Kierkegaard

During the pandemic I have had a lot of downtime in the 200+ days. During this time I have decided to write a book using the guidance of Soren Kierkegaard. One of his many famous thoughts was “Life must be lived forward, but only can be understood backwards”. This week I’ll summarize three of the chapters in my upcoming book. 

A Coke a Day

In many sales jobs we use a script to insure we discuss all of the features our firm wants us to sell. My first sales job was selling new cars. We learned many sales quips to sell the car. My favorite script was to share that it looks like we are down to a Coke a Day to make the final decision. I would end the script with a question. Do you need anyone else’s permission to buy a Coke?  The answer to this rhetorical question was No.  I would close the sale by saying since we don’t need anyone’s permission. Let’s sign the contract  for your new car!  The script also taught me what I didn’t want use a script in my next job. Companies who use scripts often have something to hide. 

 Hero’s Journey 

Many Silicon Valley firm’s CEOs are advocates of Joseph Campbell and his Hero’s Journey. I followed it when when I broke-away from my last job.  I was relieved to be out from under my “clueless firm and it’s managers “. After five swings and misses I learned that many of the Wall Street skills I developed are not needed in my new Fiduciary World.  Most of the good Fiduciary firms I worked with wanted me to recruit and train the new professionals on how to use their solutions and grow. 

My View

Many of the lessons I learned were from watching top performers  My view from the boss’s office was a great view  I have been very fortunate to watch great people work. The maxim of history is written by the winners needs to be updated to add good consultants are watching from the cheap seats.  I hope my book will convey that reality. I was a C performer but earning that grade taught me to appreciate the skills and hard work of the A players.  Magic, Michael and Larry were A players but they were not good coaches. I believe good coaches and consultants can explain why the A players earned their grade.  I am happy I got to watch from the best seat in the arena.

I hope you and Soren will be proud of my initial chapters.