Thursday, May 8, 2003

its days like these when i actually learn a lot from class. today a guest speaker came into our business management class and talked about his journey up the "corporate ladder." he's a cal poly alumn...but it took him 9 years to graduate. kinda makes me feel good cuz i'm probably lookin' at a 7 year plan myself. anyways, he talked about how he moved from wisconsin to LA in hopes of being a rock star...but he didn't make it in that so he turned to little jobs like sweeping at K-Mart...kept working at it...and now he's making $300 grand a year as CEO of a brokerage firm.

one tip he told us was "pick your enemies carefully...cuz you don't want an enemy that can beat you...you want an enemy that you can squash like a bug."

another tip he told us was, as shitty as it sounds, there is no real such thing as "fairness" in business...all it comes down to is how productive you are and how much money your company is making because of you.

he also made a big deal on how you can never be overdressed for an interview. "if you can spend $1,500 on a really nice suit...get it. if you can get a $500 tie...get it too. image is everything in the corporate world."

after 1.5 hours of speaking, the theme that was prevalent throughout his lecture was how when you start out at the bottom, be good to everyone and karma will pay you back. for example, whenever he finished a big project he'd give all of the credit to his co-workers and none to himself. even though he made the effort to make his co-workers look better, everyone knew that he was the one in charge and he deserved a lot of the credit. he modesty and generosity paid off and now he's a CEO banking in $300K a year.