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  He wrote books in the interim until the rise of Adolf Hitler, when Churchill became a vocal critic of the British government’s conciliation with its rising Nazi neighbors. When news of German aggression against Norway viscerally illustrated Churchill’s warnings and fears, he was quickly made prime minister under the authority of the Parliament and King George VI. Churchill went from being out of politics entirely, considered a right-wing extremist, to prime minister—all because he refused to hold his tongue, the very same tongue that caused him such inconvenience with its lisp. Think about that the next time you feel offended at someone for being “mean” or “controversial” on Twitter—maybe harsh public speech is a necessity, even if you don’t agree with it.

  Churchill was instrumental in first holding off the Nazis, as leader of the lone nation opposing them, and then establishing relationships with the United States and the other Allied powers. After 1942, the tides began to turn. With President Franklin Roosevelt now on board, the war was eventually won, and Churchill took a leadership position afterward, helping establish the United Nations as a new hub for international affairs. Later on, Churchill gave his famous “The Sinews of Peace” speech (also known as the “Iron Curtain” speech) in the United States, effectively drawing up the battle lines of the Cold War against what was recently an ally, the Soviet Union.

  Churchill’s greatest weakness early in life, his ability to speak, became his greatest strength later, no doubt due to diligent training and education. He will be remembered as many things to many people, but even his enemies acknowledged that his wit as an orator was indisputable. As Churchill said himself, in an unpublished essay entitled “The Scaffolding of Rhetoric”: “Of all the talents bestowed upon men, none is so precious as the gift of oratory. He who enjoys it wields a power more durable than that of a great king.” In business and life, these words are true—almost nothing is more important than being able to clearly and passionately communicate. You will find the better you speak, the more you are listened to. Starting to see a pattern here, aren’t we?

  The fact that he was often vilified meant Churchill’s job wasn’t the easiest. On October 29, 1941, when World War II was raging, in an address to the students at Harrow School, Churchill strengthened the resolve of his people by evoking his iron will to carry on: “Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense.” From his earliest endeavors, including escaping as a POW and traveling three hundred miles to Mozambique, Churchill lived this maxim to the letter, most clearly seen in his stern hand in governing. As many people vilify Churchill as admire him still today, as it is with most politicians. Many, in fact, may come to criticize you, once you step into the ring. When the critics inevitably come for you, once you have made your bed and are obliged to lie in it, remember what Churchill’s fellow iconoclast Teddy Roosevelt said in his 1910 speech “Citizenship in a Republic,” delivered at the Sorbonne:

  It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

  If that doesn’t convince you, try Churchill’s own words: “You will never get to the end of the journey if you stop to shy a stone at every dog that barks.”

  You may be hated, criticized, and shunned by people for making hard decisions in the pursuit of a singular goal. This is part of the game. When he made his “Iron Curtain” speech, Churchill was railing against the expansion of the Soviet Union, which only a few years before had been an ally of Britain and the United States in the war against Germany. Churchill did not hesitate to lambast his former ally as a growing threat—and for good reason. If you are in a partnership with your best friend and have a workforce of a thousand, and your partner commits an act that could put the company under—putting those people out of a job—you must be resolute. Your partner, your friend, must go. No matter how friendly the two of you are. No matter if you grew up considering this person a brother or sister. This is a pragmatic decision—a consequentialist decision and, indeed, a Machiavellian decision—in its purest form. Churchill faced this type of decision on a massive scale—not in the context of friends and business partners, but allied nations.

  In situations such as the one I’ve just described, many business owners would sit around twiddling their thumbs and hoping their partner’s mistake was a one-time accident that could be forgiven. Their loyalties, they say, lie with their friends, even if their friends are hurting the livelihoods of innocent people who rely on them for work. You know what I say? No. That’s not a chance I would be willing to take. And I have had to make this decision, more than once, with people I would otherwise consider as close as family. For my part, I don’t actually have many friends, and I don’t mind it. I have my family, of course, and I have my associates, my bandmates, my partners who are effective leaders themselves—they are my friends, and they understand my mentality because they possess it as well.

  But, in the past, if my friends threatened the livelihood of my business, my dreams, or my goals, I made the sacrifice: I fired my friends. You too may have to do the same. Your friends are your future, and if your friends hold you back or come into conflict with your greater goal, you must be prepared to make a sacrifice. It is easy to judge from the outside, but step into the arena with me—see what you are made of, and you may find that decisions people in power make that seem callous are actually necessary for the greater good: the goal, the goal, the goal. As Churchill put it in his very first speech as prime minister, delivered in May 1940: “You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: Victory—victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.”

  7

  MODERN POWER PLAYERS

  It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent; it is the one most adaptable to change.

  —Attributed to various sources, derived from Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species

  We live in a world that’s faster paced than Machiavelli’s, or Napoleon’s, or Churchill’s. Never before have people ascended to millionaire and billionaire status as quickly from nothing, become global celebrities with little to no discernible talent, and risen to political power without the traditional bona fides to back them up. We have also never before seen a public so eager to tear down those who do ascend. Regardless of whether you morally agree or disagree with this new model, you picked up this book because you want to understand power, and likely because you want to seize it for yourself. Whether you approve of the decisions made by the figures in this book, you must acknowledge that they succeeded in seizing power using whatever it took, despite their weaknesses. What they did with their power after that, and whether we judge their actions to be ethical, are for another book.

  Power today carries a steep learning curve, and it gets steeper by the day. You will enter the workforce expecting to be the master of your own ship. But Mother Nature will send hurricanes and tidal waves to thwart you. When the storm comes, you must adapt. You must bring the sail down; you must brace yourself. In other words: you must react in accordance with the reality in which you live. Planting your feet stubbornly is not always the best strategy.

  In order to do this most effectively, we must look to those who have navigated rough waters successfully and try to determine why they ma
de certain maneuvers and how they did them.

  Why does Warren Buffett attend ribbon-cutting ceremonies for furniture stores he holds a stake in when he could sit back and relax as a billionaire seventy times over?

  Why did Michael Jordan practice like his life depended on it well into his thirties, when he had already won multiple championships, and why did he work so hard to become a shoe and fashion entrepreneur and achieve billionaire status, when he could have just sat back on his athletic millions and lived like a king?

  Why are Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos now in the space travel business, when they’ve already made billions on the ground?

  Why does Oprah Winfrey continue to launch new ventures, like her magazine and her TV network, when she is already one of the richest women in the world?

  These individuals are like sharks, circling the waters of opportunity. They love the game itself, the conquest. The truly powerful are different because they love the process, the hunt, as much as they love the rewards. To keep up with the other sharks, they must keep moving or they might lose out on a big catch. Whatever their individual motivations, this life philosophy of constant improvement, of always more, of always bigger and better, is what unites them.

  With that said, let’s explore a few examples of what it means to become powerful in the modern era.

  OPRAH WINFREY

  THE QUEEN

  What I learned at a very young age was that I was responsible for my life . . . You cannot blame apartheid, your parents, your circumstances, because you are not your circumstances. You are your possibilities. If you know that, you can do anything.

  —Oprah Winfrey

  In terms of contrast between early life and current situation, perhaps no figure mentioned in this book is as impressive as Oprah Winfrey. Born to a single, teenaged mother, she was raised partially by her grandmother, who was so poor that Winfrey often had to wear potato sacks for clothing, for which she was relentlessly teased. Adding injury to insult, her grandmother would often cane her when she felt the young Winfrey was out of line. Winfrey would later reveal to the world that a cousin, an uncle, and another individual had repeatedly molested her as a child, which she cited as the reason she ran away from home in her early teens. She would subsequently become pregnant with a son at age fourteen, who was born prematurely and died.

  Winfrey’s early hardships in life seemed endless, from an absentee father to sexual abuse. Despite all of this, she became an honors student, earning a scholarship to Tennessee State University, and even won a beauty pageant. She eventually landed her first broadcasting job at a local radio station.

  Before we continue, it bears noticing that the narrative arc of Winfrey’s life would already be extraordinary if she had stopped there. It is rare that life gets much harder than Winfrey’s was up until her early twenties, and rarer still for someone to emerge from the mire with direction, drive, and purpose. She went through hell and kept going. It’s corny, but it also gives one perspective: if she can get through what she did, then you can get through your (probably much lesser) hardships.

  Winfrey eventually began hosting her first talk show, People Are Talking, and eight years later she took over another struggling show, called A.M. Chicago, which upon her arrival became a major success and the #1-rated talk show in the country. Her fame brought her to the attention of Steven Spielberg, who cast Winfrey in his movie The Color Purple, a role for which Winfrey earned an Oscar nomination. After that, it looked as though nothing could stop her. Soon came the now-famous Oprah Winfrey Show, and the rest is history—she was soon a global phenomenon, with her show broadcast in more than one hundred countries. Originally criticized for being sensationalist, she rebranded her show with a new focus on self-improvement and spirituality, and launched her cultlike Oprah’s Book Club, with nearly every selection, known and unknown, being immediately catapulted to the top of the bestseller list. She also began doing high-profile celebrity interviews, launched Harpo Productions, and created the magazine O. More recently, she ended her talk show and launched her own television network, the Oprah Winfrey Network.

  Winfrey is, perhaps, the best example on this list of someone with power who is bolstered by, but not necessarily dependent on, her money. More valuable than her funds is her brand (a brand so recognizable one need mention only her first name) and her relationship with a teeming mass of rabid fans who hang on her every word and recommendation as gospel. I am not the first to call her one of the most influential women on the planet. For three years, she was the world’s only black billionaire. She has affected public policy—President Bill Clinton signed a bill creating a database of convicted child abusers that she initially proposed to Congress—and she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama in 2013, the highest honor possible for a civilian, and the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award before that, for her almost uncountable number of philanthropic ventures. By some measures she is the most highly accomplished black philanthropist of all time. All of these honors and recognitions contribute to her power—the power to make large-scale changes that can influence the lives of potentially millions of people.

  What is the most useful tool in Winfrey’s arsenal? In my view, there are two: her charisma and her endurance. Without charisma, how could she have taken a low-rated, virtually unknown talk show and made it #1, and from there move on to create a media empire? To a certain degree, charisma is innate—we are who we are, and we are as likable as we are. However, there are niches one can tap in to if one is honest about what one brings to the table. For Oprah Winfrey, it was her frankness, wit, and air of trustworthiness and compassion that seemed to connect with her guests and viewers on a deep level. She was, likely, creating the show that she always wanted to see and never quite got from the tabloid TV that existed before her. And when it comes to her second crucial Power Tool, like Churchill’s, Winfrey’s was one of utter endurance. Neither ever gave up, no matter how bleak the circumstances seemed.

  ELON MUSK

  THE THRILL-SEEKER

  I feel fear quite strongly so it’s not that I don’t have fear. But if I think it’s important enough then I just override the fear.

  —Elon Musk

  For Elon Musk, the South African–born billionaire known for entrepreneurial ventures such as Zip2, PayPal, Tesla, and SpaceX, the crucial moment to seize power came in 1992, when he was still a college student at Queen’s University in Ontario. The Internet was brand new at this time, and its potential infinite. Elon was living in Canada when the boom began, and he knew where he wanted to go: America. So he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where he would ultimately end up receiving two degrees: a bachelor of science in physics and a bachelor of science in economics. Elon wanted to be where the action was—Silicon Valley—and he would eventually get even closer, but more on that later.

  What was Elon’s initial power move? Was it the leap of faith he took when he initially decided to move to America? Maybe it was. Sometimes that initial leap of faith is the most important decision you will ever make. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Faith is taking the first step even when you can’t see the whole staircase.” While I espouse preparation and education, I firmly believe that taking a leap of faith will be necessary at certain crucial junctures in your journey toward power.

  When asked about the secrets of his success, Elon has cited the importance of networking and, in particular, cold-calling. When Elon was still a student in Canada, he was looking for a job one summer and read in the newspaper about Peter Nicholson, then the head of the Bank of Nova Scotia, who he thought sounded really smart and interesting. Elon had no connection to Nicholson, but he tracked down his number and called him directly, eventually persuading Nicholson to hire him for a summer internship. Talk about a shot in the dark. I have people come to me all the time with ideas just like this, and I’m usually willing to hear them out. Sometimes that’s exactly what it takes.

  Machiavelli stated in The Prince, “The first meth
od for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.” Well, what better way to gather people of intelligence around you than to cold-call them and ask for their advice? I’m not suggesting you find my number and call my house (in fact, please don’t). But if you find a way to seize my ear with something that catches my attention, I’m open to a conversation—always. It is up to you to hook me, or whomever else you may be considering, with a good idea and with yourself. That first brave step of cold-calling a stranger speaks to Musk’s character—he is a doer, in situations where other people would have faltered for fear of offending, or being perceived as rude or presumptuous. Do not fear being presumptuous. Presume. Presume you are going to achieve greatness.

  With his two degrees from the University of Pennsylvania under his belt, Musk headed to Stanford University to enroll in a Ph.D. program but dropped out two days later. The Internet boom was now exploding, and he wanted to pursue entrepreneurial ventures. With a $28,000 loan from their father, Elon and his brother, Kimbal, started a company called Zip2, which marketed “city search” software to online newspapers. They made deals with the Chicago Tribune and the New York Times, which both began using the program for their online subscribers. Four years later the brothers sold the company for $307 million. What is the lesson here? Is it that graduate school is a waste of time? Clearly that’s not the point. The lesson is, simply, that the timing of an act is just as important as the act itself. Musk was paying attention to the world around him, and when he saw a pattern emerging, he was quick to capitalize on it. In any situation, business or personal, this hyperawareness and sense of timing are crucial.