Author: David Shama

I wasn’t surprised when Harvey Mackay’s assistant, Greg Bailey, called on Monday to let me know my interview with Mackay needed to be at 9 p.m.  Mackay, 77, keeps long hours including in the coming weeks when he will stop in at least 25 cities to promote his latest book, Use Your Head to Get Your Foot in the Door: Job Search Secrets No One Else Will Tell You.

I’ve known Mackay, the Minneapolis businessman who has written five New York Times bestselling business books, since the late 1960s.  He’s been practicing multi-tasking and working 24-7 before both terms were well known jargon.

About 30 years ago it was a coup for a business group to visit the closed society of Fidel Castro’s communist Cuba.  Mackay led a Greater Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce group to Cuba and vowed not to sleep while there so he could take in as much as possible.

“That’s true,” Mackay remembered this week.  “I hate to sleep and I don’t like to go to sleep because I am afraid I will miss something.”

When Mackay was a student at the University of Minnesota he consulted with experts who told him his longevity wouldn’t be jeopardized by sleeping about five hours a night.  “I’ve been going from 1 to 6 a.m. almost all my life,” he said.

Minimizing sleep has been part of a success formula allowing Mackay to build and run his $100 million Minneapolis envelope company, sell 10 million copies of his business books (including Swim With the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive), write a weekly syndicated column published in 52 newspapers, and travel the world promoting the books and giving speeches.  Along the way he and wife Carol Ann have raised a family while living in Minneapolis and Phoenix.

Mackay’s father, Jack, was a journalist and bureau chief for the Associated Press in the Twin Cities.  He was also a mentor to his son and among his life lessons was this message: “Help others.”

Young Mackay was told to devote 25 percent of his time to volunteerism and he’s been doing that since he was 21.  Over the years Mackay has focused on helping others with career development, and not just through books, speeches and consulting.  He estimates that in the last 45-plus years he’s had over 400 personal consulting sessions with people who have come through his “front door” looking for help with their careers.

Mackay’s books have been translated into 40 languages and distributed in 80 countries.  He’s had countless people thank him for his advice in-person, with letters and in other ways.  “What keeps me going is…real simple.  When you know that you’re able to help a lot of people all over the world, it’s very satisfying,” Mackay said.

Two years ago former NBA player Vinny Del Negro, then working as the Phoenix Suns assistant general manger, sought Mackay’s counsel.  He wanted to be an NBA head coach.  But he had no previous head coaching experience.  Even in grade school.

The lack of coaching experience concerned Mackay but didn’t sideline his belief that he could help Del Negro.  In fact, he “guaranteed” that Del Negro would be a finalist for every coaching job he applied for because Mackay was confident of his student’s ability and dedication to apply the concepts he taught him.

Del Negro’s story is the subject of the first chapter in Use Your Head to Get Your Foot in the Door: Job Search Secrets No One Else Will Tell You.  Mackay details how Del Negro applied for but didn’t get the Phoenix head coaching job but only a few months later was hired as rookie coach of the Chicago Bulls.

Last spring Del Negro’s Bulls captivated basketball fans when they played and lost a classic seven game playoff series against the defending NBA champion Boston Celtics.  Two games went into overtime, one was a double overtime and another a triple overtime. The underdog Bulls were led by a first year coach whose determination Mackay describes in the book as “unscalable.”

The will to succeed is something Mackay preaches in Use Your Head to Get Your Foot in the Door: Job Search Secrets No One Else Will Tell You.  The book jacket proclaims: “You can never be sure your job will exist in five years—or five weeks. So you’d better think of your career as a perpetual job search. That demands a passion for lifetime learning and the skills for relentless and effective networking.”

Mackay’s latest book is a how-to on both career development and maintenance.  It’s filled with tips on interviewing, negotiating, rejection, technology and, of course, networking (he’s been a Rolodex champ for decades).  You will also read about warning signals in the work place that can indicate termination is near.

The book even comes with a guarantee.  Mackay will refund the purchase price if after six months you conscientiously apply the book’s principles and still don’t find a job.  (More details in the book).

What does Mackay consider the most important must-do for sports owners and executives to consider when hiring coaches or managers?  The answer is identifying winners, according to Mackay.  That means detailed research on candidates, investigating with such thoroughness that Mackay refers to it as CAT scanning the prospective hires.  “At the end of the day you really should know how many cavities they have inside their mouth,” he said.

Then Mackay talked about having patience once a great sports hire is made. He said eventual Super Bowl winning head coaches like Jimmy Johnson and Chuck Noll only won one game in their first NFL seasons.  In recent months the press wanted to fire Del Negro, the director of last spring’s near miracle upset.  Del Negro answered back, Mackay said, by making NBA history when his team won five consecutive road games against teams with above .500 records.

Mackay loves athletics.  His book includes former NFL coach Tony Dungy who Mackay helped recruit to the University of Minnesota to play quarterback, and if you look through the index you will see references to former Gophers coach Lou Holtz (another Mackay recruit), Muhammad Ali, Bob Knight, Shaquille O’Neal, Red McCombs and others associated with sports.

Mackay graduated from Minnesota in 1954.  He played on the Gophers golf team after being a three time city champion at St. Paul Central High School.  His love of golf continues to this day, an activity he uses to boost his health by walking the course, not riding in a golf car.

Last year he went to Scotland to play golf.  “I shot my age (76)…in a tournament at St. Andrews which was a huge thrill,” Mackay said.

In the next few weeks there won’t be a lot of time for golf.  A sampling of book promotional activities next week includes a Monday morning TV appearance on “Fox & Friends,” a book signing in Minneapolis on Thursday and an interview on the Larry King show Saturday night.

The Minneapolis book signing will be from 3 to 8 p.m. at the Barnes & Noble located at 801 Nicollet Mall.  Not only will Mackay be autographing books, but he will offer some wisdom in a talk from 7 to 7:15 p.m.  Mackay said all royalties for the books sold at the event will be donated to the Salvation Army.

With the momentum of past best sellers and positive early reviews of his latest book, Mackay is not about to stop writing and helping others.  He plans to pitch 15 or more newspapers about joining his syndicated column list, plus another book is coming within a year.

Mackay knows the title already but won’t say much about the book. “It’s such a great title people will steal it, but it will be a business book,” he said.  “It will be out within 12 months.”

And we know between now and then Harvey Mackay will be busy.