The Danger of Driving Sharp Bargains

Every time I have ever seen someone drive a sharp bargain, it has ended up coming back at the person in some negative way. People who get paid more than they are worth, or who receive more benefit than they provide, always run into problems and have difficulty achieving success. The most successful people in the world are, for the most part, the ones who give more value than they receive. They contribute so much value that people want to do business with them, to buy their products and services over and over again. When I was practicing law, I [Read more]

Allow People Around You to Feel and Believe Whatever They Want

When I was about nine years old I was driving down the street with a relative of mine and we saw a huge, pale man who was walking down the side of the road flipping off cars and screaming at them.  The man did not have a shirt on and seemed extremely angry.  He was wearing dirty jeans and had long hair that was sweaty.  The man was large, probably at least 6′ 4″ and quite heavy.  It was a terrifying site because the man’s movements were exaggerated and he seemed to be in a lot of pain.  My relative saw this man, slowed down, pulled over close [Read more]

Flow, Your Ego and Your Career

Aristotle believed that more than anything, we seek to be happy.  There are some individuals who do their work and continually find happiness in this work, and for whom work takes on a meaning that transcends what most of us experience in work.  These people feel completely involved in the work they are doing and are completely focused.  They do not experience emotional turmoil when they are doing their work. In Mihhaly Czikszentmihalyi’s book “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience” (1990), he described a state of “flow” where people involved in an activity “forget themselves, the time, their problems.” Flow [Read more]

How to Manage Crisis

One of the scariest things for any of us is when we are in crisis.  A crisis can be defined a lot of ways.  It can be:

• the loss of a job.
• a divorce.
• a traumatic injury.
• a death.
• the alienation of a loved one due to a fight or disagreement.
• a severe illness.
• or even your own impending death.

Crisis is absolutely one of the most challenging things that we face, and when many people are in crisis they simply cannot cope and therefore fall apart. The key to managing any crisis is to look towards the future while you’re inside the crisis.  You [Read more]

Never Stop Using Your Imagination

It is amazing what people are able to do with the power of their imagination.

• Steve Jobs has become incredibly famous by taking things that already existed and imagining and creating new uses for them. These changes he makes by using his imagination have made him one of the most famous men in the world.
• Walt Disney imagined entirely new ways to entertain the world and his vision led to a global multi platform entertainment empire.
• The imagination of inventors brought us television, the light bulb, satellites, the telephone, and other incredible devices. Imagination can truly change the world.

There is almost nothing more powerful than our imaginations. If you have a well-developed faculty of imagination, you can bring positive (or negative) change to every single person on the earth. You need to use your imagination every single day, and you need to think about who you want to become. Two people presented with the same circumstances and same information will become different people based on the power of their imagination. I recently listened to part of a book called The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris. While I did not get a lot out of this book from a business standpoint, what I was amazed at was Ferris’s power of imagination. He was able to become a Chinese cage-fighting champion by using his imagination. In this sport, there are various weight classes, and the weigh-ins occur 24 hours before the fight. Ferris was able to fight in a much lighter weight class by learning how to lose, and then gain, 25 pounds in [Read more]

Treating Your Career Like A Small Business

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

Be a good business person and your career may go far, ignore the business realities and you are likely to run into trouble. I have been a recruiter for several years and have [Read more]

Do Not Be a Victim

When I was growing up, my mother was an investigator with the Michigan Department of Civil Rights. Essentially, her job involved listening to various peoples’ complaints alleging they were discriminated against by an employer due to their race, sex, sexual orientation, and so forth. Then, she would investigate to see if any discrimination really occurred. Typically, she would interview the employer and the people in a given place of business, as well as the person alleging discrimination. Once she’d done this, she would send a report to civil rights lawyers. They would determine whether or not to pursue action against the employer based on the information she provided. She did this for a long time. She got the job through an African American state senator with whom we were friends. My mother worked for him for several years before working for the Department of Civil Rights. He was the Pro Tempor of the Michigan State Senate for at least a decade and he was incredibly gracious in sharing with me the incredible level of frustration African Americans had with the white establishment in Detroit throughout the 70s, 80s, and 90s. This insight was invaluable and drove a lot of my early interest in helping people who had not been given a fair break in the job market for various reasons. I could not believe so many talented people were trapped in their lives and circumstances due to their race, class, and other factors. The lessons I learned from the Senator and watching my mother fight for the rights of African Americans and other disadvantaged people has been a major motivating force in my life. I’ve governed my life using the lessons he taught me. There is a tremendous amount of discrimination that exists. Growing up, I witnessed a great deal of this. What this taught me is many people do not have the tools or the knowledge to help themselves and are really kept down by society. When I was growing up, society had a pattern of keeping people down through a lack of access to information. For example, people might learn about top jobs on the golf course rather than the paper. People would exchange information among their peers about jobs and this often kept certain people in one place and never gave them opportunity. I saw this when I started practicing law to some extent. I gradually came to believe the very best thing to do was to ensure people received information about various opportunities. I believed this lack of information was something holding many people back. People can only take advantage of opportunities if they are presented [Read more]

Finish What You Start

If you drive less than an hour outside of any major city in America, you will very quickly begin to see a different world. Typically, in the best neighborhoods and areas, the lawns are well maintained and there is not much to see beyond trees, flowers, and shrubs. When you start getting into poorer neighborhoods outside of major cities, however, you begin to see things like automobiles on blocks rusting in front yards and the landscape looks a lot different. I’ve ridden through these neighborhoods with wealthy people from larger cities. At least once I heard someone say something like, [Read more]

Try as Hard as You Can

Many people want and demand a lot out of life. They want the happiest family, the best material goods and vacations, the best homes, and the best cars. They demand the best in everything. They also want the best jobs and the most advancement. Often, these same people feel very angry and upset if life does not provide them the things they want. A lot of people are very upset with the world. They are angry about jobs they have lost. They are angry about advancements and breaks they have not received. In fact, these people believe the [Read more]

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

In my work as an advocate for people to find jobs, I insist that the people who work for me enjoy their own jobs, and this includes the recruiting team. I expect the recruiters I work with to thoroughly enjoy, appreciate, and respect the people they are helping to find work. Everything we do is affected by our mindset. Your mindset needs to be in the right place with regard to your work. A good mindset is a foundation for success. A poor mindset makes for job dissatisfaction, frustration, and long days, and, ultimately, can bring about failure. This is why enjoying what you are doing, and enjoying it immensely, is key. Many people cannot seem to grasp this simple but powerful perspective, so I would like to elaborate on it a bit. I think it is one of the most important perspectives one can have. It will change the way you look for a job, and if you really get it, it can really help you achieve success in your life and career. After my first semester at the University of Chicago, I had a mandatory meeting with a counselor. I had gotten a 3.3 average for that semester despite taking a difficult calculus class and several advanced classes that had made me study harder than I ever had in my life. I was feeling pretty good about myself for getting these kinds of grades. In the meeting, the counselor asked me what profession I wanted to go into after graduation. I [Read more]

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