The World Can Use a Guy Like You
Yesterday, I was getting my hair cut at my favorite $17 Albanian/Uzbeki barbershop on Broadway. I was in a spaced-out frame-of-mind, given my long day of transatlantic travel, followed immediately by a movie birthday party for my granddaughter and her dad. They were showing that 1985 classic, Back to the Future. I got to see the flux capacitor go from needing plutonium to generate 1.21 Gigawatts of start-up power to needing a banana peel and remnant beer can to start-up. Things have sure changed since 1985. Where 1.21 Gigawatts of power just sounded big to me then, today I understand just how much power that is. That would be a 400+ windmill wind farm, of which there are only a few in the world. It’s still a lot of power, but at least now it is within reach after thirty-five years of advances in renewable energy. Progress.
Meanwhile, back at the barbershop, I was joking with the Uzbeki boys when a tall, athletic-looking young black man sat down in the chair next to me. He told the Uzbeki that he wanted a fade and rather than treat it like it was an unknown request, the barber proceeded to ask him exactly how high he wanted the fade and whether he wanted a “part”. The barber was obviously very familiar with cutting black hair and was “unfaded” by it. The man asked about a beard trim and was told that was an extra $10. The man spoke with a high-born English accent so I sensed a well-educated man. He declined the extra cost, so just to mess with him I said I was happy that I got my beard trim included for $17. The Uzbekis played along and said I was a good customer that lived in the neighborhood and the black man was a first-timer. He objected and said he had lived in the hood for a year and had been there before. I told him I was just kidding and proceeded to ask if he was an investment banking analyst.
He was indeed, with Barclays Bank. I asked if he was educated in the UK and hence the accent. He said no, he was from Nigeria, had done some early schooling in England, but had gone to Princeton. I asked his major, whereupon he told me he was a dual major in operations research and financial engineering. I speak academics, so I understood that meant that he was very quantitative. He asked me about my IB career and I gave him a thumbnail sketch while I was getting my beard trim and was lying back in the old barbers chair. I find myself talking like a seasoned veteran of the wars on Wall Street (which I sort of am). My new friend from Princeton was fascinated and asked me a bunch of questions. His biggest line of inquiry, when he learned I was running a venture company, was about moving from investment banking to venture capital.
I found myself advising him that he should stay in the big leagues for more than a year or even two. He asked about going back for an MBA once he heard I had taught at Cornell’s Business School. I told him he would learn more in two years of practice than in two years of school and should only go if he wanted to switch areas or disciplines. He got the point. I went on to say that with a degree from a prestigious school like Princeton, his resume would only improve marginally with an MBA. He said his father wanted him to get an advanced degree. I said I hadn’t realized he was living his life for his father and not himself. He smiled and said, “point taken.”
Meanwhile, my Uzbeki Laurel & Hardy (Hardy was cutting my hair) pals were listening to all this and then said to me, we knew you were a rich Wall Street guy. I said if I was a rich Wall Street guy I wouldn’t be walking into a hot $17 barbershop on a Saturday afternoon. That worked to get them to put on the A/C, so it was a worthwhile jab. They said they were still going to have to rethink what they charged me now that they knew I was such a big deal. They charged me $27 like always and I left a big tip, like always.
Today I am holed up at home trying to rid my body of a slight bug I picked up on that wretched aircraft I was trapped in for eight hours of recirculated and probably germ-ridden air. I am catching up on paperwork and emails and online shopping with an intermittent movie and story. I see that Risky Business has been getting some play on cable (these movies go in cycles), so I watched it. I’m always a fan of Tom Cruise and Rebecca DeMornay, but the guys I really enjoy are Joe Pantoliano and Richard Masur. The combination of the “Guido” pimped-out Chicago accent and the rep-tie preppy of the Princeton admissions officer are wonderful character roles that epitomize both actors’ screen careers.
The entire point of the movie is summed up in the exchange between Tom Cruise and Richard Masur while Rebecca DeMornay is playing Madame around them in Cruises’ suburban north shore family home. Cruise has been unmasked as a “respectable” student “but not quite Ivy League.” So he declares that “sometimes you just have to say, what the fuck!” And with a degree of acceptance and finality, puts on his sunglasses to “Looks like University of Illinois!” In 2019, Princeton ranks #1 and University of Illinois ranks #46. I feel sorry for UI for having to live with that unwarranted pop-culture indignity for the last thirty-five years. It’s not a bad school and I think its fair to say its more about what you do with the degree than just having the degree, even with the inordinate entree afforded by a Princeton pedigree.
Well, while Richard Masur enjoys his evening with Chicago’s finest ladies of the suburban evening, Tom Cruise (Joel) and DeMornay (Lana) make train movie history. When the dust all settles and Cruise thinks he is permanently in the parental doghouse, his father (a successful Princeton grad) tells him Masur has said that “Princeton can use a guy like Joel”. So all ends well for Joel and for his parents.
My friend with the fade haircut has already pleased dad by getting into Princeton. I have no idea what the family situation in Nigeria is, but I can guess its pretty darn prosperous. I’ve known a few other expat Nigerians in my day and they are all from Chieftain fathers. My guess is that like Joel, fade-guy will do what pleases dad and I suspect he will wind up at Harvard Business School in another year. Wealth concentration demands certain norms. I just hope that fade-guy has a higher priority on doing the right thing (preferably in Nigeria, but really anywhere) rather than the fun thing like Joel. The world can use a guy like you. Time of your life, kid.
Rich,
I related to part of this story – first by getting my haircut at a cheap place from a Russian guy. But I’m easy – a number 1.5 clippers all over, but still the big-ish tip.
The other part was the whole advanced degree thing. My undergraduate degree was/is in Religion and Philosophy – hey, it was the late 60’s, early 70’s. Ten years after graduating and it turns out I’m a business guy. So, I went back to night school, on a 3-year MBA path from St. Thomas University in St. Paul, MN. I felt inferior as an MBA was a requirement to work in my department. I kept wondering if they were ever going to check and see the boss didn’t have one. I’d gotten a good way into it when I was recruited by AT&T and eventually transferred to Los Angeles to run a 400 person division. The first few years I kept looking around for an LA-based night MBA program that would take my credits. Never got around to it. Then I was recruited to IBM, in another GM roll, and they transferred me to New York. Five years at IBM and Prodigy and I find my Internet experience was beginning to get attention as recruiters were coming out of the woodwork with prospective spots in VP & SVP positions. I gradually realized that not having an MBA was no longer a liability.
The bigger lesson was that I often ran across colleagues with advanced degrees who did not appear to have a real grasp of the business. They also couldn’t seem to see how their role and objectives tied into the larger goals of the company. They seemed reluctant to do the work to learn and understand these things. I came to think they believed their learning had been completed when they’d gotten their degree. My feelings of educational inferiority had motivated me to read a significant number of business books every year. My goal was to always read 50 and while I didn’t always get there (some of Drucker’s stuff took way more than a week), I usually got pretty close. By the last ten years or so, my education inferiority had pretty much vanished. I was confident about what I knew and experienced enough to know it was unnecessary for me to know it all. Thanks for reminding me of all this.
Steve
Experience always triumphs