Business & Money

I was recently speaking to someone that made a distinction between a coach and a mentor. I thought it was an apt distinction.

They defined a mentor as someone that only has one data point to work with: whatever you tell them. So you meet with this person every so often, you tell them what’s going on in your life and ask for their advice, and based on what you tell them and their own experience, they try to help you navigate the situation.

A coach, on the other hand, has the ability to gather multiple data points. Take a football coach as an example. In addition to whatever you say, they have statisticians pouring over all of the facts and figures of a player’s performance, they have other coaches specializing in specific areas (a quarterback coach for example), they watch and re-watch game tapes, and likely many more data points that I’m not aware of.

In other words, a coach has an external barometer of your reality.

So it seems, that in business and in life, people might be better served to seek out coaches as opposed to mentors.

Human Progress

If you think about it, you as an individual are solely dedicated and interested in the things that are important to you. That part is obvious, but the thing that is possibly less apparent is that everyone else feels exactly the same way. So it seems that, if you really want to influence other people, it would serve you to take a keen interest in what the other side deems important.

I try my best to keep this newsletter apolitical. And I will continue to do so. But if there’s one thing that makes me uncomfortable about the current political conversation, it’s the me me me focus. America first. I too want America to be great, but it seems to me that framing the conversation that way is unlikely to engender a desire in other nations to want to cooperate with us.

So I wonder how much time we are thinking about what other people and other nations want. And I wonder if there might be a way to help them achieve whatever those desires might be, while also furthering our own desires at the same time.

The proverbial “win-win” if you will.

I’ll leave you with a quote. The great Lao Tzu said something like,

All streams flow to the sea because it is lower than they are. Humility gives it its power. if you want to govern the people, you must place yourself below them. if you want to lead the people, you must learn how to follow them.

Philosophy

I went to a massive technology conference a few weeks ago. At one point I needed to use the restroom, so navigated my way to the closest one. Unfortunately, there was a line. As I got near to the front, I was in view of the sinks. For about 45 seconds I had a clear view of how many men washed their hands vs how many didn’t. Of 7 people I saw, 2 washed their hands. (No high horse here – I’m certain that I’ve been guilty at random points throughout life)

The conference had something like 170,000 attendees. Given it’s the technology industry, let’s assume 65% are men, or 110,500 people.

If we use the same ratio from my 45-second experience, that means 78,928 people didn’t wash their hands.

That’s $#@*& disgusting!!

And everyone knows that washing your hands is the right thing and the sanitary thing to do. Yet here we are.

It’s fascinating to me how many of the most mundane and obvious concepts aren’t strong enough to alter behavior for the majority of people.

My Latest Discovery

Morgan Housel is one of the clearest and most succinct communicators I’ve come across. He has a way of simplifying things down to their core essence.

He recently wrote this post about interest rates. And while many of the ideas here might be oversimplified, I think he does a great job of communicating a few fundamental ideas that any person can grasp.