How to build a career you love: Bill Gurley's five principles

Executive overview

Most people choose careers based on status or money, then burn out when someone with genuine passion outworks them. Bill Gurley studied three luminaries — Bobby Knight, Bob Dylan, and Danny Meyer — who each reached the top of vastly different fields and found the same underlying pattern.

The edge isn't talent — it's obsessive, self-directed preparation fuelled by immense passion.

The three case studies

• Bobby Knight: became a head coach at 31 by spending his first five years building relationships with the best basketball minds in the country, not by performing inside the gym.
• Bob Dylan: hitchhiked 1,200 miles from Minneapolis to New York with a guitar, a suitcase, and $10 — to get close to the performers he was studying; mastered folk music by consuming more of it than anyone else.
• Danny Meyer: quit a $125,000-a-year job to earn $12,000 working in restaurants, then paid to work in Europe; spent two years in obsessive self-directed study before opening Union Square Cafe at 27.

The five principles

1. Find your passion — pick a profession about which you have immense personal passion, not your parents' or family's. You cannot fake passion; someone who truly loves the field will outrun you.
2. Hone your craft — be obsessive about knowing everything you can. It is possible to be the most knowledgeable person in any subject; information is freely available, so there is zero excuse not to be.
3. Develop mentors — take every chance to meet people known for success in your field. Ask questions, document what you hear, send notes when you use their advice, get them bought into your development. Never stop pursuing mentors, even after you're successful.
4. Embrace peer relationships — connect with peers on the same journey. Share best practices without worrying about proprietary knowledge; it is not a zero-sum game. Celebrate their accomplishments as your own.
5. Be gracious and pay it forward — give credit to the mentors and peers who helped you. Eventually become the mentor for others coming up. Bobby Knight mentored Coach K; Coach K later asked Knight to induct him into the Hall of Fame.

The Sam Hinkie thread

• Hinkie grew up in a town of 5,000, became a Bain analyst, and first said "sports GM" out loud at a lunch — people laughed.
• He cold-emailed NFL teams offering to work as an unpaid intern; spent spring break on a Southwest Airlines road show visiting five or six teams.
• Interned at the Houston Texans while flying back and forth from Stanford, building draft-valuation software the coaches resisted.
• Joined the Houston Rockets at 27 as special assistant to the GM; helped build the NBA's best analytics department.
• Became GM of the Philadelphia 76ers in 2013, almost exactly ten years after telling his parents his goal.
• After leaving the 76ers, launched 87 Capital — named after the 87-vote margin in LBJ's 1948 Senate race, a reminder that the losing candidate "won back his life's work and his family."

What self-directed study looks like in practice

• Bobby Knight filled out 74 three-by-five cards diagramming plays, then sat on Pete Newell's floor and worked through every one with him.
• Bob Dylan described himself as a "musical expeditionary" — he knew more about folk music than anyone when he broke through.
• Danny Meyer drove through Texas and North Carolina tasting 14 variations of chopped pork, noting differences in smoke, sauce, texture, and crackling before opening a barbecue restaurant.
• The will to win is universal; the will to prepare is rare — that gap is where dream careers are built.