• They would have questions about the proper sorts of candidates to send to law firms.
• They would have technical questions about different law firms.
• They would want to know various company procedures and so forth.

I would happily share and teach all of this information; however, in the weeks and months that I would train each new recruiter, I really was never all that concerned with fundamentals. For example, I knew that the recruiters would learn about various law firms in due course. I knew that I could teach them how to present candidates to law firms most effectively. What I was most concerned with was something far deeper and more significant.  There was one thing that I knew would either make or break these recruiters and determine whether or not they succeeded. By the time each recruiter was done being trained, I knew and could tell many, many things. I knew if they would succeed at the job. I knew if they would last at the job. What I knew, all came down to one thing: Whether or not the person believed the job was about them—or was about others. The more the recruiter truly believed the job was about others, the better they did. “None of this is about you,” I would always tell people.  “It is 100% about others and has nothing to do with you.” Less than 30% of all the recruiters I’ve hired, worked on, and trained ever “got” this.  A few people understood this naturally (most do not). My training would generally hit the new recruiters with this message from multiple directions and in unexpected ways. I might have them read self-improvement books where this was an underlying (but not direct) message. Generally, sometime during the final week or so of the training, I would try to deliver them this message in a serious way. I might bring it up in the evening while we were sitting by a fire and there were no interruptions. I felt the message needed to be taken in, pondered, and slept on. The reason for this was that I felt the message was incredibly important and something that needed to be absorbed and fully understood. In fact, I felt the message was the most important career lesson the person would ever receive. When recruiters “got” this message, their career and life changed. They would very quickly start doing exceptionally well and making all sorts of placements. They would be referred to others. Their entire career would just get fired up in a real hurry.  People who understood and practiced this mantra almost universally did very well. The power of this message was so strong that two recruiters working together in the same office might have results that were 180 degrees different. One recruiter might have fifteen people interviewing at one time and be making placements at a rapid clip.  Another recruiter might be lucky to have anything going on at all—despite having access to the same resources as the other recruiter. It is all about the other person and never about you. What does it mean when I say people believe the job is about them? It means people are focused on their needs and wants.  They focus on things like

• How much money they make
• Working too hard
• Giving too much of themselves
• Whether others in a similar job are making more money than them
• How others in their company are doing compared to them
• How much free time they have
• Hobbies and pursuits outside of work
• How they are perceived by others
• Not being taken advantage of
• The prestige of other people they are working with
• The quality of their benefits

People who are focused on themselves spend a lot of time worrying and thinking about stuff like this. In fact, they generally spend just as much time thinking about these sorts of things as they spend thinking about their jobs and the people they are serving.  When someone is focused on things that have nothing to do with serving the people they are working for, they get predictable results. When a job is not about you, everything changes.  If a job is not about you:

• You take time to prepare an exceptional work product.
• You see things from another person’s point of view constantly.
• You think about the other person’s needs while you are working and not your own.
• You take the time to meet people and form alliances.
• You communicate with people in a way that they can tell you care about them.
• You write articles, give speeches, and do all sorts of things that people focused on themselves do not.

The world provides rewards (money, status, and so forth) in direct proportion to the value you provide. You will simply provide more value to others when you are focused on giving and concerned about the welfare of those you are working for. There are essentially three types of people and businesses out there: Those that over deliver, those that deliver what is expected, and those that under deliver. People who over deliver generally believe the job is about others.  People who under deliver generally believe the job is just about them. In your current and past jobs, you certainly have been promoted, let go, or remained stagnant based on whether you over or under delivered.  In terms of the businesses you frequent and like, the odds are very good that you are most comfortable with those which over deliver. Your personal success, like the success of most businesses, comes down to whether you over or under deliver. In my job, I speak with people who are unemployed and have lost jobs all the time.  I also speak with people who are incredibly successful all the time.

• The one constant I have noticed when speaking with the most successful people is that they make “over delivery” incredibly important in their work.
• In terms of speaking with the most unsuccessful people, they make under delivery the most important thing in their careers.

The laws associated with making money, getting ahead, and being successful – all really do come down to over and under delivery.  Most people who believe that a job is about others, over deliver.  Most people who believe the job is about themselves, under deliver. Do more than expected, work harder,  give more, and you will simply do better in life. There’s really no question about it. In your career, one of the most important things you can do is to get a reputation for over delivering as opposed to under delivering. Everything in your career and life—and how you will be known–generally comes down to whether you over deliver. You need to be focused on what other people want and need. Being focused on the needs of others and not yourself is crucial in any pursuit. I love reading biographies of incredibly successful people. I like doing this because studying the lives of successful people teaches me lessons that I can teach others about their own careers. Most biographies start out in the person’s childhood and then go from there. One of the most interesting parts of these biographies is reading about the work ethic of the people. The great successes are always are people who over deliver and are concerned about others.  They can see what other people want and could use and make this a priority. I also love reading stories about successful companies.  Successful companies also get the reputation for being focused on others and anticipating others’ wants and needs. To truly reach your potential, you need to over deliver–be focused on others and not yourself. THE LESSON You are rewarded in direct proportion to the value that you deliver, meaning that you have to deliver in order to reach your full potential. You will provide more value to others when you are focused on giving. People who under-deliver view their jobs as being primarily about them, while those who over-deliver see their jobs as being about others. Strive to develop a reputation for delivering rather than under-delivering.

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

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

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

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

“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.

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 months, 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 important. 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. Every 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 were interested in recruiting. 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 attorneys 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. THE LESSON You must plant seeds in the minds of others, so that they will be more likely than otherwise to think of you when a future need arises. In planting seeds, you are making people aware of what you have to offer; you  must make sure that you are ever present in the minds of your potential employers. Planting seeds is the most effective way to generate top-of-mind awareness, and ensure that the right people remember you at the appropriate time.

“Choose the highest motive to which you think your audience will respond. If the speaker feels it necessary to appeal to motives not of the highest grades he should see to it that before he closes he makes them lead into higher motives.” Professor Barker illustrates with Beecher’s Speech at Liverpool, in which the orator during our Civil War was struggling with a very hostile audience of Englishmen. He argued that if slavery were abolished in the South, England would find a better market there for her goods, but “he connected this appear with the far higher motives of mere justice and the good of humanity … What gives its significant to [this] suggestion … is that few men are willing to admit that they have acted from motives considered low or mean. Even if they suspect this to be the case, they endeavor to convince themselves that it is not true. In an audience each man knows those about him see what moves him in a speaker’s words and therefore he yields most readily to a motive which he knows is generally commended–religious feelings, charity, devotion to one’s country, etc. . . . Since, then, men yield more willingly to motives generally commended, and since unanimity of action is more easily gained when the highest motives are addressed, this corollary to the suggestion last made may be formulated: The larger the audience, the higher the motives to which an appeal may be made.”

Similarly, in James Winans’ 1911 book Public Speaking, Principles and Practice, he writes:

While motives are frequently mixed, we need not cynically attribute right actions to selfishness, ambition or fear of public opinion. The average man really intends to do the right thing once his sense of responsibility is aroused. While most of us let down a bit when not under observation, we have certain principles of conduct, duty, honesty, honor, courage and generosity, in accordance with which we must live if we are to retain our self-respect. … The moral is: Do not fear to appeal to the best sentiments in your hearers. Assume they are better rather than worse than they are. They may respond to lower motives, but may also rise gladly to a higher plane.

When you are interviewing with companies it is always important that you ascribe good motives to the hiring of you. One of the most common hires that I make is in the legal recruiting industry. The legal recruiting industry, like all industries, is an industry where people can either make a lot of money or not much money. Since recruiting is somewhat of a sales-type position, many people applying to the work believe that what they are doing is all about sales, “closing” and making money. In terms of the way that I think about legal recruiting this could not be further from the truth. When I was younger I remember running an asphalt business and hiring people in drug rehabilitation centers in Detroit and teaching them about work and how to work for a company. Many of these people had grown up on the streets and had never worked in their lives. It is a real source of pride that I was able to make an impact, no matter how small, in the lives of these people. This is something I feel good about to this day because using my spirit and the energy inside me I felt like I was able to bring light into the lives of many of these people. When I became a legal recruiter I believed that I was also helping people. I felt that I was helping the people who had played by society’s rules make the most of themselves and that they deserved to have the best possible recruiter working for them. I felt that the work I was doing held a higher purpose and that I could positively impact the world by insuring that the attorneys with the most talent and soul ended up getting the best jobs. This is how I thought about my job and it is still how I think about my job today. Now that I run job boards and other career services I believe that I am creating opportunity and work for millions of people. I feel very good about what I am doing. I justify my actions and my life in terms of what I consider a higher purpose. This is why when people come in to speak with me for recruiting positions, for example, they demean me when they ascribe to me ideas such as they will make a lot of money in recruiting. When people cut corners in recruiting I feel the same way about their actions. If people are just focused on making money and so forth they typically do not do well in our organization. I believe people need to be working for higher motives. I do not consider myself special or all that unusual. When it comes right down to it, most employers will tell you that whatever they are doing there is some sort of noble purpose in what they are doing. A corporate attorney may tell you he prevents companies from being taken advantage of. A gas station mechanic will tell you he fixes cars so people can spend time traveling with their families. A stock broker will tell you he helps people invest money so they can retire. There is likely some noble and higher purpose to whatever any company or organization is doing. My challenge to you is to always think in terms of what the employer you are interviewing with or working for is doing that serves a higher purpose. When you understand this higher purpose, speak in terms of these in interviews and in your daily work. This will set you apart from most people and will put you on a higher and different plane than others. It will also make you appear to be a better choice in most instances for hiring and promotion. Everyone wants to be associated with what is good and noble. Being this person will have tremendous rewards for you in your career. THE LESSON Like everyone else, your employer wants to believe that he or she is a good person who stands for something positive in the world. Therefore, work to ascribe positive motives to your employer when in interviews, and think of in terms of how their work serves a higher purpose. Speaking about your and your employer’s work in these terms will put you on a higher plane than others, and will associate both of you with good and noble qualities.

Do we know the poor in our own homes? Sometimes people can hunger for more than bread. It is possible that our children, our husband, our wife, do not hunger for bread, do not need clothes, do not lack a house. But are we equally sure that none of them feels alone, abandoned, neglected, needing some affection? That too is poverty. Mother Teresa: In My Own Words, p.27

To me this is a stunning insight into the nature of the human condition that Mother Teresa was able to develop out of her care and love for the poor. It all came out of one goal and concentrating on that goal. When I think of this passage I am reminded of all the people I know who may be well off but are unhappy inside. What can be done to help these people? How many people are suffering around us? How many people need a new job, a new career, or a new life and are allowed to suffer in silence. I personally find Mother Teresa’s words very inspiring to my own life goals. Mother Teresa spent a good deal of her time travelling around to the various shelters her missionaries were running.

She would go from one tiny baby to the next, and if she spotted one which was so frail or sick it seemed likely to die that day, she would wrap it in a blanket and give it to one of her helpers to hold, with the instruction simply to love the child until it died. What mattered to her was that no child in her care should die without having experienced love. One morning Mother Teresa placed one of these desperately sick babies in the arms of one of the lay helpers. The helper held it and loved it until finally it dies at 6 o’clock in the evening. She passed away the hours by humming Brahms’s lullaby. More than thirty years later she would still retain the memory of how that tiny baby, weak as it was, pressed itself against her. Mother Teresa: A Complete Authorized Biography, Katherine Spink, Page 124.

The Missionaries of Charity was an organization that ran homes for people who needed help such as people suffering with incurable diseases, lepers, destitute widows and mothers without husbands and others who could not care for themselves. By the time Mother Teresa died in 1997, the religious order consisted of over 4,500 nuns who, like Mother Teresa, were all dedicated to serving the ”poorest of the poor”. THE LESSON Mother Teresa is universally praised for her legacy of good works, having emerged from obscurity to worldwide acclaim. The lessons of her remarkable life, such as learning from past mistakes, choosing goals compatible with your values, and being flexible in the pursuit of those goals, can also greatly benefit job seekers.

Heller’s management focused on trying to merge with a bigger, stronger competitor, concluding that it was the only way the firm could stay alive amid continuing lawyer defections. At a shareholder gathering last spring in Colorado Springs, Colo., Heller’s chairman, Mr. Larrabee, said the firm had plenty of choices of merger partners. Last summer, Baker & McKenzie LLP, one of the nation’s largest firms, emerged as a serious candidate. But after weeks of negotiations, the deal cratered in August, partly because of business conflicts. Heller lawyers had sued many of Baker’s clients. A new suitor soon emerged. On Aug. 21, Heller gathered 40 key lawyers at the San Francisco Ritz-Carlton to discuss its potential white knight: Mayer Brown LLP, an 1,800-lawyer firm. The mood was upbeat. But another problem cropped up. Robert Fram and Robert Haslam, whose intellectual-property group was among the firm’s highest grossing, had said they were considering heading to another firm. Heller attorneys implored Messrs. Fram and Haslam to stay. If they left, some lawyers believed, the Mayer deal would crumble. M. Laurence Popofsky, a Heller lifer who was the firm’s chairman from 1988 to 1993, recalls telling Mr. Fram over lunch: “People’s pensions are in jeopardy. Employees are at risk….If you do this and don’t give the merger a chance, you will hurt an awful lot of people.” Mr. Fram says Mr. Popofsky and others tried to persuade him to stay. But his team, he says, didn’t want to join Mayer and then jump ship if they were unhappy. “We didn’t feel like that was something we were ethically comfortable doing,” he says. On Aug. 29, Mr. Fram informed Heller that he was leaving.

Here, one of the oldest and most respected law firms in the United States collapsed primarily due to the departure of an important partner.  The importance of having business inside of a law firm is paramount and of incredible importance for an attorney’s success.  The entire success of a law firm can hinge on whether or not it has business.  What this means is that the competition inside law firms between people seeking to be partners does not really have to be internal.  The only thing that the associates seeking to be partner need to do to guarantee their success is go out and get as much business as they can.  Indeed, their true success or failure is almost entirely based upon their ability to bring in business.  There are no internal opponents and no external ones either.  There is is a huge pie of opportunity out there (business waiting to be claimed) and all someone needs to do is go out into the world and claim this opportunity for themselves.  The attorneys engaged in brutal competition with one another at law firms all over the country would be well served to step back and realize that all they have to do is stop competing with the people inside their own law firm and go out into the world and get clients. You need to understand that you have no opponents.  Your success will largely be determined by your ability to go into the world, find commonality and make friends with the people around you.  Establish commonalities and do not look for differences. Using this one simple idea in business can have profound rewards. It can literally change your career and life.  You must abolish from your mind the idea that the people you are dealing with in your career and in business are your competition.  You must eradicate the idea from your mind that you even have any competition.  A quote from Wallace Wattles in The Science of Getting Rich is instructive in this regard:

Intelligent Substance will make things for you, but it will not take things away from someone else and give them to you.  You must get rid of the thought of competition.  You are to create, not compete for what is already created.  You do not want to have to take anything away from any one.  You do not want to drive sharp bargains.  You do not have to cheat, or take advantage.  You do not need to let any man work for less than he earns.  You do not have to covet the property of others, or look at it with wishful eyes; no man has anything of which you cannot have the like, and that without taking what he has away from him.  You are to become a creator, not a competitor; you are going to get what you want, but in such a way that when you get it every other man will have more than he has right now.

It easy to find enemies out there.  It is easy to be suspicious of people.  It is easy to not take extra time with people.  It is easy to find reasons not to be friends with people.  This is what most of what the world does.  This is what we are trained to do.  We look for differences.  We want to find how people are different than us and not the same.  This is a path that is not going to take you anywhere and will not help you.  If you want to experience the most incredible success you have ever known, if you want your career and life to change, you need to find commonalities between you and everyone you come in contact with.  People will open doors for you when they identify with you. Over the past several years I have watched Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen rise from nothing to become two of the most important and respected best selling authors of all time with their Chicken Soup for the Soul series of books.  Chicken Soup for the Soul was the #1 book on the New York Times’ best seller list for over 100 weeks and is one of the best selling books of all time.  Canfield and Hansen have made millions of dollars through the sale of these books, and have also done countless other projects related to these books. The publication of these books has rocketed them from small time to international stardom practically overnight.  I study success for a living so that I can share it with you and change your life.  I have been to several of Canfield and Hansen’s seminars because they typically have pretty good speakers and are somewhat interesting.  One of Hansen’s most popular seminars is his Mega Book Marketing Seminar, where hundreds of people spend three days learning how they can hopefully write and sell a best selling book.  Hansen has been doing this seminar for years and each year gets up and does a Power Point presentation about what a great marketer he is due to the incredible sales of this book.  Sometimes his partner, Canfield, gets up and shows a photo copy of a million dollar check he received from a publisher.  On the several occasions I have seen Canfield speak, he also always shows a picture of his house and tells everyone how it cost $5,000,000. I like these guys and they really do seem to have a bit of an interest in helping people.  Canfield is also featured in the movie The Secret where he talks about how he was able to make his book popular by landing an article in the National Enquirer about his book. Yesterday, I found some marketing inside a magazine sent to me called Radio-TV Interview Report and saw a testimonial from Canfield and Hansen.  Essentially, what this magazine does is allow authors to advertise the fact that they are available for radio and television ads if producers or anyone it interested in interviewing them.  The testimonial they put in this magazine really threw me off for a reason I will share with you in a moment:

We’ve done several things for marketing which worked well, and advertising in Radio-TV Interview Report was one of the most effective tools we have used.  When our book was first published, no one knew who we were.  But all that changed after appearing on hundreds of radio and television talk shows.  We averaged anywhere from 3 to 4 radio phone interviews a day for that first year.  We’re convinced that this ongoing barrage of radio and television publicity helped create the word-of-mouth necessary for our book to become a national best seller! Our ads in Radio-TV Interview Report helped us hit #1 on the New York Times best seller list, and we’ve stayed there for 100 weeks and counting! But none of that would have happened had we not been willing to do several interviews a day every day on stations large and small–a commitment we continue to do to this day.  We highly recommend RTIR whenever we advise authors and speakers who want to get publicity easily and inexpensively.

Despite having attended a few of their seminars, this was the first time I realized that they had grown their business so fast through advertising in this particular publication.  Notwithstanding, what is so interesting to me about this is that according to Canfield and Hansen, most of their success was due to simply chatting on the phone with various radio stations across the country.  This is no different than a major cause of the success I experienced as a recruiter or asphalt contractor.  When you just mellow out and do everything you can to start relating to people and connecting with them, a lot of stuff happens.  If you think about it, 3 to 4 radio interviews a day takes a lot of time.  In fact, this is how it looks like they spent the substantial majority of their time for at least a year.  The key to their success, then, was establishing affinity with others.  There is nothing standoffish about this.  This ability to connect with people rocketed them to having one of the best selling books of all time. One of the easiest ways to get a job is to establish lines of communication with the hiring personnel or people who work for the employer you want to work with.  Once you establish communication, having the people you are working with feel comfortable and develop an affinity for you is even more important.  Once you have achieved affinity and communication, then you are not only in a good position in terms of getting a job, but can excel in the new position as well. It is very easy for me to tell the relative health of companies and firms.  When you go into a firm and see people getting along very well, joking and having a good time, you are generally in a successful company.  The reason is because the people inside the company are communicating, and feel comfortable with one another.  When you go inside a company and there does not appear to be solid communication between people and groups of people, you are most often in a company that is in trouble to some degree. Having open lines of communication is among the most important thing you can possibly do, and is something that will consistently get and keep you employed.  Be friendly with everyone you meet. Stop looking for differences, and do everything within your power to find affinity with other people.  This will change your career permanently and take you to a far different place.

Jim Collins, a noted management theorist and a former professor at Stanford Business School, discusses the concept of the hedgehog and the fox based on Berlin’s famous essay in his book Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t. Collins notes his conclusions formed from Berlin’s essay by Princeton professor Marvin Bressler during his interview with him:

“You know what separates those who make the biggest impact from all the others who are just as smart? They’re hedgehogs.” Freud and the unconscious, Darwin and natural selection, Marx and class struggle, Einstein and relativity, Adam Smith and the division of labor—they were all hedgehogs. They took a complex world and simplified it. “Those who leave the biggest footprints,” said Bressler, “have thousands calling after them, ‘Good idea, but you went too far!’”

To be clear, hedgehogs are not stupid. Quite the contrary. They understand the essence of profound insight is simplicity. What could be more simple than e = mc2? What could be simpler than the idea of the unconscious, organized into an id, ego and superego? What could be more elegant than Adam Smith’s pin factory and “invisible hand”? No, the hedgehogs are not simpletons. They have a piercing insight that allows them to see through complexity and discern underlying patterns. Hedgehogs see what is essential, and ignore the rest. Do you have any fox and hedgehog stories? As a young attorney, I spent approximately one year working almost exclusively for a partner at a world class law firm who never lost a case. The partner also had the reputation for burning out associates very quickly. While I could spend considerable time dissecting how this attorney operated, the simple fact is the only thing that mattered to this attorney professionally was ethically winning every case he took. Everything else was superfluous. A case would generally start with this attorney being given a fact pattern which seemed insurmountable. These were the types of cases the attorney generally handled. The reaction of most attorneys would be to settle the case after a few short hours of research. But this attorney refused to give up. He kept pushing. He would question every single aspect of the case and the law. We pulled every legislative record necessary to determine if the law was being implemented the way it should be – even if there were 30-plus years of case law against him. He carried this fanatical focus and attention to detail to the extreme. This push could go on for months or even years. After numerous months of researching the seemingly inconsequential—and questioning the truth—something would emerge that enabled this attorney to win the case. It always worked that way. Another great attorney I know, who is considered one of the top lawyers in America, once told a client in my presence: “If I take this case, I will eat, sleep and drink this case. It is all I will think about.” This is the essence of the hedgehog as I see it. Any person or group of people who achieve greatness in any calling generally do one thing and are focused on doing one thing. They do it the absolute best it can be done. Many people and organizations go through their existence trying different things and pursuing different goals. Their thinking abilities in this regard are often flawed, in my opinion. Truly stellar law firms and truly exceptional attorneys also tend to be hedgehogs. The firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, for example, has made its name doing essentially one thing. Conversely, the great majority of law firms in the country have far lower profits, but work in numerous areas of the law. Wachtell’s profits per partner are also higher than any other similarly sized firm in the world. The top partners in the best law firms also tend to be hedgehogs who do one thing really well. They are also quite focused on their careers. Few of these partners probably dreamed incessantly about going in-house when they were practicing, for example. They focused on the here and now and being the best at what they do. When you search for a job, do one thing and do it well. At its core, the difference between people who are best at looking for and finding jobs can be related to the distinctions between the hedgehog and the fox. In order to really succeed in your job search, you need to be concerned about one thing and one thing only: Getting the best job possible for you. Everything else is superfluous. In order to do what you do well, you cannot do multiple things at once. You cannot look for shortcuts and you simply should not do anything to which you are not 100% committed. You need to focus on what you do in a strong, singular way, blocking out all distractions. Once you do this everything else falls into place. In order to explain the process of being a hedgehog, I would like to tell you about something I love–legal recruiting. At its highest level, legal recruiting is a very sophisticated and serious business. While the average legal recruiter makes less than $100,000 a year, there are a small handful of legal recruiters in the United States (less than five, I believe) who make well over $1,000,000 a year. These recruiters move around practice groups, important partners, some associates and are even instrumental in merging entire law firms. These recruiters can call managing partners of large national law firms and get through right away. As professionals, these recruiters are given a high degree of respect because they can influence the future of entire law firms. There is a contrast to recruiting at its very highest level, however. People go into legal recruiting for a variety of reasons. When I started legal recruiting several years ago, it was my perception that the great majority of legal recruiters were not bringing the high level of focus needed to truly excel in this business. As recently as 2000, what was once ranked as one of the top legal recruiting firms in the United States did not even have a formal office. Moreover, I would frequently reach my recruiter in the middle of the work day on her cell phone when she was doing trivial things such as buying a dress. There also appeared to be no organization in the profession and few legal recruiters even truly knew the type of work their candidates did. Most recruiters did in-house placements, law firm placements and would even place legal secretaries and paralegals. Some recruiters also placed executives in corporations. In short, these recruiters would do whatever they could to make a fee. When I questioned these recruiters about why they did this, their response was generally that they believed the money was good and they were “people persons.” This is not to say all recruiters are like this. However, for the most part, the legal recruiting profession has not benefited from the high degree of focus and organization that characterizes many other professions. In addition, I believe there is somewhat of a bias in this country—which is largely a product of the fact most attorneys are so solidly middle class—that makes most attorneys believe they must practice law to have respectability in society. Anything less would be extraordinarily wrong to these sorts of people. Accordingly, it’s not really a surprise that many legal recruiters went into the business feeling that they’d somehow failed in the practice of law. Indeed, one of the first legal recruiters on record went to an unaccredited law school in California and could not pass the bar exam even after numerous attempts. Accordingly, the job of a legal recruiter—even at its outset—was associated with failing. I am not faulting the way this system works. Indeed, this is generally how most of the world works. This same analogy could probably be carried over to law firms. Not every young attorney is good enough to get into Wachtell. Not every young attorney is good enough to get into an AmLaw 100 law firm. Some attorneys do personal injury law—others do not. This sort of class system is all around us and pervades the profession. The lesson I learned from talking to recruiters while practicing law is that very few were committed to practicing the art of legal recruiting like I had been taught to practice law. Far from being true advocates for their candidates and pushing their expertise—and questioning everything about the attorney job search process to reach true levels of excellence—most recruiters were simply happy to be doing something they enjoyed and did not regard as particularly taxing. When I started legal recruiting, I worked seven days a week at it. I routinely started work at 5:30 in the morning and worked until at least 10 or 11 p.m. seven days a week. I am often so happy when my candidates get offers I get choked up. This business has invested everything it has—and will continue to do so—into making BCG Attorney Search the best it can be. We have attempted to translate the vision of the way recruiting should be throughout the country. Being exceedingly focused on what we do, and what BCG Attorney Search does, is the only way I feel recruiting should be done. This is how the BCG legal recruiters think about their work. Doing our jobs to the absolute best of our ability is our single-minded obsession. This is the only thing that matters and it is something we take extremely seriously. Here at BCG Attorney Search, we practice legal recruiting the way we were taught to practice law. The idea that legal recruiting is a break from the practice of law is about the most foreign concept imaginable. A good recruiter has chosen the recruiting industry as his or her profession. It is not a safety catch — it is the focus of their career. For them, recruiting is not just a unique alternative to practicing law, but an alternative just as challenging and demanding as any in the legal profession. It is a place in the legal community to be innovative and to work at the highest level of the profession. It is this drive that pervades their work on a daily basis. To a good recruiter, recruiting is a powerful and essential industry in its own right. A good legal recruiter knows the market. In Los Angeles County alone, there are over 3,000 law firms. There are an additional 5,000+ companies that hire attorneys. These numbers grow exponentially as one covers the United States. In order for a recruiter to get a candidate a job, they need to know where the jobs are and where their candidates are likely to fit well. This is an extraordinarily difficult task. Indeed, the knowledge a recruiter must have at their disposal is profound. When you think about how most recruiters operate, you may wonder how a recruiter in Los Angeles could possibly monitor over 3,000 law firms. This is especially true if the recruiter also makes in-house placements. How on earth could a recruiting firm comprised of maybe just two or three individuals monitor all this activity? Meanwhile, firm names change, people leave their jobs, and so forth. Accordingly, the answer to this question is that most legal recruiters do not. Because most legal recruiters do not monitor the entire spectrum of the market, they generally monitor only a few firms. The firms they monitor are also, incidentally, ones with which you’re familiar. In addition, they also have a few key relationships. At BCG Attorney Search, we divide the United States into numerous regions and station recruiters in those regions. We believe it would be impossible for a legal recruiter to know what is going on in different areas of the United States at one time. To be good at your job and your job search you need to bring a singular focus to it. The lesson here—and the lesson of the fox and the hedgehog—as I see it, is you need to do what you do as well as it possibly can be done. This is also the lesson of BCG Attorney Search and our present and ongoing success. This is also the lesson you need to understand in your own job search and career as well. The more focused you are the more successful you will be.