Self-Help Means Helping Others

There is a simple concept that separates those who experience great success from those who do not. I am going to tell you all about this concept in a second, but first I want to talk a little bit about self-help. I have read countless books that discuss various methods of improving one’s life and career. I have always found it interesting that these books are almost always classified as self-help. The first self-help book ever written is generally considered to be Samuel Smiles’ Self Help, originally published in 1859. The book begins with the sentence “Heaven helps those who help themselves.” The principle that self-help seems to be founded on and seems to revolve around, is that people need to take charge of themselves in order to improve their lives. Most books that fall within this classification generally offer the same prescription for improving any area of life:

• Discover what you want!
• Have a positive attitude!
• Create big goals!
• Have discipline!

[Read more]

Jobs from Employers and Employer Websites

When looking for a job, as with anything you do, you get rewards only when you put work into it. Researching employer websites is not the easiest type of work to do. It requires more effort than simply going to a job site, as you may be accustomed to doing. Nevertheless, this is very important, and these are methods you can use to track down jobs pretty much anywhere. It will be worth your while to search employers’ websites for jobs. The small investment that you take right now in learning about this can really end up changing the course of your career. Because so few people follow the process and understand this process, if you follow these guidelines you will set yourself apart. What it comes down to is research. I once knew an attorney who never lost a case. He was known for researching every single detail in his case files, and that’s what gave him the advantage. That really is the same thing with your job search. The more research you’re doing, the more likely you are going to win when it comes to finding a job. I am a huge proponent of looking for jobs online on employer websites. Anybody can do this. Whether you’re sixteen years old and looking for your first job or forty-five and a sophisticated attorney, you can benefit from this process. The rewards are extreme. When you look at jobs on employer websites, you are probably seeing unadvertised jobs. They’re not going to all be unadvertised, but a significant portion will be unadvertised. That means you’re not going to see these jobs on a major job site or in the newspaper. The job is coming direct from the employer, which is direct employment. That gives you a major, major advantage. If you’re applying for jobs that aren’t advertised, as I mentioned earlier, there are going to be fewer applications and fewer people knowing about them. Your goal in your job search is to maximize your self-interest. You want to apply for jobs that aren’t getting a lot of applications. That’s going to make a major difference for you. Another thing about employer websites that’s so exciting is the variety of employers with websites. In terms of the employer websites that my companies monitor for jobs, we’re looking at between 50,000 and 100,000; there are 50,000 really good ones and an additional 50,000 that are not as good. If you were to look at all of the employer websites available, you would be looking at well over a million sites. The reason is that today, virtually every company that has employees has a website, and a good portion of those list job opportunities. Because there are so many websites out there, when you start really drilling down into those numbers, you’re going to see an incredible variety of opportunities. Another benefit of applying to a job through an employer website is that there’s no middleman. Your application goes directly to the employer, whereas when you apply to jobs through a recruiter, that recruiter acts as a filter for the résumés before they ever reach the employer. The recruiter will only send the résumés he or she thinks that employer wants to see–and that may or may not include yours. Job sites also act as middlemen. The résumés sometimes go into a box that employers have to log in to if they want to look at the list of applicants. It doesn’t always reach the employer directly. When you’re applying to jobs on employer website, there are no middlemen like that. It’s also important to remember that posting on a job site can cost an employer up to $500. That’s a hurdle that gets in the way of the job being distributed, and anything that gets in the way of a job being distributed ultimately is going to harm your chances of getting that job. If there’s no middleman, that means that you’re more likely to find out about that job, more likely to be hired because there’s no fee, the employer is more likely to see your résumé–and all of that works in your favor. When you go to an employer site, you are really exposing yourself to a much greater variety of jobs because there are more jobs out there on employer sites than anywhere else, much, much more. The drawback, of course, is that these jobs are scattered across a huge number of sites, which means it’s very, very important that you understand the methods I describe for researching these jobs. When you apply to a job on an employer site, the employer is more likely to think you’re interested in that company specifically than if you’re coming through any other resource. That’s because you have taken the time to go to the employer’s website, log in to find the career section of the website, and then apply. That shows a lot more interest than simply clicking on a posting you happened to come across on a job site. They’re going to look at you a little bit more favorably, especially the smaller employers because they’re not receiving a lot of applications. They believe that if you tracked them down, whatever the industry is, you must have a real desire to work there, and that is a positive thing. The call for applications on employer websites is not always obvious. If you go to the website of an engineering firm, for example, they might not say, “We’re looking for a mechanical engineer with 30 years’ experience.” They may say, “We always have an interest in seeing qualified engineering candidates with the following backgrounds.” These are general statements of interest requesting applications for jobs that aren’t advertised. When you apply to those jobs, you can tell them, “I understand you’re always interested,” and that sort of thing. Again, this shows you are interested in working for that particular company, and employers appreciate that kind of consideration. [A] Big vs. Small Employers You really should know the market that you’re in. Most of my career, I’ve been involved in the legal industry. If you take an area like Los Angeles County, for example, a huge area, there are literally thousands of law firms. When most people think of looking for a job, they [Read more]

The Most Important Person You Communicate With is Yourself

“The mind can make a heaven out of hell or a hell out of heaven”

-John Milton

Several years ago, I was home after graduating from college and I met a guy who was friends with my girlfriend’s brother. He had graduated from Yale University a year or two before and was driving a truck all around Detroit delivering meat to restaurants. He typically drove this meat truck from 4:00am until noon each day. He got paid in cash at the end of each day by his boss. He had been the first person from the public school he had attended to go to Yale in [Read more]

The Kick-Ass Marketing Secret of the Most Successful Job Applicants and Employees

I have been going to conferences about one thing or another at least a couple times a year for the past several years. I have spent thousands of dollars attending marketing-related conferences. If I go to one more conference where someone talks about USPs (Unique Selling Propositions) I will probably get up and leave. I am going to teach you in the next few minutes what the best marketing minds in the world would charge you thousands of dollars to tell you about how to market yourself. You are going to know how to position yourself for incredible success—in life and in your [Read more]

Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and Taking Your Thoughts and Life Out of the Shadows

One of the greatest challenges to finding a job, changing direction in our lives and becoming the people we are capable of becoming, is learning to see the world in different ways.  Several years ago I was on a jet with one of the wealthiest men in the country.  This guy had recently purchased a jet that I estimate was probably worth at least $25,000,000 at the time.  He used the jet to hop around the United States for leisure purposes.  He really did not do any business at that point anymore, and had been retired for a few years. I had been brought along as a passenger with him at the last minute because we were both traveling to a wedding together.  I want to be clear with you at the outset that this is not the sort of society I normally travel in.  However, on this day I had the opportunity to spend a few hours with one of the richest men in the United States, and someone who by the time he was in his mid-40s was worth hundreds of millions of dollars. What I am about to tell you right now is not about how this guy got so rich.  What is most interesting about this particular guy is how he thought about the world and the opportunities in it.  I spoke with him during the flight that day and then I spoke with him for several hours once we arrived at the wedding.  This was some time ago and I was just starting out in some respects, and was very eager to learn the secrets of someone who was so successful.  In fact, I thought this person had a tremendous amount to teach and the more I spoke with him and asked him questions, the more I realized that he had a way of looking at the world that was much different from mine. A few weeks before traveling with this mogul, I had been to a party at one of his friend’s houses.  His friend was an electrician.  The two of them had gone to high school together and stayed best friends ever since then.  His friend was uneducated and had not gone to college, but was someone who worked very hard.  The house I visited for the party was the most unbelievable house I ever saw.  The guy had done so well as an electrician that he had actually had gold laid between the cracks in marble on his floor.  The home must have been at least 20,000 square feet. I had never seen anything like it.  On the airplane that day the guy started telling me about how his friend had gotten so rich. “When I made all this money I started getting disappointed that all my friends were uncomfortable around me. If I ordered a $300 bottle of wine at dinner, they would be worried they would have to contribute to the bill and then would not order entrees.  It was very uncomfortable.  People did not want to travel places with me because they were uncomfortable with me paying for their hotel rooms.  So at some point I decided that my best friends needed to be ridiculously well off as well, and I made sure they were.” “What did you do?” I asked him. I was expecting him to tell me that he gave them the money they needed.  Instead, he really opened my mind about how some of the wealthiest people out there think. He explained that his friend who was an electrician had spent 20 years with a little ad in the Yellow Pages driving around doing electrical work in the blue collar area of Los Angeles he worked in.  The guy had one helper and they worked Monday through Friday traveling around doing some work, giving estimates and so forth.  When the electrician’s friend got really rich he sat him down because he realized they could not be friends if they were not both obnoxiously wealthy. “How much do you make a day?” he asked him. He explained how he billed out at $65 an hour, his helper at $32.50 an hour, and how the two of them spent [Read more]

Finding a Job in a Down Market

I made a video recently called “Job Search Secrets for a Recession,” which discussed the best way to locate a position during a recession. In my experience, the best way to find a job is and always has been to approach the widest variety of employers possible. There is another aspect to finding a job in a down economy, however, which is even more important: your own psyche. The psychological aspect of finding a job is what slows most people down in their search. People get depressed and stop taking action. This is not the right way to [Read more]

The Importance of Your Sense of Self

Once, w hen I was around 17 years old, I was sitting in a car with a friend of mine, waiting for another group of kids. My friend was very wealthy and by this age had already inherited several million dollars–and he was very arrogant about this. In addition, he had been raised to think very highly of himself. He seemed to believe he had done the absolute best in everything he did. Even though he was not a great student, he reasoned that this did not matter, since the best students would one day be working for him. He [Read more]

The Most Important Thing You Can Have Is Faith

Several years ago I was practicing law, and over Christmas I went home to Michigan from Los Angeles for a one week vacation. At the time, I was also a law professor and I had brought a stack of papers to grade with me. For several days I read paper after paper. After about a day, it occurred to me I was unhappy with my life. I was unhappy with my job. I did not like where my life was headed and what my career was like. At the time I was making a very good living and doing everything [Read more]

Hypnotists, Worry and Living Your Life Today

I took my wife to Las Vegas about a year ago and we decided to go see a hypnotist show. I had gone to see a hypnotist who had performed for the entire university when I was in law school and had really enjoyed it. The show was fascinating to me and really drove me to a further study and interest in the subconscious mind–something I had been studying off and on since the age of 16. If you have not been to a hypnotist show, they are a lot of fun. At the beginning of the [Read more]