Category: Advice

  • Pay the Price

    Pay the Price

    “Understand there is a price to be paid for achieving anything of significance. You must be willing to pay the price.” – John Wooden

    If you want something big, you have to be willing to pay the price. That means you have to be willing to work for it and make the sacrifices. If you want to run a marathon in three hours, you have to pay the price and put in the grueling months of training and suffering.

    Ambition and achievement requires sacrifice and trade offs. I always wanted to accomplish so I didn’t spend much time with friends. My social life suffered. Many people work so hard they lose sight of their close friends and family and they become more and more distant over time. Eventually, they completely lose touch. It doesn’t have to be this extreme but it gives you a sense of the sacrifice required – the price you have to pay.

    In order to be willing to pay the price, you have to understand deeply what you were trying to accomplish. He won’t be willing to stay up late and work harder than anybody else if you don’t have a clear picture of what the final outcome of all the hard work will be. Make sure you have a clear vision for what you want and why you were sacrificing so you will be willing to pay the price.

     

  • Lead, Follow, or Get Out of the Way

    Lead, Follow, or Get Out of the Way

    I didn’t realize this when I was growing up, but my dad was also an entrepreneur. He ran a small company that he and his business partner built over 18 years. My dad had a plaque on his desk that said, “LEAD FOLLOW OR GET OUT OF THE WAY”.

    Perhaps I absorbed this through osmosis as I grew up, but I am a get s#it done (GSD) kind of guy. I have a strong drive to be productive and I am happiest when I feel that I am accomplishing something or working my way towards goals. To GSD on a team, you MUST lead follow or get out of the way.

    LEAD: If no one is taking charge and something needs to happen, you have to step up and take the lead. You will find yourself more often than not in the leadership role because most people do not have a natural tendency to lead.

    FOLLOW: If someone is taking charge and you believe them to be capable and competent, follow. Ask how you can help. Become that person’s enabler and help them lead even better by being the best follower you can be.

    GET OUT OF THE WAY: No matter what happens, nothing will slow the team or company down faster than someone who gets in the way. People who get in the way are generally unhelpful or aren’t willing to do the work. They don’t follow up up tasks that are assigned to them. They complain about the direction the team is headed or problems that are being encountered along the way. They drag teams down, and people like this can singlehandedly make a world-class team mediocre. If you have someone on your team who won’t get out of the way, you need to address it and get them onboard or get them off the team.

     

  • Hard Work = Luck

    Hard Work = Luck

    You will only have a handful of mega opportunities in your life, and they won’t hang around for long. That million dollar idea you had yesterday may be gone tomorrow. That job offer that is the dream job but requires you to move across the country expires in a week. That real estate deal might be off the market in six hours. These opportunities will come your way maybe once a decade. Which means that the vast majority of your time will be spent preparing for opportunity. The more you work and the harder you prepare, the more equipped you will be to capitalize on these opportunities. Will you be ready? Will you be able to identify the opportunity let alone seize the day?  Will your preparation be enough?

    In the same vein, always have your sails up so you’re ready to run when the winds pick up.
    • Quote: The harder I work the luckier I get.
    • Make your own luck.
    • Wooden Quote: It’s too late for preparation when opportunity strikes.
  • Be Nice

    Be Nice

    Be nice just to be nice. But there are also a lot of benefits:

    • You feel better about yourself
    • Whatever is happening in your brain is probably slightly different than the reality so being nice gives the other person the benefit of the doubt
    • The nicer you are to other people, the nicer they will be to you (this is especially important when you need something from somebody else!)
  • Don’t take any bull…

    Don’t take any bull…

    You don’t have to put up with toxic, abusive, or negative people. If you have a boss that verbally abuses you or others, or a friend who drags you down, or a business partner who sabotages you… ditch them! It can be scary to break free and find a new path forward. But life is way too short to surround yourself with these kinds of people. At the end of the day it is your choice. Ultimately, you are choosing who you surround yourself with. Or who you don’t want to be around. You can surround yourself with people who lift you up and make you better, or people who drag you down.

  • Don’t wait to lose something to appreciate it

    Don’t wait to lose something to appreciate it

    Don’t wait to lose something to appreciate it

  • Fight For It

    Fight For It

    “If only I had an enemy bigger than my apathy I could have won.” -Mumford & Sons

    Do you really want it? If so, you should fight for it. Sometimes in my life there have been things that I really wanted but didn’t fight for at the time. Invariably, looking back, I always regret not fighting for what I really wanted. The perspective I was missing at the time is that putting up a good fight for days or weeks or even months is a flash in a pan over the course of your life. You’ll always look back wondering “what if I had fought for it?”

    Mom has a wonderful story of how she got into business school by fighting for it.

    On a related but different note, you also need to fight for what you believe. If you know something isn’t right, don’t let it go unnoticed. Bring it to light, make everyone aware, and fight for it if it’s that important. With that said, you could also be wrong so you should be firm but always open to changing your mind. History is filled with stories of could-have-been would-have-been great people who mostly got it right but also got it wrong on a few really important points. Instead of adapting and listening, they ignored the reality coming at them and paid the price. The best place to be is to have, as the expression goes, “strong opinions, weakly held.”

  • It’s Never Black or White

    It’s Never Black or White

    One quirk of human nature is when we something happens to us or in the world we are so fast to come up with a explanation. This explanation is usually black or white, and usually dramatically oversimplifies the situation. Why did that ship sink? The captain crashed the boat. A more current example: Why did chaos erupt when we left Afghanistan? Because the President abruptly pulled our military presence out.

    One interesting thing here is, when something goes wrong, the simplified solution we usually come up with is to blame the person rather than the situation (i.e., fundamental attribution error).

    I’ve noticed this to be a universal quirk of human nature. Everyone does it, no matter the background.

    But complicated situations or events almost NEVER have simple explanations. The reality is usually incredibly messy and convoluted, with a tremendous number of confounding factors. It’s a mistake to demonize a person or one factor without fully understanding a situation. Defer judgement and keep an open mind. You might be surprised with the reality of the situation, and if you jump to conclusions it will be impossible to understand the root cause.

  • Estehkhareh

    Estehkhareh

    Mom’s post about pointing to the Quran when you are unsure what path to take. Let God help you.

  • What if you die young?

    What if you die young?

    Everything we do comes with some kind of risk attached to it. There is a 17% chance you will die playing Russian Roulette. Most other odds are hard to calculate but you get the idea.

    You have to weigh the odds of dying with the value you ascribe to that activity. A good way to figure out if you should actually engage in a risky activity is to ask how you would feel if you were to die doing it.

    I used to ride motorcycles. When I was young, it meant enough to me that I realized I could die and I was okay with it. As I got older, got married, and had kids, I wasn’t okay dying riding motorcycles. So I stopped. Same with skydiving.

    If you would feel like an idiot dying doing what you’re about to do then you probably shouldn’t do it. It’s okay to say no.