Crushing Your Career

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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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“Never Too Junior To Make It Rain”

Rainmaking Bankers

“Too many junior bankers see their job as minutia,” a bank CEO said.

“But I keep grooming my entire team to see their job is revenues.”

What Does McDonald’s Do?

The most junior server at McDonald’s doesn’t just take your order, do they?

They upsell you to buy more.

Would you like fries with that?

How about a drink?

In their most seductive voice…

Hot fudge sundae… Mmmmm

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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.

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Looking For Not Purpose

Many people are seeking more purpose.

It’s not just a buzzword of the era, but us humans have always been driven by a deeper sense of meaning.

A problem for many of us is that we don’t know where to look to find it.

And this leaves many of us stuck…

Looking In The Wrong Place

Purpose is one of those funny topics in our society.

Like sex, purpose is talked about all the time, but nobody ever teaches us how to get it.

How do you even know what it means?

Where do you find it?

Under that rock over there?

Shake the tree and more purpose / passion / meaning might fall out?

Maybe, but what’s for certain is where it’s not found.

11 Ways Being A Wall Street VP Is Like Working At McDonald’s

I borrowed that headline from a Bloomberg article on an ex-Barclays trader who is on trial for rigging the Euribor market.

Supposedly as a strategy to downplay his seniority and hence his guilt, he compared being a vice president at Barclays as “equivalent to the guy that serves you in McDonald’s.”

By making comments like, “As ridiculous as it sounds, a coffee boy at Barclays gets paid 400,000 pounds a year” he proved his wanker banker status, but he was also speaking some truth.

“Vice president is not what everyone thinks it is,” he stated. “It is junior.”

Why Bankers Lives Suck. And What To Do About It.

Investment banking is hardly known for its cushy lifestyle, but every now and then we’re reminded of just how bad it can be.

Earlier this week a buddy forwarded me this email message from a staffer at Moelis.

I don’t know whether it’s legit or not (I’m told it is), but irrespective it’s hardly a unique message in investment banking.

Long story short, the staffer (who is responsible for assigning bankers to projects) sent an email to his team after walking the floor at 2am, and noticing how many seats were empty.

As he supposedly wrote—

Given that new staffings continue to flow in and you are all very near capacity, the only way I can think of to differentiate among you is to see who is in the office in the wee hours of the morning.

Ouch!

Can you imagine that?

You’re working your ass off 7 days a week in a grueling job, and now you’re being judged on how busy you are based on whether you’re in the office at 2am?

I can. I lived that life, and I also did a year in the job of staffer.

While it’s easy to beat up on the staffer for his lack of managerial skills (and judgement in sending that email), I can attest that it was perhaps the hardest job I did in banking, where you’re constantly pulled and pushed in every direction.

It’s demand and supply, baby!

As the staffer, you have a limited pool of resources to assign to projects, and unlimited mouths to feed.

In my experience it was the rare senior banker who would step back and really think carefully about the work that needed to be done (blast from the past shout out to George Lee, Mike Wishart and Kevin Quinn), and whether it was worth having someone sit up all night and do it.

Generally, that’s not because senior bankers perceive working like a medical resident as a rite of passage, or they don’t care about their team, but because they also have mouths to feed.

Clients. Bosses. Shareholders. Enormous, enormous pressure to perform.

As Lloyd Blankfein once put it, the culture of insecurity runs all the way to the top in banking, and while senior bankers might want to help their juniors have a more balanced life, most of all they want to deliver their best for their clients.

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Feeling Undervalued? Do This

In life and in our work, it can be easy to lose our sense of value.

We look around at other people who are seemingly achieving more than us, “worth more,” or otherwise more valued, and we can get down on ourselves.

But when we look at situations differently, take control of our thoughts, and begin taking new actions, we quickly turn around those old ways of being.

This begins with seeing that only you are in control of how you value yourself, and influencing others to value you the same!

Common Problem In Our Careers

A world of hard-charging ambitious people, every year many people find themselves feeling undervalued.

Lots of things in our jobs, whether it be compensation, promotion, recognition, or otherwises can leave you feeling undervalued.

It’s not to say that it’s “never enough,” but that for the amount you put in, you deserve to expect a lot in return!

I had a meeting last week with a Wall Street investor who felt let down on his comp.

And to be honest, he was right, the head of his firm did let him down.

It’s not because he didn’t pay him what he “deserved” but because of the way he had handled the conversation.

Rather than sit with him and explain why the firm’s performance didn’t enable him to pay his team as he would have liked, the boss got angry and defensive.

That left him feeling undervalued, and in the wrong state of mind to drive more value in his career.

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Why Most People Will Never Get What They Want

I know my work is inspiring to people, but I also know that’s not enough.

Lots of people recognize that there’s more they can be doing to get what they want.

They think that if they get more focused on their goals, organized around what to do, and build a more powerful mind, that they could improve their life.

I know this because all the time people tell me, but talk doesn’t get the job done…

Easier Said Than Done

On a cold New York morning a couple of weeks back, I met a mid-thirties fellow in the elevator of my apartment building.

I was headed to see my body mechanic, who helps me stand and walk, and he was on his way to, “ugh, work.”

At least that was how he said it to me.

He looked like a banker, but I’d bet he’s a securities lawyer. After plenty of time around the two you can distinguish the sadness and fatigue in their eyes.

When he asked me what I do, I paused.

Feeling sorry for the man who had clearly spent the last 30 minutes cheerleading himself to throw on his suit and get in that elevator, I said, “I’m a consultant.”

“So, what type of consulting job enables you to be headed out in your gym gear at 9:00am?” he sarcastically quipped.

“One where I do what I want,” I replied.

With those sad eyes and a mousy depressed voice, he responded, “Easier said than done.”

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Too Old Not To Settle

There are many complexities and constraints when it comes to creating the lives we truly want.

In different ways it has been said—you can have everything you want, just not all at the same time. And, indeed, throughout our lives we are forced to choose, to sequence our “wants” according to what makes sense for our circumstances.

Coming out of school with a bunch of debt, it’s harder to venture out on your own. With a young family and mouths to feed, it’s harder to take risk. With the runway of a great career, it’s harder, and often wiser, to work that track for the “right” amount of time.

If we do it right, and we’re lucky to live long enough, by “simply” making the right choices at each point in time, we can create our most magical lives.

Yet, it can be very hard to keep our eye on the prize.

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Why You Feel Stuck—And 6 Tools How To Push Through

Focus Tools

How many of you have goals that you can’t seem to get yourself to focus on?

They might be professional, personal, getting things done around the home. You know that you “want” to do them, but you just can’t consistently get yourself to take action.

I know that’s a problem for many of us because I know few people who it isn’t a problem for, and because many of you keep telling me it’s a problem.

This weekend I did a call with a member of our community.

Some time ago he’d reached out to me about his grandest vision for his career and life, and although he’s too junior to be a client, I jumped on the phone and gave him some pointers.

He’s moving, he’s making good progress on his goal, but some days when he sits down eager to get things done, he finds himself stuck.

He knows the things he wants to get done, but, well, he can’t get himself to do them.

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How To Avoid Sacrificing Your Life For A Job

20 years of life wasted.

That’s what I thought when I saw this article talking about big law firms culling partners.

Working as an investment banker you get to see the “worst” of what it’s like to be a lawyer, at least a securities lawyer, and boy, you’d have to really love the law to do that job.

Now, of course many of them do, but others who I’ve met over the years are in the legal profession for the same reason many people are in “top” jobs:

At some point in time, they thought being a lawyer was a top job.

They’re right, it was.

So too was being an investment banker, private equity partner, hedge fund manager, consultant, etc. but today nearly every profession is under significant threat.

As the article states, “Being made partner at a big law firm used to be seen as a brass ring of prestige, wealth and security. But it turns out that it is not so secure after all.”

Just like many “good jobs” of the past, being a lawyer isn’t so good anymore. And with more supply than demand for legal services, the prediction is that all law firms are going to be slimming down.

When the jobs of auto workers and grocery store checkout clerks go away, we’re not surprised, but when top jobs become less attractive, it creates far bigger problems for one main reason.

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3 Questions To Ask Yourself Before Chasing "Easy Passive Income!"

When you work in the personal development space, you run across a lot of charlatans. It’s not hard to understand why. If you’re looking for advice on how to improve yourself, you’re saying you’re willing to trust someone.

It’s a sad reality, but there will always be vultures out there looking to scam anyone who makes the mistake of trusting them.

One of the most common scams these people advertise is the promise of “passive income.” I don’t put passive income in quotations because I don’t believe in making your money work for you—I “retired” from Goldman Sachs at 29, I understand investing. I put it in quotations because most passive income schemes are scammy nonsense designed to prey on insecurity and ambition.

I get it, money is important, and having more of it is nearly always a good thing. But what is it specifically about passive income schemes that is so attractive? If you’re interested in making your money work for you, there’s the whole world of finance and investing for that, so why the fascination with the “side hustle” and building “passive income streams?”

It’s because passive income schemes aren’t speaking to your desire for greater wealth, they’re targeting a different part of you entirely. To really understand this, ask yourself these three questions.

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Career Planning: The Complete Guide

Do you have a career plan?

I’m sorry, that was a loaded question. Most people think they have a career plan, and according to everything they’ve been told their entire life, they do.

The problem is we’ve been lied to. As a child, you were taught two things:

How to set a big goal for your life. You wanted to be POTUS, CEO, a star, or a fireman (obviously, the coolest choice.)
How to do the work you’re assigned. In school, you learned how to be on time. How to complete assignments. How to follow instructions. You learned that the path forward in life is to do the work you are given until the person in charge says, “Okay, you can move forward now.”

As a result, most of us plan our careers the entirely wrong way. We set a big goal for our life, and then show up to work every day and grind. The path forward to us is, “Work harder and I’ll get there.”

That’s not a plan. That’s a dream.

Dreams are great. You need something to aim for, and you should never sell yourself short by aiming small. But when you wake up from dreaming big, you need a plan to get there.

Over more than a decade of research I created a five-step system, The System For Doing What You Want, that is designed to get you from where you are in your career and life today, to wherever you want to be.

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The Ultimate Guide To Using Role Models

High performers learn from other high performers. If you want to manifest a change in your life or achieve a certain goal, the best thing you can do is study people who have already done it.

I’ve been fortunate enough to have worked with many hundreds of highly successful people.

Yet I’ve found that there are small things that distinguish the most successful few. One of those is role models.

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The 1% Aren’t Winning, But These 5 Entrepreneurs Are

The 1% aren’t winning. I say it over and over again in my work, but it’s a tough pill for most people to swallow.

Intellectually, we can understand that money is not the same as happiness. But on some basic level we are all taught to equate financial success with life success. No matter what our cultural programming, it’s a statistical fact that 2/3rds of workers in America, regardless of class, admit to being unhappy in their job.

But if the 1% aren’t winning, who is?

The builders. Creators. Sure, many of them may not yet have the success that they want, but they are living a life of purpose, driven by a vision and passion to make the world a better place.

Here are five of my favorite builders:

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3 Self-Deceptions That Are Making You Hate Your Job

There are a plenty of reasons that your job can objectively suck:

Compensation is headed in the wrong direction.
Your career options are becoming more limited.
Your workplace feels like a war zone or mental hospital.

You’d be smart for citing any of those as reasons for leaving; however, there are a number of self-deceptions we all suffer from that should lead you to question your motives before jumping ship:

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Why You Should Never Quit Goldman Sachs

After this article I wrote about quitting Goldman Sachs took off, I got a lot of attention.

Former colleagues and others wrote me wanting to know more, yet there was also some confusion about what I stand for.

My message has never been, and never will be: Quit your top job on Wall Street.

Too many faux experts preach mantras like:

“Escape the 9-5”
“Join the gig economy”
“Achieve financial independence”

The only mantra I use is this:

“Live the life YOU truly want”

Do you see the difference? I’m into how you create your dream life. People who follow the faux experts are into creating an easy life.

Top performers don’t want an easy life. They want to challenge themselves to win, and take it as far as they can go.

If you want to rise to the top of your industry, then quitting a top job is the last thing you should do.

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