Unpacking Success Beyond Education

Watch the episode here:

• Gain a fresh perspective on the value of education versus experience.
• Hear Rick Jordan’s personal take on what truly defines success.
• Learn about the inspiring journey of Chris Gardner and others.
• Discover how to leverage your real-world experiences for success.
• Get motivated to break free from conventional success paradigms.

Hey, what’s shakin, hey, I’m Rick Jordan today. We’re going all in. Last week I was in a studio for two days straight and it was really, really awesome. It’s a show called Office Hours. I’ve been on it it’s a show by David Meltzer. If you don’t know who David Meltzer is he is a legendary sports agent and entrepreneur. He ran li Steinberg’s agency as a CEO Leigh Steinberg is Jerry Maguire from like, 15 years ago, everybody’s seen that movie, right, like you had me at hello. I think that’s the line. I don’t know. But I think it is. I don’t know. We got thumbs up. Okay. I’m in the studio for a couple of days. And I’m talking with a lot of awesome people interviewing literally like 18 guests a day people like Neil Patel, people like Chris Gardner, which ironically, I changed my flight to come home early on Friday nights. And I interviewed Chris, you don’t know Chris, it’s he’s Will Smith played Chris Gardner in The Pursuit of Happiness is the true story of going from homelessness to being on Wall Street. And he was being interviewed on the show Spotlight. But then he was also a host with me or two episodes over the course of Thursday and Friday. And I had coffee with him last year at his penthouse on Trump Tower, the 36th floor, it’s beautiful. I met him actually 15 years ago, right after the movie came out. And I brought that up when I was interviewing him, and just talking about some of the things that affected his life in that way. But then, because I changed my flight he and I just happened to be just happened to be across the aisle from each other on the plane on the way home and got to know each other even better, and we’re staying connected, which is pretty awesome. But throughout his career, and this is what got me thinking of this because then it was brought up a couple more times this weekend, I’ll go back to Chris in a second, it was an article from a woman who had been trying to get a job for a year this was in Business Insider, I have a subscription, that Business Insider, amongst the Wall Street Journal and some other things. 

And as a side note, if you’re not consuming good information about life and business, you’re really missing out. Because that’s a way to actually continue to allow you to grow professionally, is just keeping up on what’s going on in the world, especially when it comes to business. If you think it doesn’t affect you, it does you’ll you’ll have a greater sense of value to be able to provide to the company that you’re working for here. And just really good knowledge about how things operate within business and life. This woman had not been able to get a job for a year and she changed one small thing on her resume. One small thing, she actually started out her resume with her education, right? And she was an MBA, and she had all these accolades and these certifications and all this stuff. And she actually ended up putting that at the bottom of her resume. And at the bottom of her resume was this section and it was almost like a sub-thought right now, I’m not even like an afterthought, but a sub-thought of an afterthought. And she just listed out her experience and things she had been through first. You know, so I started thinking about us because what I did was I ended up coming home from this event with Chris. I watched The Pursuit of Happiness with my kids, I ordered some pizza, watched it with my two 16-year-olds and a 14-year-old, and I started to look at them. And I’m like, we’re gonna watch this because I was just with this guy for two days. And the story is great. I only saw the movie once 15 years ago. And it was a good time with my kids. But this got brought up again when I was watching the film because I forgot this about Chris Gardner, as he’s applying for this internship. As a stockbroker. They’re literally going through like, what’s your experience? Have you ever? Have you ever done this before? 

No. It was like, Well, what’s your education, you know, and he’s like high school. He ends up of course, if you know the story, because he ends up being a harder worker than anybody else. He ends up because of his son. And the times he had to drop them off at daycare and pick them up. He had to condense it into six hours with all these other 40 interns were doing in nine. So he had to dial faster. I mean, even little things like back then you literally had to pick up the phone, right? And these other interns, 40 interns, and just one person was going to get the job, they would hang up the phone, pick it back up, he figured out that he could save eight minutes a day by literally just tapping the click thing. I don’t remember what it’s called right the hook, whatever it is, I mean, that was a long time ago. Now. It’s just tap on the phone on your screen, and that’s it, but he could save eight minutes a day, right to work up the list. And then he started forming networks and all of these other things, but I see this. I saw this article over the weekend about this woman who decided to highlight what she had been through professionally and what she had learned from those experiences and Education and certifications became a sub-thought that even that was like page two, right? And who actually reads past the first page of a resume when you’re interviewing somebody doesn’t happen very often. Here’s Chris Gardner, who had never been a stockbroker before, did not have an education actually started learning this on his own, and then ended up frickin crushing it. I mean, the guy is a multi multi-millionaire. I went to his place in Chicago last year having coffee with them, it by far is the best view in the city period, you can go to the observation deck of what I still call the Sears Tower, then it was the Willis Tower. Now, I think it’s a no-name Tower, or the John Hancock, right, the 100 and 10th floor, that is also the 95th floor of the John Hancock. 

But this is on the 36th floor of Trump Tower. And it just literally wraps around and you can look at this Trump Tower right on the river. And you can just have this amazing view right out to the lake. And you can literally walk around this overhang, which the the patio, the penthouse patio is like 5000 square feet in itself. And you can see the entirety of the city. It’s beautiful. All this coming from a guy that didn’t have education, didn’t have certifications. And he had this amazing, amazing American Dream story. And as I’m talking this morning with, Oscar, who’s my assistant, we’re talking about different ways of presenting things right, and not talking about the features, right, but actually articulating the value of what you can deliver in what you bring to the table first before anything else. Because in sales, a lot of people used to talk about like, like feature, benefit, feature, benefit, feature benefit, right, and line item, all this stuff and say, here’s all the technical specs of something, right? And here’s what it might do for you, here’s what it’s going to bring for you. It’s like no, that’s the reverse benefit and value always comes first. And the features are just getting into the weeds. So as I’m reading this article, there was one other thing that came up this weekend that’s slipping my mind right now. But there’s this thing in my life, and it’s the strongest structure ever formed is the rule of threes. 

So if you ever see something come up in a short period of time that three times it’s something to pay attention to. It’s just like this natural law that happens. And this happened three times over the course of about three days where this came up. And I started to think about this because obviously, within reach out, we have certified technicians. We have a bunch of certifications around but I cannot remember one single time in my almost 20 years 20 freakin years of being an independent consultant. And having reached out after that, that certification has mattered, let alone that I even talked about it. Because I can go all the way back to 2003. When I was an MCSE, a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer, I can go back to when I was a Linux Certified Professional and LCP. I can go back and say I’m a plus and network plus all of these certifications that exist with this, within this industry, I have never once talked about now and I still get the deals time after time. after time and time again, I’ve never been in a customer meeting. Never been in a customer meeting where they’ve asked, Hey, what are your credentials? I was in the freakin White House, advising the White House on artificial intelligence and border security for the previous administration. And not once, not one single time that they say, Hey, what does a piece of paper say about you? What are the letters after your name? All people do is look at the value. That’s all that they care about is the value that you bring to the table. Can you do the job or not? Period? I’m telling you, there’s a benefit to certifications because it give you the knowledge on how to do the job. But I will take somebody with 20 years of experience any day over somebody who just took a test last week period within our organization, or within any place that you might end up being at some point in time, I am telling you your certifications matter so that you can do the job so you have the skill set. It does not sell the deals ever.

Unless maybe I’ll put this accolade or this sidebar unless maybe it’s a government deal where they’re looking for something very specific, but I’m talking about how most of us sell to consumers to be small businesses, mid-markets. Nobody asks I’ll tell you what else doesn’t matter to our logos of vendors on your websites. If you take a look at reach out, we don’t list our partners, we don’t say, Oh, we’re a Microsoft Gold partner, who freakin cares. It doesn’t matter. And we still Make Dollar After Dollar out, we still close deal after deal after deal. They don’t care because all they see is the person that’s sitting in front of them. And all they need to know is to say, Hey, have you done this before? Have you done this for other people? Tell me about those times. And as long as you’re not diving into the weeds and the weeds, I am telling you, the weeds are your certification. The weeds are your education. The weeds are specs. This is also why we never line item stuff on invoices because we articulate value, we articulate outcomes. Ai articulates a desired end state saying this is what’s going to happen. And you know, what? If it doesn’t happen, they don’t have to stick with you. So I mean, that’s your own integrity. When you go into a situation like if you sign up for a job that reached out, and you’re like, hey, this is what I can do. And you’re like, there’s your resume. 

You know, that’s great. But if somebody starts diving into your education, hardcore, don’t worry about it, pass it on by because they probably don’t even can’t even articulate their own value for real, like the person interviewing you probably can’t even articulate your own their own value. If they’re just sitting there going through. Oh, I see you graduated in 2007. You know that those are some nice letters after your name there. I wish I had that’s what their thing I wish I had those letters, you know, and say, Who cares? Can you do the job or not? I’ve had people who have been MBAs that have worked for me that suck, could not do the job. Right, bad hire on my part. Sure. I never focus on the education. But education certification specifications will not get your deal sold. The only thing that gets your deal sold, the only thing that customers matter about the only thing that people matter about is whether can you do what you say you are going to do, and show a track record of being able to do that. I’ve never gone public before, obviously, I’ve never taken a company public before. But I articulated the value ahead of time to get the right people involved to actually make it happen. And you know what, when they looked at me and said, You know what, Rick, you’ve never done this before. I’m like, You’re right, I haven’t, but I’m gonna figure it out. And it’s okay if you want to jump in right now. That’s fine. If you don’t want to jump in. That’s, that’s cool, too. I’m still gonna do it. And it took that it actually took proof of concept for some people to get in. There’s a concept called first money when it comes to investors. And almost nobody wants to be the first money. Because it’s it’s an unproven thing, right? But the first money is the people that actually end up getting the most reward because they took the risk. 

Risk tolerance and timing is a big thing. And that’s the same thing with customers if you can articulate the value, because the only way people know how good you are, or how good you say that you are, before they sign the contract before they sign the deal, is your branding, and your marketing. That’s it. And within your branding, your marketing, or your message. So if you’re picking up the phone, and it’s like, hey, you know, reach out what’s going down, and you’re a technician working on something. It’s like, cool. How can we set the frame I’ve been thinking about this lately. How can we set the frame ahead of time and say, I’m gonna get this fixed for you today? Like right at Right, right out of that, right? All they care about is the outcome. Do you think they’re calling customers or calling up to reach out and saying, hey, you know, what before you work on my printer problem, what certifications do you have? Because I mean, I don’t know. Are you HP-certified? I’ve got an HP red all your Xerox certified. I don’t know if you can help me or not, right? Well, you don’t have any printer certification. Oh, but you built a whole frickin infrastructure in the cloud. You know, I don’t know, though, because you don’t have the certification for this thing right here. It doesn’t matter Come on. Within 20 years of being outside of the corporate environments, on my own, and with reach out, not once have I ever been asked, What are your certifications? Are you a Microsoft partner? Are you an HP partner? 

All of those things not once and we still close deal after deal after deal for one specific reason because we can articulate, I can articulate the value of the outcome and the desired end state. That’s all that matters. Before people know that you can do what you actually say you do. The only thing they know that you can do that is by your branding and your Marketing, which in those is your message? Don’t get caught in the weeds because of education. It’s great. I think a lot of people need that stuff. Absolutely. Especially accountants, lawyers, I hope doctors, right? I mean, you don’t want somebody cutting you open unless they’ve been through a residency and they’ve studied the human body, the biology, all of those things. Education is important for a lot of industries at the same time, like when I had LASIK, right? The one thing I asked like, I’m like, How many times have you done this? Oh, I’ve done over 60,000 procedures. I’ve been in this for 25 years. Awesome. You know what? You got the same degree as the dude down the street who has cut an eye 10 times. I’m gonna go with you, brother. Absolutely. Because of your your history and your outcomes, and what you’re selling me as the value which he articulated, never got into the specifications of the stuff or anything like that. All I know, is it afterward, nine years later, I can still see 2015 Because I chose a person that could articulate the value with his branding and his message. That’s what I will continue to do. That’s why I hope you continue to do education certifications. Those are a sub thoughts that gave you the foundation to be able to do what you’re doing. What matters is one year of experience and especially, this shouldn’t be like number one on top of it. Can you articulate the value of what you bring to the table?

GO ALL IN.