بخش 3

Hitting the Anvil

I learned the value of hard work by working hard.

—MARGARET MEAD

Anthropologist, writer, speaker

AN INTRODUCTION TO LESSONS 20 TO 29—MARKETPLACE LESSONS FOR SUCCESS

Long before anyone thought to ask me for my “secrets for success,” I had come to the fairly straightforward conclusion that there was no such thing. First of all, if the knowledge, tools, and techniques for assuring success were so secret, wouldn’t that mean that only the most elite among us would ever succeed, while the rest of us would be doomed to failure? And that’s not the case. Or, by contrast, given how much folks like to tell secrets, wouldn’t everyone be in possession of the secret by now?

Well, all this is to say that when we go in search of the means for attaining success, we’ve got ourselves an embarrassment of riches. Where do we start? We can borrow what’s already known from other people’s success—which is available for free everywhere we look. And we can also use what we already know from our own experiences and life lessons learned while hitting the anvil of any past and current pursuits.

Here’s what I believe—that everything we’ll ever need to know for our greatest successes can be learned by the sweat of our own brow and through vital knowledge taught by the marketplace. This is from common sense, more than anything, since most of us first interacted with the laws of supply and demand, buying and selling, and various forms of marketing long before we left home. More than that, most of us began to pursue different forms of employment in our teens and will eventually go on to spend the majority of our waking hours for much of our lives at our jobs. Of course, part of that is to earn our wages and produce whatever we’re being paid (or paying ourselves) to do. But in the wide, wonderful working world, we’re also continuing our education—through OTJ, or on-the-job, training—and lessons that keep evolving with new relevance as we grow.

My belief in the value of OTJ training was first inspired years ago by an image that’s stayed with me since childhood, that of an old-fashioned, wise blacksmith, a tradesman in pursuit of excellence, working away in his shop, always learning, adapting, and mastering his craft, pounding his anvil for all of his worth.

The image of the classic blacksmith also helped to inspire the concept of the five Cs—Clear, Concise, Compelling, Committed, and Consistent—which reminds us that only with commitment and consistency can success be reached. Again, it’s no mystery that success comes from hitting that anvil, pounding not until you’re done, but until you’ve done your best. You’ll find in the process, as I have, that happyness doesn’t arrive just from the admiration of others or by taking it to market for all the rewards, but also in the act of doing. The high of knowing that you’re giving your all, that you’re leaving everything you’ve got at the anvil, pounding with all your might and then some, can be the purest, most unadulterated feeling of joy.

Now, you may be puzzled by this nonsecret. If we can locate all the knowledge we need to be successful by grabbing it from our own experience and the thousands of years of marketplace lessons for success, why, then, do a high percentage of us believe it can’t be that simple? One answer, I suspect, is that some masterful marketing and PR over the past millennia has fed that mentality. As long as we buy into the pitch that we can’t possibly already know how to better ourselves, then those claiming to have privileged knowledge will keep it that way.

My other theory for why we have trouble believing that we each have the knowledge we need to pursue happyness and attain success is that we haven’t done the work of defining those terms for ourselves. And that part isn’t easy. Look at history. Almost 235 years ago Thomas Jefferson and his collaborators wrote in the preamble to the Declaration of Independence that they held certain truths to be self-evident: that we are all created equal and endowed by our Creator “with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and…” of course, the pursuit of happyness. Right off the bat, life and liberty didn’t need defining. But that third concept, of what was being pursued exactly, has been an ongoing subject of serious, even legal debate.

Is pursuit of happyness defined as the quest to attain property, status, and wealth, as some would say? Or is it the protection of the rights of all citizens to work as hard or as inventively as they choose in order to attain whatever fruits of their labor they so determine—in emotional, intellectual, and/or economic terms?

Although I’m going to leave it up to you to define success and its true measurements for yourself, I’ll tell you right now that in my experience the trappings—the stuff—ain’t it. Instead, you might want to consider the working definition that’s helped me. Simply put, success is the result you get when you apply what you’ve learned in productive, practical ways. More potently put, I believe that success is the result of tactical and strategic applications of learned knowledge toward objectives pursued with passion.

Whenever I’ve gone in search of how others embrace success on their own terms, the diversity of answers has been amazing. Take this e-mail that I received from Alex, a twenty-four-year-old law school graduate from rural Arkansas. The first to go to university in her family, she had always considered herself to be ambitious and tenacious. But she had come to believe that only from facing challenges had she discovered her own mettle, and the depth of her desire to be a “world-class lawyer” and not settle for just any job: I know that I probably don’t need to write you about how difficult it can be to find jobs in this economy. But what I’ve learned about my “Pursuit of Happyness” is that if I define my goals and remain true to self-belief, that keeps me going. After two years of job hunting, I landed a part-time temporary position that I decided to embrace as if it was my dream job. Not surprisingly, I was given more hours and greater opportunity. Now it looks as if I may be given full-time, semi-permanent status. The terms aren’t the best, but honestly I’ve never been so proud of myself! From here on out, I feel that there is no limit.

For Madison, the secret so far had been staying at her anvil. She was also motivated by the opportunity to inspire other young women in her extended family to raise their sights. Her obvious enthusiasm was going to be a plus for her in the marketplace no matter what.

As the lessons ahead will emphasize, the only success that matters is that which you claim for yourself. You may already know what I mean, and you may have done your large share of hitting the anvil. In that case, the lessons coming up may be ABCs you’ve known for a while. Even so, it’s never too late to go back to basics. In fact, it’s never too soon.

LESSON 20

The Law of Hard Work Is No Secret

KEYWORD: Initiative

There was a time in the early 1980s when I was convinced that somewhere out there someone had a lock on privileged information that would give me the key to success on Wall Street. By any other name, I was looking for the secret.

Two years later, I held the key in my hand—literally. The process of getting to that pinnacle involved working two jobs simultaneously—one as a medical supplies salesman, which paid the bills, and one in pursuit of an opportunity to work as a stockbroker, which gave me a crash course in cold calling, getting past gatekeepers, and making sense of the numbers game as I knocked on doors of every branch office of every brokerage in the Bay Area; I heard more than a year’s worth of noes before catching my first real break. Once I did get my foot in the door as a trainee at Dean Witter & Company, after my trainee workday was done, I studied ferociously in order to pass the exam for my brokerage license—a feat that coincided with becoming a single parent and subsequently homeless. Without any margin for failure, I set myself a quota of making no fewer than two hundred sales calls a days. Meanwhile, my other OTJ training was figuring out the logistics of where to sleep, how to pay for quality day care, and how to feed and clothe my toddler son and myself, with enough left over to put a roof over our heads.

Many or even all of these efforts may resemble those that you have undertaken in your life, or those that you may undertake in the future. In such cases, we all know that we’re not alone in having to juggle efforts—whether they include an entry-level position on the job or seeking new work, finding places to stay, as well as needing to make choices for transportation, and budgeting the living needs for ourselves and our loved ones.

Though it took a year to land a job and another year of hitting the anvil, with initiative and persistence I was able to survive a beginner’s mistakes and conquer the basics. It was then that I finally looked up and saw that I’d built my “book” of clients. That was not only a success that validated my efforts, but in cold, hard cash terms, I could finally afford a place of our own to stay. Our first place of residence, after a year without, was a basement unit of a house in Oakland that I’d found when we passed by and I spotted the roses that were growing out front. Roses in the ghetto! We were home.

It wasn’t the end of the journey, only the beginning. But I must say that after our first night sleeping there, when Christopher Jr. and I left that next morning, the single little metal key given to me by the landlord made me feel as if I were the richest person on the planet and that I had completed the hardest assignment ever.

Just the feeling of the weight of the key in my hand is something that I will never forget. It defined for me the proving grounds of a life lesson that I’d known all along—the first and last rule of the marketplace—that the law of hard work is no secret.

You can write it on your arm in permanent ink and on the inside of your skull. It will not fail you. No matter what your current or future field of endeavor, whenever you take the initiative to make of yourself and your life what you will, and back it up, you’re in possession of special knowledge about how to succeed in the marketplace.

When you recall your efforts in the workplace as well as in other areas of your life, you might be surprised at the role that initiative has played in some of your accomplishments that you never thought of as such. What about that school fund-raiser you good-naturedly organized that was such a hit? Did you ever run an idea up a flagpole at the office that you were given the job of overseeing that turned out amazingly, but you just took it in stride? Or how about the success of the arts and crafts items that you create as gifts to others? The funny thing that happens when we’re engaged in something that we’ve decided to do on our own is that it doesn’t even seem like hard work. Wouldn’t it be great if we could tap that same natural ease and capacity for initiating action when facing the daunting prospects of entering or reentering the working world? Well, I think we can. And the most successful do. Yet we still sometimes hesitate in taking initiative.

Part of the problem is fear. Who relishes calling up potentially cranky people? Who looks forward to hearing that there are no openings at this time? And then there’s the resistance we all can feel about being a commodity out there for sale, or the anxiety many have about the marketplace in general.

Fear of the unknown is common to all of us when we put ourselves out there in the real world, out of our comfort zones, in situations where we feel that we may be judged, criticized, possibly rejected, and where we can’t control many variables that will affect the ultimate outcome. It can be nerve-racking to put yourself out there, hat in hand—asking for something. It can be less intimidating if you know that you’ve done your preparation, making sure your tools of the trade are in order—that is, your résumé is updated and easily accessible, your websites and marketing materials are current—and you’ve made sure that at absolutely all times you’ve got a business card and an ink pen on your person, at the ready. You can find me butt naked on a desert island, and I will have a business card and an ink pen on me somewhere! Be prepared.

The stone-cold truth is that the marketplace is not your friend. It’s not designed to be a loving, welcoming entity. It doesn’t care about you. You can mark that down as another rule. Whenever you take the bold step to put yourself on the line—with your creations, ideas, wares, dreams, and desires—rarely will a welcome wagon come out to greet you with flowers and chocolate. Whatever you’re hoping to give or get—a job, love, or a contribution to a cause—the marketplace isn’t interested. That is, unless you’ve got something of value or interest to offer.

Hard work and initiative do get you noticed. When a receptionist notices that you’ve stopped by three times to have a few words with the manager in charge of hiring, your repeat appearances can at least be a conversation starter.

When I was new on the job at Dean Witter, initiative and creative ways to hit the anvil were what paid off. That meant starting at the bottom—“smiling and dialing,” as I referred to the grueling numbers game of cold calling. I hit the anvil so diligently, my right index finger is permanently bent to this day.

On a recent business trip to San Francisco, I happened to be in the financial district crossing the street when a young woman called my name. She explained that she was just starting in the brokerage business and wanted to know only one thing—“Why two hundred?” I knew exactly what she meant. Why did I set such a ridiculous daily minimum goal for how many calls I had to make before the clock struck 5:30 P.M.? The real reason, I explained, “I was hungry.” That was the highest goal that I could set for myself to improve my odds. It required me to employ discipline and economy of language and motion and to sharpen my tools.

That’s my interpretation of hard work—doing your best, whatever you do. Again, it may seem so basic as to be stating the obvious. But if you really want to be noticed in a crazy competitive environment where you’ve got a stampede of thousands or more vying for the same thing that you want, the most obvious attributes may be what allow you to stand out.

If you find this lesson and its variations compelling, take the initiative to embrace your time in the sun, your opportunity to shine. And then you, too, can and must strap it on tight and push yourself toward excellence.

LESSON 21

Core Strengths Forged on Your Anvil

KEYWORD: Confidence

Right after initiative, the next tool you’ve got to be prepared to pull out of the toolbox, sharp and ready to put to use in any situation, is confidence. For effectively navigating the marketplace, confidence is your go-to resource, as well it should be.

There is no doubt that confidence is one of those intangibles that can take individuals much further than the skills or experience on their résumé indicates they will go. Whenever I hear highly successful folks describe how they convinced others to give them their first break, often they’ll admit to blowing the interview or audition but sailing on through because there was something special—a core strength that compensated for other shortcomings—that others recognized.

So where does this intangible quality known as confidence come from? This is a question that has been of great interest to me over the years as I’ve observed individuals who are considered world class at what they do—heart surgeons, music maestros, and international financiers who move and shape global economies all in a day’s work.

When you watch those individuals, you’ll notice they exhibit a level of confidence that is supersized, often larger than life. When they walk into a room, you notice them and how they move like tigers, as if they’re about to pounce. They may not say a word but just seem to dominate the space.

There was a time when I assumed these superconfident people were that way because they were born with added doses of self-assured, self-possessed qualities. Yet in my conversations with many individuals who have attained levels of mastery, that assumption has proven wrong. And what I’ve come to discover, through this very lesson that core strengths can be forged on ordinary anvils of all kinds, is that confidence is definitely an acquired resource.

How do you acquire it, then? From basic common sense and paying attention, I’d have to say that it comes from practice, training in your area of expertise, and, yes, from hitting the good old anvil of hard work at whatever you wish to be confident in. When you step out of your element, a building block for developing confidence comes from the entitlement you embrace to do so. When you go knock on doors, for instance, it’s up to you to claim the right to do so.

The need to entitle yourself, I should add, was first made evident to me by my mother—who steadfastly insisted that my worth wasn’t tied to pedigrees, degrees, or registries but was rooted in the core of who I was as a person. By her example, once again, I saw that what she brought into a room with her sense of quiet strength and power of presence was so much more impressive than any paper credentials. The other person who embodied that kind of confidence was my beloved uncle Henry Gardner—the youngest of Momma’s three brothers—who died in a boating accident when I was eight years old.

Uncle Henry didn’t just have authority. He had command! Not merely strong, he was bold, and, as far as I could tell, he didn’t have an ordinary cell in his body. I was inspired by the strengths I admired in him—from his impeccable grooming and outstanding personal style, to the adventurous spirit that guided him to see sights and places in his travels around the world.

When he was taken from us much too young, I decided to carry on the family tradition in his memory and run with my own sense of style and cool as far as I could take it. When I was eight years old, the die was cast for me. Clearly, I was going to have to attain a decent enough living to afford the expensive tastes that I developed as a result!

I’m not suggesting that you walk into every job interview, business meeting, or workplace setting with the intention of only promoting yourself. Nor does being confident mean being brash or pushy. Literally, it does mean that you act “with faith”—in yourself and in others to recognize that you can be counted on to deliver the goods, whatever that means in that context.

Confidence builders for the marketplace come from an array of outlets that simply make us feel great. The trip to the gym is a common way to boost endorphins and well-being. Yoga, I hear, is amazing for fueling a sense of composure and confidence. Maybe being out on a boat fishing or hunting in the woods empowers and energizes you. Maybe you feel like a million bucks after you get your car washed and take it out for a spin. Do you tango? Are you a golf or tennis fanatic? Are you in your personal heaven on weekends when you garden? Retail shopping therapy does it for me.

Some might view these as hobbies, but don’t tell that to those of us who are passionate about how we choose to spend our free time and how we derive confidence from those pursuits. These signature activities aren’t merely for winding down after a long day. They’re forms of meditation for many people I know, ways to be creative in their own workshops with their own anvils.

I once had the pleasure of watching Quincy Jones—the legendary musician, composer, and producer—cook a turkey burger. He approached this other creative outlet with the same flair seen in his musicianship—blending herbs, spices, texture, and color with a methodical, painstaking attention to detail. It was like watching Picasso paint.

The happyness that is gained from doing something that raises energy and well-being in one area almost always spills over to the challenges in other areas.

Moral of this story: confidence is a transferable strength.

When you feel like a million bucks, whatever you do to feel that way, the marketplace responds positively. Something that I started doing years ago—when I moved to New York City in the mid-1980s—is treating myself to a shoeshine whenever I’m on my way to do business. For me, that feeling of sparkling from your toes to the top of your head is a confidence blast. I recommend it to anyone who would like to join with me and follow in the footsteps of my uncle Henry—still the undisputed King of Cool in my book. You can do so without developing the serious shoe issue that I’ve acquired. You also don’t have to insist, as I do, that you can only wear shoes that have been shined that same day.

Not long after my move to New York and acquiring this habit, I went in search of the ultimate shoeshine and found the best of the best on Fifty-fifth Street and Seventh Avenue. For many years I thought it was my best-kept secret, too, until one beautiful autumn day in late 2002 when who should walk in and sit down on the shoeshine stand next to me but the hippest dude on the planet—the Emperor of Cool, Tony Bennett.

In his midseventies at the time, he hadn’t lost an iota of the good looks, charisma, and talent that made him such a heartthrob in the 1950s and early 1960s. Much of the public knew that he had kind of disappeared with yesteryear in the rock ‘n’ roll heyday of the later ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s. What not everyone knows is that in those years, following marital and financial troubles, Tony Bennett hit a downward spiral and almost died in 1979 from a cocaine overdose. Instead, he orchestrated the most amazing comeback, going back to his anvil of core strengths—the style, passion, and musicality that allowed him to sing anything and make it his own. With the help of his two sons managing and producing, he came roaring back to the top of the charts, conquering the music awards, rolling like the rock star he truly is.

I couldn’t resist striking up a conversation with him about anything, everything, and nothing. Shoes done, shining almost as bright as the moment, before heading out the door, I turned back and asked Tony, “Man, when are you gonna slow down?” Without missing a beat, he smiled and said, “Why should I?”

Confidence, baby!

LESSON 22

Wizards Begin as Blacksmiths

KEYWORD: Transferable Skills

Anvils? Blacksmiths?

You might be thinking something along the lines of what I’ve been asked by several friends and family members: “Hey, Chris, what’s up with all this talk of hitting the anvil? Why the fascination with blacksmiths?” I usually explain that it’s not all that far-fetched for someone who grew up, as I did, in a steel town like Milwaukee with the hum of industry all around, with its ample waterways for powering the mills, foundries, and other metal and ironworks. In my mind, the blacksmith has always been the everyman or everywoman who represents the hard work ethic I saw in people all around me—whether they worked in the steel business or not. The attitude wasn’t just Do it! but rather Do it and enjoy it! And get good at it!

Out of this atmosphere, I grew up with an appreciation for tradespeople and the different levels of skilled labor, as well as the many stages needed for developing skills. This was evident not just at the steel mills, but in all the local industries—the brickyards, breweries, tanneries, meatpacking plants, and automotive factories.

Long before I knew what a blacksmith did, these various industries allowed me to see the general steps to mastery that could be pursued regardless of the endeavor. Eventually I also discovered the coin of the realm for ascending those steps: transferable skills. Before I had come to learn that term, that capacity was something I was already using in my everyday pursuits.

The image may have first been inspired for me by the books of Greek and Roman mythology that I ate up as a kid. The blacksmith in the myths was also the master tradesman to the gods and keeper of the horses, and he was endowed with powers of magic. It turns out that in The Sword in the Stone and other tales of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, Merlin the Wizard was a blacksmith as well as a magician. Moral of this story: aspiring wizards who wanted to transform common metal into powerful swords had to labor long and hard as apprentices. No advancement to mastery could take place without time spent in the fundamentals, hitting their anvils.

As much as I knew this intuitively, I really didn’t appreciate its importance or the value of this transferable skills lesson until I was an apprentice under the Wall Street wizards (the “Masters of the Universe” as they were known in the 1980s) who mentored me. True teachers, like Gary Shemano, occasionally reminded me to take a closer inventory of what I already knew before tackling something new. For example, if I was going to be approaching clients with long-term investment strategies for retirement purposes, Gary would make sure that I had a frame of reference for doing so. Well, in that case, I could recall my work at a nursing home where I took care of the elderly and saw the concerns of their families up close. In fact, as I looked back on my employment history, for the first time I was grateful for the diversity of experience that could be applied to my efforts to be successful on Wall Street.

This revelation inspired me to come up with an alternate to the traditional job résumé, which typically only lists the name of the employer, position, and duties specific to that field. My idea was to create more of a worksheet that could outline the portable knowledge, marketplace skills, and life lessons that could be applicable to other fields and positions. As a planning tool for interviews—that is, not something you hand to a prospective employer—whether you’re doing the hiring or hoping to be hired, this transferable skill worksheet is also a wonderful reminder to bring up strengths that would otherwise go unnoticed.

When you do this kind of inventory not only to land a job in a new arena but also when you’re trying to ascend a ladder in your field, it can provide you with very helpful guidance as to where you are in your pursuit. Do you need to push yourself to the next level? Do you need to gain more proficiency?

As you apply this lesson and put your transferable skills to use, don’t hesitate to ask yourself at different points where you really are in your journey to mastery. If you’re starting out, know that the time you invest as a blacksmith will pay off soon enough and later on. And if you’ve reached wizard status at whatever you do, don’t forget to stay grounded in what you learned back at the beginning. Maybe that’s a secret after all.

LESSON 23

Are You Bold Enough to Go Back to Basics?

KEYWORD: Resilience

For all the financial and economic woes that we’ve witnessed in recent times, I’m a firm believer in the resilience of the marketplace. Even more important, I have faith in the capacity for resilience that’s available to each of us—as this lesson is here to emphasize.

Not too long ago, I went to a social event attended by several colleagues and friends from the financial field, many of whom were dealing with personal and professional challenges they’d never experienced before. It was fascinating to hear how for some it was the best of times and for others it was the worst of times. Some were toasting to new, exciting prospects while others were drowning their sorrows.

I heard an entertaining earful from a complete stranger who was upset with me for causing him to quit his job in order to pursue happyness!

Instead of staying in the financial field, when the industry was starting to change, he had decided to reinvent himself and do something, as he said, “to serve the greater good.” The problem was that it was turning out to be so much more difficult than anything he’d done before. Back in the good old days in the rat race, he was a CPA working for a national accounting firm, making lots of bucks. Now he had hung out his own shingle helping nonprofits with their financial books, and he had started his own effort to raise money for a job-training program working with individuals impacted by poverty and low education levels. He couldn’t believe the many obstacles that kept being thrown in his path. “And you know what’s wrong?” he asked. Before I could say a word, this guy said that he read somewhere that if he started giving more of himself to others, he’d be happier. So far, he said, it was turning out to be harder than dealing with the most grueling IRS audit!

“You want to go back to being a CPA?” I asked, not sure if he really wanted me to say something or if he just wanted to rant.

“What and give up my dream?” he replied with a laugh. And then, with a drunken hug, he thanked me!

It turned out that as hard as he was working, with less money and time than he ever had before, the autonomy of running his own show was more fulfilling than anything he’d previously done. His complaint, and it was valid, was that, in many respects, when he decided to become an entrepreneur and strike out on his own, he was forced to go back to square one and start with basics that he’d surpassed years earlier.

Now it was my turn to thank him. His story enabled me to recognize one of the most critical marketplace lessons of my career. It comes with the ever-useful question you can put to yourself whenever you’re contemplating change or a different path of growth—Are you bold enough to go back to basics?

Not a day goes by that I don’t hear from several different individuals who are intent on finding meaningful advice for how to launch their own business or major undertaking. The three most frequently asked questions that I hear in this connection include the following: (1) What made you decide to start your own firm? (2) What was the one thing that helped you build a multimillion-dollar enterprise that started in your apartment with only a ten-thousand-dollar investment? (3) How long did it take before you knew that you were really going to make it?

My answer to the first question about opening up my own firm takes me back to the moment when I left San Francisco and arrived in New York. My focus was on learning from the Masters of the Universe who ruled Wall Street with blazing powers in the 1980s, so that eventually I could borrow from their knowledge to do my own thing. Somewhere in my daydreams the vision of having my own firm—with my name on the door and all—must have cropped up early on. But for every practical reason, I knew that such a pursuit would have to come much later.

Meanwhile, I began to see this immense galaxy of opportunity that only a few fearless innovators were chasing. That’s where I really wanted to be. Plus, I saw possibilities for going ahead of their curve and pursuing revenue streams for investment that had been attempted but not at the scale that I envisioned.

Was I ready to go test the waters and find out? Hell, no. That was, until the day, much to my shock, that I was fired.

Though I should have seen it coming, I didn’t. Here I was, a rising star, working my way up in the ranks of Bear Stearns, but instead of toeing the company line by promoting the packages that I was supposed to be selling, I had bigger ideas. Independent money managers, middlemen and-women, were dominating in the arenas of wealth management and institutional investment strategies for pension funds and the like. There was no reason that I as a stockbroker couldn’t compete with the money managers and work directly with institutional clients. Or so I thought. After the fact, I should have realized that my employer would not relish my dreams of reinventing the game on Wall Street or veering from the company program as enforced by the chain of command. So when my immediate supervisor fired me for not sticking to policy, I shot back, “You can’t fire me. I’m gonna go to see Ace.” Going to see Ace Greenberg, the chairman and legendary CEO of the maverick phenomenon Bear Stearns & Company, what was in those days one of the most profitable private partnerships on Wall Street, was the equivalent of going to go see God. Since God wasn’t in that day, the great and mighty Ace was in charge. I found him sitting among the rank and file at his familiar seat on the trading floor, from which he rose to escort me into his office and hear me out. He was sympathetic to my vision—and passion—but in the end he had to back his guys in middle management. “You can’t serve two masters” was his fundamental message. That was the deal. But when he showed me the door, Ace didn’t close it completely. Actually, his last words to me were, “The road is long.” At the time, it felt as if I had been exiled from the only home I’d ever known. Only later did I perceive what a gift that was. Today, I think of Ace Greenberg as the prime example of someone who is both a journeyman blacksmith who has never stopped hitting the anvil, and a true wizard.

After some memorable soul-searching, I chose the bolder, much more uncertain route of change. I could have joined another firm and toed that company’s line, but I decided to strike out on my own.

This brings me to the second question I’m so often asked regarding how it was possible to start a business in Chicago in the competitive business environment of Wall Street with only ten grand of capital going in. For one thing, I didn’t know that it couldn’t be done: ignorance is bliss. Additionally, I brought with me the resourcefulness that came from nearly a year of being homeless, being a single parent, and starting my career at the same time. If anything prepared me for lean days ahead, that experience and many of the life lessons learned in the process were central to the early survival of my firm.

So, hitting the anvil with my stack of business cards and my telephone, I reminded myself every day of the old lessons that the cavalry ain’t coming and that baby steps count, too. As frugal as I was with the start-up money that had been given to me by one of my most generous mentors, pretty soon it had dwindled to almost nothing. It was time to reach out to another potential investor. On the day of our appointed meeting, for reasons that I don’t remember, I forgot one of the most basic marketplace rules: be punctual. Ironically, I’d mastered that one years earlier, to the point that I was sometimes overly early rather than not being on time.

To my own dismay, and that of my prospective investor, I arrived in his office twenty minutes late. He did what I would have done in his place. He turned me down. He said, “Son, if I can’t expect you to be on time, I can’t expect you to make timely decisions with my money.”

Well, I’d handled a cash flow shortfall before, so I wasn’t worried. But before I could call someone, move some things around, and buy some time, my phone got turned off.

This was what I’d call “think fast” time. A stockbroker with no telephone? How does that work? It doesn’t! In thinking fast, I had to go through my mental Library of Resources, pull out every bold memory of something that I’d done or learned before, or that I had heard about someone else doing.

In the process, I remembered hearing a story back when I was at Dean Witter and was given some fantastic pointers from a much respected broker by the name of Gary Abrahams.

Having done very well for Dean Witter, Gary was sent in the late 1970s to develop business in the Las Vegas area. Instead of hanging out a shingle and waiting for customers to come to him, or going after clients who were doing business with other brokerages, Gary did something much bolder. For a broker of his stature and for most brokers, it was almost unheard of. He had noticed out in the Las Vegas suburbs that there were big million-dollar homes being built, which was then a fortune. So he decided to get out and meet the buyers by going door-to-door. Nobody at the senior levels of the competing brokerages was going door-to-door, but Gary Abrahams did.

Instead of seeing that as something that only a rookie would do or as below him, Gary put on his best blue suit, looking like more than a million bucks, and went out to hit his anvil by knocking on doors and introducing himself to the owners who had just moved in. I never forgot hearing that story and how he shook their hands, handed them his card, and explained, “I’m new here in town with Dean Witter and I don’t know if I could ever be of service, but keep my card in case, and if I ever can be of assistance in any way, I’d love to talk to you.” That eventually led him to create a massive amount of business in Nevada.

As I recalled that story some years after hearing it, there was no question in my mind but that I had to deal with the fact that I had no telephone in the boldest possible manner by following the example of Gary Abrahams. First, I put on my best and only blue suit, then went out and knocked on doors. In Chicago, in the wintertime. Without appointments. I went and showed up in the offices of every viable contact on my list. Just about everyone welcomed me in. I was able to pitch a retirement plan at a fund director’s office, then reviewed options for growth with pension fund administrators at a couple of corporate headquarters, and toward the end of this process I went over to see some of the principals at the City of Chicago who were open to what my expertise could do for them. Every meeting was productive, each concluding with a nod and a request for me to follow up soon. Instead of embarrassing myself by having folks call only to discover that my phone had been cut off, I had actually improved my prospects by making personal contacts with my potential clients. Nobody seemed to think it odd or beneath me that I was showing up and knocking on their doors. No one else on Wall Street was doing that, so I was well ahead of the game.

Within one day, boldness and the basics led to payoff, giving me time in the interim to scramble and do whatever I needed to do to get the phone turned back on. Business began to slowly build, and pretty soon I was off and running. Resilience had won the day.

The moral of that story and of these back-to-basics lessons is that the marketplace rarely turns a blind eye to boldness. It also reminds me that the sweetest successes can be those that demanded more of us than we knew we had in us to give. And on that point I should finally answer the third question that began this lesson—when was I able to breathe easier and believe that this start-up of mine was going to make it over the long haul?

Well, I have to say that the most exciting milestone for me was about two years into the endeavor when I bought my first fax machine. In those days, that was becoming one of the tools of the trade that everybody had already turned into a verb. More and more, I’d been hearing things like, “Hey, can you fax me a contract?” or “I’ll fax you my info,” and I couldn’t keep running down to use other businesses’ fax machines forever.

Once I brought that baby home, every time I heard the electronic fax sound go off, I would celebrate. In fact, as my staff grew, we would all cheer; and I’d be the one crowing the loudest. That’s been a mainstay of my business, as it has flourished—that we celebrate the small and large victories.

Wherever you are, if you’re bold enough and resilient enough to go back to basics, you’re probably ready to venture out where you’ve never gone before. If you are considering veering off on that road less traveled for yourself, my further advice is that doing it your way, on your terms, requires the recognition that your ass is on the line. Not so much your money, but your energy, passion, joy, dreams, and desires. Are you ready to do that while taking the long view, understanding that success will come and go, that you’ll be down and up, flush and strapped? With the ebbing and flowing, are you prepared to be constant with your own oceanic persistence—being your own tide that rises and falls, comes and goes, moving forward, backing away only to come forward, again, again, and again?

Are you that bold?

LESSON 24

Supply and Demand Ain’t Rocket Science

KEYWORD: Marketing

Everybody’s selling something.

That is another stone-cold rule of the marketplace that’s been engraved on clay tablets since the invention of language. You probably are well aware of this truth, but it’s important to consider again, especially whenever you gear up to launch a new venture or even a new attitude.

Let me repeat myself, and this you can take to the bank: everybody’s selling something. That’s the essence of this lesson, Supply and demand ain’t rocket science. It has applications from the cradle to the grave, and answers numerous questions about how to make your way in the marketplace—whether you’re starting out or you’re already on the Forbes 400.

What you’re selling could be, and often is, something lofty, revolutionary, and unique—an idea, a vision, a dream, or a transformational, practical solution for a most pressing issue. Even the saintly Mother Teresa, who dedicated her life to healing and lifting up the poor, sick, and homeless, had to become a brilliant saleswoman to raise money and awareness for the cause that was so much larger than herself. She had to put on her best blue suit and go knock on doors to sell others as to why they needed and wanted to contribute to her cause.

Even if you are not in any form of sales or marketing per se, you’re selling something. And if you do claim the title of salesman or saleswoman, you shouldn’t have to apologize for what you do. Every pursuit must be marketed, if only to yourself. That rule is woven into the fabric of society. We’re all selling something. You sell, I sell. Or, like my mentor Marshall Geller once said—if you’re not selling something, then you ain’t in the game!

Let me quickly add that by the laws of supply and demand, if everybody’s selling something, then everybody is buying something, too. The more you practice wearing both your buying and selling hats, the more you sharpen all your skills.

Back in my early days of cold calling, one of the first things that I learned was not to try to talk someone into buying something she or he did not want to own. Instead, my R&D was to find out what the potential buyer was already buying. By the dictates of supply and demand, I could increase likelihood of making a sale by following a simple adage—Sell ‘em what they’re buying.

You can turn cartwheels and somersaults letting folks know how great your product is, but if you’re selling oranges and they’re buying apples, you’re at a disadvantage. So you procure some apples, and now you’re in business. But wait, they’re buying produce from someone else. Why should they buy your apples and not your competitor’s? You then go to your well of resources and assets that you offer on the supply side and hope to increase your chances of getting a piece of their apple business. Yet again Uncle Joe was a step ahead in teaching me that if you made friends before you needed friends, they’d be the first to try your apples.

There’s a second part of this lesson, which is what we learn from supply and demand about what to do with all those oranges you’ve got sitting around. The question you want to ask is—who is already buying them? Once you answer that, you need to find out where the orange buyers are. That’s the other twist on supply and demand—you gotta go where they are. You get up and go to where they’re buying what you’ve got.

So, as you can see, supply and demand really isn’t rocket science. Except now comes the application of the lesson in real-world terms. In the early days of launching my own business, these laws weren’t so clear-cut. For one thing, I was just me going up against vastly more established names and brands. So what could I do from a marketing standpoint that could be compelling to folks who never heard of me? I started with what I had in my hand—my name—and then added another fictitious name that had its own appeal. Actually, I borrowed the last name of one of my business heroes, Marc Rich. With no connection to him actually, the result was Gardner Rich & Company! To me, it gave the feeling of a brokerage that was classic and established, yet hip. Luckily, no one ever asked to speak to my partner, Mr. Rich.

The more challenging concern in terms of supply and demand was that Gardner Rich & Company (me) had the crazy idea to grow wealth for underserved individuals and communities—which included African American individual investors, minority-owned and-run businesses, educators, union members, and government employees. The mechanism for that was to cultivate the market that would create the demand. It all came down to educating the decision makers at the institutional level about why they needed me in addition to the vendors and firms they were buying from. In those days, the people with the power of the purse who oversaw pension funds and the like went through money managers—the intermediaries—who dealt with the stockbrokers and investment analysts. I believed it would be advantageous to the shareholders to bypass the money managers and buy direct—from us guys who were doing the actual trading—for a couple of reasons. My expertise was one reason. Even more important, I cared. The personal connection to teachers, union workers, minorities, and community organizers came straight from my background. Through my actions and how I communicated, they understood that their business was important to me.

Fortunately, the idea to not go through the money managers appealed to my prospective buyers. In practice, it would require going against the grain in a major way.

By the time everyone turned around and realized what we were doing, I had enlisted my first two institutional clients—the National Education Association and its more than 3 million members and 1.5 million members of the California Public Employees Retirement System.

Nobody could believe it. How had such a thing been possible? Well, I would explain, it wasn’t rocket science.

Marketing 101: Know your audience.

If you feel that the marketplace just doesn’t get what you’re trying to sell, switch hats and go shopping. You don’t have to buy a thing. But in the process of seeing what’s out there, you might be inspired to see what’s moving where. And that’s the beauty of this lesson that the marketplace is never static. Neither should you be!

LESSON 25

Truth Is a Hit

KEYWORD: Authenticity

Every now and then a marketplace lesson comes along that defies conventional wisdom and turns all the other rules and laws upside down on their heads. Such was my experience when I started to test the waters in public speaking. At first, following what I knew of supply and demand, it seemed to me that the market was glutted and that nobody was out crying in the streets over the lack of enough public speakers. On top of that, many heavy hitters at the speakers bureaus advised me that before ever taking my show on the road, I would need to consult with acting and media coaches, speechwriters, and even wardrobe experts. Wardrobe experts? Me?

None of this interested me in the least, not to mention the fact that I loved my day job and planned on keeping it. But doing my R&D, I decided to hear what the experts had to say. The input was valuable, yet the more I thought about the suggestions that were being offered, the more uncomfortable I became. The mere idea of coming across as canned, rehearsed, or packaged made me miserable. Then I was given terrific advice from the brilliantly gifted Bebe Winans, a gospel singer, actor, and minister, who insisted that the only thing that counted in any public presentation was to come from your heart and to only speak on what you are truly passionate about. Something else to keep in mind, he added, was the fact that the audience was hearing everything for the first time. Just remember, Bebe said, “They’re new and it is true.” I was able to employ another one of the three As—authenticity—and just be myself, dispelling the need to live up to any artificial marketplace image of what an aspirational speaker should be. Three years later, I’m happy to report the essence of this lesson—The truth is a hit!

There is everything to be gained from honoring the truth of why you’ve chosen your particular pursuit of happyness. That’s what was discovered by a retired military chaplain whose work was brought to my attention. After leaving the military, he decided to continue to do God’s work by ministering to the dying and their families in hospice care settings. When he wrote a book to share his unique spiritual and practical approach that had been so effective in his work, he faced extensive rejection from agents and publishers. No matter how many times he changed his manuscript to be like the other books out there—following all the marketing steps recommended at publishing business seminars—he couldn’t find an opening in the marketplace for what he had to offer. Finally, he realized that he had strayed from his purpose to speak from his heart and expertise, and to give comfort and guidance during one of life’s toughest passages. He then rewrote the book in keeping with his authentic approach and his truth. The kicker? The chaplain got an agent who sold his book to a midsized publisher, and he signed a deal for a follow-up book to boot. In the meantime, when he asked for advice about public speaking, I assured him that he already had all the right stuff.

This lesson is one of those that lots of folks find somewhat obvious. You most certainly have been advised in your life at different times about the importance of being yourself. Maybe you tossed it off as overly general. If so, it may deserve a second look.

I’m asked often what to do when there seems to be absolutely no demand for the thing that you’re selling, as heartfelt and authentic as it is. At what point should you throw in the towel and admit that it’s not what the marketplace needs or wants?

My answer is that the marketplace doesn’t know squat. Example? I’ve got two words: “Pet rock.” Who ever needed a pet rock? Nonetheless, the inventor and marketer of pet rocks, advertising executive Gary Dahl, had the authenticity and originality to come up with it; and he became an overnight millionaire with a product that was all the rage for one six-month Christmas selling season.

LESSON 26

Learn the Ropes First, Then Conquer Rome

KEYWORDS: Discipline/Character

What are employers looking for? This is a subject that comes up in many settings.

The top attribute most named by employers is passion. That’s the coin of the realm. Folks know when you’ve got it or not. It comes from who you are, and it can’t be bought, sold, taught, or acquired. It’s like the color of your eyes. After passion, a number of different assets come up that many employers find valuable. Foremost on my list after passion are the related qualities of discipline and character. Although recommendations and education are indicative of the potential for those attributes, for a truer picture, while interviewing candidates I listen to the kinds of questions a prospective employee asks me. That tells me a lot about someone’s level of curiosity as well as his or her potential to get the most out of on-the-job training and that person’s willingness to learn the ropes.

Let me give an example. In 2004, I had the opportunity to interview three candidates for two positions at Gardner Rich & Company. The first candidate was very impressive—with an Ivy League bachelor’s degree, terrific grades and scores, no direct experience in investment but with strong recommendations in related fields. The second candidate hadn’t been to college and had no experience but had been raised working in his family’s retail business and had actually invested some money in the stock market to start his savings for college. The third candidate was ideal on paper—top business schooling and a versatile work background including a stint at a prestigious brokerage firm, plus he was the son of a business associate.

During the interview process, the first candidate asked how much phone work was involved in the job? Clearly, he wasn’t crazy about being on the phone. That should have been my first clue. Nonetheless, I hired him on the basis of his recommendations only to find out that he couldn’t overcome his fear of taking calls or making them. I offered to teach him the ropes, but he couldn’t get past his nerves. He had a future in research but not in an area that we were involved in. He gave his notice without having to be let go.

The third candidate was not shy in the least. No matter what I asked him, he had all the answers. Then it became apparent that all of his questions were ways for him to drop all the big names in the business world that he knew. When I mentioned that, yes, I knew so-and-so, it turned out this young man didn’t know him at all. He was much more interested in perks, company travel, and, basically, how soon he could have the corner office.

The second candidate, the youngest of the three, won me over in the interview by asking if I had heard about a new tech stock he’d been reading about. Of the questions that I asked him, if he didn’t have an answer, he would say so and ask me to clarify what I had meant. I hired him on the spot. That was Sal (Salvador Guerrero), who has been with the company ever since; he not only had the discipline to learn the ropes from the start but no sooner would I explain something than he would be off and running, putting it into action before I had to ask for that next step. I have seen the strength of his character through that discipline time and again. When we offered to put him through college and business school, he deliberated seriously and then came to the conclusion that he could learn as much where he was.

The lesson to me in recognizing how much I value discipline and character today is remembering myself at earlier stages when those concerns weren’t always priorities for me. Like everyone else, when I was starting out I had my eye on the rock stars of the industry, and my intention was to get where they were, as fast as possible. Thankfully, the structure of the marketplace prevented me from doing that without first acquiring the knowledge needed to ascend to the next place.

Along those lines, when studying what it is that causes a career to run aground or to float, often you can see what important steps were taken and which were ignored. In hindsight, I’m grateful that I had mentors willing to tell me to pace myself or not to be too cool for school, and to avoid shortcuts so that I could get to that corner office lickety-split.

I’d venture to say that in many industrial accidents where human error has been involved, someone or a group of people tried to take shortcuts. In the financial world, many of the booms that turned to busts were the result of get-rich-quick schemes that skipped steps and that should have been obvious to smarter people.

No doubt we’ve all met those fast-trackers and hotshots who fly up in the ranks of whatever they pursue with drive, charisma, and an unrelenting will to win. They’re impressive, attractive, and dangerous when they have not spent time learning not just how to get ahead but what their values are and what they stand for. Talent is dazzling, but if individuals aren’t grounded in a sense of discipline and character, their ride is destined to be short-lived. We’ve all seen the extreme cases of burnout when the sports industry throws massive contracts at rookies, not giving them time to learn everything they need to mature, to heed the advice of others. The pressure of having all that attention, freedom, money, and fame—sometimes before barely stepping onto the playing field—can be overwhelming.

We hear so often that it’s not how often you fall but how fast you get up. I also think that it’s not how fast you get to the top but how much wisdom you attain on the way. With discipline and character, you can savor the true fruits of success.

LESSON 27

Who’s Who at the Office and in Your Spheres of Influence?

KEYWORD: Networking

Besides being uncaring and unwelcoming to newcomers, the marketplace is crazy. It will turn any activity under the sun into a game you can play for money. In fact, all those fun games that we used to play as kids—you know, the ones like kick-the-can and hide-and-seek—can either be good training or accurate predictors of how you’ll play the game as you make your way through the working world.

It turns out that an earlier lesson, Who’s who in your ‘hood?—which focused on trust issues—gave me portable knowledge in understanding the power of relationships in most every working or social environment that I’ve encountered. Indeed, trust, good faith, and general all-around people skills are essential ingredients in business dealings, negotiations, and especially for playing the vitally helpful marketplace game known as networking. Interestingly enough, when you have taken the time to identify key players in your early life’s history, you may find it easier to identify who plays important roles in this expanded version that I call Who’s who at the Office and in your spheres of influence?

Whenever buying and selling are involved, I’ve learned from this process that it’s helpful to research the “Who’s Who?” of the other party or parties in terms of chain of command. It’s valuable to know who has the buying power but also who is second to that position. Frequently, that number two person can be your best ally. In the office setting, you might also spot some of the same stock characters you used to know back in your ‘hood—the bully, the nerd, the hotshot, the nosy neighbor, the villain, and the wise counselor.

My uncle Joe Cook, who walked on foot from Mississippi to Wisconsin, first taught me about the importance of networking with his oft-quoted philosophy, “It’s always best to make friends before you need friends.” As a kid I took that to heart and started applying it at an early age. Fortunately, this wasn’t a challenge, as I genuinely like people—and not just some people. I like people. Period.

If you feel that you lack people skills or don’t know where to begin practicing the art of networking, start with the name game. Ask people their name, look them in the eyes, and shake their hands. And tell them your name. This is one of the oldest marketplace rules of the game out there and it works.

The other benefit of playing the “Who’s Who?” game for even the most practiced of us, as I’ve learned, is that if I keep my ears open and pay attention to my instincts, I might discover something valuable. I might discover someone who’ll be a friend, an associate, an introduction to a matter or person of interest, a partner, an employee, or an intern. Or that person might be connected in some way to someone else who might be all those things. That person might even be a pillar of an entire neighborhood—what my mentor Marshall Geller called a “sphere of influence.”

When learning the fundamentals of the marketplace, many folks get stuck even after they’ve done the work of reaching out to meet people outside of their familiar circles. They have a cell phone full of names and numbers or a shoebox full of business cards, but they don’t know what to do next.

So, how do you grow your success with initial contacts? You stay on it. This all goes back to the lesson of hard work. You have to hit the anvil, do the follow-up, write the thank-you card, remember details, and remember names. Let me repeat: stay on it. If you’re selling something and you want to beat the competition or introduce a product that you’re excited about, that extra kindness, interest, and caring that you show may be the difference.

I heard a story about Donald, a real estate salesman in California, who was the only one left standing in his area after everyone else ran for the hills when the market started to soften. He had built his network of clients by making friends first, then cultivating relationships, checking in from time to time, attending their church suppers, their kids’ Little League games, and patronizing their businesses. When it came time for those people to sell or buy a house, he was their go-to guy. Donald understood that when everybody is offering basically the same expertise, that added amount of caring seals the deal. And those clients tell a friend and they tell a friend. And so on.

Whenever you’re playing the game of “Who’s Who?” it’s a reminder to do more than develop marketplace relationships that may be mutually advantageous at some point. Of course, that’s a terrific fundamental of networking and doing business in general. But the next step, all the more important, is to get to know who those individuals and business entities are. If you’re preparing to become trading partners—whether you’re buying or selling, representing or consulting, collaborating or competing—the more you know about a potential client’s track record, the better the agreement you’ll make together. The ability to trust and to be trusted is as crucial to business dealings as it is to personal relationships.

Networking teaches many lessons at different stages. I’ve certainly learned from several mistakes when I didn’t follow my hunches or when I was naive about the “Who’s Who?” of a particular venture. One episode in particular taught me about a component of networking and marketplace relationships that should be addressed by anyone who wants to play to win at the game. I’m referring to the expectation that whenever someone has scratched your back, you’re going to be called upon to scratch theirs.

That was made very apparent to me several years ago when a well-established financial institution was balking at paying my firm—for services and profits rendered—and I decided to bring in some juice in the form of a high-powered individual who carried more weight than we did at the time.

Even though my instincts told me that I should fight my own battles, I made no headway when I appealed to the chairman of the board of this outfit that owed my firm money. He shrugged me off. With that, I decided to let him know that I had connections and that I was going to be pulling strings through my network of who’s whos. So I said to him at a conference meeting, with all the defiance I could muster, “Have you ever met Johnnie Cochran?” “Uh, no,” he said.

“Would you like to?” I glared at him.

Let me quickly add that I didn’t know Johnnie Cochran or have any famous legal guns in my corner. So I asked a high-powered community leader whom I knew through other activists if he would help me seek justice and come with me to a showdown with those who had wronged me. When we arrived, I was ready to rumble, but he took the lead on my behalf, rose above the fray, and smoothed everything over; we left with the agreement that I’d receive 60 percent or so of what was owed to me.

It didn’t occur to me that I had much in the way of a return favor to offer, although I was certainly in his debt. Not too much later, however, the bill came due when he asked me to provide some favorable quotes to the business media in regard to a financial venture he was spear-heading. I was happy to do it, but when articles ran linking us, I was stunned by the reaction from several of my clients who assumed that I was partnering with him and decided to take their business elsewhere. Unbelievably, I turned around and saw that I’d lost more than 50 percent of my accounts. I had to take a close look at what had just happened and whether the benefit that his favor had provided me was worth the loss when the bill came due. Or, as I refer to this moment of revelation: Sometimes you gotta ask yourself, is the juice worth the squeeze?

At times the juice is definitely worth the squeeze. I’ve been amazingly blessed by those who have favored me with the greatest gifts of their wise counsel, sound advice, and strong support. Though they don’t operate by a system of quid pro quo, they know that when and if I can offer the same to them, I do so or will do so in a heartbeat—at whatever the effort required.

LESSON 28

It Takes as Much Energy to Bag an Elephant as It Does a Mouse

KEYWORD: Focus

The essence of this lesson is very simple. In a nutshell, it teaches that you do not have to be an entrepreneur to think like one. That message had particular resonance for me when I was asked a question during a Q&A session at a conference for cafeteria workers in my early days of public speaking. A woman who was probably in her early sixties strode up to the mic and asked, “How would you describe your management style?” Well, that was a subject that I’d addressed before, but I hadn’t expected it to come up in this setting. My assumption was that perhaps she was a supervisor and was looking for advice for the workplace. It turned out that, no, she was a line worker, rank and filer. Nonetheless, she was interested to find out what she could learn from me to apply to her work and to other areas of her life.

My job as the head coach of my team, I explained, is to keep the focus. The power of focus, without a doubt, is often our most overlooked natural resource; when tapped, it has the strength to move mountains. So my other job as head coach is to help the members of my team identify their strengths and focus on them. And on an overall basis, I aspire to keep us focused in general. On what? On opportunities rather than challenges. Purpose rather than perks. Pursuit rather than pace. To maintain focus and marshal all of our forces to adopt a big-game mentality, the philosophy and slogan I developed was It takes as much energy to bag an elephant as it does a mouse.

In marketplace terms, this reminds all of us not to sweat the small stuff, to establish priorities. It’s a gauge for how to use time wisely. After all, if the bigger goals end up taking the same time as the smaller ones, why not go big? Focus is also about concentrating your energies individually and collectively, about having an intensified presence in everything you do, and about how you come roaring onto the field with your power and drive. All those aspects of focus, I believe, were pivotal in Gardner Rich & Company’s success at going big. And as we grew, with pockets of activity happening in multiple offices, this approach has helped unify our efforts that could otherwise drain us or pull us in too many directions.

When I related these details at the cafeteria worker conference to the very focused woman who asked the question, I could see by the way she nodded her head that she immediately understood the principle as a management style and as something she could apply for herself.

The power of focus is something that has interested me not just as the CEO of a company but as the CEO of my personal pursuit of happyness. I think that it’s fair to say that there can be a downside to the hyperfocus that many of us big-game guys and gals have in work-related matters. I’m the first to admit, not proudly, that beyond my personal commitment to my children, I’ve sacrificed the time and energy needed for sustaining long-term personal relationships. I’m working on it but don’t want to sugarcoat the downside of focus or pretend to have much wisdom to offer in how to better balance the needs of work and home. In fact, with my travel schedule, whenever anyone asks me where home is, I have been known to answer, “United Airlines.”

However you choose to apply the opportunity to focus your energy on what matters most to you—elephants rather than mice—in your career, your health, your peace of mind, your relationships, or any undertaking in which you seek out the best of yourself, I do have one piece of advice. Through much pain and deliberation, I have learned that when you choose to focus your every molecule on a pursuit, you have to sacrifice somewhere. With all the demands of your time taken up by many equally important matters, only family rules. Everything else can be sacrificed, but family is nonnegotiable, especially children. The bottom line for me is that all that other stuff is negotiable but not my son and daughter, who moved back to Chicago to be with me, not long after my company was up and running.

Let me add one more note about this lesson as it applies to parenting. To my knowledge, there is no pursuit that is as humbling, challenging, rewarding, and frustrating as that of becoming a successful parent. Many years ago, I was given great advice from a teacher who was offering suggestions for the best ways to respond to the upsets that come along with having adolescent children. She said simply, “Pick your battles.” That, too, has been another spin on this lesson, and it has helped me to focus on loving my kids and being there for them. Sometimes focus is just that simple.

LESSON 29

Share the Wealth

KEYWORD: Community

Not long after I went into business for myself and set up shop in Chicago, I was taught a major lesson about how I could give of myself to others and make a contribution to the community at large. Up until that time, I had wrongly assumed that only someone financially very well-to-do could achieve the status of a real philanthropist.

My revelation came after a series of failed attempts to procure appointments with some of the most successful businesspeople in Chicago. Now, I understood that, hey, I was the new kid in town and these folks already had their top-tier investment professionals they were most likely content to keep giving their business to. My agenda at that time, however, was less about selling them my firm’s services and more about asking for ten minutes of their time so that I could learn from their vast expertise.

Unfortunately, I was naive. Many of these very busy high-powered, self-made individuals didn’t know me from Adam, and they didn’t have ten minutes to spare. Undaunted, I showed up in many of their offices, where I introduced myself in person; and I received an abundance of great advice that I value to this day. But there was one gentleman who was a holdout. Not only that, but he was surrounded by a team of gatekeepers whose sole purpose, it appeared, was to tell me no.

Following my best playbook, after weeks of phone calls, I headed over to his headquarters to introduce myself in person but was stopped by the downstairs security guard. No one would be allowed to ride up the elevator to the executive suite unannounced. Of course, that made sense. So I asked the guard to call up and announce me. The answer came back directly from the top, from the head honcho himself, “Not available.” Feeling let down, to say the least, I decided to blow off some steam and go for a stroll in the neighborhood of Chicago’s financial district with its tall, gleaming fortresses of power and success. I walked and walked, thinking about how I could choose to respond positively to the rejection I’d just experienced. The farther I walked, mulling over the situation, the more that I noticed the scenery start to change as I wandered into poor, forgotten neighborhoods there in the shadows cast by the towers of industry. On those streets, I saw reminders of myself—single parents, struggling, some who were possibly among white-collar or blue-collar working homeless or between places to stay. I saw young men and women who were no different from me when I was first starting out in the business, no doubt in search of opportunities to work hard and hit their anvils, while learning the fundamentals of their pursuit. And that’s when I made one of the most important decisions of my adult career.

It came to me in a flash that as soon as my company was situated and secure, my door would be open to anyone who wanted ten minutes of my time. What had been a disappointment turned into the inspiration for where my headquarters was eventually located—in the heart of the financial district, on the ground level, and with all glass windows, too. If I couldn’t be accessible to share my lessons for success with others, that wasn’t success.

The revelation that sharing the wealth is about so much more than money was liberating. I decided that if I could make a contribution of my time to offer advice, I didn’t have to wait for people to come calling on me. Instead, I created an internship program at our office for high school students to learn about Wall Street and financial literacy. Our policy is that we will pay tuition to college for those interns willing to work and learn consistently for two years, while maintaining their grades. By investing in the potential of young people of different backgrounds and neighborhoods in Chicago, my company benefits from the opportunity to put resources we’ve gained back into the soil. We also have discovered that many of the students who have gone on to college and then found work in the business world end up becoming clients and affiliates. Just as they have been mentored, they naturally go on to mentor others in their pursuits.

Let me recommend to fellow entrepreneurs and marketplace executives that if you haven’t yet explored the benefits of being a mentor to give it a shot. The gift of your time to encourage someone who was once in your shoes will be repaid to you countless times over.

Another way to share the wealth is to be open to others about the struggles that you have overcome to reach a high level of success—which is sometimes the most encouraging and inspiring thing you can do for those in the midst of their struggle.

One of my close colleagues, who happens to be Jewish, once told me that according to the tradition in which she was raised, there are eight levels of charitable giving. At the lowest level, your arm is twisted into writing a check. At the next to the highest level, you give generously and anonymously, and the recipient doesn’t know who gave the gift. But the very top level of sharing the wealth isn’t about handing out money or material goods. It turns out that the greatest wealth you can share is when you give someone a job or do something to create an opportunity for that person to find employment, because you are preventing poverty from happening in the first place. Included in that practice is funding for education, which is vital to job creation. Along those lines, I am a committed proponent of providing scholarships to individuals in all underserved communities, along with grants to honor educators—who are heroes in every community.

Whenever you question what resources you have to share, as I once did, this lesson is a reminder that the smallest gift of time, consideration, kindness, advice, or direction that you give to one person can truly have a ripple effect that lifts the well-being of the entire community and of the marketplace. That’s how we can all improve the general economy, believe it or not. Indeed, the wealth of knowledge and innovation will need to be shared, now more than ever, so that we can strengthen and revitalize our ailing sectors. We can and we should.

Sharing the wealth and caring about the community where you live as well as the global community is not complicated. It can be applied however you choose. Give what you’ve got. And don’t wait. Start now. Right where you are.