you know how it is if you didn't go what you've gone through you wouldn't be who
you are today and I'm not belittling your pain and don't worry I've seen pain
in my life and I've seen not only in my life but people's lives and people say
well at least I have no arms no legs and then what am I supposed to say
well at least I'm not an African orphan who's dying at 4 years old and I met
that person what about the 10 year old girl that was bought for 700 u.s.
dollars in Mumbai and kidnapped as a sex slave to have 350 clients before the age
of 13 pregnant and 12 put the baby under the bed while she works on top abandoned
by a family after she pays her debt of seven hundred US dollars after three
years with her child she leaves on the streets of Mumbai hoping for a new life
no family no job no food her baby needs food she gets raped beating up on the
street she comes back to the only way that she knows how to make money she
goes back to the brothels she gets pregnant at 15 the second time and then
that child dies and then 20 years old she comes out to me yes I have met this
woman she comes up crying she says Nick I just found out I got hiv/aids
and I got fired from being a prostitute
what do you say to that you may have arms and legs but unless you know three
things number one who are you what your value is number two what is your purpose
here in life and number three what is your destiny when you're done here
if you don't know the answers of any of those three questions you're more
disabled than I the first thing I want you to take away from today is this you
will have good days and you'll have bad days but you will always learn something
more or something new and you will learn more overall on bad days than good days
you will learn more about yourself you'll learn more about relationships
you'll learn about life and principles and it'll build your character
if you're a person who wants to let's say improve on your character of patience let's say
don't complain when you're waiting in a line you ain't going to grow in patience
until you put in a place to wait it's like you go into a gym and you know
you're walking through the front doors and you know you tell your wife or your
husband I'm going to the gym you go into the gym and you come in three feet and
do a u-turn and you're right out I went to the gym ain't gonna do nothing you
gotta go with and what are you gonna do you're gonna pick up the weights and you
exercise the muscles that you want to build I stand before you without arms
and legs but a very strong man because of the bad days of my life W T O H
what's the opportunity here so you're having a bad day maybe you had a fight with
someone maybe you lost the big sale maybe someone cut you off in traffic and
then you didn't get your favorite lunch and then you missed
getting in to SoulCycle class and then you had a difficulty on the way home so
let's say that's happening you simply run the W T O H question which will allow
you to pivot W T O H what's the opportunity here see there's great power
in a question and it allows your brain to hunt for
something good and so how do you pivot you ask yourself what's the opportunity
here you have a fight with someone let's say one of your family members you say
what's the opportunity here well your brain then starts to look for the
opportunity which is I can learn how to communicate better or this is an
opportunity for me to show forgiveness and grow in my personal bravery this is
an opportunity for me to understand my family member better it's a great and
powerful question I worked for Miss Hughes for about eight months and I got
in a weekend gig in New York so I would do weekdays at WOL in Washington and
drive up on Fridays after my shift which would end at 7 o'clock and I'd be on all
weekend long over in Queens that's where the radio station was located and then I
would drive back to DC and I would never even stop at my parents house never had
time for friends because everybody was kind of not understanding my dream and
kind of laughing at me or something or trying to you know my friends were like
real immature and stupid and wanting to party and hang out and I'm on a path and
my parents were very you know uuuh do you want something to eat what is this crazy thing
you're doing called radio I would sleep in my Subaru they gave me a Subaru
for college graduation and I would sleep in my car at every rest stop
between New York and and Washington DC to block out the noise of people telling
you you can't do it right I would literally be I'd have a blanket an alarm
clock and a quilt and I would take a bird bath in the bathroom might be woken
up by the man sweeping next to my Subaru looking at me cuz I'm like the crazy
girl in the and I had a baby shade without a baby pull the baby shade down
you know and that was my life for about two months I was going back and forth
learning is a lifelong thing it doesn't end at Harvard Business School it's your
responsibility I think if you're in any profession at all you have to do it
consistently all the time I think I spend probably fifty or sixty percent of
my time learning reading talking to people travelling
it's the only way you can keep on top of this global world of ours and it's even
tougher now because of the globality of the businesses you're all gonna deal in
how reading is the most important one but the second one which is often
forgotten is talking to other people you can learn more from speaking to people
in 15 minutes then if you've spent your life doing something they can explain it
to you and you can learn from watching people you also are going to learn by
I'm gonna call it imitation but by watching other very good people and how
they operate in difficult circumstances I learned a lot of things what not to do
analyze what to do by watching other people the main thing I try and tell all
my friends family kids is do your homework
why do you want to compete with somebody on a level playing field and be exactly
the same have the same chances of winning as the next guy well you already
know you're at a disadvantage so you need to change the odds you need to tilt the
odds in your favor which means you need an advantage
because otherwise the next guy is going to beat you now of course if you go
to a casino and stack the cards in your favor
what happens they throw you out beat you up even worse even worse in business or in
life it's called doing your homework and being prepared and it's what you
expected to do stack the cards in your favor there's no shame in that
it's not illegal it's exactly what you need to do in your life you do not want
to compete the same odds as everyone else because those of you substitutions
here are there a few statisticians no okay nobody does numbers in Oxford
good that's probably the other thing I was good at numbers you'll find out it
averages out so do your homework prepare yourself make sure you've got
the advantage because it just doesn't come
and for me every time I go into a deal or do I have to achieve something I
would work so hard I would stack the cards in my favour to give me a chance
of winning and even then sometimes you lose because that's the fact of life
you'll make wrong decisions it was said earlier the person who says you never
made a mistake never made a wrong decision is a person that has never made a
decision or is a bloody liar so you will get things wrong but make sure you stack
the cards in your favor you know in this world and I you know the importance of
actually you know going through the process of understanding what the
problem is and then figuring out yourself and every now and then you need
some help that's fine but if you get too much help you never figure out how to do
things and you don't develop the grit and some of the older folks in this
audience is shaking their heads you've got to have grit and grit means getting turned
away from things 14 15 times calling someone every two weeks you know every
day for five months and then finally it materializing and something that you
want and discovering the drawer and figuring things out means you know if
you know for you know fight through those problems understand and learn how
you address those problems and come up with the answers to those solutions that
come up with the answers to those problems within the solution that is
uniquely yours that's an important part of growing up in solving problems
because if you can't solve easy problems now you will not be able to solve
difficult problems later I have in my travels occasionally met promising young
people who insist they are not going to ask for help along the way they want to
figure it out themselves mine was the opposite approach it is hard enough out
there get all the help you can getting help really it's just a part of a
lifelong search for wisdom I always tell people the secret is is there's certain
times don't think like when you get up in the morning don't think just roll out
of bed go on your lifecycle or go on a bicycle ride or go to the gym work out
you know that's what you have to do and then read something and learn something
so don't even think about it