What 8 Successful People Did In Their First Jobs
You never forget your first job. It's usually not what you expect, you learn a lot, and you typically leave at least knowing what kind of career you don't want to have.
LinkedIn asked the biggest names in business to share their first job experiences. From selling birds and Christmas trees to polishing floors and buying illegal cigarettes, these people learned a lot about success right from the start.
Billionaire Richard Branson's first businesses were breeding budgerigar birds and growing Christmas trees.
Branson was an entrepreneur from an early age.
"When I was 11, I decided it was time to start my own small business. With my best friend Nik Powell as my partner, we set about breeding budgerigars. We saw a gap in the market to sell budgies as they were very popular with kids in school at the time. However, they kept multiplying quicker than we could sell them, and the school holidays were coming to an end..."
Next, Branson set off to sell Christmas trees by buying small ones and hoping to make a big profit once they grew. It didn't work out the way he expected.
"...Despite the setbacks with budgies and Christmas trees, my appetite for the life of an entrepreneur wasn't sated. Thankfully our next venture - Student Magazine - went a lot better, and from that sprang Virgin Records. Forty years on, the Virgin Group has more than 100 companies and approximately 60,000 employees in over 50 countries. But if it wasn't for those first few failures, the future successes would never have happened."
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Intuit CEO Brad Smith was a part of the "Cola Wars" in the 1980s.
After graduating from Marshall University, Smith joined the Pepsi Bottling Group to become a district sales manager with one goal: Destroy competitor Coca-Cola.
"One of my greatest lessons came from one of these leadership concepts that we referred to as 'a one better mentality.' In the mid-80's, the Cola Wars were reaching epic proportions with advertising and endorsements that included Michael J. Fox, Michael Jackson and Madonna championing the brand promise for the Next Generation. On the ground, my marching orders for my territory were clearly communicated - I was to find the person who had my job at Coke and apply a 'one better mentality.' If my Coke counterpart had one display in a convenience store, I needed to have two. If they had 13 feet of shelf space in a supermarket aisle, then my goal was to have 14 feet. The concept was simple and galvanizing for an army of district sales managers, the competitive intensity was thrilling, and the ability to measure one's success on a daily basis was clear.
"But along the way, a very important lesson emerged that I have never forgotten. In 1991, I was inspecting our execution in a key account and nodding my head in approval as we had secured 16 feet in a major supermarket aisle as compared to Coke's 12 feet. Then I looked to the left and saw 24 feet of bottled water. Bottled water? Who invited them to this fight?
"Lesson learned: Sun Tzu was wise in saying, 'know thyself, know thy enemy, and you need not fear the results of a thousand battles.' However, being fixated on a single competitor can blind you to other disruptive entrants and substitute alternatives."
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BuzzFeed's COO Jon Steinberg realized early on that working smart is better than working hard.
Before the mature age of 15, Steinberg had scooped ice cream, been a camp counselor assistant, worked in retail, and chopped vegetables for a catering business. But it was working in retail with his sister that taught Steinberg the importance of expertise.
"My sister, Sarah, and I sold clothing together at a store in East Hampton, New York called Springers that in the 1990's sold a mix of sweatshirts, t-shirts, Patagonia athletic wear, and high end fashion. The Patagonias were at the back of the store. I'd bust my hump running all over the store, and Sarah hung back at the high value Patagonias. I'd sell 5 items running around the store with the customer for a total of $100. Sarah, in contrast, knew everything about the Patagonias (wicking fabrics, etc.) and would close a single $200 item in 10 minutes.
"This experience taught me the importance of order value and time allocation. I learned that given a common infrastructure (a set amount of space and employee time), if you can work smart on items with high order value and high margin, you will always be better off than working hard on low value, low margin items.
"I also learned that study and expertise matter. I got the Patagonia catalogs and technical books, and I studied them and developed a concise pitch about why their fabrics and products were worth the premium."
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Oil magnate T. Boone Pickens learned more than you'd think from a paper route.
"I got a paper route when I was 12. Although it began on a street grandly named Broadway of America, it was the smallest route in my hometown of Holdenville, Oklahoma: 28 houses with a penny a paper profit per day. When other routes came open next to mine, I talked my supervisor into letting me add them. Within five years my route grew from 28 papers to 156, and I had saved close to $200, which I hid in a hole under the floor in my closet. It was my first experience in the takeover field: expansion by acquisition. I learned other lessons, too. My first year as a paperboy, I found a wallet on the sidewalk. Inside it were the name and address of the owner. I delivered it to the man, and he gave me a dollar reward. It was a windfall. My mother, grandmother, and aunt were on the porch when I got home. They never looked at each other. They didn't have to. They were so much alike that their heads moved in unison, almost as if their heads were attached to one other by a string. They didn't respond as I'd expected or hoped about the news of finding the wallet and getting the reward. I pleaded my case over and over. Instead they sent me straight back to return the dollar to the man.
" 'You are not going to be paid to be honest,' my grandmother told me. So I had to go back to the man and give his dollar back."
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Jacki Zehner, CEO of Women Moving Millions, learned how to do math quickly while working at a crowded concession stand in the 1970s.
"Back in the late 1970s, not only did we not have cash registers (or tills as we call them in Canada), but the only calculators we had to rely on were the ones in our heads. It was during those brief intermissions during hockey periods when everyone would rush up for refreshments, meaning the lines would be long and patience would be short. Thankfully, the prices were usually rounded to the nearest quarter, but you had to do the math on the fly and very quickly. 'Two dogs, large Pepsi, a KitKat, and a popcorn' would be blurted out at me, and a sum total would have to be provided nearly instantly. '$6.50 please.' If I was lucky, I made a couple dollars a night in tips.
"So what did I learn and how was this connected to what I would do later in life? First, I learned how to deal with pressure. At 14 years old, serving customers is stressful, but this stress was exceedingly magnified when the lines were long and the service was expected to be fast. During those 15 minutes we hustled and the energy was high. I discovered that I loved this feeling, and I would challenge myself to be the fastest server at the concession. A decade later, when I was being interviewed for a job on the trading floor of Goldman Sachs, I realized that the atmosphere felt strangely familiar. The noise, the yelling, the energy, all the men everywhere; it was like coming home."
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BBC host Steve Tappin was a cleaner for a factory.
Tappin cleaned the factory floors of the ICI factory with a machine polisher. If you could survive the Victorian-style staircase of over 50 steps, you were in, says Tappin.
"Graduating from high school a couple of years later, I was looking for my first job. I responded to a job ad in a newspaper - to join the very same firm, ICI (Imperial Chemical Industries) - the biggest company in Europe at the time. The role was at the same Harrogate factory where I used to clean; but this time it was a chance to join the fast-track management scheme.
"700 people applied for just two vacancies. I didn't quite make it into the final two, but was rather the third person they employed. I was told that I had scraped in by virtue of my personality and ability to get on with people. Taking after my dad, I like to think that I can get along with just about anyone, and I'm sure my experience of getting stuck in polishing floors helped."
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GE exec Beth Comstock was "summer relief" at a Virgina Rubbermaid factory.
"On the first day of my first job, the veteran workers started a pool on whether I would make it to the shift's end. It was the summer between my freshman and sophomore year in college and I was working with injection molding machines that produced spatulas, beer mugs and huge trash bins. This wasn't the I Love Lucy chocolate factory job; it was hot and the pace was intense. I was a sensitive weakling! If I had been invited into the betting pool that night, I might have wagered against myself, too. "...I was a fish out of water. Not only was I not particularly tough, I was regularly assigned to jobs I wasn't prepared to do. The work was physical, demanding and required a great deal of focus. My coworkers could have been hard on me, but instead they took me in and taught me about teamwork. I learned how people bond around their roles on the line and establish camaraderie. Forget management, we worked hard for each other. This drive led me to double down and make sure there was no way I was going to fail. "...I made it through the summer, though I never fully fit in. One of the workers, who became a friend, called me 'college girl,' assuming I thought I knew something. Truth is, I mostly learned from her. Still, I got to be pretty good on that line and was often asked to step in as a substitute. I owe a lot to that job for helping to teach me what it means to 'put it on the line.' " Read the full post at LinkedIn
Twitter's Social Innovation Manager Claire Diaz-Ortiz bought illegal cigarettes for the Berkeley city police.
"I'd wake up early on a Saturday morning with two plainclothes policemen rapping at my door. We'd get in their non-police car and drive to the bad parts of town. They'd stop at a corner and point to a shady-looking liquor store across the street. My job was to go in and buy cigarettes. If the store carded me for being under 18 and then didn't sell to me as a result of my being underage, they were smart. If they didn't, the police gave them a fine, and put them on a list. A bad list.
"At lunchtime, we'd hit McDonald's, where I'd pepper the policemen with questions about what their normal workdays looked like.
"Throughout the day, they'd ask: 'You want to call it a day?' My response: 'No way!'
"After all, the city was paying me on commission - $5 a store for what was considered an assignment outside my normal work duties. This, I knew, could net me a big daily paycheck. On my best day, I came home with $360. Seventy-two stores! I was highly motivated, apparently."
A few lessons she learned - eschew tradition, find flexibility at work, and have a personal passion for your work.
Read the full post at LinkedIn