The Graduate, Andrew Carnegie, and Finding Positive Economic Currents

In the 1967 movie The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman plays a young, recent college graduate, Ben. At a party, Ben is congratulated by his family and their friends:

Guests: We’re all so proud of you, proud, proud, proud, proud, proud, proud, proud. What are you going to do now? Ben: I was going to go upstairs for a minute. Guests: I meant with your future, your life. Ben: Well, that’s a little hard to say.

In one of the most memorable lines in movie history, Ben receives advice from Mr. McGuire (played by Walter Brooke), a family friend:

Mr. McGuire: I just want to say one word to you – just one word. Ben: Yes sir. Mr. McGuire: Are you listening? Ben: Yes I am. Mr. McGuire: ‘Plastics.’ Ben: Exactly how do you mean? Mr. McGuire: There’s a great future in plastics. Think about it. Will you think about it? Ben: Yes I will. Mr. McGuire: Shh! Enough said. That’s a deal.

In an interesting twist, in real life McGuire’s advice would prove to be [Read more]

Finding Jobs Where There Are No Job Openings

I’m a businessperson. As a businessperson, I find I get a lot of phone calls from private equity companies and so forth throughout the day. I enjoy getting these phone calls, not necessarily because I’m looking for their investment, because it can come with a lot of strings attached. Rather, I’m interested in learning about their perspective of business. They tend to call about the businesses I’m running that are hot at the moment and doing well, where the revenue’s increasing. People in the investment banking business and private equity business are trained as a general matter [Read more]

Increasing Efficiency is Your Best Route to Employment Security

The cheapening of any article in common use almost immediately results in a largely increased demand for that article. Take the case of shoes, for instance. The introduction of machinery for doing every element of the work which was formerly done by hand has resulted in making shoes at a fraction of their former labor cost. Now almost every man, woman, and child in the working classes buys one or two pairs of shoes per year, and they wear shoes all the time. Formerly, each workman bought perhaps one pair of shoes every five years, and went barefoot most of the time, wearing shoes only as a luxury or as a matter of the sternest necessity. In spite of the enormously increased output of shoes per workman, which has come with shoe machinery, the demand for shoes has so increased that there are relatively more men working in the shoe industry now than ever before. The workmen in almost every trade have before them an object lesson of this kind, and yet, because they are ignorant of the history of their own trade, they still firmly believe, as their fathers did before them, that it is against their best interests for each man to turn out each day as much work as possible. Under this fallacious idea, a large proportion of workmen deliberately work slowly so as to curtail their output. Almost every labor union has made, or is contemplating making, rules which have for their object curtailing the output of their members. Those men who have the greatest influence with the working people, the labor leaders, as well as many people with philanthropic feelings who are helping them, are daily spreading this fallacy and at the same time telling them that they are overworked. -Frederick Winslow Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management (1911) From the time I was 18 until I was about 27, I spent most of my summers working as an asphalt sealant and maintenance contractor around Detroit, Michigan. One of the main jobs I did involved putting an asphalt sealant on parking lots and driveways. At the beginning of my first summer doing this work, I used to purchase the sealant in five-gallon pails. Then I starting purchasing the sealant in 55-gallon drums and installing a pipe on the drums to drain [Read more]

You Need to Be Connected with Others at Work

Early in my career I used to work directly with attorneys who had lost their jobs or were having extreme difficulty finding their first job. If certain people were persistent enough, and I saw they had real potential, I would generally invite them into my office and offer them work for some time to keep them going. I was not offering them work because they needed the money—most had enough money to survive.  Instead, I would offer them work because I knew they needed to be around people in order to get through what they were going through.  [Read more]

Being in the Zone

Nothing is more important to success in your career and life than being in the zone. The problem with most people, however, is that they are not in the zone; instead, they are merely doing what they and others think they should be doing. Most people are following a path that they believe will lead to happiness, wealth, and achievement, rather than doing what comes naturally to them, what they are good at, and the sort of work that makes them happy. You should not be doing anything as a career unless you feel you at least have a shot at being the best in the world at it. It does not matter what you do. Being a waiter might get you excited: If it does, try to be the best in the world at that job. Being a ski instructor might be your dream career–if it is, try to be the best in the world at it. Do not waste your time on earth doing something you do not enjoy, or something in which you know you cannot truly excel. Do what you love. You need to spend your time doing something that gets you excited. Whatever that [Read more]

Plant Yourself in Good Soil

There is nothing more important to your long-term success than finding and keeping yourself in a healthy environment. I have known so many people out there with incredible talent who insist on remaining in the wrong environment and, consequently, they never end up reaching their full potential in their careers and lives. If you work alongside or spend your time with people who are negative or lazy, who lack motivation, dislike work, and do not believe there are great possibilities for them out there–you will begin to absorb this negativity. You simply cannot spend time around negative [Read more]