The Winning Advantage

Anita Brick: Hi, this is Anita Brick, and welcome to CareerCast at Chicago Booth. To help you advance in your career. Today, I'm delighted to be speaking with Raymond Houser. He is an executive and author of The Winning Advantage. Raymond has a wonderful story, so let me share a little bit with you. He started earning money by selling pecans when he was six years old. By the time he was 12, he had a paper route in addition to working in grocery stores and a bowling alley. When his dream of becoming a major League Baseball catcher ended, he knew he had to focus on other goals and that's what he did, challenging himself to overcome shyness, knocking on doors until he became the highest grossing dividend book salesman for the Southwestern Company and after that he developed and eventually sold his own book company.

His career is like everyone's, it’s had its ups and downs, including a bankruptcy. Yet despite setbacks, he never gave up, starting a new career in his 40s, he was hired by Merrill Lynch, where he became a successful money manager. He used his really good people skills and his ability to innovate in the financial world to create an even bigger career after that. Raymond, it was wonderful to read your book. Thank you very much for making the time today. There's just such a high level of success, coupled with an amazing amount of humility. That's what resonated with me. So thank you so much for writing and sharing the book.

Raymond Houser: Well, thank you for the invitation and it's a privilege to be here with you. It's always great to talk with a person of your stature. Appreciate the opportunity.

Anita Brick: Well, thank you so much. Maybe you could briefly define what is the winning advantage.

Raymond Houser: There's an advantage within all of us. The winning advantage is to exploit those gifts, those talents, those abilities that have been given to all of us, but through various reasons have been unused, mainly fear, fear of rejection, self-image. And there are many causes of that which are explained in my book and gone through and quite detailed. I know one of my great mentors in life was named Maudling. He lived in Phoenix and I lived in Phoenix at this time because I had my book business based in Phoenix. He was the keynote speaker at the Southwest Forum Company every year, but he and I spent a lot of time together. He joined Jefferson National Life Insurance Company in Indianapolis, and it was less than a $40 million company when he joined, but when he left some 22 years later, it was a $12 billion company. Well, he said, Raymond, if you ever find a job or career that you love so much, you do it for nothing. But yet you do it so well people want you bad enough to pay you to do it, he said. You found your niche in life. And he said unfortunately, less than 4% ever find their niche in life.

Anita Brick: And I think you're right. I know fear is a running theme or what fear can do as a running theme in the book. There was a student who said, “We all know you can't succeed if you give up. Yet I become immobilized by big obstacles. How can someone create a support among one's peers so we can encourage one another? And how do you choose people for that group?”

Raymond Houser: Fear can be used. It's something we should never eliminate, but it's something that we should harness and manage and put in its proper place. It can be used as a motivator, but many times people use it as a deterrent. The way to do it is to establish some goals to decide exactly what you want in life? Where do you want to be five years, ten years from now and put it in writing lists the good things that you have done.

Make a list and go down that list and make sure you're covering everything and then on the right, put down the bad things, the things that have had a difficult time for you in life. And after you've listed them, put a big black X over that list and you focus on the good things you set goals, ways that you know that you can get something accomplished. I recommend that before you go out into a career interview 3 or 4 people within that career that have been there 30 years or more have a personal conference. I ask them, what is it that motivated you to want to get into this field? What are the things that you would like to have known 30 years ago that you know today?

Tell me your most discouraging times and how you came through them. Truly, truly successful people in all walks of life are anxious and ready to help others that are willing to ask questions that will help compliment themselves. For after all, all of us are walking around with a sign on our back. Make me feel important when you ask someone else, how do you do it? You've risen above your competition heads and toes, so get the details.

Anita Brick: You're absolutely right when you need to interrupt. But when you think about it, what you're saying, it's wonderful. You're saying you don't have to necessarily have support from your peers. Really having people around you who are willing to share with you. I mentioned it in the intro. You had a big setback. You had bankruptcy. Why were you willing to share some of those things? And how can you make someone else comfortable sharing those things? If you really do want to know both the good and the not so good side of a profession.

Raymond Houser: Well, the reason being is because of those bad things is the reason that I evolved them to good things. You don't have to look at a failure or an attempt to do something, and not working out as an indenture on your personality or on you as a person. It's only the event that was a failure, not you as a person.

Anita Brick: Agreed and not to interrupt, but let's reframe the question a little bit. My question is how do you get someone to feel comfortable enough with you as you're asking them about their career, that they would be willing to share what others might think was a failure or at least a negative setback, which would be useful for you to know.

Raymond Houser: I think if people are honest, they are going to deep down tell you if you will ask them in a certain way. And that is after they have talked about the complementary aspects of their field, then you can also go to the other side and say if you would, and certainly between you and me, and it won't be published in the Wall Street Journal, I promise you, if you would just tell me some of the things that have been very discouraging that would be helpful to me in your career and how did you overcome them? No, I think there's a fire within everybody and that they're willing to share these things. It's not a point of embarrassment. It's a complementary point because of what they have evolved to be, because of them. They're anxious to tell you, well, I was this and I was that and it was rough, but here's how I overcame it. That's something I think everybody is willing to do. If indeed you are sincerely inquisitive and want to know and know that it would help you, that's the part of the helping process that he has to convey. He or she that you're interviewing. And I don't think that's a difficult way. If you know you are strategic about it or I mean, I don't think the first moment that you sit down you ask them to tell you their discouraging points in their life.

Anita Brick: No. Right.

Raymond Houser: Right. It's after you've taught for 10 or 15 or 20 minutes. I think after a certain relationship, our comfort zone has been established. I don't think that's a difficult area to accomplish.

Anita Brick: It's a really good point. You made a point, another point, which is actually also a very good point about the difference between a rejection that is related to a situation versus a rejection that is about the person. There is another student who said, “When I receive a rejection in my job search, it really discourages me. How do you advise others on how to separate the situation of rejection from my taking it personally?”

Raymond Houser: That's a beautiful area, and that's a lot of what the book is about. How to harness rejection into opportunity instead of a roadblock. Mainly it's fear, and this is many times when we don't attempt anything, but also when we do attempt, we have a fear of being rejected because we'll have ridicule from friends and neighbors and ourselves. Mainly, there's a human tendency within all of us to overestimate someone else's ability and to underestimate our own.

And many times we were raised in an environment, not intentionally, but sometimes parents criticize an individual for what they did instead of criticizing the person for the act in and of itself. But the person, the young man or young girl, took the criticism personally. And it wasn't really intended to be that way, but it was that way, and it evolved to be the reason that we were successful in the book business. You're not going home for $55 to $65 a day. I have had so many doors slammed so loud that the paint is coming off, but what drove me back to the next house and continued on to run between houses as they say it? Because they said you'd move your enthusiasm up if you ran between houses.

Well, it was the law that they taught us in sales school. The four day, five days of unbelievable intensive training. And that is the person is not rejecting you as a person. They don't know you. How could they reject you at the door? They're rejecting the idea. They're rejecting the fact that their pocketbook is threatened. You have to separate the act from the actor. By nature, we take that personally. It's not natural to do that. You have to train yourself to understand that it's the act they are rejecting, not you as the person. And you look at the things that you were rejected about and list what you learn from that rejection. You list the things that were manifested because of the rejection and be thankful for it. Learn to be thankful for it because of fear. F.E.A.R. is really false evidence appearing real.

You see, when you face the things you fear, the death of fear is certain. You only live in captivity of fear if you submit to it, and you don't have to separate yourself from the rejection from the act of failure. You are not a failure. You just failed at what you tried to do. Set some goals, but then you follow up those goals in the procedure as to how you're going to achieve those goals, and you focus on those. You don't worry about the rejection and the ridicule from friends and the turn downs that you're going to receive. You don't let the outside world, you know, hurt you like that. You have to focus on your goals. Yes, there are two people in every individual. There's a pole, a positive and a net negative. Net negative is far more boisterous. He's always talking.

Your relatives tried that and they say, oh, you couldn't do that. Look what a fool you're going to look like in front of your friends. But staying positive is whispering in your ear only when you apply to her. She'll say yes, other people and fail, but that doesn't mean that you can't do it. You are an individual. You have some gifts that nobody else on the planet has, so why should you correlate yourself with somebody else? It failed, but you have to apply and appeal to her. She doesn't just come from the curtains naturally. And so that's the difference. You know, it reminds me of the story of a little girl that was born 60 miles southeast of Nashville in 1940.

She was one of 22 children that her dad had sired through two wives. She was number 20 at four years old. She had constricted scarlet fever and also double pneumonia. Well, the doctor, after seeing that she had developed polio, put braces on her left leg and told her that she'll never walk again. As a normal person, you have to understand that and we'll increase the size of the braces as your leg grows. Well, her mother loved her. They went home and she wouldn't accept that mentally. What people didn't realize was at night when everybody was asleep, she got up in her bedroom. She walked with that brace used in furniture as the lift went around the room for over an hour every night, practicing walking with a brace.

Well, a long story short, that time she was nine years old she went into the regular doctor routine office for the visit. She threw out the braces and walked around his office. He nearly had a heart attack. He'd never seen such a thing and such a recovery. Previous to that, she had told her friends walking around with braces at school, I'm going to be the fastest woman on the planet someday. And they all laughed. Oh, they rolled in Harvard and they made fun over. They stiffened their left leg and went around like they had braces just to put her down. She went out for the soccer team when she was 11 years old and didn't make it, but she went out for the track team. She did make the track team.

Her track coach put his arm around her and said, someday you're going to be a great superstar. I believe in you. Rolling up the hands of time. She won some local events, won the state championship, and went on to qualify for the Olympics. She won three gold medals. No woman in history had ever won three medals in Olympic history. She went back and there was a great parade in Clarksville, Tennessee. No one was laughing anymore. Nobody made fun of William Rudolph anymore. Yeah, don't break the story. What other people say. Don't be bothered by ridicule and disappointment. Do gather your friendships. We do learn from these sources and 98% of what you know in life. Very little of what you know you haven’t learned in and of yourself. The three sources are friends, associates, and the people that you interact with. Hopefully you will interact with people that are successful, that are open minded to opportunities. Gossip is one of the worst failures on the planet. People that are gossiping are people that have low self images.

Have you heard the news about this? That is a person that has a very low self-image and she wants to be recognized. He or she wants to be recognized. The books that we read, I recommend that you read books of people that have accomplished things that have left rules and principles for posterity. The Andrew Carnegies of the world, the Rockefellers, the Winston Churchills, read these books and biographies and learn something from them and their way of thinking.

It's a wise person that learns from the experiences of others. It's the fool who limits their learning process to their own experiences exclusively. And the third place that you learn what you know is through classroom seminar exposure and taking good notes and practicing. Yes, it's important to have a positive attitude. It's much more valuable than a negative attitude, no doubt about it.

But you have to have a belief within yourself which is more important than a positive attitude, a solemn belief that if he can do it, if she can do it, I can do it and chain to a heart that knows of no surrender. And you will not let anything hold you back like that.

Anita Brick: That's wonderful.

Raymond Houser: You get me started on something it's hard for me to stop.

Anita Brick: I love that though. It's really good. It's good enough. I know you need to stop. But do you have time for one more question?

Raymond Houser: Yes, indeed. Okay.

Anita Brick: Wonderful. When you think about it, what is it? Top three things that you would advise someone who wants to create sustainable success while honoring his or her values?

Raymond Houser: Certainly integrity would be at the top. Integrity is saying and doing the right thing when nobody else is looking. I was told a long time ago, if you have integrity, nothing else really matters because you can learn it. If you don't have integrity, nothing else really matters because you won't earn it. I would say the top of the list would be integrity. I would say also to develop a habit of complimenting other people. Give at least one sincere compliment a day to someone that you may not know. Make a habit of making somebody's day a better day. Many people say at least three a day, but I say a minimum of one every single day, because the greatest source of happiness in this life is adding value to the lives of other people.

We have to come to realize that the only change and shackles that hold any of us back from any goal in life are those that we ourselves forged in the fires about and hammer out on the animals of lack of belief. That is one important area that needs to be pursued every day. The third thing is to definitely have a plan. Don't be a wandering generality. It's often been said that if you have no particular goal in mind, then your future is destined for failure. Your reach should always be further than your grasp. You want to make it that you reach one level, then you move on to another level. This is the keep challenging type of attitude. The opposite of courage is not fear, it's conformity.

It's conforming to the regular thing that everybody typically wants to do, and that is to seek out security. Well, you have to come to realize the greatest security in this life is a person that you prepare every morning in the mirror that you see, it's not the job, it's not the company. If you take a salaried job, you're paid what it costs to fill that job. What do you do? What if someone else does it? That's what we pay you to do the job. But if you are willing to run a risk on yourself, then you'll be paid what you're worth. And if you're to work the hours necessary to reach worthwhile goals in life, then you'll be paid accordingly. Like the clothes rolling up the hands of time you're living the last two days of your life.

You look back over your shoulder and will have been just a one lane road pepper good road signs up for me and my I will have been a two lane road, one in which you've added value to the lives of other people through a product, service or an idea. And then the second lane comes back to you, a feeling of knowing that you have done your duty as a person, that value invades the lives of other people, that you've lived a worthwhile life, that you fulfilled your mission in life. Oh yes, and the dollars will come dancing in your backyard. Just to see what kind of a person you really are. The answer is yours to make. The answer is yours to keep.

Anita Brick: That's wonderful. Thank you for having the courage to take on the many challenges that you have, and that you're willing to share it on. Whether you speak at a university or at a company, or you make the time for us today. Thank you. Thank you very, very much.

Raymond Houser: Well, thank you, Anita. Appreciate the opportunity. And it's always great to adopt the person of your success. Record that for sure.

Anita Brick: Thank you very much. I know you can read an excerpt from Raymond's book, but if you want to learn more, you can go to TheWinningAdvantageBooking.com to learn more about the book. He does have other resources as well. Clearly there's a lot of very, very practical advice. Thanks again Raymond.

Raymond Houser: Thank you.

Anita Brick: And thank you all for listening. This is Anita Brick with CareerCast at Chicago Booth. Keep advancing.