An investing guru’s unusual advice
As a full-time freelancer, I have my nose in a bunch of different honey pots. One of the long-standing under-the-radar gigs I’ve maintained for years is the alumni magazine for the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. When I started, I wasn’t sure I was interested in the intricacies of the business world. But this is one of the great gifts of the profession: Sometimes the most interesting assignments land in your lap—and you learn things you never knew you wanted to know.
Over the years, I’ve written feature profiles of the CEO of Timberland, the deputy director of the FBI, and the CEO of Brooks Running. I’ve also interviewed countless entrepreneurs about their latest labors of love. (One particularly inspiring one, Andrew Smith, started a company, ATDynamics, that makes tails for long-haul trucks. These tails can improve gas mileage by over 6% and, in one year, reduced American trucks’ fuel consumption by more than the entire electric-car industry.)
My latest story for the magazine, which will be released soon (this photo is my messy process), is a feature profile of a quirky, charismatic Silicon Valley investor who, with great gifts for observation and analysis, can seemingly see around corners. As a result, Roger McNamee has built a remarkable track record in a volatile industry. He also plays in a rock band, has partnered with Bono, and supports ambitious philanthropic endeavors, including a conservation project for elephants and a new San Francisco co-op for poster artists.
I always ask these business-school alums for their advice for young graduates, and McNamee, true to form, came up with something unusual: self-awareness. “It’s is the ability to understand your true strengths and weaknesses and how others perceive you as well as how you perceive you—to realistically understand, did I do that well or poorly? Did I give it my best or less than my best? I tell myself I like this; is that really what I like? If I make this decision, can I really live with it?” Too many times, he says, business-school grads make decisions based on what their parents want or what other people think is cool—and they don’t even realize that’s what they’re doing. (This goes for the rest of us too, right?) And too often, they don’t check in often enough. “It requires looking up from your foxhole from time to time and assessing what your options really are,” he says. In other words, turn off the autopilot, take a realistic look at yourself and your work (even if it’s unpleasant), and chart your course with a clean sheet of paper. Food for thought.