Olympic Games And Barriers

* This article is originally published on Democrat & Chronicle.

I am not into sports of any kind.  But I watch the Olympic Games occasionally, for two reasons:

1. Handsome men, and
   
   
2. Top performers

Since I will need much more space to talk about handsome men, let’s focus on top performers for now.

I’ve heard some “I want to do XXX” conversations ending with a “but”. People go through a laundry list of things that could go wrong, and concluded that it’d never work.

Imagine if Olympic athletes had said “I really want to compete in the Olympic Games, but there are so many great, talented players, I’ll never win.”

Sixty years ago, we thought it was impossible to break the 4-minute mile, but now we have the 1-mile world record of 3:43:13 by Hicham El Guerrouj.

It seems that 90% of our barriers to success come from our head. Not only do we let them run the show, but we encourage them to take over.

I’ve always wanted to see the world outside China. When I was in high school, my plan was to move to Hong Kong one day. And the one way I could make it happen was to apply for college there.

But as soon as I had that thought my mind went crazy, “The competition is unbelievable, I can’t speak English, I will never get in, it’s too expensive to apply...”

Guess what? I never went to college there. The saddest part, I never even sent out an application.

I told myself that there wasn’t much I could do, so I gave up.

When I went to college, two of my professors had lived abroad for several years (one in UK and one in Australia). They both talked about how valuable that experience was, so once again I decided that I would go see the world outside China one day.

It was like my life depended on it (I still don’t understand why but I am glad it was such).

I won’t bore you with the details, but after 2 gallons of tears and hundreds of times thinking “Screw it, I can’t do this...”, here I am!

A girl I know from my high school told everyone that she was going to apply for grad school abroad around the same time as me. Last time I checked, she’s exactly where she was 8 years ago, never got out of her hometown.

All I thought was “That could have been me”, but I am glad I made the leap.

You probably have a similar story.

The moral? We are our own worst enemy.

But, barriers are not necessarily bad.

Barriers can be your friend

Yes, barriers can be your friend. You can use them to your advantage, especially when other people chicken out in front of barriers. If you can surmount, you instantly stand out.

Example #1. Asking for career advice

When I was just a young college grad, I wanted to pursue a career in corporate finance. I didn’t know what it would take to get into prestigious companies but I was almost certain that I had no chance. After all, I was just a college kid with zero work experience.

Most of my classmates shared the same thought, eventually it became a “fact” that no companies in the world would hire us, especially when they were recovering from the recession.

By the way, so called “career services” in college is functionally useless. Most likely, you’re gonna hear career advice from someone who has never worked at your dream job. Much of the advice they can give you looks like this: “You need a LinkedIn account.”
Fast Company has a nice video demonstrating it. (Or you can Google “Career Slump? John Cena Can Help (Explicit Language)”)

I knew I wanted to hear insights from top performers who’ve worked in the corporate finance field.

The problem: I didn’t know a single person who works in that field (or any field, for that matter.) How I got myself into this situation after so many year’s school is a story to tell for another time.

After a few sleepless nights, a thought came to me “Can I ask for career advice from someone I don’t know?!”

So I started cold emailing people on LinkedIn. (You can tell if someone is a top performer by looking at his career trajectory.)

I had like 20 connections on LinkedIn, and that didn’t help at all. Imagine you receive an invitation from a stranger on LinkedIn who has 20 connections, creepy, right?

I knew it was gonna be challenging, so I sent out 400+ invitations explaining why I wanted career advice from them and hoping for the best.

Surprisingly, I got around 100 responses from people who are doing very well in their careers. Not only did I learn a lot about the lay of the land (it turned out that many “facts” were not true at all!), but also I got to listen to many amazing stories about why people made the choices they made.

One of the responses I got was from Matt, VP of Intuit.

If you can’t see the screenshot, here’s the partial text of the message:

From: Matt, VP at Intuit

To: Siwei Dodge

Date: 4/28/2015

Hello Siwei.

I’d happy to answer your questions. Would you mind sending them to me via email? xxx@intuit.com

Thanks,
Matt

I was surprised to receive responses like that, so I started asking why they responded to my messages. And they always said “I’ve always wanted to help young grads like you, I even offered to mentor kids in college, but few ever reached to me for help. I’m glad you did!”

Lesson from this story: Most college grads feel too intimidated to ask successful people for career advice, they assume that successful people would never respond to them (the barrier). But in reality, they love helping you IF you make it easier for them to help you. So when I overcame that barrier, I won.

Example #2. Finding valuable mentors

From my own experience, I find that successful people love helping others. But most people suck at looking for mentoring.

A year ago, I met my mentor Jim Bullock, a brilliant consultant, by accident. (He’d probably argue that we are learning from each other, so I always joke about how he must be deeply honored and humbled to participate in this mentorship.) Since then, I’ve learned so much from him. When I don’t know how to handle a situation, he’s always there with answers.

So here are a few things I find important when seeking mentors:

      1. Do your damn homework.

I wrote tons of horrible emails in my life. They still give me nightmares whenever I look at them. I sometimes write exceptionally good emails that allow me reach the unreachable. 

A general rule: Do your homework before asking a question. There’s a thing called Google, so Google around to see if they’ve already answered the same/similar questions somewhere. If they have, don’t waste their time on asking the same question.      

I remember hearing one guy complain about his mentor not giving him good answers.

My take: The quality of the answers you get is directly tied to the quality of the questions you ask.

If you ask broad/general question like “How do you stay motivated?”, then expect to receive a broad/general answer or no answer at all. When you ask a question, you want to hear people say “That’s a good question.”

      2. Apply the Multiple Choices Technique (yes, I created this name) when you ask questions.

It looks like this:

Hi Jim,

I read the book you recommended. Here’s a situation similar to the one described in Chapter 12, so I tried it. It didn’t go very well because of XXX. So I am thinking about doing the following instead:

• *Choice A, blah blah
  
  
• *Choice B, blah blah
  
  
• *Choice C, blah blah
  
  

What do you think?

-Siwei

This will get you 100% response rate. Why? Because you didn’t just throw a question, you actually did all the work on your end, thus requiring little work on the busy person’s end. (All he has to do is to select an answer.)

Good job, Siwei! (I am patting myself on the back right now.)

As someone says “I resolve doubts, not ignorance.”

Summary: “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”

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