10 SKILLS That Will Pay Off Forever

when you think about focusing right

you think well focusing is is saying yes

no

focusing is about saying no

focusing is about saying no and you’ve

got to say

no no no and when you say no you piss

off people and they go talk to the san

jose mercury

and they write a shitty article about

you you know

and it’s really a pisser because

you want to be nice you don’t want to

tell the san jose mercury the

person is telling you this you know just

was asked to leave or this or that is

that so you take the lumps and apples

been taking their share of lumps for the

last six months

in a very unfair way and it’s been

taking them

you know like a like an adult and i’m

proud of that

and there’s more to come i’m sure

there’s more to coming some of these

i read these articles about some of

these people that have left i know some

of these people

they haven’t done anything in seven

years and you know they leave and it’s

like

you know it it’s like the company’s

gonna fall apart the next day

and and so you know i think there’ll be

stories like that that come and go but

focus is about

saying no and the result of that focus

is going to be some really great

products where the total is much greater

than the sum of the parts

i made a decision when the computers

started to become

omnipresent and so that would have been

about 1993

that i was going to spend a year and

that was the first year that i was

teaching in boston

pretty much doing nothing but figuring

out how

intel 486 has worked and it meant there

was a lot of other things that i had to

put on hold but i did

become a competent computer user and i

was

i’m pretty fast but you know my son

it’s just annoying as hell to watch him

on the computer and on the phone because

and my graduate students as well because

they’re so much faster than me that it’s

not even funny and

i’m not really accustomed to being

slower than someone else in the room

and so

now if i had children now the one thing

i would bloody well make sure that they

knew was how to use a computer how to

program man

because if you’re smart and you can use

a computer you are so much smarter than

you are if you’re just smart that it’s

not even funny you know when

you talk to people you see this in

silicon valley all the time you talk to

people who are expert computer users

they are so bloody powerful it is just

beyond belief

so and that that’s going to do nothing

but expand right because moore’s law is

not dead and

computers are doubling in power every 18

months and and so

and who the hell knows where that’s

going to go

but you can’t have a standard education

and expect to have an extraordinary life

it’s not going to happen

the one breakthrough for all leaders is

constant never-ending improvement and

that means

educating yourself and continuing to

develop even greater emotional mastery

because that’s what affects whether you

execute enough the opportunity

for self-education is there we have to

change our psychology from

i’m going to do what everybody else does

and i’m mad because it doesn’t work

anymore to the reality is this is the

greatest time to be alive

if you’re growing you’re learning you’re

educating and you’re developing valuable

skills

it’s like if you go to work for

mcdonald’s i don’t know i think the

average i read recently is

7.75 an hour in the united states

working for mcdonald’s

the skill sets the value you provide can

be taught to anyone in about 20 minutes

instead of complaining you got to say

where are the skill sets valued in the

marketplace and how do i work harder on

myself

than anything else because if i become

more valuable

then i will be able to give more do more

and change more when i interviewed

warren buffett has the most important

investment he ever made in his life you

know what he said it was i was thinking

all the companies he’d done you know

he said tony going to dale carnegie said

what

he goes because by developing myself

that’s the most

important investment those skill sets

learning how to persuade learning how to

speak learning and influence all my

ideas would have died on my lips

if i hadn’t be able to influence and i

learned it from that little course most

valuable thing ever did in my life you

said

when i started microsoft i didn’t think

of it as all that risky i mean i was so

excited about what we were doing

it’s true i could have gone bankrupt but

you know i had a set of skills that were

highly employable

and in fact my parents were still

willing to let me go back to harvard and

finish my education if i wanted to

you’ve always got a job with maybelline

and the only the thing that was scary to

me wasn’t quitting and starting the

company it was when i started hiring my

friends

and they expected to be paid

and and then we had customers who went

bankrupt customers that i’d counted on

to come through and so then i got this

incredibly

conservative approach that i wanted to

have enough money in the bank to pay

a year’s worth of payroll uh even if we

didn’t get any

any payments coming in and you know i’m

almost uh

true to that the whole time we have

about 10 billion now which is is pretty

much enough for the next year

anyway you know i if you’re going to

start a company it takes so much

energy that you know you it better

overcome your

your feeling of risk i don’t think

that you necessarily if you’re going to

start a company should do it at the

start of your career

i think there’s a lot to be said for

working for a company learning how they

do things

you know if you’re young it’s hard to go

lease premises they they made that hard

for me you couldn’t rent a car

when you were under 25 at the time so i

was always taking taxis to go see

customers

and the people with you know people say

we’re gonna go have a discussion in the

bar well i can go to the bar

and but you know that’s fun because i’ll

tell you

when people are first skeptical and they

go this kid doesn’t know anything

then when you show them you’ve really

got a good product and you know

something they actually tend to go

overboard and they think whoa

you know they know a lot let’s really do

an incredible amount with these people

so our youth at least in this country

was a huge asset for us once we reached

a certain threshold it is hard

it’s hard to hire old older people um

because they’ll be a little bit

conservative about whether they should

come

and take the risk and it took three or

four years before we could go out

to the normal sort of employment pool

but those

those problems that come with starting

the firm you better think of those as

as part of the the pleasure part of the

the challenge that

that is part of the the excitement

you must find a way to serve

[Music]

martin luther king said that not

everybody can be famous but everybody

can be great because greatness is

determined

by service now we live in a world where

everybody wants to be famous

and where we admire people for just

being famous we think being known

brings us value the truth is all of that

will fade in time in three years you

won’t be able to name the housewives

of banana

the real truth is that

service and significance

service and the significance that you

bring to your service

is that which is lasting so to be able

to

whatever your occupation or job or

talent or gift is our honorees today

getting doctor degrees to

apparently opposite fields hiv and aids

and the spoken word but what they have

in common

is service using the spoken word

in service to community and the world

using your knowledge and information

about hiv and aids and medicine

in service to the world and if you look

at all the most successful people

in the world whether they know it or not

they have that paradigm of service

everybody’s talking about mark

zuckerberg and ipo

service jay-z rapid

service through the word to

people through song

for many years i was really just happy

to be on tv and people would stop and

say oh you’re on tv yeah i’m on tv

i like being on tv it’s a nice job

and it was about the time that i

received my

honorary doctorate from spelman around

1993 so i don’t know if that had

something to do with it i thought of

myself as dr winfrey

that i went back and i took a long look

at what it was i was doing on

on tv and made a decision

that i was no longer going to just be on

tv

but i was going to use tv

as a platform as a force for good

and not be used by tv and i will tell

you

my decision to make that significant

change in the way i operated

on television using television as a

service

changed my career exponentially

service through medicine service through

art using whatever it is

you produce your product as a way

of giving back to the world when you

shift the paradigm of whatever it is

you choose to do to service and you

bring significance to that

success will i promise you

follow you service and significance

equals success

[Music]

people say you you have to have a lot of

passion for what you’re doing

and it’s totally true and the reason is

uh

is because it’s so hard that if you

don’t

any rational person would give up it’s

really hard

and you have to do it over a sustained

period of time so if you don’t love it

if you’re not having fun doing it you

don’t really love it

you’re going to give up and that’s what

happens to most people actually if you

really look at

at the ones that ended up you know being

successful unquote in the eyes of

society and the ones that didn’t

often times it it’s the ones that are

successful loved what they did so they

could persevere

when you know when it got really tough

and and the ones that

didn’t love it quit because they’re sane

right who would want to put up with this

stuff if you don’t love it so it’s a lot

of hard work

and and it’s a lot of worrying

constantly and

uh um if you don’t love it

you’re gonna fail so you gotta love it

you gotta have passion

let me tell you a story so a friend of

mine and i

we went for a run in central park the

road runners organization

on the weekends they host races and it’s

very common at the end of the race

they’ll have a sponsor who will give

away

something apples or bagels or something

and on this particular day when we got

to the end of the run

there were some free bagels and they had

picnic tables set up and on one side was

a group of volunteers

on the table were boxes of bagels and on

the other side was a long

line of runners waiting to get their

free bagel so i said to my friend let’s

let’s get a bagel

and he looked at me and said ah the

line’s too long

and i said free bagel

and he said i don’t want to wait in line

and i was like free bagel

and he says nah let’s it’s too long and

that’s when i realized that there’s two

ways to see the world

some people see the thing that they want

and some people see the thing

that prevents them from getting the

thing that they want

i could only see the bagels he could

only see the line

and so i walked up to the line

i leaned in between two people

put my hand in the box and pulled out

two bagels

and no one got mad at me because the

rule is

you can go after whatever you want you

just cannot deny

anyone else to go after whatever they

want

now i had to sacrifice choice i didn’t

get to choose which bagel i got i got

whatever i pulled out

but i didn’t have to wait in line so the

point is is you don’t have to wait in

line

you don’t have to do it the way

everybody else has done it you can do it

your way

you can break the rules you just can’t

get in the way of somebody else getting

what they want

what if i told you this was the last

monday morning of your life

what if i told you you died this week

would you complain about your crap job

or that test you don’t want to take i

doubt it you would go much

higher level thinking well that’s really

what it takes

it takes understanding that if you’re

not pumped right now

if you’re begrudging what you’re about

to do if you’re if you’re not looking

forward to it look

i respect practicality you got to go

through school because your parents want

to

you got to pay your rent you got student

loans i get it but please recognize the

world we’re living in

we’re living in a world where there’s so

much more opportunity this internet

thing created

way more opportunity for all of us way

more i mean look

you might not even be alive like your

mom and dad could have had sex like

three minutes later and you wouldn’t

even exist and you’re complaining

you could have ended up being a bus a

tree i just don’t get the mentality

of being head down sad on a monday

morning i’m gonna make monday morning my

i’m gonna make you

saturday monday morning that’s what i

want to do every morning and that’s what

i want from you

please take a step back and think about

how awesome it actually is

and then recognize that you can attack

the world in a totally different way

because you were lucky enough to be born

during this

era

it takes three qualities essentially to

do well

and extremely well actually in this

country it takes intelligence

it takes energy and it takes integrity

and i say if you don’t have integrity

you know we don’t want to hire somebody

that’s got intelligence and energy if

they don’t have integrity we’d rather

hire somebody that’s dumb and lazy

if they don’t have integrity because

they probably will never get around to

cheating us or doing something

and integrity is absolutely an option

you know

you may not be able to throw a football

60 yards and you know you may not be

able to run the hundred and

in nine eight you know you may not be

able to think three point pointers from

but you can choose

where you stand on the integrity scale

yeah you can’t

you weren’t born wired one way or the

other that is an absolute choice you

make

if there was one concept

that i would um suggest

to people to take a daily confrontation

with

is fear um the

the the problem with fear is that it

lies

right so fear tells you hey

you know if if you say that to that girl

she’s gonna know she has you you know

and she’ll never really be attracted to

you

if she knows how much you attracted to

her

yeah don’t say that no how we get her is

when she walks by

ignore her all right right so

you know it’s like pop it on your

shoulder fear tells you dumb

like that right you know

so you know for for me the the daily

confrontation

um with with fear has become a real

practice for me since about three

three years ago um i went uh

i went skydiving in dubai right and

skydiving skydiving is a really

interesting confront with fear right so

so i gotta i gotta stand up i’m sorry i

gotta stand up

all right so so all your friends what

happens you go out

how are you oh sorry i dropped my thing

so what happens is

you go out the night before and you you

know you take a drink with your friends

and somebody says yeah we should go

skydiving tomorrow

and you go yeah we’ll go skydiving more

yeah yeah

yeah and everybody goes yeah right and

you go home but you by yourself you’re

like

[Music]

right you’re like well i mean they was

drunk too

right so so maybe maybe they not maybe

maybe i mean

we don’t have to go we don’t have to do

it so then that night you’re laying in

your bed and you just keep

and you’re terrified you keep imagining

over and over again

jumping out of an airplane and you can’t

figure out why you would do that

right and you’re laying there and you

have the worst night’s sleep of your

life but you still have the hope that

your friends were drunk

right so you wake up the next day and

you go

you know down and you say where you were

going to meet and everybody’s there

you’re like oh um

all right all right cool cool cool cool

cool cool right so you get in the van

and you don’t know that your friends had

the same night that you had because

they’re pretending like they didn’t

they’re like yeah

man my uncle’s a navy seal and you know

this is gonna be great i’ve been looking

forward to this you’re like oh my god

oh my god and your stomach is terrible

you can’t eat and everything but you

don’t want to be the only punk who

doesn’t jump out of this airplane

so you get there and then you have the

safety brief

and you’re standing there and the guys

will tell you well if the shoot doesn’t

open what’s going to happen is you’re

doing

why the hell what could happen that the

shoot would the shoot wouldn’t open

right

so you do a thing and what you do is

your first jump you’re attached to a guy

who is going you know he’s going to walk

you out so you go

and you get there and there’s an

airplane and nobody’s stopping

everybody’s still going so you get onto

the airplane and you’re sitting there

and and you know it’s extra because

you’re sitting on some dude’s lap some

stranger

he’s sitting on his lap and it’s like

you know you’re trying to make small

talk yeah man

so you you be jumping with people all

the time huh

right you know so and then you just want

to make sure you got you got kids right

you got people you need to see

right you just want to make sure he’s

serious right so you get in there

so everything’s normal so you fly and

you go up you go up you go up you go up

to 14 000 feet

and you notice there’s a light it’s red

and it’s yellow and green right so right

now the light’s red

so then you start thinking at some point

the light’s going to go green because

you don’t know what’s going to happen

right and you wait and it goes yellow

and the light goes green

and somebody opens the door and in that

moment you realize you’ve never been in

a freaking airplane with the door open

right terror oh sorry i’m spitting

sorry so terror terror terror

terror right so you go and then

you know if you’re if you were smart you

sat in the back so you don’t go first

right and then people start going out of

the airplane

and you go and the guy walks you up

to the end of the thing and you’re

standing and your toes

are on the edge and you’re looking out

down to death

and they say on three and they say

one two and he pushes you on two because

people grab on three

right right

and you go

[Applause]

and you fall out of the airplane and in

one

second you realize that

it’s the most blissful experience

of your life you’re flying

right it doesn’t feel like falling right

it’s like the

you actually are kind of held a little

bit by the wind

and then you start and you you start

falling you’ve fallen and you

there’s zero fear you realize that the

point of

maximum danger is the point of minimum

fear it’s bliss it’s

bliss and you’re flying

right and you’re doing it and then 20

seconds

25 seconds 40 seconds and you have

enough time to just kind of be like oh

that’s that building that’s not like

that one

oh you can see the ocean right you start

doing all of that and

the the lesson for me was why were you

scared in your bed the night before

why did you what do you need that fear

for just don’t go

why are you scared in your bed 16 hours

before

you jump why are you scared in the car

why could you not enjoy breakfast what

what what did you need that the fear is

fear of what you’re nowhere even near

the airplane

everything up to the stepping out

there’s actually no reason to be scared

it only

just ruins your day you don’t have to

jump

and then in that moment all of a sudden

where you should be terrified

is the most blissful experience of your

life

and god placed the best things

in life on the other side of terror

on the other side of your maximum fear

are all of the best things in life

[Music]

you