On Power Read online

  When I was in my early teens, the great James Brown released a song called “Say It Loud—I’m Black and I’m Proud!” As a teenager who’d always felt very insecure, it was moving beyond words. Here was a black man who had likely dealt with more struggle in his life than even I had. And he was loud and proud. Feeling proud on the inside is one thing. But getting up there and singing about it publicly, and hearing your own voice saying those words, is something else entirely—it’s far more powerful. Until you stand up, arch your back, and proclaim to the world and to yourself that you deserve power and everything that comes along with it, until you actually hear those words coming out of your mouth, they won’t fully resonate.

  So say it out loud.

  Say it out loud to yourself. Every day.

  Before a boxer steps into the ring, he has to motivate himself. Before a tightrope walker gets on that wire (especially for the first time), he’d better be telling himself things like, “I know I can do it. I can do it.” Before a nervous teenager asks a beautiful girl out on a date, he should look in the mirror and tell himself that the things he’s planning to say will make her heart melt and swoon.

  Tell yourself the things that others won’t say to you.

  You don’t need them. You should be your own greatest cheerleader and motivator.

  If you find yourself at home dipping chips and watching yet another ball game, get up off the couch and say it out loud: “I’m going to do something.” Sound silly? Well, it works. I talk to myself all the time. I’m doing it right now. It’s the only way to get in touch with your true dreams and desires. When I talk to myself and psyche myself up, I tend to actually do something as a result. It’s certainly more likely than if I’d kept my big piehole shut. Religious motivation is similar. Praying by yourself is all well and good. But how much more motivating is it to go into your place of worship and to hear your pastor/priest/rabbi/etc. preach something, and then to repeat it back?

  So, yes, power and money are the essentials. Fame is overrated and fleeting. “Cool” is a moving target and the public is fickle. Power and money are different. If you learn how to harness them, and to use them wisely, they will last you a lifetime. Let’s dispel the idea that money and power corrupt and that they are the “root of all evil.” Instead, let’s embrace the idea that money and power are the roots that grow all other possibilities in life. Power has made my dreams come true, provided a wonderful life for my family, and allowed me to be charitable to people I have never met, more so than I ever could have as a poor kid in Israel and then New York.

  Power makes everything possible.

  4

  POWER TOOLS

  THE GOLDEN RULE:

  He who has the gold makes the rules.

  So you’ve bought this book and you want power. Good. So do I. I always want more power, and you should too. Every day. We’ll get into the historical, social, and ethical implications of power a bit later. But first, I want to cut to the chase. Quick and dirty, like a street fight. I want to give you a good, swift kick in the ass, to get your attention and open your eyes to the power that is out there for the taking. And don’t stand there waiting for your opponent’s jabs to come your way. You need to be the one who strikes first, who moves faster, to take the power away from him.

  No one is born powerful. We are all born bald, toothless, and vulnerable. And we’re all probably going to die bald, toothless, and vulnerable. But while we’re alive . . . we must live. When you’re a newborn baby, the slightest sound or movement is an assault to your senses. From that point on, gaining power over your environment is a constant uphill battle. It is not easy, and it was never supposed to be easy. Everything from learning to walk to learning how to invest takes immense effort. And, like learning to walk, you will be embarrassed. Your legs will shake. You will fall down. You may even be ridiculed. But then you are going to get back up and do it all over again.

  YOU WILL FAIL

  Let me be blunt about this fact, and then let me help you. Let me take a pail of ice-cold water and throw it in your face. You must accept this fact of life if you want power. Everything your mother told you about how you are special and how you can succeed at anything you put your mind to is simply not true. You will fail, many times over. Even once you have achieved a modicum of success, you will fail yet again.

  But what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Understanding and embracing this simple truth is what separates the powerful from the weak. This is true, and it will always be true. All the way up to the last breath you take. So ignore the word no. And ignore the failure. Every time you step up to the plate and strike out, be ready to push harder and try again. This is the way the world works. I didn’t make the rules. I’m just here to remind you that if you choose to believe all the negative crap people throw in your face, you will be the architect of your own downfall. Not them. The power is yours.

  This is one of the first reviews of KISS, during our very first tour:

  The gentleman who wrote this review of our little band, I am sure, didn’t have anything personal against us. I am quite sure he actually believed the words he wrote. So what? We chose to ignore him, as we do all of our critics, and that’s why the band is still around and thriving today. Your critics don’t count. You must ignore the negatives in your life and continue to move forward. You must be unrelenting and follow your dreams. And you must accept that you will fail. Just like I do. Every day. But I also win. And so will you.

  Here’s a famous story of failure that may sound familiar to you:

  When Harland David Sanders was seven years old, his father came home one day with a fever and later died in his bed, leaving the young boy responsible for feeding his siblings while their mother was at work. It was 1895 and his family had nothing. But he had to find a way to cook for his siblings. So the children all foraged for food, and Sanders learned to cook vegetables and then meat. What started as a bleak tragedy would turn out to be the catalyst for Sanders’s calling, despite his absolute lack of power and resources. He eventually left home to work on a farm, and after that he held various jobs until he ended up running a Shell service station in Kentucky. By this time it was the Depression, and Sanders was dead broke. He decided to start selling chicken in his service station as a way to make some extra money.

  Sanders was pressed for time, as his customers came to his station for gas, not to eat. The food was an afterthought, and he needed to find a way to cook his food quickly. So he developed a way to prepare his secret recipe by dropping the chicken into a pressure cooker instead of frying it in a pan the way all his competitors were doing. This made the chicken extra crispy—the way we still know and love it today. But then came the perfect storm: a highway was built that bypassed Sanders’s gas station/restaurant altogether. His dream was derailed, and he was forced to sell his business and live off his savings, teaching his recipe to a friend and allowing him to serve it in his restaurant. The friend’s restaurant flourished, and Sanders knew that he was really onto something. So he packed his bags and went from restaurant to restaurant with a pressure cooker and some seasoning, in hopes of franchising his recipe. He slept in his car, took free meals from the restaurants he visited whenever possible, and slowly but surely his persistence began to pay off. Eventually word spread: people loved his recipe, and potential franchisees started coming to him. He shipped his spices to franchised restaurants at four cents on every chicken sold and eventually sold his share of the company for $2 million (which would be $15 million today). Eventually he moved to Canada to oversee the Canadian branches of his company, and until his death, he continued building his business into the monolith that is KFC.

  Was Colonel Sanders born powerful? No. Was he given a handout? Of course not. He chased success down like a dog and didn’t stop running until he caught it. As you are reading this right now, you may have an idea that people are telling you is crazy. I’m sure many people told Colonel Sanders he was crazy. But in the end, your results will vindicat
e you, no matter how crazy your idea seems or how many people you might have to alienate in pursuing it.

  Can you cold-call businesspeople you find interesting? Are you willing to sleep in your car, pound the pavement, and never rest? I hope that the answer is yes. Because if you don’t have that same dedication to your vision, I will never hear of you and you will never have the success and the power that you deserve. This is where the gulf exists between those who become powerful and the rest. Even if you lack everything else—resources, connections, even talent—but you can retain this endurance and persistence, and never give up, you can seize power. I can all but guarantee that you don’t have it any harder than Sanders or any of the other figures we’ll speak about later in this book. They did it. And so can you.

  Now let’s get into the practical strategies for attaining power and keeping it. I call these the Power Tools.

  BEGIN WHEN YOU ARE YOUNG

  The way we teach our children to think about power is incredibly important. It has a huge influence later in life. What does playing with the Hulk, Thor, and other action figures teach a child about power? What about playing with Barbie? I don’t think it takes a child psychologist to figure this out.

  When we are taught to pursue power from a young age, we become more confident, powerful, and reassured adults. There are many aspects of the modern self-esteem movement that I think are misguided. Telling kids that everyone gets a trophy for participating does nothing to prepare them for the real world, and this will only lead to disappointment later. Kids must be taught about the world as it is, not as we would like it to be. They must also be taught that success is important and empowered to understand that they can succeed.

  Do you give your children a weekly allowance for doing nothing? Stop it. You’re training them to expect that money will just magically appear when they need it. It doesn’t work this way in the real world. Instead, teach them that nothing will happen for them unless they work for it. This will be especially important once they leave home at eighteen or so.

  When I think back on the moments from my childhood that turned me into the powerful adult I am today, I always end up thinking about the hardest moments. In today’s world, children are being given a free pass from hardship. We worry that too much homework is bad for them, that their schoolwork is too hard, that their classes start too early. We are preparing them for a world that doesn’t exist. When parents try to give their kids the things they never had, they end up doing more harm than good. Providing a cushy life for your kids is going to be more of a curse than a blessing in the long run.

  Instead, teach your kids, from an early age, to prepare for adulthood. Because if you’re not planning your own future, you will become part of someone else’s plan for their future. I think it’s a shame that classes on accounting, taxes, and job hunting are not mandatory in high school. But this is the world as it is. You have an obligation to make sure that your children learn about these things. Teach them that the world isn’t going to give them the life they want—they must help themselves. And if you want to give your children a weekly allowance, give them a quarter. After all, they already have all the food they can eat, you buy them most anything they want, and they have a roof over their head. For free.

  Warren Buffett’s father was incredibly strict with money, giving young Warren only five cents a week as allowance (which, even adjusted for inflation, is not very much). His father didn’t have much money himself, but he taught Warren the power that money carries and instilled in him a value system that launched the man he would become. Buffett passed this on to his own children—Buffett plans to donate most of his fortune to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation upon his death; his children have some modest stock in Berkshire Hathaway, but for the most part they must fend for themselves.

  If my kid asks me for a dollar on Monday morning and I fork it over without a care in the world—because, c’mon, it’s a dollar—what happens on Tuesday morning after he has gone out and spent that dollar on a Ring Pop? Other than the fact that his teeth will be rotting, he will have developed the belief that money is a flowing faucet in my house. And then, when he grows up, he will have no value system in place to regulate his cash flow.

  BE CONFIDENT

  Even before you earn a single dollar, before you land that dream job, power exists. Power existed before you came into the world, and it will exist after you exit the world. It also exists whether you access it or not. Power, for the purposes of this book, is the ability to make things happen. It is the ability to walk into an unfamiliar room and “own it.” Before you walk into the boardroom, or the bedroom, or any room, what is the single most important thing you can walk in with?

  Confidence in yourself.

  Without confidence, goals and tasks seem impossible, and become impossible. You must exude confidence for others to have confidence in you. There is an old saying: the door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman is not selling vacuums. He is selling himself. You must embody the type of power you wish to possess before you possess it. Power is more than having a lot of money, though money helps immensely. Your personality and the world’s perception of you translate to a sort of raw power that is hard to quantify.

  DRESS FOR POWER

  You know what I mean, don’t you? Do I have to spell it out? We don’t think about these things much. It’s not Mad Men, and we don’t all wear suits anymore. Today it’s politically incorrect to tell people that their appearance and how they dress matters. But it’s true.

  Gentlemen, don’t wear your jeans midway down your butt. From what I hear, this fashion statement started in prisons, where the “catcher” would advertise availability to those who were “pitchers.” While I’m not judging anyone’s sexual preferences, I am saying that a fashion statement that started as a way to advertise sexual submission in prison might not be the best thing to lead with in a professional setting. I’m sure you understand. It’s hardly the message you want to send. Or maybe you do. It’s your choice. This look will not make people think you’re powerful. You may think you look cool, but the rest of the world will think (pardon my bluntness) that you’re an idiot, uneducated, and possibly a criminal. I’m not saying that you are any of these things, but I’m talking about the way people will see you in the real world. Whether they’re right or wrong is irrelevant. You will still have to deal with the consequences. Most important, you won’t get a decent job dressed this way.

  If you want to get ahead at work, dress like your boss. Dress for the job you want. If you work on Wall Street, your boss likely wears a suit and tie, so you need to be wearing a suit and tie, whether you feel like it or not. Whether a suit and tie expresses your “inner truth” or not. You may feel like coming in to work dressed like a Jimmy Buffett Parrothead, but I’d advise against it. Millennial CEOs like Mark Zuckerberg seem to prefer dressing for work in T-shirts, jeans, and hoodies. This is an expression of the rules and the culture in their organizations. And that’s fine. If you work at Facebook, you don’t need to come to work in a three-piece suit. But the rule still applies: Dress like your boss. Whether he/she wears a suit or jeans. People want to know that you are there to take your job seriously. Your clothes should communicate that. Before anyone speaks to you, before they know what you’re selling, before they know anything about you at all, they are going to see you. And you have the opportunity to seize the upper hand in the power dynamic.

  “Judge not, that ye be not judged.” That’s a nice quote from the New Testament. But it is irrelevant. We do judge. We all do. And we will all probably continue to do it. This is the way people are. So you can complain about it, or you can accept it and find a way to make it work for you. Before you ascend to any level of power, before you earn a dollar, people will see you. People will judge you. Based on your appearance, your attitude, your posture, your hygiene. They will judge you and try to determine how useful you are, what you can offer them.

  Imagine yourself lost in an unfamiliar city. You want to find a
phone, ask directions, perhaps get a room for the night. On one side of the street is a brightly lit, well-manicured hotel with well-dressed staff visible through its large windows. On the other side of the road is a decrepit-looking motel with peeling paint and shady characters standing around outside. Where are you going to seek shelter for the night? The answer is pretty obvious, and you came to this conclusion based on appearances.

  The staff at the decrepit motel may be doing their best to maintain their business, but the only thing that matters is whether it appeals to you, the customer. On the flip side, you may approach the brilliantly lit hotel to find that the staff is standing at the entrance with their arms crossed, staring at you in an intimidating manner. I’m sure you’re going to think twice about entering that building. Now, try to think of a person who is powerful and intimidating. I’m sure you know one. I sure do. Usually, it’s me. On the surface, this seems like a bad strategy. However, you must dress and act the part for the business and the brand you have created. For me, being aggressive and off-putting works, because it is consistent with my brand. Similarly, the income model at that fancy hotel may depend on a feeling of exclusivity. This is not personal, nor is it an attack on a class of people. It is simply the business model that works best for the hotel. If that model stops working, the company that owns the hotel will immediately change its strategy.

  The same goes for your appearance. Whatever you choose as your public persona, your hairstyle and your style of dress must be tailored to what will make you the most money and garner you the most power. If the way I dress began to have a negative effect on my ability to make deals, I would change my look immediately. You need to be willing to do the same thing. There are ways to dress the part, even if you lack the budget. You can court an aesthetic without going for the name on the label. We live in America, and there are plenty of discount options. Once you have money, investing in your appearance is a worthwhile expense. I’m not talking about trying to look handsome or sexy, though these things can help. I mean dressing for the level of power you wish to achieve. Dress like the people whose jobs you are after.