Guest Articles | Chris Zavadowski's Massive Leverage Marketing

Get Out Of the Alligator Pit At Least An Hour Every Day

Getting Out of the Alligator Pit Recently, two business partners came to visit me, looking for magical help with their host of terrible problems. Without dragging you through all the details, the bottom line: they have no terrible problems. They have a few minor problems. But, overall, they’re in pretty good shape. Theirs is a business that peaked at about 2.5 million, dipped to 1.6, but is now back up to 1.8, may break 2 this year “as is”, has lost some markets but gained different opportunities, and is satisfactorily if not excitingly profitable as compared to industry norms. But to hear these two, you’d think the sky was falling.

The blunt truth: they need a therapist, not a marketing consultant. Actually, they need to start with a very simple but important strategy….

One of the Eternal Truths that I quote in one of my books is: when you are up to your ass in alligators, it’s difficult to remember that your original objective was to drain the swamp. It’s easy to get so caught up in managing all the problem parts of a business that you never do anything else.

And that’s a sure path to where these two partners are now: burn out. I could give ‘em the all-time killer sales letter, the best marketing campaign ever devised, and it wouldn’t do them much good…when they go to the office each day wishing they weren’t there, fatigued from first thing on, going through the motions, viewing their activities as drudgery…and end the day without any sense of measurable progress toward meaningful goals…their ‘walking dead’ aura pervades ever nook and cranny, every employee, every customer, every aspect of their business.

It’s the psychic equal of trying to attract a lot of customers to a restaurant that smells like rotting, burning flesh.

Prescription: each and every day, keep a pre-set, inviolate appointment with yourself or with one or two key people, out of sight and hearing of the alligator pit, no matter how many alligators there are or how hungry they are, to do nothing but focus and work on positive, productive plans and strategies that look to the future, that are linked to goals and progress, that you can be excited and optimistic about.

Simplistically, this is a means of maintaining perspective. Even better, add taking one action, getting one thing done every day, no matter what, that you know moves you forward, toward positive goals. Go home if you must knowing you spent 7 hours and 58 minutes in the alligator pit, but at least you found 2 minutes to put something in motion that will improve things.

– By Dan S. Kennedy, serial entrepreneur, from-scratch multi-millionaire, speaker, consultant, coach, author of 13 books including the No B.S. series, 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

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On Achievement, Prosperity, and Envy

Oscar Wilde said: “It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.” There’s nothing wrong with both, of course. Those who insist that money doesn’t buy happiness are usually short on money, ignorant of means of getting any, and selling their philosophy hard because misery loves company. Mark Twain wrote that, actually, no one can stand prosperity – another man’s.

Money can’t buy happiness, but absence of money, endless worry about it, and envy and resentment of those who have it most certainly buys unhappiness. There are reasonably happy, almost poor people. I know some. But they are rare. The lack of financial security wears a person down.

I’d also note, making a great deal of money by honest means does not guarantee unhappiness. I know quite a few 7-figure earners and rich folks who are quite happy. And it shouldn’t just be about personal happiness anyway – such a childish pursuit. There is some ethical obligation for being here, to be constructive, productive and contribute, whether by creating magnificent art, or writing an influential book, or building a company and creating jobs, or amassing and being a good steward of wealth, or being the best schoolteacher, nurse, cop, taxi driver or whatever you can be, and being willing to do tasks and bear responsibilities that don’t necessarily produce happiness-as-you-go in order to accomplish significant things.

Money is not the only measurement of such accomplishment, but it is certainly a valid measurement; money is a mirror reflection of commercial value created. Those who resent the rich are often, truly, resentful of their own failure to create such value. It’s not a constructive emotion, and others’ having and expressing it ought not influence you in the least.

One of the great benefits of my work is the up-close relationships I have with people I categorize as Renegade Millionaires, and beyond that, getting paid to be keen observer of many others similarly striped. An interesting thing I find about them is, compared to most, little time or thought or angst given to the question of happiness; and compared to most, much more time and thought and energy and, yes, angst given to achievement.

It’s easy to lose sight of the central question: are you choosing goals for yourself that are significant and rewarding to you, and progressively achieving them? If you went to Harvard Law School and now choose not to practice law and instead live as an itinerant cowboy, sleeping under the stars and drinking campfire coffee from a rusty tin cup, and you’re honestly, authentically happy about that, more power to ya – unless you have unpaid loans and debts to family, or institutions for your education, or other responsibilities that must be honored and discharged.

If you make millions and wish to spend much of it on wine, women and wine, and it’s your money, and you do no harm to others, have at it. It’s unlikely, though, that such things absent achievement and contribution will long sustain happiness, but you’re welcome to try. The trick in it all is honesty with self.

Earl Nightingale observed, that when it’s all said and done, each person is about as happy or unhappy as they choose to be. That’s true as far as it goes. Happiness is amazingly subjective, but not entirely subjective. For one person, never even having to think about money makes for happiness. For another, with no economic necessity, still, redeeming a coupon and getting a good deal makes them happy. But there is fact: achievement contributes to happiness; lack of achievement contributes to unhappiness. Envy contributes only to unhappiness. And much criticism masks envy.

Your business is YOUR business. Never forget it. That’s the core philosophy behind so much of my work, including books I hereby self-servingly but also sincerely suggest you get and read: NO B.S. RUTHLESS MANAGEMENT OF PEOPLE AND PROFITS; NO B.S. TIME MANAGEMENT FOR ENTREPRENEURS; and NO B.S. WEALTH ATTRACTION IN THE NEW ECONOMY. As arrogant as it is to say, they just may change your life.

So, by all means, seek out role models, inspiring examples, teachers, mentors, advisors, experts – validated by relevant, successful opinion – and learn from and sift and sort and consider all they have to offer. But ultimately know that The Renegade Millionaire Way is by very definition the finding of one’s own way.

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The Narrow Path

The Narrow Path Government does not work because it is more about royalty remaining royalty than it is about results, so the only time it gets anything of real importance accomplished is in moments of severe crisis, when all the royals are equally threatened.

Business works – when it works – because of an opposite operating system. Small business works better than big business because its leaders have little fear of being deposed; they are the owners, a status actually higher than royals (which is why royals despise business owners), so they can act without political considerations.

For that reason, they are often proactive instead of only reactive. Because they deal in real rather than fictitious numbers, have a limit on debt they can get their hands on, and eat profit, they often make intelligent and rational decisions. Many work at defusing problems at their tiniest, in their infancy, rather than postponing doing so as long as possible, until the monster has grown big enough to eat them.

If you stand back and observe all this, you can see what works and what doesn’t work quite clearly, and make your personal behavioral and business practices choices accordingly. If you will.

Felix Dennis is a Renegade Millionaire – actually worth about $500-million, which he manufactured for himself, entirely on his own, from scratch. He is one of Britain’s richest citizens. In his newest book, The Narrow Road, he tells more blunt truth about what works in the making of money, more succinctly than any other credible person I’ve ever read on the subject.

I am more simpatico with his conclusions than I am with anyone else’s. Like me but more so, Dennis is offensive to many and frightening to many more. Truth is rarely pleasing or reassuring, except to the very tiny number of people who prefer it to being pleased or reassured. I suggest getting and reading this little book, but in a well-lit room, not in gloom inhabited by scary shadows.

Unlike most authors of most success genre content, he makes no attempt to deliver ideas that will be popular with a large audience. This mirrors my own approach as an author, spanning, now 32 years and more than 20 published books. (www.NoBSBooks.com), My scariest is No B.S. Ruthless Management of People and Profits.

One very big difference between the path most are on versus The Renegade Millionaire Way is mixed agendas vs. laser-focused dedication to what works. The Renegade Millionaire Way is simple: find what works and use it. (That’s what being part of a great mastermind group is all about. Why coaching is important.)

Others’ way is far more complicated. It is cluttered with: what will people think of me? am I permitted to do this? but we’ve never done it this way. we should do get more consensus. my peers are all rushing off to do the new thing and I don’t want to be left behind. will this make me popular? liked? or gossiped about? what if it sparks criticism about me on Google?

Ordinary business owners are trying to run fast through a dense forest of all these concerns, thus bumping into trees at every turn, spending a lot of time lost and confused. Renegade Millionaires have left that forest and are running on a clear, paved path.

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