my office sells fresh juices made with a hydraulic press so strong that the juice is extracted to the maximum possible extent. It’s the latest trend here at the Malibu Country Mart. So I grab a juice and drink it. The juices cost about $6.50 but they’re very good, very fresh, with lots of nutrients and ingredients like kale, lemon, and various greens.
“How many of these juices do you sell in an average day?” I asked the juice guy in his truck one day.
“At least a hundred, and more on the weekends,” he said. “We’re getting ready to open a few new locations.”
And so. As I pondered my financial predicament I started wondering … What if I opened a yoga studio that also sold fresh juices?
The Aha Moment
I made some quick calculations:
- Sell 150 juices, and with a $4 profit each per day = $600 profit.
- Have 100 yoga students a day (for $20 classes) at $15 profit per student = $1,500 profit
This comes out to about $2,100 profit per day and $62,000 profit per month. That’s roughly $740,000 a year.
Would it work?
I had no idea.
But I’ve got to make it work.
The studio is going to be called Yoga Blue.
“Blue is fresh, clean and happy,” one of my new instructors told me. “It’s simple; I like it.”
It’s going to be where the old furniture store was.
Here’s a picture of the website I’m working on:
Here’s a picture of the building it will be in:
Here’s a picture of the space it will be in:
“You’re out of your mind,” my wife told me. “This is not what you do for a living. You’re in the career business and know nothing about yoga.”
She may be right.
But that won’t necessarily stop me.
The Plan
A few days after my aha moment, I had lunch at an outdoor café in Pasadena with one of my yoga instructors and her roommate, who was also interested in joining this endeavor, along with my longtime assistant. My assistant, who’s known me for seven years, has worked with me in businesses as diverse as printing, student loans, job sites, recruiting firms, publishing companies, real estate companies, and resume companies. These businesses have operated all over the world. She no longer asks questions and has come to embrace whatever insanity I bring her way.
So there we were that hot day with two yoga teachers in Pasadena, contemplating a juice bar/yoga studio. One of the girls wore rings with exotic stones in different shades of green. They both had experience in dance and Eastern disciplines and had spent time in India learning about Eastern medicine.
“So, it’s like this …” my assistant told the girls as the sun reflected off the lenses of their sunglasses. “We will have scented towels in lavender and lemon. We will rent regular towels for $1.00 to the yoga people and then rent the scented ones for $2.00. We can also have dance classes and maybe even do some jazz yoga. We can serve little snacks … you know, the sort that have fillings and are tiny pastries. We can offer all the juices, and people will be happy. Maybe we can even serve cappuccino.”
“That’s brilliant!” I exclaimed.
I was tired that day. I’d been taking classes at UCLA Business School as part of an entrepreneurs program that demanded 20 hours a week in study. Then there was my daily 90 minutes of yoga, plus my family and several companies. Oh, and the three hours each week I put in at a counseling group for the unemployed (more on that later). And now I needed to open a yoga studio. Yes, my wife was probably right. I was out of my mind.
“What kind of yoga are you interested in,” one of the girls asked me. “What’s your vision?”
“Why don’t you plan out the sequences and what you think the yoga should be like,” I told them. “Whatever you think is best.”
The girls were surprised. Here was a new yoga studio being created with no vision whatsoever.
Yoga Blue.
“It’s yoga for everyone!” I said.
In my decade-plus in Pasadena, I’d never seen a yoga studio go out of business. I was determined that Yoga Blue would be the largest one there yet.
Yesterday a few contractors came to the space to review the situation. It was not pretty. The tenants had ripped out not only the bathrooms but also the floor and, for some strange reason, the wiring in the walls as well. In addition to fixing all of that, we’d need to put in triple sinks to make the juice. Like I said, it wasn’t pretty. But we were making a start.
The Support Group
I’ve mentioned that I’ve been going to a support group for unemployed people. Every Tuesday afternoon, about 30 miles from my house. I’m the only person who does not talk there. And even though I’m employed and should technically not be there, I go anyway, to listen. I want to find out how people think about their careers; I want to learn about the struggles they’re going through.
One of the men in the group has been in and out of jail for petty offenses. Another woman is addicted to Oxycontin. Everyone is unemployed. A few were let go from grocery stores. The meetings are led by a very nice older woman with multiple studs along her ears. She goes around the room and asks people what they’re doing to find a job.
See Your Connection With Others and Not The Differences
When I was in first grade an older woman with glasses came down to our class room and gathered a few students including myself. She proceeded to sit all of us on a bench and ask us a questions covering a variety of topics. She told us that we were the three smartest kids in first grade and “gifted” and would be meeting with her weekly until we finished elementary school. I remember thinking the entire thing was funny and proceeded to give her smart ass answers to various questions. For example, she asked us what kind of food birds ate and I [Read more]
See Your Job and the World from the Bright Side and Not The Dark Side
For about as long as I can remember, I have been taking one course or another about different subjects every several months. I take courses in just about every topic you can imagine and love taking these courses. Typically, the courses I take are three or four-day affairs, and executives from one company or another are always flown in for these events by their companies to attend. I am at one of these things today that is about to start within the next couple of hours. Incredibly, for the next several days I am going to be listening to Tony Robbins, of self-improvement [Read more]
Take Small Actions and Meet Others
When I was in law school I was standing in a bar one day and the most beautiful girl I had seen around campus walked up to me and said: “I am just wondering why you have never come up to me and tried to talk to me. Every other guy I see around at parties does this.” Five years later we were married. She was right, I might have never walked up to her and introduced myself had she not taken this action herself. Imagine for a moment if she had not walked [Read more]
Do Not Create Too Many Rules
One of the biggest mistakes people make when they are looking for a job, working in a job and in life is this: They have too many rules.
- They have rules about the jobs they can apply for.
- They have rules about how they apply for jobs.
- They have rules about where they can apply for jobs.
- They have rules about whether they will or will not use recruiters.
- They have rules about how many jobs they apply for.
- They have rules about the type of work they will do.
- They have rules about the hours they will work.
- They have rules about the wages they will start making.
- They have rules about the sort of health insurance they need to receive.
- They have rules about the reputation of the employer they are working for.
- They have rules about the diversity of the employer they are working for.
- They have rules about the challenge of the job they are working in.
- They have rules about the vacation policies their employer should offer.
- They have rules about the challenge their job should offer.
- They have rules about the sorts of people they will be working with.
- They have rules about the style of the people they will be working with.
- They have rules about the accomplishments that people they work with should have.
- They have rules about the academic degrees the people they work with should have.
- They have rules about the material possessions the people they work with should have.
- They have rules about the neighborhoods the people they work with should live in.
- They have rules about whether or not the people they work with should have families.
- They have rules about the organizations the people they work with should belong to.
- The have rules about the race the people they work with should be.
Understand Your Ultimate Goal
Several years ago I was living in New York City and taking the subway to work every single day. Like many young people, I had been taught somewhere along the line that this was “the place” to work and where the most sophisticated work happened, where the highest salaries are paid and where the most important work occurs. I think this is true to a great extent. The city is extremely exciting and people work so hard there they cannot help but become incredibly good at their jobs. The concentration of businesses in New York also creates an abundance of extremely [Read more]
Do Not Be Vengeful: Let Hurt and Anger Go Through You
He who conquers the mind, conquers the world. -Guru Nanak Dev
In today’s economy, a lot of people are losing their jobs. People are being fired and let go from companies at an alarming rate. There is a huge sense of betrayal people feel when they lose a job. People are incredibly angry at their employers and often life itself. There is also a tendency for people who feel they have been wronged to want to “lash out” at their employers who have fired them. Many of these people become angry, not just at the employer where they have lost their job, but at all employers. They take on [Read more]
Ferraris Crashing Into Poles and the Importance of Focus in Your Life and Career
I read another article about someone in Los Angeles crashing a Ferrari into a pole today. The car was split in half. The driver of the Ferrari was Charles Lewis, a famous mixed martial arts fighter whose car spun out of control while he was racing a Porsche. Lewis’ Ferrari was split in two after hitting a pole. Tragically, Lewis was killed. Right in front of my house a couple of years ago there was another famous Ferrari crash. In February of 2006, Stefan Eriksson a Swedish entrepreneur, lost control of his $1,000,000 Ferrari Enzo sports car while driving along Pacific Coast [Read more]
