I grew up in a family that emphasized education, and my parents demanded good grades from me. A’s talked, everything else walked. When I got to college, my dad amped up the emphasis even more. I think I skipped, maybe, five classes in all of college, and three of those occurred on the Monday after Lori and I attended Super Bowl XXVII in Pasadena.
When I was graduating from college, my dad wrote me a seven-page letter. He called it “Jon’s Book,” and the note was entitled Chapter One. He has added two more chapters to it as I have moved through my life.
The seven-page first chapter is bullets of excellent advice, ranging from which magazines to read and the importance of developing two areas of expertise to a challenge to start a business in my 20s. The last bullet was this: “Remember, the only persons who will ever care about your grades are your parents, your first employer (maybe), and any graduate schools to which you apply.”
I felt like he’d totally psyched me, but I did smile. The reality is, having good grades has never hurt me.
I had lunch recently with a promising SMU grad looking to enter the commercial real estate industry. In our discussion, another of my father’s bullets was relevant: “You should plan on sticking with an industry and gaining expertise in it. Three thoughts result: 1) pick an industry you like; 2) pick it as soon as possible; and 3) if you are confident about the industry (or profession), it doesn’t really matter where you start in it.”
Twenty years into this, I would add one last bullet to my dad’s list: Focus on who you will be working alongside and who will be teaching you the business. I have found that to be all-important, and I have seen many a career prosper while another one flounders, all at the same firm, simply because of the varying quality of sponsorship.
Jon Altschuler is a partner at Altschuler and Co. Contact him at [email protected].
