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    The First Habit: The One Technique That Can Change Your Life
    The First Habit: The One Technique That Can Change Your Life
    The First Habit: The One Technique That Can Change Your Life
    Ebook72 pages55 minutes

    The First Habit: The One Technique That Can Change Your Life

    By Lewis Schiff

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    About this ebook

    Since 2005, Lewis Schiff has been researching the behaviors of America's most successful people—self-made millionaires who build businesses around what they do best. In Schiff's eyes, this is the new American Dream: do you and do well doing it! Expect the best return—on your time, on your investment, on your talents. In The First Habit, Schiff, who has interviewed over 1,100 "new economy winners," including many of the most famous entrepreneurs in the world, describes the attitudes you must master in order to realize this dream.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateApr 30, 2016
    ISBN9781483569512
    The First Habit: The One Technique That Can Change Your Life
    Author

    Lewis Schiff

    Lewis Schiff is the executive director of Inc. Business Owners Council, a membership organization for Inc. magazine's top entrepreneurs and owners of closely held family businesses, and maintains a blog about behavioral entrepreneurshipon Inc.com. Schiff has coauthored two books: The Influence of Affluence: The Rise of the New Rich and How They Are Changing America, which charts the rise of America's growing affluent middle class through original research and analysis, and The Armchair Millionaire, which describes a wealth-creation system that leverages Nobel Prize-winning methodologies.

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      Book preview

      The First Habit - Lewis Schiff

      Schiff

      What Is the First Habit?

      CREATE TWO GROUPS OF FIVE. LINE UP ALONGSIDE EACH OTHER and face the person across from you, the meeting facilitator chirped at us inside a lower-level hotel room in San Jose, California. It’s a better-than-nice hotel conference room with yellowish-golden tones. Incandescent bulbs light the room, giving it a warm feeling even though there are no windows. The drapes alongside the wall where windows would be, that’s the dead giveaway. Pull back that curtain and there’s nothing but plaster. We’ve all been in this room a thousand times. And we’ve all had this facilitator, too. Usually he’s good-looking enough, with nice teeth and an athletic build underneath his studied business casual attire. The kind of person who has translated his nonspecific attractiveness and cheery nature into a career where we don’t mind looking at him while he helps us figure stuff out.

      This meeting took place ten years ago. The other nine people in the room had already been my colleagues for a few years at this point. They weren’t exactly my cup of tea back then, and even now I keep in touch with only one of them. What I didn’t understand, however, is that three of these co-workers were about to change the course of my life.

      OK, said the facilitator, Bob, here’s what I want you to do. I want you to look across at the person facing you in the other line, and I want you to tell that person what you think he or she is particularly good at. Then he or she should do the same for you—tell you what you’re good at. When you’re done, move down to the next person and do the same thing. Do it with all five people.

      So we do. The first person, Patty, says to me, You ask good questions. Hmm, I never thought of myself as being a particularly good listener but, OK, sure, whatever. I forget what I told her she’s good at. To be honest, I forgot what I told them all.

      Switch people, Bob says.

      You’re good at asking questions, Henry says to me. Again with the questions. That’s weird.

      Switch.

      You’re really good at technology, keeping up with the newest thing, says Frank. Now that makes sense. I’m the COO of a virtual company. I’d better be good at technology.

      Switch.

      Sharla: You always ask really good questions.

      Mind blown.

      Three of the first four people tell me the exact same thing. (I forgot what the fifth person said. At this point my mind is reeling.)

      I had never, ever thought about how I ask questions. It had never occurred to me that I was a good question-asker. I’m opinionated. I like to talk. I really like it when people pay attention to me. But asking questions? If you told me to list my positive attributes at work, I doubt asking questions would have appeared anywhere on my list.

      But three out of five people I’d worked with for over three years told me that I was good at this. I was speechless. For a while, anyway. Then I started asking a lot of questions.

      I read once that Hemingway didn’t so much write as he let the angels move his pen. Since that exercise Bob ran us through more than ten years ago, I’ve come to realize the same thing is true for me. Angels drop questions into my head and then they come out of my mouth. What was once a complete mystery to me is now the way I make a living, and I’m never happier, never more engaged, than when I’m asking someone questions. That’s not true. I’m never happier than when I’m asking an interesting person questions. It’s not fun asking questions when the person I’m talking to is not interesting—especially if they’re not interesting to themselves.

      You’d think that being a questioner is a positive thing, because everyone likes to be around people who show interest in them. But being a questioner has its downsides, too. I love to ask questions so much that people tell me they feel like they’re being interrogated. I’ve learned to compensate over time. When I’m in a store, buying something interesting, like a new gadget, I usually start my conversation with the salesperson like this: I’m what they call a ‘fact finder.’ I love to ask questions. So if you feel like I’m leaning in too close or my questions are coming at you too fast, please let me know. It just means I’m interested and excited. I don’t mean to invade your space. Figuring that out took many awkward encounters.

      Looking back on that day in the hotel conference room over a decade ago, I remember how amazed I

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