Create a Sense of Urgency
March 13, 2012
When I first started selling asphalt repair services door-to-door, I heard one response an awful lot: “Let me think about it!” In fact, I heard this so often it became tiresome after a while. I could speak with 100 people in an evening and 99 of them would say, “Let me think about it!” The people were pleasant enough and understood the advantages of what I was selling, but they all wanted time to think about it before committing to the purchase. That is how most of us react when we are confronted with [Read more]
Do Not Be Influenced by Others’ Negative Opinions of You
March 11, 2012
I have kept a journal for years. Today I opened the journal and found a quote that I had written down on July 4, 2002. I had written this quote down because at the time I had just gotten out of a relationship in which the person I was with had decided that I could do absolutely nothing right whatsoever. At that time I was reading a self-help book about recovering from bad relationships, and this particular quote had really hit me with tremendous gusto, because I believed it really described what I had been going through. I was sitting in my backyard [Read more]
Plan for Success–Not Failure
March 9, 2012
When I was younger, there was a restaurant on Telegraph Road in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, that used to offer people a percentage off the price of their meals equal to a person’s age, on the person’s birthday each year. So, on your 25th birthday, for instance, you would get a 25% discount on your meal. On your 50th birthday, you would get a 50% discount on your meal. Not surprisingly, this particular restaurant was extremely popular with older people on their birthdays. In fact, elderly people came from all over town on their birthdays each year. I [Read more]
It Is Better to Be Known for Something than Nothing at All
March 8, 2012
When I was 20 years old, running an asphalt business in Detroit, I purchased a fax machine and a couple of business phone numbers, as well as some lists of companies and businesses I thought would have big asphalt parking lots I could work on that I got from a mailing list company. I then rented a loft apartment for the summer and hired a salesman named Jim, who was a career salesman in his 50s, to come into the loft and cold call businesses about potentially hiring me to do some asphalt work. “Hello. I am calling to ask you a question: Isn’t it about time you invested in getting your parking lot patched up and sealed? Your parking lot is the first part of your business that your customers see and set foot on. I’d like to swing by and give you an estimate today.” [Read more]
Bullies and Your Career
March 6, 2012
One of the guards was always incredibly bored and was therefore always looking to get into long conversations. My job kept me pretty busy, but one day I decided to sit down and start chatting with him. I was glad I did because it turned out to be one of the most interesting conversations I had ever had. The guard told me he had spent the past 10 years of his career sitting in police cars outside the homes of a few kids in the neighborhood where I grew up. These homes were within a few streets of my house. The retired officer told me that he and various policemen had been doing 24-hour surveillance of a few of these homes for “at least a decade, just watching who came and went.” “A couple of your neighbors were among the most powerful crime bosses in the country,” he told me. “They were being watched all the time.” The neighborhood in which I grew up consisted of quiet urban streets. Since the courthouse I was working in was around 100 miles from there, it was a real coincidence to find myself talking to someone who had spent 10 years sitting in a police car right down the street from my house. I certainly never saw these police cars or the police officer doing stakeouts down the street when I was growing up, and I never heard anything about it from anyone. The people whom the guard mentioned, with whom I had gone to school, all had Italian last names, and their parents had been rumored to be in the mafia. When I asked the retired officer what the parents did to warrant such massive police attention, he said something I will never forget: “Lots of stuff. But like most people who succeed over a long period of time, they were experts in bullying and intimidating people, and getting them to do what they wanted them to do. They are just grown-up bullies who are really mean-spirited.” This former police officer essentially saw the world in terms of bullies and the bullied. In fact, everything about the way the guy saw the world was in terms of people intimidating others, and people being intimidated by others. He was very short, and in listening to him speak I started to feel that he himself had probably been bullied when he was younger, perhaps because of his stature. The guard’s statement really stuck with me because at the time I was working in a courthouse, seeing all sorts of conflicts every day. I was seeing cases of companies being sued and suing people. I was seeing cases of bank robberies and other crimes. However, when I looked at most of the cases I was dealing with, I realized that most of the conflict always had a bully on one side of it. In fact, when it comes right down to it, most conflicts involve bullies in some way. Over the next several months I started looking at every case I worked on in a different light.
- I saw a case of a man who found a bum on the street and talked him into robbing a bank for him by intimidating him.
- I saw a case of a woman hurt in a giant convenience chain, in which the chain was “layering up” and intimidating her by dragging up her past, threatening her with malicious prosecution and questioning her motives.
- I saw a case of a company copying a very small competitor’s product and then making it incredibly difficult for the small company to sue, by making the legal process extraordinarily cumbersome and expensive for them.
- I saw a case of the government bullying someone that it did not like by taking away their property and making things difficult for them.
- I saw the case of a large company taking away the business of a small company by unethical means, and then making it incredibly difficult for the smaller company to fight back.
Criticism, Your Career, and Your Life
March 4, 2012
Throughout your career, you will encounter a series of so-called friends, confidants, and others who will come up to you and let you in on various things that “people are saying about you.” I am not talking about the sort of people who are happy to pass along good news; rather, I am talking about the sort of people who are mostly interested in passing along bad news about you, criticism of you, and more. There are people like this in every company and every organization, and the more you try to accomplish in your life and career, the more [Read more]
The Quality of Your Life and Career Is the Result of Your Habits
March 3, 2012
Every year on my birthday I receive phone calls and e-mails from various people. Many of the people I do not know very well, but they have been sending me birthday wishes each year for as long as I can remember. Some of them are distant relatives and others are people I may have been close to a decade or more ago. Like clockwork, every year I can count on receiving some sort of notice from these people congratulating me on spending another year on this earth. These people who are so good at remembering my birthday [Read more]
Concentrate on Your Product
February 29, 2012
When I was growing up, I used to spend most weekends with my father. Like most fathers I knew, my dad loved to watch sports. Football was always on during the season, and he always seemed most interested in college sports. I have always been amazed by college football because of the high level of enthusiasm that students, alumni, and others have for it. My mother went to the University of Michigan, my father attended law school there for some time, my grandfather went there, and my grandmother got a master’s degree there as well. My grandparents liked the school [Read more]
Do Not Tell Yourself You Have Negative Traits
February 27, 2012
Many years ago, I decided that I was not that good at math. This happened with seemingly good reason. I got an F in algebra in the ninth grade. However, I did not get an F because I was not capable of doing the work. I got an F because I never once did homework for the class—and was too distracted by other stuff during class to follow what was going on. I was a misbehaving, distracted, and lazy kid. I could get good grades in just about every other class without doing homework, but in math this was impossible. [Read more]
Choose Work That Fits Your Nature
February 25, 2012
For as long as I can remember, I have always sat in an office with someone else. For me, this is a useful way to work because various things come up throughout the day and as these issues come up, I want to ensure that I have someone to bounce ideas off of. I have shared offices with all sorts of people throughout the years. I once shared an office with a guy who was an extremely loud typist. He would bang on the keyboard all day long. He was also very loud when he spoke on [Read more]
