If You Want to Earn More, You Need to Be Worth More

Your financial requirements and what you would like to earn have nothing to do with what you are worth in the market. In running my various organizations, I have hired superstars from the very best universities with the very best work histories who ended up contributing next to nothing to the organization. I have also hired people who started out making close to minimum wage, and whose contributions were so great their salaries doubled, and in some cases even quadrupled. Several years ago, the contribution of one of our departments, which was then around 10 people, was so great I literally doubled each and every member’s salary in one short 15 minute meeting.

Are you someone who contributes so much to your organization your salary merits doubling? Or do you merely have a sense of entitlement and feel you are worth more than you are paid?

I cannot tell you how many times I have heard statements like the following:

“I made this much four years ago; therefore I should be making more right now.”

“My wife told me that I need to get a raise.”

“I think it is really important that I get this car because it will show some outward sign of success.”

“I know of someone who makes even more money than this in [some other city] and, therefore, I need to make that much as well.”

“This is an expensive city, and I need to be paid that much to live well.”

“I would like to have some extra spending money for travel and other things, after paying the mortgage on my house.”

“I need to make enough money to afford to send my kids to a private school.”

These are actual statements I have heard from people over the years. The sense of entitlement that drives people to make these sorts of demands needs to have a basis in reality.

Again, your financial requirements have nothing to do with how much you are worth in the market. Unless you are truly indispensable, your employer simply does not care what those requirements are. You are paid a certain amount based on your ability to generate value for your employer, and, with very few exceptions, that value generally must be far greater than what you are paid. Your contribution to any organization must generally be at least three times greater than the reward you are seeking.

Far too many people fail to realize what they are paid is based on the company’s profitability. Organizations have overhead, such as rent, advertising, and the cost of manufacturing the products or services they provide. Organizations need to have reserves in order to pay you when money is not coming in. Organizations need money for research and development. Organizations need money to pay for your health benefits and social security taxes, to print brochures, pay for office machine maintenance and more.

Since I am a legal recruiter, I would like to share with you some information about how partners are traditionally compensated in law firms. There are numerous compensation systems. However, the one I am about to share with you is the most prevalent.

When many young attorneys graduate from elite law schools, they tell themselves when they join equally elite law firms they will one day make astronomical amounts of money. About 10 years ago, I remember the number young attorneys my age were throwing around was $1 million. How does an attorney make $1 million a year?

Remember: any amount of money you are paid will have to add much more than that to the firm’s bottom line. Typically, the rule is that for every $1 a partner makes they have contributed at least $3 to the firm. That means that the partner is lucky to receive only 33 percent of what he or she brings in as business to the firm.

How does a partner contribute a total of $3 million to the pot for a firm? The partner brings in loads of business, works extremely hard, and then collects the money that has been billed. The partner also has associates doing work, he ensures their work is getting done and that all invoices are getting paid.

If partners in the world’s largest law firms are lucky to receive only a 33 percent return on the contribution they are making, you should understand you will need to make a giant contribution to any organization you are part of in order to justify the amount you would like to be paid. In order to justify a high salary, it is important you begin concentrating on what you can do to make your contribution even greater than it is now.

You need to make yourself indispensable to your employer by virtue of your hard work and contribution. There are certain people within any organization who are indispensable, and others who are not. These employees usually don’t last very long in organizations.

I want to tell you a quick story about one of the worst hiring mistakes I ever made. It involved hiring a manager to lead a small company I was starting at the time. In order to try out for the job and show me what he could do, I asked the man to put together some financial figures that took into account the potential performance of the company and what he believed he should be paid if each milestone was met. Since it would take several hours to go over these figures, I agreed to meet the man at my home on a Sunday afternoon to go over them until we could reach an agreement.

After three to four hours of reviewing these figures with him, I realized there was absolutely no way the company could make any money and that, no matter how well or how poorly the company did, the man would end up making plenty of money from the business. It really didn’t make a lot of sense, and I saw immediately this man was not interested in making a contribution to the company. He was only interested in taking money from the company as quickly as possible.

There were many warning signs I should have noticed early on. The man was extremely flashy in the way he dressed. He bragged about always getting stuff for free. His car had been modified, and was very over-the-top. Basically, the man made me feel uncomfortable.

By 10 p.m. that Sunday, I realized I could not reach any sort of agreement with this man. Instead of offering him the job to lead the company, I offered him a commissioned sales-type job in another company. The man had stellar qualifications and had formerly been the leader of a large division of a national company.

The man responded by telling me how he had a home in Beverly Hills with an expensive mortgage payment, a nanny he needed to pay, a private school he sent his daughter to, and that his wife really liked to shop for expensive shoes. Therefore, he told me, he needed to bring home a certain amount of money every two weeks to pay all these extravagant expenses. I told him I understood and I agreed to loan him a massive amount of money against his future commissions over the next several months, as he started his job.

This man ended up being the worst performing salesman in the company’s history. He failed like no other and disappeared with all of the money he was lent. To this day, I still do not know where he is.

The primary mistake I made here was not paying attention to the various signs this man would make an extremely bad hire. Mainly, he was entirely focused on what he believed he deserved, and not at all focused on what he could contribute. The most revealing thing was his business plan, which basically did not permit the company to make money and survive.

In order to thrive in your job, you need to be the sort of person who over delivers and provides incredible value to your employer and organization. You need to focus on over delivering in order to be worth more than the other people who are doing similar jobs.

I am from Detroit and an interesting subject to me is the decline of the American automobile industry. I remember in 1984, when I was 14, my mother purchased a Honda Accord. Before she purchased the car, we went and looked at numerous other, American cars. Even then, I realized that the quality of the Honda far surpassed any American car in the same price range. You could tell by the way the car started, the way the doors closed, the way the lights clicked when you turned them on, the way the radio fit into the dashboard, the hue of the paint, the tightness of the ride, and more. As a young teenager, I thought someone would have to be an absolute idiot to purchase an American car in the same price range.

At the time I did not even know about things like resale value, how long the car would last, and overall brand reliability. Purchasing the Accord would actually be even more valuable to someone in the long run, once reliability and resale were factored into the equation. In this respect, it made even less sense to purchase an American car. Ten years later, I sold that Accord to a classmate of mine for around $4,000. If it had been an American car (assuming it were still running), the sale price would have probably been around $400.

My main point is the Honda provided far more value than its competitors at the time. It was worth far more than its American counterparts, even though it was priced less. It is no wonder, then, the market share of Japanese manufactured cars has grown rapidly in the United States, while the market for American cars has declined. It is an issue of providing more value for the money.

Since your labor is a commodity to your employer, you should aim to become a higher-priced commodity that is worth far more than your competition. In order to merit raises and other employment related benefits, you need to shine and really stand out as someone who provides tremendous value. Do not expect to be paid a certain amount simply because it is what you want. Get paid more because you are worth more and because you deserve more.

The Greek Parthenon and Your Career

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Narcissistic Entitlement Syndrome

The word “narcissism” comes from the Greek character Narcissus, who fell in love with his own reflection and was made famous by the Greek poet Ovid. The story is one of great psychological complexity. In the story, Echo falls in love with Narcissus and gets rejected. The story makes it clear that Narcissus is only able to love himself and not others. Conversely, Echo completely loses herself in her love for Narcissus and has no sense of self at all. At the end of the story, Narcissus tells Echo, “I would die before I would give you power over me,” and Echo responds, “I give you power over me.” Both Narcissus and Echo die because their love is unattainable. They, like many of us, cannot find a balance between themselves and others.

What You Will Learn The Narcissistic Entitlement Syndrome (NES) plagues a lot of people in the job market today. People with NES see themselves as special, believe they should have whatever they want, and continually inflate themselves while putting others down. People who have NES are likely on a dangerous collision course with failure. Even if the persons with NES do not fail, the chances are great that, they can negatively affect you if you work with them. You need to avoid people with NES.

One of the greatest problems facing many people in the job market today is what I call Narcissistic Entitlement Syndrome (“NES”). This is especially prevalent among the younger people of this generation. I would also argue that it is a reason why the United States of America is experiencing an overall decline in terms of economic productivity and its contribution to the world. I first started noticing NES several years ago amongst recent graduates of elite law schools. Over the past five or six years I have watched NES infect a large proportion of younger workers in the United States, and spread beyond this to many seasoned members of the job market.

People who suffer from NES often find themselves out of a job very quickly-whether they quit, are fired, or simply move between employers to deal with their disorder. I need to be clear that this, in my opinion, is an extremely serious subject, and something I believe probably more than 10 percent of the workforce suffers from. I am talking about a disorder I see virtually every week in my conversations with young workers in the job market-and older ones as well-and it is something that can cause your career to self destruct.

NES is something that is not easily defined but, in its simplest form, it is demonstrated by a person being inwardly focused and oblivious to the people and organizations that he or she are supposed to serve. I link the concepts of “entitlement” and “narcissism” when discussing this syndrome because the sense of entitlement most often has classic narcissistic undertones. People with NES see themselves as special, believe they should have whatever they want regardless of the feelings of others, and continually inflate themselves while putting others down. There are five major characteristics that people with NES often exhibit:

First, they are generally preoccupied with fantasies of limitless brilliance, power, and success. While these types of thoughts may occur from time to time even amongst healthy people, the person with NES will generally be quite consumed by these fantasies. Advancement and achievement are extremely important to them and they envision the environment around them as one where they should be the center of all others’ attention due to their achievements.

Second, people with NES generally have an exaggerated sense of self importance that is not commensurate with their actual level of achievement. They expect to be recognized as superior to others without a corresponding level of achievement. People with NES will also generally exaggerate their achievements to those around them. Indeed, people with NES like to speak about their achievements (and do) quite frequently. As a product of these fantasies, the person will often possess a very arrogant attitude. People with NES believe they are “special,” and that they should only associate with and work for other high-status people and institutions.

Third, a person with NES generally lacks empathy and is unwilling (or unable) to identify with the needs or feelings of others. Interpersonally, they are often quite exploitative, taking advantage of others in order to achieve their own ends. In this respect, people with NES often view those around them as objects to be manipulated in service of their ultimate fantasies of power.

Fourth, people with NES are most often very envious of those around them, particularly those who have advantages they themselves do not. At the same time people with NES believe that others are also envious of them.

Fifth, people with NES require excessive admiration. They need constant approval from those around them. People with NES believe that they should be constantly admired by others.

While the psychological underpinnings of all this could certainly be explored in great detail, the narcissism is usually something that the person has developed as a façade and coping mechanism to deal with underlying feelings of defectiveness and isolation. When such people and their work are criticized, they often react with great internal rage because they believe their self image has been deflated. Their response is often to further isolate themselves, and they may do so by leaving the profession they are in, switching employers, or simply directing their rage at those who have criticized them.

There is a difference between healthy and unhealthy narcissism within a company. It is, of course, healthy to have a basic sense of your rights. You have a right to be treated fairly, and you also have a right to be proud of your achievements and to tell others about them. Narcissism becomes unhealthy, however, if you become obsessed with having people think you are special, and if you have not just a sense of your own rights–but no regard for the rights of others.

In an essay, “Working with Problems of Narcissism in Entrepreneurial Organizations,” Richard Ruth of the University of Virginia writes:

Contemporary practitioners, both clinical and organizational, are faced with the pervasive presence of narcissistic disorders in those who consult us. It is a disquieting encounter, because–even as we recognize that our work to understand and assist persons and organizations with narcissistic pathology has increased the reach and efficacy of our interventions, and the lessons of this work in turn have transformatively impacted psychoanalytic theories-there are particular qualities at work with narcissism that are painful to work with analytically, perhaps in significant part because they militate against a defensive introduction of non-analytic methods into analytic work. It is in the nature of narcissistically organized persons, and perhaps also, I will argue, narcissistic organizations, to deny the reality of the other (i.e., the analyst), to wrench the analyst into playing a hated but necessary part in the patient’s internal drama, to try to disable or destroy the analyst in the service of a soothing return to a narcissistic self-sufficiency, and to project onto the analyst, with resentful hatred, a whole internal world of persecutory and toxic part-objects, as the first step toward eventual understanding, health, and wholeness.

While this quote may seem overly complex, it does elucidate a final characteristic of NES that I believe merits consideration: that a person with NES will not confront his or her weaknesses because doing so would interfere with his or her inflated sense of self. Instead, institutions and individuals that call into question that sense of self of the person with NES are perceived by the person as toxic objects. As a final point, this explains why people with NES may change employers frequently or leave their chosen profession.

I realize the picture painted above of NES may appear extreme, however it is important to note that NES is s quite common, especially among the highest performing people inside most organizations. Again, I would estimate that over 10 percent of people starting their careers in major firms have NES and will have more difficult careers for that reason.

People with NES are generally the people who have come from the very best schools and have had a historical pattern of academic achievement that is nothing short of extraordinary. NES is something that can actually create the sort of super achiever who shows up to work and truly excels. In a scholastic environment, where such persons have the luxury of choosing most of their courses, working hard, and getting immediate feedback via grades, and in conditions that demand performance at a high academic level, persons with NES are likely to thrive.

It is very easy for me to pick up the signs of NES when speaking with young people in the job market and others. People with NES generally believe that they should be given the type of work that they want. They also tend to believe that they are extremely intelligent and valuable to their employer. In addition, these sorts of people tend to be very calculating, analyzing most situations vis-à-vis whether or not they are getting the upper hand. If they are criticized by their employer, they may simply leave, rather than facing the possibility of any shortcomings in ability or performance.

As a recruiter I can tell you that I see this occur frequently. Because our firm solicits telephone calls and interest from the highest caliber people on a daily basis, the NES person is one of types of people we often speak with. The following similarities generally define the people with NES whom I speak with:

-They generally have not worked at a “real job” before starting as a first-year associate inside a law firm;

-They generally did exceptionally well in college and attended a top 10 law school (NES, in fact, appears to be more likely to occur in a person who has attended better law schools);

-They generally come from a sheltered, upper middle-class background, or their parents are academics;

-They generally believe they are smarter than the people they are working with.

In essence, people with NES would likely never have made it into a prestigious law firm had they not been sheltered by school, parents, and others for so long. The artificial academic environment, the home environment of privilege, the constant positive feedback from academic institutions (where social dynamics are not as emphasized as much as common academics might have been), and the lack of prior work experience all serve to isolate the person with NES, allowing their condition to grow in the absence of a “real world” environment. While I would be the first to argue that a law firm is not necessarily a real world environment, it is much more like the real world than a school or a sheltered upper middle-class upbringing is.

The issue with NES inside a law firm and other organizations is that the persons with this disorder are primarily in service of themselves. For the most part, working for an organization is something that is not going to quickly lead to massive glory, riches, or fame. Instead, employees are hired to work hard to make money for their firm. There may be little opportunity for the sort of continual positive feedback and the kind of reassurances the NES person needs, and may be used to from his or her upbringing.

What usually happens to the NES persons is that he or she does not hold up well against the initial criticism that all new workers in most companies receive–no matter how constructive the criticism may be.  The person do not take orders well, nor do they understand why others are considered to be their peers. Such people most often leave the employer quickly with fantasies about achievement in a much higher caliber work environment. Or, they may switch between firms for a few years. Some start their own businesses-most of which fail. A few stick with it and become better employees.

While this topic has gone largely unexplored, it is very real and it affects numerous people-especially the ones who appear strongest on paper. I do not pretend to know the answers. Certainly, the inability to find a balance between one’s self and others is a serious condition. Recognizing the presence of a problem like this is usually the first step. The second step, then, would be correcting the problem by getting help. The biggest challenge in dealing with this condition, though, is that those who need help are not likely to ever realize or admit they have it.

If you have completed reading this article, you most likely do not have NES because, if you did, you would not confront it by reading all the way through. You would have stopped several paragraphs ago. What you should understand, though, is that the people you work with who have NES are likely on a dangerous collision course with failure. If the NES person does not fail within your organization, the chances are great he or she can negatively affect you if you work with him or her. Do your best to avoid NES people.

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

What You Will Learn Position yourself well to be successful in your career. Your USP plays a pivotal role in marketing you to potential clients –You must be very clear as to what your USP is. Focus on it and make sure it is strong and persuasive. Clearly conveying and marketing your USP will ensure your success in the job market.

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 job—in the following way:

First, I am going to tell you how to get jobs that more highly qualified competitors do not get.

Second, how to get jobs you are not even qualified for.

Third, how to appear to be the most logical choice to be interviewed when you apply for a job.

Fourth, how to make every interviewer talk about you enthusiastically after interviewing.

What You Will Learn Position yourself well to be successful in your career. Your USP plays a pivotal role in marketing you to potential clients –You must be very clear as to what your USP is. Focus on it and make sure it is strong and persuasive. Clearly conveying and marketing your USP will ensure your success in the job market.

Sound impossible? It’s not. However, it requires that you know something about marketing and that you really understand one marketing concept: the USP, or whatever you want to call it. It is not hard to understand, but you do need to think through the idea a bit to really grasp it.

I have been getting up and leaving lots of conferences lately.  I left one last weekend, and I left one a couple of months before that.

The reason I am leaving these conferences is because very few of the people at conferences have any idea what they are talking about.  What these people typically do at the conferences is learn some marketing ideas about this or that, create a horrible course, and then try and get people to pay hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars for them. In addition, most of these people are not just clueless; they’re completely clueless. I usually end up leaving when I hear them pronounce some famous marketing person’s name incorrectly or call some marketing concept by a name it should not be called.

The reason people keep showing up to these marketing conferences and paying all these gurus money to listen to them bastardize marketing concepts they do not even understand is this: When a marketing concept really works it can be incredibly effective.

• 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 manager 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 nucleas 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 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 ball 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.

Socrates and Your Job Search

What You Will Learn Consistently look for new ways of doing things and question assumptions. Do not be stuck in one way of thinking – open up your mind. Do everything within your power to think about your job search in a way that gives you more opportunities and not fewer.

Several years ago, we were launching a newsletter for law schools.  One of our employees who was working on the project decided that the title of the newsletter should be “The Signal” and he was very enthusiastic about this particular title.  In fact, I had never seen him so enthusiastic about anything.  I am not sure why this name meant so much to him. However, the more I recall this episode the more I remember that he had very strong reasons for thinking that this name really summarized it all.

The problem with this name was that there was no domain name available for it and it had been taken long ago.  In addition, I seem to remember that the person who owned the domain name also had no interest whatsoever in selling the domain.  Without a domain name, it did not seem like it made sense to have an important newsletter going out to law schools with this particular name.  The reason was that the newsletter was supposed to be electronic, and due to it being electronic, people would start associating the name “The Signal” with the newsletter and looking for it under this URL when they did searches online.

I explained this to my employee and he was having none of it.  He did not care what the URL was.  He was convinced the newsletter needed to be called “The Signal,” and when I would not agree to this he became extremely irate.  He stomped out of work.  He stopped working on the project and refused to work on the newsletter the next day.

What had happened to this particular employee is that he had decided that things just needed to be a certain way and he did not want to hear anything that was different from this certain way at all.  He had made up his mind that only one name was appropriate and had thrown all of his thinking, energy, and spirit behind something that was really unnecessary.  However, this is something that many of us do in one form or another, and we do it with numerous, numerous things.

One of the biggest challenges for me in working with people looking for jobs, is that most people seem to believe that their search needs to work in a certain way.  They believe that there is one way of looking for a job and that way is the only way.  People are extremely attached to doing things a certain way.  For someone who is in their mid 50s, they may believe they should never go online and that the best sources of jobs are always in the newspaper.  Other people may believe that networking is the only approach to getting a job.  Still, other people may believe they will only be able to ever get a job with a certain type of employer.  People are very pigheaded and this pigheadedness is something that really holds them back.

The guy who worked for me was so frustrated by the title of the newsletter, he ended up not coming into work regularly and turned from a very dependable employee to one who was completely unreliable.  This was a huge mistake and he ended up losing his job.  He was pigheaded about something that did not really matter.  Many of us are pigheaded about stuff that does not really matter and it ends up hurting our careers.  We believe that something can only be done a certain way, and then we stick to this without questioning everything around us.

For my entire career, I have been preaching in every way I know how and encouraging people to question their assumptions about how to find a job.  I believe that questioning assumptions, consistently doing new things and finding new ways to search are among the most important things we can do in a job search.  In fact, I believe they are the most important things.  The more you question what you are doing and embrace new methods of looking for jobs, the better off you will be.

Socrates is considered by most academics as the Founder of Western philosophy.  He lived around 2,500 years ago and since he never wrote a book, everything we know about him comes largely from what others wrote about him.  Socrates was considered a very interesting figure around Athens.  After having been a distinguished solider he returned to Athens and wandered around the city engaging various people around the city in conversations.  At the time there were teachers who traveled around the country called Sophists, who taught various subjects to people who paid them.  Unlike the Sophists, Socrates never took payment for his teaching, and most significantly, he claimed that he had nothing to teach.  He told people he did not have any actual knowledge and was no smarter than others.  Socrates claimed that if he was wiser than others, it was only due to the fact that he was aware that he was ignorant.

Most of what is known about Socrates comes from the writings of his student Plato, and from his dialogues in particular (however, the works of Aristotle and others provide some insights as well).  In these dialogues, Socrates will typically confront someone who claims to know something and be an expert on one philosophical topic or another, such as a moral or epistemological issues–for example, the nature of justice or virtue.  Through questioning of this person, Socrates will then proceed to show that this person does not know what he claims at all.  According to one definition:

The Socratic method is a negative method of hypotheses of elimination, in that better hypotheses are found by steadily identifying and eliminating those which lead to contradictions. The method of Socrates is a search for the underlying hypotheses, assumptions, or axioms, which may subconsciously shape one’s opinion, and to make them the subject of scrutiny, to determine their consistency with other beliefs. The basic form is a series of questions formulated as tests of logic and fact, intended to help a person or group discover their beliefs about some topic, exploring the definitions or logoi (singular logos), seeking to characterize the general characteristics shared by various particular instances. To the extent to which this method is designed to bring out definitions implicit in the interlocutors’ beliefs, or to help them further their understanding, it was called the method of maieutics. Aristotle attributed to Socrates the discovery of the method of definition and induction, which he regarded as the essence of the scientific method. Perhaps oddly, however, Aristotle also claimed that this method is not suitable for ethics.

According to W.K.C. Guthrie’s The Greek Philosophers, while sometimes erroneously believed to be a method by which one seeks the answer to a problem, or knowledge, the Socratic method was actually intended to demonstrate one’s ignorance. Socrates, unlike the Sophists, did believe that knowledge was possible, but believed that the first step to knowledge was recognition of one’s ignorance. Guthrie writes, “[Socrates] was accustomed to say that he did not himself know anything, and that the only way in which he was wiser than other men was that he was conscious of his own ignorance, while they were not. The essence of the Socratic method is to convince the interlocutor that whereas he thought he knew something, in fact he does not.”

Socrates was eventually put on trial and sentenced to death in Athens for allegedly corrupting the youth of Athens with he teachings.  It was during this trial that Socrates made the famous statement that the “unexamined life is not worth living.”

The idea that there is one way of doing things is something that needs to be questioned.  One of my greatest frustrations with job seekers is trying to get them to realize how many different methods there are for them to get jobs, and the incredible number of paths they can follow in their job searches.  You need to be aware that whatever assumptions you have about the way you should be looking for a job may be doing you a tremendous amount of harm.  These assumptions need to be questioned, and you need to insure that in questioning these assumptions, you realize that they may be limiting you.  Here are some of the assumptions that are not necessarily true that I have seen people make about their job search:

• A recruiter will not help me get a job.
• A recruiter will help me get a job.
• I need to use a recruiter for my job search.
• I would never post my resume on a resume site.
• I need to post my resume on a resume site.
• I would never pay someone to help me get a job.
• I can only get a job if I pay someone to assist me.
• I will never get a job in this economy.
• I am too old to get a job.
• I am too young to get a job.
• I do not have enough experience.
• I have too much experience.
• I need connections to get this job.
• I will never get another job because I was fired.
• I did not go to a good enough school to work there.

The list of things about your candidacy and job search could go on and on.  You need to be questioning everything about how you are looking for a job and what this means.  Your job search is too important and your career is too important to allow yourself to be stuck in one way of thinking.  You need to open your mind and ensure that you do everything within your power to think about your job search in a way that gives you more opportunities and not fewer.

Treating Your Career Like A Small Business

What You Will Learn You need to understand that you are a product in your career and that like a product, you need to be marketable and have a personal brand that is in demand. You need to follow certain business rules so that the ‘product’ (that is ‘you’), sells effectively. You must understand that everything you are doing or are not doing has a major impact on your brand – you shape your brand by the choices you make. Be yourself and also be aware of what the particular employer wants – market your product and brand for maximum possible success.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“At least 10%” he said.

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

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

Running businesses is hard. Most businesses fail.

How hard is it running a business?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

D. Conclusions

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

Cheap Is Expensive: A Marine Disaster

What You Will Learn If something looks like too good of a deal, it probably is! You pay much more after the actual purchase for something cheap. Never get lured by cheap things or unbelievable incentives or schemes. Be smart while making a deal.

One thing I’ve learned in my lifetime is if something seems too good to be true, it probably is.  Every day so many of us are glued to televisions and see people becoming rich overnight on game shows.  Grwiong up, kids receive a lot of messages that you can become rich and famous without an education.  Throughout America, there is a belief you can get something for nothing.  One of the most successful men I ever met, a man who owned numerous auto dealerships in Detroit, once told me that “Nothing is free and there are never any deals.”  This is surely true.

Several years ago I bought a mobile home on the beach in Malibu, and the story behind it is very strange.  At the time I was pretty involved in giving speeches at various law schools around the United States and considered myself a national expert in advising law students on how to get a job.  I was enthusiastic when my fiancé invited me to go a Pepperdine Law School party with her friend who was in her last year of law school.  When I got to the party, I was surprised no one recognized me from my various law school lectures.  However, no one there seemed very interested in a job search.  There was a lot of liquor and craziness going on at the party.

I introduced myself, and started recommending various job search strategies to the students I met.  The evening didn’t go well. People would excuse themselves after a few minutes when I would pause in my conversation to reflect on one job search strategy or another.  I was sipping a Diet Coke and feeling very fortunate to have this “street level” experience of meeting law students first hand. I had been a law professor five years ago and was now “in the trenches” with a group of law students, finding out first hand what their lives were like.

These kids seemed more interested in partying, however, than speaking with me.

About an hour into the party, I realized things seemed to be thinning out and I could not find my fiancé anywhere.  I looked around and saw a lot of people going into a bedroom.  I walked in and saw my finacé’s friend taking a huge hit from a bong.  Other people were standing around also waiting to enjoy the marijuana.

In front of a group of stunned students, I walked up to my fiancé and said, “This is outrageous!! I am getting out of this party now!  I cannot believe you are allowing yourself to be in the same room with this!”

The people in the room all laughed, including my fiancé.  I was horrified this episode might get around to law schools and somehow destroy my reputation.  I have never done drugs in my life and the fact my fiancé was associated with it was even more shocking. 

“I am a major figure in the national law student job search scene!! I am leaving!  There is no way I can be associated with this sort of stuff and you should not be either!”  I told her in front of the group. I was acting as if I was the President of the United States and she was my wife carousing with people doing drugs.  People were laughing at me and I realized I must have looked ridiculous.  I stormed out of the party and realized my fiancé was nowhere to be found.  I got in my car and drove home.

The next morning my fiancé called me from her parent’s house in Santa Monica and asked me to come get her.  We fought, basically about my belief that as an important national career figure for law students, I could not be associated with her friend’s marijuana use.  I am from the Midwest and my fiancé grew up in Los Angeles and attended school with people like Paris Hilton. People think differently in Los Angeles.  She thought I was out of my mind for being angry with her for hanging out in a room where people were smoking pot.

Because I didn’t want our neighbors to hear us fighting, I decided to drive along Pacific Coast Highway.  We drove for quite awhile before I finally stopped to turn around.  We pulled over to the side of the road, still fighting, and that’s when I saw the mobile home on the beach.  It was for sale.  Boy did it look ugly!  It looked so ridiculous I was confident I could afford it. 

In case you don’t know, Malibu is not a place where there are typically mobile homes on the beach.  In fact, the mobile home I purchased is the only one I know of directly on the beach in Malibu. 

To say this mobile home was run down would be an understatement. It was the first “structure” ever put on this beach, sometime in the 1950s.  Imagine what its interior looked like after 50+ years of use and zero renovation. An 80 year old man was living in it.  I was love struck.  My purchase of this mobile home went off without a hitch.  Despite the fact we were in a real estate boom at the time, it’d been sitting on the market for some time.  The real estate agents seemed astonished anyone was interested in it.

“Whatever you want,” they kept saying as they wrote up the purchase contract.  Incredibly, the owner was so eager to get rid of it he let me take possession of it and move in without even getting financing for a year, and I paid him a nominal monthly rent. 

After a day or two of relaxing in this mobile home, I realized it was not all it was cracked up to be.  Living on the water is fun. However, when you are in a 500-square-foot mobile home from the 1950s, it can get pretty cramped.  There was no heat or air conditioning in the mobile home, either, so the living conditions were pretty Spartan.  After a couple of weeks, I decided I needed to get a boat and this would make the experience of living in Malibu much more enjoyable. My plan was to anchor the boat about 100 yards from shore and then use it on the weekends.  In theory, this was a very good idea.  I started to look on eBay and it didn’t take me long before I found my dream boat.

It was a 15-foot Seadoo jet boat that’d been used for only a few hours.  The purchase price had been an incredible $22,000 but the owner of the jet boat had put a “buy it now” button on the listing for $5,000.  This looked too good to be true and I decided I had to purchase the boat.  I could not believe my luck in finding such a good deal.

I sent a guy who worked in our warehouse to pick up the boat and when he arrived he became a little nervous.  In fact, when he came back with the boat, he hinted the seller of the boat may have had an unusual sexual affliction.  He looked a little shook up. 

“What happened?” I asked.

“It was weird.  When I got there, she had a video camera and started filming me the second I arrived.  She asked me to climb under the boat and to rub it.  She then started saying stuff like ‘Look at the camera and say you like it while rubbing it hard! Tell me that it’s nice and feels good and tap on it.  Look at the camera and say it is smooth and hard while rubbing it!”

The whole situation sounded very strange to me but I have heard weird sex stories in Los Angeles and I figured this was another one of them.  A few weeks before I’d been on a freeway interchange in a traffic jam on a Sunday afternoon.  I thought there must be a huge basketball game or something at the Staples’ Center, but instead there was a porno convention.  It took me 30 minutes to get through an interchange that should’ve taken no more than a couple of minutes. This is the kind of stuff you see only in this part of the United States.

I thought I would anchor the jet boat about 100 yards off the house where the tide never went below.  I also did a lot of research and determined I would need what is called a giant “mushroom anchor” in order to build a permanent mooring for boat. I found a marine supply store on the East Coast and ordered a buoy, mooring anchor, and all sorts of other items to build an official mooring in front of my house and my neighbor’s homes.  It cost me a couple of thousand dollars but the sea captain I spoke with in Maine assured me what I was purchasing could handle “gale force winds” and would keep the boat anchored.  My plan was to use a sea kayak to travel out to the boat when I wanted to go on expeditions.  I would use the boat to travel to and from the shore.

Since you may not be from Malibu, I have to assure you this is something that’s highly unusual.  People who pay millions of dollars for a house do not want to see a $5,000 boat permanently anchored in front of it. In fact, I am not aware of anyone who had ever built a mooring in front of their house in Malibu either before or since this episode.  The claustrophobia of living in a 500-square-foot mobile home on the beach can drive people to do strange things.  I assured myself, however, this is what my neighbors must have realized when they moved to a stretch of beach that included a 65-year-old mobile home. 

My plan was to put the mushroom anchor on the boat and then launch the jet boat at the boat launch in Oxnard.  I would then travel 20+ miles up the coast and drop the mushroom anchor and mooring.  The entire procedure was going to be quite difficult, however, because the mushroom anchor weighed 100s of pounds.  A man who worked in our warehouse had picked up the boat for me, and he recommended a couple of his friends from Mexico who spent their days standing in front of a U-Haul looking for work help me.

“Do they know how to swim?”  I asked him.  He checked and only one of them did.  Therefore, the plan was to use three of his friends to place the giant anchor on the boat, launch the boat, and one of them would travel up the coast with me in the boat to launch the anchor.  Despite having a mobile home that was gradually being subsumed by the sea, I was feeling very enthusiastic about having purchased a boat.  I was also excited to brag to my neighbors about the boat.  My neighbors were getting a little annoying.  The day we moved in, one came over with his wife.

“Look, they bought the lot!” the man said to her.  I was actually proud I had a new home and he was calling it a “lot”.  My neighbor, who resided immediately next door, came by periodically and told me he was amazed our home had not been washed out to sea but assured me it was “going down” shortly and that “I better not be there” when it did.  Being a boat owner would put me on par at least to some degree with my neighbors I thought.

When we finally got the boat launched and started going through the harbor, everything seemed like it was going pretty well.  The anchor was resting in the front of the boat and we had to travel very slowly because the front end was practically in the water.  After about five minutes I was feeling very good about everything, but then I saw a boat screaming towards me with lights flashing.  Since I had never captained a boat before in my life I could not imagine what was happening.  I thought I might be going to prison due to the mooring sitting on the front of the boat.

Hillario, my helper, looked terrified.  “Inmigracion!!” he told me with a terrified look in his eyes.  It was the Harbor Patrol and they pulled us over and made us go to the side of the harbor.  They asked me if I had flares, a whistle, life jackets, and all sorts of stuff you apparently are required to have in order to take a boat into the ocean.  Incredibly, they said nothing about the giant mooring sitting in the boat.  I had none of these things and they wrote me several tickets and told me I needed to take my boat over to a local store and purchase these items before I could venture into the ocean legally. I explained to Hillario in Spanish he was not being deported and he was incredibly relieved.  Thankfully the Harbor Master didn’t pursue it when I explained to him Hillario had no identification.  After spending a couple of hundred dollars on life jackets and other required supplies, we headed over the to Harbor Patrol office to show them what we had purchased and they were kind enough to cancel all the tickets.  The whole episode must have taken us over two hours; however, we were now prepared to venture out into the Pacific Ocean towards Malibu.

We were soon out in the sea and the boat was handling very well. Despite the massive mooring, she was amazingly agile and picking up speed.  We could feel the wind in our faces and the entire event was very enjoyable.  A couple of minutes into the journey I saw another boat rushing towards us.  This boat was larger and looked very official.  As it got closer, I realized it was the Coast Guard.

“Hi, we’ve already been pulled over and we’re all set!” I told the man who boarded our boat.  This guy was serious.  He had a gun and I thought Hillario was about ready to get deported for sure.

“That was the Harbor Master who is from the County of Ventura,” he told me. “I’m with the United States Coast Guard and we have jurisdiction over the ocean.”

“Oh, I’m sorry …”

“What the hell are you doing with that giant mooring in your boat?  It is so big we saw it from over a half mile away.”

I had no idea what to say.  If I told him I was about to launch an illegal mooring off the coast of Malibu, he would not like it.  Actually, the more I thought about where I was planning on putting my mooring, the more I realized it was probably an international shipping lane.  Cruise ships, freighters, and all sorts of stuff went by daily.  I wondered what they would make of my little jet boat if I ever made it out there.  I hoped they would not run it over.

I had to think quickly on my feet.  I started thinking about the past few minutes.

“This is a jet boat,” I told the man from the Coast Guard.  As I was speaking, I realized I could see myself and Hillario perfectly in his sunglasses since they reflected directly toward me like mirrors.  “This boat is fast and these waves are incredibly big.  With this giant anchor here, I prevent the boat from flipping over in the waves.  I am trying to be safe.  You should see how fast this thing is.”

“That’s so cool dude!” the guy from the Coast Guard said.  “I totally understand.  These jet boats are so kick ass!  I want to get one but my wife would kill me!”  I could not believe what I was witnessing.  I thought the guy must be the biggest idiot I had ever encountered.  Just like that he let us continue and gave me some sort of “hang loose” type surfer sign as we motored away.

Some time later, we found it was an incredible feat launching the anchor in front of our house.  Luckily, a man on a jet ski boarded the boat and somehow we managed to all get the mushroom anchor in the water and build the world’s first mooring in Malibu.

Hillario, however, could not swim.  For over an hour I tried to convince him to jump in the water and swim to shore but he refused.  Eventually, it got so bad I pulled the boat up to an area no deeper than his chest and pushed him overboard.  Despite the fact he could have simply just walked to shore in the water he sat there flailing and screaming for help.  I was very close to shore and screamed to a couple of surfers who were wading in the water to help him get to shore.  They refused.

“I am a commercial litigator.  There is no way I am getting involved in this one. I do not want the liability!” one of them told me.  They just stood there. After about 10 seconds of me screaming to Hillario to just “walk” in Spanish, he figured it out and walked to the shore.  Apparently, he had lied about his abilities as a swimmer to get this job.

It was a wonderful sight.  All weekend I tied a kayak to the mooring and jetted up and down the coast in my little jet boat.  I felt as if I was the smartest resident of Malibu ever.

All week at work I was looking forward to a wonderful weekend with more boating adventures.  On Wednesday a call came in and a secretary rushed into my office.

“Harrison!! One of your neighbors called and said there is a boat sinking right in front of your house!  I have no idea what they are talking about!”  I had no idea how one of my neighbors tracked me down.  My neighbors all had pretty nice houses in Malibu and did not associate much with white trash like me who lived in the mobile home.  I called my neighbor back.  She explained to me the boat was filling up with water and her feeling was that something called “a bilge pump” had stopped working.  The bilge pump turns on when water comes inside the boat from waves and then pumps it out.  My neighbor told me the best thing I could do was purchase a battery and come out and install it in the jet boat.  She told me I should also purchase a pump and pump out some of the water.

“It’s going to go under soon if you do not get out here!”

I rushed out of work and went to a marine store and purchased a battery and a pump for the boat.  When I got home I noticed the boat really was sinking and it looked pretty bad.  It was so far out; however, I could not see it very well.  I got in my kayak and started paddling out to the boat.  The sea was very rough and it was a struggle to get out in the kayak.  When I finally made it to the boat I realized there was so much water in it I might not be able to pump it out.  I hooked up the little electric pump I had purchased to the battery and started trying to pump the water out.  There was so much water and so many waves there was nothing I could do.

The last thing I remember is a giant wave coming inside the kayak.  I am not sure how it happened but the car battery had so much charge to it the water electrified in the kayak, and I started getting electrocuted!  I jumped out of the kayak and into the water and the kayak went off drifting into the distance.  I swam towards the boat.  Given the wave that’d just hit it, I figured the boat was going to completely sink within the next 10 minutes or so.  I was panicked.  There were rough currents and I guessed I might be too far from shore to make it if I swam.  In addition, I was about ready to lose a $5,000 boat to the sea.

I considered my options and realized the only thing I could possibly do was to cut the rope between the boat and the mooring.  I would pray the sea would take the boat and I back to shore. I was very lucky to have a knife with me.  My kayak appeared to be drifting towards the shore and I figured my little jet boat and I might be able to achieve the same.  I prayed we would.

Over the course of the next several minutes the sea did carry us back to shore.  The boat was half way under water and filled with water but it started going towards shore and got very close.  At this point a small crowd of my neighbors had formed and they rushed out and tied ropes to the boat and tried to assist me in keeping the boat in one place.  The problem was the waves kept trying to take the boat out to sea.  At this point it was probably 3:00 or 4:00 in the afternoon and for the next five hours or so, I and groups of my neighbors all struggled with the boat.  Eventually using winches and lots of rope, we were able to secure the boat after it was low tide. We had ropes running 20 feet from various homes on stilts out to the boat.  It was crazy. 

One of my neighbors brought out a large bottle of tequila and we were all taking sips while trying various maneuvers to secure the boat.  It was an exhausting experience and required the effort of over 10 men.  By nightfall we had secured the boat.  The boat was still filled with water and it was all inside the engine compartment.  I actually do not know what we thought the next step was.  I am assuming in the morning I was going to drain the water out of the boat. 

I fell asleep quickly that night, but around 4:00 am I awoke with a jolt.  I am usually a good sleeper.  But that night I could not go back to sleep.  I had a sixth sense something was wrong.  I was very nervous and wanted to go look at the boat.  The boat was about 100 yards from my house up the beach so I could not just look out my window.  It was pitch black and very difficult to see.  I had a very powerful spotlight flashlight I had purchased unnecessarily months ago at Sam’s Club and fired it up.  It was like a giant beacon. This light was so powerful that you could hit the clouds with it.  I had never seen anything like it.  I put on some sandals and a coat and started walking down the beach.  The closer I got, the more I realized I could not see the boat — all I could see was the rope coming out of the houses and appearing to go into the sand.  Finally, the truth of what was going on was inescapable: The boat was buried beneath the sand.  In fact, all I could see was the rope going directly into the sand.  Apparently, the tide, waves, and current had decided to bury the boat under the sand while I was sleeping.

Incredulous, shaken, I walked back home and managed to go to sleep. I got up an hour or two later and managed to get a hold of the guy who had picked up the boat in our warehouse.  I told him to go to Home Depot and pick up at least 10-15 guys and purchase a shovel for each one of them.  I explained the boat was buried under several feet of sand and we needed to get it unburied.  By 8:00 am there were at least 15 men on the beach digging.  We dug and tugged on the ropes but could not move the boat.  We were also using winches to try and move the boat and it was so heavy the winches were breaking.  I am lucky no one was killed.  The winches have cables on them and the cables were snapping and then flying back to the people operating the winches.  It was so bad we started using blankets from my house and the people were operating the winches behind the blankets so they were not hit by cables when the winches snapped the cables.  The boat was a disaster.  It was completely filled with sand in the engine compartment.  It must have weighed three times its normal weight.

By 1:00 pm I realized that absolutely nothing could be done.  The boat was not moving.  For the next hour I sat in my house while my workers barked back and forth to each other in Spanish about how insane this entire exercise was.  I realized I needed to find someone who was an expert in this sort of thing.  My neighbors no longer thought this was funny.  There was a boat buried directly in front of their homes.  I decided to walk down to a lifeguard station on the next beach over.  When I got there, I found a man who looked like he had been a lifeguard for the past 50 years.  I had never seen so much sun damage.  I’ll call him “Leatherface.” 

Leatherface told me he’d  been working on the beach for 30+ years and had never seen anyone as big of a jackass as me.  He told me he had been watching this episode from the outset and had never seen anyone stupid enough to build a mooring.  Despite the fact he’d witnessed the entire episode with the kayak, he told me he was not even sure he would have rescued me if I started drowning because I might be better off dead.

Leatherface told me I needed to call a service called Marine Assist to come out and help move the boat.  He explained they would bring a giant tug boat and pull the boat back to the harbor.  That sounded pretty good to me.

I called Marine Assist and they told me they would send out a tugboat for $500 and $175 an hour, but if I wanted them to swim to shore to hook up the boat they would charge me an additional $300 to bring along a swimmer.  I told them I would swim out and grab the rope to hook up to the boat and they agreed.

An hour or so later a giant tug boat arrived about 50 yards out to sea.  My neighbor let me use his kayak and I started making my way to the tugboat.  I got hit by a wave and flipped the kayak.  Between the tug boat captain screaming something at me and all the commotion, I lost the kayak and paddles and soon was standing on the tug boat.  The guy on the tug boat asked me questions about what was going on and then shook his head.  “I’ve never heard anything like this” he told me.  He then proceeded to lecture me just like Leatherface had about how stupid I was.

Lots of people have never heard anything like what I’ve told you so far, nor what was to come next. In fact, one of my ex-employees decided I must be a pathological liar after I told him this story.  It is really hard to believe.

The tug boat captain told me once I swam to shore I should hook the rope up on a couple of strategic points on the boat and then proceed to have the 15 illegal aliens push the boat. He assured me this would get it out to sea.  I agreed.  For the next hour the tug boat tried to pull the little jet boat out but simply couldn’t extricate it from the sand.  It was a Herculean task.  Several times the tug boat captain called me on my cell phone.

“It’s not moving!” he would say, as if I was not there.

“Keep trying!” I would encourage him.

“Ok!”

Eventually, after over an hour the tide started coming in and miraculously the boat started to move slowly.  After several tries the boat started drifting out to sea.  At this point there must have been at least 30 spectators in addition to my workers.  No one on the beach had ever seen anything like this before.  In fact, several of my neighbors had come home early from work to watch the excitement.  As the tug boat started towing the little jet boat away my neighbors began to clap and the workers were giving each other high fives and hugging.  It had been a long ordeal and we were all very excited.  The tug boat operator was even excited and blew a really loud shipping horn and he towed the little jet boat away.

The neighbors and everyone standing around looked really relieved.  As I walked towards my house with around five shovels under my arm, I noticed a British neighbor of mine looking very intensely towards the tug boat and my little jet boat being tugged away.  I realized he had not been part of the celebratory excitement in the past few minutes.  In fact, he was quite focused.

“Something is wrong,” he shouted from his deck.  “The boat is sinking!”

Sure enough, I looked out and the tug boat appeared to be backing up.  I looked and I could not see my little jet boat anywhere.  My cell phone rang and it was Marine Assist.

“This is a disaster!  The boat has sunk!” the tug boat operator told me.  He had conferenced in the owner of the Marine Assist Company.  “I’m going to have to call the Coast Guard about the sunken boat.”  The next few minutes were a blur.  What I do remember is a Coast Guard helicopter showing up within the next few minutes and making a rapid couple of passes over the area where the sunken boat was.  My heart was racing.  My neighbors were all alarmed as well.  I looked down at my phone at some point and realized I had received four or five messages in the past few minutes from Marine Assist.

I called them right back.

“The Coast Guard says we are going to need to call in divers and do an emergency extraction,” they told me.

“A what?”

“An extraction.  You cannot just leave a boat on the bottom of the ocean.”

They explained to me they were going to have to send in divers to float the boat to the surface by attaching blow up devices to it.

“This is out of our league.  We are going to need to call specialists and another boat.”

It was also explained to me that the “extraction operation” was going to cost up to $5,000.  An hour or so later a boat with a bunch of divers arrived and the rescue operation began in earnest.  By the time the rescue was complete I could not see anything because it was dark.  I did receive a call at some point that they were not headed back to Ventura Harbor with the boat and it had taken longer than expected to complete the rescue and therefore more credit card charges were required.  I was also given a complete report from the divers about what was wrong with the boat.

Apparently, there was a huge gash/hole on the bottom of the boat that had been cheaply covered up with some epoxy.  When I’d left the boat sitting in the water it had all dissolved.  The cheap price on eBay and the bizarre behavior with the video camera finally made sense.

When the boat got to the harbor it was so heavy with sand it could not be put on the trailer.  A flatbed truck needed to be called at 2:00 am to tow it away.

This was how I learned that cheap is expensive.  If something looks like too good of a deal, it probably is.  In the case of the jet boat, it ended up costing me much more than the purchase price, just to do mandatory rescues in it.