The story of my first recruiting job is a sad one: when winning solves most of your problems, and no one is winning, there are lots of problems. In my first recruiting job, this was indeed the case.
We were all paid on commission, and that first year, no one billed >$100K, which meant that no one was taking home more than $60K and, while it wasn’t SF, it was still LA.
So, since no one was winning, no one was happy. Some unhappy people get angry and mean.
The women who were asked to help me learn the ropes instead mocked me when I was on calls (“wow did you hear what she just said!? That was stupid!!”) and talked trash about me behind my back (and by that I mean literally – in their cubicles behind mine, knowingly within earshot). It was sad. I was sad!
The silver lining, since they didn’t help me learn the ropes, was I got to figure out for myself how to climb:
I realized that starting with my own failures, I had the opportunity to maximize my learning. Something along the lines of “When you're at the bottom, the only way is up!”
This practice started unintentionally, really: like movie reels seen through tears in the shower, I’d replay mistakes and missteps from the progress and backslides of each day:
Like the time I gave into negotiating via email on a very big deal, and only realized I lost when the client never wrote back (“ghosting” wasn’t in our vernacular back then).
Or, the time that I thought I had covered all of my bases, but actually never asked the candidate directly whether she was ready to relocate from NYC to SoCal – and that was ultimately the reason she turned down the offer (lesson here: ask the question you’re most scared to get the answer to!).
Or, perhaps the most humbling, that pipelines won’t build themselves, and that spending my time on a pity party would only delay the progress I wanted to make.
These lessons come from the willingness to look at the awkward discomfort of poor performance (or subpar results) and dissect: what could have been done differently?
I also came to realize, that like making friends, the platform for learning is teed up for us early in life. And then it just kind of stops and we’re each left to our own devices: to find our people, and choose whether (or not) to continue to build our brains. Once past school, there are no assigned teachers or homework assignments to promote a life of learning.
Or, to not. And when you don't, you stagnate; you atrophy — you peak at ~21 (and who wants to do that?!).
The beauty of this opportunity is that there are limitless avenues for learning, and WAY less constraint than when you’re facing teachers, professors, report cards, and standardized tests (shower crying is great, but you need not follow my lead!):
You can learn by watching, listening, doing, reading, audio-booking, experimenting, reflecting; you can learn while you're walking, or cleaning, while you're with friends, or solo. You can learn when you mean to, and take lessons that are purely opportunistic.
![Giuseppe Chiari, Composizione su carta musicale 88 n° 109, 1988 [Archivio Giuseppe Chiari, Firenze]](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!sO01!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd2d0f2f4-6210-4a09-b94f-dbea35c3e0ec_1280x1304.jpeg "Giuseppe Chiari, Composizione su carta musicale 88 n° 109, 1988 [Archivio Giuseppe Chiari, Firenze]")
All of which will require proactivity and commitment. The anti-pattern to maximizing learning is to live life on autopilot.
Through trial, error, luck, and circumstance, some efforts work out better than others; and your opportunity is to learn from all of it:
What went into a great outcome? What will go into the next great outcome?
What was the order of operations on the path to a bad one?
Who can you ask to get more / better / different perspective on what happened?
Maximizing learning maximizes your option-set for success. Without learning, success appears binary: it worked, or it didn't; a good outcome, or a bad one. It ends there.
When you layer in learning, there's an opportunity to win regardless. I’d argue that your willingness to learn changes the stakes entirely.
Taking lessons from a good outcome, means getting a good outcome AND learning about what worked: what was predictable, what was a surprise, what went as planned, and what was an adjustment. This process can help capture everything that should be repeated in a next time.
And when you have a bad outcome and you take the time to learn from it, then at least you’re extracting value from the experience. Bad outcomes can result from errors in judgment, bad ideas, poor communication, unforeseen circumstances, or outright mistakes. (Sh)it happens! And while messing up might feel awful and annoying in the moment, and ostrich-ing1 might protect your ego, looking the problems in the eye is the best chance to prevent them from happening again.
Finally, lest I remind you that there are infinite avenues to develop and grow. So, dare I offer you to pick the ones you like: the podcasts you enjoy, newspapers, articles, or ask ChatGPT. The meta opportunity is to learn new ways you like to learn.
Because the real benefit is that everything you learn becomes part of your own tool belt: new material your brain can use and leverage for perpetuity. And everything you learn definitionally adds to your own knowledge and perspective.
That itself is an out-right win.
To jumpstart your life of learning, here are some of avenues of inspiration:
Books:
Think Again, Adam Grant
Grit, Angela Duckworth
Podcasts:
How I AI, Claire Vo
The Digital Mindset, Brené Brown with Paul Leonardi and Tsedal Neeley
Articles:
‘Give Away Your Legos’ and Other Commandments for Scaling Startups, Molly Graham
Do things that don’t scale, Paul Graham
Ostriching: When a person buries their head in the sand to avoid a problem. (https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/submission/18211/ostriching)