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