Introduction
There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.
— Colin Powell
Why this matters
67% of businesspeople believe that school did not appropriately train them for the workplace. Only 27% say that college taught them what they needed to enter the world of commerce.
I read a lot of business books. Most either focus on broad strategy, or a very niche topic for certain industries. I've found few (if any) that provide a meaningful practical overview of what work life is or could be.
I go to a lot of meetings. I find a lot of young workers who have no clue how to navigate a meeting, or how to turn that hour on Zoom into an action that drives results.
I find the same with a smaller, but quite significant, percentage of Chief Executives.
Even top business schools don't cover the block and tackle at a level that can make a worker confident on their first day.
Solving this problem is much bigger than the career of any individual reader. If we all knew the things we'll cover in this book, it would increase productivity; innovation; employment and profits — improving the economy and world in myriad ways. Well-trained employees make 218% more than their peers. Companies who ensure their people are trained see 24% higher profit margins. Studies show that training has a 28 times return on investment (ROI). Only a 4% drop in criminal activity among well-trained workers yields a $51 million economic impact.
Why you should listen to me
I have thirty-four years experience as a worker, a leader and an entrepreneur. I've built and sold two companies; co-led a relaunch; helped many media companies grow (or at least slow decline); advised dozens of start-up founders; and consulted for another dozen or so enterprises, building a track record of solving problems and making the planned things happen. I've also built a digital network of 30,000 entrepreneurs, leading a team delivering education, problem-solving and access to capital.
You can get a general idea of my trajectory here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikeorren/.
My family is comfortable and well-cared for, but I'm not a billionaire. I'll argue that is a benefit for the journey we'll take in this book. I've been and still often am in the trenches. If you aren't already at the pinnacle of success, I can talk to you about the part of the journey from beginning to where you are going. Even if you are at the top, you may find some new tricks. Or you may learn how to better grow the people who are making you rich.
While most of my direct experience has been in news, advertising and marketing, I've worked with retailers, real estate; restaurants, makers and non-profits. And news and advertising are both fields that lend themselves to becoming a polymath.
I've also made countless mistakes, and am not ashamed to use them as learning tools. If you're looking for an author who is going to chest-thump and make you feel inadequate, this book is not for you. In the best recommendation letter I ever got, from my early boss and mentor Wick Allison of D Magazine, he said "Mike is the rare entrepreneur who will dispassionately kill his babies when necessary, dust himself off and do the next better thing."
Except for the dispassionate part, he was right.
How-tos and how not-tos
One of my early experiences teaching larger groups came about when I had my advertising agency, Speakeasy. We had a lot of employees in their first jobs. As we grew and manager positions started to open I created a course for first time managers, with an assist from the excellent book Managing (Right) for the First Time by David Baker.
One of the things I added to the mix was a whole unit on why you might not want to be a manager, even though that is the path most perceive to be the one to get ahead. My analogy was that Michael Jordan was an amazing (if not the best) individual performer ever, but not a manager. His coach, Phil Jackson, earned a tiny fraction of what Jordan did. While he was one of the most influential NBA coaches ever, his ripples weren't measurable in contrast to Jordan's.
The point is that being an individual performer is, for most, a better choice — even though management is the generally sought path forward. Only after encouraging team members who weren't really ready or willing to become managers to opt out did we get to the core material.
When building business support network Good Soil HQ, we quickly learned that part of the job was to dissuade those not really ready to start a business from setting out on a road that could lead to debt and heartbreak.
Similarly, throughout this book, we will explore multiple career paths with no judgment that one is better than another for an individual reader. Not everyone is cut out to be an entrepreneur or manager. But those roles' success are generally entirely dependent on the work of individual performers. All are valuable — and all require knowledge of the norms of business.
Chances are you have to work to survive. But you don't have to work a specific job; become a certain type of manager; or become an entrepreneur to thrive. This is a handbook to increase your chances of succeeding at whatever level you find yourself.
No get-rich-quick schemes
If you picked this book up in the business section of a bookstore or website hoping to find the "10 Simple Tricks to Becoming A Billionaire," you may want to return it now. There is no such tome revealing a legal methodology to guarantee such an outcome. Business books, like business opportunities that sound too good to be true, are just that. If you aren't ready to accept that as fact, please return to the prior section of the Introduction.
Isn't a lot of this book logic and common sense?
Absolutely. But I guarantee that there’s at least half of this that you haven’t thought through. Also, human people need reminders. This book represents how I want to do business — in a perfect world. That world, however, doesn’t exist. You’ll find along the way many instances where I didn’t do what I’m advising here and the negative consequences. Consider this a regular inoculation against forgotten logic.
That said, you’ll find a lot of the material is counterintuitive. (See chapter “The customer is always wrong.”) Businessfolk like their jargon and their adages. Many of those were established in the analog age and simply don’t apply anymore.
