I dispense.
I have occasionally been introduced as The Professor of Harsh Reality. This does NOT mean I’m negative. If anything, I’m one of the most optimistic, positive-minded people you’ll ever meet. However, I do not believe in confusing positive thinking with fantasy. And the word “optimism,” like many words in our perplexing English language, has more than one meaning. There’s a mammoth difference between earned, deserved, justified optimism and wild-eyed, blue-sky, stubborn optimism. One of the biggest optimists I’ve ever known had brief peaks of amazing entrepreneurial success but could never sustain them, more frequently had shockingly deep lows of entrepreneurial failure, acted with appalling irresponsibility as a business owner and organizational leader, abused investors, spent five years in a state penitentiary, and is ending his life broke and estranged from family and friends—enormous talent and know-how wasted. His self-destruction is tragic. Extreme, but then, I see a great deal of business tragedy caused by the same basic disease: a refusal to deal with “what is.”
I’ve discovered that I’m most successful when I have a firm grip on what is and least successful when caught wrestling with what ought to be. Creating your own reality of choice is what being an entrepreneur is all about, but it has to be built on solid ground not fairy dust.
If you are already in business for yourself, this book will help you go forward into The New Economy more astutely, efficiently, productively, and confidently. I think you’ll also catch yourself nodding as you go along, saying to yourself, “This guy has been where I live.” Sometimes there is value in just finding out you’re not alone! In fact, the very first “success education” that I was ever exposed to, in my early teens, was a set of recordings titled “Lead the Field” by Earl Nightingale, in which he gave me badly needed permission to violate the “norms” I saw around me, with his dramatic statement:
“If you had no successful example to follow in whatever endeavor you choose, you may simply look at what everyone else around you is doing and do the opposite, because– THE MAJORITY IS ALWAYS WRONG.”
That may not be a precise, verbatim quote; it is as I recall it and have it stored in my subconscious as a primary guiding principle. This, for example, led to my strategy of deliberately questioning all industry norms and deliberately violating most of them, and encouraging my clients to do the same. It also led to my coining of the term “Mediocre Majority” to succinctly describe the vast undistinguished middle of any industry or profession. Anyway, Earl said a lot of things I had been thinking but had never heard anyone validate, and that gave me a great boost of confidence and conviction. Maybe some of my words, here, will do the same for you.
Most entrepreneurs tell me that, because of this feeling they get from this book, they are instantly eager to share it with other entrepreneurs. Please do so! If you want some place to send them, refer to www.NoBSBooks.com. There you and anyone you direct there will find on-demand video interviews of me hosted by Kristi Frank, who competed on Donald Trump’s The Apprentice television show, free excerpts and previews from many of my books, additional free resources, and more.
If you have not yet started in business but intend to, this book might scare you off. If it does, consider it a favor; you’re too easily spooked to succeed anyway. The entrepreneurial arena and The New Economy is no place for the timid, nervous, or easily worried to come and play. If it doesn’t scare you off, it will help you avoid many pitfalls and problems and help you cope with those that can’t be avoided. It will not cover the basics. There are plenty of books out there on the basics and we’re not going to cover the same ground all over again. This is not a how-to-start-a-small-business book. This is a go-for-the-jugular success book.
As I said earlier, I am not a fuzzy-headed academic, pocket protector and wingtip shoes accountant, or other theorist, although there are plenty of these pretenders writing business books. I’m also not a retired authority who runs a business in my memory. I’ve been on the firing line meeting a payroll, battling the bankers and bureaucrats, struggling to satisfy customers, and solving real business problems. Over the years, I’ve arrived at a point where my own business is engineered to meet all my lifestyle preferences—for example, only one employee, in a distant office, not underfoot; no set hours; no unscheduled phone calls. But still, I deal with clients and vendors and real business life just like you do. I am invested in and advising several different businesses including start-ups, including a software company that earned a spot on the Inc. 500 list of fastest growth companies two years in a row, and a chain of upscale men’s barber shops. I also work very hands-on with clients in a wide variety of businesses, as well as being “the consultant to the consultants”’—I advise over 50 different leading marketing and business consultants, each exclusively serving a different business or professional niche, in total in direct, hands-on relationships with over one million small business owners. I am still on the front lines myself and I am behind the scenes and intimately involved with a broad diversity of businesses. I live with independent entrepreneurs every day of my life—like some daring researcher in the wild, not just observing, but living with the lions and tigers and bears. I want you to know this because I think it makes this book more valuable to you.
I’ll never forget taking over a company with 43 employees, never having managed more than 2 people in my life. I grabbed every management book I could get my paws on and sucked up all the experts’ advice. Then, after a couple of months of getting my brains beat in every day by my employees, I started to look critically at the credentials of those “expert” authors. Most of them had never—I repeat, never—managed a workforce. These geniuses spewing out creative management, non-manipulative management, Japanese management, open-door management, and everything-else management wouldn’t have survived a week in the real world. I resent those authors to this day. And it’s a shame that a lot of college kids get that management theory; that is, fantasy sold to them as reality. So, I chucked all their books, rolled up my sleeves, used my common sense, and started finding out what really works and what doesn’t.
Ever since then, I’ve looked at every new business book with suspicion. Most won’t pass muster because most can’t pass the real-experience test. I was originally motivated to write this book largely because reading most of the other books written for and sold to entrepreneurs turned my stomach. I am just as sickened by most of the most current crop.
I also want you to know that there are a lot more things I haven’t got a clue about than there are things I understand, and, in this book, I have not dealt with any of the many things I’m in the dark about. Everything in here is based on my own expensive experience. It may not be right. You may not agree with it. But at least you should know that I didn’t swipe it out of somebody else’s book, give it a jazzy new psychobabble name, and pass it off as a new miracle tonic.
I also know you can’t eat philosophy. So, while there is a lot of my own philosophy in this book, its primary job is showing you how to make more money then you ever imagined possible, faster than you can believe possible. This is a book about getting rich. If that offends you, please put this book back on the shelf or take it back to the store and get a refund. Spend your money on milk and cookies instead. You’ll be happier. In fact, I’d like to quickly clear up a big misconception about what being an entrepreneur and owning and building a business is all about. The purpose is not to employ people, not to do social good, not to pay taxes. A lot of liberals think those are the purposes of business. Nuts to them. The purpose of being an entrepreneur is to get really, really rich, and reward yourself for taking on all the risk and responsibility with exactly the kind of life and lifestyle you want. Facilitating that is the sole aim of this book.
Before getting into the “meat,” on the next few pages you’ll find a brief description of my business activities past and present, and what my current business looks like. I think you’ll benefit more from the book if you understand where I’m coming from; however you can choose
