Associate with the right people. I
want to be associated with
people who will tell me, ‘No,
you’re wrong, Ed,’ not someone who tells you that I’m
the smartest guy they’ve ever
met. Fluff doesn’t do a lot for
me. A lot of times, I don’t go
out on the first calls when
we’re calling on a new client
because I sometimes want to
get some feedback from the
people in the organization, to
think how they fit in with
our organization, our clients.
I pick my clients, it’s not
reversed. If you have the money to fly privately, but you
have somebody who doesn’t
show up on time, doesn’t care
about anyone else, I’m probably not your guy.
I want to be around nice
people, and the secret to my
success is I do exactly that.
If there is somebody that I
just don’t want to be around,
even though he has money to
fly charter and can do all
these things, I’m not out
there flying for payments.
I can be around nice people,
and generally, nice people
hang around nice people. You
deal with nice people, and [if]
they bring you somebody
new as a referral, they’re nice
people, they’re not jerks.
That’s why our business has
succeeded where others have languished. A lot of people
look at new business, but it
might not be good business.
It’s not the stuff you want to
have. I come to work every
day excited because I’m dealing with nice people and it’s
interesting.
It’s hard to be successful if
you go in and you’re just
clipping coupons; if every
day, you say, ‘Well, I made
another $10,000 today.’ I’ve
never met anybody successful who went at it with no
passion.
Don’t dwell on what you can’t control. I don’t dwell on things
that are out of my control. I
don’t view people and situations in terms of how I can
effect change.
Most importantly, I don’t let
successes or failures define
how I lead. Once it’s done, I
move on to the next deal.
I’ve always been like that,
ever since I was in the military. When you’re doing a lot
of complex things, some people get to the point where
they just focus all the time
on what happened two
weeks ago. Things where I
can’t effect change, I move
on. I don’t worry about
things I don’t have any control over.
That’s why I’ve never had
any ulcers or a bad stomach.
I don’t know if that’s a good
thing or a bad thing as a
management style, but I
don’t dwell on things. I just
press on.
HOW TO REACH: L.J. Aviation Inc., (724) 537-0520 or www.ljaviation.com
