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 Wizards Begin as Blacksmiths
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Email article
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By Chris Gardner
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ANVILS? BLACKSMITHS? You might be thinking something along the lines of what I've been asked by several friends and family members: "Hey, Chris, what's up with all this talk of hitting the anvil? Why the fascination with blacksmiths?"
I usually explain that it's not all that far-fetched for someone who grew up, as I did, in a steel town like Milwaukee with the hum of industry all around, with its ample waterways for powering the mills, foundries, and other metal and ironworks. In my mind, the blacksmith has always been the everyman or everywoman who represents the hard work ethic I saw in people all around me—whether they worked in the steel business or not. The attitude wasn't just Do it! But rather Do it and enjoy it! And get good at it!
Out of this atmosphere, I grew up with an appreciation for tradespeople and the different levels of skilled labor, as well as the many stages needed for developing skills. This was evident not just at the steel mills, but in all the local industries—the brickyards, breweries, tanneries, meatpacking plants, and automotive factories. Every place had its own structure and stages of production, but generally I understood that no matter what specialized skill you might attain, everybody had to start at the bottom, becoming familiar with basic nuts and bolts—that is, turning raw materials into finished goods. Along the way, you could move on to proficiency, either staying at that rung or developing a specialty. That, too, could become your highest conquered.
I learned something else that was even more relevant to my interest in the subject. It seems that except for the last century or so, the village blacksmith was valued as the most important craftsman in town, more integral to the marketplace than all the other tradespeople. Without the products made by the black metals that he forged on his anvil, all forms of transportation, construction, and commerce ground to a halt. Even the horses couldn't walk without their "lucky" horseshoes fitted by the local smithy. It was no accident that in most town squares, the blacksmith's shop was at the center of the marketplace. All the vendors, buyers, travelers, merchants, high-society folks, and commoners would stop by for services or to catch up on gossip, goings-on, and the weather. It served the same purpose as the corner barbershop or local bar of different eras—with the barber, barkeep, or smithy being sought out for advice.
All of that only raised my regard for the blacksmith and his anvil. Upon further reflection, it turned out that the image may have first been inspired for me by the books of Greek and Roman mythology that I ate up as a kid. From somewhere back in my memory banks, I recalled that the blacksmith in the myths was also the master tradesman to the gods and keeper of the horses, and he was endowed with powers of magic. It turns out that in The Sword in the Stone and other tales of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, Merlin the Wizard was a blacksmith as well as a magician. Moral of this story: aspiring wizards who wanted to transform common metal into powerful swords had to labor long and hard as apprentices. No advancement to mastery could take place without time spent in the fundamentals, hitting their anvils.
As much as I knew this intuitively, I really didn't appreciate its importance or the value of this transferable skills lesson until I was an apprentice under the Wall Street wizards (the "Masters of the Universe" as they were known in the 1980s) who mentored me. True teachers, like Gary Shemano, occasionally reminded me to take a closer inventory of what I already knew before tackling something new. For example, if I was going to be approaching clients with long-term investment strategies for retirement purposes, Gary would make sure that I had a frame of reference for doing so. Well, in that case, I could recall my work at a nursing home where I took care of the elderly and saw the concerns of their families up close. In fact, as I looked back on my employment history, for the first time I was grateful for the diversity of experience that could be applied to my efforts to be successful on Wall Street.
This revelation inspired me to come up with an alternate to the traditional job résumé, which typically only lists the name of the employer, position, and duties specific to that field. My idea was to create more of a worksheet that could outline the portable knowledge, marketplace skills, and level of skill, or you could move further by diversifying and finding methods of innovation, and eventually you could arrive at mastery.
Long before I knew what a blacksmith did, these various industries allowed me to see the general steps to mastery that could be pursued regardless of the endeavor. Eventually I also discovered the coin of the realm for ascending those steps: transferable skills. Before I had come to learn that term, that capacity was something I was already using in my everyday pursuits.
As I began to see how knowledge and skills can be transferred, not only in the working world but through the stages of growth in general, I finally decided it was time to do some research about the stages of mastery that are relevant to blacksmithing. For starters, I learned that the job requires proficiency in the use of the three necessary tools of the trade: (1) the fireplace or furnace in which to heat the iron or other black metal (hence the word blacksmith) to be forged, (2) the anvil on which to hit the iron and shape it to its desired dimensions, and (3) something to use for hammering and hitting the metal. Other steps are involved: learning how and where to obtain the ore; doing research in metallurgy and alloys; analyzing composition of the elements; studying the chemistry of temperature change needed to transform the metal's molecular structure; figuring out the physics impacted by the size of the hammer and its force and speed. This all comes before the blacksmith markets his or her wares and promotes his or her excellence. Life lessons that could be applicable to other fields and positions. It's an idea that I've used for myself and have recommended for anyone who is facing a sharp learning curve in a new field. As a planning tool for interviews—that is, not something you hand to a prospective employer—whether you're doing the hiring or hoping to be hired, this transferable skill worksheet is also a wonderful reminder to bring up strengths that would otherwise go unnoticed.
Take a look at my version of an in-house résumé that you can emulate should you need or want to familiarize yourself with your abundance of transferable skills. I've listed my employment history that came before I went to work on Wall Street and can assure you that every bit of it has been valid as I've moved up in my field —from blacksmith status to conquering the fundamentals, paving the way to mastery.
When you do this kind of inventory not only to land a job in a new arena but also when you're trying to ascend a ladder in your field, it can provide you with very helpful guidance as to where you are in your pursuit. Do you need to push yourself to the next level? Do you need to gain more proficiency? Are you in too much of a hurry? The latter question is a reminder to pace yourself because being in too much of a rush may mean having to repeat or relearn a lesson later. This can be very costly in terms of opportunity, not just money, and most of all in terms of time. After all, you can always make more money, but you can't always make more time, and opportunities can never be re-created. When you do decide that you're ready to push yourself but are intimidated or unsure about skills that you lack, you may want to consider a piece of wisdom that I learned from Gary Shemano not long after I started at Bear Stearns. Gary taught me many things but perhaps none have been as transferable as his suggestion for how to overcome the feeling of being intimidated when contacting high-powered, important people. The key, he said, was to never be afraid of calling someone you think is bigger than you—as long as you can offer something that is of interest to them.
His advice was given around the time that I'd been trying to get a Mr. Nelson Hunt of Texas on the phone. My goal had been to establish a dialogue that I hoped would lead to a business relationship. The Hunts had allegedly been attempting to corner the world's silver market, and my goal was to compete for a portion of the brokerage transaction that promised to be huge. I knew it and so did every other broker on the street, since it was no secret what the Hunts were buying. All in the same chase, we eventually got to the same place: nowhere.
And then one day, for no particular reason, I called and left a message for Mr. Hunt regarding a company called Holly Sugar, not expecting anything different to happen. Later that same day, my assistant interrupted a sales meeting to inform me that a Mr. Hunt was on the phone for me!
After I ran to take the call, the first thing he said to me in his thick Texas drawl was, "Is this Chris Gardner? Did you call me about some sugar?"
We established a dialogue and though I didn't actually get a chance to do business with Mr. Hunt, I had put Gary's advice to the test and it had worked. I had come up with something that was of interest to him that no one else had found. This was pay dirt. From then on, whenever I was feeling unsure about going after the heavy hitters that everyone else was chasing, I did my research to find something of interest that hopefully no one else had uncovered. The ability to connect with individuals deemed impossible to get on the phone thus became a major transferable skill that I use to this day. In fact, a short while after my success in getting Mr. Hunt on the phone, I was able to make contact with J.R., another Texas oilman, who took my call by accident—thinking that I was someone else. On that same phone conversation, he ended up buying fifty thousand shares of "whatever you called to tell me about," sight unseen. At fifty cents commission per share, that was a $25,000 profit for me. It was the largest transaction I'd ever made to that date, not to mention a significant boost to my ranking on the totem pole.
The lesson Wizards begin as blacksmiths can be applied not only to push yourself when you're ready to move to your next level, but also to know when you may need to slow down. As I learned through a rude awakening or two when I arrived in New York City, full of myself and ready to blast off to the top, I still had more fundamentals to conquer before being ready to do that.
As you apply this lesson and put your transferable skills to use, don't hesitate to ask yourself at different points where you really are in your journey to mastery. If you're starting out, know that the time you invest as a blacksmith will pay off soon enough and later on. And if you've reached wizard status at whatever you do, don't forget to stay grounded in what you learned back at the beginning. Maybe that's a secret after all.
Chris Gardner and his compelling story were introduced to millions with the hit 2006 film, The Pursuit of Happyness, starring Will Smith. Lacking formal qualifications of almost any kind, Gardner sacrificed nearly everything for a shot at a job at a major brokerage house – which he landed. From there he went on to start a successful firm of his own, and today he is a best-selling author, philanthropist, and motivational speaker.
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