Finish What You Start

If you drive less than an hour outside of any major city in America, you will very quickly begin to see a different world. Typically, in the best neighborhoods and areas the lawns are well maintained and there is not much to see beyond trees, flowers, and shrubs. When you start getting into poorer neighborhoods outside of major cities, however, you begin to see things like automobiles on blocks rusting in front yards and the landscape looks a lot different. I’ve ridden through these neighborhoods with wealthy people from larger cities. At least once I heard someone say something like, “Why don’t they clean up that mess?”

I know exactly why they do not clean up that mess because I have some family members who live in the country who also collect vehicles on their front lawns, and behind their homes. They do not clean the mess up because they are in the middle of trying to restore and fix those various vehicles. There is a story to every car and truck that is in a state of disrepair. One needs a new transmission and will be fixed soon. Another needs some complicated engine work. Most of the cars were purchased on a whim and for cheap when they were already broken. Everyone believes they will one day fix the car or truck and when they do they are going to make some good money.

It is almost as if the unfinished car or truck gives the person who owns it value. It makes them feel as if they are important because they have some untapped wealth or power of which they’ve not taken advantage. Isn’t this how many of us are in our own lives? We have untapped power of which we’ve not taken advantage, and we’ve started things we have not completed.

One evening I was at a mall and I saw a poster advertising surgery for women to lose weight. I saw the most stunning before and after pictures. A woman was at least 350 pounds and so large you could hardly make out her face. After the surgery, she had lost about 200 pounds. Her transformation after losing the weight was amazing. She was very attractive, and she looked much happier. What was so striking to me was the difference in potential the two pictures represented. One woman looked like a supermodel and the other could not fit into clothing you would find in an average mall. Why would someone want to pass up the incredible potential they have in their life? This is only one example of potential.

People start diets and never finish.

Others tell themselves they will start exercising and never follow through.

Others start school and never finish.

Others plan to start a business and never follow through.

Others tell themselves they will start saving and never follow through.

Others start a novel and never follow through.

Others start taking the path to a better life in one of a million ways and never follow through.

In fact, I think following through and finishing what you start is one of the most important things you can do. Why don’t more people follow through? What is it about following through that scares so many people? Why don’t more of us finish what we start?

I know so many people with so much potential who could be incredible artists, lawyers, programmers, businesspeople, and more who never complete what they start. I know people who are chronically unemployed because they never finish what they start. I can think of whole groups of people I know of who are brilliant and talented but have lives of complete mediocrity because they never finish what they start.

Before you read any further, I want to make sure you are aware of one thing: the only thing separating the people with the most important and meaningful lives from those who have average lives or fail is that the latter fail to finish what they start.

When I was practicing law I remember being at a cocktail party with numerous partners and associates from the law firm where I worked. One of the associates was joking with the partner that the law firm had only made two partners in the entire 14 years it had been in Los Angeles. The partner looked at the associate and said, “That’s because you guys get too scared you will not make partner and always leave before we have a chance to nominate and vote on you.”

I thought that was an interesting statement because, regardless of the truth of it, the partner was saying that no one who worked there ever followed through by staying on the job. They got too scared and left. Perhaps those associates went somewhere they were positive they would make partner. The thought of all of those careers that were stalled by not following through was an interesting one to me. Maybe those associates like to say to themselves, “I would have made partner if I stayed around, but I did not like it so I left.” I do not know. However, what I do know is this situation is not much different from those people whose personal worth is tied to the fact that if they fixed up the cars on their front lawns they would have a lot of money. If only.

Once you go inside the homes with cars rusting in front of them on blocks you will see additional projects that are half finished. You will see a bathroom that is being remodeled, and that has been for a long time. For years the family may have been taking a shower in a bathroom where there is no tile on the floor. This epidemic is not just confined to rural areas, it also exists in cities. People do not collect cars on their front lawns in cities because the police and authorities in these areas do not allow it. Go inside many homes in cities and suburbs and you will also see a huge collection of unfinished projects.

I want to be clear about something with these unfinished projects: it is not just about the money. You can tile the average bathroom with inexpensive tile for less than $30. You can rebuild a transmission quite inexpensively if you know what you are doing. It just takes time.

My mother is someone who was always attracted to dreamers and she dated a lot of them while I was growing up. These were men who always told her tomorrow was going to be far different from today. They were on the verge of getting rich, they were going to build a house on the water, something was going to change and change soon. My mother had relatives all over Michigan who did things like drive trucks and work in factories in the country, but she had a small house in a nice suburb. The whole outlook of never finishing what you started came right into our house with these men who were dreamers. Most of them were contractors or were involved in contracting, and they would start one project after another and keep the projects going for years. One project might involve replacing the kitchen floor. A few hours would be dedicated to ripping up the floor on a Sunday and a few years would pass before a new floor was installed. For years we would get splinters and eat in a kitchen with no floor.

In the interim, they’d start numerous other projects. None of these would be completed either.

What was the meaning of all of these uncompleted projects? Why did so many things consistently not get done? What was happening?

The answers to these questions are complicated. However, I believe a large part of it is a desire not to be held accountable for the result. If the kitchen remodel is completed, we will have to call the result our kitchen. If all of the cars are fixed, we will have to explain why we do not have any money. If we finish college, we will have to be accountable for getting a high-paying job.

How many people have you met who have started a novel and never finished it? Almost everyone knows someone like this. Have they not finished the novel because they do not know how to write? Have they really had writers block for the past eight years? The legions of people with unfinished novels are legendary. I think so many of these novels go unfinished because if they did finish them, the person will have to come to terms with the fact they are not the next great novelist, or they are not as important as they would like to believe they are deep down.

Many of us want to represent ourselves as something other than what we are. Finishing what we start forces us to confront who we really are. So we are afraid to finish what we start. This brings me to you and your job. Do you finish what you start? I have supervised and worked with hundreds of people over my career, and the number one characteristic I have seen in the very best people is they finish what they start.

Finishing what you start is the most important thing you can do in any job. The people you are working for need to know whatever work you are given you will finish. Every week for the past several years I have had a series of teleconferences with various individual employees in my company. The purpose of these teleconferences is to solicit various ideas about our businesses, to go over projects that have been assigned, and to assign new projects. They are the most effective method I know for making our company strong, ensuring the continual promotion of the good people, and pressuring the average people in the company to “shape up or ship out.” These teleconferences are simple and there is really nothing to them but ensuring that people finish what they start. I believe that cycles of action and finishing what we start are the most important things that can happen in any company.

Several years ago, before I conducted these weekly teleconferences, I found most of the projects I assigned never ended up getting completed by certain people. It was a constant source of anger for me when things did not get completed and, after a while, I would simply give up on many people.

The typical teleconference goes like this: we start going over the assignments for the current week and explaining them. Then we go over the assignments for the previous weeks and the person with the assignments provides an update. The spreadsheet may look like this:

Assignment Weeks

Write a letter to all previous EC clients re: sale 7
Call Franchise Tax Board re: new tax ID number 7

Certain employees never have any task go more than one or two weeks, and others have their assignments open for months at a time. The people who complete tasks are the people who remain at the company and work there year after year. In the past I have hired people from other great companies, great schools, and people with a lot of “flash” who could never complete an assignment.

I have also hired others who did not look as good on paper but who always finished an assignment. Our company has no venture capital or borrowed money and must support itself with real revenues. In our company, the only thing that really matters is whether or not projects are completed. If a project is not completed, our company does not make any money. I believe the downfall of many companies begins when there are more people not finishing tasks than finishing them. There are people who are in the habit of not finishing what they start. The same employees who do not finish what they start are often the people who have the most doctors’ appointments and waste the most time during the day. They spend their time in a nonproductive zone. I do not judge people who do this because I am also guilty to a certain extent of not always finishing what I start. The fact of the matter is, however, the way to do the absolute best in your job and life is to make sure you always finish what you start no matter what.

When you do not finish what you start at work you are sending the message the task and the company are not important enough to you. In the business world, if you do enough of this people will stop taking you seriously. People do not have confidence in people who do not finish what they start. Companies do not promote people who do not finish what they start.

Everyone, regardless of who they are, must be accountable for finishing what they start. When Hillary Clinton was running for president, one of the images I could not stop thinking about was when she pledged to fix the healthcare program in the United States when her husband had been president years previously. After a great deal of effort, she failed completely. I saw her at a news conference and she said something to the effect that “I do not know why anyone even tries. You cannot get anything done with these people in Washington.”

To me this was a striking statement. It was striking because she had essentially “thrown in the towel” and given up. I wanted to see her succeed. After this sort of attitude, I felt it was very unlikely she could have really thrived in Washington. For example, when Al Gore lost the run for president he kept fighting for his belief in fixing the environment – even without public office. I wonder what Hillary Clinton would do with healthcare reform if she were not in office. My feeling is not a lot.

Finishing what you start says a lot about your character and leaves a huge and lasting impression on everyone around you. It is extremely important you are always finishing what you start. The results you will have in the world and the impact you will make will be in direct proportion to your ability to finish. Everyone can finish what they start if they really put their minds to it.

The rewards for completing what you start are huge. When you complete what you start, you learn about your capabilties. You learn lessons you can use to take the next step and grow.

I believe most people will do a lot more to avoid pain than they will to experience pleasure. For many people, completing a task may represent the potential for being criticized or judged for something, which is painful. People want to avoid pain. Success, however, could be compared to creating constant failure and forcing yourself to grow in response. If you finish a task and do not believe what you have done is good enough, then you will learn lessons that will drive you forward to do as good as possible the next time. The important thing is that you finished. Growth only happens when you are completing tasks.

If You Want to Earn More, You Need to Be Worth More

Your financial requirements and what you would like to earn have nothing to do with what you are worth in the market. In running my various organizations, I have hired superstars from the very best universities with the very best work histories who ended up contributing next to nothing to the organization. I have also hired people who started out making close to minimum wage, and whose contributions were so great their salaries doubled, and in some cases even quadrupled. Several years ago, the contribution of one of our departments, which was then around 10 people, was so great I literally doubled each and every member’s salary in one short 15 minute meeting.

Are you someone who contributes so much to your organization your salary merits doubling? Or do you merely have a sense of entitlement and feel you are worth more than you are paid?

I cannot tell you how many times I have heard statements like the following:

“I made this much four years ago; therefore I should be making more right now.”

“My wife told me that I need to get a raise.”

“I think it is really important that I get this car because it will show some outward sign of success.”

“I know of someone who makes even more money than this in [some other city] and, therefore, I need to make that much as well.”

“This is an expensive city, and I need to be paid that much to live well.”

“I would like to have some extra spending money for travel and other things, after paying the mortgage on my house.”

“I need to make enough money to afford to send my kids to a private school.”

These are actual statements I have heard from people over the years. The sense of entitlement that drives people to make these sorts of demands needs to have a basis in reality.

Again, your financial requirements have nothing to do with how much you are worth in the market. Unless you are truly indispensable, your employer simply does not care what those requirements are. You are paid a certain amount based on your ability to generate value for your employer, and, with very few exceptions, that value generally must be far greater than what you are paid. Your contribution to any organization must generally be at least three times greater than the reward you are seeking.

Far too many people fail to realize what they are paid is based on the company’s profitability. Organizations have overhead, such as rent, advertising, and the cost of manufacturing the products or services they provide. Organizations need to have reserves in order to pay you when money is not coming in. Organizations need money for research and development. Organizations need money to pay for your health benefits and social security taxes, to print brochures, pay for office machine maintenance and more.

Since I am a legal recruiter, I would like to share with you some information about how partners are traditionally compensated in law firms. There are numerous compensation systems. However, the one I am about to share with you is the most prevalent.

When many young attorneys graduate from elite law schools, they tell themselves when they join equally elite law firms they will one day make astronomical amounts of money. About 10 years ago, I remember the number young attorneys my age were throwing around was $1 million. How does an attorney make $1 million a year?

Remember: any amount of money you are paid will have to add much more than that to the firm’s bottom line. Typically, the rule is that for every $1 a partner makes they have contributed at least $3 to the firm. That means that the partner is lucky to receive only 33 percent of what he or she brings in as business to the firm.

How does a partner contribute a total of $3 million to the pot for a firm? The partner brings in loads of business, works extremely hard, and then collects the money that has been billed. The partner also has associates doing work, he ensures their work is getting done and that all invoices are getting paid.

If partners in the world’s largest law firms are lucky to receive only a 33 percent return on the contribution they are making, you should understand you will need to make a giant contribution to any organization you are part of in order to justify the amount you would like to be paid. In order to justify a high salary, it is important you begin concentrating on what you can do to make your contribution even greater than it is now.

You need to make yourself indispensable to your employer by virtue of your hard work and contribution. There are certain people within any organization who are indispensable, and others who are not. These employees usually don’t last very long in organizations.

I want to tell you a quick story about one of the worst hiring mistakes I ever made. It involved hiring a manager to lead a small company I was starting at the time. In order to try out for the job and show me what he could do, I asked the man to put together some financial figures that took into account the potential performance of the company and what he believed he should be paid if each milestone was met. Since it would take several hours to go over these figures, I agreed to meet the man at my home on a Sunday afternoon to go over them until we could reach an agreement.

After three to four hours of reviewing these figures with him, I realized there was absolutely no way the company could make any money and that, no matter how well or how poorly the company did, the man would end up making plenty of money from the business. It really didn’t make a lot of sense, and I saw immediately this man was not interested in making a contribution to the company. He was only interested in taking money from the company as quickly as possible.

There were many warning signs I should have noticed early on. The man was extremely flashy in the way he dressed. He bragged about always getting stuff for free. His car had been modified, and was very over-the-top. Basically, the man made me feel uncomfortable.

By 10 p.m. that Sunday, I realized I could not reach any sort of agreement with this man. Instead of offering him the job to lead the company, I offered him a commissioned sales-type job in another company. The man had stellar qualifications and had formerly been the leader of a large division of a national company.

The man responded by telling me how he had a home in Beverly Hills with an expensive mortgage payment, a nanny he needed to pay, a private school he sent his daughter to, and that his wife really liked to shop for expensive shoes. Therefore, he told me, he needed to bring home a certain amount of money every two weeks to pay all these extravagant expenses. I told him I understood and I agreed to loan him a massive amount of money against his future commissions over the next several months, as he started his job.

This man ended up being the worst performing salesman in the company’s history. He failed like no other and disappeared with all of the money he was lent. To this day, I still do not know where he is.

The primary mistake I made here was not paying attention to the various signs this man would make an extremely bad hire. Mainly, he was entirely focused on what he believed he deserved, and not at all focused on what he could contribute. The most revealing thing was his business plan, which basically did not permit the company to make money and survive.

In order to thrive in your job, you need to be the sort of person who over delivers and provides incredible value to your employer and organization. You need to focus on over delivering in order to be worth more than the other people who are doing similar jobs.

I am from Detroit and an interesting subject to me is the decline of the American automobile industry. I remember in 1984, when I was 14, my mother purchased a Honda Accord. Before she purchased the car, we went and looked at numerous other, American cars. Even then, I realized that the quality of the Honda far surpassed any American car in the same price range. You could tell by the way the car started, the way the doors closed, the way the lights clicked when you turned them on, the way the radio fit into the dashboard, the hue of the paint, the tightness of the ride, and more. As a young teenager, I thought someone would have to be an absolute idiot to purchase an American car in the same price range.

At the time I did not even know about things like resale value, how long the car would last, and overall brand reliability. Purchasing the Accord would actually be even more valuable to someone in the long run, once reliability and resale were factored into the equation. In this respect, it made even less sense to purchase an American car. Ten years later, I sold that Accord to a classmate of mine for around $4,000. If it had been an American car (assuming it were still running), the sale price would have probably been around $400.

My main point is the Honda provided far more value than its competitors at the time. It was worth far more than its American counterparts, even though it was priced less. It is no wonder, then, the market share of Japanese manufactured cars has grown rapidly in the United States, while the market for American cars has declined. It is an issue of providing more value for the money.

Since your labor is a commodity to your employer, you should aim to become a higher-priced commodity that is worth far more than your competition. In order to merit raises and other employment related benefits, you need to shine and really stand out as someone who provides tremendous value. Do not expect to be paid a certain amount simply because it is what you want. Get paid more because you are worth more and because you deserve more.

Understand Your Ultimate Goal

What You Will Learn Stop focusing on the externalities and realize that happiness is inside you. You do not need any rules of what must and must not happen for you to be happy. To ensure that you are constantly happy, you need to change your focus. Choose meanings in your life that empower you. Use contrasts to make yourself feel good and not bad. The happier you are the more positive energy you will attract towards yourself.

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 sophisticated work for people to do.

While I love living in New York, I asked myself frequently while living there “What’s the point?”  People work so hard there and live in small apartments and put up with so much.  The city is incredibly expensive and it is difficult to work in.  People from all over the United States come to New York seeking to be at the pinnacle of their professions whether it is law, advertising or public relations.  People are coming there really seeking something.  What people are seeking is to feel differently about themselves.

New York can be a really stressful place to live.  At the time I was living in a small apartment and despite making a good salary I quickly realized that there is not much to do inside small apartments. Like many people in New York I spent a good amount of time walking around on the streets, going into cafes, seeing movies and exploring museums.  There is a lot of activity in New York City and it is a very exciting place to be.  As a young man I started to ask myself what all of this means.  The entire city seems to be dedicated to working extremely hard. If you are inquisitive like I was and you’re thinking about where you want to spend the rest of your life, one of the questions you ask yourself is: What does this all mean? What are these people in this city all trying to achieve?

When I think of images of New York what I see are men and women rushing down the street on the way to various jobs.  They are all going to and from work and the streets are incredibly crowded with people rushing about on their way to and from work.  On the streets themselves, there are people working as well selling sodas, coffee and other things from carts.  When I think of New York City I think of people rushing around working.  The image I have of New York is simply “work”.

Last night I saw a picture in a magazine and it was of the roof of Rockefeller Center where apparently there is a garden with a lawn.  The article went on to describe how incredible it was that there was a garden in the midst of this concrete jungle.  It was a happy article, but it left me thinking that “green grass” is something that is sort of unattainable in New York.  New York City represents streets and a world where not much grows. There is too much concrete and progress for this.

When I look at all of the people on the street the image is traditionally of a man or woman rushing somewhere.  There is typically a bit of stress in their face and they do not appear totally excited about where they are going or what they are doing.  They have something to do. They do not say hello to people on the street.  They need to rush off and be somewhere.  Work is too important.  Who cares about green grass?

I think a lot of what you see in the expressions of the people of New York on the street is a metaphor for much of our work lives–we are rushed, stressed and unhappy. I heard a statistic recently that something like 15% of all Americans are clinically depressed.  A lot of those people rushing back and forth on the streets of places like New York will smoke cigarettes to alleviate the stress. They will drink to excess, use cocaine and do all sorts of other things to feel good.  Many will also go shopping and spend incredible amounts of money on haircuts, suits, vacations and do other things to feel good.  The jobs they have are something that they have pursued in order to capture something.  Everyone is chasing goals.

When we are growing up many of us are taught that we need to be lawyers, architects, or doctors in order to be happy.  This message is that something needs to happen outside of us in order for us to feel good about ourselves.  When we become doctors or lawyers we are taught that we need to be partners, or reach a certain level, in order for us to be happy.  Many of the people I know in New York are obsessed with the consumer culture and can tell you about the latest this or that.  These people are incredibly knowledgeable about various things that are available for purchase.  This is part of what many of us are as people, however.  We believe that something outside of us needs to happen in order for us to be happy:

1. We need to purchase something
2. We need to get a particular type of job
3. We need to receive a particular acknowledgement
4. Someone needs to do something for us
5. We need to get promoted

The idea with all of these things is that something outside of us needs to happen in order for us to be happy.  The fallacy of this thinking is that nothing is ever good enough.  There will always be a better job, something else which can be purchased and something else outside of us that can happen in order for us to experience happiness.  I have no doubt that much of our thinking in this world is driven by the fact we are in a consumer society and as part of this society we are constantly bombarded with advertisements that link up the purchase of a particular good or service to being happy.  That is why, for example, in the heart of consumerism in an area like New York City the idea that something outside of us can make us happy is even more pronounced.

The most amazing place to me in the world is Thailand.  If you have never been there, you need to go.  I spent some time attending high school there and the experience of living with the Thais changed my life.  The people there are extremely happy and despite massive western influence have largely stayed removed from a psychology which requires external events to occur in order for them to be happy.  The last time I was in Thailand my wife and I met a man who stated he goes there at least twice a year because it is the only place in the world where people are happy all the time.  He feels good there because people do not think about happiness the same way.  The thinking of the people of Thailand is that happiness comes from the inside and not the outside.

When you watch a baby you can see the baby be happy about an incredible number of things.  They can laugh at a light bulb on the ceiling.  They will smile for the most trivial reasons.  When you watch a baby being happy what comes to mind is that we are born happy.  Happiness is on the inside.  Happiness is something we are born with.

Back on the street of New York people are rushing too and fro and the thought that occurs to me is that people are working so hard and living these lives because their ultimate goal is really to be happy.  They believe that if something occurs they will be happy.  This is such a Faustian bargain and it makes no sense.  People are doing all of this and working so hard because they believe that if they do they will be happy.  When you think of someone walking down the street singing a song because they are so happy, the image is typically not of someone in New York.  The image is most likely of someone in the country where there is no one around to judge, evaluate and tell the person they should not be happy.  You need to be happy regardless of what is going on outside of you.  We are seduced by the outside world into definitions of happiness that require various external things to occur before we can be happy.  Happiness is inside of you and never requires any sort of external intervention.

The reason I am focusing so much on your happiness is because the happier you are the better job you will get and the better you will do in your career.  Your happiness will guide the course of your life.  When you are happy you perform better at your job.  When you are happy all the time people want to be around you.  When you are happy good things happen to you and continue happening to you.  Most of all, the best way for you to be happy is to stop focusing on externalities and realize that happiness is already inside of you right now.

You do not need any rules of what must and must not happen for you to be happy. You can just be happy.  You need to realize that what is already inside of you will give you joy if you allow it.  You need to set up rules which allow you to be happy for no reason at all–just because you are happy.

Another important way to insure you are constantly happy is to change your focus. I am amazed when I go into different companies and meet people.  I can always get a very good sense of what the people are like and what the company is like by speaking with the people.  In some companies the second you get there the people are talking about how exciting this or that is and what a great place the world is and how much opportunity there is. In other companies the people will be talking about how awful the world is, how tough the economy is and more.  Most of this thinking occurs and is prevalent in these companies regardless of the state of the economy.  When the economy is good the people focus on the bad and when the economy is bad the people focus on the bad as well. This sort of negative thinking is very destructive.  People feel what they focus on and a negative focus is self reinforcing and continues to make things worse and worse.

Focus is one of the most important skills you can learn. Refusing to be negative is a skill that really can help you accomplish a great deal in your life and career. Right now you can start thinking about who has wronged you in the past and get angry.  You can focus right now on jobs you have lost and get angry. You can focus on people in your life you were close to that died and feel incredibly sad.  You can continue focusing on negative things forever if you like (which many people do) and will continue to feel absolutely dreadful about your life. You can share your negativity with everyone you meet and insure that you spread this negativity everywhere.  This is what a lot of people enjoy doing.  They focus on the negative.

Refuse to focus on the negative.

When you look at the world around you there are many choices you need to make.  For example, if someone is rude to you one option you have is to be rude back.  Another option is to empathize with them and see if there is anything you can do to brighten their day and make them feel better.  You need to choose meaning which support you and make you continually feel good.  Nothing in your world and life has any meaning except for the meaning you give it.  One thing I have noticed about the unhappy people and the most unproductive organizations is that they are constantly judging and putting a negative spin on people and events around them.  They decide to interpret things in a negative way and this ends up doing them a massive disservice.

When you think about all of the famous people in history who have died despite being incredibly gifted but have taken their lives with drugs it makes no sense.  All of the overdoses and issues of rock stars and other entertainers are nonsensical. Some of the most talented people in the world have used drugs like this to excess, most likely because they felt stressed and upset by the world around them.  They wanted to feel good.  Managing how you feel about yourself and your life is probably the greatest skill you can have.  You need to feel good about yourself and how you feel about yourself is most often determined by the meanings you give to circumstances and the world around you.  The most important thing you can do with your life is to choose meanings that are empowering you.

One of the reasons I think that so many people get into so much trouble when they get famous is that they are suddenly surrounded by people who are even more famous and talented than they.  They look at these people and they start comparing themselves with other people.  Because they make happiness external, they start not feeling as good about themselves due to the fact that someone is better than they are in one way or another.  One of the ways that we look at the world and interpret the world is through contrasting ourselves with others.  For example, I run a group of career sites that I believe are the best at what they do in the world. I feel very good about the power of EmploymentCrossing and how good it is in terms of getting people jobs.  However, if I decided that the measure of my success was whether or not this site had as many users as a free site like Monster, I probably would never feel that good about myself and my business.  The reason I would not feel good is because I would be measuring my success and ability to feel good by something external.

I made this mistake growing up. I grew up in a very wealthy neighborhood with parents who were not well off.  Since the people around me were making such a big deal about cars, homes, vacations, clothes and so forth (none of which I had at the same level), I decided that I should feel bad about myself.  This is a crazy reaction.  A choice I could have made was that I should feel happy that I am being exposed to this and glad my parents are able to afford for me to be in an environment where I can associate with these sorts of people.  Instead, however, I chose the negative interpretation. I think this is how many of us run our lives.  We so often use contrasts to make ourselves feel badly instead of to make ourselves feel good.  You need to use contrasts to make yourself feel good and not bad.  Contrast is one of the most important tools you can possibly use in your psyche and it will change your life.

One of the largest obstacles to our true happiness is not just the contrasts we make it is the rules we make for when we can be happy. I remember one time I was on my way to visit a relative with my mom and I had on a shirt that I thought was alright and a sport jacket. I was probably 25 at the time.  My mom started getting all agitated in the car and was very unhappy and angry with me.  She wanted me to stop at a store and purchase a new jacket, slacks and shirt.  The whole thing seemed very strange to me.

“You need to look ‘crisp’ and if you do not these people will not respect you. Your clothes have too many wrinkles.  You need to be ‘crisp’,” she said.

Somewhere along the line she had picked up a rule about the importance of being “crisp” that led her to believe that wrinkles were a massive sort of sin.  Perhaps she was right, but if she did not have this rule she would have had a much better time that day and so would have I.  Many of us have rules about the way things need to be that prevent us from being happy.  We want things to be a certain way before we will allow ourselves to be happy.  We decide that to be happy we must be rich, lose 10 pounds, have a certain mate, or drive a certain type of car.  We allow ourselves to be paralyzed by rules that are difficult if not impossible for us to ever meet and this prevents us from ever being happy.  So many people out there are paralyzed by rules like this.  Relaxing these rules would change their lives forever.

I would challenge you to stop externalizing your happiness with rules, conditions and more that will continually make you unhappy.  Instead, you need to adopt a belief for your life and career that defines success as simply being happy and failure as not being happy.  While we all have our ups and downs in life, the most important thing that you can do is to be happy.  When you are happy your career and life will change as you know it.  More happy people will start coming into your life and you will attract the energy of good opportunities and other happy people.  Your life is too important not to be happy.  Change your mind and you will change you life.

As Seen on TV, P.T. Barnum, Penis Pills and Your Career

What You Will Learn The ability to sell is among the most important skills. When you know how to package and sell something, you can do anything. Think creatively and understand that you need to stand out with your applications. You need to get employers’ attention and get them to call you. If you do not package yourself correctly you are doing yourself a huge disservice.

I confess that I took no pains to set my enterprising fellow-citizens a better example. I fell in with the world’s way; and if my “puffing” was more persistent, my advertising more audacious, my posters more glaring, my pictures more exaggerated, my flags more patriotic and my transparencies more brilliant than they would have been under the management of my neighbors, it was not because I had less scruple than they, but more energy, far more ingenuity, and a better foundation for such promises.             — P.T. Barnum

One of the greatest marketers of all time was P.T. Barnum who coined the phrase “The Greatest Show on Earth.”  P.T. Barnum was the absolute king of promoting various events during the 1880’s and understood advertising and marketing concepts that are still in use today.  He was able to make an absolute fortune by capitalizing on sensational headlines and arousing curiosity in various sideshows.  He knew what people wanted to see and hear, and he aroused their curiosity.  He used language and was able to create a sense of urgency so strong that people often fought to get into his shows.  He was also a man of the people and able to identify with the people around him.

One of PT Barnum’s greatest lessons, however, involves the importance of promotion.  One of my favorite quotes is by P.T. Barnum is, “Without promotion something terrible happens: Nothing!”  In fact, it is the people who are most successful at promotion that are able to achieve the most success in virtually every calling there is.  Without promotion very little can happen.  Businesses who do not promote go out of business.  People who do not promote themselves successfully also fail to get the sorts of jobs they are capable of getting.  It is a huge tragedy when people fail because they are simply unable (or unwilling) to promote themselves as they should.  I wonder to myself if you, or people you know, are not living the life you are capable of due to an inability to effectively promote yourself.  Many people are, and this is a massive tragedy.  In fact, most people out there do not know how to successfully promote themselves.

Last night I went to Target with my wife, and I was pleased to see that they had several areas of the store that are now dedicated to “As Seen on TV” products:

• sandpaper you put on your hand that can remove all the hair off your body
• a tool to file down your dogs nails
• a blanket with holes for your hands so you can wear it
• scratch remover for a car
• a towel that soaks up anything, and can be used thousands of times
• putty that can glue together anything
• a carrot chopper
• a juice maker

There used to be an “As Seen on TV” store in Santa Barbara and, when I would go in there, I would spend hours and hours inside this particular store looking at stuff.  These stores are my dream come true.  I wish there were more “As Seen on TV” stores, and there were Targets stuffed with every good that had ever been sold on television.  I would probably never leave.

Why am I so interested in the stuff that is “As Seen on TV”?  I am completely and utterly fascinated by this stuff because, with extremely limited exceptions, all of the stuff being sold is complete junk that is being marketed incredibly effectively.  The only thing any of these products has is that, somewhere along the line, an incredible copywriter and/or salesperson has gotten behind these products and endowed them with super human qualities.  People line up to buy these things the same way people used to line up to see P.T. Barnum’s shows.  These products also appeal to the average person–i.e., all of us.  The people who are marketing these products are absolute geniuses in many, many respects and they could teach you and I a ton about getting a job.  People that know how to market things really have an advantage in the world.

Before I go any further I want to make something clear to you.  When you know how to package and sell something, you can do anything.  The ability to sell is among the most important skills there is, and has ever been.  More importantly, the ability to sell yourself is exceptionally important.

• When you can sell yourself, you can get any job you want.
• When you can sell yourself, you can get promotions.
• When you can sell yourself, you can help your company expand.
• When you can sell yourself, you are capable of incredible achievement.

You need to understand the skills of selling.  If you can sell yourself, you can do anything.

Massive fortunes are made by the people who are able to market these products successfully on television. Do you have any idea how much money people make who sell this stuff on television successfully?  It would absolutely boggle your mind.  People who are able to take inanimate objects like this and package them are among the most successful people out there in marketing.

The woman who cleans my teeth in my dentist office lives in a modest suburb in Los Angeles.  However, each week she takes some of the most outrageous trips you have ever imagined.  Her best friend’s husband came out with some sort of pill that he claims makes men’s “private parts” larger and he advertises it in magazines, on television and other various locations.  The guy has gone from living like an average Joe to spending his weekends taking his friends (and my dental hygienist) to Rio, Cancun, Hawaii and other locations on his private jet.  The guy apparently makes millions of dollars a month with his penis pill.  He started out advertising in magazines, moved to television, and the rest is history.  There is nothing in these pills but some common herbs and vitamins, but none of this seems to matter.  It is his ability to sell this product that makes all of the difference.  I can tell you that as far as I know, probably no advertising executive on Madison Avenue and in any of the largest advertising firms on the planet has a lifestyle like this.

You will not find most of these successful marketers (like the guy with the penis pill) working in large advertising agencies.  The people who are marketing these products in infomercials and other areas are typically “outsiders” to the big corporate advertising firms.  The reason is that most large advertising firms do not want to do direct response television advertisements where they need to be accountable immediately for the result.  Large advertising firms and others prefer typically to do “branding” sorts of advertisements where the results the ads get are not really measurable.  You would prefer to do this sort of advertising if you were a big advertising firm, as well.  If you were a big advertising agency, you would not want to have to be accountable for the results of your work either.

However, the people who do direct response advertising on television, the people who sell penis pills and people like P.T. Barnum, all need to be accountable the second their ad runs.  If people do not purchase their product, they do not earn money.  Therefore, the people who promote these sorts of products develop the most outrageous and effective skills they can to sell these products and get your attention.

One of the most interesting facts, that has been true as long as I remember, is the fact that the National Enquirer is read by more people each week than Reader’s Digest, Time, US News and several other publications put together.  The National Enquirer is incredibly popular.  In addition, some of the highest paid writers in America also work at the National Enquirer.  The key to what they are doing is writing the headlines that appear on the cover. These headlines, as I am sure you can remember, are absolutely fascinating.  But they sell magazines, lots and lots of magazines.  While other magazines experience financial problems, people keep buying the National Enquirer in supermarket checkout lines to the tune of millions of copies a week.  We buy the National Enquirer because it interests us.

An interesting article  by Jay Gourley ran in the Washington Monthlyin 1981 that discussed the differences between “quality press” and the “popular press.”  This article discussed that the popular press follows the motto “tell them what they want to hear” while the quality press tells them “what they ought to hear.”  Gourley wrote that, ”Popular journalists generally see quality journalists as dimwitted and pretentious. Quality journalists generally see popular journalists as immoral and brash.”   This is a conflict that exists everywhere between advertisers selling penis pills and large pharmaceutical companies, between magazines like the National Enquirer and The Economist, and between large advertising firms and individuals out there peddling carrot peelers in 30 minute infomercials.  However, I would submit to you that what ultimately matters is whether or not something is sold and people buy it.  The most important thing is whether or not people buy something.

I am constantly amazed when I see people with very little intelligence or academic prowess come out with a book about this or that, and sell millions and millions of copies.  It could be a story about a woman who spent a romantic night with a famous man and is writing a tell all.  It could be a 200+ page book about a diet someone likes.  There are so many ridiculous books out there it is difficult to believe.  These people make millions of dollars writing books about the most stupid topics.  Simultaneously, there are tons of books out there written by superstar academics that discuss stuff that is really important.  These people are professors at the best universities all over the country.  However, more than often we are buying the books about crap, than we are the books by the really smart people.  What everything ultimately comes down to is whether or not something sells.  It does not matter how smart you are, or how many degrees you have.  It matters if you can get people to ultimately pull the trigger and buy what you are selling.

Recently, I have started to read and study the works of various copywriters.  I have studied copywriters on and off for the past decade or so, but am always drawn back to their works for various reasons.  These copywriters run workshops that they charge thousands of dollars to attend, sell binders full of other best ads for hundreds of dollars, and will basically sell you anything if you pay them money.  Primarily, I am drawn back to the work of copywriters because I am amazed time and time again when I see products and people come out of nowhere to dominate the national consciousness.  Because I am so interested in getting people jobs, the idea that the quality of our letter to an employer, a headline, or something along those lines can have an incredible influence on your candidacy and whether you end up getting the job of your dreams is fascinating to me.

There is also something to be said of the fact that when people are following the rules and doing things the same way others are, they may not be getting the best results they are capable of getting.  This is true as well with your job search.  P.T. Barnum, infomercials, other sales people and vehicles outside of the mainstream are more often than not the ones who are actually moving products and selling lots of stuff.  The writers for the National Enquirer are some of the highest paid writers in the world–not the writers for the New York Times.  Everything is about the ability to arouse peoples’ interest and get them to buy something.

The most successful people and marketers are able to get your attention.  They are able to get you to part with your hard earned money and they are able to close the deal.

What does this have to do with your job search? It has everything to do with your job search.  Your job search is no different than the conflict going on in the business world between traditional advertisers and the mavericks like P.T. Barnum and the guys with infomercials out there.  What do advertisers like P.T. Barnum and  ”As Seen on TV” ads and others have in common?  They grab your attention, make an offer that motivates you to act by picking up the phone, signing up (or whatever).  These ads ask for action and they try and make the sale now–and not later.  They know that their objective is to get you to act because if they do not get you to act

• … they will not fill their circus with seats
• … they will lose hundreds of thousands of dollars advertising their gadget

Traditional advertisers do not care what results they get (for the most part) because it does not matter to them.  They are used to following the rules.  They run ”image” and not “direct response” advertising.  This is a massive difference between what the people who are making the real money advertising are doing. In image advertising the results are not measurable.  When you need someone to pick up the phone, or fill out an order form and order a product right now, you had better bet you are going to do everything within your power to sell the product as effectively as you can right now.

In your job search, I want to encourage you to think creatively and understand that you need to stand out with your applications.  You need to get employers’ attention and get them to call you.  You need to arouse their curiosity, and you need to have an offer that looks better than the next guy or gal.  It may seem unusual to you that people are getting incredibly rich selling stupid stuff like pet nail files on television, but they understand something most people do not: It is all about the ability to package and sell something that matters.  It is more important how something is packaged and marketed many times than what the product is.  It is all about the marketing.  Everything is about the marketing.  Regardless of how good you may look on paper, regardless of how good your resume and experience are, if you do not package yourself correctly you are doing yourself a huge disservice.

Use the Power of Contrasts to Drive Yourself Forward

What You Will Learn Compare yourself with people much superior to you and never with average people. Come out from within your comfort zone and face the real world. If you do not use the power of contrasts, you will never become the person you are capable of becoming.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.

Richard P. Feynman, Noble-Prize Winning Physicist

When my father was growing up, his father used to spend occasional Sunday afternoons driving him through expensive neighborhoods around Detroit and showing him the expensive houses in these neighborhoods.  My grandfather was a newspaper man and never made a lot of money.  When I was growing up, my father also didn’t make a lot of money and did the same thing with me.  It was often uncomfortable cruising three miles an hour down these streets.  A lot of the reason I was uncomfortable with this had to do with the fact that I knew a lot of the kids living in these houses.  Although It did not happen often, when I would spot one of these kids, I would invariably slump down in my seat so I would not be seen.

“Wow, look at that!” my father might exclaim while looking at a particularly large home.

I can remember being driven down these streets at slow speeds probably at least once a month for several years while I was growing up.  I never really understood the purpose of this exercise because it seemed as if the whole point of it was to feel envious about what someone else had and we did not.  It was always mildly depressing returning to an apartment or wherever we might go after these drives.  There was never any hint or hope that we would live like this.  It was just a drive down prosperity lane to look at a bunch of nice homes that our family would never, ever be able to afford.

At the same time that I was being paraded by the homes of the rich, I was always being told to work hard in school because this was something that was open to all.  The competition to get into Ivy League Schools, for example, was just as competitive as it was for the rich as it was for the poor.  At least this is what I was taught growing up.  I learned later on that for various Ivy League schools, a lot of what happens has to do with connections and wealth, as well.  But in some respects, what my father had taught me about the democracy of most learning institutions was true.  This emphasis on education was almost to say:

“People in our family have never known how to compete with the rich in making money, but we can be equals academically.”

One of the saddest moments of my father’s life, I think, was when I did not get into Harvard College.  There were a lot of schools I was interested and people from that school had never been too nice to me anyway so I was not that concerned with it.  In fact, my first choice college was actually University of Hawaii and I was talked out of that by a legion of concerned school officials in the private high school I was attending. I had thought that applying to the honors program at Hawaii would make some sort of different but no one seemed to care.  I was really looking forward to going to Hawaii and because of my dad’s work with Harvard I actually was given the treat of learning weeks before Harvard decisions went out that I would not be admitted.  My father had been involved in admissions work for Harvard and had seen the sons of other rich and influential men he knew get in with lower test scores than I had.  He must have realized that this idea of democracy did not completely hold true as he had preached.  My father was someone who had spent a lot of time in the military.  He got up at 6:00 a.m. each day and came home from work at exactly the same time, as well.  The day after I did not get into this school, I remember coming home from lunch and finding him sleeping at 12:00 in the afternoon.  I knew he had been so depressed at work that he had actually come home from work to take a nap.  The idea that there was not perfect democracy, that wealth and influence mattered and more, must have really shook him to the bone.

One of the easiest things for each of us to do is to believe that things are different than they in fact are.  We all have a model of the world and want to look at things in a certain way. In many respects, this is a protection for us against the pain we will feel if we need to change and step outside the box of comfort we are currently standing in.  One of the largest and most persistent hallucinations that we all experience is the hallucinations we create about ourselves and the lives we are living.

• We believe that our careers are different than they are.
• We believe we are more important than we are.
• We believe we are contributing more than we are.
• We believe that our careers are safer than they are.
• We believe we may achieve something that we never will achieve.
• We believe that we have made the right decisions.

Life, for many of us, becomes an unconscious process where we exist almost as if we are on “autopilot” and end up going through the motions each day while making very few changes in our own lives. In fact, we do everything we can to insulate ourselves against any form of change and protect our own beliefs about the way things are.  This allows us to perceive the world in the way we choose without any interruption of our fantasy of the way things are.

What I am talking about is a “comfort zone” that many people spend their lives in that never allows them to realize what lies outside of themselves.  People need to know what they can, in fact, end up doing if they allow themselves to step through this comfort zone to an area which is uncomfortable.  People also need to show themselves what reality in fact is.

One of the best ways of experiencing reality is when you are looking at homes and cars.  A couple of years ago, I was looking at new cars in Pasadena, California.  I initially went to the dealership to look at Audis.  You can buy a nice Audi for around $40,000.  However, the particular dealership I was in also sold Porsches, Bentleys, Jaguars and Rolls Royces.  When I looked at the Audis, initially I was amazed.  I had not purchased a car in years and could not believe how advanced the cars were.  There was satellite navigation and all sorts of other things that really made the cars special.

After looking at Audis, I went over to the Bentley and Rolls Royce dealership.  I started looking at the Bentleys and was very impressed with them. I noticed, however, that they seemed to be very similar to the Audis.  I test drove a Bentley and could not believe how well the car drove.

“It is actually an Audi all dressed up,” the salesman explained to me about the Bentley.  Since Bentley and Volkswagen were the same companies, all that Bentley had, in fact, done was take an Audi and redo the engine and interior to create a different car (and charge 5x as much).  This was fascinating to me.  I then looked at the Rolls Royces.  Compared to the Audi and Bentley, the Rolls Royce was much nicer.  In fact, after test driving the Rolls Royce, the Audi and Bentley seemed like junk.  Suddenly, I noticed how much plastic was used in the Audi and Bentley.  I noticed where there wood was and was not used on the two cars.  I admired how quiet the Rolls Royce was compared to the Bentley and more.

The idea I am trying to make to you is that the contrasts between the cars made me realize that what I wanted to perceive (a $40,000 Audi as “the ultimate car”) was, in fact, not at all true.  Instead, the $40,000 Audi was actually a piece of crap because there was something far, far different out there.  When you see the contrasts between what you want to perceive (the Audi as the ultimate car) and what in fact is (the Rolls Royce is much better), then you start to realize that you are fooling yourself when you perceive one thing.

The crazy thing about living in Los Angeles is that there are so many “open houses” every Sunday.  When you drive down the street in virtually every neighborhood, there are open houses.  You can just as easily go to an open house for a $500,000 house as you can go to an open house for a $20,000,000 house on a Sunday afternoon.  They will open up a $20,000,000 house to the public no matter where it might be, and you can just walk right into it and look around.  This is an incredible exercise in contrast, as well. Seeing what could be is an exercise that can also show us what is possible.

In order for you to really be the person you are capable of, you need to give yourself contrasts between what you are and what you can become.  Just as there are contrasts that exist between various materialistic things (cars, houses, watches, etc.), so too exist vast differences between people and their careers.  The only way you can understand these differences is to allow yourself to become aware of contrasts out in the world and start seeking out these contrasts.  If you are interested in really reaching your full potential and understanding what you are capable of, you need to seek out people who are working in the careers and living the lives that you want to live.

Several years ago I was making the transition from running a fairly traditional recruiting company to running a recruiting company that also existed on the Internet. Instead of simply saying something like “I need Google!” and advertising online, I started going to all sorts of technology conferences. I will never forget going to the first technology conference and being absolutely amazed and blown away by what was possible and what other people were doing on the Internet.  I was being introduced to an entirely new world in terms of the way things worked.  This contrast helped drive me forward and motivated me to incredible action.

How do you do the same thing with your career?

One of the most useful things you possibly can do is to seek out and research other people who are doing something similar to you in different companies.  Do not simply seek out people who are average.  Seek out people who are the best in the world at whatever you are doing and try and spend time with them or read about them.  When you investigate the histories of most great business people, current and former American Presidents, and others, you will usually find that they have studied in depth the biographies of countless other successful people in their field.  In the case of American Presidents, they often studied these biographies while they were in college, in their first jobs as politicians, and all along as they rose way up the chain to finally become President.

Great people, in any field, have generally studied their predecessors at great length to learn what made them successful.  They never allowed themselves to feel content with who they were or what they had achieved and continued to fill their minds with images and stories of people who had achieved great things.

Where do you want to go?  What do you want to happen with your career?  The most wonderful thing to understand is that the roadmap to get you where you want to go already exists. It is in the biographies of other successful people who have risen to the heights you too want to go.  The biography may not be written, and it may be something you can learn about simply by asking, but it is something that you need to know about and need to learn about.  You should be consistently filling your mind with the images and stories of people who have managed to do incredible things with their careers and lives because this is going to motivate you to make the impact you are capable of making.  If you do not use the power of contrasts you will never become the person you are capable of being and have the career you could otherwise have.