Warren Buffett says, "Know your circle of competence, and stick within it. The size of that circle is not very important; knowing its boundaries, however, is vital."
Perhaps like you, I spent my earlier years wanting to know about and become skilled at everything. There were two problems with that: a. a wide range of competence is very difficult to achieve and b. it leaves no room for others to identify and develop their skills.
Buffett has also said that he is great at only one thing: identifying mispriced companies and stocks and buying and holding them for the long term. Using only this small circle of competence, he became the world’s wealthiest person, 99% of which he is giving away.
I was 50 by the time I became fully focused on my small circle of competence: I am very good at learning what people want or need, then finding a way to give it to them. That’s it! I’m not a great creative, financial guy or operator. I’ve also proven that I’m a lousy CEO. But I’m great at pleasing people. In return, I receive both love and money in abundance.
Which leads me to the second sentence of Buffet’s quote: learning my boundaries. In the case of pleasing people, I’ve added Covey’s win/win habit. If a customer or friend continually gains more benefit than I do, the relationship won’t be healthy in the long term.
- An abusive client – It took forever but I finally learned to fire them. There’s no
future for me or our teams with a domineering client. - Greedy customers – Discounting my product or service may please them but
creates a loss for me which is, at best, short term and at worst, stupid. - A codependent friend or relative – It took a lifetime to learn I am not helping them if they are not (at the same time) helping themselves. Pity is a poor substitute for love.
convenient for them: Netflix.
What is your circle? Have you identified and leveraged it as well as you might? Warning: it takes patience and humility to become focused only on your circle of competence.
Peace.
Tim McCarthy
Quote of the Month: Warren Buffett
“No matter how great the talent or efforts, some things just take time. You can't produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.”
---Warren Buffett
Song of the Month: “For What It’s Worth”, by Stephen Stills (Buffalo Springfield)
In order to play out with my new friend Bill Hing, I collected all the songs I love to play and this was among them. It is one of the first “counterculture” protest songs and is written in response to the Los Angeles riots of 1966. Buffalo Springfield was also Stills
and Neil Young’s first “famous” bands.
Favorite lyric:
“Stop, children, what’s that sound?
Everybody look what’s going down”
Book of The Month: “Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty”, by Anderson Cooper
Editor’s Note: I’m not much for reading about celebrity excess and therefore you may want to skip a few chapters I pushed myself through. But what made this worth reading for me was a. well-known journalist, Cooper is the son of Gloria Vanderbilt, the last of the dynasty and b. the Vanderbilt (railroad) fortune which peaked as the USA’s greatest in the late 1800s is now largely exhausted. More interestingly, the money was spent on private mansions, now gone except for tourist attractions such as Ashville’s Biltmore
and Newport’s Breakers.
Truly Funny: Skip Stories
My sister, Kathleen’s late husband, Francis (Skip) Marx, was terminally ill in the spring of 1999. He was a very faithful Christian Catholic and a very funny man. Two of my greatest laughs from Skip came in his waning days.
First, a life-long art professor, one of his most difficult students who he had not seen for years visited his death bed to apologize for his many misdeeds. When the student had left, Kathie returned to Skip’s side and said, “how did that go?”. Skip answered, “I suggested he come back more often”.
Then, he asked my sister and I to help prepare his homecoming service. We came up with the faith songs he loved and then he made a special request for the communion reflection song. With great confidence a life well-led would result in his reward, he asked us to hire an opera singer friend of his to sing what he thought would be a great entrance song as we sent him off to heaven. The song? “Stranger In Paradise”.
I can’t make this stuff up.
