Transcription
I really want to talk about what's on your mind. So, we're going to do a Q&A in a minute.
I There are a couple questions I always get asked. People always say, "Well, who should I go to work for when I get out then?" Got a very simple answer. We We may elaborate more on this as we go along, but the real thing to do is to get going in for some institution or individual that you admire. It's crazy to take in-between jobs just because they look good on your resume or because you get a little higher starting pay.
I I was up at Harvard a while back and very nice young guy picked me up at the airport. Harvard Business School attendee. He said, "I went to undergrad here and then I worked for X and Y and Z and now I've come here." And he said, "I I thought it would really round up my resume perfectly if I went to work now for a big management consulting firm." I said, "Well, is that what you want to do?" And he said, "No, but he said, 'That's the perfect resume.'" And I said, "Well, when are you going to start doing what you like?" And he said, "Well, I'll get to that someday." And I I said, "Well, you know, I said, 'Your plan sounds to me a lot like saving up sex for your old age.'" You know, It just doesn't make a lot of sense. >> [laughter] >>
But I told that same group, I said, you know, "Go to work for whomever you admire the most." And I said, "You can't get a bad result. You'll jump out of bed in the morning and you'll be having fun." And the dean called me up a couple weeks later and said, "What did you tell those kids?" He said, "They're all becoming self-employed." So, you've got to you've got to temper that advice a little bit. Uh Uh [laughter]
Play one game a little bit with me for just a minute and then we'll uh then we'll get to your questions. Uh I'd like for the moment to have you have you pretend I've made you a great offer and I've told you that you could pick any one of your classmates and you now know each other probably pretty well after being here for a while. You can pick you'd have 24 hours to think it over and you can pick any one of your classmates and you get 10% of their earnings for the rest of their lives. I ask you, what goes through your mind in determining which one of those you would pick. You can't pick the one with the richest father. That doesn't count. I mean, you've got to got to do this on merit, but you probably wouldn't pick the person who gets the highest grades in the class. I mean, there's nothing wrong with getting the highest grades in the class, but that that's not that isn't going to be the quality that that that sets apart a big winner uh from the rest of the pack. Think about who you would pick and why. And I think you'll find when you get through you'll pick some individual. You've all got the ability. You wouldn't be here otherwise. And you've all got the energy. I mean, you've got, you know, the initiative is here, the intelligence is is here uh throughout the class. But some of you are going to be bigger winners than others. And it gets down to a bunch of qualities that interestingly enough are self-made. I mean, it's not how tall you are, it's not whether you can kick a football 60 yards, it's not whether you can run the 100-yard dash in 10 seconds, it's not whether you're the best-looking person in the room. It's a whole bunch of qualities that really come out of Ben Franklin or the Boy Scout code or whatever it may be. I mean, it's it's it's integrity, it's honesty, it's it's generosity, it's it's being willing to do more than your share, it's it's just all those qualities that are self-selected.
And then if you look on the other side of the ledger because there's always a catch to these you know, free gifts and genie jokes. So, you also have to, and this is the fun part, you also have to sell short one of the your classmates and pay 10% of what they do. So, who do you think is going to do the worst in the class? This is way more fun. And think about it again. And again, it isn't the it isn't the person with the lowest grades or anything anything of the sort. It's the person who just doesn't shape up in the character department. I mean, we look for three things when we hire people. We look for intelligence, we look for for initiative or energy, and we look for integrity. And if they don't have the latter, the first two will kill you. Because if you're going to get somebody without integrity, you want them lazy and dumb. I mean, you don't want them you don't want them smart and energetic. So, it's that third quality and but everything about that quality is your choice. You know, you you can't change the way you are wired much, but you can change a lot of what you do with that wiring. And it's the habits that you generate now on those qualities or those negative qualities. I mean, the person the person who always, you know, claims credit for things they didn't do, that always cuts corners, that that you can't count on. I mean, in the end, those those are habit patterns. And the time to form the right habits is when you're when you're your age. Yeah. It doesn't do me much good to get golf lessons now. If I'd gotten golf lessons when I was your age, I might be a decent golfer. But someone once said, "The chains of habit are too light to be felt until they're too heavy to be broken." And I see that all the time. I see people with habit patterns that are self-destructive uh when they're 50 or 60 and they they they really can't change them. They're imprisoned by that. But you're not imprisoned by anything.
So, when you write down the qualities of that person that you'd like to buy 10% of, look at that list and ask yourself, "Is there anything on that list I couldn't do?" The answer is there aren't there there won't be. And when you look at the person you sell short and you look at those qualities that you don't like, if you see any of those in yourself, you gettism or whatever it may be, selfishness, you can get rid of that. I mean, that is not ordained. And you And Ben Franklin did this and my old boss Ben Graham did this at early ages in their young teens. Ben Graham looked around and he said, "Who do I admire?" And he wanted to be admired himself and he said, you know, "Why do I admire these other people?" And he said, "If I admire them for these reasons, maybe other people will admire me if I behave in a similar manner." And he and he decided what kind of a person he wanted to be. And if you follow that, at the end you'll be the person you want to buy 10% of. I mean, that's the goal in the end. And it's it's something that's achievable by by everybody in this room.
So, that's the end of the sermon. Now, let's let's talk about what's on your mind. And the you can ask anything.