Learn from Every Experience You Have Ever Had
February 5, 2010
One of the greatest things you can do for yourself is to learn from every single experience you have ever had. Each and every day you are having experiences, and you choose what to do with them. The wisest people are the ones who see every experience as an opportunity to learn. Smart people can transform even the smallest experiences into lessons that drive them to become better at everything they undertake in the future. You, too, can learn from your experiences and, in so doing, benefit tremendously.
In every experience, there are things that did and did not work for you. Your objective is to learn from what happened. The more you learn from your experiences, the more effective you will be at whatever you do in your career and life.
Think back on your career: there are things that have happened from which you can still learn. What lessons can you use to drive yourself forward? How can you get better at what you want to do now?
Every experience, no matter how trivial, offers a chance for you to learn. I’d like to tell you a story about just such an experience of mine and how I shaped my life by learning from it.
Years ago, when I was in college and about 19 years old, I was sitting in the television room of my dorm at the University of Chicago. As I sat there with a friend of mine, Danny Weisberg, a commercial came on for a real estate seminar led by a man named Tom Vu. In the 30-minute commercial, Tom Vu was shown driving around in fancy cars and on boats with beautiful women while talking about his real estate seminar.
As I watched this commercial with Danny, I was incredulous when, near the end of the commercial, Tom Vu said something to the effect of:
“I came to the United States from Vietnam with no money, and the only job I could get was as a man who refilled peoples’ water glasses in a country club. One day, a very rich man came into the country club and sat down at a table. I asked him to tell me the secret to his success and he told me it came from only three words. He whispered them into my ear. Those three words changed my life!”
“All this I got from three words. Come to my free informational seminar and I will teach you the three words,” said Vu.
At 19, there was nothing that Danny and I wanted more than to be surrounded by beautiful women, drive fast cars, and live in mansions. Therefore, we decided we would get up early on a Saturday morning and take the ‘L’ train from Hyde Park all the way to the downtown Chicago Hilton to see Tom Vu’s free seminar. Getting up early the morning after a Friday night party was something that I usually never did in college – not even for an exam! In the spirit of fun, however, we decided we would get up early and go see Tom Vu that weekend.
When we arrived at the Hilton, we were sitting next to a single mother who had brought two children no more than three years old with her. I noticed the children were dirty. The single mother told us how she hoped this would be a profound experience. We also sat near two men who appeared to have come to watch Tom Vu in order to heckle him. The two men had beers in their hands, despite the fact that it was still morning. There were literally thousands of people crowded into the Hilton ballroom for the Vu seminar. There were so many people, in fact, the only place we could get seats was at the very back of the ballroom, at least 30 or 40 yards away from the stage. But that is exactly where we should have been.
About 15 minutes after the seminar was scheduled to start, Tom Vu entered the back of the banquet hall in a bathrobe and was followed by a woman who started massaging his neck. She was saying stuff to him like “You can do this!” and “You control your future!” and other motivational encouragements. After a few minutes of this, some music started and she pulled off Tom’s bathrobe, revealing a business suit he was wearing. Tom Vu then rushed to the front of the stage to a standing ovation.
The men drinking next to us roared with laughter. The woman with the children put down one child so she could stand and clap.
Over the next hour or so, Tom Vu told the audience that if they paid him a couple thousand dollars, he would teach them how to buy distressed real estate and resell it at a profit. At the end of this sales pitch, Tom Vu got slightly teary-eyed and said:
“Now, does everyone want to hear those three words?”
The crowd roared and stamped their feet.
“Don’t give up!” Tom shouted. “The three words are don’t give up!”
I must admit I was really swept up in the passion of that moment. Despite the ethical considerations of whatever Tom Vu’s business practices were, I realized right then and there that there was a huge lesson in those three simple words. One should never give up.
Giving up was the greatest mistake one could make. If you gave up, you almost certainly welcomed failure.
Hearing those words that day had an immediate impact on me. I realized I had gotten up early in the morning to come see Tom Vu and had wasted my time listening to him, because I certainly could not afford to go to his paid seminar. So, I told myself that I would at least learn from this piece of career advice, and would never give up in anything I did.
And I have refused to ever give up. I believe this particular lesson has not only served me well, it’s profoundly altered the course of my life. Let me tell you how.
When I was in college, I wanted to go to law school. In order to be accepted by the best law schools, I knew I would need to get a near perfect score on the law school admissions test (LSAT). I studied for this test but, no matter how hard I studied, I could never get even close to a perfect score. Therefore, I kept delaying the test over and over again. I delayed it until December of my third year of college. By the time I finally scheduled the real test, I had taken enough practice tests to assess how well I would do.
I got sick just before taking the test. I cancelled my scores and retook the test in March of that year. I still did not do as well as I had hoped. By the time I got my results, almost all the law schools had accepted students for that year, and they told me I had simply taken the test too late. Notwithstanding this, some schools told me they would let me know later in the summer if they had an opening for me.
In considering this, I did everything within my power to ensure I did not give up on the schools that told me there still might be hope. I was remembering the lesson I learned from Tom Vu. I wrote, I called, and I had teachers and others write on my behalf. I graduated from college knowing there was very little hope I would go to law school and, instead, I decided I would probably stick with my then current life as a pavement contractor.
Working in the asphalt business was extremely hard work. Many people who do this kind of work get cancer or die very young because of the hazardous chemicals involved. For example, I was working with hot tar, which gives off gaseous fumes that stick inside your lungs. I would often get so burned from chemicals that I would have to peel a layer of my skin off of my arms or feet.
As the summer progressed, I continued to drop short notes to the law schools with whom I was still corresponding. However, I still needed to make a living, so I continued building up my asphalt business. My friends were all contractors and I was associating and spending my life entirely with people who used their hands to make a living. I was enjoying my life.
One night I was out with another contractor and my girlfriend, having pizza and beer. When I returned home there were a few messages on my answering machine. I checked the first message and it was from someone who told me he’d noticed I was becoming very busy with my asphalt business, and that he and “other people he knew” wanted to meet with me. It was a person I’d heard about over the years. Essentially, he was with the mafia and he was demanding I pay money in order to operate in a certain area of Detroit. It might have been a prank call, but I doubted it. I think back on that message to this day because it was a sign of where my life was going. The moment was truly a crossroads because the next message was from a law school administrator, telling me classes would be starting in two days and, if I wanted to attend, I was welcome.
I chose to go to law school.
I’m not sure if I ever would have gotten into law school had I not learned the lesson of not giving up from Tom Vu. I kept studying for the LSAT even when I was not doing as well as I wanted. I took it again after I cancelled my score. I kept writing law schools even after not getting accepted. In short, I did not give up, even after my life started going in another direction.
Had I been six months further into my asphalt business, it might very well have been impossible to go back to life as a student. I would have had more trucks, more equipment, more employees – my life might have turned out much different. Who knows?
I believe taking so much away from the single lesson of Tom Vu made a huge difference in the quality of my life. My first job after law school was one of the first times I had ever set foot in an office. I could not believe people got paid to work indoors and read and write! My entire working world up until that point had been hard and grueling manual labor.
There are numerous moments in your own life from which you can choose to learn a lesson, or not. Your own experiences present a wealth of learning opportunities on which you can build. I chose to learn from Tom Vu that day because I had invested so much time in the preliminary seminar. What can you learn from your past?
Learning from your past provides you with a solid and rich foundation for your future. You can learn from your past every day, and each day can provide a better experience for your future. Your past and its lessons set the stage for what you can do differently tomorrow. There is so much available that can enrich your future. Learn from your past and enjoy a happy future.
One of the Most Significant Lessons I Have Ever Learned About Work
January 6, 2010
What You Will Learn
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When you become detached mentally from yourself and concentrate on helping other people with their difficulties, you will be able to cope with your own more effectively. Somehow, the act of self-giving is a personal power-releasing factor.
-Normal Vincent Peale
While I am no expert in the laws of the universe, one thing I’ve consistently noticed is when you stop thinking about yourself in business and concentrate on the needs of others, you begin to do well. I’ve seen this rule repeat itself over and over again, and I believe it is one of the most important keys to success.
When I was in high school I started an asphalt business to earn money for college. I ran this business as a part-time job during school for about two months, one of which was during summer vacation. My sole objective was to make money. There are many entertaining stories I could tell, but to make a long story short, after several weeks I lost a great deal of money, did very poor work, and failed. Miserably. I’d done shoddy work, and there were a lot of people who were upset with me. The only thing I thought of when I did those early jobs was the money, and getting done with the day’s work so I could go and have some fun with friends. Doing a good job wasn’t my top priority. I was.
Because I absolutely had to make money for college, I then began working as a garbage man for $5 per hour. I worked from 5 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday for the remainder of the summer in order to save money for tuition and expenses. It was not a fun job and the people I worked with left a lot to be desired. For example, one day the driver of the garbage truck that I was riding on was pulled over by the police and arrested because he’d assaulted a woman the evening before. I was then relegated to another truck, and the driver of this truck told me one day if I was not careful he would “cut me up.”
Even though I’d quit the asphalt business, my phone continued to ring with complaints and demands that I come and repair the poor work I’d done. Towards the end of the summer, I had saved just over $1,000. I had to use that money to buy supplies to fix the jobs I’d botched. I didn’t have to do the repairs, because I’d already been paid, but my sense of integrity won out. I knew I could not enjoy my time at college knowing I’d left shoddy work behind.
As I was buying supplies, I noticed an older man asking a hardware store clerk questions about various asphalt products. The clerk did not know the answers. I did, so I approached the man and began talking to him. I was surprised by how much I knew about asphalt. I must have talked to the man for over an hour. Despite the fact I was not a talented asphalt contractor, I was somewhat knowledgeable.
As it turned out, this man was the owner of a large apartment complex, and he was planning on having his maintenance man do a large resurfacing project on the property. During our conversation, I told him how much he should be paying for the work, the best materials to buy, and how to ensure his maintenance man did a good job. At the end of the conversation, the man asked me if I would look at his apartment complex to provide him with more tips.
Not even thinking about the money (I was actually interested in the process—and helping this man), I went and looked at the complex and called the man with my recommendations. He asked for my phone number in case he had any further questions. When I hung up the phone, I felt good I’d assisted the man with his questions. Throughout my whole exchange with him, I never expected anything in return.
A day or two later the phone in my house rang again. I was not in the habit of answering the phone because I was always afraid it would be another complaint. I let my mother get it. She told me it was the man from the hardware store. He wanted me to do the work on the apartment complex for him! I could not believe it. He said something to the effect, “You care about the work. You will look out for me. I want you to do this because I know you will do a better job than anyone else I could find.”
To make a long story short, I made over $3,000 on that job, and it was done in just two days. The work turned out perfectly. Over the years, I continued to do a great deal of work for this man, and always delivered top quality.
I learned a lesson that summer, one about selflessness and taking pride in your work. Two summers later, at only twenty years old, I was confident about my work. I did more driveway resurfacing than any other contractor in Michigan. I continued in this business throughout college, law school, and even after graduation. I loved it! I owed that success to the realization that, in business, you can never focus on just yourself. While I eventually sold the asphalt business, I never forgot the lessons I learned, and I still share them as career advice. Today, I believe I owe my home and much of my current motivation to the lessons of selflessness and caring about your work, which the man in the hardware store unknowingly taught me.
Visualize Where You Are Going: Think Big
January 5, 2010
What You Will Learn
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Some time ago I saw a movie called The Secret. Afterwards, I read the book which essentially professes you need to visualize where you are going in order to get there. A famous book quoted in The Secret is Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. Anthony Robbins and many other motivational gurus often talk about these same topics and inspirational ideas. There is a lot to be said about clearly visualizing where you are going. You have to know where you want your life to go, and set high goals to get there.
When I was in my mid-20s I lived in Hollywood, and for a time I palled around with people who were very interested in becoming actors. After I had spent several months in the Hollywood scene, I began to notice everyone who was interested in show business talked a big game; they always seemed to be talking about where they were going to be in a few years. Moreover, most of these people could tell you every last detail about their favorite actors and movies. In many cases, these wannabe actors and actresses littered their apartments with pictures of their idols and of the movies they liked. Every social move they made was geared towards getting to know people in the business. At night most of these people were only interested in going to places and seeing people who could potentially further their acting careers. They all seemed to have a common underlying belief they needed to bring their efforts to a fever pitch in order to succeed in Hollywood. They needed to eat, breathe, think, and do everything within their power at all times in order to accelerate their careers. In at least two cases I know of, these people became very famous. At least once a week, I see them gracing a magazine cover or on television. Looking back, I know that what made these people so successful, ultimately, was their burning desire to achieve their dreams.
Obviously, while not everywhere is like Hollywood, you should approach your career with a massive amount of passion and a burning desire to succeed. In order to succeed, you need to visualize where your career is going and keep a fire burning within you. The further you visualize your career going, the more success you are likely to have.
There are several things I’ve noticed which really do seem to work when you visualize yourself succeeding.
The first is surrounding yourself with people who are likely to assist you in reaching your goals. For example, the actors I knew spent their time with other actors. Not only did they have a lot in common, they also shared information about job opportunities. Furthermore, the actors also made sure they structured their social lives around meeting people who could assist them in reaching their goals. They also surrounded themselves with pictures, posters, and other paraphernalia in their homes that helped them visualize their successes.
While not everyone wants a job in television or in movies, many of us want to be someone and to achieve a successful career somewhere. Perhaps we are seeking a job with a major corporation, or a position in the medical profession, or in any other number of fields of interest. Regardless of the type of job you are seeking, the career advice is the same. I encourage you to aim high. You need to make sure you visualize the outcome of your search in order to become what you are seeking.
It is hard to state how to “become what you are seeking” and “visualize who you want to be” without describing in brief what happens in a typical job interview. If you are interviewing candidates for a blue-collar position, they are likely to come to the interview dressed in fairly average attire. They may be wearing jeans and will most likely look like a blue-collar worker. They will look and act the part the job requires in most cases. If you are interviewing someone for an executive position, on the other hand, that person will likely show up wearing a suit. They, too, will look the part.
Study the sorts of people you want to become and the sorts of jobs you are interested in having. You need to look the part and eat, breathe, and act like the sort of person you are interested in becoming. Understanding who you want to become and studying those above you will help you rise to new levels in your career and life.
I want to bring up an important final point, one that needs to be clearly understood: It is not easy to rise up when those around you are not also rising. I have seen this happen countless times. If you are truly trying to better yourself, your career and your life, you need to ensure that you do not let others hold you back. This is crucial. You need to have the power to really become the person you want to be, and this needs to come from inside, without any external distractions.
A few years ago, I ran into one of my old actor friends who had not made it in Hollywood. The people he knew and once ran with who became famous no longer associated with him or any of the others who had not become famous. They had fallen out of touch, which is a nice way of saying the people who had become famous had simply moved on. I noticed my old friend had somehow become much more negative than I remembered him being. He now spoke negatively about others and about Hollywood in general. He no longer had the spark and enthusiasm that could have made him a successful actor. I knew no successful people would probably want to spend time with him. His outlook and his overall attitude had taken a turn for the worse, which unfortunately could only beget more negativity and despair.
You must try to avoid feeling down or becoming negative, even in the face of adversity or missed opportunities. Hold on to your dreams and stay positive. When it comes to your career, do everything in your power to ensure that you do not give up on your dreams. Continue to focus on what you want to become until you become it.
Play the Game by Your Own Rules
January 2, 2010
What You Will Learn
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We essentially have two choices in our lives. First, we can be average. We can let the people around us mold us, and we can let society marginalize us, as we follow its so-called norms. Alternatively, we can take a stand, choose not to play by the rules, and simply do things in a way that makes sense to us.
Applying this philosophy and career advice to your job search is a tremendously successful strategy, especially in a challenging economic environment.
Let me share with you a story about one of the most incredible men I have ever known. He changed the rules of the game in his life. He drew a line in the sand and decided he was going to live the sort of life he wanted. He may have been someone just like you. Whether you are in a blue-collar job or a white-collar career, you will identify with this man.
I grew up in a suburb of Detroit called Grosse Pointe. From the time I was 18 until I was 27, I owned an asphalt sealing business. Each summer, I would go door to door, visiting literally every house in Grosse Pointe, trying to sell my asphalt-related services. At the time, most of the people who lived in Grosse Pointe were very conservative. Many of them worked for auto companies, or suppliers of auto companies.
Once a year, I would call on a man named Ken, who lived in one of the largest homes in Grosse Pointe. He wore expensive, flashy shirts from Italy, and ridiculous looking Swiss watches. He also had a collection of Ferraris. When I passed by his house I would always notice him sitting in his driveway, revving a Ferrari, or walking around his backyard pool in a robe, or smoking a cigar while taking a leisurely walk. Ken always seemed to be enjoying himself, almost as if he were in a perpetual state of bliss. He appeared to have a kind of fantasy life.
Eventually, Ken and I became friends, and I gradually learned all about his business. His story was incredible to me. He’d gone to all the right schools, earned an MBA, and gone into the banking business. He’d worked for a prestigious bank for several years and enjoyed his experience. However, at some point he realized he would never be able to achieve the life he wanted by staying where he was.
One day, he was having the windows cleaned at his house. He observed that the two men from the window cleaning company showed up, cleaned his windows in 15 minutes, and left. They did this three times a year, and each time they billed Ken $125 through the window company. He saw the cleaners went to each house in the neighborhood when they did their tri-annual cleanings. Ken figured the men doing this work probably did not make more than $8 an hour. At that point, he realized there was a lot of money in window cleaning.
Despite being a highly paid banker, Ken started cleaning windows in his neighborhood each weekend. You can imagine how people must have looked down on him–someone from a blue-blooded background now doing this sort of blue-collar work. But Ken decided this was what he wanted to do. Pretty soon, he was making more money cleaning windows each weekend than he made each week at the bank. Eventually Ken quit his job.
Ken was soon making over $1 million a year with a window cleaning crew of six guys going door-to-door around Grosse Pointe. But more importantly, Ken was the person he wanted to be. He did not have the same stress he had when he was a banker, even though he took a seemingly ridiculous risk with his career, going from prestigious banker to window washer.
When Ken became the person he wanted to be, he did not worry about what other people said. How many of us have ever had the courage to do this in our own lives?
Do you want to be a musician, an artist, or an actor? How about an auto mechanic or a sports coach? You need to follow your heart and pursue whatever it is you want to do. When you do this, everything in your life changes. I cannot count the number of people who stepped out of the rat race and did exactly what they wanted to do with their lives, and have found not only happiness, but also great success. And, the rewards don’t always have to be financial. The most important ones you receive may be spiritual. These are the rewards that change you from the inside out.
Communicate Your Value: How to Get a Job and Keep It
December 19, 2009
What You Will Learn
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One of the best ways to realize the importance of communication is through simple services, such as getting a shoeshine, ordering hotel room service, or taking advantage of valet parking. In these situations the people providing the service must act quickly to show their value and win a large tip. If they fail to show their value, they risk selling themselves short and losing out on the extra cash. You can always tell how good someone is at these sorts of jobs because they communicate their value, or lack thereof, usually early on in their interactions.
Several years ago I was getting my shoes shined at a Washington, DC airport.
As the shine progressed, I noticed I was being treated to a ridiculous amount of attention. The man used a modified common contractor’s drill to buff my shoes, in addition to other specialized tools. He painted the heels with what appeared to be an artist’s brush and, as the shine progressed, it was one thing after another like this. Finally, towards the end of the shine, he sprayed something on my shoes, took out a match, and very briefly lit them on fire! It was the strangest thing I had ever seen. He put out the fire in less than a second and made a statement about how this would really make a major difference in the shine. The shoes ended up looking fantastic and I gave the man a giant tip. I’m sure he got tips like that all day long. The shoeshine man did everything he could to communicate his value.
Communicating our value is something we all must do to keep our jobs. We must also do the same in order to get jobs. Imagine if this man interviewed for a shoeshine position and described his approach to the job. Imagine an average shoeshine man doing the same. Who would you hire?
One of the biggest mistakes people often make when interviewing for jobs (or in their current jobs) is failing to communicate their value frequently and in detail. This kind of communication is one of the most important things in our careers. If you go above and beyond the call of duty on a daily basis, or have become aware of cost-saving measures or new sources of revenue, you owe it to yourself and the company to communicate this. It is extremely important that you communicate with your company and supervisors at all times.
If you were an employer, you would expect nothing less from your employees, right?
Why? Because the company you work for, or want to work for, cannot possibly know the multitude of ways in which you can or already contribute. The company cannot know all the improvements you can or already make to its bottom line. You need to make the people around you aware of who you are and what you can do. If people don’t know this information, you are doing yourself a disservice. People lose jobs all the time because their superiors do not know who they are or how they are helping the company. Don’t let this happen to you!
Earlier this week, I saw an employee (who works as a driver) sitting outside my office, using a computer. Sitting next to him was a manager. The driver appeared to be surfing the Internet and not doing much else. I watched this go on for a couple of hours as I passed by now and then. Later in the day, I called the manager into my office. I was very close to firing either the manager or the driver–or both. I could not believe that someone was being paid to sit there and surf the Internet.
“What is he doing?” I asked.
“He says his finger hurts,” the manager said.
I proceeded to question the manager about whether the driver could work or not. The manager said, “I assume he cannot.” I knew the driver had cut his finger earlier in the week, but I also knew it was not serious. I met with the driver to discuss the situation as well. What essentially happened in this exchange cast a very bad light on both of the employees.
First, the manager assumed the driver could not do any other work, because he had a hurt finger. The manager did not communicate with the driver further to see if there might be any other type of work he could do; He simply decided to end the conversation there, without giving the driver any other work to do.
Second, the driver did not ask for any more work. The driver simply decided that, since he was not given any more work to do, he would just sit there and do nothing. I know this driver quite well and he is very talented. He knows about carpentry and has many other useful skills. Obviously the driver’s wounded finger did not preclude him from playing around on the computer.
In many companies, both of these men would have lost their jobs that day. The driver should have spoken up and stated that he did not have anything to do. The manager should have spoken up and either found another task for him to do, or sent him home. Both men should have handled this situation much differently. They both failed to act as responsible employees.
It is like this with your job too–regardless of what you do. All employers want things done efficiently. No one wants to waste time or money. By communicating clearly you are able to avoid the appearance of inefficiency. For this reason, nothing is more important than effective communication.
Communication goes much further than this simple example. Communication is important in the highest levels of executive suites. Communication is needed to ensure that businesses are healthy and that you are preserving your job through positive efforts, and through garnering appreciation for those efforts. Effective communication can help you to know exactly where you are going and what is going to happen in your career. Most importantly, communication can help you ensure that you are always in a good position with your company–and if you are not, you can usually get out while there’s still time.
A couple of years ago, one of our businesses at Career Mission dealt primarily with student loans (and it still does, although much less so than in the past). In running this business I was always a little circumspect about its long-term prospects, mostly because a lot of the business was dependent upon major forces that were outside our control: (1) government programs to subsidize student loans from private lenders, and (2) the value of those loans as securities on Wall Street. Both of these eventually went away, and following this the student loan business suffered a great deal.
Had I been an employee at the time, I certainly could have benefited from knowing this information. I could have asked to be given work in other departments or divisions of Career Mission, which were not as dependent upon student loans. For example, I might have asked to work in an employment-based business as well. In short, I could have communicated with my superiors, relaying my value and how it could translate to other, healthier areas of the company.
The mortgage business in the United States was also built on the value of being able to sell securities (i.e., packaging loans into bundles and selling them as a group). Imagine if you worked for one of these mortgage companies two years ago. Down the street from our office in Pasadena is the shell of IndyMac, a former giant bank that did tons of these mortgages. The mortgage business of IndyMac is now completely gone. What if you had worked in this bank a couple of years ago? Would you have been asking questions about the bank’s long-term viability? What would you have done for the company and for yourself as the tide began to shift?
The ability to communicate your value is part of the big picture. You need to communicate your value but also understand where you and the value of your work fits into the grand scheme. Is your value to the organization dependent upon forces outside of your control? Is your job dependent upon the government like the student loans were? You need to understand these things well in order to assess the viability of your company and your employment.
Once you interview with a company–or even send in a résumé, you do not have anything to lose by communicating your value. A little-known job search secret is that a significant percentage of people get jobs each year using non-traditional methods to communicate with potential employers. For example, calling before sending a résumé is a great way to get the employer’s attention. Calling after an interview to reaffirm your interest is another great way to get an employer’s attention. Making sure you remain on the employer’s radar with a series of notes (even if you end up getting the job six months from now) is also a great way to get an employer’s attention. Remember, communication is key.
Communication means letting people know you are there. Let people know you are interested in working for them. Let people know you care. When you communicate with a potential employer, you make yourself stand out. Excellent communication can get you a job when you might not have otherwise succeeded.
What makes you special? What makes you different? Why are you a good employee? Communicate who you are and what you do well. This is what all potential employers want to hear, and it is what you need them to know.
Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss it, you will land among the stars.