In the Renegade Millionaire System, I dispense this advice:

• BE the Wizard
• BEWARE the Wizard

Wizards are very powerful, so it is better to be one than to be influenced by one.

Everybody welcomes the convincing Mystic. People so desperately wish to Believe. That there is a long lost, ancient or a revolutionary new Something: cure, elixir, formula for easy riches or happy relationships or better sex or children that mind or growing 12 foot high tomato plants; a gizmo that turns corn into fuel or tree bark into gold doubloons; an Answer Man, Seer, Keeper of Secrets.

And in dark times, this desire intensifies. In dark times even kings subjugate themselves to the Mystics – which you know if you’ve studied history. People really don’t want rational explanations for how you do what you do, they prefer Believing that you possess Mystical Powers and Magical Secrets that you will use for their benefit.  To underestimate the power of secrets and secret powers is to ignore how humanity has been manipulated, controlled and ruled since its beginnings.

In these times, you can rise to greater heights of influence and power than at any other time, by turning up the wattage on your mysticism. In the dark, you glow. Doesn’t matter if you dispense investment advice or lawn care advice, are a dog whisperer or a presidential candidate, or a tax attorney or a mattress manufacturer – now, more than ever, is the time to speak of secret techniques and magic ingredients and unique abilities. To offer absolute certainty in an uncertain world. To declare unique and profound importance.

I’m speaking now about how you present yourself to the world.

If you sell a particular kind of mattress, you must present it as THE – emphasis on key word: THE – first, best, only “magic,” based on top secret technology invented for NASA and Olympic athletes – that relieves all back pain, delivers 10,000 more REMs per night, lets cellular structure rejuvenate thus slowing aging, helps you lose weight while you sleep; is THE secret to eternal youth and vitality.

It must be THE GREATEST discovery in medical science of this century. And you, as its spokesperson, must be the Grand Mystic of Sleep Science. You need an arsenal of Amazing Facts at your disposal.

You need practiced language and Profound Statements. You must convincingly promise THE Cure. For whatever ails them, economically, emotionally, physically.

To advance your education, I strongly suggest getting and reading the book CHARLATAN. It reads like a novel but is non-fiction. Not that you should be a charlatan; I presume you deliver legitimate value in whatever you sell or do. But that you should use the techniques of the master-charlatans of the ages. Nothing less will do.

When a group becomes lost and frightened in a dark cave, the man with the only flashlight automatically becomes their leader. Key word: only. It’s time to present yourself as the person with THE ONLY flashlight.

——————————————

– By Dan S. Kennedy, serial entrepreneur, from-scratch multi-millionaire, speaker, consultant, coach, author of 13 books including the No B.S. series (NoBSBooks.com), and editor of The No B.S. Marketing Letter. FOR A SPECIAL FREE GIFT FROM DAN FOR YOU including newsletters, audio CD’s and more: visit:
www.FreeDanKennedyNewsletter.com

In my relentless search for I don’t know what, I found an article in the December 1, 2008 edition of Nation’s Restaurant News, the trade journal of the restaurant industry, headlined :

“Operators Bank On Profit And Loss Scrutiny To Stay Afloat.”

It made me laugh out loud. The article states that “maximizing the profit and loss statement has become a mantra for restaurant operators during the current economic downturn.”

This is then presented as some sort of horrific torture imposed on the owners by a vicious economy.  What is not said, but should be, is that maximizing profit shouldn’t be paid attention to only after dire economic conditions occur, to be given temporary priority, only until ‘things get better.’

It’s supposed to be what anybody responsible for operating a business does everyday.

Including what’s then described in the article: ferreting out and cutting wasteful spending, controlling labor and administrative costs; creating products, offers and price propositions customers really want. Any business owner complaining about having to attend to these priorities because of a recession is a moron, and any trade-journal writer taking them seriously is dumber than a sandbox.

But this is why so many businesses fail.

When you turn on the news to see insurance giants exposed as valueless houses of cards, venerable auto companies as manufacturers of nothing but debt, retail and restaurant chains announcing massive store closings, make no mistake: their managements can point their fingers at the recession all they like, but it’s a lie. All the tough economy has done is expose the failures of the people at the helms.

Businesses never fail. People fail to run them profitably. Much of that is pure and simple negligence.

To be clear, negligence is, by definition, the failure to act with the care a prudent person would exercise. So, when Mort Zuckerman loses 30-million or 300-million of his charity’s dollars by having it all invested with Bernie Madoff for three years, claiming he didn’t even know the money was invested there by somebody he delegated its management to, he is obviously negligent.

If you leave a rake pointy side up on your front porch steps, with the lights burnt out, and the pizza delivery guy steps on it and falls and breaks his leg, you are negligent, will be successfully sued, and see your insurance rates go up.

There is a price for negligence, and there’s supposed to be.

In business, failure to closely and constantly monitor all the important numbers and benchmarks and predictive indicators (as detailed in Chapter 43 of my book ‘No B.S. Ruthless Management of People and Profits’) is negligence of the highest order.

Its bill may go unnoticed in boom times when money flows easily and everyone does well, but when the warm breezes change to bitter cold wind, and the accumulated tab for such negligence is presented and payment demanded, much pain occurs, much hand-wringing and whining and crying about the mean ‘n nasty recession is heard, and fools commiserate with each other, sharing the misery of their own sins of negligence.

If you own a business, by gum, run the darned thing.

Maximize profits every way you can, and never stop trying to find new and better ways to do so, from every valid source of input, ideas and information you can get your hands on or get connected with. At day’s end, ask: what do I know now (about maximizing profits) that I didn’t know this morning? And: what am I going to do tomorrow as a result of what I’ve learned?

Anything less is negligence.

——————————————

– By Dan S. Kennedy, serial entrepreneur, from-scratch multi-millionaire, speaker, consultant, coach, author of 13 books including the No B.S. series (NoBSBooks.com), and editor of The No B.S. Marketing Letter. FOR A SPECIAL FREE GIFT FROM DAN FOR YOU including newsletters, audio CD’s and more: visit:
www.FreeDanKennedyNewsletter.com

“He Smashed His Head Bloody Pounding It On His

Locker Door – And Broke Off Two Teeth Biting On It.”

You may recall a story like that from Dan Jenkins’ football novel, Semi-Tough. (Made into an okay movie.) The story is reportedly based on actual behavior of Howie Long when he was playing for the Oakland Raiders.

You now see a mild-mannered, pleasant Howie on the Sunday morning football show on FOX. That is not the Howie teammates and opponents saw on the field. There, they saw and encountered a man who hated to lose. In his newest novel, about the LPGA, The Franchise Babe, Jenkins again talks about the hate-to-lose element.

I find fewer and fewer people exhibiting this. In pro sports. In business.

Most are all too willing to accept losing and losses, to shrug them off, to end days without productive accomplishment, to miss sales, to let revenue escape, to let customers disappear, to bank excuses instead of money.

And as I said in the last article, you get what you accept.

I have always hated not doing well. Hate is, or is supposed to be a very strong word. Hate is dark and violent and intense. I mean it that way. I hate not doing well.

People interfering with my ability to do well, through negligence, incompetence, stupidity, have seen and felt my wrath. Like Howie, I have actually, physically injured myself – smashing fist into wall, steel file cabinet; kicking car fender repeatedly; etc. – in unchecked rage after screwing up badly.

When I set out in the A.M. with a To-Do List, I resist with every fiber of being, carrying an item on it over to the next day. I hate that.

When advertising, marketing or sales campaigns are slowed or sabotaged by peoples’ sloppy or careless implementation, I immediately begin scheming to rid my life of the culprits. I hate people who don’t hate things being f’d up.

I approve of the Oriental tradition of falling on one’s own sword when performing badly.

By normal standards, I suppose I am emotionally unstable or dysfunctional, and might be diagnosed as mentally ill, but then normal standards lead to normal results, which suck.

By the way, every doctor always expects me to have high blood pressure. I do not. I cause high blood pressure, I don’t have it.

Seems to me, if you don’t care deeply, passionately about getting whatever you’re doing right, done fast and on time, done in the way that produces best results, you ought to find something worth caring about to do – or find a way to do nothing at all.

If I had a team, I’d much rather have a Howie Long, and have to pry the damaged locker door from his hands and talk him out of the depths of rage, despair and depression over losing, than have a modern-day, laissez-faire, sh** happens, we’ll try to do better next time wimpus and struggle to talk him into performing.

When I look around the ranks of the rich, I see people like me who hate losing. When I look around everywhere else, I see loads of good losers.

At the moment, a lot of willing-to-accept-not-doing-well folks have been handed an extra supply of excuses – gas prices, real estate slump, Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy, etc. – and many are unconsciously delighted to have them.

Be careful. Their mental illness is contagious.

——————————————

– By Dan S. Kennedy, serial entrepreneur, from-scratch multi-millionaire, speaker, consultant, coach, author of 13 books including the No B.S. series (NoBSBooks.com), and editor of The No B.S. Marketing Letter. FOR A SPECIAL FREE GIFT FROM DAN FOR YOU including newsletters, audio CD’s and more: visit:
www.FreeDanKennedyNewsletter.com