This cosmetics company has laid some non-carbon footprints worth following. 

When you walk into any of the 931 Lush stores spread across 49 countries, you’re immediately tantalized by colors and flavors you can only imagine before you’ve tried them with names like Moroccan Argan, Ugandan Moringa and Indonesian Illipe. 

These ingredients are mixed together with the hand-crafted assurance that everything is fresh and cruelty-free. In fact, Lush enlists an entire ethical buying team to strategically source its materials from around the globe. 

“It’s all about transparency to me,” says Lush’s Ethical Buying Manager, Heather Deeth. “We want to know all the people and faces connected to each ingredient.” Supply chain transparency is nothing new to the company. For years they’ve been cultivating a lasting relationship with growers around the world, to ensure their ethical standard is maintained from seed to shelf. 

Since 2010 Lush has implemented the Sustainable Lush Fund, dedicated to investing in sustainable farming and projects that rejuvenate the land so as to support global communities from the ground up and establish lasting business partnerships that will guarantee quality ingredients for all of Lush’s  products. “The power of ethical buying is that you get to connect all the way back to these producers and see what’s really happening to them,” Heather explains. “We’re connected to the land and where these things come from.” 

Lush’s current agricultural investments include farms in Arizona, Guatemala, Peru, and Uganda. The Fund supports fair wages and working conditions for growers, as well as the development of sustainable farming practices by challenging the methods—and profits—of traditional agriculture. 

“We had to provide an economic alternative to chopping down the trees,” Heather says, “and find a way to value the forest as it is.”

Partnerships with these growers insures a steady income for those who might otherwise be forced to turn to monoculture as a means of survival. This is a sustainable alternative to the profits from palm plantations and cattle pastures that decimate local ecosystems by clearing forest land for crops and livestock that quickly deplete the nutrients from the soil. Conventional monoculture may be more profitable in the short term, but Lush is striving to provide a more stable, long-term alternative, for growers and the land they harvest.

Since 2014, Lush has promoted regenerative farming among its agricultural projects, a system that rejuvenates degraded land while simultaneously producing ingredients for their products. This method of farming transforms formerly fallow fields into diverse agroforestry systems, a process that steps away from monoculture by growing trees and multiple crops on the same pastureland. By combining agriculture and forestry into a lush garden of plenty, numerous crops can be grown at the same time, creating a richer, healthier, and more diverse ecosystem (and providing farmers with the added benefit of growing food for their families while also growing crops for profit). Instead of working against nature by clearing land, the reforestation aspect allows forest ecosystems to thrive, more resilient than before because the combination of crops generates a microclimate regulated by the trees, which improve water purity, soil fertility, and shelter for both flora and fauna. 

Through this system, Heather explains, “We can provide good jobs that are in line with sustainability. We need these projects to go deeper than charity. We actually want to be a long term partner so we can regenerate the land and buy ingredients.”  

By investing in its supply chain, Lush sets out to prove that working with nature instead of against it is the key to long-term success. Lush is a company in a special position because it relies directly on the health of the planet in order to flourish. 

“The environmental aspect is also very important,” Heather emphasizes, “Because many of our ingredients are natural and come from the earth at some point. We want to limit our footprint.” 

Lush has done this from the beginning, leaving a trail of non-carbon footprints worth following. They’ve worked towards locally sourcing post-consumer products to reduce emissions associated with shipping packaging materials. They run a closed loop recycling system with their black pots. They’ve even recently begun harvesting salvageable ocean plastic and using that as a percentage of their packaging. 

And Lush has gone even beyond recycling. 50% of Lush’s product range is naked, which means it’s completely packaging free, a sustainability choice that not only supports the movement to reduce waste, but saves on packaging costs. “When you are clever and you can formulate without packaging,” Heather says, “you can put more value into the ingredients you’re sourcing. It means I can buy the best ingredients I can get, and we can put more value into supporting ecosystems and supporting farmers around the world. We can prove that businesses can be sustainable.”

Nike is pledging zero waste to erase its carbon footprint

Nike’s new European distribution center in Ham, Belgium is powered by 100% renewable energy. All 1.5 million square feet of the new facility, known as the Court, are powered by locally generated wind, solar, geothermal, hydroelectric, and biomass sources. This is part of Nike’s sustainability pledge to power all owned-and-operated facilities with 100% renewable energy by 2025, and another huge step towards Nike’s pledge for zero carbon and zero waste. 

The Court’s location is significantly factored into the environmental equation. It lies in the middle of an infrastructure of railways and canals, eliminating the need for trucks to bring inbound and outbound shipments, and consequently reducing the carbon emissions that come with them. This supports Nike in line with the Paris Agreement of 2015, aiming to reduce carbon emissions across its global supply chain by 30% by 2030.  

Going one step further, Nike’s facilities are operating production in conjunction with the Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals Foundation (ZDHC), committed to reaching its goal of zero discharge of hazardous chemicals in its supply chain by 2020. 

The Court’s facility itself is committed to managing waste among its products, in line with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals of Responsible Production and Consumption. The Court’s walkways have been engineered from reclaimed footwear material, and over 95% of on-site waste is recycled. 

Upcycling waste materials has long since been a part of Nike’s waste-free initiative, and follows the UN’s SDG for Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure. Already, Nike diverts 99% of footwear manufacturing waste from landfills, and annually redirects over 1 billion plastic bottles from landfills to be recycled into yarn for new jerseys and uppers for Flyknit shoes. The Reuse-A-Shoe and Nike Grind programs also convert materials into new products, playgrounds, running tracks and courts, bringing Nike one step closer to zero waste. 

On September 20, three days before the UN Climate Summit in NYC, young people and adults will strike all across the US and the world to demand transformative action be taken to address the climate crisis. To learn more, sign up to host a strike, or receive updates check out: strikewithus.org

In the US, youth and adults, institutional and grassroots organizations, climate-focused and social justice groups, are coming together as a unified front to demand the change we need to save our future. The youth have been leading the way and demanding bolder action, and now it’s time for everyone else to back them up. Real Leaders will be highlighting these leaders throughout the day on all our social media channels.

To accomplish this, a youth climate strike coalition has come together to collaborate on the campaign. The youth strike coalition, coordinated by Future Coalition, includes national youth-led groups such as Zero Hour, Earth Uprising, Fridays For Future USA, Sunrise, US Youth Climate Strike, and Extinction Rebellion Youth. 

The climate crisis is the largest threat of our time, and we’re counting on our collective power to demand immediate and decisive action. This is our opportunity to move beyond the traditional climate bubble and expand the table of who is involved in this movement. It is time to lift up the voices and stories of young people on the frontlines of this crisis and ensure we are creating an intergenerational and intersectional climate justice movement.

To host a strike in your town, signup at this link.

September 20 will be one of the largest climate mobilizations in US history. We, as a global society, are at a crossroads. We have a decision to make. Are we going to choose money or power, or are we going to choose the future? This strike is an invitation to choose us. Choose the kids, choose humanity, choose the future. As Greta Thunberg, the teenager leading the Global Climate Strike, said: “I want you to act as if our house is on fire. Because it is.”

To #StrikeWithUs, head to http://strikewithus.org

A successful executive team is often more — or less — than the apparent sum of its parts.

Put yourself in a CEO’s chair for a moment. You have an opportunity to select the members of your top leadership team from a neat pile of resumes. You scan each one, noting their experience, their accomplishments, and their apparent abilities — and then build a team from the top tier of candidates. You feel confident in your choice, and figure that with such well-qualified members, you won’t have to provide much guidance to achieve your company goals. 

Within a month, your confidence begins to crack. As high-potential as the group appears to be, its performance barely qualifies as average. Each team member has ample experience, but they don’t share it with their peers; each meeting is rife with passive aggression, disengagement, and unshared information. No one communicates, and few collaborate. As their leader, it sometimes seems as though it’s all you can do to keep the team on task, let alone direct them towards higher achievement. 

Frustrated, you wonder — what did you do wrong?

The truth is, it’s all but impossible to select a lineup of top leaders from resume details alone, and individual talent plays a far smaller role in group achievement than most might expect. Without a collaborative mentality and strong leadership, even the most talented group of individuals will fail to achieve their collective potential. 

As human management researchers Dave Winsborough and Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic explain in an article for the Harvard Business Review in 2017, every person within a team has two distinct roles that are wholly unrelated to any task at hand — both of which can impact overall performance. The first is functional; it hinges on their technical skill and their assigned job within the team. The second is psychological; it centers on a member’s personality and how they contribute to the social dynamic of the group as a whole. 

“Too often,” Winsborough and Chamorro-Premuzic write, “organizations focus merely on the functional role and hope that good team performance somehow follows.” 

Thus, we see the first mistake that the CEO in the above scenario made: he believed that each member’s talent would add up into a sum of achievement — however, he did not take into consideration how conflicting personalities within the group could slow or even outright prevent that achievement. 

His other mistake was one of leadership. He chose to step back and allow his executive team to plot their own siloed courses, trusting that their experience would keep them on track. In short, he delegated his responsibility to maintain a productive team dynamic, and his company’s achievement suffered as a result. 

Once an executive team — or any team, for that matter — stops working well together, organizational fission begins to harm company-wide culture and productivity. This change can result in information silos, disengagement, higher turnover, chronic underachievement, and, perhaps most dangerously, distrust. When executive leadership falters, distrust can spread through an organization like wildfire and have a destructive impact on achievement. According to a study published by the Ken Blanchard Companies, there is a “large degree of correlation” between trust and employee engagement, interest, tenure, and positive contribution. 

High-performing companies require effective leadership at every level to thrive. CEOs cannot create a capable executive team simply by awarding titles to qualified-seeming candidates; they need to set team expectations, establish management ground rules, and give those they oversee the support they need to thrive and help those they manage in turn. 

It’s an inherently trickle-down process — and how a CEO chooses to manage their executive team will set the tone for the entire company. 

Below, a few guidelines to consider. 

A Leader’s First Responsibility is to Be Supportive

As the foremost team leader, a CEO’s is responsible for empowering the company leaders and, by proxy, their teams. They need to push people outside their comfort zones while still ensuring that they never feel disconnected or adrift — and establish the expectation that each senior leader should do the same with their respective teams. 

When team members feel valued and encouraged, they tend to achieve more at work and better contribute to business growth; in fact, one 2017 study found that this style of empowering leadership “was positively related to both knowledge sharing and team efficacy, which, in turn, were both positively related to performance.”

A leader’s responsibility to offer support is particularly important for senior executives, as they may miss crucial information if they do not fully engage with or listen to their subordinates. As one writer puts the matter in an article for Harvard Business Review, “Senior executives dismiss good ideas from below far too often, largely for this reason: If they don’t already perceive an idea’s relevance to organizational performance, they don’t deem it important enough to merit their attention.” However, given that middle-rung managers are in an ideal position to collect valuable insights through their contact with employees, customers, and suppliers, a leader’s choice to withhold support and ignore lower-level ideas can pose considerable opportunity costs to the business later on. 

Support your leaders, and you’ll see the trickle-down effects produce tenfold returns. 

Eradicate Negativity

An executive team’s dynamic should always be positive. Every challenge should be constructive, critiques should never feel personal, and conversations should be based on facts and data. Above all else, there must be transparency; passive-aggressive behavior can never be tolerated, lest it festers and influences negativity in the team as a whole. 

At work and in life, passive aggression and other “toxic” attitudes can be harmful to the health and productivity as the team as a whole — and can prevent a CEO from understanding the real needs of the business they lead. As one writer puts the matter in an article for Forbes, “Words from the mouth of a passive-aggressive manager cannot be trusted as they will always tell the CEO what they want to hear, and they will always paint the picture of having everything perfectly under control.”

Worse, however, is the effect toxicity can have in the workplace. One 2015 Harvard Business School study found that such “incivility” in the workplace has a pointedly negative impact on employee morale and efforts. Nearly half those surveyed “decreased their work effort and spent less time at work,” while 38% “intentionally decreased” their work quality, 25% admitted to “taking their frustrations out on customers;” and 12% left their jobs altogether. 

Never ignore passive aggression. If you do, it may become the default tone of your organization — and cause everyone in it to disengage. 

Every Team Member Must Be in Alignment

If team members aren’t adequately aligned with an overarching vision, they won’t be able to contribute to achieving it effectively. Properly aligned executive leaders share a clarity of purpose and are willing to collaborate to meet their organization’s strategic objectives. They also tend to be more willing to engage with their work and care about the business itself — a mentality which can lead to more productivity.

An easy way to create alignment is to hold discussions and come to a consensus. However, a leader should never allow their company to slip into an argument-prone democracy. If there are ten people in a room, the CEO holds eleven votes — always. As a leader, listening to other perspectives is crucial to developing a clear view of the business and an effective growth strategy. However, facilitating discussion is vastly different than being ruled by it; a team paralyzed by dissent will never achieve anything it sets out to do. 

At the end of the day, a company’s CEO must decide on a course of action.

Don’t Set Goals, Establish Commitments

Executive leaders should never turn to “goals” as motivation. The term implies that the team might shoot for a “goal,” but miss — and that the failure would be acceptable, albeit not preferable. Instead, CEOs and their executive team should establish attainable commitments and be vigilant in holding each other accountable for achieving them. 

It’s a CEO’s responsibility to guide a company to success. As such, it falls to them to build a leadership framework and support system that can empower leaders at every level to thrive in their role and boost the organization to ever-greater achievement. 

By any measure, we spend about half of our time thinking about something other than what we’re supposed to be doing. At work, this can be especially lethal to our projects and, along with them, our job satisfaction and success.

Yet few people understand the degree to which routine diversions impact our performance. In fact, how many of us consider interruptions and distractions as just part of the job? But they aren’t, nor should they be, particularly when our precious projects are on the line.

To start, let’s differentiate between interruptions, or externally driven diversions, and distractions, or internally driven diversions.

Of the two, interruptions tend to be harder to deal with because they usually involve other living beings — say, a meddling micromanager, a chatty coworker, or even a playful pup. But distractions, particularly in the digital age, can be just as difficult. Who among us hasn’t allowed a ‘quick’ Facebook or email check devolve into 45 minutes we’ll never get back?

Though minimizing distractions and interruptions may require different solutions, the solutions themselves share a common thread: They require recognizing the ‘entry point’ and then uncovering how to counter it. By focusing on entry points, we can actually preventdistractions and interruptions rather than just react to them. After all, once we’re diverted, we lose valuable momentum and oftentimes the will to recover it.

So, whether interruptions or diversions, here are nine ways to deal with project diversions — and do your best work.

Build common ground with the boss

Managing interruptions from your boss can be tricky. But, obviously, it’s in her best interest, and in yours, to see to it that your projects succeed. In this way, you can help build common ground by explaining that your current need to ‘go dark’ is to do even more and better work, and effectively move a project along. 

Negotiate with coworkers

Starting with your boss makes minimizing interruptions from coworkers a lot easier. In most cases, it’s simply about negotiating commonly available times. This is a welcome relief for many coworkers and teams because it disrupts the “always available” mindset that too often wreaks havoc on projects.

Manage other adults, kids, and pets

When working at home — where human and furry loved ones may abound — focus on three things: boundaries, boundaries, boundaries. Express your needs. Set limits. Make agreements. And be resolute.

Make a daily plan

Before mindlessly jumping into your usual distractions, have a plan for each day and what you want to achieve with that time. This way, even if you need to check email or your collaboration hub, you can get right back to your plan without losing momentum and having to start anew.

Create better defaults

During transition periods, replace one distraction with another, lesser one. For instance, between calls or meetings, rather than checking your email by default, get up from your desk and stretch or even take a walk around the block. Personally, I leave my office after every meeting. If I don’t, I am more likely to fall into a click hole, IM, or conversation — and not get right back to my project.

Turn off notifications

To go dark, temporarily disable all your digital temptations. That means silencing smartphones, computers, collaboration hubs, and anything else that can inadvertently woo you away from heads-down work. And, while you’re at it, remind yourself that ‘Do Not Disturb’ is your friend, not foe.

Lock yourself out

Sometimes turning off notifications isn’t enough, so you may need to block out certain entry points, such as apps and websites. I currently use Cold Turkey Blocker (on my Mac) and Screen Time (on my iPhone). And I’m always on the lookout for other, new or emerging options that can help lock me out.  

Remove apps and capabilities

If locking yourself out doesn’t do the trick, then get rid of some apps and websites completely. I routinely sit with clients while they remove distracting apps and capabilities from their smartphones, including in some cases, their email and browsers. All modern operating systems allow you to create accounts that can only open (or, conversely, cannot open) specific apps and sites. Another action is to turn off your Wi-Fi.

Use ‘dumbtech’

It’s inconvenient, if not extreme, but using devices that don’t have internet or other distracting capabilities is actually doable. For instance, you may need music to really get in the zone, and assume then, you need your smartphone. An old-school iPod, however, plays music just as well. (You can buy one cheaply online or at a local pawn shop.) And, to be sure, writing longhand is way less efficient than typing. But what if you were to wind up drafting more and better ideas or documents because you were less distracted? Spending a couple of hours a week transcribing your longhand would be worth it.

So, if you really want to start doing — and finishing — your best work, start dealing with project diversions. With less interruptions and distractions, you’ll go a long way.

We are in the Fourth Industrial Revolution—an age of AI, machine learning, robotics, blockchains, and IoT. It is a new era requiring new strategies to remain competitive. Old ways of leading organizations will no longer work. We need Leadership 2.0. If you don’t believe this, look at what is happening to big-box retailers and incumbent organizations that are now on the brink of bankruptcy.

Successfully leading an organization in the digital age takes bold disruption and a commitment to reengineering the company’s DNA. This level of change cannot be a knee-jerk response or just reaching for the newest CRM platform. Mutating from a traditional company with a rigid hierarchy and profit-based mission into a Humachine—a combination of the better qualities of humankind with the mechanical efficiencies of machines—requires five distinct steps: developing a long-term vision, accurately assessing the status quo, allocating resources, embracing organizational transparency, and launching experimental pilot programs.

Step 1: Develop a long-term vision

Many executives feel pressure to become “digital” by acquiring technology rapidly. But research reveals that the most successful companies don’t react to stress. Instead, they begin by developing a long-term vision, driven by their unique intentionality and mission. Then they carefully think about what a company’s structure should look like to support this vision.

Far too often, companies focus on current problems and find quick ways to address them. They merely “patch” the current system. Hasty patches may have worked in the past, but it will not work in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Preventing your boat from capsizing is not the goal—it’s competing in the boat race.

Yes, making incremental improvements is more relaxed than developing an aspirational vision. It is also easy to get caught up in complaints from various division leaders and managers—each with their limited vantage point—and focus on solutions that address those immediate needs. However, a successful organizational redesign needs to be driven by intentionality, mission, and strategy, all tied to a long-term vision of the future and the organization’s role in it.

Step 2: Understand the current state

Once a long-term vision is in place, and the need for a supporting organizational restructure is appreciated, leaders must objectively assess an organization’s current state. This includes comparing its formal hierarchy to its real organizational hierarchy, which is often different from what is on paper.

Smart organizations understand that their actual culture—the informal social structures and skewed flow of information through human communication—differs from an organization’s logical hierarchy, its “official” lines of communication, and other abstract delineations between departments.

Most companies have assumptions as to how things function based solely on their organizational chart. In doing so, they ignore additional lines of communication that support innovation and collaboration. Be objective about these assumptions and fact-check them. Understand talent capabilities, current incentives, weaknesses, and which relationships to build upon. Leverage the real structure of your organization to bring it closer to the ideal.

Step 3: Allocate sufficient resources

One significant roadblock to reorganization is not allocating sufficient resources toward the effort. Reengineering a company’s DNA must have not only organizational commitment and support in principle but also in monetary and human resources. Leadership must make a thorough assessment of financial consequences, tax implications, and sequencing of rollouts to make sure there is ample funding at each stage. This will help mitigate risks and alleviate anxiety, particularly from the board of directors.

Research has shown that having “slack” in human resources positively impacts financial performance in the pursuit of strategic change. Though not surprising, studies show that companies that increase financial and human resources during times of change have better economic outcomes. The lesson for leaders? Allocate sufficient resources before undergoing strategic restructuring. It pays off to have slack in the system.

Step 4: Embrace transparency

In the age of AI and technology, it is easy to forget that organizations are a collection of human beings. Your employees have emotions, hopes, fears, and beliefs. Restructuring the organization creates uncertainty, and uncertainty makes humans uncomfortable. Too many organizations view employees as “cogs” to be moved around during a restructuring. One of the most critical aspects of successful restructuring is addressing employee’s human needs: fear, anxiety, and defensiveness.

When employees lack insight into the broader context of ongoing business change, they will treat the disruption as a threat. Through informal channels, they will alert others in the organization. Each employee will then interpret the restructure through his or her lens. Different parts of the organization will reach different conclusions about what is happening, which leads to chaos—and it’s a recipe for failure. Successful restructuring requires that the entire organization has the same view, the same insight, and the same understanding as to what is happening. This requires transparency.

Step 5: Start with a pilot

Before a considerable reengineering effort is rolled out, it is best to test it with a small, targeted, and carefully selected pilot project. The test environment could be in an independently operated unit, such as a division. This process is called “purposeful experimentation,” and it allows for bugs and kinks to be worked out.

Rather than jumping into restructuring the entire organization, select a high-potential area in which to experiment and “test and learn.” Once a plan tests well, scaling it rapidly is often the best way to create value from such a small project.

Targeted pilot projects help leaders understand what works. These programs should not be random. Instead, they should be driven by strategy and understanding an organization’s primary and competitive priorities.

Leaping from a traditional brick-and-mortar company that will be left in the dust like Blockbuster to a flat, fluid, innovative, and purpose-driven Humachine depends on many variables. To manage the process and increase the likelihood of success, adopt a long-term vision, peg the status quo, increase resources, lead with transparency, and work out bugs before scaling to the rest of the enterprise. This is leadership for the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

In the 2018 documentary Free Solo, professional rock climber Alex Honnold does something you wouldn’t expect. He gets his brain scanned.

Neuroscientists wanted to learn why he didn’t fear his upcoming quest: an immensely dangerous, 3,000-foot free solo climb of El Capitan, Yosemite National Park’s famed granite monolith. The result? It turns out Honnold is completely immune to fear and risk.
 
Risk is subjective. Sixty years ago, risk avoidance in financial markets meant investing in high-grade bonds and landing a career with a large company. But notions of risk have changed. Many investors think that risk is volatility. But from my experience, it’s not. Instead, taking risk is akin to a free climb, albeit without extreme physical danger, and those who attempt it may reap incredible rewards—as long as they’re well prepared.
 
There are very few Alex Honnolds or J. Paul Gettys (the financial equivalent) in this world. Investors, in general, become skittish when the price of something varies a great deal. They find themselves caught between Getty’s approach and that of John Maynard Keynes. As Getty once said, “If you want to make money, really big money, do what nobody else is doing. Buy when everyone else is selling and hold until everyone else is buying.” On the other hand, according to Keynes, “Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.”
 
In my business of investing, not being contrarian is “risky.” In fact, rejecting popular opinion can bring tremendous rewards, as long as you’re mindful and methodical. Here are five ways to start:
 
Welcome volatility: Recent research has shown that higher price volatility in traded securities correlates with higher investment returns, and it creates opportunities for adept and disciplined investors. Forget the experts: volatility is usually your friend.
 
Change how you view illiquidity: Most investment experts equate illiquidity with risk, but they don’t quantify the degree of illiquidity. Many publicly traded securities become hard to trade in during market convulsions. This has worsened with the increase in index funds, together with open-end mutual funds. Both are equity investments with overnight funding and must buy and sell at the whim of their investors. A majority of non-publicly traded investments can be bought and sold within 30 days, though with disadvantaged pricing. Yet, private investments usually offer higher returns and more control. If you can buy larger investments, illiquidity is your friend over the long term.
 
Recognize operational change: Operational change is a risk. When an organization changes management, processes, or product, predicting the future requires great humility. Given the rapid pace of technology in consumer preferences and markets, every successful enterprise must plan for the unknown. As the Nobel prize-winning physicist Niels Bohr noted, “Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.” To deal with this omnipresent risk, I select opportunities that are confronted by major change risks—such as business turnarounds—in which a positive outcome seems likely, but the price of the investment reflects the uncertainty, rather than the upside potential.
 
Get out of your own head: Due to how our brains are wired, we can easily become our greatest investment risk. The primal, ancient part of our brain warns us of threats daily. When investment prices surge, it warns us not to miss out. When these prices dive, it warns us to bail out. Far too many investors operate this way. While some of us are wired to remain dispassionate about risk—and I know that, as I’m one of them—the rest of us must develop the mindfulness to know when we are in over our heads. Don’t ignore when your investments are sounding alarm bells (that don’t stop going off) and take on less risk if you are unable to gain critical distance.
 
Keep learning: The most significant risk in my business is investment error: buying at the wrong price, selling at the wrong time, or buying the wrong thing. Everyone makes some of these mistakes, even if they’re not willing to admit it. To keep mistakes at bay, you must keep learning. You cannot acquire too much information, have too much training, build too much experience, or try too hard in this relentless business. Today, all one needs to take a shot is some cash and a computer or phone. Around the world, countless smart, experienced, and dedicated people—with an almost unlimited flow of information—are devoting themselves to selling overpriced investments to you. As the late Cy Lewis, famed trader and senior partner of Bear Stearns, once said, “An investment bought right is half sold.”
 
With courage, preparation, and self-awareness, you can take on more investment risks while minimizing your investment errors. Just make sure that you’re ready to do so. It’s a life that’s not for everyone.