Uncategorized

“I Never Want To Retire”

“I’ve been working since I was 10 years old,” a top Wall Street lawyer said to me.

Reaching that point when it’s time to move on he’s hardly excited about it.

To say the least.

“I love working,” he says.

Work Isn’t A Means

It’s an end.

At his level and for many people I know it’s not about the money.

They’ve made plenty of money, and they’re lucky to work for more important reasons.

Being productive.

Challenged.

Engaged.

Contributing things of value.

Sure plenty of them still love making more money, yet we all work for so much more, don’t we?

“Like waiting tables as a kid,” he says, “taught me more about human nature than 40 years practicing law!”

Continue

Coke Doesn’t Sell Obese Diabetes

Selling ourselves can be hard, can’t it?

It holds us back.

Many of us being humble tend to understate our strengths.

Downplay our achievements.

Imagine if companies sold to us this way.

Imagine…

TV camera pans to an obese man sitting alone on a sofa.

Filthy sweatpants, belly hanging out of stain drenched t-shirt.

As the scene opens you see the living room is a pigsty.

Shades drawn, TV flickering the only light.

Eyeing a brochure on diabetes he mumbles to himself, Doctor has no idea what he’s talking about.

Reaching down he picks up a 2 liter bottle of Coke and downs it one go.

Slogan rolls… Coke, diabetes and obesity in one gulp.

It may be true enough but they’d never sell their product that way.

Continue

How Dare Us?

Surviving Our Sewer Society

Outrage is the new happy.

At a time in human history our lives have never been better you might think it’s never been worse.

The economy is still on a tear.

Living standards are the best they’ve ever been, everywhere.

Our lives only get better and better.

Yet so few of us humans ever get happier.

Depression. Drugs. Booze.

Anger.

Outrage.

Loneliness.

Anxiety.

Fear.

These are the daily killers of the human race.

We constantly blame it on something wrong out there, but it’s only going on in here.

Continue

“I Feel Sorry For Hank”

A challenge some people face in retiring is what it means.

Who are you now?

How do you stay relevant?

Engaged?

Be someone of value in the world?

Just A Guy On The Street

A Goldman Sachs partner said to me—

I saw Hank [Paulson] walking down the street and I felt sorry for him.

I thought to myself…

He was CEO of Goldman Sachs.

Treasury Secretary.

Now he’s just a guy on the street.

I love Hank and I felt bad thinking that, but really what I’m saying is what does retiring mean for me?

Continue

Really Why WeWork Failed

Raise Your Fund Bigger, Faster, Easier

The drama with WeWork highlights a theme as old as humanity.

It’s not that for some rational reason investors changed their view of the company.

It’s that investors have never been rational.

As long as investors are in a frenzy they’ll justify anything.

Until, well, they don’t.

Massive Liabilities…

Real Estate tycoon, Sam Zell, said it well…

More or less, what does WeWork actually have that’s of value?

Cash burning business.

A model that has failed every single time.

Offset by…

Wait for it…

Being cool.

Being cool like Theranos you can get away with just about anything until you can’t.

Continue

Duck Rabbit

We often talk about being open minded, don’t we?

Wanting to unlock our potential.

See another person’s perspective.

The world through another’s eyes.

For some people it comes more naturally, but for most of us it can take some training.

This Or That?

We live in an increasingly polarized world.

Left or right.

Black or white.

Binary or not binary.

Climate change believer or denier, etc.

This tears our world apart, but ultimately has nothing to do with our world.

Only the way our brains are wired.

Like a computer—0,1.

Continue

Transform To Soar

Like most great spiritual teachers he’s a storyteller.

Often avoiding direct answers his stories convey what you need.

I met with him to discuss a leap I was making.

Back then I felt stuck.

There were moves I didn’t know how to make.

Things I wasn’t able to do.

I only knew to continue.

To Transform

After we met I sat in a filmed studio session he was hosting.

I don’t recall where he started but like a dream soon we had arrived here.

“Do you know the caterpillar doesn’t become a butterfly?” he provoked the audience.

When the caterpillar goes into its chrysalis it doesn’t know why.

It’s living its nature.

Building a protective shell encasing itself inside.

It cannot know why.

Nor what it will emerge to be.

Continue

Why Headhunters Are Bottom

Where do you find that crazy job you truly want?

How do you hunt it down?

Best get yourself in front of opportunities?

It’s the hardest problem salespeople spend their lives solving.

A Sourcing Problem

Often we think of selling as what you do when you have a prospect in front of you.

When in fact most the sale happened way before that.

In the way a top salesperson prepares for the sale.

Developing collateral.

If they’re a real pro, laying out their best ideas in a selling Black Book.

But FAR MORE importantly…

In the way they target their hungry buyers.

Continue

“I am simply trying to survive…”

Kids in Africa.

India.

Half the damn world.

They are TRYING to survive.

Half The Office Laid Off

It was 2001.

The Internet bubble had burst.

Goldman’s Silicon Valley office I’d relocated to was being slashed.

It didn’t make sense to me.

Is this as good as it gets?

All these people who’ve given their life to this business just trying to survive?

Continue

“I Want To Be The Hulk Too”

We received a bunch of emails on this article, When You Must Smash It, basically asking the same thing—

How can I better do this for myself?

Great question.

Let’s smash it!

Perfect Practice

It’s often said that practice makes perfect, but this is wrong.

Practice makes permanent.

Perfect practice makes perfect.

Of course in these articles and even my Masterclasses it’s near impossible to convey how to perfectly use these methods.

Reading even 100 top books on boxing is likely far less valuable than one hour training with a pro.

And the same is true with what we can do here together.

That’s said, let’s Smash It further.

Continue

When You Must Smash It

“I must smash it,” he said.

“Now is when it really counts.”

For months we’ve been working towards these meetings.

Either he smashes it out of the park.

Or missed opportunity.

On top performance, there’s no in between.

No Kindof Top Performance

You either show up your best.

Or less than.

Most days for most people it doesn’t matter.

Unlike a pro athlete, no-one’s judging your every move.

Livelihood doesn’t hinge on top performance.

But some days it does.

Where anything less than your best is an F.

Continue

Crazy To Settle For Stuck

Too many people feel stuck in their career.

Not just in so-so jobs, but even many people in top jobs…

Feel like they’re stuck settling for less than they deserve.

Crazy To Go For What You Truly Want?

I get that some people think what I do is craaazzzy.

But isn’t it more crazy to stay stuck in our careers?

Now, let’s be honest here.

I’m the wrong person to ask what is crazy.

I’ve always been crazy relative to settling for less than we can achieve.

Growing up working poor I didn’t get why people wouldn’t do everything they can to elevate their lives.

At Goldman Sachs, one of the best jobs on the planet, I didn’t get why many people felt stuck complaining.

It’s crazy to me they wouldn’t just make a change.

Continue

“How Many Times Did I Give Up?”

I lost count past two

Coz when I just think about it

I can never lose

Sings Livy Lee in…

“Bring It Home”

In most pursuits in life there’s no A for effort.

Sure, relative to not trying…

Or putting in our worst…

We should feel better about giving it our best shot.

But in many things, like driving home safely, what counts is do you get there in the end?

Continue

Crazy Job Demands Crazy Approach

There’s plenty of good-enough ideas for landing a job.

Writing your resume.

100 interview questions to prepare for.

Ace the case, and all that stuff.

Good-enough might be good-enough for good-enough jobs but not when you’re focused on…

Landing That Crazy Job

The job you truly want.

That you’d be crazy excited to land.

The job others might perceive is way out of reach for you.

You may be “unqualified” for.

That others might think is crazy for you to even set your sights on.

Let alone for you to walk in and land.

Continue

Silly Cats Having So Much Fun

Chasing around a laser light thinking it’s real.

Shine it on the floor they paw after it like a mouse.

Put it on the wall, they climb up.

Are They Confused?

Maybe they know it’s a game?

An illusion projected from a device?

Perhaps they play anyways because it’s fun?

They are of course just cats, easily confused by what is real.

Yet are they really much different to kids playing made up games?

No care what is real or make believe, just running around having fun.

What happens to us adults?

Have We Forgotten The Play?

I feel I should avoid going deep here.

To say real-ity is an illusion.

Just a light shining through a human machine.

Yet even on a shallow level us adults have mostly forgotten the play.

Taking all this oh so seriously, pawing after “real” things to really change how we feel.

We think…

When I get that house or job or lover or 3 drinks in me, now I’ll be having more fun.

Although our greatest human knowledge tells us that’s the illusion…

We’ve never been taught to really live our dream.

Continue

Veggies Of Banking

If benefits are the meat of a sale.

Objections are the veggies.

They’re perhaps the most important part of the meal.

But they’re most often avoided.

Left On The Table

Us humans hate hearing no.

No man wants to be “rejected” by a woman.

No person wants to be told they can’t have what they want.

And too novice salespeople most want to avoid hearing no.

So they do everything they can to dance around it.

Like those banker meetings, consuming all the oxygen in the room, leaving no space to hear no…

Also means leaving with no idea what stands in the way of yes.

Continue

Stop Doubt Being Redoubtable

Redoubtable was Dictionary.com word of the day.

With my third grade vocabulary I didn’t know what it means.

But I took it in with great meaning.

Being Redoubtable

When you see “Re” at the front of a word it often means to do it again.

e.g. Remember. Reuse. Redo.

But here it means the opposite of doing doubt again…

Redoubtable—that is to be feared; formidable, especially as an opponent.

Great word, right?

Why again doubt when you can have…

Continue

My Greatest Moment At Carlyle—Quitting

It was the most magnificent surprise.

Friday, mid March.

Bonuses were due to hit our bank accounts Monday.

For some reason I had an instinct to check.

Woo-hoo!

My bonus landed early.

10 minutes later…

I Walked In And Quit

I’ll never forget the look on his face.

Priceless.

I wandered into his office.

Stood in front of his desk.

And started to explain that my bonus hit my account early.

Looking up to me as if to say, OK why are you in my office telling me this?

“So I came in here to quit.”

I turned around and walked away.

Continue

Why So Serious?

Really, why do we take our lives so seriously?

Of course we’ve got bills to pay.

And kids to raise.

And all those responsibilities at work and in our lives.

But why for so many of us does it all seem so hard?

Why Can’t It Be More Like Play?

You know that quote about all the world’s a stage…

I interpret it to mean it’s a play.

Like a lucid dream we’re directing this life on our own stage.

Here to play.

Believe me, for many years, well, basically, all but this one…

I couldn’t live this way.

I was king of…

Continue

“relive making love from memory”

Is a search that landed someone on my website.

Do you think that might be fun?

OK, let’s play with it.

Time Machines

Our minds are fabulous time machines.

Just by thinking you can travel anywhere in time, can’t you?

Like some time you were a kid running around playing.

Or an adult doing much the same.

Any time you enjoyed in the past.

Or see yourself enjoying in the future.

In fact anything you can imagine enjoying right now in your mind.

Continue