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Not too long ago, I was spending the afternoon with a man who had sold a company for $850 million that he had founded. His home was perched on a cliff over the ocean in Malibu – sort of like Tony Stark’s home in the Iron Man movies. Very few people know who this man is. He took an ordinary product and created a huge national chain around it, remaining relatively anonymous the entire time.
“I have a few famous neighbors,” the man bragged to me. He then mentioned a well-known local real estate agent who was his neighbor. He seemed to take a tremendous amount of pride in the fact that this well-known real estate agent was his neighbor.
Why was this real estate agent so well-known? The agent is on shows like Celebrity House Hunters and has his face and name plastered all over local newspapers each week selling houses. The man sells expensive homes and nothing more. He works in a small office with just a few people. He is seen on television with various celebrities on an ongoing basis. However, he is only well-known because he sells expensive homes and is associated with various celebrities. That is it.
He certainly has not started a huge national chain of stores or run a company with thousands of people reporting to him. However, to the man whose house I was at that day, the real estate agent was of great importance simply because of his association with celebrities and the fact that everyone knows who he is.
In your career, you can really go far if everyone knows who you are. There are risks in getting out there and being seen, but success comes to those who specialize and put themselves out there to be seen. If you are “seen” with important people, then that is even better.
People are attracted to influence and celebrity. Regardless of what you do, it is important that you try and get out there and get in the limelight.
One time, I thought I might have cancer because my doctor had misdiagnosed me. I found the best doctor I could in the world, someone who had been on various television shows, written books and so forth. People want to use experts and they are attracted to influence and celebrity.
Incredibly, the “well-known” real estate agent I told you about is so well-known that he does not even show houses. His staff shows the homes he is selling. I purchased a home from him once and never met him until the purchase had been completed – and then only because he needed to drop a document off and was in the neighborhood.
Regardless of what you do, you should do your best to be a celebrity and be well-known. Getting well-known in small niches can go a very long way. For example, Arnold Schwarzenegger was well-known as a body builder before he became known as an actor and politician. Being a niche celebrity can give you huge dividends.
In the past, our company has sponsored various employees from India and worked on getting their work papers and visas. I never had much say in who we hired to do the immigration work because, once the employees got here, a mysterious network seemed to pop up that recommended an also Indian-born attorney practicing law in the United States. The first time I visited the website of this Indian-born attorney, I could not believe my eyes. He had pictures of him shaking hands with:
• the President of the United States,
• the former President of the United States,
• the Governor of California,
• the former Governor of California,
• Pamela Anderson,
• Billy Joel,
• Tori Spelling …
• and all sorts of other well-known people.
I am not sure what Pamela Anderson, Billy Joel and Tori Spelling have to do with immigration law, but who cares? If I was from a foreign country and saw pictures of an attorney shaking hands with Pamela Anderson, I would be impressed. I would think he really was someone.
In reality, if you want to get your picture taken with an important politician or celebrity, there are all sorts of fundraisers you can go to. There, you can pay $5,000 or so, stand in a long line, and get your picture taken with the celebrity or politician. (See http://audio.wrko.com/a/37445376/what-it-cost-to-take-your-picture-taken-with-president-obama.htm) However, most people do not know this. How brilliant of this attorney to do this … it is not my sort of thing, but imagine how much business he gets from it.
In fact, despite having gone to an unaccredited law school and being a solo practitioner (and other various issues with his background), he was able to charge as much as the largest American law firms do for his work. In fact, he was charging a few times more than other solo practitioners for the exact same work. In addition, people wait weeks to even get an appointment to speak with this attorney about filling out some simple immigration forms (that do not require any great deal of skill).
That is the power of being someone and associating yourself with others who are someone. When you surround yourself with important people, it rubs off and (consciously or not) people consider you more important. How else do you explain a near-billionaire getting a sense of importance from the fact that he lives down the street from a real estate agent that sells homes to celebrities on television and whose face is plastered all over the local television?
The ability to be seen is huge, and it can make you enormously successful. In the town I grew up in, there was a man who owned a local auto dealership and had started out as a mechanic with no high school education. Years later, he ended up purchasing the auto dealership and grew it into a huge dealership with car lots all over the state. He became well-known shouting about various car deals on television and doing things like beating a rubber chicken over his head while practically foaming at the mouth about the great terms he was offering on cars. However, people knew who he was and, because of this, he built a huge brand and became well-known.
In every community, there are various people getting seen who end up becoming local celebrities. They could be the local optometrist, the local personal injury attorney, or the local veterinarian. There are people who make it in every community in the country because they take their expertise and allow themselves to be seen.
I speak with attorneys about their careers each day. In order to be a successful attorney, you generally need to specialize, be seen, and associate with greatness.
First, an attorney who practices all sorts of law (litigation, contracts, corporate law, etc.) is generally going to have a very difficult time getting ahead unless they run a law practice in a small town. Being an attorney is a form of “being specialized”; however, the more specialized you are, the better off you are generally going to be as an attorney.
When someone hires someone, they want to choose the best. You cannot be the best if you are doing a bunch of different things. It is okay to go see a general doctor if you are being treated for a cold, broken bone, cut, or infection. However, if you have a brain tumor, you are going to call in the “big guns” and go see a neurosurgeon. Who in their right mind would let their family doctor perform complicated brain surgery?
Second, once you are specialized, you need to get out there. Opportunity comes to those who are seen. People are seen when they go on television, on the radio, are interviewed in the papers, when they write articles, when they advertise themselves. If you are not seen, you do not get business, and if you do not get business (in a law firm environment), you are going to have a difficult time getting ahead. You need to be seen. All of the best known attorneys were able to be seen.
One of the greatest mistakes attorneys – and others — make when looking for a job is not getting out there. If you are looking for a job, you need to use the mail, use the phone, attend every event you can, and meet every person who can possibly help you. This is the only way. I’ve worked with so many attorneys who are afraid of rejection and do not get out there. Getting out there is often the difference between greatness, and really reaching your potential, and nothing happening at all.
Third, you need to associate with greatness. Being associated with greatness can take a lot of forms. In the small law firm I run, for example, a famous attorney recently did an amicus brief on our firm’s behalf. I did a press release about it because I felt it helped the firm. (See https://www.jdjournal.com/2014/02/13/erwin-chemerinsky-the-most-influential-first-amendment-scholar-in-the-united-states-submits-amicus-brief-in-support-of-harrison-barnes/) Greatness can be the quality of law school you went to, or the firms you worked at, or even the individual attorneys you worked with. That is why education and experience is so important in the legal community. The more greatness you are associated with, the better.
Regardless of who you are, you can accomplish amazing things if you specialize, get out there, and associate yourself with greatness.
About Harrison Barnes
Harrison Barnes is the Founder of BCG Attorney Search and a successful legal recruiter himself. Harrison is extremely committed to and passionate about the profession of legal placement. His firm BCG Attorney Search has placed thousands of attorneys. BCG Attorney Search works with attorneys to dramatically improve their careers by leaving no stone unturned in a search and bringing out the very best in them. Harrison has placed the leaders of the nation’s top law firms, and countless associates who have gone on to lead the nation’s top law firms. There are very few firms Harrison has not made placements with. Harrison’s writings about attorney careers and placements attract millions of reads each year. He coaches and consults with law firms about how to dramatically improve their recruiting and retention efforts. His company LawCrossing has been ranked on the Inc. 500 twice. For more information, please visit Harrison Barnes’ bio.
About BCG Attorney Search
BCG Attorney Search matches attorneys and law firms with unparalleled expertise and drive that gets results. Known globally for its success in locating and placing attorneys in law firms of all sizes, BCG Attorney Search has placed thousands of attorneys in law firms in thousands of different law firms around the country. Unlike other legal placement firms, BCG Attorney Search brings massive resources of over 150 employees to its placement efforts locating positions and opportunities that its competitors simply cannot. Every legal recruiter at BCG Attorney Search is a former successful attorney who attended a top law school, worked in top law firms and brought massive drive and commitment to their work. BCG Attorney Search legal recruiters take your legal career seriously and understand attorneys. For more information, please visit www.BCGSearch.com.
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In this article Harrison discusses what a good hiring manager should look for. Many people who make hiring decisions really do not know what they are doing. In fact, they often make mistakes when hiring. They put too much emphasis on skills and experience. But the single most important aspect of hiring is evaluating the person’s unique outlook on the world. If the person does not have a positive outlook on the world, he/she will bring down the morale of the other workers. The person will harm the company through the negative outlook. The key to success is having the power to stick it out in jobs and finding happiness wherever you are. Hiring people who do good work and are always able to find happiness should be the number one objective of hiring managers.
To reach the goals to which you aspire, you must compare yourself with people superior to you for motivation. Most people prefer to look at life the way they wish it to be, rather than as it truly is. Move out of your comfort zones and face reality. Don’t seek out or compare yourself with the average people around you, as doing so will only mire you in mediocrity rather than push you forward.
You can better market yourself by taking a stand against something. Peoples’ personal beliefs, including the things with which they do not agree, define who they are as people. Standing against something differentiates you from the crowd; when done in the correct manner, without disrespecting others’ opinions, such a stance can help you land your dream job.
Maintaining a routine in both life and work is important to success. Not only do you need to establish a routine, you must make that routine demanding and push yourself to the limit. Budget a certain amount of time each week for networking, applying to jobs, brushing up your interview skills, and following up with employers. Such consistent effort on a daily basis will make a huge difference to your career success.
A recommendation from a powerful person can make a huge difference in your job search; a reference from an influential person makes a tremendous difference to a prospective employer, and thus can be a major advantage for you. When an important person whom the company trusts recommends you, you instantly qualify for positions that may previously have been unattainable. Make the absolute most of your connections with the powerful people in your life, because doing so can instantaneously change your career and life.
You must plant seeds in the minds of others, so that they will be more likely than otherwise to think of you when a future need arises. In planting seeds, you are making people aware of what you have to offer; you must make sure that you are ever present in the minds of your potential employers. Planting seeds is the most effective way to generate top-of-mind awareness, and ensure that the right people remember you at the appropriate time.
Recent immigrants exemplify the benefits of willpower, passion, and excitement in the way that they work so much harder for their goals than the people who have been here for most or all of their lives. Like most Americans, you need to rekindle the spirit of your immigrant ancestors and become hungry for what you want. The entrepreneurial spirit that brought people to America has often faded over time; adopt the fire and work ethic of new immigrants in order to achieve your goals.
Determine whether you are a global or specific person. Most people are either too general or too specific in the way they treat information, and overly detail-oriented people risk losing sight of the bigger picture. General people are more comfortable in managerial positions, while detail-oriented people prefer everything to conform to a logical sequence. Understand which sort of person you are, and seek work that best harnesses your natural inclination.
In this article Harrison talks about releasing the lack that you feel, in order to reach your full potential. If a sense of lack dominates your thinking, it will affect your interaction with the world and how the world sees you. There are many areas of your life where you are coming from a position of lack. Your ability to release this lack and go forward with your life can create a tremendous sense of peace and more natural accomplishments in your world. The amount of lack that people see out there is profound and it has a massive impact on their lives. According to Harrison, the most successful people in the world see the world as a place of opportunity and not lack.
When faced with difficult times, you must develop the ability to transcend the trouble around you instead of giving up or assuming that nothing can be done about your situation. Keep your wits about you and take charge of the situation, and you will find yourself on track for constant improvement and career success.
It is extremely important that you enjoy your job. Most people find themselves in jobs that they resent, and eventually make this resentment known by appearing disinterested and distracted. Success comes from being engaged in and grateful for your work. You can define your job according to your own vision; you can either choose to engage with your work, or avoid and despise what you do. People recognize and appreciate those who are enthusiastic about their work.
Your résumé is an extremely important document. There are entire books written about how to craft them. I have written at least one myself. There are scores of résumé consultants, companies, and others that will work on your résumé for a fee. Hiring one of these services can be useful and can improve your résumé. Nevertheless, most résumés can improve dramatically by following the below advice.
In this article Harrison explains how you can do better in your career by selling. The most successful people are absolute masters at sales. Selling is among the most important career skills you can have. When you know how to sell something you can do exceptionally well wherever you go. Knowing how to sell something is a key to survival, advancement, fame, and fortune. Everything we do is about making a sale. Selling yourself is about showing others the value you can bring them. So package yourself to the best of your ability, always be at your best and sell yourself. Develop your sales skills and do not be afraid to sell anything. Whatever your goal in life, becoming an effective salesman will help you achieve it.
It is absolutely vital to be in control of your life and career. When you fail to control your life, someone else will step in to do so and fit your life into their plans. Understand that it is in others’ interests to establish control over your life and work, and instead exert control yourself over your life and the events around you.
Do not be a dabbler, or someone who turns away in the face of stress; the secret to long-term happiness is to instead confront and push through these stress factors. Do not be discouraged by difficulties, but find ways to persist and deal with the stress. Confronting problems head-on is the key to improvement, and will take you much further than the dabblers who fail to approach their careers with commitment.
In this article Harrison discusses how persistent pursuit of something you believe in, against all obstacles, is one of the most important keys to success. So many of us just decide at some point not to push through and not to keep going even when a little bit of extra effort would push us through. The secret to being incredibly good at everything is pushing through and getting better and better when others around you are quitting. Even while hiring, employers want experts and people who are the best at what they are doing–they do not want dabblers. They want to hire the person who is incredibly committed to a job and has persisted against odds in one direction when others have given up.
In this article Harrison suggests that you actually may be safer getting a job without the help of family or friends. It is exceedingly rare that a friend or family member will ever be able to get you a position. They may not even want to help you get a job for various reasons. Their involvement in your job search may actually hurt you. The organization may actually look upon you negatively if you try to use a friend or family member to get a job. So going through a close contact is often counterproductive to your job search. Even if you get a position through a friend or family member, you could harm your relationship with that person in the process. Your friend or family member’s act of kindness may ultimately unbalance your relationship. The risks involved in this kind of job far outweigh the potential rewards.
A powerful sense of self will make all the difference in your life. You must understand that your sense of yourself and your capabilities come from inside of you, not from the external forces that have brought you to your current place in life. What you feel internally might be completely different from what the world is telling you, and you must learn to focus on the former rather than the latter.
In this article, Harrison explains the importance of making an effort in your job which is way above what is expected of you. When you have been given certain responsibilities, it means that someone is dependent on you for certain things. When you fulfill these duties far more efficiently, put in a lot more time and effort, and even stay back on weekends and holidays to complete or do extra work, your employers get the message that you are sharing their burden of pressures with them and begin to place tremendous trust in you. This is what paves the path to your promotion and growth in the company. Harrison believes that you need to develop the correct attitude and possess an extraordinary work ethic to thrive in the job you do.
In this article Harrison discusses how resisting change and not taking necessary and relevant action can be the biggest obstacles to a better career and better life. Resistance is something that prevents most people from ever changing. Resisting change can be highly damaging to your growth in your career and life. Instead of allowing your life to be controlled by external circumstances, choose to take action and bring about a change. Conduct a brutal self analysis if needed, to clear the blocks you have in your mind and to bring about change that is necessary. Most people give up. They do not persist. You need strategies and beliefs that will allow you to persist and persevere, so that you can change. The best strategy is to be focused, and this focus will help you overcome the resistance you face whenever you make an effort to begin changing.
Adopting a positive attitude will always bring you closer to success, as nobody wants to be associated with a losing side. Everyone wants to associate with and hire winners, and avoids losers. Nothing is more important than maintaining a positive attitude, as many employers hire people based primarily on attitude; with the right attitude, everything else will fall into place. You must look like you are on the winning team, even if times are tough; nobody wants to hire a loser.
The past does not dictate the future, so you should not use inductive reasoning to make conclusions about your life or career. Recognize when you are making incorrect conclusions based on past events, and switch to deductive reasoning in which you are not limited by the past. You will find your conclusions to be much more accurate, and you will succeed as a result.
When I was an attorney, I stopped going out to lunch with other attorneys during the day. The reason was not that I was not hungry. Instead, I stopped going out to lunch because just about everyone I worked with would want to dedicate the lunch to a critique—whether it was critiquing our bosses, coworkers, or others. When these people were not being critiqued, the job itself was being critiqued. When the job was not being critiqued, the attorney’s home life was being critiqued.
In this article Harrison discusses the significance of conditioning yourself to develop behaviors that will elevate you in your life. One of the most difficult things for anyone to do is to get leverage over themselves and condition themselves to go in a new direction. Very few people are ever able to make very fundamental transformations in their lives and become someone completely new and completely improved—and stick with it. Major improvements in our lives come only when we condition ourselves over and over again in one direction. You need to get leverage over yourself and condition new habits and behaviors within yourself to make any sort of fundamental and lasting change. The conditioning needs to be part of your lifestyle. You need to condition yourself to adopt new patterns in your life.
Going after companies on an “explosive growth” trend is among the most interesting and beneficial things you can do in your job search, as many such companies will hire you even if they do not have openings. Similarly, you can get hired in booming industries and geographical areas even if there are no openings, simply by showing up. Apply to growing companies, even if they do not have open positions.
Two fundamental laws of the universe are that order leads to disorder, and disorder leads to order. Since disorder always leads to order, you must always view disorder as a positive rather than a negative; disorder in your life is an opportunity to reorganize your life and career into something better. Making both order and disorder work for you will enhance your chances of success in career and life.
Think about your ultimate purpose in life, and what you are currently doing to accomplish it. Everyone is gifted with unique talents, and a failure to identify and utilize yours would be tragic for your life and career. The greater purpose you identify in your life, the greater the obstacles you will face. If you persevere and push through these hurdles, you will find the rewards to also be correspondingly greater.
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