Why People Fail – A series of No B.S. Articles from Dan Kennedy

If Your Income’s Not Where You Want It, There’s A Reason

“One of my earliest mentors had his office walls adorned top to bottom, side to side, with big, handwritten signs intended as cautions to others as well as reminders for himself. If you’ve ever been in a direct sales environment, you’ve probably seen such a place. Two of the biggest signs read “Thumb-Suckers Not Welcome Here” and “You Can Hire Spellers For Minimum Wage”.

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He was a millionaire, and in one company, held a commission record at the time of slightly over $1-million earned in 37 months. But he could not spell. And flaunted it. He said that, since you could hire perfect spellers for minimum wage, he preferred learning and thinking about more important things, things it was not so easy to pay cheaply for. He was talking about the concept of value. Value is fundamental. In In boom times or tough times, in big business or small business or any kind of business, even in any occupation or career, the person who makes himself most valuable and creates the most value for others (as they perceive it and are willing to pay for it) always prospers. If your income isn’t where you’d like it to be, you’re not creating enough value. His advice to me, said less elegantly than this, was to find and master something so valuable to enough other people that they will cheerfully pay just about anything for it, and devote all your time and energy to selling and doing that. Most people who fail to achieve their aspirations in business do the exact opposite. They let themselves be consumed doing things of low value, then are surprised to discover they reap small harvests. To be fair, getting yourself organized and disciplined to be relentlessly focused on creating value by making yourself more valuable – daily – by always learning more, acquiring and processing more information, running more experiments, making more useful contacts; and by doing the most valuable things you can do is not an easy task. I’ve written four different books that reveal different paths converging at this same point. Association with others working on this same skill is helpful. Dis-association from those not dedicated to this premise is also helpful.

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Which brings me to the other sign. He had zero tolerance for adults still sucking their thumbs. If you wanted to whine and cry like a baby when something didn’t go your way, you were told to go home, stick a pacifier in your mouth and hug your blankie. At the time I’m writing this, the economy’s a bit tough and bruising and I hear too many adults who sound like babies. Actually, it’s just one of those times that the entire economy woke up on the wrong side of the bed grumpy and is telling everybody: thumb-suckers not welcome here. And this must be your personal policy, if you are to prosper and thrive while most others do not. Which is, incidentally, all the time; fewer than 5% have 95% of the wealth flow to them all the time; the disparity is just more stark, the judgment of the critical marketplace more harsh and quick and visible at some times than others. You need zero tolerance for thumb-sucking, personally, or by anybody you permit in your world: staff, associates, vendors, even customers, friends, neighbors, media voices you listen to, authors you read. The power of association is an enormously powerful, irresistible force, for good or evil, for gain or loss, for growth or regression. You dare not discount or underestimate it. You can and should strategically use it for advantage.”

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Articles © 2009/Glazer-Kennedy Insider’s Circle LLC. All rights reserved.

Why People Fail – A series of No B.S. Articles from Dan Kennedy

What Will You Accept?

“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.

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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 last week, you get what you accept.

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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.

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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, shit 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.

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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.”

Articles © 2009/Glazer-Kennedy Insider’s Circle LLC. All rights reserved.

“Every year back spring comes, with nasty little birds yapping their fool heads off and the ground all mucked up with plants.”
So said: (a) W.C. Fields or (b) Dorothy Parker or (c) Woody Allen.

Dorothy Parker, and if you haven’t read her, you’ve missed one of the most vicious biting wits and grand cynics of all time. When you visit NYC, you can stay at or have a drink at the Algonquin Hotel, home for years of Dorothy Parker’s famous roundtable, where literary lions met to drink and spar.

“You can be married and bored or single and lonely. Ain’t no happiness nowhere.”
So said: (a) Chris Rock or (b) Elizabeth Taylor or (c) Ann Landers. The correct answer is Chris Rock.

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It just seems few people are really happy or even content with much. We are all too eager to complain, myself included – and I stop myself often. Truth is, everybody does have something to complain about because no business, no career, no relationship, no one’s health, no life is ever free of problems, hassles, annoyances or disappointments for very long. Having a lot of money helps but I doubt there’s enough money, period, to insulate somebody from things worthy of complaint. I certainly have been willing to spend any sum, have spent quite a bit, and brought in a dozen experts, technicians, people from the manufacturer to fix my fireplace but, after 5 years trying, I still have a gas fireplace that sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t, with no rhyme or reason. It’s not as worthy of complaint as, say, coming home from Iraq missing a leg. But it’s still worthy of complaint. Right now, everybody’s complaining incessantly about gas prices – even though they pay more per gallon for bottled water and Starbucks, even though our prices are a bargain vs. other countries, even though we could easily go out less and cluster errands but don’t, and even though the economy’s booming. Nuts. Well, we’re never going to stop others or ourselves from complaining at times we should be celebrating and giving thanks. To a degree, our ever-restless dissatisfaction’s and complaints are the forces leading to invention, innovation and, in some cases, improvement. But I would offer this observation, for whatever it’s worth – the most successful people I know keep more of their complaints to themselves than they air and operate in a broad, general way, happy and enthusiastic, “on fire” about what they are doing and where they are going.

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I talk to a lot of people who complain about parts of their businesses, some of the work they must do. Charlie ‘Tremendous’ Jones says: “If you can’t get excited about the miserable job you’ve got right now, you’ll never get a good job worth being excited about.” I think that’s true hour by hour, day by day. Certainly there are lots and lots of people who would follow you into your lucrative business if they could only do the pleasant tasks – like kids licking the crème filling out and discarding the rest of the cookie or cake. The reason there’s so little competition at the top levels of the prosperity pyramid in America is NOT barriers erected to keep riff-raff out and the elite small in number; it’s mostly because most people won’t get their hands filthy doing all the ugly tasks that are required in order to get to do the pleasant ones. When I was speaking a lot, I got approached at least 1,000 times by people who wanted to be on stage and speak to thousands and make $100,000.00 in an hour or two. I found none were eager to learn the craft, create and perfect a presentation; study the 100 or so speakers and stand-up comedians I pointed them to; go find inconsequential venues like local car dealership sales meetings and Chamber meetings to practice; to create their own business filling seats so they could prove they could sell from the platform before asking someone to give them a valuable slot; then develop marketing materials; relentlessly mail to people who might hire them; write books and articles and newsletters to create prominence. And it doesn’t take long for most people to complain a lot about the endless hours in airports, the delayed or missed flights, the bad hotels, the bad food.

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Everybody’d love to be rich. Most people just aren’t willing to put up with all the crap you have to shovel and occasionally swallow for the privilege. In this American life, you pick your place and the prices you will pay for admission – so you really have little right to complain about either.

So if this is one of those days, think twice before complaining. Because the secret of secrets that we know and never speak of is that our exceptional success and prosperity has only a little to do with all the things those wishing they had what we have think it does – with education or expertise or who-you-know or luck, etc. What we know that we won’t speak of is it mostly has to do with a willingness to do a lot of things others can do but won’t.

The WHY PEOPLE FAIL articles are provided by Dan S. Kennedy, serial entrepreneur, from-scratch multi-millionaire, speaker, consultant, coach, author of 13 books including the No B.S. series (www.NoBSBooks.com), and editor of The No B.S. Marketing Letter. WE HAVE ARRANGED A SPECIAL FREE GIFT FROM DAN FOR YOU including a 2-Month Free Membership in Glazer-Kennedy Insider’s Circle, newsletters, audio CD’s and more: for information and to register, visit: www.FreeGift.com.

Articles © 2008/Glazer-Kennedy Insider’s Circle LLC. All rights reserved.

Why People Fail – A series of No B.S. Articles from Dan Kennedy

Watch The News, Make News.

I happen to be a politics junkie and, therefore, a news junkie. I even write political columns, so I have to pay attention daily. But I learned years ago that it is the news media’s job to make every problem a crisis, every item of earth-shaking, life-altering importance. Few news events actually are. As a matter of fact, most things wind up being about as important as you permit them to be.

Few people think of themselves as news-makers.

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All the world’s a stage, and on it there are players, but there are countless more spectators. It never dawns on people how much of their time is spent as a spectator, how little spent actually playing a game over which they exercise control. Millions watch football on any given Sunday. Only a small cadre of coaches scheme to win their games on Sunday, a small number of players work hard all week to be mentally and physically prepared to win the games in which they compete. It’s significant that the spectators rarely make news – the winning players and coaches do. And the spectators never get million dollar contracts to watch. They must pay for that privilege.

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There is that old cliché, about three kinds of people: those who make things happen; those who watch things happen; those who wonder what the heck happened, why, and why they were left out! There’s a lot of truth to the cliché. Most people act as if they are in a little boat set adrift in a vast ocean of circumstances beyond their control, rowing fast and frantically, looking about endlessly for someone to come to their rescue. Few are captains.

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It’s my observation that exceptionally successful people are very deliberative and purposeful about three things, in this regard. First, they act as captains. Every day – yes, every day – they set out on a charted course of their choosing; they never meander about aimlessly. Two, they are “makers”, creators, doers. They make things happen, make things move forward, get things done, sometimes through sheer force of will and refusal to accept or excuse less. In doing so, they are even, from time to time, news-makers, to their clientele, in their industry, in their community. Third, they seek association with people of this ilk, and abbreviate as best they can the time spent with or on people not so self-determining, self-motivating. They recognize just how powerful association is. My friend, the late Jim Rohn said that given the bank balances of the five people you hang out with the most, he could “guess” your bank balance with great accuracy. He also noted that rich people have big libraries, poor people prefer big TV’s – a way of asking you what sort of ideas you associate with most. A lot of people with 52” plasma’s and TV’s in three or four rooms of the house say they have no time to read.

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Most accomplishment or lack thereof is result of investment – not accident. Those who are endlessly, constantly disappointed with their incomes, businesses, lives, prefer believing in accident, luck, randomness as a comforting religion, but that’s delusional. Examination of most success reveals controllable causes, notably that person’s investments of his time, energy, money, in association with productive and provocative ideas, and people who are in the game, not in the bleachers.

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Up in the air. It’s a bird, it’s a plane – no, it’s SuperDan. By the time you read this, I will have flown to four cities and presented my ‘no-fail follow-up seminar’ and autographed books for four groups in L.A., Chicago, NYC and Orlando. And boy, are my arms tired. At age 20, this might have been fun. It still beats working for a living in a job. But it is annoying every time I hear politicians, particularly a certain recent presidential candidate, demonizing me for my success and suggesting that the Grand Canyon gap between my high income and others’ low incomes is evil and must be narrowed by government theft. In a recent episode of Gene Simmons’ show, his daughter ruefully said to him, “I think I’m taking on your work ethic.” To which he said, “Good.” I’m afraid I’m NOT the kind of Kool-Aid® the no-work-crowd wants to drink. I drive them away from Glazer-Kennedy with this kind of talk. I’m not sorry. And now that an overly generous economy has turned irritable and more demanding, and businesspeople and salespeople are having to dig in and work, I’m hearing a lot of whining. Most salespeople haven’t worked in ages. I was comparing notes about this with a friend last week and neither of us could even remember the last time we were “prospected” by a salesperson, followed up on by a salesperson we’ve previously bought something from. There’s crying in the car business, but no salesman or dealer from whom I’ve purchased new cars in the past 5 years has contacted me. There’s mass exodus of real estate agents in surrender, but none I’ve purchased a property from has contacted me to sell me another. Retail: from the clothing store in my hometown where I spent $1800.00 in my first visit two years ago…from the clothing store in my other home city, where I spent $500.00 on first visit…from a store in Vegas where I spent $2,000.00 on cowboy boots , no salesman has attempted contact. May they all be fired. May they all starve.

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Yes, in my WEALTH ATTRACTION book, I write in-depth about liberating yourself from the Work-Money Link. But I never said: don’t work, period. Nor did I suggest resenting it. I talked about injecting leverage into the equation, as many ways as possible: better customer or client selection; premium prices or fees with higher profit margins; better systems, delegation, outsourcing; smart use of media in place of manual labor; smart time management; money wisely invested. But I never suggested any or all of it as a substitute for work. I presented it as an enhancement of work. It would be more accurate, I suppose, to talk about breaking the strict hours for dollars link.

Leverage. So I want to promote my books. To do my four events in four cities in four consecutive days I used a chartered jet costing over $45,000.00. Sure, I could have flown commercial for a fraction of that cost; if careful and not choosy about routes and time, for as little as $3,000.00. But not done in a four day window. Done this way to minimize consumption of one of my most valuable assets, my time. Besides, I got InfusionSoft to pay for it. When self-made billionaire W. Clement Stone talked about “OPM” – Other Peoples’ Money – I listened very carefully. Plus, I tapped into InfusionSoft’s lists, and laid the burden of logistics on them. But this also allowed me to tap into Glazer-Kennedy lists and media in a different way, providing Bill with a way to serve Members, promote to non-Members, and support our Independent Business Advisors in four major markets at zero out-of-pocket cost. I created “banked leverage” with current or prospective publisher(s) by doing promotion few other authors could or would do. I hear you: “but I’m not an author and not interested in promoting books, so this doesn’t apply to me.” You wish I would talk about YOUR business – be it selling insurance or installing draperies or blacksmithing. But this is the way of all Renegade Millionaires: they’re masters at creating time efficient promotion for themselves and their businesses, with someone else picking up the tab. OPM, OPR, and OPC: other peoples’ money, other peoples’ resources and other peoples’ customers. But make no mistake: it’s not about avoiding work. In those four days, I did four days of hard, high pressure, exhausting work. But I’m leveraging it every way I can.

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The WHY PEOPLE FAIL articles are provided by Dan S. Kennedy, serial entrepreneur, from-scratch multi-millionaire, speaker, consultant, coach, author of 13 books including the No B.S. series (www.NoBSBooks.com), and editor of The No B.S. Marketing Letter. WE HAVE ARRANGED A SPECIAL FREE GIFT FROM DAN FOR YOU including a 2-Month Free Membership in Glazer-Kennedy Insider’s Circle, newsletters, audio CD’s and more: for information and to register, visit: www.FreeGift.com.