• ‘‘Sure’‘
• ‘‘Yes.’‘
• ‘‘Go ahead.’‘
• ‘‘Please do it.’‘
• ‘‘You’re hired.’‘
• ‘‘Great.’‘
• ‘‘Excellent.’‘

I was always paid and I never spent more than 5 minutes at each house ‘‘selling‘‘ and ‘‘closing’‘ the homeowners. Since the product I was selling was my labor, and the stuff I put on the driveways cost only a few dollars per house, my profits were great no matter what I charged. I went from doing one or two houses on a street each year to doing virtually every single one of them. My business boomed and I am confident I became the largest residential asphalt sealing contractor in Michigan almost overnight. Each night I would come home and there would be so many checks in my mailbox the postman would have then banded together with rubber bands. None of this would have happened if I had not developed the ability to ‘‘close,’‘ push homeowners over the fence and turn them from casual snoopers into buyers. This is about the ability to ‘‘close’‘ and get the sale. In your business the most important ability you can have is the ability to ‘‘close’‘–without the ability to close very little is likely to happen. You will be on the sidelines and others will be hired instead of you. It is easy to get in the door anywhere. Getting in the door, however, is only 1% of the battle. The most difficult thing to do once you get in the door is to close the sale and move the employer from a ‘‘browser’‘ to a buyer. In a poor economy, the price of things typically starts coming down. The reason for this is that stores and other merchandisers are doing everything within their power to ‘‘close’‘ you and get you from someone who may not purchase something to someone who will. A short time ago a local Ford dealership in Los Angeles discounted a bunch of new Ford Mustangs by around 50% to move them out quickly. This gimmick works. When I drive down the street in Los Angeles these days I have been seeing people standing on corners promoting incredible going out of business sales at various businesses, offering 90% off of retail price in many cases. Low prices are a very effective tool for closing consumers. One of my favorite scenes in the movies that highlights the incredible importance of closing, is from the 1970s movie, Kramer v. Kramer. In the movie, the protagonist, Ted Kramer, is going through a divorce and is unemployed. He wants to get custody of his son, but his wife is about to tell the judge in an upcoming hearing that he is unemployed and she should be granted custody. Ted has to get a job immediately. He first goes to an employment agency and finds the only job available in the entire city, but the recruiter tells him that now is not a good time to set up an interview. Ted fights with the man in the employment agency and finally manages to coerce the man into setting up a very quick interview. Ted manages to get a few minutes with some hiring personnel while they are having a Christmas party on the Friday before Christmas. He goes into the interview and knows this is his one shot. Here is the dialogue from the movie script

91    INT. OUTER OFFICE, J. WALTER THOMPSON -          LATE AFTERNOON          The large room is crowded with secretaries, junior          executives, researchers, editors, ad-men, etc., etc.          They all have drinks in their hands and there is a good          deal of kissing and general conviviality going on.          THE CAMERA TRACKS WITH ACKERMAN as he steps out of his          office, closes the door behind him and makes his way          across the room to MR. SPENCER, the Advertising Director.          At the moment, Spencer stands with his coat over one          arm and a drink in his hand talking to a very pretty          young woman. Ackerman approaches him, whispers some-          thing in his ear. Spencer shakes his head and points          to his watch. Ackerman says something else and finally,          with a look of weary resignation, Spencer excuses him-          self from the pretty young woman and follows Ackerman          back to his office. THE CAMERA FOLLOWS THEM. As          Ackerman opens the door to his office, THE CAMERA IS          ANGLED so that we can SEE past them, into the office          where Ted stands waiting.                                ACKERMAN                          (as they enter)                    Mr. Spencer, Mr. Kramer.                                 SPENCER                         (not wasting any time)                    So you're the go-getter. All                    right, you've got ten minutes.          As the door closes behind them, blocking our view, THE          CAMERA PANS UP to a clock over the door. It reads          five-fifteen.                                                     MATCH DISSOLVE TO:    92    INT. ACKERMAN'S OFFICE - LATE AFTERNOON          ON A CLOCK--which now reads five twenty-two. THE CAMERA          PULLS BACK TO REVEAL Spencer, now sitting in Ackerman's          chair, his feet on Ackerman's desk. Ted has just          finished his pitch.                                SPENCER                          (sipping his drink)                    That's very interesting, Mr.                    Kramer. I must say, it's very                    interesting. Let me think about                    it. I'll let Jack...                          (indicating Ackerman)                    ...know and he'll get in touch                    with you.          Spencer gets to his feet, starts to retrieve his coat.          ON TED--as he decides to take a gamble.                                TED                    Excuse me, I believe you said                    I had ten minutes.          ON SPENCER--almost at the door, looking around.                                SPENCER                    Well?          ON TED--checking his watch.                                TED                    That means I've got two minutes                    left. I understand you're paying                    twenty-five.          Spencer nods.                                TED                          (a deep breath, then                           a real huckster)                    All right, I'll tell you what                    I'm gonna do--I'll take the job                    at twenty-two-five. Now, that's                    twenty-five hundred less than                    you're offering. The only thing                    is, you have to say yes right                    now. Not tomorrow. Not next                    week. Not after the holidays.                    It's worth it to me for a                    yes right now and I'll take                    twenty-five hundred less.          There is a long beat of silence as Spencer and Ackerman          look at one another. They were clearly not prepared          for this.                                TED                          (watching them)                    Today only. One day only.                    Twenty-two five.                                SPENCER                    Mr. Kramer, can we talk privately                    for a moment?                                TED                    Certainly.                                                     CUT TO:    93    OUTER OFFICE - LATE AFTERNOON          ON TED--as he steps out of Ackerman's office, sits down.          Now, all of the fear, all of the anxiety that he has          been fighting down comes welling up. What if he pushed          too hard? What will he do if he doesn't get a job?          If Ted Kramer could fall to his knees and pray, he          would.          CROSS-CUT WITH THE CHRISTMAS PARTY-- that swirls around          him. We notice in particular, one very pretty young          woman flirting with a number of men. She is wearing          a dress with straps, one of them has broken and she          has patched it with a piece of masking tape.          Finally the door to Ackerman's office opens and he          steps out.                                ACKERMAN                    Mr. Kramer?          Ted jumps to his feet, starts into the office.                                                     CUT TO:    94    INT. ACKERMAN'S OFFICE - LATE AFTERNOON          ON SPENCER--He looks at Ted carefully for a long time,          then:                                SPENCER                          (grins)                    Welcome aboard, Mr. Kramer.          C.U. TED--There is an instant of relief, then, with          astounding cool:                                TED                    Well, gentlemen, I'm pleased                    to be with you.          ANOTHER ANGLE--as they shake hands, say their good-          byes. THE CAMERA TRACKS WITH TED as he makes his way          through the Christmas party that is still going strong.          Then, suddenly, as he passes the very pretty woman we          noticed earlier, he turns and kisses her.

This is one of my favorite scenes from the movie because it shows the absolute power of ‘‘closing’‘ in getting a job. In this particular example Ted used money to close. He also used the power of a deadline. This is similar to what I did in the asphalt business by telling the homeowners they had to make a decision ‘‘right now’‘ and not later. The ability to pressure people to make decision now, and not later, is one of the most important things you can do in ‘‘closing.’‘ However, it is not something that is always going to work in getting a job like it did with Ted. I would like to tell you a quick story about how I once hired someone and how this person ‘‘closed’‘ me to get a job. It is an unusual story but it is something that taps into something that I believe is one of the more powerful methods out there of ‘‘closing’‘ to get a job. I used to work in downtown Los Angeles and worked in a building called the Oviatt Building, which was directly across the street from the Los Angeles Athletic Club. The Los Angeles Athletic Club is a nice club, however, anyone can join for the most part. I believe at the time it cost $500 to join the club and then cost around $100 a month to keep your membership. This is in contrast to several other ‘‘downtown’‘ social clubs which could cost $30,000 or more to join and sometimes require years of evaluation and references from other members in order to be accepted. I was perfectly happy with the Los Angeles Athletic Club but the longer that I was around people in Los Angeles and got familiar with the scene downtown, the more I realized there was a giant pecking order among clubs. In fact, the people who were from the oldest families and the more prestigious people in terms of their professional accomplishments and so forth tended to belong to these more prestigious clubs. The situation was compounded by the fact that you had to be invited to the more prestigious clubs by a current member, then they introduced you to current members and then a board would vote on you after a certain length of time. One day I had been with a recruiter of ours from Texas and we had walked into one of the more prestigious clubs to see what it was like and how to join. We were kicked out of the club and they threatened to call the police since we had come in from off the street. It was at that point I realized that there was an entire subculture in my midst of extremely private and exclusive clubs in downtown Los Angeles. They were far different than the Los Angeles Athletic Club. One day I was interviewing a man a few years older than me for a position in our company and the interview ended about 5:00 pm. The man was from an old waspy sort of Los Angeles family and was pretty classy and well spoken in all respects. Generally, if an interview ended around 5:00 p.m. I would take someone out for drinks or to dinner, but on this occasion I simply asked the man if he had plans. He told me he was going to his club to exercise and I asked him which club. He informed me that it was the same club that I had been kicked out of with the recruiter from Texas just a few months previously. He then did something extremely smart: ‘‘Would you like to come to the club with me and have a look around?’‘ he asked. This is something I was definitely interested in. He took me to the club and then proceeded over the next few weeks to introduce me to other members. In the process, I ended up hiring him. While he was very qualified for the job I hired him for at the time, I am not sure if from an economic standpoint he was someone that made sense for me to hire. He was a great guy, but at that point the company simply was not at the level where it needed him. In retrospect, and this is a sad thing to say, I think a part of me hired him because I had a desire to belong to his group which I had been an outsider of previously. This brings me to you and ‘‘closing’‘ and getting a job. When someone is hiring you or making a decision about whether or not they should hire you, one of the things they are always asking themselves is ‘‘What’s In It For Me’‘–or WIFM. You need to look at getting hired and getting a job from your perspective, and from the perspective of the person who is doing the hiring. I once heard a well known copywriter, Ben Mack, say something along these lines. I wrote this down so these are probably not his exact words, but I wanted to share them with you because they are so powerful: People will follow you anywhere to the extent you encourage their dreams, justify their failures, allay their fears, confirm their suspicions, and help them throw rocks at their enemies. For the past several years, a great deal of my time has been spent interviewing and working with the very best-educated attorneys throughout the United States. One of the things you will find in the resumes of attorneys who went to law school from the 1990s onward is that, if they went to most of the top 10 law schools, they generally have an extreme amount of liberalism in their background. By this I mean they are extremely liberal politically and were involved in very liberal organizations in college. They generally were the head of these liberal organizations. Why this is relevant is due to the fact that most of the administrators and admissions officers at top law schools around the United States are extremely liberal as well–I do not know why this is, but it just is. I know this because I have met most of them. It probably has something to do with the fact that a good portion of these admissions officers were student activists during Vietnam. If the admissions officers are young, their predecessors were probably activists during the 70s and hired their replacements based on having similar views. When these liberal admissions officers are making admissions decisions for top law schools they are faced with an overwhelming number of highly qualified applicants. Accordingly, they need to ‘‘look beyond the numbers’‘ when they are making admission decisions. What I believe happens is that they do everything they can to admit people who share their same ultra liberal views and this is what their ‘‘looking beyond the numbers’‘ means. Admitting ultra liberal students:

• Encourages their dreams of a liberal society
• Helps confirm their belief that social action is necessary
• Helps them ‘‘throw rocks’‘ at their conservative enemies.

These are the people who ultimately ‘‘get the job’‘ and get into many of the best law schools. This same thing also occurs at most top colleges throughout the United States. Admissions officers are seeking to admit the most liberal people they can among a pool of similarly highly qualified candidates. I once worked for a very conservative federal judge. Most of the people that he hired to work for him were also extremely conservative. I once worked in the office of a law firm where almost everyone was the Catholic religion. What ends up pushing many employers over the fence is a powerful group affiliation. Why does this occur and what does this mean for your job search? People who are offering you a job want to hire people who they believe are part of the same group as them and confirm the way they feel about the world. This is something that is incredibly important for your potential employers and they will be more likely to hire you, and you will be more likely to ‘‘push them over the fence’‘ and close the deal, if you are able to identify with a particular group or cause that is important to an employer. When I was in high school I remember being invited to a college to spend the night there as a prospective student. Something very strange happened when one of the hosts (who was a college student) came up to me and said: ‘‘You seem too white bread and boring. This school wants people with passion.’‘ Actually, I am the opposite, but I was acting very subdued because that is what I thought it was going to take to fit in. When you are yourself and have passion one way or another, that is something that often closes the deal. The student who told me I was ‘‘white bread’‘ was right in many respects because he was pointing out that the more normal we seem the less likely we are to influence people one way or another. Pushing an employer over the fence to make a hiring decision is no easy thing to do. There are a million closing techniques that I could write about, and a discussion over every closing technique could compose a 1,000 page book. I think you have the ability to close because we all do. Your ability is instinctual. What you need to do is tap into your instinctual closing ability and push employers over the fence to make them hire you. You need to push employers that little extra bit to ensure you get the job. Anyone can go out on an interview, but only the most talented can actually close the deal.

• On one hand, the culture of Athens left a legacy of art, drama, architecture, philosophy, the enjoyment of wealth and opulence, the idea of a governmental democracy and a strong navy.
• On the other hand, the government of Sparta left a legacy of asceticism, military supremacy on land and oligarchy (rule by a few).

These two societies fought repeatedly between the years of 500 BC and 350 BC. Their clash was a fight between two civilizations in the fullest sense. Each believed that their society and their way of doing things was the correct way. They fought in different ways and they ran their societies in different ways. Most of what we know about the Spartans comes from the writings of the Athenians, because the Athenians were the ones who spent their time writing and thinking. And since the Athenians did not like the Spartans, the writing is somewhat biased. I believe, and have always believed, that being a successful job seeker requires you to be more of a Spartan than an Athenian. In fact, I would propose to you today that a great deal of what is wrong with our current economy is due to many of us approaching our careers and our jobs more like an Athenian would than a Spartan would. I have been witnessing what appears to be a decline in a solid work ethic, job finding skills and the ability to do good work in the United States since I have been a young child. It seems to me that this decline is just getting worse and worse. Most people use all their sick days each year, even if they are not sick. Many people who are not working spend years unemployed and refuse to take a job unless it pays as much as their last one. In the automobile industry, unions have contributed to a slow death among American automobile companies by demanding more and more benefits and less and less work. Our government is bailing out companies and banks when they cannot make a profit. Our leaders are intellectuals with no experience running armies or groups. Worst of all, there is something developing in this country where we reward people for making mistakes. For example, between 2000 and 2005 hundreds of thousands of Americans made an incredible amount of money buying and selling houses. Now that the economy has started to slow down and they are no longer making money, we are stepping in to fix all of this. It is like a child running back to their parent for help. Our health care costs are incredibly high compared to other cultures. The people of our country are very unhealthy and do not watch their diets. Our highest paid workers in the law and other disciplines form communities online where they spend more time complaining about what they are making than appreciating what they have. Our jobs in this country have begun migrating to places where people can do them more cheaply and are hungrier for work. With manufacturing, it happened already with jobs migrating to China. In the information technology sector our jobs are going to places like India. Our country is getting fat, lazy and developing a massive sense of entitlement. We are turning into intellectuals, as opposed to soldiers. Our children spend time playing video games and not learning. Our national test scores are going down on an almost annual basis. We are innovators in many sectors, but something is changing. We have a sense of entitlement about what we deserve and yet we are not delivering. Much of the success we have experienced in the recent past has been the result of financial chicanery and financial manipulation. The cultural icons of our youth are other kids who have never worked. Some of our most popular shows at this point in time are of people who are not even required to memorize lines. Instead, a camera follows around young adults on shows such as The Hills, as they go on dates and socialize. Our country spends more than it saves. Our government has a deficit and most households do as well. There is something going on in this country that is more “Athens” than it is “Sparta,” and it is dragging us down. I know there is not a lot you can do about what is going on–and I know you may not agree with me as well. However, what you can do personally is be more “Sparta” than “Athens,” and being more “Sparta” than “Athens” is something that can help you reap incredible rewards in your career. As I will discuss below, being more “Sparta” than “Athens” will enable you to: (1) get a job more quickly, (2) be more effective in your existing job and (3) survive in all economic conditions. In ancient Greece, Sparta had the most feared military force there was. The Spartan soldier was, and still is, legendary. A Spartan soldier’s training began at birth and the Spartan soldiers never lost a battle in the conflicts that waged between the small city-states of ancient Greece. When a baby was very young, it was tested for weakness and deformity. Babies were bathed in wine shortly after being born by their mother. The babies that survived the bathing were brought by their fathers before a governing body of Sparta (a council of elders known as the Geousia). Babies that seemed as if they would be unlikely to become strong soldiers, or who were considered “puny”, were thrown in a gorge to die. (If a baby made it past this stage and died in another manner later on, they were not even allowed a headstone. The only Spartans who were allowed headstones were those of Soldiers who died in battle where Sparta was victorious, and women who died in childbirth or a divine office.) For those who were allowed to live, the training of the Spartan solider was nonstop and savage. Spartan boys began formal military training at the age of seven in what was called the Agoge system. The boys lived communally, and were given grueling physical training and learned to work with weapons at a young age. Men could not not live with their families until they left active military service at the age of the thirty (Spartan men remained in the reserves until the age of sixty). Plutarch, a Greek historian and essayist, wrote that for many Spartan soldiers going to battle was a welcome relief from the grueling training: “For the Spartans, actual war was a holiday compared to their tough training.” What is so significant to me about this early aspect of Spartan training, is the incredible focus that the young were forced to develop at a young age. Their lives were all about their jobs and they were toughened and taught to be “warriors”. Instead of being coddled by schools, they were toughened by schools. They were pushed both physically and mentally in these schools. The emphasis in the schools was not on being academic. For example, while Spartan boys studied reading, music and and writing, the boys were punished if they failed to answer questions laconically (i.e., briefly). The idea for Spartans was that they were to be warriors who were educated but did not sit around debating the nature of good and evil, for example. The idea of intellectualism and debate was not something that was part of Spartan society. A Spartan was trained as a soldier whose job it was to get something done. While I am not sure I personally would be all that comfortable with the Spartan educational system, what makes it so interesting to me is that it emphasized utility and action over the converse. The idea that was being taught was that focus is what is important. By being focused, you are much more likely to reach your point than by talking around the truth. The Spartans’ educational system was geared towards this focus. In modern society, our academics will traditionally sit around debating this or that. Our best students are often those skilled in the art of giving long-winded answers. Lawyers spend a great deal of time debating this or that, and this makes up a giant portion of what goes on in our culture. Students in school are coddled and given the sorts of learning environments that “nurture” them. While I am not going to debate this in great detail, I would go so far as to argue that the nurturing of our modern educational systems gives people in the United States a certain sense of entitlement about what society owes them, instead of what they owe society. This coddling ends up instilling a sense of entitlement that may go on in peoples’ lives forever, and continually put them in the role of being takers rather that doers. This is not something that would have happened in Sparta. In Sparta, failure was also something that was not allowed. According to Thucydides, when Spartan men were going off to war their mothers, wives, or a woman of significance in their lives would present them with their shield and the statement “With this, or upon this.” This meant that the solider could only return to Sparta having won the battle, with their shield in hand (“with this”) or dead (“upon this”). Spartans who returned to Sparta without their shield were presumed to have thrown it at their enemies and then fled–something that was punishable by death or banishment from Sparta. The entire Spartan culture was one that enforced incredible discipline upon its soldiers. For example, one Spartan legend discussed a man who ran away from battle and back to his mother. Instead of comforting him, the mother chased him around the streets hitting him with sticks. In our current society, failure is allowed. While there is nothing wrong with failure, it should never be an attractive option. Celebrities and well known figures repeatedly go into rehab for drugs and alcohol. We quit jobs if we do not feel we are being treated as well as we could be. We coddle people for failing and give them “easier” tasks to do if one task seems too difficult for them. Our government steps in if people make horrible economic choices and does not allow them to fail. We pay people unemployment who get fired from their jobs. We bail out companies with government money that are making bad products that no one wants to buy. When a Spartan went off to battle they had no choice but to succeed. There would be no warm homecoming for them if they failed. Consequently, the Spartans did not fail and always won their battles among the city states of ancient Greece. According to one commentator:

The life of a Spartan male was a life of discipline, self-denial, and simplicity. The Spartans viewed themselves as the true inheritors of the Greek tradition. They did not surround themselves with luxuries, expensive foods, or opportunities for leisure. And this, I think, is the key to understanding the Spartans. While the Athenians and many others thought the Spartans were insane, the life of the Spartans seemed to hark back to a more basic way of life. Discipline, simplicity, and self-denial always remained ideals in the Greek and Roman worlds; civilization was often seen as bringing disorder, enervation, weakness, and a decline in moral values. The Spartan, however, could point to Spartan society and argue that moral values and human courage and strength was as great as it was before civilization. Spartan society, then, exercised a profound pull on the surrounding city-states who admired the simplicity, discipline, and order of Spartan life.

Sparta’s emphasis on military supremacy and a simple lifestyle was the major emphasis behind Plato’s book, The Republic, which was one of the first attempts to formulate an ideal community. Was Sparta ideal? In many ways I believe it was. In our current society everything is just far too complicated. Our emphasis on leisure and eating has made us a nation that is predominantly overweight. Our ability to manufacture goods the world wants to buy continues to decrease. As a group, we do not have discipline. Our military is not valued and held in esteem by many of our highest leaders. We surround ourselves with luxuries and more emphasis seems to be put on this for many of us than on the value of our work. In contrast to Sparta, Athens was a very different society and far less rigid and militaristic. In Sparta, the emphasis of the society was on the military and in Athens the largest emphasis was upon culture. Some very important accomplishments were made by Athenians in science, art, philosophy and other disciplines. For example, the philosophers Plato, Socrates, Aristotle and the playwrights of Euripides, Aristophanes, Aeschculus all lived during Athens’ golden age in the fifth century BC. Athenians believed that they were culturally superior to the Spartans. They enjoyed luxuries and foods from all over their empire. The homes of wealthy Athenians were very nice and had inner courtyards. A good description of Athens also comes from Pericles famous funeral oration:

Further, we provide many ways to refresh the mind from the burdens of business. We hold contests and offer sacrifices all the year round, and the elegance of our private establishments forms a daily source of pleasure and helps to drive away sorrow. The magnitude of our city draws the produce of the world into our harbor, so that to the Athenian the fruits of other countries are as familiar a luxury as those of his own.

In contrast, Spartan men were taught to get along with almost nothing. Spartan citizens were not permitted to own gold or other luxuries. These differences between the Spartans and Athenians remind me of a conflict I see today all around me. There are people who talk a lot about what they are going to do and read a lot about what others are doing and have done, and there are people out there doing things and actually getting work done. Which are you? I would encourage you to be on the side of action, self denial and create effective contribution, rather than on the side of those who simply talk and do very little. One of the greatest conflicts I have personally witnessed in working with thousands of job seekers over the years has been a similar conflict–there are job seekers who are Spartans and there are job seekers who are Athenians. The Spartans are always the more successful in the long run. When I was around 18 years old my parents stopped giving me money completely. I did not have a traditional home to come home to where parents cooked and looked after me, either. Without any money coming in and expenses that included car maintenance, gas for my car, clothes, books for school and other essentials I was put in a position where I had to work. While I resented my parents for their personal situation which put me in this role at the time, it was something that I ultimately came to appreciate as I got into my 30s because I realized how much more scrappy it made me compared to others. In ancient Sparta, the boys were intentionally underfed so they would always be hungry and so they would develop the skill of being able to steal food. Here, without any money coming in, I needed to toughen myself and learn skills that other kids my age were not learning at the time. I sold knives on the street. I worked as a pizza delivery boy. I worked in the school bookstore. I started a business doing asphalt work. I worked on cars in my spare time. I did not have the same luxuries and other accouterments as other kids had. I also knew that I did not have any “backstop” if I failed. If I did not have any money then I would simply not be able to function. I needed to look out for myself. This was something that personally toughened me up. It made me quite self reliant and it put me in a position where I learned over time how to make use of existing resources, find the best deals for things and make the most of what I was given. This is an incredibly valuable skill to have, and as a “Spartan” I toughened myself up quite a bit. What this means for you and your job search is that you need to put yourself in the position of a Spartan. If a Spartan were looking for a job today they would show up to an interview ready for work. They would not debate the idea of retreat or running home if they did not get the job. They would not debate the idea of quitting the job if they were unhappy with the work conditions or they did not like their boss–they would make it work. They would only accept victory. Moreover, a Spartan would go to work ready to work and would work very hard. A lot of people enjoy sitting around and talking about things. They are undisciplined when it comes to their job search and quite lazy. Many may purchase a book or two here and there, and not do anything with it. Others may lament the state of the market and cite accounts in newspapers and other sources that there are simply not enough opportunities. They will sit around and try to see what benefits they are entitled to. They will take all of their vacation and sick days. Instead of working on their existing weaknesses and acknowledging them, they may move between jobs to find employers who will not bring to light their weaknesses. None of this does them any good in the long run. I think a lot of what is wrong with this country today is that we are too Athenian and not Spartan enough. I would encourage you, in your job search and career, to be more Spartan than Athenian. THE LESSON While Athens prioritized culture and intellectualism, the people of Sparta devoted themselves to simplicity and discipline. You need to approach your job search as a Spartan, not an Athenian; don’t retreat from the negative aspects of your life and current job, but rather make them work for you and remain focused on your success.

List of Territory Departments of Education

Territory	Contact Information
American Samoa	No records found.
Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands	No records found.
Federated States of Micronesia	No records found.
Guam	Guam Department of Education Federal Programs Division P.O. Box DE 312 Aspinall Avenue Hagatna, GU 96932 Phone: (671) 475-0470 Fax: (671) 477-4587 Email: icsantos@gdoe.net or gicruz@gdoe.net Website: http://www.gdoe.net/fedprograms/
Puerto Rico	Puerto Rico Department of Education P.O. Box 190759 San Juan, PR 00919-0759 Phone: (787) 759-2000 Fax: (787) 250-0275 Email: Nieves_C@de.gobierno.pr Website: http://de.gobierno.pr/dePortal/Inicio/Inicio.aspx
Republic of Palau	No records found.
Republic of the Marshall Islands	No records found.
Virgin Islands	Virgin Islands Department of Education 1834 Kongens Gade Charlotte Amalie, VI 00802 Phone: (340) 774-2810 Fax: (340) 779-7153 Email: lterry@doe.vi Website: http://www.doe.vi/

Colleges and Universities Colleges and universities are where the search starts to get exciting. To review, the strategy we’re following here is simply to go to the website and look at the jobs available. Identify all of the colleges and universities in the area of the country in which you want to work. The best way of doing this is to use the following Wikipedia list. Wikipedia has the best lists so let’s review this one here quickly. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_universities_and_colleges_by_country If you go to this link, you’ll see they have a list of universities and colleges by country. If you have some special sort of skill, you can apply to places in other countries if you teach something very specific and have a shot of getting a job there. Teachers job opportunities are everywhere. For example, I lived in Bangkok, Thailand, when I was a teenager. I went to high school there for a year and there were tons of American teachers there. You can go to work in international schools and could be the “Teacher Jon” (or Jane) that the school needs. If you’re interested in teacher jobs, there are numerous places you can teach all over the world. Teacher job vacancies have no geographic boundaries. Let’s look at California. You have a huge list of all of the different colleges. You can see also the California Community College Systems, which we’ll talk about in a minute. Basically, you’ve got this list of private colleges and they are all different places you could work organized by country. They have rankings and subjects of study. I really like Wikipedia. They can show you all the different law schools if you’re an attorney, chiropractic schools if you’re a chiropractor, and so on. It’s amazing what kind of resources you can find here. After browsing through these lists, find the colleges and universities you’re interested in then go to their websites. Just so you can get an understanding of how it works, this is UCLA. Assume for a moment you’re interested in working there. You’d first go to the UCLA website. You can see they have different schools there. The UCLA website, for example, has a tab called “employment.” In addition to campus jobs, you can find more UCLA employment opportunities at the hospital, the medical school, for recruitment, for fund-raising, and more. It’s just awesome how many jobs you can find when you start looking at what each school offers. It’s important to keep in mind that a lot of these jobs won’t be advertised on the school’s website. You have to dig in and look at all of these as closely as you can. To do this, go to Wikipedia. Another thing I recommend is performing Google searches for colleges or universities in the county where you live. For example, let’s do a quick search. Type in “Los Angeles County universities” or “Colleges and universities in Los Angeles County.” Look at this. It’s absolutely insane: There are other lists you can use to find these schools. Most states have lists on their Department of Education websites. For example, look at Arizona’ site: AZED.gov. I also recommend looking into unaccredited schools. It’s fascinating. This is a good list of unaccredited institutions of higher learning: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unaccredited_institutions_of_higher_education It’s still under construction, but I would keep checking back to see updates. It will obviously continue to improve over time. Unaccredited schools could become accredited at any time, so it’s worth keeping an eye on. Then, of course, there are always the U.S. News and World Report rankings located at: http://www.usnews.com/rankings. There are colleges and universities all over. There may even be some in your own town that you don’t know about. What’s funny, especially in California where I’m located is there are a lot of unaccredited schools. I remember several years ago, probably closer to ten years ago, I was sitting in an office building and talking to someone on the phone. He said to me that he was a student in this particular law school. I asked what law school and he said the name. I literally had never heard of it. It was in an office building that was a stone’s throw from where I was working. I had never heard of the law school. Be on the lookout for both unaccredited and accredited schools and know that there are schools all over that you may not know about. In addition to looking for colleges and universities, you should look for trade schools. They have jobs for accountants, attorneys, architects, and pretty much any profession you can think of. To the extent you want to be very proactive in your job search, you need to look at pretty much every list of trade schools you possibly can. Chances are, several trade schools are located nearby. This is a vocational school database: http://www.usnews.com/rankings. A lot of this database is online and I haven’t found a good list that is public. I want to warn you that these tend to be lead generation sites. You can see there are places here that are advertised. The for-profit education system is huge. As a matter of fact, the founder of the University of Phoenix is a billionaire, one of the richest men in the United States. I just want you to understand that when you’re looking at these lists, you need to be careful. None of these lists are complete. In some cases, people have to pay to be on these lists. Trade schools may or may not advertise in different places online, but you should use these lists to the fullest extent possible. I’m cognizant of the fact that if you’re looking for a job, simply as a teacher, professor, or something, that you’re going to go to this site and look for other colleges and universities. Use these lists and even look at trade schools. There is a lot of available work depending on the geographic areas you choose. Jobs in K–12 Finally, let’s consider lower level education. Now, many people look at private schools to find K–12 jobs. Again, there are lots of good lists for that. I am going to give you some links for private schools. Let’s look at a couple of them quickly. Check out this list for accredited schools from all over the country: http://www.privateschoolreview.com/. This is a good searchable list. Check out this list of schools as well: http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/schools/Default.aspx. Wikipedia is a good source for lists of K-12 schools. Check out its listings for California, for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_high_schools_in_California. This list is broken down by all of the counties in California. Wikipedia does this for every state. Remember, each of these schools, with the exception of some of the smaller ones, are going to have openings on an ongoing basis. The point is, to find a job, you have look at each of the schools in your region, and these links are awesome for doing that quickly. Conclusions There are a myriad of jobs in the education sector that you can locate if you know where and how to look.

• Can you work on Saturdays? If so, make sure the employer knows this.
• Are you enthusiastic about traveling on business when needed? If so, make sure the employer knows this.

There is something about you, your candidacy, and what you offer that is always going to be a bonus, compared to what other people are willing and able to offer. You need to make employers aware of this. The bonus can make a huge difference. When I was applying to colleges I bought some sort of planning book that forced me to go through all of the things I had ever done that amounted to much. I remember some of these things were very small and amounted to the fact that I knew how to play the saxophone, that I had done a lot of volunteer work, and so forth. The book basically had a bunch of small questions that forced me to make a list of my various assets and what I could offer a school. These were all things that I thought were very unimportant and that no college, or anyone for that matter, would ever be all that concerned about. I gave this list of things to the teachers whom I wanted to write me recommendations. One of the teachers was so impressed with the list that he started having all of the people for whom he wrote recommendations in the future do this for him. He asked me for a copy of the 100 questions or so that I had answered while compiling the list. He told me that without the list he never would have been able to write me such a good recommendation, because he did not know that much about me. In your career you need to make a list of your various assets, and what you can offer an employer as a bonus if they hire you. It could be introductions you can make. It could be extra skills that you offer that may not seem completely relevant to your job–but could be. These extra assets that you have could make a tremendous difference in whether or not an employer chooses to hire you over another. In everything you do, you should always offer as many bonuses as you can. *http://www.neilrogers.com/news/articles/2005052314.html THE LESSON Make a list of the bonuses that you can offer an employer if hired, whether they be contracts or additional capabilities. Your extra assets may form a tipping point in the employer’s decision whether or not to hire you. Many businesses and career failures result from people focusing on their own needs rather than the incentives that they can offer others.

If you emphasize the process over the results in the recruiting and asphalt business, you will succeed.

One of the biggest mistakes many people make in business is emphasizing results over process, or style over substance. The more people concentrate on the process and substance of their work, the better they do:

• The more people concentrate on their intended results, the worse they do in the long run.
• The most successful job seekers are the ones who have the ability to excel in their work process.
• The most successful companies are the ones who have the ability to excel in their work process.
• The most successful workers and employees are the ones who have the ability to excel in their work process.
• The most successful asphalt contractors are the ones who concentrate on their work process.
• The most successful legal recruiters are the ones who concentrate on their work process.

I am not saying that results do not matter; they do. But what ultimately matters most, and what makes people successful is focusing on the process and how things are done. A lot of the problems in the American economy have been caused by a massive emphasis on results rather than process. For example, the Wall Street practice of emphasizing quarter-by-quarter profits and gains has been extremely dangerous to our company in numerous respects. I believe that in business, in your job search, and in everything else–process is the most important thing. It is how you do things that matters, and not just the result you hope to attain. Process in the Asphalt Sealing Business. In the asphalt sealing business there is essentially one thing you are doing: You are putting black stuff on people’s asphalt and then leaving. This is the result of what happens when you do the work. This is what most contractors and others concentrate on, and it is why most of them fail or eek out poor livings at best. In the asphalt sealing business, there are a lot of tricks that contractors can do. When you are putting asphalt sealer on a driveway or parking lot, essentially what you are working with is a black coating that fills in cracks and pores and makes the surface look good. More importantly, the coating serves to protect the surface from oil spills and other things. This material is typically purchased from a factory in a raw state, when it is very heavy and thick like molasses. The contractor has to water down the material in order to make it the proper consistency to be used on asphalt. From the consumer’s point of view, it does not matter how much water you put into this concoction, within limits. After the material dries on someone’s asphalt, it is generally going to look quite similar, regardless as to how much water was used in the mix. Contractors can save a tremendous amount of money by watering the material down more heavily. This is something that many contractors do. The difference is that a few months later, the material that has been applied ends up looking very bad, which does not do the customer much good. There are other tricks of the trade as well. One of the most outrageous scenarios involves people traveling from city to city purchasing used motor oil (which used to be practically free) and then putting this on peoples’ driveways and parking lots. They would get paid for the work, and the customer would have a piece of pavement that looked decent when the “contractors” left, but the asphalt would never dry and the job would end up having been a complete waste of money and time. Here are some other tricks of the trade:

• There are chemical thickeners you can buy to bulk up watered down sealer, for example.
• Using a squeegee will apply much more sealer than a brush, but it costs more.
• You can fill cracks with sand instead of tar (which is more expensive).
• It is better to put the material on when the asphalt is cool because it can cure longer (but this means you cannot work when the asphalt is hot, unless you have cooled it).

I could create a long list of the various things that contractors do to cut corners when they are doing this work. However, it is really never a good idea to cut corners. This is what most people and contractors do, however. Asphalt contractors who emphasize the process of the work they are doing always do much better in the long run. They come back and work for people year after year. There is a certain confidence they exude in their work. They are craftsmen, not salesmen. They take pride in their work. They build careers, and meaningful careers at that. You can do very well financially (and in many other ways) as an asphalt contractor. However, very few people truly do well in the asphalt business. In fact, not only do most asphalt contractors fail, the contractors who do not fail end up making mediocre livings at best. Every year tens of thousands of people go to law school. They all graduate and compete for the same jobs. How many people choose to become asphalt contractors? Hardly any. You could learn most of what you need to know about this job in less than a week. There are some complex areas of the job that require engineers to work on roads and stuff, but basically anyone can do the work or run a business doing this. When a state or city needs to build a road out of asphalt, they will get bids from a contractor. Most times there are only a few people bidding on many of these jobs because there are just not a ton of people in the business with credibility. The reason is that most people get a single job and simply try and make as much money as they can as quickly as they can. They cut corners. The people who do not cut corners get good reputations and end up doing better in the long run. Process in the Legal Recruiting Business. In the legal recruiting business, there is essentially one thing you are doing: Finding an attorney and making an introduction between the attorney and a law firm or a legal employer. This is the result that occurs when you do the work. This is what most legal recruiters in the business concentrate on, and it is why most of them fail to even moderately reach their full potential. When I got into the legal recruiting business, I quickly noticed people cutting corners, just like people do in the asphalt business. If you were looking at the profession from a distance, without any form of understanding, you too would likely think that all that recruiters do is find people and make introductions. I remember one of the most upsetting interviews I ever had was interviewing someone for the job of being a recruiter, who told me that the job sounded great. He told me that he thought he could spend time out on the golf course doing the work, forwarding résumés around on his Blackberry between strokes. This person simply thought that all the job involved was forwarding résumés from one person to another. Incredibly, the more I learned about the business, the more I saw that most recruiters seemed to feel this way. In fact, this sort of idea was indeed how most recruiters seemed to approach the entire business. They would put a little advertisement on a job site, or in a legal newspaper, and then forward someone’s résumé to an interested employer. Others would simply cold call attorneys. The idea was that they were simply going out and plucking people from one firm, and sending them over to other firms. This simplistic understanding of the job characterizes the way many people approach it. Without going into too much detail, however, there is a much more in-depth way of looking at the work:

• The best recruiters are constantly writing and lecturing about recruiting-related issues and their industry.
• The best recruiters put together very compelling and in-depth presentations about their candidates.
• The best recruiters meet with employers on a weekly basis.
• The best recruiters know about the industry and the most important things happening in it.
• The best recruiters are constantly networking at industry events.
• The best recruiters have highly developed research skills to find jobs.
• The best recruiters have highly developed research skills to find candidates.
• The best recruiters never compromise their integrity.
• The best recruiter help people, even when it does not mean a short-term reward.
• The best recruiters are committed to working hard throughout their careers.

There are actually thousands of little things like this that the best recruiters are constantly doing in order to excel at their jobs, and all of these details are what make them incredibly good at their job. Most of these things are not, however, related to simply emailing résumés. They are related to the deeper process of recruiting. When you speak with recruiters who are process rather than results oriented, you can always tell. They are not focused so much on getting résumés out the door or making money. They are doing a good job at all “touch points”. The importance of process in recruiting also has a huge impact on the bottom line. The best recruiters do well in all economic climates due to their emphasis on process and not results. Process and Your Career and Job Search. Just as a successful piano maker, contractor or recruiter needs to concentrate on the process in order to be successful at their trade, so too do you in both your career and job search. Good results only come about when you concentrate on the entire process of what you are doing, refine each step of the process, and ensure you are getting better and more skilled each step of the way. A job search ideally should not start, for example, when you are looking for a job. There are thousands of data points that go into finding a job and ensuring that you get a good job when you are looking for one. For example, you need to consistently be building relationships, and building every single relationship you can over time. The more relationships you build both inside and outside of work, the more people you are going to have to call upon when you are interested in getting a new job. The harder you work in your existing job, the more people are going to be interested in helping you when you are looking for a job. People will come to your defense and do everything they can to help you when they believe that you are someone who will work hard. When you do the right thing and always make a good effort, this will come back to help you. This is the opposite of what many people do, however. Many people are only out for short-term rewards and “quick fixes” at every turn. They do not think in terms of building long-term relationships with those around them. In your career, you need to be consistent, to give results and perform over time–not just in the short term. When you are looking for a job, the quality and the depth of work you put into your résumé matters. The quality of the letters that accompany your résumé matters. Whether or not you apply to enough employers, to increase your odds of getting a job, matters. Your interviewing skills matter. The entire process that you follow matters and the better that you do at each step, the more likely you are to get the results you want. Think about the manufacturing of a world-class piano. A lot of thought goes into each little component of the piano. Whether it is the wood used, the thickness of the wood, the polish of the wood, where the wood comes from, how the wood is sanded, how the wood is fitted into the piano, the glue that is used in the piano, the dexterity of the person working with the wood, the machine that the wood is compressed on (if it is compressed) and more–the thought that goes into each part of the process matters. Every data point is refined and studied and probably has been refined and studied for a long period of time. You need to make sure that you continually improve every single data point that is involved in the process of your seeking a job, or growing your career. Several years ago, in the late-1980s, I was taking a test drive of a Corvette with the President of a German car company. He thought the American Corvette was a piece of junk, and did not like the car at all. He told me a story about how his company operates, contrasted with how a typical American automobile company operates. He said that American car companies build a car model, and then completely change up the model the next year. They may throw a different transmission in the car, a different engine, radically change the styling and so forth–the idea being that they are trying to show progress and innovation, although, in reality not much is really changing. In contrast, he told me that when his company builds a car, over the next decade or so they keep refining it and making it better and better. They figure out a way to make the transmission better and to make small “almost invisible” changes that continually improve the car. They are concentrating on the process of improvement in building a car, and the result is that when you get in one of their automobiles, it feels very different. The cars also last longer. They run better. There are a myriad of powerful things that make these cars superior, and they are all the result of concentrating on the process. You need to be focused on the process in your job and job search. Pay attention to the small, almost invisible things that collectively make a difference. Think of yourself as an instrument, like a fine piano. It is the attention to everything that goes into you that will ultimately produce the best notes. THE LESSON Concentrate on the process, not the results, in order to succeed in your career. Focus on the entire process of what you are doing, refine each step of that process, and make sure to constantly improve each step. Pay attention to the small, seemingly insignificant details, because they will add up to make a huge difference.

In 1991, scientists aboard the submersible Alvin were in the right spot at the right time to witness something extraordinary. They had sailed into the aftermath of a very recent volcanic eruption on the seafloor and found themselves in a virtual blizzard. They were densely surrounded by flocs of white debris, composed of sulfur and microbes, which drifted more than 30 meters above the ocean bottom. The seafloor was coated with a 10-centimeter-thick layer of the same white material. This vast volume of microbes did not come from the ocean. The eruption had flushed it out from beneath the seafloor. The discovery was transforming. It strongly suggested that previously unimagined and potentially huge communities of microbial life were thriving in the dark, increasingly hot, oxygen-depleted rocky cracks and crannies below the ocean bottom. An abundance of life apparently flourished in conditions we had considered too extreme. It shattered our narrow preconceptions and stretched our view of the places and circumstances that can harbor life.

The importance of this theory of evolution is that humans and other species may have actually come from bacteria and other life forms which came from inside the earth and developed there. Conventional wisdom has always held that life has evolved on the surface of the earth. To take this one step further, all planets may hold, in their core, the ingredients for life as we have on Earth. Once you get deep inside a planet and beyond the crust, there is a possibility that a substantial majority of planets may have the potential to have life spring out of them just as may have happened on Earth. There is potential in our earth and there is also vast potential inside of you. Planets like Mars and others, which we believe have barren surfaces devoid of life, may have beneath them bacteria and other things that can support life. When you get beneath the surface there is often a lot more there than meets the eye. This is the way it is with the job market as well. Many people pick up one newspaper, or look at one job board, or talk to one recruiter and conclude there there are no opportunities in the job market. They start to believe the market is so bad that there are no possibilities for them. They apply for unemployment or bemoan the current state of things in the market. It is when you penetrate the surface and begin to go deeper and deeper that you start to see possibilities you did not realize were there. When you are looking for a job you need to go deep and look beneath the surface. You should be looking at jobs on every job board, every employer website, and everywhere you possibly can. You need to go beneath the surface and find where life and the opportunities are. This is the way to really get ahead. You cannot just accept what appears to be true. When the job landscape looks barren you need to go beneath the surface and find where life is and where the opportunities are. The discovery that life itself may actually come from within the earth strongly suggests that that there is life inside other planets and if not on them. The bacteria that are believed to thrive in extreme conditions in the bottom of the ocean, deep inside boiling vents, are a class of species known as extremophiles. There are extremeophiles that live inside ice, live in rocks, and live in other conditions which are extremely inhospitable to life as we know it. What makes extremophiles so important to science is that they may even be able to survive for long periods of time even in deep space. In addition to bacteria found in black smokers (oceanic volcanic vents), these extremophiles have even been found in semi-dormant states inside ice cores over a mile-deep beneath Antarctica. Endolithic bacteria have even been found inside rocks in subterranean lakes. Tarigrades bacteria can survive the vacuum of space. Some recent experiment suggest that if bacteria were sheltered from space radiation they could survive dormant inside of a thick meteoroid, for example, for millions of years. In an incredible example:

On April 20, 1967, the unmanned lunar lander Surveyor 3 landed near Oceanus Procellarum on the surface of the moon. One of the things aboard was a television camera. Two-and-a-half years later, on November 20, 1969, Apollo 12 astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan L. Bean recovered the camera. When NASA scientists examined it back on Earth they were surprised to find specimens of Streptococcus mitis that were still alive. Because of the precautions the astronauts had taken, NASA could be sure that the germs were inside the camera when it was retrieved, so they must have been there before the Surveyor 3 was launched. These bacteria had survived for 31 months in the vacuum of the moon’s atmosphere. http://www.panspermia.org/bacteria.htm

All of this suggests that life exists where we do not necessarily believe it is capable of doing so. Even the inside of a rock may contain life. When you are looking for a job you need to keep asking questions; do not just accept the idea that there may not be opportunities in certain places. You need to look as hard as you can for the opportunities and life that exist in the market. Opportunities exist where you least expect it. An interesting theory called panspermia states that seeds of life already exist all over the universe and that life on earth may have originated through these seeds. Additionally, it states that these seeds may deliver or may have delivered life to other habitable bodies. The late Noble Prize winner Francis Crick, along with Leslie Orgel, proposed the theory of directed panspermia. Under this hypothesis, life on earth may have been purposely spread by an advanced extraterrestrial civilization. According to Crick, small grains containing DNA fired randomly in all directions would be a very cost-effective strategy for seeding life at a compatible planet at some time in the future. Such a strategy could have been pursued by a civilization facing catastrophic annihilation or hoping to terraform planets for later colonization. Our sun is one of 400 billion stars in our galaxy which is one of 100 billion galaxies that we know of. The chance that there is not life on other planets would be very, very difficult to accept. However, what is even more difficult to accept is how our search for life on other planets has been proceeding throughout history.

• We have used telescopes.
• We have used vast networks of radio listening devices (SETI).
• We have flown spaceships around numerous planets.
• We have landed spacecrafts on Mars numerous times.
• We have sent men to the moon on more than one occasion.
• We have placed massive telescopes in outer space.
• We have taken small samples of dirt and other minerals from planets and tested them.

We have spent billions of dollars and done incredible things with our search for life; however, what is most interesting to me is that in all of these things we have just scratched the surface. The trip to the moon and the Viking I Mars Lunar Lander were some of the greatest national and world events of their time. We went to space and spent billions of dollars, but all we did was scratch the surface. Incredible efforts were made to find life and explore, but all we have ever done is scratch the surface. Life may very well exist in these places, but the life would likely be beneath the surface and not on top of it. Most people assume that life must exist on planets like our own. According to a 2007 paper by University of Florida astronomers: ”With powerful instruments scouring the heavens, astronomers have found more than 240 planets in the past two decades, none likely to support Earth-like life.” (http://news.ufl.edu/2007/12/20/et-observers/) This means that it is unlikely that there are planets nearby which are like our own. However, we continue to look for patterns which are familiar and planets that have similar atmospheres to our own. What does the exploration for life on other planets, extremeophiles, and panspermia have to do with your job search? It has everything to do with your job search. In space exploration and the search for life on other planets, we have confined our search primarily to what we understand. We assume that signs of intelligent life must be on the surface. However, it may be beneath the surface where all of the activity and life actually exist. Think of all we have put forth through telescopes and all the other efforts that have gone into studying the universe. We have done all of this when we do not even understand the life that exists inside of our own planet, beneath the surface. There is likely life on other planets, even ones close by, but this life is almost certainly beneath the surface. You will not find opportunities and you will not find jobs unless you allow yourself to go beneath the surface and find these opportunities. Everything that you need and desire is out there, but you need to look beyond (or in this case beneath) the obvious in order to find it. People who achieve the greatest results in their job searches always go beneath the surface. THE LESSON There is vast potential beneath the surface of each individual person, and it is the same with the job market. Many people fail in there job search because they only pursue one tactic, find nothing, and conclude that there are no jobs available. When looking for a job, you need to go deep beneath the surface, and exhaust every job board, employer website, and other possible avenue in order to get ahead.