Rich Habits Word of the Day
Confederate – Partner, collaborator. Jamie Dimon and Sandy Weill were confederates in their efforts to change the face of banking in the U.S.
Rich Habits Fact of the Day
Jamie Dimon is one of the most successful, respected bankers in the world. Dimon was mentored by the legendary broker/banker Sandy Weill. The Weill-Dimon team was legendary for how intensely they worked together and how many mega-deals they struck. It was a far cry from the typical employer/employee pairing. In 1983, Weill, then at American Express (AXP), hired a young, eager Dimon (whose stockbroker father had worked for Weill) when he was just 26 and fresh out of Harvard Business School. Weill left American Express in a huff not two years later, and Dimon followed his mentor.
The two of them worked side-by-side culling deal opportunities until they alighted on a foundering consumer lender in Baltimore called Commercial Credit, took it public, and used it as a base with which to build Citigroup. The string of successful mergers culminated in 1998 when Weill’s Travelers, the former insurance giant, merged with Citibank. As Weill’s detail man, Dimon took care of the day-to-day minutiae of many a merger. And to many observers, their relationship seemed like that of father and son.
Rich Habits Lesson of the Day
If you are not among the lucky few to have been blessed with a parent-mentor all is not lost.Finding someone at work who can act as a mentor is the next best option. A career-mentor will help ensure success in life. How do you go about finding a mentor at work? It’s simple. You look for someone at work that you admire and respect and ask them to be your mentor. Let’s say you find someone at work who fits the bill, here’s how you ask them to be your mentor:
‘John, I’ve been watching you for some time and you are very good at what you do. I would like to follow in your footsteps. Would you be my mentor here at work?’
How could John say no? Unless John’s a jerk, he will be very flattered and say yes. Being a mentor is not a one-way street. Mentoring also helps the mentor become a better teacher. You must really know your area of expertise to be able to teach it to someone. Being a mentor benefits both parties. Over time your relationship with your career-mentor will grow stronger and move beyond the workplace. The lessons your career-mentor will share with you will move beyond the workplace as well. Your career-mentor will teach you about success both inside the workplace and in life. He or she will share with you their morality, success principles and daily habits. They will share with you the mistakes they’ve made and the life lessons they learned from those mistakes in order to help you avoid repeating their mistakes. In this way, career-mentors pave the road to success with a smooth surface. They remove the rocks and potholes. They remove the detour signs. Career-mentoring, outside of parent-mentoring, is the most direct path to financial success.
About Thomas C. Corley
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