Reflections on what I learned from an incredible mentor (part 2)

In Thursday's e-mail, I shared the story of how I met and ended up working closely for six years with Harvard Business School Professor Michael Porter.

He became a friend and mentor.

In today's e-mail, I'll follow up with sharing the most important things I learned from him...

Balancing Arrogance and Humility

Having a lot of self-confidence, maybe even bordering on arrogance, can be a good thing.

You're more likely to try bold things and not be deterred by setbacks. The key, however, is to marry this confidence with a healthy dose of humility.

This will help you figure out the difference between trying something bold versus something that's just dumb, and whether to soldier on in the face of setbacks versus wisely pulling the plug on something that's never going to work.

Warren Buffett is a great example of someone who has struck the right balance.

He has plenty of self-confidence – one of my favorite sayings of his is, "My idea of a group decision is to look in a mirror" – but he's also very humble.

He's the world's most famous and successful investor – one of the richest people ever – but he's always saying he doesn't understand certain companies or industries, and he goes out of his way to talk about the terrible investments he has made over the years.

Ditto for Michael Porter. As one of Harvard's youngest tenured professors ever, the author of many books, and an adviser to CEOs and government leaders around the world, he certainly had good reason to be pompous and arrogant.

But when I worked with him, I observed the opposite. Sure, he had an ego, but he married it with humility, which manifested itself in a number of ways...

Treat People Kindly

Professor Porter bent over backward to be kind to everyone he met – even people I could tell were sort of irritating him.

There's a myth that to get ahead, you have to be ruthless and nasty, and that nice folks are chumps who get taken advantage of.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

I've been lucky enough to meet – and, in some cases, get to know – more than two dozen of the world wealthiest, most successful people: Buffett, Charlie Munger, Bill Gates, Laurene Powell Jobs, Eli Broad, Jorge Paulo Lemann, Don and Doris Fisher, Reed Hastings, John Walton, Michael Bloomberg, and more people than I can count in the hedge-fund business (Bill Ackman, David Einhorn, Joel Greenblatt, Seth Klarman, Julian Robertson, Leon Cooperman, Jim Simons, etc.).

Among all of them, I can't recall a single instance in which they were ever rude or dismissive to me or anyone else. In fact, I never cease to be amazed at what genuinely nice and philanthropic people almost all of them are.

Nice guys (and gals) finish first.

Become a Learning Machine – and Don't Let Up

By the time I met Professor Porter in 1993, when he was in his late 40s, he had already done enough pioneering research, thinking, and writing that he could have rested on his laurels for the rest of his career.

But he didn't. He remained driven and continued to produce groundbreaking work throughout his career.

This too reminds me of Buffett. He had already made generational wealth when he first became a billionaire at age 56 in 1986, but he didn't slow down. Of his current $139 billion fortune, he has earned more than 99% of it since then. Even today, at age 93, he's still a learning machine.

(In a future e-mail, I'll share more on how to become a learning machine – stay tuned.)

Don't Make the Same Mistake Twice

One of the only times I can recall Professor Porter getting annoyed with me was when he was editing a letter I had written for him (something I did often).

He was a beautiful writer and, as he turned my writing into a sea of red ink over the years, he made me a much better one as well.

I had written:

Dear Mr. Smith,

It was great meeting you last week...

He crossed that out and wrote:

Dear Mr. Smith,

It was a genuine pleasure meeting you last week...

As he handed it back to me, he said, "Whitney, I made this same edit last week. I need you to pay attention to the edits I make so that I don't have to make them more than once."

Nearly three decades letter, I still remember that moment and how chastened I felt – and vowed to myself to not be so lazy and sloppy and to stop wasting his time.

Do More Listening Than Talking, and Show Genuine Interest in Others

Even though he was usually the smartest person in the room, Professor Porter was a great listener. This had two benefits: first, he was learning a lot (you're not learning when you're talking)... and second, it made people like him.

Dale Carnegie explained why in his classic self-help book, first published in 1936, How to Win Friends and Influence People. It's a corny title, I know, but it has sold more than 30 million copies. Its most important lessons can be summarized in three bullet points:

• Most people don't care very much about you.

• They mainly care about themselves.

• So if you want people to like you, show genuine interest in and appreciation for them.

This book was such a revelation to me...

All those years, I thought people were as interested in me as I was in myself, but they weren't.

I know it sounds crazy, but other people will like you more – and think you are more interesting – the less you talk about yourself and the more you ask questions about them. I'm not kidding – try it and see. And then keep doing it for the rest of your life.

Money Doesn't Equal Happiness

As I mentioned in Thursday's e-mail, after working with Professor Porter for the summer between years of business school and throughout my second year, I turned down a highly paid consulting job upon graduation in 1994 and instead assumed the role of executive director of the nonprofit we created, the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City. It's still going strong to this day.

Five years later, when I came back for my fifth reunion, the organizers did a slide presentation sharing the results of the class survey they'd conducted. Of course, this being Harvard Business School, one of the questions was, "How much money have you made since you graduated?"

The bar chart they showed with all 800 responses was in the shape of a bell curve, with the right tail being some classmates who had made hundreds of millions of dollars (this was 1999, at the peak of the first Internet bubble).

And at the far left, I could see the tiny bar representing my answer: $375,000 (I had earned a salary of $75,000 each year, with no raises or bonuses).

That's right: I had made less money since graduating than every single one of my more than 800 classmates.

And you know what? I didn't care. I just smiled and said to myself, "I'm the luckiest person here."

I had the privilege of working with and learning from Professor Porter – knowledge and experience that served me well in my investing career because I had learned about competitive advantage and strategy from the master.

And I loved my work and felt like I was making a difference in the world.

My wife Susan and I weren't rich, but we earned enough to start a family and live comfortably (it helped that she was a corporate lawyer, earning quite a bit more than me).

Most important, we were happy.

I can tell you, both from personal experience and a lot of data, that once you've taken care of your basic needs, more money doesn't translate into more happiness. I know quite a few happy teachers and miserable billionaires – seriously.

These are timeless lessons, and I'm eternally grateful for being able to learn and work with Professor Porter.

Thank you, Professor Porter, for being such a great role model and mentor.

Best regards,

Whitney

P.S. I welcome your feedback – send me an e-mail by clicking here.