For those of you who know me well, you know I choose my words carefully and am not prone to hyperbole. This has been a truly extraordinary experience and a life-changing adventure. When I started at Common there were three of us--Brad, our Founder and CEO, my youngest son, Sterling (Commonʼs first employee), and me.
Over the years our ranks grew as our business expanded. In the early days we took on new challenges on a daily basis, figuring it out as we went along. We had many incredible successes together with our share of mistakes, disappointments and setbacks.
Through it all, the most rewarding part for me was developing so many wonderful working relationships with talented, driven and passionate professionals who were also great human beings. In so many cases working relationships became personal relationships that I will cherish and value always. Thank you Brad for putting your trust and faith in me and for always being supportive.
I also want to thank Sterling for being willing and enthusiastic about continuing to work alongside his dad. One of the activities I enjoyed most over the years (other than attending meetings with my son) was participating in the onboarding of new employees. The idea was that company executives would each talk for 15 minutes about Common so that new employees would get a better understanding of what we were doing and how we were organized.
Notwithstanding the purpose of these sessions, I never took the opportunity to talk about Common. I always felt I could make a more unique and potentially meaningful contribution by talking about what I had learned in 45 years of working and more than 60 years of life (now just shy of 70). I called it “The Three Most Important Things” though it actually was more like five.
Since I will not be doing this any longer, I thought I would take the opportunity to lay it out here one last time. First, regardless of who you are and where you are in life, your most important possessions are the days of your life. When you get up each day you make the decision (usually unconsciously) to exchange a day in your life for something else--whether that be something at work, an experience, money, the pursuit of love or whatever else you value.
If you think about life in that way it will help guide you to make better decisions that you will not regret and will, in fact, look back upon with great satisfaction. Also, remember that life is about the journey--not the destination. My own fatherʼs passing taught me that and it changed me forever.
Second, be compassionate and generous in your life--toward friends, work colleagues and most importantly towards your family. At work, take responsibility honestly and graciously and give credit to those around you--generously and enthusiastically. We are all pretty much the same and our circumstances in life, while certainly dependent on talent and hard work, are also in a meaningful way the result of pure luck.
Keep that in mind when dealing with those seemingly less fortunate than yourself. Most important of all, when you have children love them with every bit of intensity you can muster (regardless of their age) --for their sake and yours. Third, make it a focus of every day to learn something new.
Careers are a marathon and not a sprint. If you want to be standing as you come across the finish line the most important thing you can do is to go home from work every day (or, in todayʼs WFH environment, when you shut down your computer at the end of the work day) having learned something that you did not know at the beginning of the day. This is especially important early in your career.
Knowledge is the most important “capital” you can be putting in the bank to strengthen your professional career. This also applies equally to life in general. Be a student--continue to learn and challenge yourself.
I am a voracious reader (my reading lists are online atwww.simonjawitz.com) and I have recently started taking online courses through Coursera (Statistics; Understanding Einsteinʼs Special Theory of Relativity; Calculus). Embrace what Adam Grant calls “confident humility” --confidence in your ability to learn but not that your understanding today is correct. Be open to new ideas and changing your mind on issues, even regarding your most deeply held beliefs and opinions.
Fourth, and again something I learned from my dad over the course of watching him throughout his lifetime, always aspire to both professional and personal integrity. You will have a more rewarding and satisfying life if you make this a part of who and what you are. Your friends and colleagues will thank you and you will be a far better role model for your own children.
Thank you dad. Finally, and I am thinking mostly of those in their late teens and early twenties (though I suppose it applies to everyone) if you are sad, depressed, lonely or feeling any type of despair (including existential)--I went through all of that when I was a much younger man--reach out to friends and family or seek out professional help. As I said earlier, life is a journey and one not meant to be experienced alone.
Let me finish where I started, by thanking all of my colleagues at Common for seven fantastic years that I will always cherish.