Finding Success
In any job, it’s easy to overestimate the value of skills on a resume and underestimate the power of how you show up.
What earns trust, opens doors, and unlocks opportunities isn’t just what you know or what you’ve done – it’s how you carry yourself when the path isn’t clear. The people who succeed over the long haul are the ones who keep promises, follow through, ask smart questions, and build things without waiting to be asked.
In this corner of The Orbit, find advice and insight on the powerful ways to grow your impact at work that don’t always show up on paper. Think, becoming someone others can count on. Staying organized as your responsibilities grow. Taking ownership of your work like you’re the last person who will ever touch it. And building a network of people who’ve seen you deliver and want to see you win.
“Success starts with good posture... When my heart posture and intellectual posture are directionally humble and honest, decisions become easy and the path of progress becomes obvious.”
— From Brent Beshore’s 2021 Annual Letter
“Jeremie concluded his talk that afternoon with a metaphor I hadn’t heard before and that’s that to be influential, one has to be like a fountain. Apparently his mentor used to ask him, “Jeremie, does a fountain move?” And Jeremie would say no. But the point was that despite it being immobile, by projecting beauty and calm, fountains come to be surrounded by people in public spaces. So if you can be like a fountain, and project beauty and calm, people will come to you and you will become an influential leader without having to interject yourself into anything.”
— From Tim Hanson’s “What I Wish”
“If you want to build a career in anything, not only should you work somewhere that is doing something different, you need to be genuinely different as well. One form this can take in finance is by being a good writer. It’s conventional wisdom that you need to be at least reasonable with numbers in order to buy and sell things for a living, but it’s one thing to calculate a return profile and another to persuade someone to take the risk of earning it. Another differentiator is to be entertaining and likable.”
— From Tim Hanson’s “Entertaining and Likable”
