"Getting There" Author Gillian Zoe Segal (Business Book on Mentors)
1,321 views · Published 8 May 2015 · 3:12 · Indexed 29 October 2026
Channel: FOX 5 New York · 2015 · News & Politics
Mentors are proven to help you have greater success and make more money, but most people don't have access to advisers like Warren Buffett, Michael Bloomberg or Kathy Ireland. So a new book is bringing them to you. "Getting There" by Gillian Zoe Segal is a collection of stories, struggles and wisdom from 30 highly successful business people and leaders. It's also a great reminder that it takes a lot of work and even some failure to find your way to the top. Segal's favorite piece of advice in the book comes from Warren Buffett who says "You can always tell someone to go to hell tomorrow." Buffett believes it's best not to be hasty and act on emotion when someone has upset you. Buffett is one of several mentors who share their struggles in "Getting There." He was rejected from Harvard Business School, the only business school he applied to. J. Craig Venter, one of the first people to sequence the human genome, barely got out of high school. He slid by with a D- average and only graduated because the school forced him to write an extra paper so they wouldn't have to see his face again. Journalist Anderson Cooper couldn't get a job when he graduated from Yale. He went overseas and lived in roach-infested motels for $5 a day, shooting stories on his own with a little camera. He sold those stories back to Channel One for such a cheap price that the channel couldn't refuse. That's how he launched his career. Michael Bloomberg didn't become uber-rich until he was fired. He worked at Salomon Brothers for 15 years and loved it, but the company was sold and restructured, and Bloomberg was fired. No one offered him another job, so he started his own company. Sara Blakely, the now-billionaire creator of Spanx, originally wanted to be a lawyer. She took the LSAT and bombed it. She took it again and did one point worse. Nearly all of the mentors in Segal's book hit some serious rough patches, but like hotelier and Studio 54 founder Ian Schrager, they believe those failures propelled them forward. Schrager told Segal that so little separates people, but he believes the ones who want success the most and are relentless about pursuing it are the ones who get it. And Segal agrees. She struggled herself to get anyone to talk to her for her book. Nobody said yes right away, so she chipped away. Her advice: If the front door is locked, try the back door. If the back door is locked, try the side door. If that doesn't work, just trying climbing in a window! --ALISON MORRIS
