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A Summary and Analysis of The 10 Laws of Enduring Success by Maria Bartiromo for Practicing and Aspiring Managers

Published by David C. Wyld Southeastern Louisiana University, November 10, 2011

This synopsis and review of the book, The 10 Laws of Enduring Success, was prepared by Tiffany Fruchtnicht while a Business Management student in the College of Business at Southeastern Louisiana University.

Cover of The 10 Laws of Enduring Success

Executive Summary

Maria Bartiromo began her life on September 11, and in 2001, on her birthday, her life and view of it changed. The book The 10 Laws of Enduring Success, is a novel of motivation and a path. In the days following September 11th Maria contemplated how people that worked hard and did amazing for themselves, finally getting great jobs in companies located in the world trade centers, and then they were killed even though they had amounted to so much in life they were still not safe. That is how this book became, Maria Bartiromo shares her many experiences with successful people and combines these experience into her own laws. These laws outline how common individuals can amount themselves to whatever they aspire too just as many successful people have. She also presents a new definition of success, one individualistic for each person. Success to Maria is one of enduring time and one of which we can each look at ourselves and we happy with our choices, where we have taken our lives, what we have become, and how we have gotten there.

The Ten Things Managers Need to Know from The 10 Laws of Enduring Success

1. The first law of enduring success Maria Bartiromo presents in her book is self knowledge. This is your own ability to define for yourself what you life will be and what path you will follow. Choosing your own destiny and making a decision as to which routes you will take. This is not tangible or something you can read a manual on how to do, it is a state of being content and satisfied to yourself.

2. The next law Maria discussed is Vision. We must be able to look ahead in our lives and see ourselves in some place or some point. Then being able to make that vision happen and take the actions necessary to get to that place. If you cannot see yourself in success or in your goal then you cannot achieve it. In deciding this vision it can be helpful to ask yourself “what is my life preparing me for?”.

3. Initiative is the next law discussed in the book. It mean being able to take next after step after step until you get to the finished goal. Being able to do something that no one else is doing and put you above, by putting yourself out there. This can often be scary and take courage, but if you wait someone else will be living your own destiny.

4. Courage Maria describes as “the inner fortitude to withstand life’s battles”. Whether it be a daily struggle in your life or a huge tragedy without courage we will not survive in this world. It takes the biggest battles for us to express our true courage. It is not something taught or learned it is something we have inside ourselves that will it gets touch we push on through and show what we can accomplish.

5. Integrity is what we question of people on a daily basis. Having integrity is knowing what the right thing to do in a situation is, and then choosing to do it. With integrity sometime we must pass up a benefit, but that is what gives you respect from peers. Money and fame are attainable without integrity, but success is not. If you have integrity people will trust and you and will be willing to stand behind you and rick things for you.

6. The ability to keep up with the changing markets, laws, and economy is known as adaptability. As the world changed everyday if we stayed in the mindset of the first things we learned we would be passed up by better quality and knowledgeable people. We must keep up with what is current at all times and have the ability to quickly and effortless change our mindset about a topic.

7. Often times we find ourselves too serious, not remembering that we are all human being and we can all have success and failures. Humility is that ability to not take you to seriously. In this age of the world Maria says we like to teach people to be themselves and come out forcefully, but sometimes that may be too strong. We must remember that we are all equal and when we make mistakes it is normal.

8. Being in for the long haul is often a struggle for successful people. We see everyday companies rise to fame and fall quickly, but having endurance is the keep to success. In the business world endurance means sacrificing short term gains or long term goals. Knowing how to stage our lives with incremental wins is a great way of paving yourself to success. If we took every short term gain that was presented to us we would never get to the finish line, they are like detours. We must create a vision and see it out to its full potential success.

9. Purpose is our ability to look inside and see what really matters. Maria discussed a major questions she gets a lot is do you have to be a workaholic to be success. She answered by saying you have to know what is important in life. We have to be able to budget our time and see the true meaning of our life. At the end of our lives we all want to look around and know we meant something great to someone or many people.

10. As we see companies rise and fall, the ones who suffer great lose and rebound are the ones that amaze us. Resilience is that ability to make a comeback after a great fall. Some time in our lives we will fall from something and being able to get back up and return to your previous position is what is important. The comeback define who you are not the fall.

Full Summary of The 10 Laws of Enduring Success

September 11, 2001 is a date that no one living in the United States will ever forget. For the thousands of people born on September 11, they woke up that day celebrating and went to bed in sorrow. The book The 10 Laws of Enduring Success brought this day to a new realization for author Maria Bartiromo. Maria Bartiromo born on September 11th thought this was going to be a great day until the tragedy of 9/11 when she was working as a reporter for the New York Stock exchange. In the days following September 11th she contempt how people that worked hard and did amazing for themselves finally got great jobs in companies in the world trade centers and then they were killed, and even though they had amounted to so much in life they were still not safe. She thought back to her family and her roots, where she had come from. Her mother and father were first and second generation immigrants from Italy. Her dad inherited a restaurant in Bay Bridge, Brooklyn from his father called Rex Manor, Named after the ship the Rex they had taken here to immigrate in 1919. They left her families and everything they know to aboard the Rex for a voyage to Ellis Island. They did this based on a dream, the promise of freedom and opportunity was that powerful. She was taught a great work ethic, if you wanted to live the American dream you had to work for it. Her mother worked at off track betting, she loved this job because it gave her financial freedom to do little extras for her family and send her children to great schools. Her first job as a teenager was a coat check girl at her dad’s restaurant. Her parents never even thought about complaining about their lives or how hard they worked, they loved what they did and had an amazing work ethic. Her goal of this book is not only motivation but for herself to have a greater understanding of the lessons to be learned from life and how they can be applied.

Success once arrived is not necessarily there to stay, we can work hard our entire lives and get to a point of great success and it could be gone in a minute. The financial crisis of 2008 explains this completely, legendary firms who were at the top of the game watched their fortunes collapse to nothing overnight. Maria notes some examples of companies who were at the top and feel in 2008 are Lehman brothers, Freddie Mac, Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, northern rock, Citi group, Merrill lynch, AIG, General Motors, Chrysler, and Wachovia. All declare bankruptcy. With all these companies falling so sudden and quickly Maria started to think success is defined in different ways, more in significance than superficial ways. Maria notes in her book, “I wondered if there was a definition of success that you could have permanently, in spite of the turmoil in your life, your job, or your bank account.” Measuring success as not just an initial achievement but as a durable, lifelong pursuit is the true definition of a successful company or person.

While reading The 10 Laws of Enduring Success, I noticed many questions that Maria Bartiromo presents to readers. The first question I came across was, “How can you remain successful even when the worst things happen to you? “. This questions definitely hit home for me and I’m sure many other readers as well. Maria states that this is what shows true success, lasting and endurance, bouncing back from problems and struggles to continue success. “Is it possible to build success from failure? “, is another question Maria presents to readers. I believe we can only try for success and often failure is what happens, but is it not possible to know what will be success if you do not take risks or chances.“What if I woke up tomorrow and did not have any of the external things that other regard as proof that I am doing well?”, this questions is what Maria states we should all do when searching for a job, totally take money out of the question. She also says that when you take all material posses out of the pictures that are when you can truly judge someone’s success, their values and relationships they have created shine. Maria touches on a great point in her novel, individualism. Many powerful people do questionable things to gain power or higher position. Even though these people have reached powerful positions of responsibility, they are not successful.

The novel beings as previously discussed on September 11, 2001 Maria’s birthday. From there she moves to looking at her past and people who have greatly influenced her life. First her mother and father and then professors and professionally she encounters in college, and especially at gradation. One of the great quotes that stuck out to me from Maria’s past was presented by Hilary Clinton at Maria’s college graduation from New York University, 1989. “If it were easy anyone can do it”, this quote from Mrs. Clinton motivated Maria to realize this was not going to be an easy road and her past until graduation had not been easy, students work hard and that is why. It is not suppose to be easy, the struggle is the work we all put in as students to be something one day and receive the diploma.

After graduation Maria said is when she first started to think of her future and what she would do. The 10 laws of enduring success do not count individually; they are all created as a whole. One cannot determine success, they all create success together. Maria uses this quote to explain how important it is to take a handle of your future to achieve the 10 mentioned attributes. “True success come from the inside, meaning you can have it, and anyone can have it. You must take charge of your life, if you do not someone else will.” Self knowledge, vision, initiative, courage, integrity, adaptability, humility, endurance, purpose, and resilience make up Maria Bartiromo’s 10 laws.

The ability to know and control how your life will turn out is the attribute of self knowledge. This is not tangible or something you can read a manual on how to do, it is a state of being content and satisfied to yourself. Has previously stated individualism is important for success, it is the foundation. You cannot recreate someone else’s success, if you follow the exact same steps as someone else to success you will probably not get there because it is different for each individual person. Every successful person Maria has ever met has had their own unique strong sense of the abilities and aspirations. She considers them leaders in their own lives who pursue their dreams on their own terms. The term or level of success for each person is different, some people find their success as holding any job or having a family. While for some people success is gradating for Harvard or running a fortune 500 company, for some people having the dream of holding their very own baby or finding someone who love them means success, no matter what success means to them these qualities still apply. For each attribute of success Maria mentions suggestions to accomplish your way to success. To accomplish self knowledge She suggest control your fate or someone else will, make the biggest mistake of your life, take money out of the equation, where you are from is not who you are, be the only you, take it personally, beat the stereotype, and create your own measures of success.

The next attribute Maria find necessary to accomplish success is vision. Maria uses her trip to Barrack Obama’s presidential inauguration as an example of vision. Vision is your own ability to look ahead in life and see possibilities, see your future perspectives. Ignoring the difficult days and places his childhood and life brought him, he had a vision for his life. Maria says that Barrack Obama had the vision of being president since he was in kindergarten. No Matter what Maria, mine, or anyone else political views are we all see that Barrack Obama definitely accomplished his vision. Another very remarkable event Maria compares to vision is U.S. Airways flight 1549, that had to make an emergency landing in the Hudson River in 2009. Pilot “Sully” as we all know him spent his entire life preparing for that moment. He may have not known it but his life prepared him for that. By seeing and accomplishing his goal of being a pilot he prepared himself for this miracle on the Hudson without even knowing this would happen one day. Maria presents the question “Ask what your life is preparing you for?” I believe we will never know, and some of us may have already faced this event. Cultivate change and have an inquiring mind are two other suggestions presented through vision. Maria comments that whole having interviewed Bill Gates on a number of occasions the most fascinating thing is not what he has done, but it is himself. He is very intrigued about every topic, interested, and always wanting to know more and have more knowledge. Imagine a different world, solve the problem, be an inspiration, and balance high dreams with reality checks are just of the suggestions made through our vision.

One of the most intriguing laws is initiative, being able to take step after step to achieve something. This rings the bell of mistakes and failures in my brain, but Maria says it is essential in accomplishing true success. Initiative is a matter or doing something, which is better than doing nothing. Even if the something fails or is a mistake at least we tried and learned something rather than playing it safe and learning nothing all the time. One piece of advice I took from this Chapter is play with the boys. First I thought she can’t mean literally but then she kind of did mean that. One of the many people Maria interviews was Sarah Palin, Former governor of Alaska. Maria’s main question for her was where you get your confidence. She states that “the playing field is your own to conquer”, if anyone who believe they are at a disadvantage plays life by this philosophy they will have the ability to accomplish anything they set their mind too.

Just do it, is the first piece of advice readers get from the law of courage section of this book. Author Maria says she got her courage from her grandmother who always taught her that courage is the voice that tells us just to do it. As Maria goes on to discus courage the word bravery comes along while discuss AIG CEO Hank Greenberg. She tells his remarkable story that very few people are aware of, many just know him as the successful CEO of AIG. Hank lived his life on a farm milking cows daily after his father died when he was six. Hank then went on to join the army at age 17 and worked his way up through a long life to his successful seat that we now know him to have. Since Maria has had to ability to interview Hank and get to know his story, she knows that Hank lists bravery as what he thinks his and many others success can be attributed too. For someone that fought against Adolph Hitler’s army bravery is definitely something he has experience with, not only his tasks as CEO of a major corporation. “courage is doing things that others have not done, and being willing to bet your own worth and take a risk because you have confidence that what you are doing is going to work out all right.” Being in the business of risk, insurance this CEO knows what it takes to make risks sometimes paying off and sometimes not. Fighting for yourself, and overcoming the fear of failure are also things Maria says goes along with the bravery and courage it takes to become successful.

Integrity, what does that word mean to you? We can all watch T.V. a witness good and bad examples of integrity. Some people can make it to the top without having a single ounce of integrity. You can cheat, scheme, and weasel your way to become a top executive manager, but what will you have? As an aspiring top level manager the one thing more than a high paying check I wish to have is respect from superiors and co workers. With integrity people are willing to bet on you and take a chance for something you believe in. If you do not have respect of people they will never have trust in you or believe in your work. People are attracted to you and trust in you when you have integrity. Money and fame are attainable without integrity, but success is not. Creating a personal honor system, not being a white knight with dirty hands, telling the truth, and getting what you deserve are a few phrases Maria uses to explain attaining integrity.

With this every changing environment and technology we must be willing to accept and adapt to change. The People who can adapt to the changing environment are the ones who withstand and make it through with success. While showing an example from her life about adaptability Maria looked back on a business trip for CNBC in June of 2009 that took her to Russia. She was traveling to Russia to interview with President Medvedev in St. Petersburg. What was really astounding to her was the fact that she was able to travel to Russia to do this interview and discuss the European Forum with the Russian president. Change occurs in the real world, things are never the same and as soon as you get used to something it will change. In the professions setting no matter what your feelings about a previous enemy, they possibly could become your partner, acting professional by adapting to the change is most important. Maria also gives a quote from Charles Darwin, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, or the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.” Darwin explains the beginning and existence of our earth, if anyone can give us a clue about success it is him.

Humility to for is something hard to achieve. In this age of the world Maria says we like to teach people to be themselves and come out forcefully, but sometimes that may be too strong. Everybody fails at something in their lives, and admitting that failure and moving on shows humility. Knowing when too let yourself shine and hold back will let your knowledge and intelligence shine. Maria uses her relationship she has formed with the Gates family as a form of humility. She explains that the most extraordinary thing about the family is their modesty. Throughout her interviews with the family they have never pretended to think they are geniuses or that they have a special gift. Success often comes to those who don’t expect or think they deserve it.

When running in a race we can not sprint from start to finish, we must start slow and pace ourselves, endurance. In the business world endurance means sacrificing short term gains or long term goals. Knowing how to stage our lives with incremental wins is a great way of paving yourself to success. Maria says that she is often asked if being successful means becoming a workaholic. She uses words first heard by Jack Welch to answer this. You have to work hard for success and sometimes a great CEO goes month or two without taking a day off, but then they can plan a summer beach vacation with their family every year no matter what is going on. The balance of knowing when to spend your time focused on work versus home is the key. Maria made me think of the analogy work hard play hard, when reading this section.

As the next law come about in the book it continued to remind me of a section we discussed in the vision section. Purpose, the meaning of our lives and what we are meant to do. Maria uses different examples, but purpose reminds me of the miracle on the Hudson. Pilot Sully Sullenberger never planned on that being his purpose in life, he never planned on doing something that great. For many, nothing that great ever happens, but the point in life is to have that moment when we look around and say we are truly happy and we have accomplished everything in life that was intended for us to accomplish. Maria uses examples from CEO of Fannie Mae who committed suicide short after the declaration of bankruptcy by his company. This loss she comments as a tragedy and a loss of purpose of life.

Eventually after 362 pages on inspiration readers will find themselves upon the final law of enduring success. One of which I had not thought would be included, resilience. We see companies and individually fail daily, but it’s when we see those people rebuild their lives we are secretly routing for them. When they build their lives back everyone wants to know how they did it, how did they come back from such a low place? Those are the people will endurance and those are the people to take an example from. They made the leap of faith and made the mistake and bounced back from it. This is the law that Maria Bartiromo choose to discuss last and end her novel with, and I believe it is because this is one we can all learn from and can reflect on every other law.

True success come from the inside, meaning you can have it, and anyone can have it. Maria uses at least 1,000 quotes in her book from successful visionaries, CEO’s, and business owners who have inspired and directed her success. She choose to share these with us because she wanted to inspire individuals to become something and to not give up when things go back or make a mistake in the beginning to cost them everything. You must take charge of your life, if you do not someone else will. When looking for success we must always look for enduring success. Success is worthless if it is not enduring and lasting. What is a life without meaning or purpose, none at all? To some success may we the great career, but to others it may simply be having a happy healthy family. We all must feel self worth; we must feel as though we have done something worth something to someone.

The Video Lounge

Today Show Clip

Source URL: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/36105005/ns/today-books/t/bartiromos-laws-enduring-success/

As I began to search for a clip related to this book it was not difficult to find. It was actually difficult to choose which clip to pick because as a news anchor Maria Bartiromo has thousands of great clips I could show. I choose this one because it was a different spin on her. She was being interviewed instead of someone interviewing her. It also has a little bit of her opinion in our real life situation and then she combines that will her book. She gives examples of how to help people in this job market and a couple skills required to find a job in this market as well.

Personal Insights

Why I think:

The author is one of the most brilliant people around…or is full of $%&#, because:

Maria Bartiromo is successful, professional, and intelligent. She believes in people and in the system she has put together. She wrote this book to help motivate people and to help herself learn about the world. As a student I would never get the opportunity as Maria has to interview and have relationships with the people in this book, but from reading it I have gained of sense of each of these people. I feel like they have written be a little letter telling be bits and pieces of advice. Maria book is great and so is she, it is what every business student needs to read before venturing out into the career world.

If I were the author of the book, I would have done these three things differently:

1. Often times while reading the book I got confused about which law we were discussing. Possibly better organizing the sub points and sub suggestions under each law, I feel like some of them were being repeated at times.

2. As I loved this book, Maria used quotes and stores from tons of people. By the end all of these were running together in my head and I had to go back to remember which story went with which law. If she could have focused on less people and just stuck to a few influential people in her life instead of 100, it would have been more helpful as a reader.

3. When discussing resilience, I do not exactly see how that is helpful to a manager even after reading the book. I do not think she explained it very well. The examples she used did not seem like examples of resilience. As I see resilience as important I think it is important for other people to witness. I think she could of explained it better is my only suggestion.

Reading this book made me think differently about the topic in these ways:

1. I never thought of each law as being necessary. I though each person had some, but I did not think we each needed to have them all. I still think many successful people may not have all of these qualities and they are still very successful and have a purposeful life.

2. After reading the novel I think that vision and purpose are the too most profound and important laws of enduring success. Without those none of the other laws are even possible. We must in the beginning pick a path and the way we are going to attain that success before moving on to having courage and integrity.

3. This novel made me see enduring success in a new light. When I saw the title of this book and read the reviews I expected to be reading a book on how to become a successful business person or millionaire, but that is almost the exact opposite of what Maria discusses. She made me see success ad different for every person. Some people just want to have a happy family, some want to graduate high school, hold a baby, graduate from Harvard, become a lawyer, or even be in the military. For each person in the world personal success means something different.

I’ll apply what I’ve learned in this book in my career by:

1. I need to pick and vision and decide which path want my life to lead, then I will follow the laws to help me get there. These laws are just a roadmap to follow. Whenever they lead me I know mistakes are inevitable and bouncing back from them is what will define my life.

2. I am also going to do a tasks Maria discuses, taking money out of the question. If every job in the world paid the same amount what career would you choose. She says that is how you should choose a job and that is what I’m going to do. Put all the possibilities together and choose which one will make me feel the most fulfilled and worth something to someone.

3. One of the most important laws I think I could use in my career is integrity. I think this is an attribute that many do not have. They do what it takes to make the most money or gain the most clients. People often think what other people do not see will never be found out but as we witness daily things always come out. Being respected to me is a main quality I need in my career and hope to attain.

Here is a sampling of what others have said about the book and its author:

In searching for reviews of this novel I found plenty of them, but I did not want to write about the ones on the back of the book or from the publishers on how many stars she had, I wanted to know what real people like me thought of the book. I hope all loved it just as I did and that’s what I set out to find. As you will see in my video many people love and respect Maria and her opinion so as she did many interviews about her book the one that stood out to me the most was Good Morning America. Maybe because that is one of my favorite news channels around, but as a fellow anchor she set out to discuss politics and then her book with Matt Lauer and as we see from the video he definitely approves of the book and suggests it to many.

After seeing several interviews about her book and people discussing it, I wanted to find comments from normal people. So I set out to Google Books and looked up this book and found people felt the same way as I did about the book. One reader commented by saying “Excellent advise for all people. Easy, and compelling to read. Short and to the point.” (Google). This is almost exactly how I felt. It was an easy read and got to the motivating point. Another reader commented on how they thought Maria did an excellent job because she did not bring them men vs. women object in the novel. She actually did the exact opposite by interviewing Sarah Palin who said being a women has never become a obstacle or a benefit to her. Another great comment I loved was, “it’s a map to find inner strength”. I think Maria would be especially happy about that one because from reading the introduction we see that is why she wrote this book for motivation and for people to understand themselves and what it takes.

Bibliography

Bartiromo, M. (2010, April 1). Maria Bartiromo’s 10 laws of enduring success. Huff Post, Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maria-Bartiromo/maria-

Bartiromo, M. (2010). The 10 laws of enduring success. (p. 293). New York: Random House.

Google Books: The 10 laws of enduring success (2010). [Online forum comment]. Retrieved from http://books.Google.com/books/about/The_10_Laws_of_Endur-ing_Success.html?id=OON81fb9NUMC

Lauer, M. (Performer) (2010). Want enduring success? [Web]. Retrieved from http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/36105005/ns/today-books/t/bartiromos-laws-enduring-success/

Pouchot, A. (2010, October 12). Book Review: The 10 laws of enduring success. The Levo Le Gue, Retrieved from http://www.levoleague.com/expand/book-Bartiromo/

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Contact Info

To contact the author of this article, “A Summary and Analysis of The 10 Laws of Enduring Success by Maria Bartiromo for Practicing and Aspiring Managers” please email Tlfruchtnicht@gmail.com.

About the Publisher

David C. Wyld (dwyld.kwu@gmail.com) is the Robert Maurin Professor of Management at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, Louisiana. He is a management consultant, researcher/writer, and executive educator. His blog, Wyld About Management, can be viewed at http://wyldaboutmanagement.blogspot.com/. He also serves as the Director of the Reverse Auction Research Center (http://reverseauctionresearch.com/), a hub of research and news in the expanding world of competitive bidding. Dr. Wyld also maintains compilations of his student’s publications regarding:

management concepts (http://toptenmanagement.blogspot.com/)
book reviews (http://wyld-about-books.blogspot.com/) and
international foods (http://wyld-about-food.blogspot.com/).

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3 Comments

faidzinn

Posted November 11, 2011 at 3:59 am

very very nice share … awesome. please visit my blog http://bit.ly/myisland (Hawaii)
Ryan McCray

Posted November 17, 2011 at 2:10 pm

Every day we see people make mistakes and try to cover them up with fame and money, but having integrity to first make the right ethical decisions and then have the strength to own up to those wrong doing is what integrity is. The main ideas of this book is clearly written and easily understandable in this well written summary.
Reid Blundell

Posted December 5, 2011 at 3:47 pm

Self Knowledge, vision and purpose all drive success. Integrity is an undermined characteristic that truly pays off in the long run. Seems like one of the better books thus far.