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“Great Work, You’re Fired!”

I grew up in a 30-by-30-foot brick house in Harrison burg, Virginia, a sleepy town of 15,000 people nestled in the foothills of the Shenandoah Valley. My parents didn’t have a lot of money, and too much of what extra they had got gobbled up by my ridiculously bad eyesight. By age two, I was already being fitted for glasses, which I promptly ruined. Other disasters followed until my parents settled on military-like plastic frames with a giant rubber nose protector and lenses thick enough to suggest deep-space exploration.

Needless to say, such singular eyewear did not promote popularity, but I survived, if mostly on the margins. My high-school grades were just good enough to get me into a solid public university, and my parents had just enough spare money left to help me pay the freight.

After college, I held a succession of jobs as a consultant, but the toll of my extensive travel became crystal clear one Saturday morning when my two-year-old daughter, the oldest of what are now three children, woke me with this memorable greeting: “Daddy, Daddy, thanks for coming to visit!” I called my employer that weekend and resigned. Thus, only a few months before my doctor pronounced me “completely unremarkable,” I found myself on Employer No. 4, this time as an executive recruiter.

As had been the case with my consulting positions, I was competent at the work, and my firm, Spencer Stuart, was one of the tops in the business. But I clearly was no standout. By the time I had been with Spencer Stuart two years, the writing on the wall was hard to miss. I might make partner some day if I kept my nose ever to the grindstone. But my talents were average, and it would be a long slog to get there if I ever did.

Worse to me by far, I had no real zeal for the work. One day bled into the next, one task into another. Ever since childhood, I had been blessed with a naïve optimism that always led me to ask, “Why not?” Now, the question was getting whittled down to a single word: “Why?”

In short, I didn’t know where I was going, and I was working like hell to get there. Sound familiar?

Did He Say “Severance” ?

Studies don’t always support what we intuit to be true, but in this case there’s plenty of literature to show that where I found myself was common ground for a great many of us.

Since 1997, Gallup, Inc., has been tracking the workplace satisfaction of millions of employees. On average, Gallup has found that only about 30 percent of all workers are “engaged”: they want goals so they can meet and exceed them; they’re curious about the enterprise generally. Another 55 percent are what Gallup calls “not engaged”: they’ve got a wait-and-see attitude about their jobs, their employers, and their coworkers.

And then there are the roughly 15 percent who are actively disengaged. Gallup refers to them by the semi-acronym “cave dwellers,” where “cave” stands for Consistently Against Virtually Everything. Not only are they unhappy on the job, they’re busy acting out their unhappiness by tearing down the positive accomplishments of their coworkers.

I was never a disruptive force at Spencer Stuart, and I was certainly never actively disengaged as Gallup defines the term, but I would have to say that “not engaged” captured me to a tee. I came, I saw, but I was never going to conquer. And then I had an inspiration. If my “day job” wasn’t bringing me the satisfaction I wanted, maybe a night-and-weekend job would.

I was a voracious reader of business-themed books, everything from the autobiographies of corporate titans to futuristic visions of what the workplace would be like decades out to nuts-and-bolts manuals on how to increase sales, revenues, efficiency, you-name-it. For a number of years, I had been thinking that what would be really useful would be a book that explored the commonalities among highly successful people. I had stuffed several boxes with articles on the subject, and Spencer Stuart had a treasure trove of resources, so I thought, why not do it myself? And with that, some of my old optimism began to flow back into me.

I convinced my friend and fellow recruiter Jim Citrin to join me in the project, and we set out to write an introduction and an outline of what was to follow. Like most other professionals who aspire to see their names in print, I was completely in the dark about the challenges of actually getting a book published, but I knew that I needed this dream in my life as a counterbalance to my daily reality. And, in fact, the dream didn’t die. In August 2003, The 5 Patterns of Extraordinary Careers first appeared in bookstores. Then to our utter and complete amazement, the book took off.

Encouraged by my CEO to hit the publicity trail, I did radio, television, and magazine interviews, published articles excerpting the book, and spoke in front of thousands. And while Spencer Stuart was never far from my mind and often mentioned in my presentations, not once in all that time did I think, “Boy, I can’t wait to get back to head-hunting.”

By November, three months after publication, we had climbed onto the Wall Street Journal’s top-15 list of business best sellers. Business Week had us at No. 7, Amazon.com at No. 4. BN.com, the online e-tailer for Barnes & Noble, would eventually rank us No. 1 among career best sellers for 40-plus weeks.

For me, this was incredibly heady stuff. I all but jumped up and clicked my heels that November when Spencer Stuart’s CEO—the same one who had sent me out on the book tour—called and said, “This has been great for the firm. In return, we really want to take care of you. Come see me and we’ll discuss where to take your career next.”

A private meeting to discuss my career? Forget the old rut. As I flew from Atlanta to the company’s New York headquar ters, I couldn’t help but wonder what might lie ahead. A raise? A promotion? Perhaps he even wants me to run a small part of the business . . . like, say, Europe!

When I stepped into the CEO’s office, his first words to me were, “Rick, what have you liked most about the last several months of your career?” To me, this was a slow hanger right over the center of the plate. I swung hard and launched into an excited description of my new life as a successful author. Forty-two minutes later he cut me off.

“Wow, Rick, your passion is amazing—this clearly seems to be your calling. But . . .” and with that he hesitated, “I must note that during this conversation you never mentioned head-hunting.” He paused again, picked up one of the firm’s recruiting-services brochures, and slid it across the table in front of me. “And in case you’ve forgotten, Rick, that’s basically what we do.”

In my memory the rest of the meeting flies by as a kind of static-filled blur. I recall words and phrases far more than whole sentences: “want to be supportive . . . innovative ideas . . . your first sponsor . . . personal introduction for you.”

At one point along the way, I remember my heart sinking: had I played this one incorrectly? Yet as the meeting concluded and I headed to the elevator, I was still excited. The CEO had said something about my having personal access to his own Rolodex. This could be my big break!

Not until the elevator doors were sliding shut did I recall the boss’s exact parting words: “In fact, we are so supportive, that we will even give you severance.”

Severance?!

By the time I reached the first floor, it had finally sunk in that I had just been fired. Here I was, the coauthor of a best-selling book on career success, and my own career had just crashed and burned.

Birth of an Idea

I let that reality sink in for a day or two. Then I did what every mature, together, resilient person in the same circumstance would surely do. I PANICKED!

For starters, I immediately brushed off my resume, reviewing and rewriting it over and over again. I checked out job boards on the Internet and browsed the want ads in the newspaper. Ironically enough, I even went to bookstores and purchased several guides to career success.

The weeks passed with no job offers, but my mounting spare time also gave me space to nurture an idea that had first occurred to me while I was on my book tour. In the course of researching and writing about successful executives, I had been struck by the explosive growth of networking groups. Hardly a week passed that didn’t include at least one invitation to me and just about everyone I knew to join some group or another. What’s more, the groups clearly had a positive influence on career success. Peers helping peers just made sense. But I also was increasingly struck by the fact that none of these networking groups seemed to involve the very top executives, the most respected professionals in their fields, the highest-ranking person in their role in their company.

Why, I wondered? And what could I do about it? By then, my rejections had mounted high enough to cut a wide swath of free time, so I started to put pen to paper and draft a plan.

The idea was this: I would create the most influential network of top-level executives in the world—or more accurately, the most influential family of networks. Each network would consist of the 50 most important chief marketing officers, CFOs, heads of human resources, and the like from not only around the nation but around the globe. Under the auspices of the umbrella organization I was going to create, these executives would meet periodically to share, debate, and collaborate on their most critical issues, and each of these executives would pay me tens of thousands of dollars per year just to join and participate.

I even came up with a name that seemed to capture the spirit and grandeur of the concept: World50, or w50 for short. I remember thinking more and more convincingly each day that maybe this is it, my way out! And it sure seemed as if it would be a lot more fun than working at some place that wasn’t wild about my even being there.

That left only one small problem, the same one I had initially faced with my book: I hadn’t a clue how to make all this happen.

Well, make that two problems. My wife and friends thought I was nuts, likely shell-shocked from being newly middle aged and suddenly unemployed. If w50 were such a great idea, certainly it would have already been done. Not to mention certain gaps in my own track record to date. Who was I, after all, to attempt to pull off something so audacious?

Only mildly deterred, I hosted a dinner of some of the smartest businesspeople I knew and pitched the idea to them, certain they would see the glimmer of genius within. Alas, they were unimpressed. Maybe I picked the wrong restaurant.

Slightly more discouraged, I put together a six-page Power-Point presentation and sent it to a top management consultant and former mentor whose opinion I greatly respected. Of all the people I knew, surely he would get it! But instead of providing the affirmation I was so desperately seeking, he responded with the devastating suggestion that I might want to focus on something “more realistic.”

Maybe I was crazy, or just grasping at straws rather than facing the fact that I had been cast out to the cold, cruel exile of out-of-work professionals. Certainly, I was getting poorer by the day and no closer, it seemed, to any solution.

“Where Do I Sign Up? ”

Spencer Stuart had generously allowed me to continue using my office for a couple months to conduct my job search, but that grace period was quickly coming to an end. In my last week there, I hauled in a dozen cardboard boxes and started packing up my things. I can recall reaching for the pile of research, notes, and documents that summed up my idea for World50 and worrying that if I packed this idea in the bottom of the box, I’d never take it out again. But that’s just what I did. I put the documents in the box and piled more stuff on top. When I finally taped the box shut, it felt almost like a funeral.

Then I noticed a business card that had dropped to the floor. It came from Carl Gustin, the chief marketing officer of Eastman Kodak, whom I had met on a plane about seven years earlier. I was sure Carl wouldn’t remember me, but just seeing his card lying there was like a revelation. I had sought opinions from everyone under the sun about this new business idea I had, but I had never once reached out to someone who actually might be a customer.

I decided to e-mail my six-page summary to Carl—he was still Mr. Gustin then—along with the request that we meet sometime within the next several months to discuss it.

One hour later, a return message from Carl popped into my e-mail inbox. I stared at it, unopened, for a long minute, the way high-school seniors stare at the envelopes waiting to tell them whether they have been accepted at the college of their choice. Was the envelope thick or thin? Then, taking a deep breath, I highlighted Carl’s message and clicked on “read.”

Rick:

 

I am involved in many groups like this. However, I know of nothing like this in terms of scope and scale, and think other marketing executives will find it incredibly valuable. Where do I sign up?!

 

Carl

I must have sat motionless in my chair for an hour, reading the e-mail over and over like someone checking his lottery ticket to ensure it was the winning number. Not only did I finally have the glimmer of validation for my idea that I had so desperately hoped for, but I might have just landed my first customer.

A day later, I received a call at my home office.

“Hello, this is Rick,” I said.

“Oh, my, I am so sorry to bother you, Mr. Smith. This is Ruth with accounts payable at Eastman Kodak, and I was looking for someone in w50’s accounting department.”

I covered the phone receiver with my left hand and let my arms drop to my lap. Accounting department! What? I am World50’s only employee. Wait a minute—what am I talking about? The company doesn’t even exist yet?!

“That’s, okay, Ruth,” I finally managed to stammer. “I’m happy to pass along a message.”

“Well, we have been told we need to make a payment to World50 but can’t seem to find the invoice. Can you have them fax us a copy?”

Again, the phone dropped to my lap. I don’t even know what an invoice looks like!

That night, I created my first invoice ever, for $50,000—an amount that signaled the exclusivity of the membership, nearly twice the fee of other networking groups. After that, I stayed up the rest of the night designing the company’s first logo. In the morning, I mailed the document off to Eastman Kodak, literally hot off the printer.

A Kid in Candy Land

In truth, everything concrete about w50 began from that moment. Two months later I had contacted 16 of the most influential marketing executives in the world, and all but one of them had agreed to join. The first group was filled and sold out within six months, with 50 executives each paying $50,000 to belong.

With this initial momentum, I recruited a talented and experienced staff and attracted even more influential people to join our advisor network. I enlisted the support of senior executives at some of the world’s most respected professional services companies: Accenture, Omnicom, Bain, WPP, Gallup, and others. Collectively, they contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars in intellectual capital and branding and public relations support as well as making critical introductions to member prospects. And all of them—or their companies—actually paid me for the opportunity to help my fledgling business grow.

Soon I was launching other exclusive groups to fulfill the vision of a family of business communities and receiving overwhelmingly positive responses from each group. By then, the company was clearly an unequivocal success, by any measure.

Within two years of coming up with the idea of w50, I could tick off dozens of globally recognizable names with whom I had spent time conversing about business, government, and favorite causes: Jack Welch, Alan Greenspan, Martha Stewart, Earvin “Magic” Johnson, former U.S. Senate leaders Bob Dole and George Mitchell, Lance Armstrong, Richard Branson, and U2’s Bono, among them. Robert Redford invited me and my team to spend a long weekend at his house. One memorable evening, Francis Ford Coppola poured me wine from his private cellar as he shared his secrets on creativity.

Throughout it all, I was much like a kid in Candy Land. I couldn’t believe this was happening to me! But the fact is, I had accomplished what almost no one thought possible. I’d put together one of the most influential business networks in the world. And in the process, I had made a leap from the ordinary to the extraordinary.

Force Multipliers

The energy that founding w50 had released in me was astounding. Sixty-hour weeks flew by as if they were half that long. Challenges that would have loomed like mountains in my old, stuck life were suddenly reduced to relative molehills. Simply put, I couldn’t wait to get out of bed in the morning. Better still, I knew I wasn’t going to come home in the evening too dead tired and down in the dumps to enjoy spending time with my wife and kids.

I was successful, yes, beyond my wildest dreams. But after so many years of slogging down the same old path, I was finally fulfilled. And that made more of a difference than all the markers of success I could have possibly surrounded myself with.

A Quest for Understanding

How had it happened? And why? I had no experience as an entrepreneur. I didn’t even want to be an entrepreneur! I had no business plan, and the outline I did cobble together was shot down as ridiculous by nearly everyone whom I respected. What’s more, I had no seed money to get my idea off the ground. Still, my life had turned on a dime in a direction of success that no one, including myself, could have predicted or even imagined. As much as I was enjoying my newfound life, I felt an urgent need to understand what could have possibly allowed this to occur.

Some of the contributing factors seemed clear from the outset. The idea for my company’s proposed mission—to provide influential managers around the world with a forum for peer exchange—had tapped a need in the marketplace that was not being served. That’s straight out of Business 101. I was supplying a service that didn’t previously exist and for which there was great pent-up demand.

I also hadn’t ventured far from my area of expertise. As a management consultant and executive recruiter, I had been exposed at the margins to the sort of top-level executives who were rapidly becoming my clientele. That’s not to say I was on anyone’s radar screen before I launched w50—I definitely was not—but it wasn’t as if I had cast over my old day job completely to become a professional tango dancer.

Now that I was running a highly successful business, everyone was quick to cast me in the role of the ballsy, lone-wolf entrepreneur—the kind who throws caution to the wind and bravely charges forward against all odds. I liked the thought of myself as a kind of biz-oriented Evel Knievel, but I also knew that wasn’t the case. I hadn’t dived into this new life. Truth be told, I was scared to death of risk, and I resisted change, any change, nearly every step of the way. I even continued interviewing for a real job well after I had received checks from my first customers.

What’s more, I hadn’t gotten where I was on my own effort, or anything like it. Dozens of people had joined me in my quest, without any direct obligation to do so. World50 had energized me as I had never been energized before, but I ultimately had been carried to my goal on a wave of other people’s enthusiasm.

Thus it was that, almost with a sense of guilt, I boiled my search for answers down to one basic, three-part question:

How could someone who avoided significant risk, who never changed who he was, and who succeeded in great part through the efforts of others, have experienced such an incredible life transition?

That’s where I concentrated, and that’s where the answers were waiting.

Finding the Path

For starters, I revisited the extensive body of research I had conducted for 5 Patterns, this time looking at it through a different lens. My own version of an extraordinary career had told me there was more to learn and fresh perspectives to factor in. From there, I branched out to explore the fields of biology, modern culture, psychology (including the relatively new branches of cognitive neuroscience, and neuroeconomics), physics, communications, sociology, animal behavior, and social networks. I even traveled to Berkeley, California, to get plugged into a brain-scanning machine.

I also just started talking about what had become my consuming interest, and once again, friends and even relative strangers began enlisting in the cause. It was truly amazing to me to discover how many of us know people who have lifted themselves up to new levels of achievement and fulfillment despite the old curse of being gifted with only (seemingly) average talents and resources.

A friend of a friend of my wife introduced me to Sara Blakely, a one-time fax saleswoman who launched Spanx, the women’s clothing line that has taken off like a rocket over the last five years. By a route even more tenuous, I ended up having an incredible conversation with Brad Margus, a shrimp farmer turned renowned genetics expert. And so it went on, from person to person and example to example.

I wasn’t alone. Countless others, I came to learn, have defied a lifetime trajectory of ordinary and managed astounding accomplishments. What’s more, like me, they didn’t take reckless and unnecessary risks. They stayed true to who and what they were, and they benefited from legions of others who joined their cause. Most amazing to me, while the details of our journeys were always singular in the extreme, the patterns we followed were so similar as to form what amounted to a physical principle.

That’s the real insight that my multiyear quest yielded: There is a path that almost all of us can follow to substantially improve the stature and trajectory of our life. By conscientiously applying the framework of ideas I have uncovered, it is possible to achieve a life of extraordinary impact and fulfillment beyond your most ambitious dreams.

That’s where we begin: with the surprising, almost counterintuitive, yet well-trod path that can lead to great success and contentment, and with the old habits and beliefs, many grounded in the evolutionary development of the brain, that hold us back.

First I invite readers who want to move to a deeper level of engagement with this book to begin filling out the journal that follows and those at the end of subsequent chapters. “My Leap Journal”—named for the tipping point that will carry you from where you are to what you can become—will help prepare the way.