Warriors

The Warrior of the Month award must certainly go to Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus (though he might actually feel the Nobel Peace Prize he was awarded last week is an even bigger honor). Yunus developed the concept of "microcredit" and founded the Grameen Bank. Thanks to him and the bank, over the last thirty years more than 100 million people have been given an opportunity to take the first steps out of poverty. The concept is simple. People in remote poverty-stricken parts of the world that otherwise could not get credit are awarded small loans. The money might buy a dairy cow, a few egg laying hens, or even a cell phone that allows them to conduct business. With a little bit of capital, people are given the opportunity to start small businesses that change their and their family’s lives, and when they repay the loans the money is loaned to others that make similar progress. Yunus gives people the tools and minimal resources to lift themselves out of powerty. Instead of fixing the symptom of a problem, he has found a way to make profound permanent changes.

Many 1970s music fans will remember folksinger Harry Chapin for hits like “Taxi” and “Cats in the Cradle.” During a tremendous career cut short by his death in an auto accident, Chapin released ten albums and toured throughout the world.

But shortly after releasing his first hit album, Chapin decided to use his musical gift and fame to combat world hunger. In 1974, he founded WHY (World Hunger Year), an organization that still exists almost twenty years after his death. He set out to educate people on the issues of world hunger and to raise money to help solve the problem.

Throughout the remainder of his career, Chapin donated much of the proceeds from his tours and record and merchandise sales to this and other charities aimed at fighting hunger. He helped found and fund other hunger charities, including Hungerthon and Long Island Cares.

In 1986, Chapin was posthumously awarded a Congressional Gold Medal for his tremendous work. A memorial fund started at his death to continue his work has raised more than $5 million for a variety of social causes that were close to his heart.

I have personally found that negotiating with confidence is one of my most useful tools as a Warrior, and I consequently tend to negotiate almost everything in business and my day-to-day life. For instance, I always negotiate when a vendor’s delivery falls below reasonable expectations. Most people would be amazed to discover that if you have the confidence to negotiate, almost everything is negotiable. Because I travel a lot and because I spend a lot of money in the process, I especially negotiate with travel vendors. I am a believer in the axiom that “you get what you pay for,” and I don’t mind paying the appropriate premium price for premium service, but I also find that given my continual travel budgets and the frequency of travel vendors to fall below promised standards, it is an area of constant negotiations. In the past few months, I have negotiated several free round-trip airline tickets from major airlines, several first-class upgrades, thousands of free frequent-flyer miles, and a $1,000 flight credit—all negotiated settlements when their service was far below expectations. I constantly negotiate and receive car rental free days and upgrades, free hotel nights and upgrades to suites, free meals or sometimes wine or cocktails with dinner . . . the list goes on and on.

The Warrior realizes that almost everything in life is negotiable (even in scenarios that you would not assume negotiation was possible), and that having the Warrior’s confidence to negotiate opens doors, saves money, makes money, and allows the Warrior to generally live a better life than the non-Warrior.

Of the many Warrior stories to emerge from the horrors of World War II and the Nazi concentration camps, Maximillian Kolbe’s is one of the most heroic. Father Kolbe was a Polish priest imprisoned in Auschwitz in 1941. When one of the men in Kolbe’s bunker disappeared and presumably escaped, the Nazis decided to take ten men from the bunker and starve them to death as an example to the others. (Tragically, the missing man was later found drowned in a camp latrine.) When one of the men selected to die cried out in despair that he would never get to see his wife and children again, Father Kolbe stepped forward and asked to take his place. The Nazis complied.

After two weeks of starvation, four of the ten men, including Father Kolbe, were still alive. The Nazis needed their cells for more inmates, so the four were finished off with an injection of carbolic acid.

Father Kolbe was reportedly the last to die, sacrificing his life for a man he barely knew.

Warriors take shape in all walks of life. The particular warrior I would like to reference has 29 lives (literally), never started his own business, does not drive a Porsche and has never been to Ruth’s Chris Steak house.

In their article Stubborn Man Tried To Govern Iraq, the NY Times featured an Iraqi governor named Mamoon Sami Rashid. Mr. Rashid play’s such an integral role in bringing peace and justice to Iraq that rebels have made 29+ attempts to take his life. For years Mr. Rashid (with the help of US soldiers) has dodged bullets, bombs and suicide missions to continue his quest.

I also consistently meet people unhappy with their careers because they choose a profession based solely on financial potential. Although they might have the accouterments of success, they are unhappy in their lives. This seems especially true in professions normally thought of as “big-money jobs.” For instance, a sizable percentage of the attorneys I have had contact with express dissatisfaction with their lives, often saying they were lured into the profession by the image of big money and fancy offices, but that they have no love for the work. But the good news is that there is always redemption available—even late in life—for those who have gone down the wrong career or life path. It just involves making choices that might seem hard at first but that offer a lifetime of satisfaction.

Johnny Carson’s and Dianne’s stories share another similarity. They all ultimately found success doing what they loved to do. Though “do what you love, and the money will follow” is an old adage, I found that most happy and well-rounded successful Warriors and Workers truly do love their work and swear by the axiom. I have certainly found it to be an absolute truth in my own life. Early in my career, I worked in the family business for a few years. Although I had a few talents that brought me a few successes in the industry, I had no passion or love for what I was doing, and I ultimately sought to artificially change my job, which led to near disaster. Transforming a business to better suit your personality, as opposed to finding a business you are suited for, is always a bad idea. Finding business environments I enjoyed immediately made me much more successful. This seems to be a constant theme in family-owned businesses. I encounter many unhappy second- and third-generation business owners who went into the family enterprise out of a sense of obligation, or to take advantage of the easy advancement, only to find they are miserable in their jobs. They often then become Whiners, or they unwittingly bring down the organization because their heart is in the wrong place. In the end, this serves no one, because miserable people do not make good business leaders. Businesses and employees deserve happy and energized people at the helm. Often, those who are unhappy with their careers and situations will subconsciously make bad decisions that they know will ultimately force them to make a change. In the meantime, these decisions can lead to the unnecessary destruction of companies and environments.

Dianne also embarked on the painful process of rebuilding her personal brand, first by doing extensive amounts of volunteer work for industry trade organizations and by speaking at different industry functions. To assist with the dreaded detail work, she found a partner for her business who in many ways was her direct opposite. He countered her flamboyance and big-picture perspective with a more reserved and detail-oriented nature. And she used her aggressive and outgoing personality to build relationships throughout her business. Although Dianne will certainly always enjoy a bit of juicy gossip, she stopped the Whiner and Weasel ways that had hampered her reputation in the past. In just a few short years, Dianne completely turned her life around. Her consulting business now flourishes, and she is one of the most respected and powerful people in her industry.

Luckily, Dianne discovered that her talent for putting together deals was sorely lacking at—and needed by—many companies. In fact, although there were many fine operations in the industry that could actually do the work, there was a shortage of energetic and talented deal makers who could attract clients and close deals. She began doing independent consulting work, assisting corporations in strategizing and orchestrating new business pitches, and building relationships and joint ventures with other complementary companies. Acting almost like an agent for her clients, she found a market niche that allowed her to work for companies that, in many cases, she used to compete with. And because she only performed the functions in the process she was good at and competent to perform, she built a base of happy clients.

Warriors are not always Warriors from the start. Even if you have slipped into the morass of serious Whiner or Weasel behavior, you can still sometimes find redemption if you activate and properly use your Warrior tools. Take Dianne, for example. She is the middle-aged president and owner of a successful consulting firm Although business is going well now, things have not always been so rosy. After graduating from a good university with a master’s degree, Dianne bounced around from job to job, finding reasonably good positions but never really working her way up in any organization to the level she desired.

It’s Easy to Become a Whiner or a Weasel.

By the time she reached her forties, Dianne’s inability to succeed past a certain point had begun to take a toll on her, gradually transforming her into a Whiner (with strong Weasel tendencies emerging). Instead of using her tools and accurately assessing her own job performance and worth to the organizations she was being paid by, she instead felt she was a “victim,” blaming her inability to rise in her career on office politics and other non-issues. This is a deadly, career stopping response for Warrior wannabes. Warriors realize that they possess free will, and they constantly utilize their self-responsibility tool. If their careers are not going well, they take responsibility to change the situation in their work environments, or they move on to better situations. They never just stand still and lament their situations or blame others for their plight. Dianne began to play classic Weasel and Whiner games: refusing to take responsibility and backstabbing supervisors, bosses, and coworkers. She built a personal brand filled with words like “untrustworthy,” “gossip monger,” and “snake in the grass.” Initially, she had some success with the approach. Unfortunately, Weasel and Whiner crutches can sometimes be used effectively for short periods of time, especially if they are used on other Whiners and Weasels. She managed to convince a competitive company that she was, in fact, the “brains behind her operation,” and based on this misrepresentation, she was awarded a major new position that she was completely under-qualified for. Within a year, she had misused her new job. Sensing that the ax was about to fall and smart enough to move on, Dianne quit and announced she was going into business for herself. Although she did manage to quickly launch her own company, she had not changed her Whiner and Weasel ways. She did have some initial success in attracting clients. But she consistently over promised and under delivered. Ultimately, her company failed. Forced to declare bankruptcy, with her personal brand at an all-time low, she took a hard look at her personal and professional life.  “I realized in my heart that I was really best at being a deal maker, and that things fell apart for me after the deal was put together,” she explained. “I enjoy the front end of the new business process: identifying clients, the courting process of developing relationships, putting together the deal from the big picture. Once the deal was done, I lost interest.”