Can you tell me a little bit about your background?
Sure. I grew up in a small town in Georgia, led a pretty idyllic life. I actually was first generation in my family to go to college, but I always knew I was going to go to college. I attended Georgia State University where I studied business. But the most important part of that is the story of a guy who had a tremendous influence on me. David Schwarz who is deceased was the author of a book that is pretty well known called The Magic Of Thinking Big and he was the chair of the marketing department. I took 4 classes with him and I’d never considered how much you really could stretch your mind to accomplish goals. Right after I graduated the Vietnam War was going and I ended up being a pilot and flew search and rescue missions. When I became an instructor was when I started to pay attention to the processes for what causes success and I eventually applied that my business life.
Over all this time, I actually cataloged all of my experiences and my life lessons that enabled me to succeed. I thought there had to be a way to deliver this message to the world and There’s more to Life than a Corner office was the byproduct.
So, there’s one young hot-headed character and one CEO in this book? Is the CEO character based on you and is the young character based on someone?
Actually, it’s interesting you ask that. I would really say it’s a dialogue between the person that I am today and the person that I was at the age of 30.
You’ve got alot of interesting life lessons in there. Did you make these mistakes yourself as you’ve gone through your career?
Yes absolutely. Actually it’s an interesting phenomenon. We always remember our mistakes. For some reason it’s easier to remember those. For example, you touch a stove, it burns, you don’t touch a hot stove again. But, our successes for some reason seem more difficult to remember. We just don’t pay attention to the process for it. People are like icebergs. Only 15% of what your capable of is above the surface, and 85% is inside of you. It’s just that very few people if any ever tap that capacity below the surface. What we’re capable of is quite extraordinary.
I’ve noticed in the book that you took a particular interest in growing and mentoring people from waitresses to delivery drivers? What’s driven you do to do that?
I’ve always had a genuine interest in people. I may just talk to a waitress in a restaurant and say tell me your life story in 25 words or less. I actually think there’s something I can learn from everybody.
It’s been really tough out there for recent grads from MBA programs, undergrad or any other school in terms of finding jobs. What advice do you have for us?
Winston Churchill said never, never, never give up. My daughter has been trying to break into publishing in New York and she struggled quite a bit for almost 3-4 months, but she was determined, and now she’s working as an editor at a publishing company. Figure out what unique things you have to offer and showcase those. Realize that life is not about what happens to you, but how you respond to what happens.
While I knew this before, yesterday I experienced a particularly challenging day because I didn’t leave the house and I spent most of the day looking for a job and trying to find jobs to apply to. Like anything else in your life, you really want to keep the idea of moderation at the forefront of your mind. It’s like drinking too much. For the first few hours, you are hopeful, having a good time, and next thing you know, your head is in the toilet. Ok, that’s not the greatest metaphor, but consider some of the following ideas.
When you spend all day searching for a job, and you apply to 20 jobs, and you don’t’ hear anything, it will throw you into a pretty negative mind set to say the least. Once that happens, you pretty much going into a self destructive thought pattern of "I suck, I’m never going to get hired, this is impossible…." and so on. So, now that is your story, that is the energy you are sending out into the world, and you become what you think about all day. It’s quite vicious isn’t it?
So, how do you balance it out? Part of the reason I’ve developed a morning routine is to maintain some level of balance. In my post 8 Free things you can do when you’re unemployed, I shared some ideas to help restore this balance into your life. That’s why morning routine consists of a bit of creative visualization and self improvement, writing on my two blogs, and applying for jobs, and then surfing for a few hours a day. By noon, I don’t bother with the job search. Sure, you can worry constantly about whether your search is going well, but in the end it’s pretty useless to worry.
I got a hold of There’s more to life than a corner office thanks to somebody at the publisher coming across my blog and sending me a free copy. I think subtitle of the book “The Secret to Total Life Prosperity” really is a great way to sum up what this book is all about. Through the eyes of a young hot shot executive we get the tail of how easily we can lose our way in our goals for career success. When he comes across a highly successful CEO, he begins the period of introspection that I think all business leaders need to go through.
When we neglect every other area of our life with a focus of just getting head it becomes really detrimental to our abilities. The other great thing about this book is that it reads really quickly. For a fairly quick reader you might be able to finish it in just a few hours. But, it will definitely leave a lasting impression on you. I decided to extract what I consider the most important lessons from this book and include them in this post:
The most successful people are the ones who ask themselves the hard questions and confront the truth even if isn’t pretty
Each and every person is incalculably valuable. Each person we meet is as valuable and deserving of our respect as every other
Target fixation is the condition of becoming so singularly focused on a particular goal or objective that one ignores other important factors even to the point of ones own detriment. Over focusing on just the target can make everything go down the drain
Humans have a great capacity to produce and grow, yet most only scratch the surface
Plan well enough that you know what the proper course to completion looks like and you are then set to see departures from that course much sooner
Be intentional in all you do
If a person truly sells out to accomplish a major objective and ignores the balance in the process, he or she will invariably find that any satisfaction is short lived, even if he or she accomplishes the objective
Immaturity temps us to look only at the immediate reward, but we need to think beyond the longer term cost or effect
True leadership has many facets but it begins with the need to see more and see farther than those being led
Hope is simply a reasonable expectation for a brighter tomorrow. Of course the choices we make form our basis for hope or lack of it
Some actions in life are undoable once you pull the trigger
Real change is not easy. It involves getting in touch with our true values, what we stand for, the deep longings of our hearts.
What happens to you in life is much less important than the way you respond to it
What we put into our minds is just as important as what we put into our bodies
Just because you’ve had some success doesn’t mean there isn’t anything to learn. We are always learning and growing
If it isn’t obvious by now, I’m a huge proponent of personal development and read tons of personal development books. One of my favorite authors as of lately is Dr. Wayne Dyer. In his book Manifest Your Destiny, he talks about a concept that really intrigued me. He talked about how we all have phases that we go through during our personal development, and I realized, we do exactly this in our professional lives as well. So, I decided to explore the 4 archetypes of Carl Jung, as explained by Wayne Dyer, and as they tie to the MBA experience.
The Athlete: This is most likely the phase that we enter business school in. Depending on our age, we might start as a warrior. But if we’re on the younger end we definitely start as an athlete. Athletes concern themselves with their physical appearance, and a good amount of their self-identification is in their physical appearance. Securities, insecurities, beliefs, and things that form self-image are highly tied to physical appearance. In this phase, the suits you wear, how good you look, how hot you are, are what you think are responsible for your success.
The Warrior: Most MBA students in my mind start out as warriors. The warrior phase is all about competition. Your mantras are “what can you do for me?” and “how can I get ahead.” You compare yourself to your peers and you are competing for the same jobs, trying to get ahead, setting goals, and working really hard to achieve all of your goals.
The Statesmen: Hopefully by the time you graduate, you have seen the light and evolved into a statesmen. At this point your mantra becomes “how may I serve” and all the goals you’ve set and things you’ve desired flow into your life in abundance and effortlessly. But the ultimate irony is that you have no more attachment to them, and their importance has diminished significantly. In this phase of your life you find yourself in a place to give. Perhaps that’s why we see top executives, CEO’s and others make massive donations to charity, and become heavily involved with causes that benefit the world around them. They’ve realized that you get back what you give out.
The Spiritual Being: This is a phase that I think we all strive for, but seems to be the most difficult to reach. Wayne Dyer says that it’s at this point that you realize you are no longer a human being have a spiritual experience, but rather you are a spiritual being have a human experience. You realize you are not any of the above three archetypes, and you achieve a blissful, effortless, control over your life.
So, in my mind, by the end of your first year of business school, set a goal to become the statesmen. I was the warrior until the very end and I think it would have had a much more profound experience and impact on the people around me if I had become the statesmen as early as possible.
If you think that getting an MBA is about nothing but taking action and getting as far as you can get think again. Those three letters on the end of your name indicate one thing: "I just spent a s#$#tload of money on my education and I have read a bit more about business than other people out there." Sure, that’s a bit harsh. But, when you look at realistically, having an MBA doesn’t make you special at all. What you do with it is really what makes you special.
As MBA’s we have a tendency to dismiss anything related to personal development and spirituality as new age nonsense. We live in a heavily action driven world. But, the reality is enlightened leadership will get you further than any of your skills. First I want to recommend that you purchase a copy of Lao Tzu’s book the Tao Te Ching. The best translation I’ve come across is the Wayne Dyer’s version, Change Your Thoughts Change Your Life.
So, why should you be an enlightened leader? Enlightened leaders are in a place of peace that makes success flow into their lives, in a way that almost appears effortless to the outside world. It also feels effortless to the leader. As an enlightened leader you are more likely to inspire those around you, you’re more likely to be healthy, and more likely to be proud of what you’ve become. Enlightened leaders are able to lead people without force and as result people gravitate towards them. Enlightened leaders seem to maintain a balance in their life, while those who are not end up sacrificing the things that truly increase the quality of your life such as family, friendships, and overall life experience. So, choose the path of the enlightened leader and let your success flow into your life.
For this blog post, I was fortunate to interview Jeff Rozic, a Pepperdine Alum from Google. His insights and his advice are some of the best I’ve received. Below are just a few of the things that Jeff offers in this interview
1. The keys that got him hired at Google
2. Networking strategies to get you your dream job
3. Tips on how to write a standout cover letter
As I was reading an article on The Demise of Job boards on Dan Schwabel’s blog, I came across an almost disturbing statistic. It said that approximately 1 in 1470 resumes submitted results in a job offer. When you think about it, it might finally make sense that despite your extensive qualifications you are not getting any interviews. To add to that, the people who are scanning your resumes are often not subject matter experts. So, if you don’t submit resumes, how do you find a job? First off, I wouldn’t abandon submitting resumes completely. I still submit resumes every single day. But, I’ve found that local sites like Craigslist for my city have been more effective.
However, I will go back to the one thing that really seems to result in a higher hit rate, networking events. I’ve written about the ins and outs of networking events: how to find them, how to utilize them, and more. So I’m not going to go on about that. But, these events provide significant benefits beyond your traditional job search. First and foremost people get to meet you in person. There’s a great deal about a person that you can’t tell just from looking at a resume, even if that person fills it with interesting details about their extra curricular life. Second, it gives you a chance to have human interaction, which is going to be an essential skill to almost any job. If you are sitting behind a computer submitting resumes all day, but never interacting with any real people, it could be detrimental to the energy you give off when you finally do land an interview. In one recent experience I met a recruiter who called me in for an interview for a position that wasn’t even posted on the company’s web site. Finally, the events can be a good place to make new friends and have some fun. The whole job search thing can get so frustrating, that you owe it to yourself to go and have a little fun. When you allow yourself to live a little the world seems to open up to you much faster.
If you are a regular reader for Bizskoolblog or just browsing and ended up here, I wanted to let you know about a new project that I have started work on. Now that I have gradated from business school I’ve decided to continue my education in another school. The Skool of Life. This is my new personal development blog which explores everything from goal setting to peak performance in all areas of your life. Stop by and check it out.
In today’s world and current environment getting networking is not only more important than ever before it is easier than it’s ever been. With a little bit of effort you can extend your network of contacts far beyond what you ever imagined possible. Networking is an essential part of the MBA experience and will open up more doors for you than anything else you do in business school. The tips below could be applied to universally to almost any profession:
1. Ning:Ning is one of my favorite sites now because of the sheer volume of custom social networks. Whatever your area of interest, personally and professionally, Ning seems to have at least one social network tailored to your needs. The one I belong to is Keith Ferrazi’s Greenlight Community. After reading his book, Never Eat Alone, I realized the guy is a master at networking and being part of his Greenlight Community would help me to become a more effective networker.
2. Meetup.com is another site I absolutely love. Meetup is great because the whole premise is to meet up with people in person. If you do a simple search for your zip code and look at the list events going on in a 20-30 mile radius, you will find 100’s of meetups ranging from CEO meetups to Chinese cooking meetups.
3. Alumni Networks are another tremendously valuable resource. I went to a lesser known business school and some people complained that our alumni network didn’t help at all. However, in order for you to get value out of an alumni network, you have to leverage it. I found that even MBA alumni from other schools were more than happy to talk to me. So, don’t limit yourself to your own alumni network. Reach out to alumni from other schools.
4. Industry Associations: This is an idea I got from Brian Tracy’s book, The Luck Factor. Industry associations can get you in with alot of the right people, and help you extend your network to some very high level people. In a previous post I mentioned how to grow your professional network through volunteering, and these associations are a great way to do that. Local and City governments are full of volunteer opportunities to connect you to people in your own backyard.
SOCIAL NETWORKS