Hi, today I want to talk about the concept of fake it till you make it.
You hear this a lot from kind of the entrepreneurs talking about the hustle and start ups and
so forth and I think some people have missed the true meaning behind that, the spirit of
that.
It isn't to completely fake it and not know what you're doing and pretend that you know
what you're doing, but to move as fast as you can to learn about what you should be
doing and gain the knowledge as quickly as you can to be able to get to the point where
you are successful and you have the experience of doing that thing.
And this reminds me of just what I've done in my own career that, you know, when I started
out at IBM many, God, many, many years ago, the software that was being used at IBM you
probably haven't even heard of it if you're a younger person was OS2, is an object oriented
interface.
It was interesting, a little ahead of its time, a little slow, but I had no experience
with that.
I'd been using macOS, I'd used Windows, DOS, but not OS2 and so I got a book on it.
I got a book and I learned how to use it before I went in for my interview so that I had some
knowledge about how to use OS2 and I could be comfortable on the job.
And I did the same thing when I was going to work at Apple.
I bought all of the engineering books that talked about, and I think there was like 10
books, which, you know, when I was a graduate student was a huge investment for me, but
I got all these books about how to develop for the macOS and for the operating system
and learned enough about the engineering to be dangerous and to have useful conversations
with engineers.
And I wasn't applying to Apple to be an engineer, I was applying to Apple to be a designer,
but having the knowledge of how the operating system worked and how the finder worked and
how to develop for it allowed me to see opportunities with how I would design things, like what
was possible in the interface because of what I knew about the back end.
And I continued to do this throughout my career.
And it's just this concept of always be learning, always be open to learning.
And I think that's the real spirit of FAKE IT TO YOU, MAKE IT, is learn about what you're
going to be doing.
I was so surprised because later my career became a hiring manager and I'd have people
come in for interviews and I remember one in particular at eBay where someone came in
and we were talking about eBay and about the interface and it became clear this person
really wasn't familiar with eBay.
And so I asked him, when was the last time you've used eBay to buy something or to sell
something?
And he said, oh, I've never used eBay.
Excuse me, what in the hell are you doing going into an interview with a company that
has public software that any consumer can use?
This is an enterprise software you'd have to spend $50,000 to use.
This is publicly available website.
You've never used eBay to buy or sell anything and you're coming in for an interview.
It's unacceptable.
I mean, needless to say, he didn't get the job.
But when I went into eBay, I bought something.
I sold something so that it was fresh in my mind how everything worked and what I thought
the issues would be.
That's when I was interviewing.
And I had a friend who did that.
I mean, he bought a car on eBay.
He bought a car so that he could talk intelligently about the process of buying a big ticket
item on eBay.
He got hired.
This continued throughout my career, the fact that I took the time to learn about the people
I was going to be interviewing with, to learn who they are, their background, what they
cared about, what they were writing, their last interview, what was important to their
company, who their competitors were, products they've recently released, what the press
is saying about them.
There's no excuse these days.
When I was young, it wasn't that easy to get access to this information.
The web barely had any information online.
Now everything's available.
You can take out your phone and research any company, their products, the people who work
at that company, their backgrounds, go check out their Twitter accounts, check out their
public-facing pages, learn everything you can about who you're going to be interacting
with so you can have an intelligent conversation.
It's going to help you get a job.
It's going to help you get ahead in your career.
As an entrepreneur, as a business person, when you're going into a meeting with someone trying
to pitch yourself, if you really understand them and their business, you're going to be
a lot more successful.
There is no excuse for not being educated anymore.
Fake it till you make it doesn't mean come in and be ignorant and pretend that you know
what you're talking about.
It means do everything you can in your power to educate yourself, to become knowledgeable
so that you can gain the experience that you then have that experience, you no longer have
to keep faking it.
I know this came off as a bit of a rant.
Sorry about that.
I've seen it too often and it really bothers me because there's no excuse for it.
I think so many people could be so much more successful if they would simply take a little
bit of time, do the research, educate yourself, and come into these meetings, interact with
other people with a whole lot more knowledge than you would have had before.
All right, that is my thought for the day.
Until next time.
