I recently started a new job at a consulting firm. And through three interviews over three weeks, ended up getting the job within a month’s time. What was more incredible to me was the first interview was when the Jewish owner in his 60s reached out to me first via LinkedIn, and within 5 minutes of the interview said that I have good character. It was then mentioned in the next few interviews and between that he was pushing to have me get hired. Even if this were a trick to induce certain people to get hired, it still shows something to make a decision that fast. No reference checks or reference list was asked for, which I thought was interesting as this was a deviation from how companies typically hire. He didn’t believe in reference checks to begin with, thinking that they were a waste of time; someone from the past at other jobs does not necessarily represent how that person will do at the current job. They may have changed, learned new skills, or not gotten along with past coworkers, clients, managers. It also shows his confidence in his own discernment to go on his impression; and that of the other two interviews responses too. I was flown in to Toronto during my 2^nd week on the job to meet the team, and get in person trainings too. While also staying at the most expensive places I’ll ever be staying at, and eating very high end expensive food (all paid for by the company). He spoke during the dinners as well as extended monologues during my stay that left a memorable impression on me. On top of the discernment and deviant hiring practices, I learned some other lessons imparted.

Life’s trajectory to some extent is determined by luck; factors outside your control

He’s a 61-year-old Jewish male born and raised in the west and hasn’t worked for anyone since he turned 30, due to founding his own consulting company. The catch? His father was also a rich educated Jewish owner and had given him ample amount of guidance and money to start his own business. For the average person to do this from average circumstances, it just doesn’t happen statistically. Most people who became wealthy were already coming from a well-off family background, either from money, connections, education, genetics, or some combination of all of the above. It was rather refreshing to hear him openly admit to this inherit advantage that many people dream for.

Follow your passions is stupid

The most popular advice given from society at large for occupation is to follow your passion, as that will mean you never work a day in your life and that passion will lead to skills acquired at a deeper and faster pace, with the money eventually to follow. This sounds ideal and in reality, rare to materialize. Countless amount of people has various passions that they followed, and 9/10 end up in some variation of the starving artist stereotype. He himself said that if he followed his passion, he would have become a musician of some sorts. Not sure how his family would have felt about that. Instead, he recommended to do something that society values, that will also be paid well for, and that you can end up learning and doing proficiently. That is the way to succeed in an occupation, whether as an employee or not. The primary notion of an occupation is to make money from in order to provide for a life, not to find a passionate or meaningful life within the occupation. Society has convinced us to fall for its extreme capitalist ideology and somehow equate passion with occupation, or even identity with occupation.

Life is not that long

Life moves quicker as you age, due to more responsibilities eating up your time. This gets especially true with the start of a family, and other negative factors that can occur, with aging parents needing time, money and care, an ugly divorce damaging both parents and children irreparably. All this requires more and more time, on top of responsibilities that if left idle, come back in multiplied ugly ways in the future. He had mentioned that from 30 onwards with starting a company and family at the same time, that 30 years had only felt like “a decade, two decades tops”. So, he recommended to really self-reflect and think about the purpose of life, what one wants to achieve, do, become and value in this short time here on earth. By the time people have realized this, they are already past the age of 40, enduring a mid-life crisis. That crisis is really just people realizing too late what they actually want instead of following dogma their whole lives out of caring what others think and going along with societies expectations. Every person has two lives, and the 2^nd life begins when they realize they only had one to begin with. Live life in a manner that is conducive to you.

Do things that make your mind think

There is a popular trope now that says that people are NPCs, living life as mindless zombies without any thinking, consideration or input into our lives. Living lives that are essentially the same the entirety of life, with no changes or self-awareness. Doing things that make your mind think gives a better chance to make changes for the better. This includes doing different things, getting out of the comfort zone, new environments, new people, new challenges.

Giving back ends up benefitting yourself

If you live long enough life has a way of giving you what you were looking for all along. By giving and helping those along the way, it has a way of giving back to you ten-fold; Ray Dalio, the Bible, and others have shared similar sentiments. Hogging it all to yourself is a way to ensure a lot of tangible success and lack of love and meaningful relationships. Shane Parrish attests to this with interviews of former CEOs who the moment they retired, all their “colleagues” decided to stop golfing with him when it became optional, rather than out of necessity from business gain. Giving in love is the only way to have any chance of that coming back, even if the odds are slim.

By handing out equity to the employees, this while hampers some of his equity payout in the future, ensures that the employees are vested in the company. It creates a win-win scenario for everyone, making everyone end up working harder via thinking as a part owner with stake in the company rather than as an employee. It’s a smart strategy that gets more buy in from everyone.