The Most Under-rated Key to Long-Term Career Success: Staying Power
You know what’s really under-rated in a career – and it goes for journalists, CEOs, bankers, traders, musicians, athletes, or plumbers?
The old codgers still have it: U2 360 Tour, Anaheim, 17 June 2011 (Photo credit: InSapphoWeTrust)
Staying power.
There are certain people in any profession who seem to rise to astronomical prominence like a supernova. They are the talk of the town for the moment. And then, as quickly as they arrived, they seem to disappear.
There are others who are fixtures. They’re always there churning out great work; year after year, decade after decade. They have an uncanny ability to persist and continue making great contributions to their field, even as other generations of colleagues rise and fall like waves on a beach.
I think back to the people in my industry I remember 12 years ago when I was starting out at a software company doing early Siri-type voice applications. A lot of the CEOs who seemed destined for greatness are doing nothing today. They bounced around from one unknown start-up to the next, did a little consulting and are basically gone. Some people made some money but have basically floated around playing tennis and golf and thinking of their next big idea “in stealth mode” without ever following through.
There’s one person from that little voice industry who’s gone on to big things: Mike McCue. He was running a company called TellMe back then – which was a big deal amongst the fancy VCs. They really were doing Siri before Siri and – had they not sold toMicrosoft (MSFT) in 2007 – probably could have been Siri. But Mike got a good exit for his investors and went on to start FlipBoard, which is one of the hottest private start-ups that hasn’t IPO’ed yet and served on the board of Twitter (where the young guy I remember was now the wise old man with gray hair giving advice to entrepreneurs who only went by one name… Ev, Biz, Jack).
Flipboard CEO: Mike McCue (Photo credit: Robert Scoble)
Getting older in your career is a funny thing.
It’s like one day you start walking down a city street and you’ve got hundreds of people in your field walking alongside you. Three or five years later, you lift up your head and look around and you’re walking down a dirt road in the country and 90% of those people are gone. Some of them died, some of them switched industries, some of them moved to a different state with their spouse, and most you’ve just lost track of. There are some new 20-somethings fresh out of college that are now part of the mix and many other new faces to replace them.
But wait another 3 – 5 years and most of those new faces will be gone too. And yet you just keep walking down the road.
I love and deeply admire folks who just keep churning out great work. Here’s to those who keep at it and continue to prove they’re no flash in the pan.
But how does this happen that people seem to have great talent and fizzle out while others with the same or less talent persist?
Remember Sam Bowie? The Portland Trailblazers selected him in the 1984 NBA Draft instead of picking Michael Jordan. Bowie was an All-American basketball player in high school and at the University of Kentucky. After his first season, he suffered a string of injuries and only ever played 63 games for the next 4 years. Michael Jordan went on to be arguably the best basketball player ever.
Some people keep showing up for work on Monday morning to clock in and perform at a high level.
Here are a few examples.
- Steve Nash was a short guard out of unheralded University of Santa Clara and even more unheralded Victoria, British Columbia. Yet, at 39, he just signed a 3 year deal with the Lakers after an outstanding hall of fame career and is still in amazing shape.
- Magic Johnson not only had a long career until HIV ended it prematurely, but has transitioned into perhaps the most successful ex-athlete business executive ever.
- Most companies only have 1 hit consumer product over their lifespans, if they’re lucky. Yet, Steve Jobspresided over the AppleII, the Mac, the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad, and (to be released next year) the Apple (AAPL) TV.
- Howard Schultz bought a little coffee company in Seattle in the 1970s and built it into a colossus. He stepped down as CEO from Starbucks (SBUX) in 2000 and saw it start to drift. So, he came back in 2008 and has helped spark a renewed growth in the brand and push into China and mobile commerce.
- Henry Blodget was a 32 year old stock analyst at a lesser known Wall Street firm called Oppenheimer. However, he predicted Amazon (AMZN) would soon hit $400 a share – and it did a month later, after increasing 128%. On the heels of the attention he received, he was hired at Merrill Lynch. Yet, New YorkState Attorney
NEW YORK, NY - MAY 22: Henry Blodget attends TechCrunch Disrupt NYC 2012 at Pier 94 on May 22, 2012 in New York City. (Image credit: Getty Images for TechCrunch/AOL via @daylife)
General Eliot Spitzer and the Securities and Exchange Commission went after him for civil securities fraud, due to some of his private emails painting a different opinion he had of certain stocks he covered compared to his published research. Henry had to pay a $2 million fine and a $2 million disgorgement. Yet, now he’s the CEO of Business Insider – one of the fastest growing news-sites around – and contributes regularly to Yahoo! Finance (YHOO) and New York Magazine.
It’s amazing to me how Henry got through those years 2003 – 2007. A lot of people would have been so embarrassed that they would have just disappeared. He was banned from the securities industry. He was written off by most people as a “liar.” How do you have “staying power” at that darkest moment of your life – especially when you’ve got a wife and kids at home?
I asked Henry how he got through that dark time:
Not sure what to say other than that what happened was appalling to me and there was no way in hell I was going to go out like that.From the moment it happened, I started working as hard as I could to regain the trust I had lost. I knew it would take a long time, and I’m grateful to everyone who has given me a second chance over the past ten years.
Anyone can win one race on a given day. Few can keep winning marathons. Why is it that?
Well, here’s what doesn’t seem to matter to whether you’ll have staying power or not.
- Smarts
- Talent
- Good looks
No, to still be walking down that dirt road at then end of your career – 20, 40, or 60 years from now – here’s what is going to ensure your career will have “staying power”:
1. Never give up. Sounds simple, right? But, most around you, won’t be able to follow this rule. It’s easier to give up than to keep going. It subjects you to less criticism. But we all go through valleys in our life – personal or work-related.
My dad used to advise me when these dark moments came to “keep putting one foot in front of the other.”
My favorite bumper sticker slogan on this point is “If you’re going through Hell, keep going.” What’s the alternative?
You need to have a basic amount of these in the early days of your career (although good looks really only matters for being a pop star or the entertainment field versus if you wanted to be a trader or plumber). But the point you need to remember is that everyone you’re going to be competing against will have smarts and talent. Smarts and talent are the cover charge you pay at the door to get in the club. But it’s not what keeps you in the club.
2 Stay relevant by remaining open-minded. Madonna didn’t keep recording “Lucky Star” sound-alikes. U2didn’t make 5 more
Madonna at last January's Super Bowl (Photo credit: stephen_d_luke)
albums that sounded like “The Joshua Tree.” They kept evolving. That evolution in sound always made them relevant.
There’s a lesson for us in other industries besides music. Are you relevant?
I meet some journalists who grew up in the world of ink-stained print or executives and they look and sound old. They write and speak in a stale way too. Then, you come across someone with a voice that is riveting, unique, and completely relevant. Being relevant makes you interesting but you can’t stay relevant unless you’re continuing to learn new things and watch the world around you develop. To learn, you’ve got to be open-minded. The first people to get laid off in a big company reduction in force are the ones who stopped being relevant years ago and made a choice to start “mailing it in” instead of staying relevant.
3. Love what you do. It sounds like a Hallmark Card, but it’s so true. Do you love your job including the most mundane administrative aspects of it? If so, you’ve found your place in the world. If not, keep looking.
It’s inevitable that you’ll put yourself on “cruise control” unless you absolutely love what you do and find meaning in it. Having staying power for a 40 or 50 year career is tough. It’s impossible if you don’t love your work. There are lots of jobs out there I could never do. That’s ok. The world’s a big place with other people to do those jobs. But I have to ensure I love what I do.
4. Don’t get distracted. Finally, it’s important to realize that a lot of the people around you who will drop off walking down your dirt road with you will do so through distraction.
Sometimes, it’s because of alcoholism or drugs. Sometimes, it’s a bad divorce. Sometimes, they sell their company and seem to lose their sense of purpose and start playing golf all the time. Sometimes it’s over-eating and not exercising.
Amy Winehouse and Janis Joplin were super-talented artists but their distractions snuffed out that talent forever. Don’t let that be you.
We all have our distractions. Don’t let those distractions side-track you from what you do best and what really gives you a lot of pleasure and self-esteem: your career. Stay focused and let that talent keep shining through.
Robert Lenzner, who is a Contributing Editor and Columnist from Forbes, tweeted this to me the other day about staying power:
“It’s all there is– staying power, resilience, chop wood, carry water, bounce back.”
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