Be Committed to What You Do

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

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

The secret is commitment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All of that comes through the power of commitment.

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

Are you?

Your Ultimate Goal: How You Can Find Job Security

What You Will Learn It is crucial for job seekers to choose the right kind of job, the right kind of organization, and to have the perfect pay-package in order to enjoy security. Professionals in high positions within an organization are more prone to getting let go, as opposed to those in lesser positions. The complexity of an organization also plays a crucial role in hampering or promoting a sense of job security among different workers in an organization. Competitiveness can also bear a loss of job security, as there is a constant pushing and pulling, with regards to company resources.

One of the worst things that can happen to people is getting fired from a job with no notice whatsoever. It can be devastating to lose your source of income unexpectedly, especially in a contracting economy. Losing a job can color our perspective on the world and our future. Going forward, we have a difficult time allowing ourselves to ever feel secure again. We believe that things can change in an instant and that we might be suddenly out of a job again. This fear of sudden job loss is something that many people who have been terminated from jobs carry with them throughout their careers. The goal for all of us is to be in positions where we are secure, and to keep that security. Recently, I saw the movie American Beauty again. When I first saw the movie I was younger; I didn’t really understand the importance of what was going on, and how it applies to everyone in the working world. In the movie, the protagonist is fired from his job. In response to this, he decides he wants to simplify his life and he takes a position in a fast food restaurant–which is far beneath the sort of job he had been fired from. He takes this job, the viewer is led to believe, because he wants to go back to a simpler, happier time in his life, and have again that feeling of empowerment and security from his youth. His goal is to find that stability in a world that had grown dark and uncertain around him.

Stability and certainty are so important to many of us that we often settle for far less than we could have simply because we want that security. We settle for worse jobs than we could get, we settle for less pay than we could earn. Simply stated, we settle because our cost benefit analysis of the world tells us security is more important than pay, job satisfaction, or status.

Several weeks ago, I wandered into an impossibly expensive bed store in Beverly Hills with my wife (where some beds cost as much as $50,000) and when I asked why someone would spend so much on a bed the salesperson told me that we spend one third of our lives there. However, we spend far more than one third of our lives at work–or thinking about it. Furthermore, if we do not work we cannot even afford a bed! Therefore, work is one of the most important aspects of our existence.

When you add up everything we do in our lives, whether it is participating in a church or synagogue, spending time with friends or family, or engaging in various hobbies-you will quickly discover that most of our time is spent working. Work may be the predominant activity in our lives, whether we want to admit it or not, and, more importantly, if we do not like our work, we are probably not enjoying life.

Have you ever spent time with people who hate their jobs? This is practically all they talk about. Not liking their jobs makes people depressed or angry. Being around people who hate their jobs is a miserable experience. I remember growing up in Detroit, where many of my friends’ parents would come home at the end of the day from jobs they hated. They would walk straight to the liquor cabinet, pour a drink, and, after 20 minutes or so, begin complaining to their spouses about how much they hated work, or about some slight they received from their boss that day. Several hours later, a loud argument might even break out between the parents. This process would be repeated day after day. Even at the age of seven or eight, watching this process taught me that not liking one’s job was a huge problem.

Sometimes it takes a child’s mind to see what is really going on in the world. I remember writing reports about Russia when I was around seven or eight. The major conflict in the world that existed up until the 1990s was the threat of communist Russia against the United States. We were afraid of communism, but, in reality, communism is nothing more than an economic system wherein people are given jobs and told exactly what to do. They are paid less by the state but, in exchange, they receive security. In the United States, capitalism is built on a lack of security. You have your choice of jobs, but it is up to you to find security within the capitalist system. Entire civilizations have been built on the quest for security.

In the United States, a giant strike was going on in late 2008 between the machinist union at Boeing and the company. The company was demanding the right to outsource certain work, and the workers were demanding security in their jobs. This fight cost the company $100 million a day. At the same time, similar conflicts between unions and automobile companies were having far-reaching implications for the American auto industry.

The fight for security is all around us.

When a man loses his job, you will usually find him in a bad mental state. Sometimes the man will stop shaving. He may look confused. He will fight with his wife more and snap at people around him. The stress of not having a job, or feeling a lack of purpose, can quickly bring on emotional problems. When people are having emotional problems, a psychologist or doctor may prescribe drugs or treatment, maybe wanting to talk about the person’s parents, for example. Most often a better solution would be to look at how the person’s job is going-or how their lack of a job is affecting them. Fix a person’s career and most other things often quickly fall into place.

If security is so important, how does one go about finding it in a job? People get college educations, professional degrees, and do everything within their power to make themselves attractive to employers so they will have security. People rehearse interviewing so they can get a job. People attempt to go into industries or work in sectors with presumed security, whether they are in government, real estate, medicine, or law. Every industry out there has been presumed to be secure at one time or another. However, all of them involve some level of instability.

After studying the employment market for some time, I believe there are several ways to look for security. There is a push and pull between finding security and making a great deal of money. The question is, what do you want and how much are you willing to risk? Since I am a former attorney, I will draw from my experience to give you some career advice, and an indication of how the employment process works in the legal industry.

When attorneys graduate from law school, they typically try their hardest to get the highest-paying jobs they can. The highest-paying jobs are with large law firms and they typically pay around $160,000 a year. Due to the massive amount of money these attorneys make, they are expected to work extremely hard; they are also very quickly let go if they are not billing as expected or if there are issues with their work. These jobs typically do not have a lot of long-term security, and if young attorneys believe they may lose their jobs they will usually try to find another job at another high-paying firm. They will likely keep doing this until they either become a partner at a high-paying firm, or they end up changing careers.

Once attorneys get a few years of experience at a high-paying law firm, they generally start wanting to leave the law firm to work for a corporation. Jobs with corporations are very much in demand. In most cases, corporate jobs pay at least 50 percent less than jobs at law firms. The reason attorneys want to work for corporations, though, is due to the security factor. Security appeals to some attorneys far more than money (jobs with corporations typically also require less work).

Most (over 95 percent) attorneys do not end up with jobs in the highest-paying law firms. These attorneys typically do not change jobs as often and, in my experience, have a lot more long-term security. As an example, almost all of the attorneys I personally know who started practicing law with large firms that paid large salaries are no longer practicing law ten years later. The attorneys I know who went to small law firms or took positions with the government, on the other hand, are still practicing law. This phenomenon bears some examination, and I think there are reasons behind it.

I believe that the attorneys who went to large firms saw so many people lose their jobs (and may have lost their own jobs) that they simply became disillusioned with practicing law because they saw no security in it. Conversely, smaller firms, which typically pay less, do not let people go as aggressively; the attorneys working there experience far more security within the practice of law and therefore continue their legal careers.

Generally, the higher paid or more competitive the job you take, the more insecurity that job will involve. Think about investment banks letting go of thousands of people. You will rarely find an investment banker in his mid-30s even who has been with the same firm his entire career.

I also want to note that the more complex the organization you are in is, the less security you will generally have in your job. For example, giant companies like Yahoo! might suddenly decide to let go of 10 percent of their staff to save money. A larger organization is, in many respects, more impersonal and, due to its complexity, there are forces involved that are simply beyond the control of the people working there.

A few months ago, I went to the dentist and, as I started speaking with the dentist and his staff of four, they told me that they had all been working together for over 20 years! I thought about how rare this is in today’s society, where people move around so frequently between jobs. In considering this, however, I quickly realized the reason. A dental office is not a complex institution. If it is set up in the right area (an economically stable one) and the dentist is respectable (this dentist was also a professor of dentistry at USC), the operation should continue going indefinitely. In this case, the lack of complexity in the dentist’s operation, and the presumed stability of the business, made it a secure work environment. Working in a small dental office is a secure job, it would seem, and in that sense, not much different from the job that the protagonist in American Beauty found working in a fast food restaurant.

There is one last point I want to make that is crucial and involves the people or person you will be working for. I am sure you have heard stories of the crazy boss in a given company who randomly lets people go, or who is altogether unbalanced. If you make your choice of employer based on one thing alone, make sure you are working for a stable person. You can detect a stable boss by many factors, such as the length of time certain employees have worked directly for him or her. Being around stable people is very important in your work environment, and so is feeling comfortable around the people you work with. You need to feel comfortable or you will have reason to doubt your security.

Security in a job is one of the more fundamental issues in all societies and is a basis for conflict between nations and people. Realize that you need to seek security and find it at all costs. This is the most important aspect of any job.

Are You Here? The Importance of Being Present in Your Job and Job Search

What You Will Learn It is important to be present and totally focused in your job. You need to be present in life and in your career and feel a connection to your work – this breeds career longevity and success. Passion and commitment are attributes people notice – they help build careers. The person who is “here” will always win over the person who is not. Employers want enthusiasm, commitment and presence.

What makes someone successful in his or her career? When it comes down to it, I believe one of the greatest determinants of success is whether or not you are “here.”

“Being here” takes two forms. The most obvious is to be here physically. Coming into the office each day and going through the motions is the most basic way to be here and the minimum requirement for success. An example of being here for a salesperson would be coming into the office and making a certain number of cold calls each day. If this is done, and nothing more, the salesperson will experience some degree of success. However, in all likelihood the success will be mediocre.

A more significant way of being here is to have a connection to your work. I am sure each of us knows many people who are, for one reason or another, never really present. Being absent even when you are physically present, shows in (1) not listening to those around you, or not otherwise paying attention to your environment, (2) not taking the time to understand where your work fits into the larger picture, and (3) not taking any interest in the people and activity going on around you. Such a person is unable to extrapolate “signs” and various important signals from his environment. The most important thing anyone can do in their career is be here, completely present and focused. In my job as a recruiter, I saw first-hand that every major success was a result of my ability to be here, focused on my job and attuned to my clients’ needs:

-I understood my candidates and thought a great deal about their situations.

-I wrote a letter fro my clients that showed passion, and had a clear and compelling message.

-I spoke in depth with the candidate and developed a greater bond.

-The bond I had with my candidates drove me to deepen my relationships with law firm clients so they would want to hire from me.

-I sought even more opportunities and got creative with the employers who would consider my candidates.

-The more my candidates and I bonded the more we continued our search together, even after an initial round of submissions may not have produced any results.

I found that I was more likely to place the candidates I took the time to get to know and understand. Conversely, for virtually every candidate I did not place, I was typically guilty of not being fully present with him or her. I simply went through the motions with my submissions and hoped something good would come from that alone. Sure, that approach had worked for me a few times, but rarely was success that simple. When absently going through the motions one can hardly expect to produce meaningful results.

The career advice I will give is that you need to be present in life and in your career, and to feel a connection to your work. You need to be engrossed in what you are doing and feel the passion and energy that comes from that. This breeds career longevity and success. The more you are here, the more you are also likely to keep your job when companies go through transitions or downsizing. If you are here you may even find yourself getting a promotion, even in the most unlikely of times.

Several years ago, I gave a lengthy speech about the importance of legal recruiting. At the time, I was very concerned about instilling passion in the recruiters who worked for me and showing them the value of this at all costs. Passion changes everything. I wanted my workforce of recruiters to believe in what they were doing and in the people they were doing it for. I wanted them to help their candidates to the greatest extent possible. After the speech, I overheard one lady speaking to another, and she said something I will never forget: “I would rather work for a place that cares about what it is doing and takes it seriously than work at a place that does not.”

This stuck with me. I think we all want to be surrounded by passion in what we do. Time and again you hear about how important it is to love what you do. Passion and commitment are attributes people notice. These qualities help build careers. Your boss or future employer wants to see that you love what you are doing. If an employer is deciding to hire one person over another they are likely to hire the person who connects to his or her work, instead of the person who does not. If an employer is deciding to lay off one person over another, they are likely to keep the person who is passionate over the person who is not.

My favorite example of this is in hiring an attorney. If you had been falsely accused of committing a crime, which attorney would you hire?

Attorney A

• Does not belong to any special groups involving what you do, or your situation.
• Is difficult to reach on the phone.
• Does not seem that passionate about what he does and does not seem to take a sincere interest in you.
• Has held multiple jobs at different firms.
• Is very interested in golf and wants to talk about it a lot.
• Likes to collect cars.

Attorney B

• Is a frequent speaker on matters involving the wrongly accused.
• Is the president of the local bar association.
• Recently wrote a book about the wrongly accused and how travesties of justice occur every day in America.
• Admits to having few hobbies because he spends his free time reading about the rules of evidence and how they can be used to free the wrongly accused.
• Calls you early in the morning and late at night to discuss your case.
• Is always reachable.

A person who has been falsely accused will almost invariably choose Attorney B. The person who is here will always win over the person who is not. We want enthusiasm and commitment. We want presence.

Find Joy in Your Life’s Work–and Never Be Without Work

What You Will Learn Success in your career and life depends upon your mindsets. A good mindset lays the foundation for success and a poor one makes for job dissatisfaction, frustration, long days, and, can ultimately bring about failure. When you find what you love doing and practice it with passion, you are able to touch more people with your work and create much more value in the world. Don’t be influenced by other people’s opinions or society’s stigmas. Be passionate about your job and your career.

In my work as an advocate for people to find jobs, I insist that the people who work for me enjoy their own jobs, and this includes the recruiting team. I expect the recruiters I work with to thoroughly enjoy, appreciate, and respect the people they are helping to find work.

Everything we do is affected by our mindset. Your mindset needs to be in the right place with regard to your work. A good mindset is a foundation for success. A poor mindset makes for job dissatisfaction, frustration, and long days, and, ultimately, can bring about failure. This is why enjoying what you are doing, and enjoying it immensely, is key.

Many people cannot seem to grasp this simple but powerful perspective, so I would like to elaborate on it a bit. I think it is one of the most important perspectives one can have. It will change the way you look for a job and, if you really get it, it can really help you achieve success in your life and career. After my first semester at the University of Chicago I had a mandatory meeting with a counselor. I had gotten a 3.3 average for that semester despite taking a difficult calculus class and several advanced classes that had made me study harder than I ever had in my life. I was feeling pretty good about myself for getting these kinds of grades.

In the meeting, the counselor asked me what profession I wanted to go into after graduation. I told her that I was interested in going to law school. She told me that if I wanted to have a “shot in hell” of going to a top law school, specifically the University of Chicago, that I would need a minimum of a 3.6 grade point average. That meant my B+ GPA wasn’t good enough. I would need to score at least an A- for the rest of my time in college. At the time this seemed like an impossibility.

I spent several weeks that semester thinking about how I could achieve this goal, and I worked even harder than I had worked to get my 3.3 average. Then, it hit me: I would get As if I simply took classes that I loved and knew I would do well in. Over the next three and a half years, that’s exactly what I did. I took classes in anthropology that studied African cultures. I took a class where I studied my hometown of Detroit. I took classes where I got to study and write about the personalities of American presidents throughout history. I loved these classes and my plan worked. In fact, in my junior year of college, every single grade I received was an A, except for one A-. This was not because I was smarter than other people. It was because I did what I loved and I was enthusiastic about all the work I had to do. I absorbed more information, I read more in my free time, I wrote more, I talked more in class–in short, my passion came through.

During this same time, I saw other students flunk out of school or come close to doing so. Many students had parents pushing them to be doctors or business majors. These students took one class after another that they hated and in which they did poorly. I watched all of this going on around me while I continued to read about tribes in Africa, and to take courses about fossils and other things that interested me.

When all was said and done, I ended up with great grades and a real love for school. I ended up having more opportunities, job offers, law school admissions, and so forth than I would have had if I had followed the pack and done what I believed I was supposed to.

I think the world would be a much better place if everyone followed his or her passion. People would enjoy work more and success would be much sweeter. I know that my career and life would be vastly different than they are right now if I hadn’t chosen to do what I loved.

Several years later, as I was spending 12 hours a day in an office tower in downtown Los Angeles practicing law, I thought of this advice again. See, I did not love what I was doing at the time. In fact, I did not even really like what I was doing–not to the degree I knew I should. As I investigated options for other employment I spoke with legal recruiters, and, incredibly, that sort of job had major appeal to me. I liked the creative aspect of it. I liked the fact that I would be able to do research the way I wanted. I liked that I would be able to speak with lots of people. I liked that I would be able to write. I liked that I would have more control over how much I earned. I knew instinctively, deep down, that this job was something I could love and do forever.

I quit the practice of law, walked away from job offers, and started being a legal recruiter. In the beginning I of course had no income whatsoever–but I was pursuing something I loved doing. Despite having had a good salary as an attorney, despite the prestige, despite all of the work I had put into becoming an attorney, I knew that I would ultimately be much happier as a legal recruiter than I would ever be practicing law. I also knew that loving my work would make me a better recruiter, far better than I ever would have been as an attorney.

The hardest thing about this career change was that it was going against what everyone told me I should do. Leaving the practice of law disappointed my parents and made me look something like a fool to the other attorneys I was working with. My law school classmates could not understand my decision either. It was just not what people expected of me. It was, however, what I wanted for myself.

Sometimes you need to take charge and understand that when you love what you are doing it changes everything. We are naturally better at the activities we love, and doing what we love simply makes us much happier.

There is a final point I would like to make: When you find what you love doing and you practice it with passion, you are able to touch more people with your work, and you create much more value in the world. You inspire more people around you, and more people want to work with you. You also fulfill a higher purpose and discover a life with deeper meaning. No matter who or where you are, you can bring greater worth to the world and to yourself when you find exactly what it is that gives you joy. Success will surely follow.

For example, there was a woman who worked in the restaurant up the street from me, where I would often go to eat as a child. She was always so enthusiastic about her job, and just seemed so happy to be there. This woman was the best waitress I had ever seen, and it still stands to this day.

I imagined that this woman, at one time, might have had to choose from a couple of career options. One choice might have been to take an office job as a file clerk. If she had worked in an office, she would have the prestige of that office, a steady paycheck, and coworkers to collaborate and be social with. Her other option might have been the waitress job. Working as a waitress would mean she would not have the prestige of working in an office, she would be on her feet all day dealing with the public–which can be difficult, and her income would be heavily dependent on tips. Obviously, if there was ever a choice to be made, we know which one she took; she chose to do what she loved.

This waitress was so memorable because she would anticipate your every need, call you by name, smile, and make you feel very good for coming to the restaurant. In fact, the waitress was so good that many people probably came to the restaurant just to see her. As it would happen, I had a relative who was a waitress at the same restaurant. I found out years later that the waitress had made three-times as much money working the same hours as my relative. Clearly the waitress absolutely loved her job, and that is precisely what made her so successful.

Not everyone respected the waitress, though. In fact, I remember some people actually made fun of her. I wondered if she would have been as good at an office job, only because she had such passion for her job as a waitress. Some may believe that working in an office would be a better career than serving dishes at a diner. But who cares what other people think? You need to do what you love and be happy in your career, no matter what it is.

Find what it is that excited your interest and grab it by the horns. Don’t be influenced by other people’s opinions or by society’s stigmas. Be passionate about your job and your career. If you do this and nothing more, you will have more success than you can imagine.

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.

Never Stop Growing

Sir Edmund Hillary was the first man to climb Mount Everest. On May 29, 1953, he scaled the highest mountain then known to man-29,000 feet straight up. He was knighted for his efforts. He even made American Express card commercials because of it! However, until you read his book, High Adventure, you don’t understand that Hillary had to grow into this success. You see, in 1952 he attempted to climb Mount Everest, but failed. A few weeks later a group in England asked him to address its members. Hillary walked on stage to a thunderous applause. He then moved away from the microphone and walked to the edge of the platform. He made a fist and pointed at a picture of the mountain. He said in a loud voice, “Mount Everest, you beat me the first time, but I’ll beat you the next time because you’ve grown all you are going to grow… but I’m still growing!”

What You Will Learn Never stop trying to be the best that you can be. Each day is a new opportunity for learning and you need to follow the path of constant growth. Strengthen your weaknesses and improve on your greatest strengths. Ensure to make your next performance much greater and more effective than the last one. Focus on growing in the future and getting better.

I first read this quote several years ago and it stuck with me. I am not sure who recorded it, or why, but the importance of this quote to my life, the lives of my employees, and to you cannot be overemphasized.

I grew up in a small city outside Detroit to which I do not return often. A few years ago I had to go back, and in my few days in the town I visited gas stations, hardware stores, and other such places. Inside many of these businesses I saw people I grew up with working at cash registers and doing other, similar of tasks. Many of these people are the nicest people you will ever meet, and they are also extremely happy people. What struck me about the people working these jobs was that many of them had been far more intelligent, far better socially, and far more talented in many respects than I ever was. These were people I knew could have become doctors, lawyers, or anything else they wanted to be-and they still could. However, what happened to many of these people is that they stopped growing and stopped trying to be the best they could be in all respects.

Don’t you ever stop growing.

One of the most shocking things I saw when I visited home was a girl I had a serious crush on growing up. She used to be an athlete and someone who was very concerned about her appearance. She was someone who I remember as being so attractive and in demand that, from the time she was 14 years old, she was always dating men a couple of years older. What struck me when I returned home and saw her was that she had probably doubled her weight and looked like a completely different person. There is nothing wrong with being overweight; nevertheless, she was someone who at some point simply gave up on trying to look the best she could.

There is a positive side to this: she has the potential to be who she was before. There is nothing more exciting than having an opportunity to improve yourself.

You should never stop trying to be the best you can be. Each day is a new opportunity for learning. Your career and your life need to follow the path of constant growth. You want to get better and better at each thing you do.

One of the men I respect the most in the world is Al Gore. After he won/lost the election to George Bush, I (and many others) believed that he would simply fade into obscurity like most politicians do after leaving office. Al Gore was different, though. Several years later, it almost brought tears to my eyes when I saw him campaigning for his movie, An Inconvenient Truth. To me this was a huge comment on his character because it showed that he kept growing even after losing. I imagine that if George Bush had lost the election he would have simply returned to Texas. Gore was different. He kept growing and did everything within his power to continue growing. And he is still growing.

This is the sort of person we need to be in our careers. We need to always be looking for room to grow and get better at what we do. The more we grow, the more exciting our lives and careers continue to be. There is nothing more exciting than always growing in your career.

Some of the hardest things for attorneys to do are get a job in a major law firm when they graduate from law school and make partner at a major law firm. It is interesting to watch the race between attorneys trying to make partner. What generally happens is that there are some attorneys who grow and others who do not. Attorneys who do not continue growing typically do not get better at their jobs and eventually leave the practice of law. The ones who end up with the best firms and with the best jobs are almost always the attorneys who kept growing. This is how it is with everything: the ones who never give up and never stop trying keep growing.

When you drive down the street, you will see tons of businesses that are products of continual growth and reinvention-whether they are restaurants or department stores. Many people and businesses are content with staying small and never learning what it takes to grow and improve. Other companies keep growing.

All around you are businesses and people who will refuse to grow. Some of these businesses and people may be better than you are right now. If, however, you are always seeking to improve, grow, and move forward, you will eventually wind up on top. Do not settle for mediocrity. As businesses, we are seeking to grow and improve every day while many of our competitors rest on their laurels. Remember that past achievements are never enough because you can always do better.

A few years ago I drove by an open house in a very expensive neighborhood. It was the most expensive house in that neighborhood. I did not go into the open house, but the house was so remarkable that I asked my realtor about it because I was selling a house at the time. My realtor told me that it belonged to a couple who purchased this incredible mansion in their 90s. They had only lived in the mansion for one year before dying. Living in a house like that had always been their dream and, through years of saving, stock trading, and so forth, they had finally made enough money to afford the house.

That is an example of two people who refused to stop growing. Think about it: while many people in their early 70s were checking out and going to nursing homes-or dying-this couple kept growing and pursuing their dream. It is an incredible story to me.

You, too, should never stop growing. You can learn ways to get better and better at your job. If you have certain weaknesses, you can learn how to strengthen yourself in these areas. You can also work to improve on your greatest strengths. This is one of the smartest things anyone can do. Just keep getting better and better at everything.

A couple of years ago I went to see Anthony Robbins speak for five days. Prior to attending this conference, I was always kind of secretive regarding my profound interest in self improvement. I must admit, I love self improvement and have been pushing myself for as long as I can remember with one self improvement product or another. In school, if I became aware of a vitamin that would help me think better to get better grades I would take it! Today, if I hear about a good business book I will generally do my best to read it. I have thousands of books on different subjects.

What I realized at the Anthony Robbins event was that the majority of people there were among the most successful in society. There were surgeons, investment bankers, and numerous others who I did not expect to see there. I realized that most of these people were like me and also interested in continually becoming better and better. They never stopped improving.

When I look around at the people I have known in the past who have been the best at anything, what I notice is that they, too, never stop improving. All they care about is ensuring that they make their next performance much greater and more effective than the last one. This is not confined to Anthony Robbins’ conferences. It is seen everywhere you find the most talented people.

The past is over. What you need to do now is focus on growing in the future and getting better and better. Do this and you will always come out on top.

The Importance of Planting Seeds: My Experience With the Scientologists

“And when much people were gathered together, and were come to him out of every city, he spake by a parable: a sower went out to sow his seed: and as he sowed, some fell by the way side; and it was trodden down, and the fowls of the air devoured it. And some fell upon a rock; and as soon as it was sprung up, it withered away, because it lacked moisture. And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprang up with it, and choked it. And other fell on good ground, and sprang up, and bore fruit a hundredfold. And when he had said these things, he cried, He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.”—Luke 8:4-8.

What You Will Learn You need to plant seeds and make sure that the people around you are aware of what you have to offer. You can do this in numerous ways to insure that you are always there for the people who are your potential employers. Top of mind awareness is huge. The world is huge and you need to do everything within your power to stick out.

For several years I underwent a ritual throughout various suburbs of Detroit that year after year resulted in my dramatically increasing my income and customer base in the asphalt business. This ritual became effective year after year due to the power of “planting seeds” in my prospects’ minds. I have continued to use the power of “planting seeds” throughout my career to start businesses and expand various businesses year after year. When you plant seeds in prospects’ minds, they are far more likely to think of you when a need comes up in the future than if you do not. An extremely effective secret to getting a job, getting a raise and more is based on planting seeds in your prospects’ minds. In this case, your prospects should be the potential employers you would like to work for as well as your current employer if you are seeking more money or responsibility.

So few people understand the power of planting seeds, however. The inability to plant seeds is one of the biggest weaknesses of most people in the world–whether they are businesses, or individuals seeking a job or advancement. So many people out there are simply so short term in their focus that they are only looking for instant gratification. If someone or something cannot provide them instant gratification they are not interested. This movement between one form of instant gratification to the other is something that hurts businesses and people.

Yesterday I walked into a store called “Chrome Hearts” in the Malibu Country Mart in Malibu. I have been looking for a money clip for the past few years because my current money clip is getting near the end of its life. When I walked into the store a beautiful woman walked up to me and asked if she could help me. I told her I was interested in looking at money clips. She told me they had two sizes “small and large” and I told her I was interested in seeing the small.

“It’s $825,” she said.

“$825! Wow that’s expensive,” I said. There was no way in hell I was going to spend $825 for a money clip; however, I thought it might be something I could ask my wife for when we had our anniversary in a few years, for example.

“I guess not,” she said rudely. She then disappeared and completely lost interest in helping me and turned around and left me standing there. I was still interested in seeing the money clip but was extremely turned off by her attitude. I will never go into the store again. Had the sales person showed me the money clip, let me touch it and been nice to me I would have likely found my wife and brought her back and suggested to her this might make a good anniversary gift for me one day. Instead, I was completely turned off and turned away.

In my asphalt business, I had a tradition that I would always leave a brochure with every single house in the neighborhoods I worked in once a year. It did not matter if the owner was home or not, I always left a brochure. When they answered the door I also went through the same routine each year.

“I can help your driveway,” I’d tell them, my teeth gleaming in the sunlight, my khaki pants and white oxford shirt fresh from the dry cleaners (heavy starch), my hair slicked back smelling like mangos. In front of their house I would have my Chevy Suburban with its emergency yellow roof beacon twirling. This was real urgent. Sometimes people would rush outside and grab their children and hustle them inside.

“Is there a gas leak in the neighborhood!?” people would sometimes shout from their porches in alarm.

“No, but if you don’t do something about your driveway…”

I would always hand the homeowners a copy of my brochure. The cover to the brochure warned:

Less than 48 hours from now it will be too late to seal coat your driveway. We only come by once a year! Less than three months from now, the Michigan winter may kill your driveway.Call 1-800-SEAL-NOW and your driveway will be sealed in the next 48 hours. Guaranteed. Don’t let ignorance let you make a decision you’ll forever regret!

In addition to the brochure, I always included some helpful information about asphalt that I had written that year. It might be something about how to take care of your asphalt, tips about how to hire someone like me and more. For years I left this information at thousands of peoples’ homes regardless of whether or not they were at home. Easy year for almost a decade I performed the same ritual with the same brochure. In the first year of doing this ritual a lot of people had me do their driveways. After several years of doing this people actually would rush up to my truck like it was an ice cream truck to make sure that I did their driveways. They felt like they already knew me because I had been giving them information and dropping hints to them about doing there asphalt for years. I had been dropping seeds. By the time I stopped doing this business I had people practically throwing money at me begging me to do the work.

The secret I had been following was planting seeds. None of my competitors ever planted seeds like I did. Their seed may have consisted of a small advertisement in the Yellow Pages. By giving people useful information I was consistently planting seeds and by following a ritual I made sure that my potential clients also knew how to act.

I have managed and run a legal recruiting firm for almost a decade. During that time, the substantial majority of people who have become recruiters in the company are the same people I have placed. While I hate to say this, these hires have for the most part come from my ability to also plant seeds. On the few occasions when one of the attorneys I have been working with has shown promise to be an exceptional legal recruiter I have said something like:

“You should consider legal recruiting in the future. I think you would be really good at it.” Invariably, one or two years later most of the people I have said this to in the past have called me and told me they want to be legal recruiters. Some of them are subsequently then hired. This is all the result of planting seeds.

Another thing about the exercise of planting seeds is that by the time these recruiters come to me to discuss being recruiters they have already spent the past couple of years thinking about being legal recruiters. Consequently, they generally hit the ground running and are far more effective than the average recruiter because they have been thinking about working for our company for the past couple of years. In addition, they are more committed and better at their jobs.

Think about the times you have planted seeds in peoples’ minds and the results this has had. Think about the times that people have planted seeds for you.

Several years ago I was on bar on the Detroit River speaking with the older sister of a good friend of mine. She was depressed and talking about how she could not find a good boyfriend, how she had been through one bad relationship after another and other things. The girl was quite attractive and also very intelligent. At the time I would guess she was around 28 and I was around 18. I had no interest in her and she was already well into a full blown career and life. I knew that the problem she was having was how she was visualizing herself and that if she started seeing herself differently everything could change for her. I thought of the most effective thing I could say to turn her around and then I said:

“You do not deserve the life you are having. You deserve a life of country clubs, international travel, big houses, fancy cars and to be treated like a princess.” My thought was that this statement would change how she viewed herself and make her take advantage of her full potential. Unfortunately, however, this seed I planted ended up having an unexpected side effect. She started calling me and hinting she wanted to date me. She got drunk one evening and was hanging all over me telling me she wanted to marry me. Other stuff happened too and it got pretty out of control. I am still uncomfortable about the after effects that remark had to this day. The point is, however, that the remark worked and it inspired her.

When I am working with a candidate seeking a legal job I believe one of my greatest skills is planting seeds. When very good recruiters are deep into their work, they have a very good sense of where their candidates are likely to get interviewed and hired. I will start saying things to my candidates like this:

• “If you can get a job at this firm you will really have done something special.”
• “You would really fit in well at this firm.”
• “I think you are going to do the best you have ever done in an interview when you interview with this firm.”
• “They are really going to like you at this firm.”

This almost always works. The candidate I am dealing with ends up going to the firm I am promoting in their candidate’s interest. This is in all cases the result of planting seeds.

When I was 16 years old there were a bunch of advertisements running on television showing volcanoes (representing breakthroughs) and saying stuff like “Increase your IQ by 30 points–page 124!” The promise was that if you read a book called Dianetics by L. Ron Hubbard all sorts of miraculous things would happen to you. At the time I was incredibly motivated and worried about being able to get into Harvard College. This was beginning to look like all but an impossibility given my performance in chemistry, for one. To this day I do not know how I passed that class. In any event, I picked up Dianetics and read it. None of the promised changes happened and the book did not make a tremendous amount of sense to me. At the time I knew nothing about Scientology but was very interested in anything that could help me pass high school chemistry and get into Harvard College.

I am not proud to admit that I used to purchase clothes at Goodwill when I was in high school. One day I was in Royal Oak, Michigan after school and wandered out of the Goodwill with a sweater or something I had purchased for a few dollars. I came across a little Scientology store front that had a sign out front that stated “Free Personality Test!!” This was too much to pass up. Since I had also tried to decipher some L. Ron Hubbard recently in the book with the volcano on front, I decided to take the test. I went inside and took the personality test. As I was waiting for the test to be graded, I was taken into a basement, seated on a plastic fold out chair and shown a film about the evils of psychiatry. There appeared to be a family living in the basement and several children scurried out of the room as they prepared an old projector for me to watch the film. The film scarred the shit out of me. I still do not remember much about it to this day; however, I do remember something about a football player getting horribly injured and people saying stuff like “he’ll never walk again!” when the football player was unconscious. Sure enough, the guy never walked again after being treated by a succession of evil psychiatrists but did walk after being introduced to Scientology.

After some time the guy who had given me the test came down to speak with me and bring me up to his office. “Are you sure you read Dianetics?” he asked me.

“Yeah, I read it,” I said matter of factly.

“Well your test is among the worst we have ever seen. Your graphs are alarming. I will go over them with you right now.”

He sat me down and explained to me that I needed an emergency Scientology intervention because a bunch of psychological things were wrong with me. It must have taken him an hour to tell me how messed up he thought I was. Then he started asking me if I could somehow come up with $2,000. I needed something called “auditing” and a few courses immediately or I was going to crash and burn. He asked me what my parents did and if they would be interested in paying for all of the services I needed.

“How much is all this going to cost to fix these issues?” I asked him.

“Well $2,000 to just get you functioning normally and at least $30,000 to effectively address the issues.”

He showed me a couple of tin cans hooked up to something called an “E-meter” that they planned on using on me (if I came up with $2,000).

Given the fact that I was in the position of shopping for school clothes at Goodwill, I knew there was absolutely no way my parents were going to give me $2,000 to give to the Scientologists. Since I could not afford the services, I became interested in learning about the guy I was speaking with. I found it fascinating that he was living in a store with what appeared to be a couple of other families and was telling me I was screwed up. He told me he had read Dianetics while on a ship in the navy and this had changed his life. He volunteered to work for the Scientologists after this great read. Between periodically telling me about himself, he encouraged me to investigate other options for coming up with $2,000, such as selling my car. That was a nonstarter. While I was understandably upset with the results of the personality test, I knew there was absolutely nothing I could do.

I had nothing to give.

A week or so after this I received my first correspondence from the Church of Scientology. It was a brochure or a book or something. This was 1986. Over the past 22 years I have moved at least 15 times (more times than I can count). I have moved to numerous different states, lived in dorms in various schools, lived in various apartments and homes. Within a few weeks of arriving at these addresses correspondence from the Church of Scientology suddenly appears. They send me voluminous amounts of information and it just keeps coming–in 2000-2007 I received information from them almost every single day. While the information has slowed down recently, I am confident that they have communicated with me via mail thousands and thousands of times. They send me magazines, brochures, offers, pictures of L. Ron Hubbard and just about every piece of mail they probably ever printed.

At least three or four or my assistants have tried to cancel the mail from the Church of Scientology but they cannot. My ex-wife got so upset with all the mail she wrote them several letters and was at one point asking me to sue them when I was practicing law.

I do not have opinions about the Scientologists one way or another. I have actually known some who were good people and I am sure they do a lot of good for some people. What is so astonishing to me, however, is how aggressively they have been “planting seeds” with me for over two decades. This is an example of being extremely proactive. The more proactive you are and the more seeds you plant, the better you are likely to do in the long run.

What were the Scientologists attempting to accomplish with all this mail? While you would have to ask them, to me it appeared as if they were doing everything within their power to convince me that if I ever had a problem, or needed a new religion, I should think of them. They wanted top of mind awareness. They have succeeded in getting top of mind awareness with me. I am writing about them right now.

How is this relevant to you and your career? You need to plant seeds and make sure that the people around you are aware of what you have to offer. You can do this in a ton of ways. You can send people copies of articles you have written or read, that are applicable to them and many more things. The point is you want to insure that you are always there for the people who are your potential employers. Top of mind awareness is huge.

One example of something that can be very effective is after you interview with someone and find out something the person may be interested in, you can cut out a small article and send it to the person with a note that you thought of him or her while reading it. This sends a message that you care. Planting seeds is extremely effective and is something that helps people remember you. Remember, the world is huge and you need to do everything within your power to stick out.

You Need to Be Relevant to Your Employer

What You Will Learn It is essential to realize what business you are in. You need to sell yourself to the correct audience and know where and how to market yourself in the best way possible. You need to be relevant and understand the skill you are offering. You should understand your market and know what your customers want.

In the mortgage industry many jobs have simply disappeared. This has put tens of thousands of people out of work.  While there are many who manage to hang on in all downturns, for the most part, many people in the mortgage industry have lost their jobs.

People who lose their jobs in the mortgage industry generally have a couple of options. One of the most incredible options they have is to try and find another job in the same industry, because this is what they know, which is what many are doing.  They do their best to network, and email their resume out to every opening they can find in the mortgage industry.

“The job market is really tight,” they will tell you.

They may get an occasional interview, but they do not get the job because the companies they are interviewing with eventually realize they do not have the business to hire the person.  They may also realize there is someone out there who is more qualified.  The criteria for these jobs has become much more stringent.  Eventually, after weeks or months of looking for a job, the person may say something like:

“I need to wait for the market to pick up.  I simply cannot find a job.”

To illustrate further the current state of the mortgage industry, the headquarters of Countrywide Mortgage is located in Hidden Hills, near Los Angeles. As you might imagine, there are acres of buildings for Countrywide and other mortgage companies around this area sitting practically empty.  Not too long ago, these buildings were filled with thousands of people selling mortgages to mortgage brokers and others.  Now, most of these people are out of jobs. All around this area, businesses are closing and people are pretty desperate. In the early evenings, if you drive by these Countrywide buildings, you can see inside. There should be hundreds of people, however, in most cases you see no one.

Recently, I was playing golf with a friend who lives in Hidden Hills. When he arrived to play, he was very upset.

The night before, my friend had been invited to a small party at his friend’s multimillion dollar house. The friend was an unemployed mortgage broker who’d purchased the house when he was employed and doing very well. He’d been told the party was a social occasion. Happy to go, he’d shown up wearing jeans. When he arrived he immediately realized something was wrong – his friend was wearing a suit, and everything seemed a little  ”too professional.”  A few minutes later, he was given a brochure about some Donald Trump condominium going up in Florida.  His friend started showing a movie about the development and began telling everyone at the party if they “wanted in,” he could immediately assist them with financing a condominium.

Everyone was astonished. A group of people who’d been invited to a party were suddenly being encouraged to buy and finance condominiums thousands of miles away they’d never seen in their entire lives.  My friend got up and left the party upset he’d been suckered into a sales presentation.

While I have nothing against aggressive sales practices, what this story represents to me is someone who is holding on to a paradigm that no longer exists. While people may have been speculating on condominiums sight unseen years ago, this is no longer the case.  Here, the mortgage broker was doing everything he could to hold onto a profession and a life that no longer existed for him.  This example is extremely important to understand because it has a lot to do with you, your career, and what will end up happening in your life.

From what I understand, the mortgage broker, in this example, was on his way to losing his house through foreclosure.  His world was literally crumbling around him.  Like the man in the store, he was making a fundamental error so many people make: He did not understand how to adapt to a new paradigm.  Understanding your paradigm and what you do for a living is the most important thing you can possibly do with your career because paradigms are always changing.  The sun does not shine on every specific type of job forever.  We get comfortable with one specific type of job and believe we should always do this.

A couple of weeks ago, while shopping, I met a man who was working in the computer industry.  He told me he had made over $250,000 a year just two years ago writing software for mortgage companies.  Now, he was working in a store selling sweaters and shirts to men for probably no more than $12 an hour. 

“There are no jobs for programmers in the mortgage industry,” he told me. 

The man who was trying to sell mortgages and Trump Condominiums in Florida was in the business of sales. If he realized this, he would likely not be having the problems he is having now.  He could apply to every sales job available and probably easily get one. 

The man I met selling sweaters in the store was also in a business: The business of programming.  Instead of applying to every programming job available, he was stuck in believing he was a specialist in programming computers for mortgages and, for this reason, he could not find a job.

In everything you do, you need to understand what your basic business is.  Far too many companies and individuals fail to understand this.  They end up “going out of business”.  Some of the largest and most profitable companies in the United States used to be railroad companies.  These were the “Internet moguls” and tycoons during their age.  However, when trucks came along, none of these railroad companies entered the trucking industry.  Instead, they clung to the belief they were in the railroad business.  If they had realized they were actually in the transportation business, they could have started offering trucking and other transportation services to their clients. Because of their belief they were in the railroad and not the transportation business, many great railroad companies ended up going out of business.

In your career, it is essential you realize what business you are in.  You should not be blinded by the specifics of what you do and, instead, should understand the generality of what your specific profession in fact is.  This is the way to stay employed, and it is also the means to continual improvement.

W. Edward Deming gives an excellent example of a time when there were carburetors in all cars.  The people who made carburetors continued to improve their product.  Soon, however, fuel injection was developed, and everyone stopped using carburetors.  With very few exceptions, many very large companies that formerly made carburetors went out of business.  They should have realized they were in the business of finding better ways of putting the correct mixture of fuel and air in the combustion chamber of engines.  This is what the mortgage broker was doing wrong as well: He failed to realize he was in the business of sales.

Something similar happened to the makers of Swiss watches in Switzerland.  The Swiss invented the quartz movement; however, they failed to realize the gigantic impact this would ultimately have on their business.  The Swiss continued to make mechanical watches and market these even after inventing the quartz movement.  Eventually, the number of people making watches in Switzerland went from 65,000 to around 10,000 in a decade.  The Swiss failed to realize they were in the business of making watches and they did not take into account the needs of their market.

What you need to do in your career is the same thing companies need to do: they need to understand their market.  When you understand your market, you have the ability to provide your customers with products and services that meet their needs.  You and your career are a product.  You need to sell yourself to the correct audience and know where and how to market yourself in the best way possible.  You need to know what your audience wants and requires.

In 2001, General Motors released the Pontiac Aztek.  The car was voted the ugliest car in the world by the British newspaper, The Telegraph.  The vehicle was criticized many times in Steve McConnell’s book about software design, Code Complete 2: The Pontiac Aztek and the Perils of Design by Committee.  According to another commentator, Dan Norman:

In the mid-1990s, then-General Motors Corp. Chairman John G. Smale decided to bring the world’s biggest automaker a dose of the ‘give-the-people-what-they-want’ethic that’d animated Smale’s old company, Procter & Gamble Co. And what the people wanted was sexy, edgy and a bit off-key – in short, a head-turner. General Motors’ culture took over from there. Design would be by committee, the focus groups extensive. And production would have to stick to a tight budget, with all that sex appeal packed onto an existing minivan platform. The result rolled off the assembly line in 2000: the Pontiac Aztek, considered by many to be one of the ugliest cars produced in decades and a flop from Day One.

 

The Aztek represented all that is wrong with GM’s design process, that official said. The concept car actually did something few GM designs do: arrive before a trend — this time, the crossover SUV that combined the attributes of a truck and a passenger car. And GM had high hopes to sell 50,000 to 70,000 Azteks a year, putting Pontiac on the cutting edge.

 

Then came production, the executive said. The penny-pinchers demanded costs be kept low by putting the concept car on an existing minivan platform. That destroyed the original proportions and produced the vehicle’s bizarre, pushed-up back end. But the designers kept telling themselves it was good enough. “By the time it was done, it came out as this horrible, least-common-denominator vehicle where everyone said, ‘How could you put that on the road?’” the official said.

 

Sales never reached the 30,000 level needed to make money on the Aztek, so it abruptly went out of production. The tongue-in-cheek hosts of National Public Radio’s “Car Talk” named it the ugliest car of 2005. “It looks the way Montezuma’s revenge feels,” one listener quipped. http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000321.html

In an oval office interview in January of 2006, President George Bush said he believed General Motors and Ford needed to produce “a product that’s relevant.”  The idea of producing a relevant product is one of the most important things any manufacturer can do.  Being a relevant product is also something essential for your success, as well.  In a bad economic climate, one of the strangest things people do is try and continue being a ‘product’ that is no longer needed.  This is nonsensical.

You need to be relevant and understand what the skill is you are offering.  The worst thing you can do is not be relevant to the market you are serving.  It’s easy to be relevant when you understand what you are doing and what purpose you serve.  Being relevant is about much more than just getting a job, however.  Being relevant also relates to serving your employer with the skills they need.  You need to understand your market and what your customers want.

One of the biggest failures in my career was due to not understanding my market.  When I got out of law school, I worked for a federal judge who had recently been appointed to the bench.  My interest in this job was being brilliant and showing how smart I was, what a good writer I was, and how much detail I could put into opinions and more.  I did a very good job with the harder intellectual aspects of the work.  The judge I worked for admired my intellectual abilities, but his biggest concern was for me to produce work that was completely error free.  Because I was so interested in the intellectual aspects of the work, I did not always give him what he wanted in terms of error free work.  This was upsetting to him.  Because of my concern with the “meat” of what I was doing, and not the details, I ended up leaving this position after one year, when I’d been hired for two. Had I not left, I am pretty confident I would have lost my job.  I was not giving my employer what he wanted and, instead, was making up my own rules.

The next legal job I held, I was sought out for my intellectual insight into legal issues. You need to know your audience.

When you think about your career, how often have you made up your own rules?  You need to understand your audience.  You need to know you are in the business of selling a product to people, and you need to give them what they want.  You are a product, and your job is to give your audience exactly what it wants.  This is the way to get, and keep a job.

Focus on Other Geographic Areas to Get Your Job Search Going

“The median job search among those winning positions in the third quarter lasted nearly 4.4 months,” up from 3.6 months in the second quarter.

It’s also notable that 13.4 percent of the job seekers ended up relocating to take new positions.  That’s up from a first-quarter figure of 8.9 percent, but still lower than the share who relocated in 2006 and most of 2007.

 

Moving is stressful and expensive, and some people may simply be unwilling to take that step.  However, fewer people are relocating, no doubt, due to the state of the housing market.  Job seekers eager to move for the right job may find themselves trapped by an inability to sell their homes, and perhaps are even wishing they were renters right now.

What You Will Learn It is extremely important to relocate to an area where your skills are in demand. Employers generally prefer people with a connection to the area to ensure greater stability – show some sort of connection to the area. Do not convey to an employer you cannot get a job where you live – no one wants losers. To project yourself as a winner, you should convey you are relocating for personal long-term growth objectives.

One of the reasons it’s taking so much longer for many to find employment is that many areas of the United States have been devastated by the economy, and there are fewer jobs available in those areas. The troubled automotive industry has had a serious effect on the Michigan economy, for example. Regardless of the economic status of the area where you live and work, you may be in a position in which you should consider relocating to find a job.  If you are under economic pressure, relocating and getting a job may be a crucial priority for you right now.

Relocating isn’t always an easy decision to make. However, relocating for a job is perfectly normal and is something you should not hesitate to do.  This is especially true if you’re living in Detroit or another area of the country where your skills are no longer in demand.  Essentially, the entire history of the United States was essentially built around people who relocated here because they felt there were better opportunities.

For most of us, our careers and the time we spend at work take up most of our waking hours.  Considering this, you need to be focused on finding an area of the United States or the world where people are seeking and hiring workers with your given skills.

It is extremely important you live in an area where your skills are in demand.  Life is in many ways like a game, and so is your career.  If you were a fisherman, would you rather spend your career working in a small lake with a few fish or a large ocean with many fish?  The more opportunities, and the more competition there is for your skills in your market the better off you will be.  You need to put yourself where the action is to survive.

Several years ago I was working at a federal judicial clerkship job in Michigan.  In three months, the clerkship would be over and I needed to find a job.  Although I already had a job lined up with a New York City law firm, I wanted to get a job in California.  I sent a targeted mailing of résumés out to legal employers in California. I meant to send my résumés only to major cities, like Los Angeles and San Diego, but also ended up targeting several small towns by mistake.  I received several calls from law firms in small towns, and they all had similar questions:

Why was I applying to a law firm in a small town?

Who did I know in the small town?

Was I also applying to law firms in larger cities?

One of the potential employers from a small town firm called me and asked those questions because he was worried that, if I did not have a connection to the small town, I would simply leave if I did not like the job.

Employers want you to have a connection to the area if you are relocating, because they are concerned you will not have incentive to stick around. They get nervous if you are looking at employers in larger cities as well because they feel like you are less interested in them.  

The questions about why I was relocating did not come up as much in larger cities. Employers in cities like New York are generally of the opinion anyone would want to relocate there because New York is New York.  People in smaller markets are a little less confident.  As a general job search strategy, I would recommend you stress the fact you have a real interest in the company and believe it’s a perfect place for you based on your personal interests, as well as your future career goals.

Generally, employers like to hear you have close family in a given geographic area. If you do not, you may have a significant other or friends there, or perhaps you went to college or grew up there.  The point is you want to assure them you have some sort of personal connection to the area. Absent family or friends, you should focus on the company and your sincere interest in them.

As an aside, I want to bring up an important piece of career advice about applying for a position outside of where you currently live.  The employer receiving your résumé is going to wonder why you are applying there and not in your own geographic area. You never want to send the message you are unemployable or cannot find a job where you currently live.  Employers want to hire people who are “winners” and are employable in all markets. Therefore, you should never approach an employer by telling him or her that you cannot get a job where you live.  Prospective employers should believe you are relocating because of reasons related to your personal long-term growth objectives–not because you have been defeated in trying to get a job in your existing market.

In a down market, many people end up stuck with large mortgages and unsold homes. They feel saddled with this and cannot relocate.  If you are in a market that is getting worse and worse by the day, you may have to relocate before you sell your home. This is not something that you should be talking about with your potential employer, however.

An employer does not want to feel guilty you may be leaving an unsold home behind. Sharing this sort of information can also hurt you because the employer will suspect you have to return to your hometown to deal with the situation.  Keep such personal matters to yourself in your job search.  Never give them any possible reason to believe you are not their ideal candidate.

The Heller Ehrman Dissolution

What You Will Learn Litigation is an expensive and lengthy process, and should be avoided as much as possible. Lawyers need to understand that litigation is not always necessary and that settlement is what clients prefer. Lawyers should work towards saving their clients’ valuable time and money.

The dissolution of Heller Ehrman is an event that makes me quite sad.  The September 2008 article in the Wall Street Journal stated one reason for the dissolution was several major cases the firm had been working on settled, and therefore the firm now had much less litigation work on its plate.

I really liked Heller and the people there.  It was, in its time, a great firm to work for as a litigator.  With this recent news, what really burns in my mind is the idea that a firm could suddenly go kaput due to cases settling.

I have been involved in litigation several times as both a litigator and as the CEO of EmploymentScape.  In speaking with attorneys (outside counsel), I am always struck by how expensive they can make litigation. The work they do is often unnecessary or extraneous, and the goal of many law firms (and I say many, not all) often seems to be to get cases and start milking them for fees, until the client will no longer pay and/or the case settles.  Incredibly, what usually seems to happen with most litigation, after discovery and motions, is the parties settle and the resulting net gains or losses from the settlement are no different than if the parties had not litigated at all.

None of this is to say I have any issue with the judicial system or law firms in general. My concern, however, is when a law firm begun in the late 1800s like Heller Ehrman goes down the drain because cases settle, something is seriously wrong.  Law firms should try to avoid unnecessary litigation and to promote settlement.  Settlement is important, and what clients generally prefer.  Settlement does not waste valuable time and money in the way full blown litigation can.

I am reminded of a situation many years ago, before I was in law school.  I was at a high school graduation party, talking about a speeding ticket I’d gotten with my friend’s father, who happened to be an attorney. He told me a speeding ticket was very serious and spent about 15 minutes telling me all of the steps he needed to take to defend me–and then he got to the part about what his work would cost, which was over $500.  That was a good amount of money, especially in those days.  I walked away from that conversation wondering what would be the better outcome for me.  In the end, I paid the speeding ticket, which I think was $65.  No big deal.  Yet some lawyers tend to make small matters into big deals, always in search of those billable hours. This really does not suit their clients.  Nor does this suit the judicial system. In watching Heller’s demise, I wondered what its failure said about the firm and the way in which many law firms do business today.  I am left thinking maybe events like this will change the way we look at litigation and settlement.  I think this is a good thing, though the result for Heller Ehrman was not.

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