The Education of Millionaires - Michael Ellsberg [53]
In turn, Eben, Elliott, and the other people featured in this book focused their self-education on gaining skills that allow them to contribute to other people, in higher-leverage and higher-impact ways. Specifically, they’ve focused on the ability to provide valuable, high-impact, high-leverage advice and leadership in the main areas of concern we’ve identified earlier: money and business, sales and marketing, spirituality and purpose (which often are expressed in the business world by the word “leadership”), and health and relationships.
These are the areas people tend to “want things” in. If you learn how to help them get what they want in these areas—as the self-educated entrepreneurs we’re learning about in this book have done—you can connect with anyone you want to. And you can earn a lot of money as well. Because these are areas near and dear to people’s deepest desires, fears, worries, and dreams—and they’ll want to be around you and connect with you, if you can help them with these areas.
I can’t explain exactly what the relationship is between giving widely within your network, with no expectation of anything in return, and giving in a professional relationship in which you’re getting paid, but I know that there is one.
For some reason, the more you adopt the giving mind-set in your personal relationships and your network, with no quid pro quo, the more people want to be around you and connect to your network. (That much is obvious.) But also, the more they want to hire you as well. I don’t know exactly why that is, but that’s been my experience and the experience of others I’ve seen.
It may be because people trust givers, and therefore want to hire givers. They know they’ll be taken care of. They know they’ll get great value. They know that if anything goes wrong, it will be cleaned up and fixed. They know that you’re not just doing it for the money; you’re doing it because you care.
The reverse also holds true. The more you get your money and material needs met, the easier it is to take your mind off these material needs and focus on helping others. Of course, there’s not a direct, linear relationship between wealth and the giver mentality. Obviously not. Many wealthy people are stingy, misers, greedy, takers, hoarders, selfish. And many financially poor people are incredibly giving of the heart, and even of their modest financial resources.
But, in general, it’s easier to give when your cup runneth over. Joseph Simmons dropped out of a mortuary science program at LaGuardia Community College when his hip-hop career took off, as “Run” of Run-D.M.C.—a pioneering group in the early eighties that undeniably changed the face of popular music around the globe. Now a practicing Pentecostal minister, Reverend Run encourages his followers to get their financial house in order and cultivate prosperity, for the purpose of being more available to serve others. He tells them, “It’s hard to help poor people when you’re one of them.”9
In Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?, which is the best book ever written on the central importance of giving within a business context, Seth Godin writes: “It’s difficult to be generous when you’re hungry. Yet being generous keeps you from going hungry.”10
There’s no question, this attitude we’re exploring here is a paradox. Give to get; get to give. Gifts that you get paid for and are part of your career, gifts that you don’t get paid for and aren’t part of your career. None of it can really be analyzed rationally. At some point, you just wrap your head around the paradox and “get it.” In this view, the wealthiest people are not the ones who are hoarding the most value—they’re the ones who have the most value flowing in and out of their lives.
Multi-hundred-millionaire Russell Simmons, cofounder of the Def Jam record label and the Phat Fashions line, who dropped out of City College of New York to become a concert promoter