Inside Trump University

This Issue: Turn the New Job Boom to Your Advantage

Issue 39

Think Right, Create Wealth

The proof is in the pudding. There are many products and programs that deal with wealth creation, but we don't see a lot of people who are able to uptake that knowledge and utilize it in the marketplace.

Now, I'm all for people diving in and buying books. But the fact is, the average adult reads only 10 or 11 pages of any success or business book. People buy the books with enthusiasm. They are excited about the end goal they might reach. But when they open the books and realize the actions they will have to take to attain those goals, everything falls apart.

That phenomenon is the reason I began to study adult learning. I was fascinated by the fact it is very normal for people to quit learning, and very exceptional for them to persevere.

To phrase it another way, it is actually normal to fail at learning, and exceptional to achieve. Why is that? I did my Ph.D. to find out, and I discovered something quite simple. More than 95 percent of people report that they are bored or upset when they are trying to learn. That kind of stress is actually the normal reaction to learning. And when your brain determines that you are under stress, what does it do for you? It does what it has to do to get you out of that stress. The fastest way to get you out of distress is to stop trying.

Some programs and books try to tell people that learning can be "fun." Learning can't be fun. If it is fun, that means the content has been watered down to the point where it is useless.

To learn what you need to learn to create wealth, you need a mindset that says that being bored, or frustrated, or not understanding concepts right away, is not enough reason to stop. Feeling frustrated is temporary. It is only going to last until you learn what you need to learn.

If you don't have a strategy that makes feeling bad okay, you will abandon almost any learning goal you set. When you look back at the important things you have learned in your life, you will remember that you had a hard time mastering them. But you will probably also recall that there was a teacher there for you at those times, a facilitator who got you to stick with the process long enough to get the result. This is one of the things that impressed me most about Trump University and the approach they took to teaching how to create wealth.

Learning to acquire wealth needs to be challenging. It needs to be big. But in order to really make it happen, you need support and a tolerance for learning.

The End of the MBA is Nigh!

Creativity, design and innovation are today's real success tools

I am fundamentally, at some level, offended by the notion of "Master of Administration." I guess I shouldn't be offended. It was probably a damn good idea 40 or 50 years ago. I remember reading the story of the "Whiz Kids," who helped win World War II, and then turned around Ford. Robert S. McNamara, Ford President, then Defense Secretary, was the Whiz-iest of the kids. What he discovered was that the U.S. Army Air Force didn't know how many planes they had. And so he counted the planes. And it helped. A lot. And then he went to Ford. And he pretty much found out that they didn't have any idea how many cars they'd made. And so he counted up the cars. AND THINGS GOT BETTER. So there was a time when doing those "basics" . . . countin' the planes, countin' the cars . . . made . . . no doubt . . . ALL THE DIFFERENCE.

But after 60 or 70 years of the MBA . . . we count the cars and the planes pretty damn well. And besides, the microprocessor is counting them a lot faster than the graduates of Harvard & Stanford & Wharton. The stuff that used to be "special" has become routine. And the stuff that's necessary (as I see it) . . . The Big Three . . . creativity - design - innovation . . . have been blithely ignored by the business schools!

Clayton Christensen, a Harvard Business School professor (I guess they get two things right - Enriquez and Christensen), wrote a well-received book called The Innovator's Dilemma. He chided business for its conservatism. (He might as well have chided Harvard!) "Good management," he began, "was the most powerful reason [leading firms] failed to stay atop their industries. Precisely because these firms listened to their [biggest & most conservative] customers, invested aggressively in technologies that would provide their customers more and better products of the sort they wanted, and because they carefully studied market trends and systematically allocated investment capital to innovations that promised the best returns, they lost their positions of leadership."

That's a helluva condemnation! And I buy it.

Blog editor's note: Tom Peters, called "business's best friend and worst nightmare" by BusinessWeek, is one of the preememinent business gurus of our time. Used with permission. For more information, visit www.tompeters.com.

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Turn the New Job Boom to Your Advantage

Tired of your job? Stop complaining about it and dust off your résumé. The job market hasn't looked this good since the dot-com boom several years ago.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are about 2.6 million people leaving their jobs each month. While those employees are out looking for greener pastures, that means lots of job openings.

So don't procrastinate. You have to strike while the iron is hot because industry watchers predict that this current job boom will be short-lived. Those jobs will be filled quickly or, even worse, employers will decide they don't need to fill those positions after all. Then your window of opportunity will be closed big-time.

The key is to figure out what you want to do with your career. As I've said before, if you're not happy with your current job, then stop doing it. Love what you're doing or find something else.

This hot job market is your chance to make a change. No more excuses.