• The next day (Saturday) my stepmother stopped speaking to me entirely. She would simply walk away if I spoke to her, not saying a word. I was very confused by the entire situation, and I had never seen someone completely turn off and stop communicating like she did.
• The day after that (Sunday), in the afternoon, she came into my room and told me she was so upset that she thought I was going to have to move out of the house, and that she was going to send her brother over to speak with me. She told me that it was completely unacceptable that I had had women over to the house without supervision, and a bunch of similar  things.

While all of this would have made perfect sense were she religious and if our household had a strict moral code, for example, this was just not the case. My stepsister actually had a good friend who was a very promiscuous eighteen-year-old stripper, and she used to sit in our kitchen talking about her exploits with my stepmother, and they all laughed about it. Four sixteen-year-old kids watching bad horror movies at 9:30 on a Friday night hardly seemed to qualify as a major moral transgression. By Sunday afternoon I had not spoken to my father yet and she had not either. I was really taken aback by the entire incident, and I was horrified by my stepmother’s behavior. I had moved in with my father and stepmother recently from my mother’s home, which was more than an hour’s drive away. I sulked around the house in fear the rest of the day, not sure what to do. On Monday morning as I was going to school I heard my stepmother speaking to my father on the phone. She was talking very loudly because this was in the mid-1980s, and international phone calls were typically of poor quality: “I think he should move back in with his mother and attend the public school there. I have not called the school yet. Do you think they will give the tuition money back?” I heard her say. I was not able to speak to my father until that evening and, when I did, I realized that he was not that upset about anything. I think he must have been confused by my stepmother’s reaction, but he needed to take her side to however minimal a degree, since she was his new wife. What I realized out of this terrifying ordeal was that people often seek to criticize us for reasons that are more self-serving than anything. Here, my stepmother was resentful and jealous about the household budget that was going toward paying for the private school I was attending, and she sought to undermine this by blowing out of proportion a very small incident. There is nothing wrong with positive criticism, of course. If someone has a person’s best interests at heart, then criticism can help that person become better. However, most criticism you will encounter in your career, in your family, and in social settings is not intended to build you up; instead, it is intended to tear you down. At work, in social relationships, and elsewhere there are always people who will speak negatively about us, blame us for something, or blow small incidents way out of proportion. When this occurs, the person blowing things out of proportion and speaking badly about you usually has no interest in helping you and, instead, is simply trying to bring you down. This sounds like a terrible thing to say, and to an extent, it even sounds a bit paranoid, but for most people this is the case. When you are doing well in your career and life, instead of being happy for you, many people will become jealous and resentful of your success. In order to make themselves feel better, they will find fault with how you are doing by criticizing you, either to your face or behind your back. How many times have you heard someone say something like the following:

• “That person may be rich, but they are unhappy.”
• “That person may be famous, but look at how unsuccessful their relationships are.”

Instead of being happy for people for what they have done, or what they have achieved, the reaction is to attack them for what does not seem perfect in their lives. This is a tool that many people use to feel better about themselves when they are threatened by others and their success. I spend a lot of time trying to build people up with career advice and by helping people realize their potential. There are so many rewards and benefits to gain from pursuing your dream life; however, one thing that you simply cannot escape or ignore is the fact that the more successful you become and the better that you do in every area of your life, the more criticism you will face. If you get a promotion, you may be accused of being a brown-noser. If you meet the person of your dreams, you will threaten that person’s friends, if they are single, because you are taking their friend away from them. I grew up with sisters. I was always amazed at how their single friends reacted when any of my sisters got a boyfriend. In almost every case, the friends would look for various criticisms of the man, which they would quickly voice. I have seen this occur so many times, it seems like it is almost a natural sort of response. The girls were feeling threatened because they were getting less time with their friends, once their friends entered into a relationship. Men often do the same thing with their friends. They often feel threatened when their friends meet women. The woman may be called controlling, manipulative–and all sorts of things. In most cases, your personal and professional success will invoke a bit more criticism than compliments and congratulations. The ability to deal with criticism is one of the most important lessons you will ever learn. If you are going to improve and constantly strive toward your goals, you will need to learn how to deal with criticism. Most people stop and pull back when they are criticized, or they simply do not act at all, for fear of being criticized. If you live your life in fear of criticism, you will never accomplish everything you are capable of accomplishing in your life. The best way to deal with criticism is to simply not let it bother you. If you get upset and stay upset about criticism then your ability to be happy, achieve more, and push forward has been limited. Once you allow others to limit the happiness you can experience, the person who has criticized you has achieved his or her objective. Everyone has various associates who will try to bring them down with negative words and actions. It does not matter what their objectives are; however, you need to be aware of them. These sorts of people will destroy you if you allow their negative words to influence you, slow you down, or make you angry. The most dangerous of these people are the ones who appear to be your friends but are instead, your mortal enemies. They can do you massive harm. There are countless people out there who have allowed others’ negative opinions of them to control and destroy their lives. Many people do everything they can to make others like them, to not upset people, and this ends up taking over their lives. As a result they are never pleased with themselves. You cannot make everyone happy. It is impossible. The more you base your actions on trying to make others happy all the time, the more trouble you will experience. You cannot stop people from talking negatively about you and criticizing you. The more you try to get others to approve of you, the more mediocre you will be–and the unhappier you will be. Guaranteed. When someone is critical of you, the best thing you can do is to simply shrug it off and move forward. Who cares? It doesn’t do you any good to listen to criticism that is intended to limit you; do not pay too much attention to it because people will find fault no matter what you do. Not everyone is going to be able to understand you and where you are coming from. Moreover, when you try to win over critics, you will rarely succeed, because for whatever reason, they are threatened by you, and making them feel wrong for criticizing you will not help the situation. I have watched critical people all my career, and for the most part, I have come to the following conclusion: Most critical people don’t work hard enough to do what it takes to be at their very best. Instead, they do their best to attack and criticize others, in order to make themselves feel better. Let them do this. Then forget about it and move on. Do not spend your time worrying about what others are saying. Spend your time focused on what you want to do with your life, your dreams, and your aspirations for the future. If you want to achieve anything of significance in your life, you must realize that a good portion of the people you encounter are not going to want you to succeed. Instead, people are going to be jealous and critical of you. And the more you achieve, the more criticism you will attract. If you change yourself in response to this criticism, you will start moving backward instead of forward. When I was in college, my girlfriend was a very gifted writer and verbal communicator. In fact, she was downright brilliant when it came to writing and condensing complex ideas into written prose. Her freshman year of college at the University of Chicago, she got all As in every writing-related class, which was simply something that very few people were able to do. When she got into her last year of college, however, she had all sorts of friends who were getting jobs with banks like Goldman Sachs and so forth. These girls were dynamic, but had a whole different set of skills from my girlfriend. They had probably struggled to get Bs in the writing classes that my girlfriend had done so well in. In contrast, they all were very good at math, and had seemingly spent their lives preparing to interview with investment banks. They were highly professional and came across as polished, but also calculating. My girlfriend had her own skills that made her exceptional, but she was much different from those other girls. When she started interviewing with the banks she did not get callback interviews. Her friends gave her advice like this:

• “You need to appear more calculating.”
• “You’re too nice and friendly.”
• “You need to show them you can be ‘bitchy’ so they know you will not be intimidated and pushed around by the ‘old boy’s network’ inside of the banks.”
• “You need to give ‘sharp’ and quick answers to interview questions.”

None of this advice related in the least to my girlfriend’s personality. She was not calculating, and she loved to tell people how she arrived at various conclusions. She was intellectual and her friends were not. She liked to talk a lot and analyze and help people. In contrast, her friends, frankly, were relatively uninteresting. She was not bitchy and was very open. I hated going shopping with her because she might sit there in the grocery store and get into a 20-minute discussion with the cashier about nothing. She was not an investment banker type. But she listened to her friends’ advice (which actually came from a good place, unlike the sort of evil advice I mentioned above) and decided she needed to change her personality. It was a disaster and ended up destroying our relationship. She lost her amazing personality and tried to overcompensate by acting in a way that was not at all like her. While her friends were naturally calculating, she tried to become this way, and it was obvious and made no sense. She also became mean. She stopped telling stories the way she used to and started trying to be like all her friends. This was completely unnecessary, and ultimately, she did not get a job with an investment bank. Years later, when I encountered her, she was still trying to act the way her close friends had acted, which was not really her personality at all. She was convinced that she did not get a high-powered job at the age of 23 because she did not act the way her friends had told her she should. Although she never drank more than a glass of wine or beer when I knew her, I found out that she later became a serious alcoholic and had spent several years in and out of rehab facilities. None of this made any sense to me because it just did not seem like her. This woman had had so much potential. I wonder how much of this had to do with her taking criticism the wrong way. About a year ago, I heard she had gotten a night job as a “model on the Internet.” I am not sure what this means, but it does not sound good. It devastates me thinking about it because this woman has become so different from the person I once knew, who was so talented. I personally believe that her listening to the wrong criticism, and not pursuing what she loved caused all this. If she had not gotten so absorbed in what made her different from others, I believe she would still be the happy-go-lucky person I once knew. Do not allow others to determine your destiny. When you hear criticism of yourself, just walk away and continue on your path. You will forever be held back if you allow others’ criticism of you to affect your happiness. THE LESSON When you are successful, many around you will envy your success rather than being happy for you. The ability to deal with criticism, therefore, is crucial to your success. Most people recoil in the face of criticism, or remain inert for fear of attracting criticism; you must learn to avoid such inaction and fear in order to achieve your full potential.

• Abraham Lincoln
• Walt Disney
• Henry Ford
• Milton Hershey (Hershey Chocolate)
• Donald Trump
• Larry King
• Henry John Heinz (Heinz Ketchup)
• Mark Twain
• P.T. Barnum
• Rembrandt
• Thomas Jefferson
• Ulysses S. Grant
• William Crapo Durant (founder of General Motors)
• William Fox (founder of the Fox Film Corporation)

Prior to reviewing this list, I never was aware that any of these people ever had any sort of financial trouble. I have known scores of extremely successful people in my life who ended up getting extremely overextended financially—and in all sorts of other ways. I would say that one secret of the most successful people is that they are always pushing things beyond their comfort zone. They are never satisfied with the status quo. Financial obstacles do not stand in their way, and this can often have disastrous consequences. Each of the men above probably could have used lots of justifications for not spending too much money and remaining “comfortable.” Most of these men prior to their bankruptcies already had very successful careers and lives.  But each of them kept pushing and pushing. They were never satisfied with what they had, and they pushed themselves and their businesses far beyond an acceptable comfort zone. Each time you get outside of your comfort zone—and you succeed–you create a new sense of what is normal for you in your life. Then you push yourself out of your comfort zone again and get a new sense once more. Pretty soon your life becomes completely unrecognizable to what it was before. You need to continually get dissatisfied and push yourself outside your comfort zone. THE LESSON You can never become too comfortable if you wish to be successful. Your success will largely depend on your ability to become dissatisfied with your current position. Successful people are never satisfied with the status quo, and constantly push beyond their comfort zone. When do you this and succeed, you set a new standard for normality in your life. Be continually dissatisfied, and always pushing yourself beyond your comfort zone.

• What your opinions should be
• What lines of work you should be doing
• How you should dress
• How you should act
• How you should spend your free time
• Who you should associate with

In fact, no matter your profession, my guess is that there are certain norms regarding what is expected of you with respect to items such as those above. In fact, in every job I have ever held, there have been people around me with all sorts of opinions regarding who I should be. Most people follow the path that has been laid out for them by others. Most lawyers do this. Most physicians do this. Most businesspeople do this. In fact, in just about every profession out there, people are following what the ”norm” is—for their profession and the people they are working with. My first job was as an asphalt contractor. Here, there were ”prevailing rates” for the work I was doing in the Detroit suburbs. In fact, no one ever charged beneath a certain minimum rate for the sort of work that I was doing (at least where I was working). In my second year of business, I realized that if I charged less money, I would make more money. To the astonishment of other competitors in the community, I started charging 50% less for my work. I was ostracized by them. I had my equipment stolen and vandalized by them. Nevertheless, within a few years I ended up taking over all of the residential asphalt work in at least three good-sized residential suburbs of Detroit and I no longer had any competitors where I operated. I also made a lot more money than I would have, had I sat on the sidelines and played by the rules. It was all because I chose to act in my own way—and with my own rules—that I was able to dominate the business. Several years later when I started legal recruiting, it was my ability to see beyond this business that made me the most successful. Instead of just recruiting, I went into fields as diverse as student loans, resume revision, property, and more. I did things differently and as a consequence, became far more successful than I otherwise would have been. Far more successful than any legal recruiter I have ever known—or heard about. It was all because I chose to act my own way—and with my own rules—that I was able to be successful. A few years ago, I started writing articles each day about how people can get jobs and how to be more successful. Last year, I decided that I wanted to create a course that would teach people how to search for a job. I started doing all sorts of videos related to this, writing all sorts of articles, and so forth. I have been studying how to get a job my entire career and really believe in what I have to teach. When I first began this project, a few people working for me started coming to me and saying things like ”it is not dignified,” that I should never be doing this. I also started receiving all sorts of hostile e-mails, voice messages, and so forth from people who were offended by my advice (I still receive these daily). Other people approached me and told me confidentially that others did not believe I should be writing such articles, or doing job search videos, because it is not ”CEO-like.” I’ve never been bothered with this. Today, my job search-related articles go out to more than 750,000 people per week. I love sharing my advice with people. I chose to do things differently and in my own view of things, I have helped people in their careers. Who cares if most job search companies are run by people who do things differently? It was all because I chose to act my own way—and with my own rules—that I was able to share my knowledge with so many people. You need to make your own rules in your life and in your career. If you make your own rules, then you can accomplish far more than you would just being part of the status quo and doing things the way everyone else does. Ultimately, you need to awaken what is inside of you to be unique in order to take charge of your career and life. The rewards for not taking charge of your life are that you will never grow to your full potential. Growing to your full potential is the result of making small decisions that change the outcome of your life and your contribution to the world. These decisions involve taking action in areas where most others might not act. If you are going to do anything—and really amount to something—you are going to need to learn to take action. The main cost of not taking action is that you will always be dependent on a group psychology and way of doing things. In some cases, there is nothing wrong with this group psychology—but in most cases, there is. Most people who have become very successful have seen something wrong with acting in accordance with group norms and have taken action to step outside of these norms. Having the ability to be unique, stepping outside the mold, and knowing what other sorts of opportunities exist on the other side can make a huge difference. Can you step outside the mold? One of the most interesting stories I ever heard was of a distinguished accountant working in an accounting firm. This particular accountant was motivated by making a lot of money, and for a few decades he had sat behind a desk working all day. He had bosses and office politics to deal with and all sorts of pressures that people have working in an office. One of the accountant’s clients was an exterminator. The accountant had a good education, was a CPA, and had worked hard his entire career to get to the point where he was making $120,000 a year or so. To his astonishment, the exterminator (with no education) was making more than $500,000 a year with only a few employees. Moreover, when the accountant spoke with the exterminator, he was always calling him in places where the exterminator was on vacation, like Florida. One day, the accountant quit his job and decided he too was going to be an exterminator. Apparently, some of his bosses went over to his house and spoke to his wife—they thought he might need to be institutionalized. The accountant became an exterminator. Within a few years, he was earning as an exterminator multiple times what he had made before. Moreover, he was vacationing several weeks per year. The way the former accountant likely viewed it, it was the people who were still working in the accounting firm (not him) who were crazy…. I love telling success stories about people like the accountant turned exterminator. You should know, of course, that there are many stories like this where someone makes a decision to do something and fails. Of course there are. People fail all the time—and on an ongoing basis. In fact, I am sure I am going to fail at a ton of stuff today, this week, and this year. Some of my failures will be small and others will be larger. Every time you do something different from what those around you are doing, or take an action others are afraid to take, there is a chance you may fail. That is perfectly fine. Failing is good and can be helpful. Failure develops good judgment. Most people who succeed have made tons of bad decisions in the past. Then they learn from these decisions. The important thing about successful people, though, is that they made decisions and then acted on these decisions.

1. Success in life is the product of having good judgment.
2. You only acquire good judgment from having experience.
3. Getting experience is usually the result of bad judgment.

If you are going to reach your potential in anything, you need to make a decision and gain experience—even if you fail, you are going to improve your judgment. THE LESSON People tend to follow the norms for their chosen profession; your own success depends on your ability to step outside of these norms and create your own rules. You must take charge of your life in order to reach your full potential. Be unique, and stay constantly aware of what other opportunities exist. You need to make your own decisions and gain the experience that comes with success or failure.

Famous Failures

Barbara Walters was told to “stay out of television” in 1957 by a well-known producer. Jack Benny was expelled from high school. Marlon Brando was expelled from military school. Jules Verne wrote a play at age 16 and gathered friends and family together to read his work to them.  The audience’s unexpected laughter prompted Verne to stop reading after the first act and later burn the script.  He later wrote: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Around the World in 80 Days, and Journey to the Center of the Earth. Clint Eastwood was fired by Universal studios after his first two movies for not speaking fast enough. Ulysses S. Grant failed as a real estate agent, farmer, US Customs official, and clerk in a store before becoming a general and later president. Burt Reynolds’s first TV series was canceled after one season. He then appeared as a bachelor on the dating game and was never picked. The Beatles were rejected in 1962 by five record labels. George Lucas’s first film flopped in 1971, prompting every major studio to turn down his next movie, American Graffiti. Michael Jordan didn’t make his high school basketball team. He was later named the greatest athlete of the 20^th century by ESPN. Marilyn Monroe was dropped in 1947 by 20^th Century Fox after one year under contract because production chief Darryl Zanuck thought she was unattractive. Dr. Seuss’s first book was rejected by twenty-seven publishers and Seuss considered burning the manuscript. The eventual publisher sold 6 million copies. Barbra Streisand’s Broadway debut opened and closed on the same night. Tom Cruise was rejected for a role on the TV show Fame because he was not “pretty enough.” Orville Wright was expelled from the sixth grade for mischievous behavior. Christopher Columbus miscalculated the size of the globe and the width of the Atlantic Ocean and wound up discovering the island of San Salvador in the Bahamas (which he believed to be an island of the Indies), Cuba (which he thought be a part of China), and the Dominican Republic (which he also mistook as part of the Far East). Sylvester Stallone was thrown out of fourteen schools in eleven years. His professors at the University of Miami discouraged him from a career in acting. Stallone was also rejected for roles in the movies Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico, and The Godfather. His screenplay for Rocky was also rejected by all but one company, who insisted that if they bought it, he would not act in it. Billy Joel, embarrassed by his first album, Cold Spring Harbor, spent six months playing bar piano in the lounge of the Executive Room in Los Angeles under the pseudonym Bill Martin. Rock Hudson required thirty-eight takes to successfully execute one line in his first movie. After being dropped by 20^th Century Fox after six mediocre movies, Humphrey Bogart was fired from a job reading radio playlets for laxatives.  He then earned a living playing chess for fifty cents a round. Dr. Ruth Westheimer never completed high school, had two failed marriages, and worked as a housemaid. Sigmund Freud’s first book only sold six hundred copies and earned him $250 in royalties. Walt Disney’s first cartoon production company went bankrupt. In 1977, Cyndi Lauper was told she would never sing again. She won a Grammy in 1984. Myrna Loy failed her first screen test. She later became Hollywood’s number one female box-office attraction. Elvis Presley’s music teacher at L. C. Humes High School in Memphis gave him a C and told him he couldn’t sing. Jay Leno failed an employment test at Woolworth’s. Billy Crystal was cut from the cast of Saturday Night Live before the show ever premiered. Betty Grable was told by a ballet teacher to give up the idea of ever becoming a dancer. She later became one of the most beloved dancers in Hollywood. Lucille Ball was told that she had no talent and should go home from Murray Anderson’s drama school. Failing to get into any Broadway chorus lines, she worked as a waitress and soda jerk. William Goldman was fired after writing his first screenplay.  He went on to win two Academy Awards for Best Screenplay. John Keats’s first book of poetry in 1817 was a financial failure. Van Halen’s first demo tape was rejected by every major record label. John F. Kennedy lost the election to be president of his freshman class at Harvard. He failed to win a post on the student council as a sophomore and dropped out of Stanford Business School. Thomas Edison was fired from his job working in a telegraph office after one of his experiments exploded. Dustin Hoffman, after failing to work as an actor in New York, worked as a janitor and an attendant in a mental ward. Katie Couric was banned from reading news reports on the air by the president of CNN because of her irritating, high-pitched, squeaky voice. Steve McQueen was fired from his first role, where he had to say only one line, after just four days. He later became the highest-paid actor of the 1960s and 1970s. Ruth Bader Ginsburg received no job offers when she graduated from law school.  She now serves on the US Supreme Court. Mick Jagger was deemed “unsuitable” by the BBC to sing on the radio in 1962. Bachman Turner Overdrive was rejected by twenty-four record companies. F. W. Woolworth’s first store failed.  Later he created the Woolworth empire of stores around the world. Fred Smith received a C on a project at Yale where he outlined a plan for reliable overnight delivery service. He later founded Federal Express based on the same idea. Jerry Lewis had to repeat fifth grade and was expelled from high school. Steven Spielberg’s mediocre grades prevented him from getting accepted to UCLA film school. John Cheever was expelled from high school after failing French, Latin, and Math.  He later won a Pulitzer prize. The Sex Pistols’ first single was dropped by EMI and their second single was banned by the BBC. John Grisham’s first novel was rejected by sixteen agents and a dozen publishers. He later wrote The Pelican Brief, The Client, and The Firm, which were all best sellers and were made into movies. Richard Pryor was expelled from high school. During the first year, Coca-Cola sold only 400 Cokes. During his first three years in the automobile business, Henry Ford went bankrupt twice. R. H. Macy failed seven times before his store in New York caught on. Novelist John Creasey got 753 rejection slips before he published the first of his 564 books. Thomas Edison was thrown out of school in the early grades when the teachers decided he could not do the work. President Harry S Truman went broke in the men’s clothing store business he started. Bob Dylan was booed off the stage at his high school talent show. Thomas Edison tried more than 2,000 experiments before he was able to get his light bulb to work. Chester Carlson took his invention to twenty big corporations in the 1940s. After years of rejections, he was able to persuade Haloid, a small Rochester, NY, company, to purchase the rights to his electrostatic paper-copying process. Haloid became the Xerox corporation. General Douglas MacArthur was denied admission to West Point twice. Buddy Holly was fired from the Decca record label in 1956 by Paul Cohen, who referred to him as “the biggest no-talent I ever worked with.” Academy Award-winning writer, producer, and director Woody Allen failed motion picture production at New York University and City College of New York. He also flunked English at NYU. Wilma Rudolph was born prematurely. At age 4, her survival was in doubt because of scarlet fever and double pneumonia. She was left with a paralyzed leg and told she would never walk again. She later won three  gold medals in Olympic track-and-field competitions. Glenn Cunningham suffered such severe burns when he was 5 years old that doctors told him he would never walk again. In 1934, he set the world record for the mile. Washington Roebling suffered severe brain damage and only had use of his index finger. This didn’t prevent him from building the Brooklyn Bridge. Albert Einstein didn’t start speaking until he was 4 years old. Claude Monet had horrible cataracts.  Fortunately he still became one of the world’s greatest painters. Winston Churchill had a stuttering problem as a child. He later became one of the world’s most respected public speakers. Ludwig von Beethoven was deaf when he wrote some of his best music. Most people wouldn’t think a deaf person could succeed in music. J. S. Bach was the fourth choice for the job of Kapellmeister at Thomaskirche in Leipzig, Germany. Rudyard Kipling submitted a story to a California newspaper in 1888. The editor replied, “I’m sorry, Mr. Kipling, you just don’t know how to use the English language.” He later won the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature. Randy Travis was rejected by every major record label twice. Robert M. Pirsig received 121 rejection slips before Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was published. It sold 3 million copies. John Huston’s screenplay for Treasure of Sierra Madre elicited the following review from Warner Brothers: “I don’t think you’d be missing anything to pass this up. It’s a draggy tale, unrelieved by either comedy or practical colorful incident. . . . I think we should leave this alone.” That screenplay won the Academy Award for Best Screenplay. Woody Allen’s screenplay Annie Hall was called a “chaotic collection of bits and pieces that seemed to defy continuity” by a prominent Hollywood film editor.  The screenplay later won four Academy Awards. Babe Ruth holds the major league record for most career strikeouts. Walter Payton never made it to a Division I school to play college football. He later became the NFL’s career rushing yardage leader. Jerry Rice never made it to a Division I school to play college football.  He later became the NFL’s career leader in several receiving categories. In his first twenty years of business, Tom Monaghan went broke twice, lost control of his pizza company, and was sued for trademark violations. His pizza company went on to become Domino’s pizza. Luciano Pavarotti could not read music. He has become one of the leading tenors in the world and still has trouble reading music! THE LESSON Most people are afraid of exposing themselves to failure, and therefore settle for less than what they want or are capable of achieving. Failure to take action due to your fear is itself the biggest failure of all; few people ever reach any degree of success without consistent failure. You must use failure as an inspiration to try harder in the future, and manage your emotions so as not to fear failure and let that fear preclude action.

• He did not come up with the idea for Google or any of the businesses it would eventually start. He was not the sort of person who would have come up with the idea for Google.
• He did not invest his own money in Google. He was the sort of guy who would look at anyone extremely suspiciously if they asked him to invest money. He probably would have left Google if they were not paying him enough money when he  started or if he could have made more money at another company.

Because Google did not even have any revenue, he figured he was just working for a small company on the West Coast. He was worried about whether or not he would get a paycheck each week. If another job came along that was better he would be out the door. The best thing, of course, would have been if he had gotten a job at a bigger, well known company that paid more and was more prestigious. I do not think he really knew how good his fortune really was. But his fortune had changed: He had managed to align himself and stay ingratiated with what would soon because one of the most significant companies of our time. Had he not landed at Google by chance, I am pretty confident he would have jumped around from one mediocre job to another for his career. There are a lot of people like this in Silicon Valley and throughout the United States and world. They want to work for the biggest and most prestigious company. They are concerned about benefits, salary and so forth. They want the best possible job they can get. A few years ago MBA students from University of California, Los Angeles did a study on one of the companies I run. I spent a lot of time with them. All they could talk about was how they wanted to work for Google. They would not have been talking about this when it was unknown. People from the best schools and with the best pedigrees always aim for the biggest and most prestigious employers. This is how it works. The guy I met from Google was like this. He went to a good school and had been trying to get jobs with the biggest and best employers. It just had not worked out for him. I do not say that because there was anything wrong with him—I just say that because I could see how he thought about life, people and business and I know that the success he experienced was simply a result of being at the right place at the right time. To me it clearly was not about risk taking, following his heart, or anything along those lines. In the book The Godfather,  Don Vito Corleone is incredibly respected and feared. His nickname, the Godfather, connotes his God-like powers to help people and also his patriarchal benevolence. Like a God, the Godfather  is always concerned that he does not unfairly dispense justice. The Godfather is always doing various things for people and helping everyone that he can. If someone has victimized you unfairly, or if you are downtrodden, you can approach the Godfather for help and he will generally give it. Because Don Corleone is always going out of his way to help people, they are all too willing to be loyal to him. The Godfather’s almost mystical power is due, in no small part, from the Almighty sort of help and generosity he can give people. If the Godfather could not help people and if he was not constantly helping people to a massive degree, he would not be as revered. His power is even more revered because he can have people killed and has power over important life and death decisions in the community. In my mind, understanding the Godfather can change your career: Your ability to help people and the degree of help you provide will in no small part determine the degree of success you have. The more powerful your help, the more ”mystical” and life changing your help, the greater the reward you will receive. You should ask yourself:

• Whom do you help and influence?
• How many people do you help and influence?
• How much do you help and influence people?
• How effective is the help and influence you are providing?

You need to ask these questions. The more you desire success the more you need to answer these questions. You can know exactly where you are in your career trajectory by answering these questions. Imagine a band that starts out playing in a small bar. Their music is liked and soon they are playing in bigger venues. Pretty soon their songs are being played on the radio. Then their music videos are on MTV. Eventually they are playing sold out shows in a giant stadium. As the band gets more and more popular they are influencing more and more people. This is how it works with everything. As their career starts to stall, they will start playing in smaller venues, their songs will not be played as much on the radio and so forth. This is a career trajectory in action and it is generally based on how many people are being reached, influenced and helped. The biggest stars have the largest reach—the smaller ones a smaller reach. There are some people who are in the right place at the right time and become successful due to this. In these cases, their success will not necessarily be proportional to helping a lot of people—but in most cases it is. For example, the guy who worked for Google became incredibly successful because he was working for a company (and got stock options in a company) that managed to help hundreds of millions of people. He was there and through close proximity to this company’s power he became incredibly rich. Google’s power, like the Godfather’s, was almost almighty as the company took hold. For the first time in history, people could find almost any sort of information they wanted from the comfort of their own computers. The world was opened up and peoples ability to communicate and share ideas took on a new meaning. People could find the information they wanted. The system Google created worked so well that it quickly took hold all over the planet. We have never seen anything like this and it was world changing. It is because of Google’s Godfather-like ”mystical” powers and influence that so much wealth was created. It is why the two Founders of the company are now so well known and revered. It is why Google’s first employees became obnoxiously rich. I am sure the man I met he did not know the company would be helping billions of people when he went to work for them—but it did. Because he was in the right place at the right time, he was able to get huge rewards. In your career, if you are seeking the greatest prizes and success possible you have what I believe are three choices: First, you can try and be in the right place at the right time by joining organizations that appear to be on to something that will be transformational and enrich the lives of countless number of people; Second, you can learn how to ”expand” your energies so you are helping the most possible people—the more transformational your efforts the better; or, Third, you can join an established organization and hope that the organization’s current forward momentum takes you to great heights. Right now I am writing this on an airplane. The airplane is staffed by two pilots and three stewardesses. Being a pilot or a flight attendant are good jobs. But there are only about 75 people on the airplane I am on. The pilot and stewardess are always going to be limited in terms of their income and potential because there are only a limited number of people that they can help in their current position. The people who fly on each flight are the ”consumers” who ultimately control how much money and how much fame the pilot and stewardess can have. What could the pilot or stewardess do if they decided that they really wanted to increase their income, fame, prestige? They would need to find ways to help more people and transform their lives. Some things they could do would be:

• Write a book about being a pilot or stewardess.
• Create a training course about being a pilot or stewardess.
• Create a school training people to be a pilot or stewardess.
• Get promoted to be a manager of pilots or stewardesses.
• Start an airline.
• Create a new type of menu for airplanes that tastes better.
• Design a new type of airplane that uses less fuel, travels faster or is safer.

When a pilot successfully lands a plane after an accident of emergency, the news networks often labels him a hero.  Many of these pilots respond by writing a book.  The book enables the pilot to influence more people. Everything is about expanding your reach and impact. If a pilot or stewardess want to advance in their careers, they will generally need to get into a role with more supervisory and other similar responsibility before their income and prestige within the airline rises. By being in a supervisory role, the pilot or stewardess are able to influence more people. The greatest career and life advancement comes when you are able to have a profound influence on the world at large. For example, a new type of airplane that does not use any fuel would be a ”game changer” that would decrease transportation costs, be good for the environment and create thousands of jobs for the people manufacturing these airplanes. Someone who came up with an idea like this would potentially experience incredible success. The person who came up with a fuel-free airplane could be a stewardess or pilot.. Consider the case of Howard Schultz.  At the age of 29, Schultz had been hired to do marketing work for a small coffee distributor with a few retail outfits called Starbucks. One of Schultz’s responsibilities for Starbucks was to travel around the world buying coffee. In the city of Milan, Italy, he noticed that people seemed to really enjoy drinking coffee both before and after work and that coffee was something of cultural importance in Italy. Friends were meeting both before and after the work day for coffee. Unlike in the United States, coffee was a very important component of Italian social life. Schultz believed that coffee could be something just as important to American culture as it was to Italian culture. Upon his return from Milan, he spoke with the owners of Starbucks about his idea and they were not interested. They told him that they were primarily a coffee wholesaler and that they were not in the retail coffee business beyond a few shops they ran. Schultz would not accept no for an answer and decided to start his own company. He opened several coffee shops with his concept and a few years later he ended up buying Starbucks and naming all of his coffee shops Starbucks. As he stood behind his idea, Schultz expanded Starbucks to thousands of locations around the United States and the world. He influenced the lives of millions … and in the process reaped the rewards in his career. One of the rarest abilities out there is to come up, and follow through with, an idea that is a complete paradigm changer. Schultz succeeded with Starbucks because he had an idea that was able to reach and influence the lives of millions of people. He was just an ordinary employee in a small coffee wholesaler when he had the idea. You could do something like Schultz did too. Game changers are the sort of ideas that very few people ever have and follow through with:

• 30 minute pizza delivery (Domino’s Pizza)
• Online auctions (eBbay)
• Easy to use computers (Apple)
• Quality coffee shops (Starbucks)
• Low-priced superstores in rural areas (WalMart)
• Mass produced inexpensive cars (Ford)
• Social networking (Facebook)
• Search engines (Google)

Paradigm-changing ideas are something that can and have made a huge difference in the world and the fortunes of people associated with them. These ideas are something that probably many people have had, very few ever followed through with and that makes a major difference in the lives of everyone associated with them. In most cases a paradigm changing idea simply involves a different way of looking at the world and the ability to follow through.  Some times a paradigm changing idea involves seeing a problem that people are having and coming up with an elegant solution to the problem. Most of us go through life-seeing problems and having ideas about solutions— but we never do anything about them. The most important possible thing you can do when you see issues, problems and so forth is to ask yourself if there is something you can do with your idea that will enable you to help more people. The more people you touch the better you will do. The guy I met from Google was in the right place at the right time. How can you be at the right place at the right time? In order to be in the right place at the right time you need to seek out and find employers that are likely to ”change everything”—an employer that is positively affecting an incredible number of people with an important new idea. In most cases, when you look at a company and what it is doing you can tell if what it is doing is truly going to make a major difference in the world and positively affect a lot of people. In a May 29, 2000 article in the New Yorker, ”The New Boy Network: What Do Job Interviews Really Tell Us?”, Malcolm Gladwell writes about Nolan Myers, a Harvard University senior graduating with a degree in computer science. According to Gladwell, Myers is a B/B+ student, likeable and makes an excellent impression:

I like Nolan Myers. He will, I am convinced, be very good at whatever career he chooses. I say those two things even though I have spent no more than ninety minutes in his presence.We met only once, on a sunny afternoon in April at the Au Bon Pain in Harvard Square. He was wearing sneakers and khakis and a polo shirt, in a dark-green pattern. He had a big backpack, which he plopped on the floor beneath the table. I bought him an orange juice. He fished around in his wallet and came up with a dollar to try and repay me, which I refused. We sat by the window. Previously, we had talked for perhaps three minutes on the phone, setting up the interview. Then I e-mailed him, asking him how I would recognize him at Au Bon Pain. He sent me the following message, with what I’m convinced—again, on the basis of almost no evidence— to be typical Myers panache: ”22ish, five foot seven, straight brown hair, very good-looking. :).” I have never talked to his father, his mother, or his little brother, or any of his professors. I have never seen him ecstatic or angry or depressed. I know nothing of his personal habits, his tastes, or his quirks. I cannot even tell you why I feel the way I do about him. He’s good-looking and smart and articulate and funny, but not so good-looking and smart and articulate and funny that there is some obvious explanation for the conclusions I’ve drawn about him. I just like him, and I’m impressed by him, and if I were an employer looking for bright young college graduates, I’d hire him in a heartbeat.

In fact, Myers came to Gladwell’s attention because he is considered such a ”catch” by one company pursuing him for a job–TellMe Networks and they urged Gladwell to speak with him for his article about interviewing. Gladwell learns that the CEO of Microsoft, Steve Balmer, has been recruiting Myers by sending him emails, meeting with him personally and even spending 30 minutes on the phone discussing working at Microsoft with him. (Keep in mind we are talking about someone who is a B/B+ student at Harvard with nothing to distinguish him but good interview skills talking with the CEO of one of the most important companies in the world.) Gladwell’s essay is largely about interviewing and why this student did so well in interviews, but what I found so interesting was the company that Myers chose: TellMe. After being heavily recruited by Balmer, Myers chose a comparatively smaller, less successful company but one that had an interesting business idea that could be completely revolutionary. The article did not talk about any of this but here is what I think: For at least the last decade or so, Microsoft has been a follower.

• It came out with a search engine called ”Bing” that lags behind Google.
• It came out with a music player, Zune, that lags behind the IPod.

Most things that Microsoft does these days are non-innovative. They are the exact sorts of things that companies do when they have begun to follow, opportunities are diminishing and they are trying to hold on to what once was. The more a company tries to hold on to ”what once was” the fewer opportunities there generally are. Bureaucracy takes hold as companies grow and age and innovation has a hard time emerging. People who are ”good at looking busy” began being employed instead of ”people who are really busy”. Layoffs, restructurings and so forth begin to occur as the company tries to squeeze more and more profit and savings out of what is left after all the expansion has stopped and a slow retrenchment begins. What I saw is that Myers—whether consciously or not–had carefully evaluated his options and chose a company that was ”new news” as opposed to ”old news”. In choosing TellMe—I believe he was trying to be part of the next big thing and join a company where he might have a career like the guy I met from Google—instead of your average airplane pilot or stewardess. Gladwell references that the programmers at TellMe had cots in the offices because they often worked all night on various projects. It is hard to imagine this sort of atmosphere at Microsoft in this day and age. In short, TellMe was a place where people were excited about the work and something new and revolutionary seemed to be happening—instead of the opposite of this. I have two important pieces of advice. The first piece of advice is the most important because it is the prescription for success for most of the human race: Join and attempt to thrive in organizations which appear to be on the cusp of doing something that is transformational for the human race. Find the next Google, eBay, Microsoft, WalMart, Apple, or Starbucks. Join a company doing something new that you truly believe in. This is a way to success that works for tens of thousands of people each year and it can work for you too. You need to find a company, or organization, that you believe is doing (or will be doing something) that you think is incredibly important and will positively affect the lives of millions of people. You should search for a company like this and when you find it do everything within your power to be part of that organization. If you do this you could be like the guy who was one of the first employees of Google—only you will know what you are doing. The reason it is so useful and beneficial to join companies like this is because these are companies that are on the verge of, or are, helping people do something new in an entirely new way. They will help millions of people and will make a huge difference in how the world functions. You know companies like this when you see them. You can feel it. When I started using eBay back in 1997 I realized immediately that this company would change everything. I knew this because I saw how powerful it was. I could not believe that the company was as small as it was at the time. It was a game changer and I knew it. When you pick up a new product that is really exceptional and that will revolutionize things for you and others—that is a sign that you are dealing with a company that is likely game changer. You need to seek out these sorts of game changers. The next greatest step for your career is to attempt to influence as many people as you possibly can. You can do this in a couple of ways. The first and easiest method is to enlarge your sphere of influence by seeking out more and greater responsibility in your work and by doing something that is likely to expand the quality and quantity of service you provide. The cook could become a restaurant owner. The restaurant owner could start a chain of restaurants. The list goes on and on—you need to expand your sphere of influence and just keep expanding it as much and as far as you can. The ultimate is to do something ground breaking that benefits the lives of millions of people. Develop a vaccine, come up with a cure for cancer, come up with a new product that enhances the lives of millions, start an important social movement. This and doing things along these lines is how you can make the biggest difference. Ultimately, your success in your career is going to come in direct proportion to how many people you are able to touch with your work. The more revolutionary what you are doing is, the more people you will touch and the more memorable of a career you will have. *I have attached a PDF to Gladwell’s article here. It is an excellent read. Gladwell’s article. THE LESSON Your ability to help people will determine the extent of your success; the more powerful and effective your help, the greater rewards you will receive. One of the rarest and most profound achievements is to follow through on your goals and create a paradigm-shifting idea. The more revolutionary your work, the more people you will affect and the more memorable of a career you will have.

• I know one guy in his twenties who came out with a brand of liquor and created some buzz around it and a couple of years later sold it to some giant liquor company for hundreds of millions of dollars.
• I know of another guy who did the same thing with a stuffed animal. I represented him when I practiced law. He made several hundred million dollars.

How effective is this marketing stuff? People who really understand it at a deep level can make hundreds of millions of dollars. If people can make hundreds of millions of dollars with a simple marketing concept pitching a bottle of booze or a stuffed animal, imagine what you can do with this stuff in your career. The most effective of all marketing weapons out there is the USP. The term USP has been around a long, long time. I would define USP in the following way:

Your USP is that unique aspect of yourself that sets you apart from every other “me too” employee and job seeker in the market.

Your entire career can be built almost exclusively around your USP.  The key word for your USP, however, is “unique.” Your USP is what differentiates you from your competition and makes you a must-have hire and employee in the job market. You should be able to explain, in a single phrase, why someone should hire you and want to work with you and not someone else, or why they need to hire you at all. For job seekers, the USP is among the most important things you need to have, even before having a resume, in my opinion. Your USP is what you are offering, and it is what you want to stick out and be memorable about your candidacy. Your USP is that important. The possibilities for creating your USP are unlimited; however, it is best to adopt a USP that dynamically addresses something that a potential employer is probably not getting that you can give them.  (Be careful, though, because you need to be able to fulfill whatever it is you are promising in your USP.) Before telling you how to go about creating your USP, let me first describe something that characterizes most job seekers. First, when I ask people I am interviewing why I should hire them and not someone else, most of them have no decent response. Why? Because most people have never thought through their own USP. Most people have no USP and instead, have only a rudderless, nondescript candidacy that depends only upon the momentum of the market. For example, if the market is doing well and there are lots of jobs available, they may get hired. If the market slows down and these people need another job, then they will wait for the market to pick up again.  Most people offer no real benefit to employers and nothing distinct or unique. No great service or value is promised either implicitly or explicitly—just “hire me,” for no explicit reason. It’s no surprise, then, that most careers are merely average and not exceptional. People accomplish only a small share of what they could accomplish in their job searches and careers due to not fully developing their USP. Why would you want to hire someone who is just average with no unique benefit? Or would you prefer someone who is the absolute best at what they do? Let me tell you two quick stories. Some time ago I hired an assistant whose former job had been to be an assistant to uneducated, has-been movie and rock stars and others who were on tight budgets and needed to keep their secrets out of the limelight. I reviewed her resume and saw all of the famous people she had worked for over her career and felt very privileged to have this person working for me as well. However, she had never actually been hired by these people. She had been hired by their business managers. The job of business managers of stars and others when their clients get late into their careers is to make sure they (1) do not run out of  money and (2) are not featured in the press in unflattering ways. This is what they looked for in her when they hired her. Her job had been to be an assistant; however, more than this, her job had been to babysit these people and make sure they did not spend too much money or get into trouble in various ways. In addition to this she was an assistant; however, her real skill was running peoples’ lives and keeping costs down. Her USP on her resume when I interviewed was something along the lines of “effective in controlling confidential clients’ spending and keeping them out of media in a variety of challenging circumstances.” I found this bizzare at the time, but she was extremely personable and interviewed exceptionally well. In fact, I hired her during the interview. Once she started work she started shaping up everyone around her. She demanded that they not gossip and recommended in the harshest possible manner that I fire certain employees who were gossiping. She looked around the office and determined everyone from the person who came in to water the plants to the cleaning woman should be fired and replaced with cheaper alternatives. When I travelled she rented me ridiculous little Asian cars I could scarcely fit into and put me into the cheapest hotels she could find, that were miles from where I needed to be, just to save money. I did not like this. When I protested she would talk to me like a child. “It only costs an additional $3.00 a day for a regular size car,” I might protest. “Now, what did I tell you about behaving?” she might respond. She was incredible at what she did, but it was not for me. Had I been a spendthrift, out-of-work actor on a fixed income, this would have been exactly what I needed. The people around me would not have gossiped about me to the press, and I would not have run out of money. This woman had a USP and she stood for two things (1) saving money and (2) keeping the person she worked for out of the press. She did this instinctively, and this is why she is someone who was probably never unemployed in Los Angeles for more than a few days. Ever. The reason for this is due to the fact that she had an incredible USP and it was exactly what business managers and others wanted in someone doing a job like she did. She was absolutely perfect in every way for the particular job that business managers needed for – older, non-working entertainment clients. This is the example of a USP in action. Imagine if you were managing a former movie star and had the two goals of keeping the person’s dirty laundry out of the limelight and also making sure that the person did not spend money. The person I hired would be the absolute first person you would hire. This person stood for something and followed through on what they stood for. I am sure she will never have a difficult time finding a job in Los Angeles, no matter what the economy is like, as long as she has this particular USP. Can you see what an appealing difference a USP can make in establishing someone’s image to a potential employer? It is ludicrous not to have a clear, carefully crafted USP that is in the very fabric of your candidacy with any firm. The next story I am going to tell you about USPs is so ludicrous it is hard to believe.  But it’s true. When I was growing up there was a guy down the street from me who was incredibly wild. He once got suspended from elementary school for throwing a desk at a teacher. As he progressed through high school and then college he continued to get more and more wild. One time he was over at a friend of mine’s house, and he had used so many drugs that he sat on a chair for what I understand was something like 36 hours staring at a wall. He was a wild guy, and he still is pretty wild. However, despite all this wildness he is actually extremely uptight. His mind works like a vice grip, and he is so detail oriented it is hard to believe. When you are around this guy when he is not spaced out on drugs it makes you uncomfortable. He perceives every little detail about everything, and these details make him visibly agitated if anything is ever out of place. He starts sweating sometimes if anything seems off too much. His face turns red. This guy is way, way too wound up and always has been. He almost flunked out of college because he was using drugs and partying all the time. However, he still ended up getting tons of jobs. Employers meet this guy and they know that absolutely nothing whatsoever will ever slip by him. It is difficult for me to even describe how uptight this guy is in words. His mind is like a trap. This guy has never been unemployed. His resume says something like “unbelievably detail oriented” and it is absolutely true.  The guy is considered one of the top quality-related guys in the United States. He works for a big company and makes a hell of a lot of money studying something like quality control. He gets calls from recruiters all the time. He was rich by the time he was 30. He works in a labcoat in ridiculously expensive production lines that make things like computer chips. He is an absolute star at what he does. This guy’s entire identity is based around being incredibly detail oriented on the job. He is incredibly detail oriented, and people truly understand this around him. This is what this guy does. He does this well, and everyone who comes into contact with him knows this. The point is that you need to focus your USP on one gap, niche, need, or segment of the market that the market needs. The market needs guys who are detail oriented and assistants who control the spending and public perception of people in the entertainment industry. You need to come up with a USP and have something that sets you apart in the market. Before you can incorporate your USP into your resume and interviews and work style, however, you need to figure out what it is (or what you want it to be) and then refine it and make sure you focus it as cleanly and directly as you possibly can. You should be able to articulate a crystal-clear USP in less than a paragraph. Your USP is the nucleus around which you will get a job and define your career, so you better have one and you better be able to state one. If you cannot state a USP, the people you work with and/or whom are interviewing you will not be able to define it either. Clearly conveying and marketing your USP will make your success in the job market close to inevitable if it is a strong enough USP. But you need a USP before you do anything. When you create a meaningful USP you are taking the vast details of all of your experience, education, and character and putting in one or a few sentences. More importantly, these sentences typically have the force of salesmenship in practically every single word. You do not need to care how this USP reads, either. It does not have to sound good. What it needs to do is stand out and create positive tension in the employer’s mind. The biggest test if you have adopted a really good USP or not is if it could be adopted by another job seeker without being modified. Here are some examples of meaningless USPs:

• Well-educated teacher.
• Hard-working employee.
• Team player.

These USPs do nothing to separate one person from another in the job market. Lots of people are well educated and professional. Lots of people are also hard working. Lots of people are also team players.  None of these things are really that unusual. If an employer puts and advertisement out for virtually any job they will receive applications from people claiming to have these various “unique” qualifications. The truth is, however, none of these qualifications is unique at all. None of these things is really going to make you stick out in the employers’ minds when they are reviewing your resume, interviewing you, and considering hiring you. You are well educated? What does this mean? You are hard working? What does this mean? You are a team player? What does this mean? You need to go deeper and deeper. You need to push harder and find something that make you stand out.  How about:

• “Students in my classes get so enthusiastic about learning they often come to me for extra reading assignments to learn more,” “Oxford educated teacher,” “Former high school valedvictorian teacher who speaks Latin and four other languages and makes students incredibly enthusiastic about learning” (for well educated teacher).
• “My supervisors always tell me not to work so hard,” “Known at every employer I have ever worked at as the last one out at the end of the day,” “I am the guy supervisors tell to take a vacation” (for hard working).
• “Am I too friendly and well liked by other people at work?” “When employer’s hire me morale rises because I am always the guy who organizes softball leagues, basketball teams, and so forth for the employees,” ”Pizza parties at my house are a regular occurrence” (for team player).

I am showing you these examples and want you to think about them. Each of them is memorable because each of them makes the person stand out. The imagery is vivid, and we can sense and understand what is being talked about and referred to in the statements. My greatest and most favorite skill is being a legal recruiter. As a legal recruiter I have written hundreds of profiles for various attorneys out there that I use to help them get in the door at various law firms. At first glance, every attorney is pretty much identical to the others out there in the market. For example, they all go to good law schools, they all work hard, and they are all very ambitious. I have to work pretty hard to differentiate each attorney I work with out there from the rest. I am not going to tell you I am the best legal recruiter in the United States; however, I may well be. I’ve made more than $1,000,000 in fees personally from doing this sort of work virtually every single year I’ve done it. I can honestly say that nothing I do to help my candidates get jobs is more important than helping them have a strong and incredibly persuasive USP. That is why I sit on my ass at all those shitty marketing conferences: I know that the more I learn and understand this sort of stuff, the more I can help various people get jobs. I have been able to change people’s lives by crafting powerful USPs for them and sending them into interviews. One year I actually placed every single candidate I worked with and I can say it is almost entirely due to having a good USP for them. Every attorney and every person has a USP that can be used with employers. Sometimes it is the obstacles the person has overcome. Sometimes it is their unique writing ability. Sometimes it is their passion. Sometimes it is their character. The point is that everyone out there has a particular USP. You are different from other people and there is something different about your candidacy and experience than everyone else’s out there. You need to say so, and you need to be as upfront as possible about this. Have something in your USP that no one else out there offers. And tell your story. ”I learned the importance of hard work because I grew up on a farm and got up at 4:30 am to milk the cows from the time I was 7 years old until I went off to college at the age of 18 and never missed a single day. If you are looking for an attorney who works hard ,you are never going to find someone more dedicated, hardworking, and consistent than me.” Persuasive, right? Who would you hire to be an attorney? Some four-eyed, upper middle-class arrogant law school graduate, or a guy who came in with a story like that? I think you would interview the kid of a farmer just for the novelty, and hire him as well. This is the power of an awesome USP. Why are you the right choice among all the other choices employers have out there? If you truly want to get a job, you will get in touch with your USP and start standing out to employers. You will be a standout person whose resume and so forth sticks out to the employer and who is memorable. People will be buying you as a concept and not just hiring an employer. When you interview with employers, everything you say should clearly reinforce your USP. Think about your own past buying examples. When you are in the market for a product or service don’t you tend to favor the businesses that strongly presents a USP? Of course you do! You need to understand one thing, though: You are not going to be able to appeal to everyone out there. In fact, certain USPs are only going to appeal to certain employers and not others. However, this is part of what a USP is: It is a market differentiator. Differentiate yourself in the market, create a USP, and you will never have a difficult time finding a job. THE LESSON Just as a Unique Selling Position (USP) is important to sell a product, your own USP is vital for marketing yourself to potential employers. You must define your USP before even creating your resume, as it comprises the basic product that you are trying to sell in your interview. Focus your USP on a specific niche, for which there is market demand, and make it thoroughly persuasive.