Ben Franklin stated, “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” Despite what people say, we have no idea what is going to happen with any of our tangible investments or the economy in general. The one thing you can control is the development of your personal brand. Your personal brand starts at a young age and is constantly changing. It includes far more than the school you attend, a discipline of study, and grades you earn. A personal brand is the perception others have about you; it is lasting and not necessarily dependent on external circumstances. If Bill Gates went broke and homeless, he could walk into nearly any building on Wall Street and receive a job paying at least six figures due to his technical expertise and intangible skill set.
A great place to start investing in yourself is education. This does not necessarily mean pursuing higher education. It doesn’t mean subjecting yourself to thousands of dollars of student debt. Higher education can be a profitable route assuming we are selecting degrees that have the best returns on investment, but there are other alternatives. For example, the internet and apprenticeships are powerful tools which can be used to build human capital and expertise.
Building a valuable personal brand is straightforward but not easy. It often requires delaying immediate gratification with the future in sight, resulting in long-term benefits. For example, setting down the video game controller and preparing for the S.A.T. will result in higher scores. Choosing to sacrifice eating desert and exercising instead results in weight loss. Saving a portion of your pay check for retirement rather than buying the latest new gadget will create a larger “nest egg” for retirement.
With that said, it is needs to be clear that making the appropriate choices is just part of the overall key to success. One should pursue their passions and not let their background be a hindrance. How a person is raised, the wealth of their family, their ethnicity, and other similar factors play an only a small role in being successful. In the book Outliers, author Malcolm Gladwell argues that it takes roughly 10,000 hours of practice to achieve mastery in a field. As Gladwell began to study violinists; he found that the elite violinist emerged around the age of 20 after 10,000 hours of practice. The average violinist only had roughly 4,000 hours of practice. One would expect those "naturally gifted" rise to the top faster. Yet, none of the statistical data gathered supported this view. Gladwell then began to study the lives of successful people such as Bill Gates, the Beetles, and Tiger Woods. In the case of Bill Gates, he was a college drop-out who most people probably credit his success to his natural "smarts." Yet, Gladwell found evidence pointing to another conclusion. Gates was able to acquire 10,000 hours of programming practice at a younger age than nearly anyone in the world. By the time he and his friend Paul Allen were ready to launch Microsoft, they both were experts in the field. Granted, there were outlying factors. Mainly, Paul Allen and Bill Gates had access to a computer terminal at their school, which was extremely rare in 1960s. However, both young men made the choice to pursue their interest in computers and to spend their time working with computers and programming. Gates would even sneak out of his house after bedtime to spend more time on the computer at school.
The bottom line is there is no substitute for hard work and there are no shortcuts. It should be comforting to know that natural ability, as well as other factors, play only a minor role in determining career success. The best part of being young is the ability to develop sound habits and mold yourself into the person that you want to become. When speaking to a group of college students, Warren Buffett told the class to look around the room and pick a person that they would want to invest 10% in and then think about the qualities of that person. Do they make the best grades, have the highest IQ, and have the most energy? Typically, the person you would select is a combination of intellect, motivation, and integrity. They are the leaders who can motivate other people to action. On the flip side, Buffet asked them who they would short 10%? What qualities do they have? He concluded the speech by telling them that the best part of them is they are young and able to implement any of these qualities in their life, and then said “the best part is you own 100% of you.”
Success starts with a choice. Robert Cook, the founder of this blog and successful CEO of multiple billion dollar corporations regularly reminds me of this fact, “I wish it were more complicated sometimes, but it’s not. Decide what you want to do, then get in position to do it, spend time on task, and develop a habit of improvement.” Set goals. Track progress, and continually reevaluate and move forward. We will all fail and make mistakes. The key is to acknowledge the error, analyze what went wrong, and learn from the experience. There is luck involved in success, however, luck favors those who work hard and prepare.
Along the way, keep this quote from Teddy Roosevelt in mind:
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
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