MJ Demarcos Great Advice

 

I leveraged my superpower, and that superpower is decision-making.

I'm living a dream, and when I reflect on my choices, it boils down to this:

Hard decisions, easy life. Easy decisions, hard life.

What were some of the hard decisions? Here are just a few:

The hard decision to take the road less traveled and be an entrepreneur where peer pressure, academia, and media promoted a job culture. The easy decision would have been to get a job and pave the way to an unfulfilled life with a seemingly secure paycheck. The hard decision not to get wrapped up in my emotions and get married young to the wrong woman at a time when I was still "finding myself." The easy decision would be to succumb to my emotional impatience and get married fast, only to get divorced years later while enduring the financial turmoil that comes from it. The hard decision to leave cold Chicago for sunny Arizona with no job and no money. The easy decision would be to stay and argue that my friends and family are in Chitown! The easy decision would have eroded my happiness, motivation, and zest for life.   The hard decision to save and invest a lot of my outsized earnings when I was in my thirties. Instead of buying a fleet of Lambos, I bought one every few years. As such, I can still live the same luxurious life with zero financial stress for the rest of my life. The easy decision would have been to spend everything, avoiding tax burdens and the long game. The hard decision to change my diet. After suffering many chronic health issues in my 30s and early 40s, I made the hard decision to change what I shove into my mouth, which requires daily, if not hourly, discipline. The easy decision would be to continue eating whatever I wanted (the standard American diet), while neglecting the consequences. The hard decision to make fitness a priority in my life. The easy decision to sit on the couch and play video games.   The hard decision to continually educate myself. The easy decision would be to binge Netflix and continually entertain myself like the average person.

Every day, you face numerous choices, from the trivial to the complex. However, the hard decisions are the ones that require courage and sacrifice. Ultimately these are the ones that pave the way for a more comfortable life. This may seem paradoxical, but there's tremendous power in embracing the tough choices as they force you to confront your fears, shortcomings, and even your deepest desires. The hard decisions compel you to face reality and take responsibility for your circumstances. Choosing to end a toxic relationship, quitting a job to pursue a dream, or accepting a move to a new city for better opportunities are all examples of hard decisions that initially brought me discomfort but eventually led to personal growth and an easier life.

Hard decisions require courage and sacrifice and pave the way for a more comfortable life.

The power of hard choices lies in their transformative nature. They reshape your life, push you out of your comfort zones and test your resilience. This doesn't mean the path after the hard decision will be smooth, but it ensures that you move forward instead of staying stagnant. In the process, they develop your problem-solving abilities, enhance your emotional intelligence, and increase your adaptability. These invaluable skills make life more manageable with less anxiety and stress. Less of those = better life. The ex-coach of the Phoenix Suns, Monty Williams, always said, "Everything you want is on the other side of hard." Hard is making the hard choices because they often involve risk and/or sacrifice. Risk is a necessary ingredient for growth and success. Making tough choices often means sacrificing short-term comfort for long-term gain. In doing so, we learn to manage and mitigate risk and understand that failure is not fatal but an opportunity to learn and grow.

Failure is not fatal.

Everything you want is on the other side of HARD.

Difficult choices often pave the path to an easier life.

Whether you agree or not, your superpower is your ability to decide.

To choose.

To work daily toward a life you want to live.

I recognized my superpower young— the idea that I was the architect of my life through choice—and it transformed my life into a dream. Making the easy decisions would have made it hard.

Decide to make the hard decisions.

Or let the easy decisions create a hard life.

Columbia Law School Advice on Negotiating and More

Wanted to notate and save this advice on negotiating and leadership from Alexandra Carter

World-Renowned Negotiation Trainer for the United Nations and Director of Mediation Clinic at Columbia Law School

 

 The best leaders ask themselves the right questions to cultivate self-awareness. Questions help you define the problem to be solved, uncover your needs, and grapple with your emotions so that they don't come back to bite you in the room. Feelings help you explore prior successes, and also to create an action plan. Questions are a very powerful tool in a negotiation and especially useful for an expert audience. When you raise the right questions, you're going to get the information you need, and it will give you a target to aim at. If you don't ask questions, you are aiming in the dark.
 
Always start a negotiation by defining the right problem. Many people start their negotiations in the wrong place, by tossing out solutions. Start with, "What's the problem I'm trying to solve?" I was recently counseling a really promising start-up company. They'd had two rounds of financing, and they were getting ready for their next one. COVID hits, a segment of their business disappears, and, all of a sudden, they say, "Alex, we're going to reach out to every distributor we've talked to in the last two years." And I was like, "Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. What is the problem we are trying to solve here?" Depending on that answer, I'm going to counsel you differently. If you told me you wanted geographic distribution and just had to hit big everywhere, okay, maybe do a blitz, but even then, I would still question it. If you told me you needed to achieve the best product velocity in your key markets, then you’d need a totally different strategy.

One of the questions that I think is especially useful is: "How have I handled this successfully in the past?" Asking yourself about a prior success is indispensable before you negotiate with somebody else. If you go into a negotiation with somebody else having just thought about a prior success, you are likely to perform better, because you have primed your mind for creativity, expansion, flexibility, and the ability to think on the spot. The second reason is because the question acts as a data generator. If you think about a prior success and you write down in detail the strategies you used, you're going to find at least a couple that apply to your current situation. Even in a novel situation, you have been through things before, and you can find strategies to help you in your current situation.
 

Be Exceptional and Avoid Market Risks

The best way to hedge against a market risk in a downturn like the great recession of the COVID-19 Global Pandemic is to be exceptional.

"The surest safeguard against market conditions, be they good or bad, is having truly exceptional work. “Great material fetches great prices in any kind of market" note for business, art, food, or anything during these times. Be exceptional."

Whatever the business or personality you drive make it stand out and you will be okay in any market conditions.

Quote About Trusting Your Instinct in Business

You can't make sense of it looking forward; you can only do so by looking backwards. So you have to trust in your future.

You have to trust in something that will play out correctly with you navigating accordingly. Trust your gut and instinct.

Quote From Scott Weilands Book Dead and Not For Sale

Sifu Simonet was a mentor to the late Scott Weiland of Stone Temple Pilots. He practiced a kung fu art form called Pentjak Silat Tongkat Serak. He had his own philosophies that inspired Weiland deeply and potentially kept him alive longer than he would have been otherwise.

After reading Weilands book there's a quote that sticks out that says:

"My art form never stops evolving. I can never repeat myself because the past is gone and the present is ever new, ever changing."


It's from a book called Dead and Not for sale. I recommend it.



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Best Quote from the 70's

This quote comes from Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory which was filmed in Germany in 1971. 

"Don’t forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he wanted."
 

 "What happened?"

"He lived happily ever after.”

― Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

The Ted Williams Book

Recommended by Warren Buffet and referenced in a recent podcast with the lesson and quote of the day: "Hit according to your style".

Apply probabilities to hitting and to get more hits swing at strikes and not balls. If its good you have to be swinging and not sitting by as the balls pass you by.

Enlighten yourself.

The Letter Seinfeld Episode Full Quote

The full quote of the Neil Simon Part 2 letter that Jerry receives is as follows:

""I don't know what you expect to find out there, Jerry, you know what you want better than me. But there's one thing I do know. I know I can stand here watching you destroy everything I've ever wanted in my life, wanting to smash your face with my fists, because you won't make even the slightest effort to offer happiness and still know that I love you. You mean so much to me that I'm will-ing to take all your abuse and insults and insensitivity cause that's what you need to do to prove I'm not going to leave you. I'm sick and tired of running from places and people and relationships. You want me, that fight for me, because I'm sure as hell fighting for you!"

Humurous Business Quotes

Found an old book that came courtesy of Ryan Insurance and wanted to have a digital file for these quotes:

• To Err is Human, To Forgive is not company policy.
• Say No, Then negotiate
• If at first you don't succeed, try, try again...Then give up. There's no use being a damn fool about it. 
• Murphy's Law: If anythingcan go wrong it will.....O'Toole's Commentary on Murphy's Law: "Murphy was an optimist."
• If you don't agree with me, it means you havent been listening 
• A billion dollars isn't what it used to be. 
• If you can't convince them, confuse them. 
• An honest executive is one who shares the credit with the man who did all the work. 
• Before you have an argument with your boss, take a good look at oth sides his side and the outside. 
• It isn't what you know that counts, its what you think of in me. 
• Rule of Failure: "If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.
• America is the land of opportunity if you're a businessman in Japan (Lawrence J. Peter) 
• Nothing is quite as embarrassing as watching your boss do something you assured him couldn't be done
• The mark of a  true M.B.A. is that he is often wrong but seldom in doubt (Robert Buzzell) 
• There is no job so simple that it cannot be done wrong. 
• Law of Destiny: "Glory may be fleeting but obscurity is forever. 
• A business is too big when it takes a week for gossip to go from one end of the office to the other. 
• If it ain't broke, don't fix it- unless you are a consultant 
• The mechanics of running a business are really not very complicated when you get down to essentials. You have to make some stuff and sell it to somebody for more than it cost you. That's about all there is to it, except for a few million details. 
• My decision is maybe and that's final. 
• If it's difficult we do it immediately. If it's impossible it takes a little longer. Miracles by appointment only. 
• Old salesmen never die- they just get out of commission. 
• A committee is twelve men doing the work of one. 
• Business: The art of extracting money from another man's pocket without resorting to violence. (Max Amsterdam) 
• The closest to perfection a person ever comes is when he fills out a job application form. 
• The trouble with mixing business and pleasure is that pleasure usually comes out on top. 
• Blessed are the young for they shall inherit the national debt. 
• Never tell a lie...unless lying is one of your strong points. 
• Marketing is simply  sales with a college education
• A good business manager hires optimists as salesmen and pessimists to run the credit department. 
• No business opportunity is ever lost. If you fumble it, your competitor will find it. 
• Business is like an automobile. It won't run itself, except downhill. 
• It's not whether you win or lose - it's how you place the blame. 
• Rule of Success: Trust only those who stand to lose as much as you when things go wrong. 
• If people listened to themselves more often they would talk less. 
• Some executives call passing the buck delegating authority. 
• The golden rule: He who has the gold makes the rules. 
• If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous he will not bit you. This is the principal diference between a dog and a man. 
• A successful executive in business is one who can delegate all the responsibility shift all the blame, and appropriate all the credit. 
• When I first started working I used to dream of the day when I might be earning the salary im now starving on. 
• Anyone who thinks the customer isn't important should try doing without him for a period of 90 days. 
• The typical salesmen is a man with a smile on his face, a shine on his shoes, and a lousy territory. 
• Happiness is a positive cash flow. 
• The best way to appreciate your job is to imagine yourself without one. 
• An efficient businessman who found a machine that would do half his work bought two. 
• A nickel goes a long way now. You can carry it around for days without finding a thing it will buy. 
• There are some men who, in a fifty-fifty proposition, insist on getting the hyphen too. 
• If you want something done give it to a busy man and he'll have his secretary do it. 
• There is nothing more demoralizing than a small but adequate income (Edmund Wilson) 
• Among the chief worries of today's business executives is the large number of unemployed still on the payrolls. 
• Hard work is the yeast that raises the dough. 
• It is especially hard to work for money youve already spent for something you didn't need. 
• Committee work is like a soft chair - easy to get into but hard to get out of. 
• If all the economists in the world were laid end to end it would probably be a good thing. 
• Choose a job you love, and you will never have to wrok a day in your life. 
• I'm opposed to millionaires but it would be dangerous to offer me the position. (Mark Twain)
• Idealism increases in direct proportion to ones distance from the problem
• I cannot give you a formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure: Try to please everybody. (Herbert Swope) 
• There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics. 
• Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes. ( oscar wilde) 
• Maier's Law: If the facts do not conform to the theory, they must be disposed of. 
• Buy low, sell high collect early, and pay late (Dick Levin) 
• Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there (Will Rogers) 
• Management is the art of getting other people to do all the work. 
• I'd like to be rich enough so I could throw soap away after the letters are worn off. (Andy Rooney) 
• When they say a man is born executive they mean his father owns the business. 
• Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed. 
• Money won't buy happiness, but it will pay the salaries of alarge research staff to study the problem (Bill Vaughan)