Treating Your Career Like A Small Business

No one seems to take the time to consider that their careers are businesses. Your career is no different than any small business. You have a product (you) that you are selling to your audience (your employer). You need to run your career exactly like a business person runs a business. There is no greater skill to have with your career than to run it like a business. As a business, your goal is survival and to sell your product for as much money as possible. So too it is with your career.

Be a good business person and your career may go far, ignore the business realities and you are likely to run into trouble. I have been a recruiter for several years and have seen countless attorneys “go out of business” because they did not run their careers well. In fact, this is something I see on a daily basis while reviewing resumes of out of work attorneys. Just as companies make bad decisions that result in them going out of business, people also make bad decisions with their careers that result in them going out of business and finding themselves unemployed.

• They may choose to concentrate on a profession that becomes obsolete–They are trying to sell a product no longer in demand.
• They may have resumes that do not serve them well–They are not presenting/”packaging” their products correctly.
• They may choose to work in an area where there are no jobs–They are trying to sell a product in a geographic area where there is no demand.
• They may have done something bad that makes people not want to hire them–They have a bad “brand”.
• They may be too old to get a job–People are “tired” of their product.
• They apply to only a few jobs and do not get a job–They are not marketing their brands to a large enough demographic.

Your career is a business and you are a product. You need to understand that using simple business principles to market yourself is something that can be of massive benefit to you.

Before I go further, there are a couple of other things I would like to cover. First, I believe that working for other people is an incredibly smart thing. When you think about your career and working for other people as a business, you will quickly realize that there are few businesses that offer higher pay for less risk, the ability to shut off work when you are not there, the ability to leverage others’ assets as your own, the ability to be part of a social network and the ability to concentrate your efforts on one thing.

Working for other people has a tremendous number of rewards and these rewards are both psychological, financial and otherwise. When you are working for someone else you are in business for yourself but allowing your employer to take most of the risk. Another secret of working for other people is that you can take advantage of economies of scale and inefficiency. If you go to work for a large enough company, the company will hopefully be throwing off huge amounts of money with thousands of workers and you can claim your desired share of this as your compensation. For some strange reason, however, when I meet people at various public functions (and elsewhere) they all start telling me how they want to start their own businesses. Whether they are doctors, accountants or lawyers, everyone seemingly wants to start their own business. I do not understand this.

When you meet people who have little education and start hugely successful businesses and become fabulously wealthy, they rarely want their children to follow in their footsteps. They want them to go to school and become professionals and work for other people. There are a lot of reasons for this–the respect, the stress, predictability, the ability to be involved with large groups of people, the ability to be part of society and more. The point I am trying to make to you is that working for other people is something that the most successful people in the world want for others. It is good to work for other people.

Many Americans seem to have a belief that it is much better to work for themselves and stay fixated on this idea throughout their careers. The truth is when you are working for someone else you are actually already in business. Working for others is a very smart and shrewd choice for many people and if you were a business person it would be advisable in most instances to work for others rather than yourself. Someone who makes a $100,000 a year working for a company is no different than someone with a $1,000,000 a year at a company who is clearing a 10% profit margin. This is an impressive profit margin and something that not many people could accomplish, but being able to step into a job where you are guaranteed this profit margin is extremely smart. When you work for others there is often less risk; other people are risking capital and not you. And if you choose the company right, you may have a lot of security.

A few years ago I was meeting with a lawyer friend of mine who had a salary of $200,000 a year, who was (like many people I spend time with) telling me in detail how interested he was in starting a business. The more I thought about it, the more incredible I realized making a salary like this is. He was sitting there talking about how he wanted to start one business after another. One business he wanted to start was a winery. Another business was a dry cleaners. The list of businesses he was interested in went and on.

“What sort of profit margins are you interested in making?” I asked him.

“At least 10%” he said.

“Well, in order to make $200,000 a year you are going to have to bring in at least $2,000,000 a year. If a bottle of wine sells for $5 wholesale that means you are going to have to make and bottle over 400,000 wine bottles to generate the $2,000,000 needed to make your profit margin.”

He gave this idea some thought and is still practicing law today. There are many people who dream of starting businesses when they would be far better off not dealing with the idea of a business at all.

Running businesses is hard. Most businesses fail.

How hard is it running a business?

A couple of years ago I hired a now world famous executive consultant to come and look at my companies. At the time the companies I was running were generating several millions of dollars a month and had over 700 employees. The coach sat me down and for a full day (and $40,000) lectured me about everything that was wrong with the companies I was running.

“You would be a good CEO,” I said. “If you know so much about this why don’t you try going to work for a company,” I said.

There was a pause and then the guy said something I will never forget.

“I could never run a real business. I have never been able to fire people. I just cannot do it.”

It occurred to me that here I was paying someone thousands of dollars an hour and he did not even have the nuts to be able to fire people. Running a business involves all sorts of things like this. You must be willing to take the unpopular position for the benefit of the company and consistently do this regardless of the consequences to your psyche. And then there are budgets, payroll and all sorts of other things that most people do not even think about. The stress of running a business is incredible. There are a million small things like this that come up when you run a business as a business owner. When you limit your business exposure to your career and what you are doing on a day-to-day basis, you are much better off.

Just understand that when you are working for someone else you still need to run your career like a business. I would like you to consider the following business realities of your career.

First, that your career, like any business, needs to have a marketable product. This means that you need to be in a profession that is marketable in the geographic area you are in. There are countless professions that are marketable in some geographic areas and not others. For example, it would not be profitable to be a cowboy in New York City, but this would work in rural Wyoming. It would not be profitable to be a financial analyst in rural Wyoming, but it would be profitable to do this in New York City. Furthermore, the profession you are in can be under attack from various forces (including the economy) at various points in time. If you were a computer programmer 15 years ago you had a very bright future. In today’s economy, however, this is not necessarily the case. Many of these jobs have been outsourced to India, Romania and other locations where they can be done more cheaply. At all points in time you need to be asking yourself whether or not you have a marketable product.

Second, you need to understand the importance of your “brand” to marketing your product. Everything you do in your career will have an impact on your ultimate brand. The better your brand is, the more in demand your product will be. The best brands typically work in the most competitive markets. The worst brands typically work in the least competitive markets. For example, if you go to Harvard Business School you are going to have a better chance of getting a job with a top bank in New York City than you would if you went to University of Phoenix at night for an executive MBA. This is not to be insulting to this school, it is just to point out a reality that you need to consider when you market yourself.

Third, you need to know how to market your product for the maximum possible success. When you market yourself you need to put your brand before the largest possible market to make the most “sales”–i.e., to get the most interviews and job offers. You need to know how to position yourself and your resume. You need to understand what to say in order to impress the employer in the correct way.

A. Your Career, Like Any Business, Needs a Marketable Product

Every business needs to have a marketable product in order to succeed. While businesses can sell all sorts of things, your business is selling yourself and what you do. This is something that will need to be carefully managed throughout your career. It is important to realize that when we are in the workforce we are all like small business people. We are selling a product (which is ourselves) and need to follow certain rules in order to sell this product effectively.

The first thing you need to consider is that your product needs to be marketable. A lot of my family is from Toledo, Ohio. They are house painters and do other sorts of blue collar jobs. From the time I was around 10 until I was around 17 or 18 they kept telling me I should be a machinist. The told me about how they knew various machinists and how well they did as machinists. One machinist had his own boat, another machinist just redid his home. Being a machinist was a very good profession 20+ years ago in the Midwest. You could work for auto companies and other companies that were doing work that required the skills of a machinist. Today, it is almost impossible to find jobs as machinist in the Midwest. If I had chosen that career path I would be “out of business.”

What do most machinists do when they lose a job? They try and find another job as a machinist. If you are working in an area where auto companies are closing and there are no opportunities for machinists (like Toledo, Ohio) you might have to wait a very long time indeed before you get a job. The problem with finding a job is not you–it is that you do not have a marketable product. Lots of people do not have marketable products and yet continue to look for jobs when their product is not marketable.

When people lose a job the path they follow is often ass backward. They do not think about themselves as a product in need of a market. You can only sell what people are buying. You need to have something that is in demand. You can never cling to something that once was. I have seen so many careers ruined by this very idea.

I know someone who, 12 months ago, was in a field that was very much in demand. It no longer is. He was making upwards of $70,000 a year at this profession. Now the most he can make if he continues doing this for a living is $12 to $14 an hour. He goes into every interview and tells people he expects to make $70,000 a year. The market for what he is doing around his geographic area has gone away, and to the extent it has, he can no longer sell himself for that amount. This is just the way it is.

If I was a machinist in the Midwest I might try looking for a job in other areas around the country where the skills of machinists are in demand. I would get the hell out of Toledo, Ohio if I realized there were no opportunities. If there were not opportunities for machinists around the United States, I might consider another career. Or, I might consider how to package myself differently.

Since I am in the legal career industry, I have recently witnessed something quite remarkable that I think you can learn from. During the real estate boom in the United States, a ton of small real estate firms became overwhelmed with real estate work. Companies and others were purchasing an incredible amount of real estate and this generated a lot of work for these real estate firms. About 18 months ago this work started dramatically slowing down to the extent that most of these firms started aggressively letting go of real estate attorneys. Things got so bad I was under the impression that most of these real estate firms would start going out of business. The crisis they were facing was incredible and beyond anything that had happened in the past. I was not sure what was going to happen. Recently, something incredible has happened with many of these real estate law firms. They have started representing to their clients (real estate companies) that they have great skill in bankruptcy involving property. Now, many of these bankruptcy law firms are thriving again and doing well. They are actively hiring. This is a remarkable reversal of fortune and something I certainly did not expect to see. This is because these law firms have figured out how to have a marketable product.

As a business person and operator of a small business you are going to be faced with countless decisions as to how you operate your own business. You need to remember that every decision you make will determine your marketability.

Everyone has a myriad of choices about how they operate their businesses. They may brand themselves as a big company employee, small company employee, government employee, you name it. Whether you are working on your own or for a large firm, you are always in charge of your career.

There are aspects of your product that will never change. Wherever you are in your career right now, you simply cannot change the things you have done in the past. This includes your education to date, performance in school, the first company you worked at (or second, or third), your current skills and any variety of things that you have done in your career. However, if you look around, there are literally thousands of small businesses operating. The pedigree of these businesses does not matter so much as whether they are in business and how well they are operating.

You need to look at the field you are in like the business world as well. Whatever type of business you are running, it must have a marketable product. If you are a computer programmer who programs in PERL, you have a product. You will be able to sell your product in certain areas and with certain audiences better than others. For example, your programming skills will be more valuable in Silicon Valley, most likely, than rural Nebraska. The list goes on and on. Everything is about having a marketable product throughout your career in the area that you are working in.

The point of any business is to survive and, for many businesses, to grow. You need to consider the market for your skills and run your business accordingly. One of the most important aspects of running your business involves the type of work you do. If you are a sales person of premium automobiles, you help companies sell expensive cars. If you are an accountant, you will help people deal with tax issues. Whatever you do, it is important to understand that your product likely has more appeal (to the market) in some areas and points in time than others. Your objective is to get business and the decisions you make in this regard are important.

There are certain jobs that may be bad business to choose. For example, railroad law used to be a popular practice area for attorneys, but you would have a difficult time running a small business now that focused on such an antiquated type of law. Several years ago, corporate work was enormously in demand. Later, however, this market was doing horribly and corporate attorneys from top 10 law schools who performed well both in school and in high profile firms were, in some cases, looking for work for more than a year. Years later, corporate work was again available. For many small businesses/attorneys, corporate law would have been a bad choice for them to get into because there is no demand for that product. In this current economic climate, bankruptcy would be a more prudent venture for the business-minded attorney.

The list goes on an on. The point is that you need a marketable product.

Likewise, the geographic area you are in, the stability of your current employer and your opportunity for advancement at your current firm are all factors to keep in mind in operating your small business. These are all things that will have a bearing on whether or not your business will succeed.

Far too many people fail because they fail to adapt their business to the current economic climate. This is why most businesses out there end up failing. They simply fail to adapt.

B. The Importance of Your “Brand” to Marketing Your Product

When you are working in any profession, you need to have a good personal brand. The quality of your brand will determine a great deal about what happens to you. The quality of the work you do, your interpersonal relationships and a variety of other factors will determine the strength of your brand. The point is that all brands have certain attributes and over time you will develop a certain brand.

Companies spend an inordinate amount of money both protecting and developing their brands. There are certain things that come to mind when you think of any brand. For example, think of BMW or Chevy. Likewise, RC Cola creates a different thought than Coke. A brand is developed over time. The places you work, your practice area and all of the aforementioned factors will have a bearing on the quality of your brand.

Generally, better brands can charge more and have more interest directed towards them than poor brands. All of the rules of the business world apply to managing your own brand. You always need to be cognizant of how you want your brand to be viewed by the outside world and potential employers. Think through what type of brand you want carefully, and ensure that you manage that brand the best you can.

You are shaping your brand in so many ways, both by the things that you do and do not do. Your brand is shaped by the type of companies you have worked for, how long you have worked at these companies, the promotions or the demotions you have received, the awards you have received, the articles you have written and the general enthusiasm you have demonstrated for your job.

There are numerous things that shape your personal “brand,” which is the general perception employers have of you. You need to be conscious that everything you do is reflecting on this brand. Something I have seen a ton of in my career are employees who move around a lot–they move every one, two, or three years. Once you have done this enough times you and your brand will start getting a reputation as someone who cannot be trusted to work with the same employer for a long time. If you do the opposite, you will also get the reputation as someone who can be trusted and will remain with the same employer for a long length of time.

If you start out working for small, non-prestigious companies and gradually over the course of several years rise into more and more prominent positions and companies, you will get the impression as someone who is improving. Similarly, you will get the same reputation if you are consistently rising to higher and better positions with your employer over several years.

It is important to understand that everything you are doing has a major impact on your brand. You shape your brand by the choices you make. The reason your brand is so important is due to the fact that it will impact your ultimate marketability.

C. How to Market Your Product and Brand for Maximum Possible Success

As an attorney, consider hypothetically that your salary is $100,000 per year. Also consider that you are being billed out at approximately $200 per hour and expected to bill 2,000 hours a year in the law firm you are working in. This means that your small business is generating $400,000 per year and out of that amount you are “netting” $100,000. This is not bad from a business standpoint.

As a legal recruiter, I am not surprised that most attorneys want to go to the law firms that pay the most money and have the most prestige associated with them. These are all business decisions. If you are an attorney, over time you presumably would like the amount of money you make to increase. You would also like the percentage of the money you collect from your billings to increase. For example, if you generate $400,000 from your work, you would rather make $200,000 than $100,000, as in the prior example. You want to become a partner and earn more. The business game continues.

Everything that happens to your career is the result of selling your product on the marketplace. The amount of money you receive as your salary (i.e., the amount of money the market will pay) will be influenced by the type of brand you have. Hypothetically, you could have no education and start out as a clerk in a small firm. This is something thousands of people do each year. Then, several years later, you could be earning in excess of a million dollars per year leading the same company you started out in. To many people this may seem like an aberration. Nevertheless, this is not an aberration and it happens all the time. The reason this happens is because of how people ultimately (1) brand themselves and (2) market their brand.

Marketing is the single most important thing you can do for yourself and your career. Marketing is about how you package yourself, the things you say and the value the market perceives that you offer.

The point of this essay is not to act as a diatribe on marketing; however, a few comments on marketing should make a helpful point. When you market a product, you need to appeal to people on both an emotional and rational (cost) level. When marketing personal services-which your specific skills are-people tend to want to deal with people like themselves. It is for that reason that large companies typically prefer a certain type of employee, small law firms prefer a certain type of employee and certain types of clients (rich, poor and in between) prefer dealing with a certain type of employee. We have a tendency to want to deal with people like ourselves. Thus, your product is likely to be well accepted in some areas and not others.

I remember one thing when I was clerking for a federal judge and I had the opportunity to see different trial lawyers come into court and conduct trials. I also spent a year trying to write a book about personal injury attorneys several years ago and once again I made a similar observation. The one thing I noticed about the most effective personal injury attorneys was that they were nothing like big firm attorneys and almost never had big firm experience or top law school credentials. What they did know how to do was market themselves and their clients’ grievances to like-minded jurors. They also tended to be quite flamboyant in their marketing efforts, but that is another story.

In small towns all across America, there are very successful attorneys. In most cases, these attorneys grew up in the area and are similar to the people they do work for. What is most significant about the attorneys who are most successful in small towns, from those who are not, is their marketing ability. They fraternize in local clubs and bar associations. Stories circulate about their successes. All of this is marketing.

The same thing occurs in large law firms in big cities. Here, the marketing is confined to the law firm and getting clients to hire you as you advance in seniority. What is most significant, though, is that the marketing component and what the individual’s brand represents are always at the forefront.

The issue then is how you market yourself and advance your own career. While this may not be obvious, a large part of a recruiter’s job is helping people market themselves to employers. They know what the employers want to hear and how the attorney should say it. Virtually every week at our recruiting firms we get attorneys jobs at firms that I know they could not have gotten on their own. That is because we “packaged” the person to the employer in a certain way and told him/her what to say in order to portray the particular brand the firm is interested in.

What is so interesting about the work exceptional recruiters do is that none of what we do is dishonest. In fact, it is just knowing the market, the particular brand of the firm and what makes a person marketable to them. People need to be themselves, but also be aware of what the particular employer wants.

If you are looking for a position you need to keep the idea of marketing at the forefront of what you do and how you think about everything. You have a product to sell and in order to sell your product you must brand it and package it in the right way. In order to sell your product, and get the highest price for it, you also need to have the largest possible market. Everything I have done in my career is geared towards helping people market and package themselves. One service I recommend that anyone look at is Legal Authority (www.EmploymentAuthority.com), which can assist you in marketing yourself to the largest potential demographic of employers possible. It helps you professionally package yourself and get the highest price for your product. Two other companies I recommend are Hound.com and EmploymentCrossing.com, which can help you see the most openings.

You need to know what the market is for your product.

EmploymentCrossing is an exceptional way to learn about the market. Here, you can be aware of the market at all times and know exactly what is going on and who is hiring. EmploymentCrossing is your personal barometer of the market and shows you where you can market your product. The benefit of knowing this information at all times cannot be overemphasized. Think of your career like a product. You have invested a tremendous amount of time and expense creating your product. You may have spent upwards of $100,000 on your education to get to where you are today. (If you are not educated, you have likely spent years of your life learning a given skill.) If you had that much money in the stock market, my guess is that you would want to watch what is going on in the market at all times. Your career should not be any different. Do not lose your investment. Do not allow yourself to go out of business. Know where your product is marketable.

D. Conclusions

You are a product. Your career is a small business. Run it like a small business and realize the importance of your brand. Most importantly, realize you always need to have a market for your product. If you remember this, you will be well served throughout your career.

You Need to Sell, Sell, Sell

A strange misconception among many people, especially professionals, is that there is something wrong with selling. When I talk about selling, I am referring to any number of sales activities:

-Selling yourself in an interview

-Selling yourself in a cover letter to an employer

-Selling yourself to a client

-Selling yourself to any other person

-Packaging yourself in a ‘’sellable” way

In every single interaction we have with others we are selling. The more you sell, the better you will do in your life and career. The best and most successful people are always selling. You should have no preconceived notions about the value of selling because it is among the most important skills you can have. If you understand sales, you understand and control your life.

Several years ago, I was sitting in the office of my friend, who was a window washer. While he was on the phone, I picked up a magazine about window washing from his table. In it, I read an article which appeared to be part of a series. The series was about a man with a window washing squeegee and a towel who was transported to various American cities with no money and given the task of getting back each day. He might be transported from Chicago to Miami one month. The next month they might send him from Chicago to a small town in Oregon. He could be sent anywhere in the country. The article was titled something like this:

Give me a squeegee and a towel and send me to any American city with no money. By the end of the day, I will have a steak dinner in the most expensive restaurant in town, spend the night in a nice hotel, and take a flight home in the morning.

After being dropped off in a city in the morning, the window washer would go from business to business asking to wash their windows. Regardless of the city, he would always make enough money for his steak, hotel, and flight home. When I read this in the early 90s, flights often cost close to $1,000, so what this window washer was doing was really impressive. Without any knowledge of the city he was in and with no contacts, he would end the day with clients and plenty of money.

I remember this series exceptionally well because it inspired me to understand the power of sales and how it can completely change your life regardless of your other skills. When you know how to sell something you can do exceptionally well wherever you go.

I want you to take a moment and think about the power of the window washer’s story. What makes this story so remarkable to me is that being a window washer requires no education and no investment. All it requires is the ability to wash a window, which is teachable in a few minutes, and to find people who will pay you to do this. The ability to sell the service is obviously among the most important elements of this job.

What impressed me so much about this particular story is it shows if you have the ability to sell, you can make something from nothing. When you have the ability to sell you are in control of your life and what happens to you. Knowing how to sell something is a key to survival, advancement, fame, and fortune – if you are after these things.

I believe selling is the most important career skill you can have. All people are involved in sales, even if they do not realize it. However, there is some sort of bias against effective sales people. It is often considered ”uncouth” or not businesslike to be good at sales. People often feel if they try to sell something it will reflect badly on them. People feel sales is a low-class profession. When I hear people talk about sales like this it nearly makes me sick. Selling is the most important possible career skill imaginable, and the most important people in the world are absolute masters at sales.

Every time there is a presidential election in the United States, the winner is determined by the ability to sell to the public the idea he or she would make the better president. The winning candidate debates with his or her opponents, gives speeches, creates taglines and slogans, and travels all over the country trying to spread his or her ideas. When the candidate gets into office, he or she travels all over the world trying to sell those same ideas to other countries. The President tries to sell these ideas to the congress and the senate. The President tries to sell to constituents.

If you are the CEO of a corporationyour job involves sales. Think about auto industry CEOs traveling to Washington asking for money. Their ability to obtain money involves their ability to sell to politicians. They too are in sales.

The most important jobs involve sales, as do the least important. If you want time off from a job your ability to get that time off will depend on your ability to make a sale. If you want a raise, it may depend on your ability to sell your superiors on the reasons why you deserve a raise. Every single thing we do is about making a sale. Getting a good grade in school is often about making a sale. Everything we do is about making sales.

I used to know a guy who sat in his apartment all day not doing much of anything. He watched television and occasionally made a few phone calls. He smoked a lot of cigarettes and had about five or six beers each night. He was also single and probably always will be. He had had a pretty lousy career. He was at least 40 pounds overweight and, despite being in his mid 30s, he had not had a girlfriend since he was in high school. What was this guy’s problem? He did not think it was cool to sell himself. He would not sell himself to an employer, a potential mate, or anyone. He did not care. I have not spoken to the guy in a long time, but I remember he was always making fun of people who sold stuff, making fun of commercials on television and making fun of people trying their hardest to do well in life. This guy was someone who needed to learn how to sell.

Think about the people you know who are not selling themselves or putting their best foot forward. What would be different for them if they did? How would your life change as well?

Selling yourself is about more than simply telling others how good you are. It’s also about showing others the value you can bring them. Things like being fit, being enthusiastic, taking care of yourself emotionally, taking advantage of opportunities presented to you, are all related to sales. Because you are paid by the market you are a product, and because you are a commodity you need to sell yourself and do so exceptionally well every chance you get.

A huge mistake a lot of people in the job market make is forgetting they are a product. Yes, you are a product. Everyone is a product. We are products because in order to make money and add value to the world we have to get people to ”buy in” to whatever services or skills we are offering. Regardless of the job you have, people need to like you and/or what you are personally selling if you are going to reach your full potential.

Selling yourself will really help you stand out in your job or in your job search. This means packaging yourself in the right manner. This is all about how you look and how you come across. In the most competitive jobs, employers can afford to be incredibly picky. If you go into a high paying investment bank, for example, you will see most new recruits are fit, sharp, and enthusiastic. Most investment banks can hire anyone they want, and they hire the people who make the best impression. This is how it is in a competitive industry such as this. In fact, one of the first times I met a group of investment bankers I thought they were male models – these people are very good at packaging themselves. What I want to see you do is make the most of who you are. This means packaging yourself to the best of your ability, always being at your best, and selling yourself.

I want you to develop your sales skillsand not be afraid-ever-to sell anything. Whatever your goal in life may be, becoming an effective salesman will help you achieve it.

Remain Calm

For a portion of one summer when I was younger, I had a valet job at the Grosse Pointe Yacht Club outside of Detroit, Michigan. I worked during the lunch hour and spent most of my time sitting in a small air conditioned shed in a corner of the parking lot waiting for cars to pull up. When a car would pull up, I would fling open the door to the shed and run over to the car, hand the person a ticket, and park the car.

One day, I was sitting in my little shed and a giant Cadillac pulled up and a man stepped on to the curb. As I was exiting my shed, he looked at me and shouted:

“Hey Boy … PARK THIS!”

The man then proceeded to throw his keys in the grass.

This amazed me. I used to lift weights and played football in high school. From the way I’d taught myself to think, this sort of treatment was not to be tolerated.

“Are you kidding?!” I shouted at the man. “Are you trying to start something with me?! Because if you are, I’m ready!” I strolled slowly up to the car which was about 20 yards away. Apparently terrified, the man went sprinting inside of the club. A few moments later the manager of the club emerged and fired me. The manager was so upset about the whole thing he actually called my mother and told her about the incident.

I lost my job because I lost my cool.

When you think about your life and your career, what would be different if you had, instead, developed the ability to remain calm? Most people are agitated–moving in many different directions and unable to remain calm. When you remain calm many things end up changing in your life.

Remaining calm is one of the most important traits we can have. Being calm is not just about being relaxed and not yelling. Being calm is about being focused enough to absorb the world around you and make deliberate and carefully considered decisions before acting. When you are calm, you do not lose jobs like I did, and you are more likely to keep friends and to advance rapidly in whatever environment you are in. People will trust you more. People will look to you to fill leadership roles. When we are calm, we are far more powerful than when we choose, instead, to react from our gut with anger, fear, or other nonproductive emotions. Calmness is a virtue and one of the strongest you can have. The calmer you are, the more you can control and understand the world around you. The more you understand the world around you, the better you can be at everything you do. This is the nature and importance of being calm.

Several years ago, I took a multi-day course at Disneyland about leadership. While I could write for several days about what the course covered, I remember when the instructors summed up the entire meaning of the course after countless examples and numerous exercises they said it with few words: “Leadership is about being calm.”

The more I thought about this example, the more I realized the most important thing we can do in business, our careers and in leadership, is to be calm. The more we relax our minds and our bodies, the more positioned we are to make the correct decisions in our careers. I once read a book about former president Kennedy. Apparently, Kennedy liked to use stimulants and was often up for days during his periods of stimulant use. While it is not widely talked about, there was some fear among members of his cabinet that he might have potentially created a disaster during the Cuban Missile Crisis due to his use of stimulants and inability to remain calm. Some conspiracy theorists have even speculated he was assassinated by the CIA because they felt his inability to control his emotions could have led to a nuclear Armageddon. Despite an illustrious presidency in many respects, Kennedy’s inability to consistently be calm was considered by many a massive weakness.

Several years ago, a high school friend of mine named Jeff was coming to Los Angeles from the Midwest to visit me and a friend of mine, John. We decided we would rent a giant limousine and take Jeff around Los Angeles to show him the sites. The limousine was so large it had a Jacuzzi in its trunk! I had honestly never seen anything like it. Because it was so massive, it blocked two driveways when it was parked in front of my house. About 10 minutes after the limousine arrived we called our friend to see where he was.

He told John and I he would not be able to make it because he was having dinner with his girlfriend and her parents, who’d shown up at the last minute. At that moment, I got extremely angry and felt hurt. Here I was with this giant limousine in front of my house with a bubbling jacuzzi in the trunk I’d already paid for. I felt alone and stupid. I exchanged some harsh words with Jeff and decided I would never speak with him again.

That was several years ago.

Do I regret it? Yes. I overreacted. In contrast, John got mad too, but he made up with Jeff just a few days later. To this day, I have not spoken with Jeff.

It’s easy for me to look back now and realize how wrong I was. Jeff was rude, but if I had looked at the totality of the situation I would have realized getting angry was a stupid decision. Instead, I should have remained calm and simply filed this episode away and recognize that I could not always trust him when we made plans. I could have also been empathetic and understanding of his need to entertain his girlfriend’s parents. Instead, I chose to get mad.

I’ve seen careers abruptly crash because of people failing to be calm. People react inappropriately to a perceived slight and fire off a crazy and savage email to someone. Someone does not think something through before acting. People whose careers soar to incredible heights are most often the ones who have the ability to remain calm. Being calm is more than just consistently being relaxed. Being calm is having the ability to react in a level-headed way to circumstances around you and face the world without getting flustered and keep your confidence strong.

Being calm is a sign of security and self confidence.

When you are calm, you are often more in control than the people around you. Many people fly off the handle at work, in public and when they feel they have been wronged. Generally, when someone flies off the handle, someone else is receiving their anger and negative emotion. The person who is on the receiving end typically has a couple of potential reactions. The first is to lash out and get angry. This is the most common reaction. The least common reaction is when the person on the receiving end remains calm. The person who remains calm puts themselves at a profound advantage. Usually what ends up happening is the person who has reacted angrily, or irrationally, comes to their senses and realizes they acted and responded in the wrong way. They come back to the person they have reacted to and seek apologies or attempt to make up. At that point, a subtle power shift has occurred and the person who was able to remain calm has assumed control. When you remain calm, you almost always end up in the role of the leader—regardless of the situation.

When we think of generals, presidents, CEOs and other leaders, we rarely think of them as people who fly off the handle. Instead, we think of them as people who are constantly able to remain calm no matter what. We want leaders who have the ability to stay focused and calm despite the turmoil around them. We do not want people who fly off the handle.

We think more of people who have the ability to remain calm. We respect those around us who stay calm. Being calm is so respected we have a word for it in the English language – “cool”. We call people with the ability to remain calm “cool”. We elevate people in society we believe are cool. Fonzi from the show “Happy Days” was considered “cool”. LL Cool J is considered “cool”. Action heroes are always “cool” when others around them appear to be acting nuts. We respect people in our society who are able to maintain their composure and stay cool.

In your job, nothing is more important than being cool. One of the best jobs I ever had growing up was working for Domino’s Pizza as a driver. Back in the 1980s, I was making $150+ some days delivering pizza. The tips were really good. Unfortunately, I only worked there for one summer due to an incident delivering pizza in a bad neighborhood. I did not get fired from this job. However, when I tried to get a job there the next summer they told me they did not have any openings (which I am almost certain was not true). I’m pretty sure they told me this because of the incident I am about to relate.

I dropped off a pizza in a bad neighborhood and the person’s change was only a few cents. When the person asked me for change I said: “Are you kidding?” There was only a few pennies at issue and in addition to not giving me a tip the person was asking for a few cents. I was deeply offended.

After I fished the few cents out of my pocket, the guy said to me: “If you had the change ready, I might have let you keep it. Now get the f**k off my porch.”

I was absolutely incredulous. I got in my car and started driving away, but then my anger got the better of me. I stopped my car and backed up. I got out of the car and screamed “F**k you!” at the top of my lungs at the house. The guy came out of his house and screamed “F**k you too, bitch!” This bizarre episode lasted a minute or two as we stood there screaming at each other. Eventually I peeled out in my car and drove away.

When I got back to the pizza parlor, my manager said, “Calm down. Calm down.” The manager looked like Bill Murray and he said something I will never forget to this day: “I know that guy too. He is a total a**hole, but you have to calm down. It is not professional to stand on the street screaming at a customer when you have a Domino’s pizza sign on the top of your car. The guy’s neighbors called me about you!”

The calmer you are, the more opportunities will present themselves and the fewer opportunities you will end up losing in your life. There is no sense losing your calm. This is simply not something you should do. You need to remain calm at all times.

Remaining calm will not only keep you employed, it can also help you get a job. When you are calm, you make better decisions and understand more of the world around you and what is going on. You can see opportunities where others cannot. People who are effective networkers are often very calm because they are very adept at being able to listen to others and understand where others are coming from.

People who are not calm are most often more interested in making themselves heard than understanding others. Steven Covey, the author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, is fond of saying “Seek to understand before being understood.” This is excellent advice and something I have heard many of the most successful people repeat time and time again. In sales, for example, this is something I have seen transform careers. People who have the ability to remain calm are much more likely to have cultivated the ability to understand. Understanding people and situations requires that you remain calm.

When we react to things in the world, or instantly make decisions, we are most often doing so due to our conditioning and the things we have been led to believe. We react instinctively instead of thinking things through. The ability to react instinctively often serves us well. However, when we are able to remain calm we are often far more effective. One of the most effective things we can do is to delay our decisions and not make decisions quickly. Making rapid-fire decisions is something that can do us a great deal of harm. When you are calm you are able to make decisions in a slower and more deliberate way that will serve you very well. If you delay making a decision you can always make another decision later. [Read more]

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

Over 20 years ago, I was at a relative’s house in the country, and he made a crazy statement (which he appeared to believe) that all Japanese were Jewish, and that was why they were in the process of controlling all the car manufacturing in the world just like they were controlling the entertainment and banking industries.

My relative was a truck driver in his 50s, and he made this statement as if what he was saying had a certain level of profoundness to it. Under normal circumstances, when not involved in “intellectual” debate, he was a very nice man and good father. The statement was offensive on many levels – it was racist, stereotyping people, and it was just plain wrong. So wrong it was hard to believe.

“Are you kidding? That is not true at all! They are Buddhist!” I screamed. I was about 16 at the time and absolutely amazed at what I was hearing.

He was a big burly man, probably close to 300 pounds of fat and muscle, and he punched me in the side of the head hard enough that he knocked me out. I am not sure how long I was out. Incredibly, when I regained consciousness, he was still involved in this debate with a couple of other people who were talking like nothing had happened. Those men were sitting outside on picnic tables and plastic folding chairs while all of the women were inside cooking. Seeing stars, I took a seat back on the picnic table next to my uncle while I regained my composure.

After a few moments, I looked up at him. “What the hell!?” I muttered, still semi-conscious.

“You need to keep your mouth shut and not talk about stuff you know nothing about!” he said.

I told my mother about this experience when we were driving home. I was incredulous I’d been punched for asserting the entire nation of Japan was not Jewish, and I expressed profound disappointment at being related to these people. My mother is pretty smart. She said something to me I will never forget. A close relative of hers she’d grown up with – I’ll call her “Patty” – had married this man. My mother told me Patty had been very beautiful and also very intelligent when they were growing up. She said Patty could have married any man she wanted to and instead chose to marry the truck driver. In fact, Patty’s sister had married a man who was the owner of a large bank and they lived an upper crust lifestyle with boats, fancy cars, mansions, and frequent extravagant foreign vacations. At family events at Patty’s house, they would look with disdain at the cars on the front lawn and practically shudder at the bad grammar exchanged by Patty and her friends.

My mother told me Patty had much more going for her than my mother ever did or her sister ever did.

“She chose the life she has,” my mother said. “She could have had any life she wanted, and she chose this life. We were actually talking about this after I found out about you getting knocked out because I was a little upset, too. Patty said she could have had a different life, but this is the one she chose.”

Since I was young at the time, this was a pivotal event for me. I realized right then and there we are in complete control of our lives and what happens to us. It is all about what we choose.

We choose the lives we are going to lead and we choose what happens to us. You have the power to choose in your life, and where you are today is the result of the decisions you made long ago. Think back on your life 10, 20, or more years. Where were you back then? What were you doing? Where are you now compared to where you were back then?

We have the power to choose the lives we lead and what happens to us. We choose:

1. Our jobs
2. Our mates
3. Where we live
4. Our friends
5. What we do with our free time
6. The number of children we have
7. How hard we work
8. How healthy we are
9. How we dress
10. What we eat

The number of things we choose is phenomenal. We choose our lives and what happens to us and shape our own destinies. Most people are more interested in blaming outside events and circumstances for what happens to them in their lives. The truth is what happens to us is almost completely the result of the decisions we make. We are in charge of our own lives and our decisions shape our entire existence.

One of the most important times we are forced to choose is when we are in the position of losing a job or deciding between jobs. This is a time when a lot of people find themselves stressed out and are forced to figure out what they need to do with themselves. People react to stress in different ways. Some people start to drink a lot or use drugs. Others start exercising a lot. Others avoid people who may ask them about what they are doing. Your decision about how to deal with stress and your job search is something that can and will permanently shape your destiny and what happens to you in your life. How are you going to deal with losing a job?

When some people lose a job, they decide to sue their employer. While many law suits against employers are legitimate, most I have seen are not. I make this judgment from having been an attorney who represented both employees and employers. People sue their employers because they decide someone other than them is responsible for their job and their livelihood. People make this decision to go after their employer and often spend years not working and involved in a bitter lawsuit. In the interim, they do not even look for a job. In some cases, they do not want to find a job because if they find one they will receive fewer damages from their lawsuit.

Other people who lose a job take a different approach. Instead of being angry with their employer, they may be angry with themselves. They may withdraw and stop trying. They allow this experience to have such a negative effect on them they stop trying their hardest. This is a very common reaction as well.

Others who lose jobs may launch a new business, go back to school, or try to get even better jobs than the ones they lost. These are all decisions as well. You need to choose to make empowering decisions in your life and your career.

In 1980, Candy Lightner’s 13-year-old daughter, Cari, was killed by a drunk driver as she walked down the street. Instead of feeling sorry for her daughter and herself, Lightner chose to found Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) to crusade against the problem of drunk drivers.

“I promised myself on the day of Cari’s death that I would fight to make this needless homicide count for something positive in the years ahead,” Candy Lightner later wrote. Her organization rapidly rose to national prominence and Lightner appeared on major national television shows, addressed numerous groups around the country, testified before the government, and worked to promote new legislation. She chose to take action in a way which empowered the world and made a difference rather than allowing outside events to negatively influence her.

A similar story exists for John Walsh. Walsh is the host of America’s Most Wanted. Walsh was a successful businessman living in Hollywood, Florida, and the partner in an important hotel management company. On July 27, 1981, Walsh’s wife left their son Adam in the toy department of Sears while she went to look for a lamp. Sixteen days later, Adam’s severed head was found in a drainage canal more than 120 miles from the mall, according to an account on the America’s Most Wanted website.

Walsh’s search for justice and his determination to never let Adam’s death be in vain led him to fight back like few other Americans ever have. Although he’s never held political office, Walsh has been the driving force behind major pieces of child protection legislation. His hard work led to Walsh being honored five times by four presidents: Ronald Reagan (twice), George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. One of Walsh’s proudest moments was when he and his wife Revè stood beside President George W. Bush, as the “Adam Walsh Child Protection & Safety Act” was signed into law on the 25th anniversary of Adam’s murder.

Walsh became the host of America’s Most Wanted after much of his crusade. The story of Walsh is one of someone who made a decision about how to react to a negative event, and this decision made a huge impact on his life and the world. Think about the things that have happened in your life and the decisions you have made in response to them. What have you done with the things that have happened to you? How can you take a negative and use it to empower the world?

People have so many reasons for not succeeding. Most of them have to do with people and forces outside of ourselves over which we have no control. It is how people react to the world through the decisions they make that ultimately empowers us and changes our place in the world. This is what you need to do. You need to make decisions that will empower you and your place in the world.

The greatest weakness most people have is they never make a commitment to back up their decision. Making a decision is the most powerful thing you can do, but it must be backed up with the power of commitment. You can never do anything or reach great heights if you do not commit to what you are doing. Most people never truly utilize the power of commitment.

There is a huge difference between simply being interested in something and committing to it. For example, Lightner and Walsh certainly had every reason to be interested in putting drunk drivers in jail and finding child killers. They committed to something and made a decision they would fight for what they believed in. Their decisions are what made all of the difference.

In 1519, Hernan Cortes anchored his 11 ships off the Yucatán Peninsula. At the time, the Aztecs, who had tens of thousands of soldiers, ruled Mexico. In contrast, Cortes had only 608 men, 16 horses, and a few cannons. Cortes was committed to win the battle despite having so few men. He made the decision he was going to go back to Spain a winner. Cortes ordered his men off the ships and to shore.

In the middle of the night, people screaming “Fire!” awakened the soldiers. They rose from their sleep and saw all 11 ships burning out in the water. The men rushed to the row boats to go fight the fire. But Cortés stopped them. He told the soldiers he had ordered all of the ships burned. They had no way to retreat – that was the message Cortés sent to his soldiers. They had to win. There was no choice.

Under Cortes, just 608 men, 16 horses, and a few cannons conquered the Aztecs. The power of decision, backed up by commitment, made this incredible feat possible. Cortes made sure his troops were as committed as they could possibly be and that they had no means of retreat.

Most of us decide to do something but deep down we keep the possibility of retreat as an option. What I get out of the story of Cortés, and what makes it so remarkable to me, is it shows how many of us never really truly commit to anything and any decision we are making. The people who achieve the most in this life are the people like Cortés, Lightner, and Walsh who make decisions and then proceed to follow through with them. There is so much power in making decisions and making these decisions with commitment. We may have an interest in doing something or want to make a commitment to something. However, very few of us ever follow through. We must follow through and commit. This is the difference between mediocrity and greatness – commitment to a decision.

Many people are tormented by their inability to make a decision and commit. Soap operas are a perfect example of this. Lives are wrecked over and over again by the inability to commit. No one ever knows who they want to be with in soap operas, and relationships are never characterized by commitment. Everyone is always crying, and entire stories are tragic and insane. The only reasons these stories are so nuts is because the characters in them simply can never commit. You need to commit to succeed. You can go back and forth in:

1. Your choice of a mate
2. Your choice of a job
3. Your choice of a profession
4. Your commitment to your job
5. Your commitment to your mate
6. Your commitment to an education
7. Your commitment to being better at what you do

When you do not commit to a decision about what you want to do, however, you will never have clarity. Instead, you will be in a state of perpetual confusion. This is how most people live their lives. Making a decision and committing to it gives you clarity. Clarity gives you power. Most people say words like “I’ll see how it works out” or “I’ll give it a try.” This is not what you should be doing. You should say “I am doing this!” and move forward by taking action. This is the only way to be empowered by your decisions.

There is a huge danger if you do not make decisions about your life and stand behind them: your life will be made and shaped by someone else. This is what happens to most people. They allow their complete existence to be shaped by someone else. Is this really what you want? You should be the one shaping your life and deciding exactly what happens to you. Do not let others and the world decide what happens to you.

The people who become movie stars, presidents, CEOs, and incredible people in different professions do not just suddenly end up in these positions due to a combination of luck and fate. They generally reach these heights of success because they decide this is what they want and make a commitment to it. You need to realize you have the power to be whomever you want when you decide to do this. Decide what you want for your life and take action. The hardest part of life is making a decision and following through with it.

The most amazing thing about your career is it controls so much of what happens in your life. It controls where you live, the people with whom you socialize, where your kids go to school, how excited you are to go to work in the morning, the kind of car you drive, how many days a week you work, how much you work when you are working, and more. Your career is such an incredibly important thing. Where you are today in your career is due to the power of decisions you have made in your life over the past 10 years. You have the power to change the next 10 years and make them even better than the last by the decisions you make today. You need to make decisions that will empower you and create the life you are entitled to and deserve. Start making decisions based on what you want, and do not want, and commit to those decisions today.

The Importance of Disconnecting from Your Work

Some of the happiest, most well adjusted, and most effective people I know are also people who have a profound ability to disconnect from their work. They can disconnect rapidly and put themselves in another state of mind which does not involve work. People who come to mind include Richard Branson, who set records in balloons, captains of industry who leisurely golf their days away, men in bars who slap each others’ backs while drinking martinis and making deals, or CEO’s of companies in their early 60s who run marathons.

One of the most important things you can do for yourself is learn to disconnect from your work.

Many people never do this, or don’t know how. You see these people walking around with telephones in their ears wherever they go, getting up from dinner to talk on the phone, screwing around with their Blackberries at any given moment, and, in general, working every second of the day.

I have a secret for you: The most important and successful people never behave like this. The most important people simply do not work when they are not working.

If you are working all the time, you are not being nearly as productive as you could be. For example, typical German workers, when they are working, are models of efficiency. They are detail-oriented and more focused than the average worker. When they are not working, however, they are truly not working. They are done for the day.

There is a saying: “Work hard, play hard.” I believe this expression exists for a reason. People who work hard and play hard contribute more value when they are working.

Think about the people – and you may be one of them – who inform you of how stressed out they are about work when they are not even working. Think about the people who are glued to their email and Blackberry and cell phone all weekend, no matter where they go. Think about the people who work on their laptop when they are sitting in front of the television with their family at night.

None of this is generally productive.

In fact, behavior that keeps you constantly attached to work is counterproductive. Your body and mind never has time to recharge. You are constantly at the beck and call of a job and you never get a fresh perspective. You never see the world. You just see the job.

I believe this problem is far more serious than people realize. Success should not necessarily be defined by how much you work, how stressed you are, or how dedicated you are to working all the time. Success should instead be defined by your ability to approach each problem you face at work with a fresh perspective, to maintain a cheery disposition, and be an all around happy and well-balanced person. Success should also be defined by your ability to enjoy your life when you are not working.

Your entire existence is not tied to your job. There is a lot going on in the world besides your job and the work you are doing. When you come home at night, or on the weekend, it is not productive to be focused on your job. Your mind should be on something else – your family, the weather, a book, a hobby.

You should be very aware of what goes on inside your head when you think about work. When you are thinking about work, you are thinking about how you can control and manipulate the objects of your work. If you are a writer, you are thinking about what you are writing; if you are a salesman, you are thinking about what you can sell; if you are a cashier, you are thinking about the transaction in front of you. You are focused on the people you are working with and what they are doing. You are focused on your clients. You are focused on how all of this affects you, what it means to your livelihood, and whether it makes you angry, happy, or sad. You are focused on a raise, a demotion, getting fired, getting a new client. Once you truly get into your job, this focus will become more profound and pronounced.

I am sure you have met people whose minds are totally focused on their jobs and the work they are doing. If they are attorneys, for example, they might be overly logical whenever you speak with them. It is important for people like these to go outside the state of mind they are in when working and start focusing on things not work-related (i.e., the external world). The state of mind that goes along with work is needed to do your job. However, in order for you to improve at your job, you need to be in a different state of mind each day when leaving the workplace.

The reason it is so important to disconnect from work is because much of work is an internal, introverted process. When we work, we are fixated on the object of our work. In order to get out of that mindset, we need to focus on objects outside of our work. There are lots of ways to do this, including exercising, socializing, taking a walk, or simply doing anything entirely unrelated to our jobs.

There are lots of clichés about work. There is the man who returns from the office and snaps at his wife. There is the person who throws himself or herself on the couch the second he or she gets home from the office. There is the person who gets home and talks and complains on the phone to someone for hours about a supervisor or a job he or she does not like. There is the aggressive driver on the road who yells at people on the way home from the office.

High school football players apparently get better grades during football season than the average student. A reason for this, I believe, is these players are able to disconnect from their studies and come back with a new perspective after playing. It is important to always have a new perspective on your work. This keeps you moving towards your goal.

Give yourself the luxury of disconnecting from your job. Remember your life is made all the better when you can see the world outside of your job.

Communicate With Relevance and Connect With Your Audience

One of the biggest secrets in marketing is the more relevant your communication, the more willing people are to respond. You can read and study everything you want about marketing, but if you are not communicating with relevance to your audience, nothing else really matters.

When you apply for a job, or when you work for someone, you need to make your communication as relevant as possible.

I’d like to tell you a quick story about someone I hired four years ago who communicated to me with relevance.

One day, I received a phone call from a man in Europe, telling me he intended to move to the United States for work. He told me he’d researched our organization and was impressed. He told me what areas of the organization needed work. He communicated in ways that were relevant to me and despite the fact I didn’t know this person, I opened up and began speaking about our company.

He then told me if I would like to speak further with him, I was welcome to fly him to the United States for more discussions. When I took him up on his offer, he discussed with me what he felt the organization needed, and he continued to communicate with relevance. I ended up having this person come to work in the U.S. I had him live in my house for six weeks of training, and even paid all sorts of immigration and other expenses to bring this person over. He now manages one of my most important companies. Since he started with the company, his salary has doubled.

This person never sent me a resumé.

This person never applied in response to an advertisement.

This person contacted me, the CEO of the company, by calling and doing everything he could to make a connection.

This person never would have been hired had he simply sent a résumé or gone a more traditional route. He might not even have been hired had he volunteered to fly himself over. Making our organization pay for the flight got the company invested, and certainly made me pay attention.

This person probably never would have been hired had he not researched exactly what our company did, or exactly who we were and what made us unique. The fact he was able to speak in terms of what made us unique was very meaningful to me, and also established a connection.

And here’s an incredible secret: I hired him despite the fact the company had no openings whatsoever. In fact, this person was hired for a company that was not even operational, which only got off the ground about 30 months after the person started! Companies and employers will hire people who go out of their way to make a connection.

When I was at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco in 2008, I learned about the different ways people communicate, and how it relates to the future of the Internet. I saw the founder of Facebook, the CEO of Twitter, the CEO of Salesforce.com, and several other very high ranking people in the Internet sphere. As I looked around at these people, I thought, why are sites like Facebook so popular? Why is Twitter so popular? Why are so many sites on the Internet growing so quickly? The growth of sites like Google and others is absolutely stunning.

There must be something these sites and the people behind them are doing that others are not. There must be a common thread that drives their success. What do these companies mean for you? What does this have to do with your job search?

These companies are surrounded by legions of venture capitalists and others who are not only interested in giving these companies money, but also in understanding what they do. What these companies do is really something that is as old as the hills, but far too many people miss that.

What companies like Facebook, Twitter, and others do is allow people to reach each other. They allow people to form connections. Companies like Google allow advertisers to communicate with relevance when people are searching for information. It used to be if you wanted to find car buyers, for example, you needed to put a huge advertisement on television and hope the buyers would see it. Today, a manufacturer can sponsor ads for, say, “four-wheel drive, hybrid pickup trucks,” and every manufacturer that has relevant products can reach this demographic. Businesses and brands that communicate with relevance are the ones to which consumers always flock.

The importance of communicating with relevance has always been around. Direct-mail advertisers have long known that the more focused and personally directed an advertisement is, the more likely you are to open it. Publisher’s Clearinghouse, for example, would write: “HARRISON BARNES OF PASADENA HAS WON $1,000,000!” on its envelope, in order to get me to open their package when it arrived.

When looking for a job, the more focused you are on exactly what the employer wants, the more likely you are to get the job. Facebook allows users to connect with people they know. Like Facebook, you need to connect with your “audience” – in this case your future employer, through commonalities and direct and relevant communication.

When you are on the job it is also important to connect. Professionalism is stressed in many workplaces, but you also want your employer to understand you and to know who you are. This connection is necessary and is what makes you human. It is much harder for an employer not to give someone a promotion or to fire someone with whom he or she has made a sincere and legitimate connection. You need to make a serious connection with your employer both before and after getting hired. It’s important to understand your employer’s motivations and to let him or her know that, on some personal level, you share those motivations.

In the 2008 presidential election we saw two very different candidates. If you think back over the last 100 years, this election was no different from many others. The person who connected with the most people ultimately won. ‘Connection’ means different things at different times and places. Our recent election winner was the one who did the best job of communicating. He text messaged his supporters and communicated in the language of the people whose approval he was seeking.

Always communicate with relevance and you will connect with your audience.

Protect Your Reputation At All Costs

What You Will Learn It is important to protect your reputation at all costs. Never let falsehoods be spread about you – in your career you cannot take any chances with what people say about you. If there are negative rumors circulating about you, they need to be stopped. This can not only cause problems with your current job, but can also potentially damage your future employment prospects.

“A risk to reputation is a threat to the survival of the enterprise.”

-Peter J. Firestein

I read an article once about Blackstone executive David Blitzer, whose father-in-law he once charged with trying to shake him down for $7.5 million. The man was ultimately arrested after Blitzer, 38, made a $500,000 payment as part of a deal to get the harassment to stop. Blitzer’s father-in-law had originally requested that Blitzer loan him money, which Blitzer did. However, when Blitzer refused to relinquish more money than originally requested, things turned ugly. According to the article:

“In June, Ross demanded more money and began harassing Blitzer with phone calls and emails, according to the district attorney’s office. Ross allegedly said if Blitzer did not give him at least an additional $50,000, Ross would contact Blackstone executives and law enforcement with accusations he said would ruin Blitzer’s career.

In one voicemail message, Ross threatened to “commit open warfare” against Blitzer if he didn’t send money, the district attorney’s office says.”

When I read that article, a family member was attacking me in a similar way, after I’d refused to give that person a loan. The difference between what happened to me and the situation with Blitzer was the “open warfare” against me had already begun. The attacks had been going on for some time, in fact. When my relative denied the attacks, I asked him to take a lie detector test, which he took and failed.

While I cannot comment on this further, I will say you must protect your reputation at all costs from public defamation. Don’t let yourself become a victim.

Being attacked by my relative was one of the hardest things I have ever dealt with. A situation like this really goes to the core of who you are, and causes damage in many ways. People have asked me why someone would make accusations against me if they were not true. The problems the ordeal caused me, my family, and even my employees is completely unacceptable.

During your career, you cannot afford to take any chances with what people say about you. Never let lies be spread about you. Before becoming the CEO of the employment companies I work for now, most of my experience was in the legal industry. I worked in Los Angeles and saw several attorneys’ careers literally get destroyed because of rumors. While some of the rumors I heard were in fact true, most were not – and the results for the attorneys were catastrophic. Even in a market as large as Los Angeles, word got around very quickly. If you think there’s rumors going around about you, you need to react quickly to stop them. The only fight you’re guaranteed to lose is the one you back down from.

When you are searching for a job, you need to be aware your potential employers will do their homework on you. They will put your name into a search engine and look you up on social networking sites to see what they can find out about you. If you have a blog, your potential employer will look this up as well. If the people you associate with on your blog do not meet your potential employer’s approval (e.g., they are into “weird stuff”), this may cause him or her to lose interest in your candidacy. You must ensure you are protecting your reputation and controlling what others can find out about you.

I once heard someone say something I believe is very appropriate regarding professional reputations: “Never tell people you work with your biggest weaknesses because this is something that can be used against you in the future. Your weaknesses are something that gives others power over you.” While this advice may sound extreme, the point is to protect yourself. You do not want people spreading negative information about you in the workplace. This can not only cause problems with your current job, but can also potentially damage your future employment prospects. There is no quicker way to hurt your career (especially in niche professions where a lot of people know each other), than to allow rumors to circulate about you.

The best way to deal with rumors is often to acknowledge they exist and then do your best to address them. Addressing rumors is an excellent way to ensure whatever is behind them is not allowed to fester. For example, the Coca-Coca Company has an entire portion of its website dedicated to addressing false rumors. This is a priority for large companies such as Coca-Cola, and it should be a priority in your career as well.

In my opinion, one of the best ways to overcome your critics is to simply sit down and speak with some of the people whom you believe are creating the rumors. This can be challenging to do in a professional environment but, when done properly, it can put the people on notice about your concern and let them know you may suspect their own behaviors. Getting close to these people – keeping your enemies close – is often the best medicine to help quiet them.

When I was in high school, I remember another football player spreading rumors about me and a girl in our school, with whom I’d never even spoken. I walked up to the player the day I heard the rumor and asked him, “What exactly makes you feel good about spreading rumors about this girl and me?” I never heard the rumor again. Later, I heard he denied ever saying it.

In summary, if you hope to continue to grow your career, you must confront rumors early on in order to prevent them from festering. Protect your professional reputation at all costs, act with honor and don’t let petty talk from other people stand in the way of your progress.

Be Committed to What You Do

What You Will Learn There is power in being committed. It is important to commit to your career, to a single employer or to anything that is important to you. Not being committed to your career will deprive you of success. You should not do any sort of job that your heart is not in, and that you cannot commit to.

I am about to provide you some of the strangest job search and career advice you will ever receive from someone who’s in the recruiting industry. One thing you should know about me is that I’m a straight shooter. If I see a pattern repeat itself enough times, I know it’s something that must be true. The pattern I’m about to explain to you is so powerful it could change your career forever. I know it has changed mine.

The secret is commitment.

When I was in my 20s, I had a girlfriend who watched soap operas. She was committed to those shows. She would watch them every single day, and if she could not watch them, she would record them. I’m ashamed to admit that I would sometimes watch the soaps with her when she would catch up on the missed episodes. The one thing I quickly realized about soap operas was they were all about commitment, in that none of the characters could commit. Each person on every one of the shows would get into a series of relationships, be tempted by others, get out of relationships, get married, cheat, and so forth. This was all the soap operas were ever about. The characters would inevitably suffer hospitalizations for nervous breakdowns or horrible accidents (caused by their distractions). Then there would be horrible, drunken, public confessionals, and all sorts of other malfeasance. Moreover, the people on these shows would always be led to believe that, no matter how good their situation was, the grass was greener elsewhere.

Several years later, when I got into the employment market and started recruiting, I began noticing this same soap opera pattern with clients and coworkers. People would leave a job for any lapse, no matter how small. If they were criticized by an employer, I would see them start looking for another job. If someone heard another employer was paying more, they would send a résumé. If their current company or firm were getting bad press, they would start looking for another job. The reasons were innumerable. Some might seem proactive, while others were purely reactionary. One thing seemed clear to me: There was a major lack of commitment in the marketplace. People could not or would not commit themselves to a single employer, or to anything for that matter.

Commitment is key in order to experience any form of success. You should not do any sort of job if your heart isn’t in it, and you can’t be committed. If you are a public relations intern, you need to be committed to that job. If you are the president of a corporation, you need to be committed to that as well. Not being committed to your career will only have negative consequences.

Several months ago, I was speaking with a proofreader in my company, who resigned because she had found a better job across the street, one that paid more. The amount of the pay increase was minimal. I was actually prepared to give the woman a raise, a higher amount than her new job. In our meeting, the young woman explained she liked working for our company, but she needed to make more money because her husband had been unemployed for some time.

I told her I was very sorry about this and asked how she became aware of the new job. She was a nice girl and I was interested in talking to her about this. The job she was doing at our company was very demanding and had required her to take work home at night, and to work very hard for the most part. In response, she told me she’d been freelancing for the other company for some time, and this was how she came to entertain a new full-time job offer.

Once she told me this, I was no longer interested in trying to keep this person at our company. I knew immediately she was not committed to our company to the degree I wanted her to be. She was not someone I wanted on my team.

Your boss (and we all have bosses) wants employees who are committed to what they do.

Whenever I hear someone tell me they are just doing something until they can find something better, I know that person will never really succeed. When I see someone leave a job for trivial reasons, I also know that person will probably not reach the success for which they’re striving. When I see people watch the clock and leave at 5 p.m. every day because they are not really interested in what they are doing, I know those people will probably have mediocre careers. Commitment shines through, and it is easy to see when it’s not there.

Each morning, I read the Wall Street Journal. I spend at least 45 minutes reading it cover to cover. Most of the stories in this publication are about Fortune 500 companies and other such organizations. At least once a week, I see something along these lines written there:

John Smith started out as a repairman for a local office of X company in 1977. Today, he is CEO of the same company, with 18,000 employees in 26 countries and revenues of $4.2 billion last year…

It’s not coincidental I keep seeing stories like this in the paper. Without a doubt, the people who are rising up in these situations are those who are the most committed. When they join a company they join and remain in a committed fashion. They show up to work. These are the kinds of people who grow within corporations. They usually keep their jobs, but if they ever lose a job they will find another job quickly. Their commitment attracts success.

Being committed also has financial rewards. I have several people working for me on salary, whose incomes have consistently risen (more than tripled) in the past 3-4 years alone, because I know they are committed. I know their hearts and souls are in the job. I have recruiters working for our company who make 2-3 times more money than the average recruiter due to their level of commitment to the job.

It’s very common for people who’ve held too many jobs within a short span of time to never find a job in their industry again. This happens to lawyers all the time. It is well known in the recruiting community that if you have had more than two jobs in five years (or even 5-6 over a 20+ year career), it demonstrates a lack of commitment. Even if you can account for the problems you might have had with those employers, it would seem clear that the problem is not your employer–the problem is almost certainly you.

Prospective employers will want to avoid you because they know you will leave them, too. You will find fault with them just as you have found fault with all of your other employers. You will tell the people you work with why you do not like the company. You will tell other potential employers you are interviewing with why you do not like the company. Who needs that? Most employers avoid these sorts of people like the plague.

It pays to be committed not only to your employer, but to your career. Your commitment will come out in everything you do, and you will shine. There are countless stories of the secretary who becomes the president of the company, the guy in the mailroom who ends up buying the corporation and becoming a billionaire, the worker who sweeps up at the auto dealership, who becomes a salesman, then the top salesman, and eventually buys the auto dealership and another, and another, and so on.

All of that comes through the power of commitment.

I am in the employment industry. I love what I do. I want you to succeed. I want to coach you. I am committed to what I am doing.

Are you?

The Importance of Fitting In

What You Will Learn Develop the ability to fit in – it is one of the single largest contributors, in both getting and keeping a job. Employers want to hire people who will embrace, on philosophical and moral levels, their approach towards business and the world. Your happiness and the success of your career depend on the ability to recognize when you fit in and when you do not.

One of the most persistent mistakes people make is not fitting in with their work environments. Fitting in enables you to both get and keep a job. In terms of what it takes to succeed in the long term, fitting in may actually be more important than your skill level. This little-known observation is lost on many people, and overlooking this can result in unhappy and unfulfilled careers. Conversely, being aware of this often results in very happy and fulfilling careers. The problem is that it is often the very best people and those with the best academics and technical skills that end up not fitting in.

Having been raised to believe that the true success is measured purely by how well people perform academically, many people enter the working world like shooting stars. They arrive at the very best organizations and soon leave one organization for the next, and then the next. If they are smart, though, they learn the importance of fitting in; otherwise their careers quickly end, and they are left blaming a self-imposed set of circumstances and people for their career problems.

I have been a legal recruiter for several years, and I am constantly speaking with firms that are hiring, laying off, and firing attorneys, paralegals, and legal secretaries. I am constantly seeing both good and bad things happen to people searching for jobs. The interesting thing about my work is that I often get firsthand accounts regarding why people are getting hired and why people are losing their jobs. If there is one thing that stands out to me, it is that the people that get hired and keep their jobs are generally those who fit in with their surroundings at work. The people that are losing their jobs and are having the most problems landing employment, are those who are not able to fit in.

A. The Importance of Academics and Technical Skills to Your Job Search

In order to get an interview with certain organizations, you do need (for the most part) to have certain qualifications. For example, if a company is seeking someone with three years of prior experience, you are going to need to at least come close to this. If a company hires people out of the top third of their classes–from only top-notch universities, you are also going to need to come close to meeting these qualifications. With very, very rare exceptions though, once you get beyond these types of hiring criteria, you are going to be competing with a large group of people. Who do you think is going to get the job?

I’ll tell you exactly who is going to get the job: the person who meshes best with the hiring committee.

Most professionals presume that the most important thing that employers are looking for in an interview is whether or not they have the skill set to do the job. Whatever the qualifications of the job may be, the fact of the matter is that employers would not even be interviewing you if they did not think you could do the work. Whether you are applying for a blue-collar opening or a c-level position, virtually every employer out there is smart enough to know that you can be trained to do the work for which they are interviewing you, even if your skills are not immediately on target. Employers may use your skill set as an excuse NOT to hire you after the interview. More often than not, though, the person who gets hired is the person that employers feel would fit into their organization best.

B. What Is Fitting In?

The remarkable fact is that it the concept of fitting in will vary depending upon the organization you join. Fitting in will mean something different if you want to work for the government or military from what it will mean if you want to work for a private company or a public interest organization. Fitting in simply means that you will be comfortable around your coworkers and they will be comfortable with you. Fitting in can also be akin to being part of a family: Everyone may not be the same; however, everyone shares a certain set of beliefs and philosophies about the world.

Your employers do not want to have to feel uncomfortable around you, nor do they want to feel as though you are going to be critical of them. Your employers want you to embrace, on philosophical and moral levels, their approach towards business and the world. Your employers want you to get along with everyone in the office, and not to be a source of tension. Your employers want you to identify with them and be sympathetic towards them. To your employers, you should seem like a kindred spirit, someone towards whom they can take a maternalistic or paternalistic approach.

The more easily you are able to meet these needs of your employers, the more likely you are to get hired and remain hired once you are with a particular organization.

While the analogy is far from perfect, an employer, in many respects, can be viewed as akin to an immediate family member. In any family, there are likely to be a variety of different personality types. Nevertheless, most families share a lot. They tend to share the same religion; they tend to share certain values among their members; they tend to have similar beliefs about the importance of education; and they may enjoy doing certain things together. They are also likely to come from a similar economic background and to know a lot of the same people. These commonalities bind family members together on multiple levels, despite all of their differences. These commonalities are what make the family cohesive.

In order to fit in with an employer, you need to be seen as a member of the family. In order to be a member of the family, you need to be bound to the employer by a set of commonalities. On its basest level, going to a good school or getting good grades may be enough to break the ice. This is not something that enables you to fit in over the long term, though. In fact, having a shared experience and outlook towards the world is the one thing that is likely to help you the most. This is the essence of fitting in. The most successful people are those who are able to fit in with their employers’ environments.

At the risk of not being PC, I will simply note a few things. If you examine most organizations closely, you will almost always notice some very strong similarities in terms of the types of people that are most often hired. The people are never the same; however, their tolerance (or lack of tolerance), for certain types of behavior, is usually quite similar. In addition, many organizations are comprised of people with a very similar set of life experiences. Many organizations may be male-dominated bastions, made up of groups of men with an affinity for football. Other organizations may be comprised of a great deal of former military men. Other organizations may be dominated by people of a certain race, religion, or even sexual orientation. Whether or not any of this is “correct” is not for me to say. What I will say, though, is that none of this is the least bit surprising. People want to be around others with whom they feel comfortable, and share a similar set of experiences.

And this brings me to another significant point that few professionals ever take the time to realize. You cannot fit in with every group of people. Certainly there are companies and employers in every city of the United States that are considered the most prestigious. You may have the academic and other qualifications to go work at these places. The question that is important, though, is not whether you have these credentials, but whether you fit in. You are likely to experience the most success and longevity in your profession if you find an organization where you fit in. If you do not find an organization where you fit in, you may be in for a rough ride.

The drive to succeed for certain people dictates that they only go to the hiring organizations that are the most universally recognized as the best. Job seekers often ignore the concept of fitting in in these cases, when it is really the most important aspect to consider, in my opinion.

C. Fitting In at Different Stages of Your Career

I would like to walk you through a typical career from (1) being hired out of school to (2) being hired laterally after working for some time to (3) being a senior person in a company.

1. The Importance of Fitting In When You Are Interviewing with Employers During School

In school, certain employers will generally only interview you if you (1) are coming from a certain level of school and (2) have a certain grade point average. Once you get the interview, though, it is all up to you. The most important factor determining whether or not you get a position will be your ability to fit in.

Many of the best minds in every profession are not able to get positions in prestigious companies precisely because they cannot fit in. There are, of course, companies out there that will hire people because of their sheer academic prowess. Indeed, the better your school and the better your academic performance, the more likely it is that employers will look the other way if you do not fit in perfectly. Nevertheless, at least on some level, you are going to need to fit in. As you move down the food chain in terms of your school and academic qualifications, the importance of fitting in increases.

If you are currently working at a Fortune 500 company, take a few minutes to consider the following. The people with the worst academic qualifications are often the people that fit in the best. They act as people from the company are expected to act. They have the right level of professionalism. They get along the best with others. These same people are often the ones who do best in the long term in their chosen profession. The ability to fit in will only continue to increase throughout their careers.

I want to give you a couple of illustrations from my own law school experience.

In my second year of law school, I was in an interview with the hiring partner of a law firm that, quite frankly, was at such a rarefied level that I did not think I deserved to be interviewing there. This high-powered law firm came to my law school (a top-10 law school) and only interviewed five people for a half hour each before jetting back to New York. Most other high-powered law firms came to our school and interviewed candidates all day long. Some even interviewed for a couple of days straight. Suffice it to say that this particular law firm is often considered the very best New York law firm, and its interview schedule simply reflected the fact that it did not believe more than five people in the entire second and third year classes of nearly 800 students merited interviews. While I am sure that not everyone in my class tried to get an interview with this firm, I am confident that at least around 100 students did. I had no idea why I had been selected to interview with this law firm. The other four people that the firm was interviewing were widely known to be at the very top of their classes. While I was a good student, compared to those people, I was not all that special.

I entered the interview cognizant that I did not belong there based on my grades, and I was surprised to see that the partner was very welcoming. During the interview he asked me when I could travel to New York. At the end of the interview, I rose to shake the man’s hand, and when he held his hand out, he gave me my fraternity handshake! I realized right then and there that this was the entire reason I had been interviewed. While I did not ultimately get this job (after a callback), I was the only student in my school that received an invite to visit this firm’s office, despite the fact that I did not believe I deserved the initial interview.

If you think about what was going on in this situation, I am sure that something similar to this has probably happened to you in your own career or job search at some point. If I did not have the academic qualifications to be interviewing with this law firm, why did I get the interview? The reason was because the partner had also been involved in the fraternity I was in, a small national fraternity with not too many chapters throughout the United States. He knew that I had endured some of the same hazing experiences he had endured when he was younger. He also knew that we had sung the same songs and been indoctrinated into many of the same philosophies. He probably took a liking to me because he saw me as being somewhat like himself.

Many people that do not have a good understanding of the political nature of work environments often presume that the purpose of an interview is for the employer to gauge a candidate’s skills and technical acumen. This is wrong. People who succeed in interviews are people who the organization perceives will fit in the best. Every single job I have ever gotten, I have gotten because of this factor.

The people that do not fit in with the group are always easy to recognize. They tend to be more critical of the group. They tend to create problems.

Most interns realize that success within an organization is all about fitting in. This is one of the main reasons that stories circulate each year about interns that do not fit in during the summers, at companies all over the country. Companies typically hire students to work there for the summer to see if they will fit in. Below is one of the most unusual intern stories I have ever heard. This particular story is told by Tucker Max, an individual who was a summer associate at Fenwick & West in Palo Alto, California, in the summer of 2000:

—–Original Message—–
From: [Suppressed]
Sent: Monday, June 05, 2000 2:51 PM
To: [Suppressed]
Subject: The Now Infamous [] Charity Auction Debacle…

Here is the story of what happened to me this weekend at my firm’s retreat. That’s the last time I ever drink before an auction:

Aaron and I decide to leave for the Silverado Ranch by car instead of taking the bus at 2 pm. You have not lived until you’ve ridden through three hours of Bay Area traffic with Aaron at the wheel. By the time we got to Silverado, he was madder than fire.

The first reception starts at like 6 pm. There are finger foods, etc., and lots and lots of wine and beer. Not really liking any of the food, I start drinking. Heavily. By the time I know what’s going on, I’m talking to the name partner, Bill Fenwick, in a redneck accent. Of course, he is from Kentucky, so we talked about basketball for an hour. It was great.

About 9 pm the charity auction began. There were lots of “Fenwick” type items, like a dinner cooked by the managing partner, etc. One of the items was an entire night chauffeured by the hiring partner, [John]. In my inebriated stupor, I thought that if I won this, then they would have no choice but to give me an offer. The bidding starts at $50. People are bidding here and there, but I get tired of all the slow bidding, so I stand on my chair, and hold up my bidding card. Without getting down. So the auctioneer takes this as a cue to just start yelling price increases, without even identifying other bidders.

When the price hits about $800, [John] says that he will pay half if a summer associate wins. The bidding automatically doubles (John is a litigator). As the price gets to $2,000, I think I have the thing won. I get the “going once” call, and then this other summer, Aparna, goaded on by some partners, decides that she has to beat me. So the bidding hits $2,600, and before I know it, I’m on stage, taking the mike from the auctioneer, and yelling at Aparna to stop bidding. My exact quote, “Aparna, seriously, stop. I have to win, this is the only way I’m getting an offer.”

So that just inspires more partners/attorneys/recruiting staff to contribute to Aparna’s pool. When the bidding hits $3,400, I start yelling, on the mike, about how this isn’t fair, because she has partners bankrolling her, but I only have a “few scrubby summers in my corner.” I keep trying to bid only like $5 more than her, but the auctioneer gets all mad at me, and is making me bid in hundred dollar increments. When her bid hits $3,800, I get back on stage. After some banter, the auctioneer asks me if I want to bid $3,900.

I ponder this for a second, and in front of the whole firm and spouses/significant others, with the mike in my face, say, “Fuck it–go ahead.”

I won the auction.

This particular email was rapidly circulated among most summer associates in large law firms around the United States after it was written. From a social standpoint, the reason this email was so widely circulated is because it shows the antithesis of fitting in and highlights the importance of doing so.

Regardless of where you work, chances are that you will be working in close proximity to a relatively small group of people. Because you spend so much time at work, these people are going to become quite aware of your style of work, your personality, and like it or not, a lot of details about your personal life. In all of this, these people are going to want to feel comfortable around you. In addition, these people are going to want to feel that they can develop a relationship with you over time.

2. The Importance of Fitting In When Being Hired as a Lateral

After you have been working for a few years and want to transition into a new employment environment, the importance of fitting in will arguably be further amplified.

Shared experiences take on a different form when someone is trying to move laterally to a company. As a legal recruiter, my job is made easier by knowing the sorts of shared experiences that are likely to get people in the door in different sorts of law firms. For example, if someone is in Los Angeles and has worked for the Los Angeles office of a major New York law firm, I know that other New York-based law firms in Los Angeles are more likely to be interested in that attorney than Los Angeles-based law firms of a similar prestige level. The perception is that these attorneys will share a certain “New York outlook.” The same can hold true if one is moving in Palo Alto from one major law firm to another. He or she is more likely to be hired by another major Palo Alto firm than, say, somebody who has been working in another area of California.

All of these similarities are based on shared experiences and the perception that these people will fit in. Certain organizations will simply not hire from certain other organizations (even those that are generally considered better than they are) because they believe that people from these companies will not fit in. Most often, these organizations will say things like, “These professionals are all too arrogant,” or something of the sort.

When professionals are in the job market, an exceptional recruiter will instinctively know which candidates are likely to get interviews with certain organizations and which ones are not. This calculation is based first on externalities such as the school and company the person is coming from; however, it is ultimately based on other important factors in the professional’s background that are often less evident.

Recently, I have seen professionals ultimately hired over many other applicants for what I believe were the following reasons:

• I believe one executive was hired for a $200,000-a-year job over more qualified candidates because he, like the CEO that hired him, enjoyed surfing;
• I believe one manager was hired because she attended the same religious group as the hiring manager;
• I believe one executive was hired because she had formerly followed the Grateful Dead, like a director in the company did;
• I believe one professional was hired because of his military background; and,
• I believe one executive was hired because of her ongoing participation in a controversial protest organization.

I could continue this list indefinitely and give you countless examples. People always say things like, “You have to know someone there to get a job,” and so forth. Indeed, it does help if you know someone. The reason is that you have already proven that you can get along with someone who fits in with that company, which means you too will be more likely to fit in there.

I know of dozens of instances at various major organizations throughout the United States where laterally hired employees with, frankly, horrible academic qualifications are working alongside people with first-rate academic qualifications. Why do you think this is so? In many cases, these people with horrible academic qualifications may have some unusual and highly valued skill. Still, more often than not, I have discovered that these people knew someone.

This is how things work in the world. If you fit in, you are more likely to get a job and succeed in an organization. I can also tell you that there are organizations out there that are somewhat racist, and hire people that are likely to fit that mold. My purpose here is not to be judgmental. There are certainly other factors that organizations consider when making hiring decisions, too. Nevertheless, when all is said and done, many hiring decisions are the products of people’s ability to fit in.

3. The Importance of Fitting In as Your Career Progresses

In order to survive in a company, you will need people higher up than you in your corner. You can get people in your corner by working hard. Nevertheless, there will always be people working hard in large companies. The people that most often get higher-ups in their corner are the ones who are able to establish bonds. These bonds will make people go to bat for the employee. These bonds will also humanize the employee to their employer and make it much more difficult for an employer to fire an employee.

D. Conclusions

Most of the conclusions from this article can be derived on your own. You need to understand, however, that fitting in is probably the most neglected topic when it comes to discussions about success. Fitting in can be accomplished on several levels, and oftentimes you might not even be able to articulate why you do or do not fit in with a particular group. Fitting in is also something you cannot fake. You can often get a job without fitting in, but you will have a very difficult time keeping it and advancing if you do not fit in.

When you were in elementary school, junior high school, high school, and then college, there was probably a group or groups you naturally fit into. Think back about the reasons why you fit in with those groups. Certainly, you have changed over time and will continue to change. The most important aspect of why you have fit in with various groups in the past, though, was based on how comfortable you felt with that particular group of people, and how comfortable they felt with you. Your happiness and success in your career depend on the ability to recognize when you fit in and when you do not.

The Greek Parthenon and Your Career

What You Will Learn It is crucial to have career options in your life. You need to have additional skills incase there is a demand for something different than what you are doing. Run your career in such a way that you can adapt to all economic climates. Support your career and life with multiple pillars.

One of the most important lessons for our lives and careers comes from the Parthenon in Greece. The Parthenon has been standing in the same location for almost 2,500 years and is considered one of the world’s great cultural monuments. It is largely because of the Parthenon’s multiple columns that the Parthenon has survived for so long. If you understand and employ the lessons of the Parthenon, you should never have any issues with feeling secure in your career and life.

I personally have run my career according to what I call the Parthenon Principle (the “Principle”). I define the Principle as the following:

Your career needs to be supported by multiple pillars. The more pillars that support your career, the better. If you are in a situation wherein you are supported by just one pillar or just a few, you are in danger and need to make sure you get more pillars.

I left a job as an asphalt contractor to be an attorney due to the Principle. I left the first law firm I worked for due to the Principle, and I left the second law firm due to this Principle. I run my career right now due to the Principle. The Principle is something that can guide your life and enrich your career as well, and it is something you should always be aware of. The more you understand and employ the Principle, the better off you will be. Here are some of the rewards for understanding and guiding your career under the Principle:

• If you lose your job, you do not care for the most part.
• If you do not get an important job, you do not care for the most part.
• If a business you are involved in fails, you do not care for the most part.
• If something happens in one part of your career, you do not care.

The rewards gained from understanding the Principle are profound. Over the past year, for example, I have seen incredible reversals of fortune in two businesses I operate–a student loan business and a recruiting business. The financial losses from these have been millions of dollars a month. While the loss of jobs and business from this has been painful, other businesses have picked up the slack, and I have been largely unaffected. I feel as secure today as I felt before this turn of events. I feel this way because I am running my career according to the Principle. The scariest and worst thing I believe I could do for myself would be to support my companies on one pillar alone. At all points in time, I have multiple businesses running, and this enables me to feel secure. In fact, I would say I feel more secure than the CEOs of most Fortune 500 companies because I have tried to create a Parthenon with my own career. You should do the same.

The Parthenon represents the fact that we cannot just do things in one way in any pursuit, and rely upon that one way of doing things. We cannot be dependent upon any single method of support in our careers. If we are to rely upon one way of doing things, then we are taking a massive gamble. A career and life needs to be supported in multiple ways and through multiple outlets. Being overly dependent for your income on one data point is extremely dangerous.

For example, about 18 months ago I was in the student loan business, and this was my largest business. Overnight, the value of student loans on Wall Street went almost to zero. The government changed the compensation that student loan lenders could receive. I was almost entirely put out of business overnight. At the time, our company had probably $20,000,000 in real estate and other assets dedicated to this business. We had hundreds of employees who were dealing with this business in one form or another. Then overnight everything changed. The business stopped operating, and even the company’s real estate holdings lost probably half of their value within the following 12 months.

We pulled through this catastrophe quite easily and without too much difficulty because we were anchored by so many other businesses.

Then something else happened. Our second largest business, a large group of recruiting companies, experienced a dramatic and devastating loss in revenue. The company coughed a bit due to this, but has since pulled through just fine due to even more businesses that we have started. Due to the Principle again, the business ended up being fine because there were so many other companies there to pick up the financial slack. This is how it is with the Principle: Multiple pillars help you survive. This does not just apply to companies. It also applies to you and your career.

About a decade ago, I was sitting in my office in front of a computer and I received an email, and everyone in the office received the same message. In the subject line it said something like “All Personnel: Partnership Class Decisions”. At the time, I was in my third year of practicing law and I was very dedicated (at least, I thought) to what I was doing. The Holy Grail for young attorneys is to become a partner in a law firm. Attorneys go to college and work and compete very hard to get into the best law schools. Then they go to law school and continue to work and compete very hard. Only the best attorneys from the best schools typically get jobs with the best law firms, and very few of the attorneys who go to work in the best law firms ever end up becoming partner in these “best law firms”. The entire process is extremely difficult. Once an attorney is inside one of these law firms, he or she typically needs to dedicate himself or herself to the work with a great passion, in order to succeed. It is not uncommon for these attorneys to work 3,000 hours a year for many years in order to become partners.

When this email came into my inbox, you could hear the entire office go silent as everyone started reading it. Although the subject line of the email mentioned “All Personnel”, the more I read the email, the more I realized that this email was not something I should have been reading. It should have been addressed to “All Partners”. Someone had made a terrible mistake. While I am reconstructing this from memory, I remember that the email contained statements such as the following:

Jack will not quit if we do not make him partner this year. We have decided to string him along until next year at which point we will make him partner. He is clearly material to be a partner in our firm right now but we will delay making him a partner yet one more year.

Cindy is someone who is not partner material in our firm. Nevertheless, the decision has been made that until she quits, or otherwise leaves, we will let her know that she should “keep trying,” and in the outside chance that she does leave, she is easily replaceable.

The email then listed various individuals who would be made partner that year, and a smattering of people who would not make partner and would be asked to leave the firm. I could not believe what I was reading. A few minutes later, all of the computers in the building were turned off by some sort of remote switch. Someone had made a terrible mistake by sending out this particular email to everybody. Incredibly, a couple of days later, the head of the law firm sent an email to everyone implying they had fired the head of human resources for sending this email.

There was someone in our office in Los Angeles that I referred to as “Jack” in the quote above. He was one of the more solid and good guys I had ever known, and I liked him a great deal. He had been working in the law firm for over a decade and was then in his fourteenth year of practice or so. It is rare for someone to be an “associate” and not a “partner” for fourteen years and not leave the law firm or decide to do something else altogether, but Jack was someone who was solid and really stuck things out. I remember walking by his office the day the email had gone out, and he had a noticeable perk to him that was absent before. I think he was on the phone with his wife and telling her about what had just happened.

Over the next year, an incredible number of changes occurred within the law firm. The most important change was that the power structure within the law firm was reorganized. An important partner from another law firm, whom I’ll call “Robert”, had come over and assumed leadership of the office. Under Robert’s leadership, the firm was eliminating many of the attorneys who had been there before his arrival, and Robert also ensured that many of the attorneys he had brought with him were placed into the partnership ranks.

The next year when partnership decisions were handed out, Robert made partner a few young associates he had brought with him from the other firm, but not Jack. The day after Jack learned that he had not made partner, he reported to work as usual and was in his office that morning. Robert came into his office and asked Jack to do a very simple assignment that an attorney with six months of experience should have been doing–not someone with 15+ years of experience. Jack responded with some hostility. From what I heard, Jack said something like the following:

“You know, I am a little upset right now because I have been working here over a decade and believed I was going to be made a partner in this law firm yesterday. I am not sure why you are demeaning me by giving me this work right now. I am pretty upset right now, and would rather not deal with you while I am upset.”

Robert apparently looked at him for around 10 seconds and said “okay” and then walked away. Less than 30 minutes later, Robert walked into Jack’s office and said something along the lines of the following:

“I have two pieces of paper here. One is a check for $30,000. The other is a severance agreement for you to sign that says you will not sue us. If you sign the severance agreement you can have the check. If you do not want to sign the agreement you cannot have the check, and you are fired. Either way, I want you to be out of the office within the next 15 minutes and never come back.”

Robert may very well have had good reasons for doing this to Jack, but the episode was quite alarming for me to hear. It was astonishing to me how a 10+ year career could just come to a screeching halt like this. The good news is that Jack was able to find another job eventually, and everything ended up being okay. However, I have seen similar things happen to scores of other attorneys, and it does not always turn out okay. Many of those people did not find other jobs for a long, long time.

What is the lesson of this? Under the Principle, you need to have many options available to you at any given time, and it is dangerous to put all of your eggs in one basket. Here, Jack was entirely dependent upon the whim of one law firm and their decisions about what happened to him. He also did not have numerous clients at the time. If he had had numerous clients and were he not as dependent upon the law firm for most of his work, he would have had better leverage. He could have left the law firm and easily made money with those clients. However, Jack did not have any of these things, and it held him back.

The Principle demands that you give yourself multiple methods of support in your career. If you want to be a lawyer, that is fine; however, you better be sure that your career is not entirely dependent upon the whims of one person. You need to have clients or a skill so profound that you can help dictate the terms of your career. The more you support yourself with multiple methods of doing things, the better off you will be.

This is why the Parthenon survives to this day. Its weight is supported in multiple ways, by so many pillars.

The Greeks built the Parthenon to celebrate their victory over the Persians, and it was completed in 432 B.C.

Over the course of the next 1,000 years, this building was a temple to the Goddess Athena.

• Sometime in the Sixth Century the Parthenon was converted to a Christian church.
• In 1456, after Athens fell to the Ottomans, the Parthenon was converted into a mosque. The Ottomans added a minaret to the Parthenon; however, the building was not further modified.
• In 1687, the Venetians attacked Athens and the Ottomans used the Parthenon to store gun powder. The Parthenon was hit with a shell and the gun powder exploded destroying much of the building. But the Parthenon still survived and is still standing today.

The Parthenon is now a massive tourist destination. The building just keeps providing value no matter what age it is, and it is all due to those columns. If there were not so many columns, it would not still be standing. You too need to provide value and run your career in such a way that you are always providing value.

Although I am an attorney, I originally did not want to go to law school and become an attorney. Instead, my dream was to be an asphalt contractor. The problem with me being an asphalt contractor, though, was that my skin was not very good at being out in the sun and, specifically, on asphalt in the sun. As an asphalt contractor you need to work on black pavement all day around smoking hot asphalt. The black asphalt really absorbs the sun and it is not the equivalent of being out on a sports field, for example. It is much worse. I would get so sunburned being outdoors that several times a summer I would literally physically have to peel a layer of my skin off that had become very burned. My face was constantly coated with zincs and all sorts of lotions to keep the sun out as much as possible. Being outdoors on hot asphalt was not something I believed my body could handle over the long term.

“You would do fine being an asphalt contractor,” I remember a relative saying to me one day. “But your body probably would not, and you could not last doing this.”

So I decided to practice law instead, where I could work mainly indoors. You need to choose what you are doing and your career based on the idea that you can keep doing it forever, and will not be stopped. You do not want to be stopped by the sun, by one person who does not like you, or anything for that matter. You need to run your career in such a way that you are supported like the Parthenon and can adapt to all climates.

One of the interesting characteristics of the Parthenon and its columns is that they were designed to be thicker at their bases than they are at the top. Architecturally this was done so that they would appear taller when standing at the base of the Parthenon. This creates an optical illusion for people visiting the Parthenon and portrays more strength and height than really exists. In your career and life, you need to be supported with a strong foundation and always need to be portraying strength. The less weaknesses you have, the better.

Although it occurred a long time ago, most Americans remember the controversy surrounding Tanya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan in the 1994 US Figure Skating Championship in Detroit. Here, acquaintances of Harding struck Kerrigan on the knee after a practice. Both skaters became almost overnight celebrities due to this particular incident. In my mind, what makes this so interesting is that it highlights the incredible vulnerability that many people have in their careers. The idea that a career could be taken down by a blow to the knee is a dangerous lesson. In our careers, it is extremely important that we are not just dependent upon a knee, or one potential outlet. We need multiple outlets in order to succeed.

One of the saddest things that I regularly read about is the careers of child stars who end up not succeeding later in life. I have heard about some becoming robbers and having similar problems after having had incredibly successful careers when they were younger. There are also stories of young stars who have ended up having great careers when they are older, but these stories seem less common. The idea that I am trying to stress is this: if you do not have other options in your career and job search, then you are making a horrible decision. Your career needs to be supported with multiple pillars because the idea of long-term security should factor into how you run your career.

My first legal job was with a law firm and group of people whom I really liked. However, the longer I was at the law firm, the more I realized that I would never be able to run my career from the standpoint of the Principle. The business and clients that came into the law firm came primarily from two or three very powerful partners who earned millions of dollars per year. The other partners in the law firm were partners in the sense they had titles but they really did not have any business for the most part. Consequently, their careers were controlled by those with clients. While my perception may have been off a bit, the idea I got while working in this law firm was that the partners had so much work that they were not really looking for others to bring more clients into their business. Instead, they were most interested in worker bees whom they could control. The firm had so much work that the worker bees did not have any time to go out and meet people and get business. It was largely due to this reason that I left this firm; I did not see much of a future in it. The primary partners were, at the time, making twenty-five times as much money, in some cases, as the other partners. The idea of continuing to work in a firm wherein I would be so dependent upon a few people above me did not appeal to me.

The challenge of all of our careers is to be supported like the Parthenon on numerous columns and with numerous potential sources of work, should one source fail. You should never allow yourself to be boxed in by being dependent upon just one person, skill or income stream for your success. If you are an attorney, you probably need to have lots of clients. If you are in a company, you need to have lots of allies. If you are good at one thing, you need to make sure that you have other skills, in case whatever job you are doing becomes obsolete. You do not want to be vulnerable to any one person, or to the economy.

I left the practice of law and eventually went into recruiting because, for me, this seemed like something that was more in accordance with the Principle.

• First, I felt the profession was safe because recruiting has been around in one form or another for thousands of years.
• Secondly, I knew I could be diversified because I would have several candidates at one time, whom I could work with and, since recruiters get paid if and when a person gets a job, I knew that if one person did not get a job, another person would.
• Third, I knew that since the job required me to find candidates, and my success would be determined based on this skill, I would not be dependent upon another person to give me work.
• Fourth, I knew that I could work with numerous law firms and not just one, and this would give me extra support.
• Fifth, I knew that since I was working with law firms, even if the economy was poor, there would still be business and recruitment opportunities. When one practice area in a law firm is doing poorly during a recession, another is doing well. For example, corporate work may dry up in law firms during a recession but bankruptcy will take off.

This is an example of a career that uses the Parthenon. Eventually, to keep this business going in all economic climates, I started other businesses that supported this business when it slowed down, despite the support it had. Year after year, I have had an enjoyable career that is without a lot of stops and starts, due to my understanding of the Principle.

You too need to use the Principle in your own career. Support your career and life with multiple pillars.

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