Me, Inc. Read online

  To some extent, capitalism in America has its hands tied behind its back. But there is still enough of a capitalist business world out there that will give you a chance of making Big Money.

  In point of fact, you cannot fail. Yes, you heard me right. YOU CANNOT FAIL.

  You have everything to gain, and little or nothing to lose, by throwing yourself headfirst into your entrepreneurial endeavor. If your business fails and you cannot pay off your debts, under current business laws you can declare Chapter 7 or Chapter 11, which means that with a decent lawyer, you will be forgiven all your debts and you can start all over again. Of course, because you’re an ethical person, as soon as you hit the big time, you will pay off your debts anyway, even though you may not be legally required to do so.

  The only thing holding you back from succeeding in America may be YOU.

  Before you undertake this journey, you must have the heart of a lion and your self-esteem must be intact. If your self-esteem isn’t strong, then bluff and act like it’s strong. Grit your teeth and pretend that you have enormous self-confidence. Fake it until you make it.

  If a bully comes up to you, do not show weakness. It will make it easier for him to beat you up. If you show enormous self-confidence and show no fear, the bully may, just may, back off. A small chance at greatness is better than giving up.

  In the wild, if faced with a wolf that’s about to attack, your best chance for survival is to stand your ground, puff out your chest as large as it can go, wildly flail your arms in the air, make a lot of noise, and always look straight into the eyes of the predator. If you do that, you may survive. In other words, you will win.

  The same principle applies in business transactions, though of course, the loan application and your proposal count, as does your demeanor. When you sit with a bank or financial official, and you’re looking to get a loan for your business venture, be big. Be strong. Be confident (and make sure your idea is worth being confident about). Be all that you can be. If it doesn’t come naturally, fake it.

  Remember, no matter what your business proposal is, what they’ll really be investing in is YOU.

  That’s why there are often key-man clauses in corporate contracts. What is Trump Enterprises worth without Donald Trump? What’s Virgin worth without Sir Richard Branson? I know both of those men, and I can guarantee that even if they were completely unknown, when one of them walked into a room, you would still stop what you were doing and take notice.

  Invariably, if a vacuum cleaner salesman rings your front door, he will be selling HIMSELF first. The vacuum cleaner is secondary. It always comes back to YOU, and it always will.

  Say what you mean. Mean what you say. Let your word be your bond. Your reputation will precede you. You’ve heard this all before. The most important word here? You guessed it: YOU!

  Remember, it’s how you feel about your aspirations and dreams every day that is the most important thing, because these feelings will drive you to action.

  It’s your WILL to succeed, your never-ending COMMITMENT to yourself to succeed, your “never-take-no-for-an-answer” mind-set, and your PERSEVERANCE that will help you win and win big.

  It’s important to note that rock stars, politicians, and other people with position, power, and wealth weren’t born that way.

  They had to earn it.

  They worked for it.

  They had to make up their own rules.

  They had to sell themselves first, before their product.

  They had to educate themselves. School was over, and self-education began when they left school.

  And they were willing to work harder than you to get there.

  Do you have what it takes?

  Will you let anyone or anything stop you from where you want to go?

  Have you ever said something like “I just want enough to have a comfortable life”?

  If you have, this is not the book for you. And you may not be an entrepreneur.

  Unless you have incredible luck and win the lottery, you will not obtain riches with an “I just want enough to be comfortable” mind-set. Even if you do win the lottery, you will probably not know what to do with the money, and will soon be back where you started from, just like many lottery winners. They won big fortunes, and in a short time went bankrupt. Some got divorced, left their families, and even committed suicide. Google it if you don’t believe me.

  You have to have the guts and the will to do what our military urges: BE ALL THAT YOU CAN BE.

  Go Big. Or Go Home.

  You will notice, as you are reading this book, that I repeat things. A lot. As if I’m losing my memory in my old age.

  Good.

  It’s intentional.

  You and I and everyone else have the attention span of gnats. And that means that saying or doing anything once simply doesn’t work. Never has. Never will.

  Saying or doing anything should be like the chorus of the hit song. Before the song is through, you will have heard the chorus (the memorable part of the song) over and over again.

  The repetition will make you remember the song and hum it to yourself long after the song is over.

  “If at first you don’t succeed (and you won’t, believe me), try, try again.”

  That one is correct.

  Even if you do succeed, try, try again.

  Keep at it.

  Do it over and over again.

  Keep improving what you’re doing.

  Always.

  THE ART OF MORE: PRINCIPLE #1

  SELF-CONFIDENCE IS YOUR GREATEST BUSINESS PARTNER

  The prime building block for popularity can be boiled down to one trait: self-confidence. It is neither genetic, inherent, nor for sale. But it is learnable and 100 percent essential to success. And the first step, even before you do your own due diligence (as you should), is to have an enormous, almost delusional sense of self-confidence.

  LET ME REPEAT THAT: AN ENORMOUS, ALMOST DELUSIONAL SENSE OF SELF-CONFIDENCE.

  You must learn to be able to stand in front of strangers, who couldn’t care less about you, and convince them that what you have to offer is something they need and cannot do without. What you are offering is the greatest thing you could possibly have access to. What you are offering them is YOU!

  13

  You—The Me, Inc. Business Model

  “Anybody who can afford a box of business cards can afford a website. Any company with an 800 number can move its services to the Web for peanuts by comparison. The extreme case of corporate promotion is to strip away all other aspects of your business and sell goods or services via the Net alone, as Amazon.com has done with books.”

  NATHAN MYHRVOLD

  inventor, entrepreneur, and former chief technology officer for Microsoft

  “Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.”

  ANDY WARHOL

  pop-art innovator, visual artist, author, publisher, and filmmaker

  What is your definition of “success”?

  This book is about MONEY. It’s called Me, Inc. because my attitude is this: better it’s MY MONEY than anyone else’s.

  There’s a very old platitude that goes “the love of money is the root of all evil.” The person who came up with that statement was, in my view, severely misguided, and missing a large—perhaps the largest—source of crime in the world. The implication is that money, by its nature in having value at all, corrupts people simply by being valuable.

  As I said in my book Sex Money KISS, it’s the “lack of money that is actually the root of all evil” (I’ve since discovered that this quote has been attributed variously to Mark Twain or George Bernard Shaw). And, no, I don’t mean “all”—I often use hyperbole, so you’ll have to excuse that. There are exceptions to every rule, and the usual white-collar crime suspects you hear about are, of course, greedy and evil individuals. But this platitude, “money is the root of all evil,” carries a lot of weight with people, and it’s important to note that it does no
t take desperation into account. If I didn’t have a dime, I might hold up a 7-Eleven for a loaf of bread, because I would be desperate enough to do so. But if I were worth $100 million, I would never think of doing that. The lack of money is why people hold up banks.

  After you become successful, give it all away if you like—to your family, to your loved ones, to charity, whatever makes you happy. But before you have any money, you can’t do squat.

  The truth is that it’s the lack of money that is the root of so much evil in the world. Crooks hold you up for money. And they tell us that the single biggest problem with relationships and marriages is money; even infidelity comes in second.

  Money allowed me to make my mother’s life easier. Money allowed me to buy her a house. And to buy her anything she wanted. Without money, I couldn’t have done any of it.

  And for those of you who might say, “Oh, but money can’t make you happy,” well, that’s patently untrue. If you’re a miserable son of a bitch, it’s still better to be a rich, miserable son of a bitch.

  When Scrooge is rehabilitated at the end of A Christmas Carol, he can do a lot of good and make people happy, because he’s got money to do it with. A rehabilitated Scrooge without money wouldn’t be in a position to help anyone much.

  But lest we dwell too much on money, I want to make it clear that it is the love of labor and not the love of money that will give you rewards. There is a big difference between going to work and loving to work. It is important that you take this to heart.

  And when you embark on this great personal journey you’re going to go on, I would suggest you implement my Me, Inc. Business Model.

  Ultimately, even if you are well educated, it is still up to you to figure out how to get a job, and how to make lots of money.

  The answer is, Me, Inc.

  YOU are the corporation.

  YOU are the one who should form a limited liability company.

  YOU are the one who will have to figure out how the capitalist model works. That’s something that they don’t teach the masses.

  The future is here.

  The future is now.

  The old business model had to do with a workplace: a building or an office where everyone came to work. We’re speaking of nonmanufacturing entities. And we’re not addressing farming.

  The old way was expensive. As a company owner, you had to rent or buy a workplace. You had to rent or buy equipment—chairs, desks, computers, filing cabinets—storage facilities, parking, and all sorts of other items.

  There were also many lost hours during the workday. A worker had to travel to and from work. Multiply all that travel time and cost by five days a week and fifty weeks a year, and you’ve got a lot of wasted time and money for one employee.

  The new business model is simpler. And if you can apply it to your endeavor, it will save you a lot of money and a lot of wasted time (which also costs money). If you can, work at home. Save the time and money of commuting to and from work. And save the stress of commuting. Or if you’re starting a company, you work from home and let the Internet do the rest for you.

  The new, twenty-first-century streamlined company can rent a facility for a short time and refocus the business plan; then workers can go off to their respective homes to implement the program.

  Working from home gives the worker a lot more flexibility and more usable hours to get the work done. Remember, anywhere from two to four hours a day are wasted on traveling to and from work.

  And if you work at home, maybe you don’t take a full hour off to eat. Maybe you only take half an hour.

  And you can stop work at any time to do something else, as long as you finish the work.

  The worker model of the twenty-first century is about going back to the basics: YOU are the boss. YOU make the rules. YOU, in essence, become the company.

  But that also means YOU are responsible for getting the work done.

  You may not realize it, but the Social Security system is a form of insurance. You pay “premiums” (a certain amount of money every month or every year) and later on, at “maturity,” you get to access those funds, which come to you in weekly checks. The Social Security system is your insurance that you will still be able to survive after you can no longer work. There are different forms of retirement security, including an IRA (individual retirement account) or Roth IRA. I urge you to find out what all of that is. Google it. It’s simple. Educate yourself.

  Your job will often automatically deduct a certain amount for your IRA. That’s good, because for the most part, you won’t do it. Mostly, you live in the here and now. Mostly, you spend what you earn. Mostly, you don’t save for a rainy day. Mostly, you think you will never grow old and won’t have a problem being able to support yourself.

  Mostly.

  Farmers are often smarter in their business model than the masses who work in the corporate system. And that’s because a farmer has only himself to depend on. If you work at a corporate entity, there is always the company there to pay your wages. Rain or shine. Always dependable, at least until the company becomes insolvent.

  Back to the farmer: He knows when to plant the seeds. He knows how much it costs. He knows what the price of goods is. And he can approximate his profit margin if all things go as planned. Of course, one bad winter or one flood can change all that. So, in a very real way, for a farmer, it’s feast or famine. Which is why he absolutely must have insurance of all kinds as a farmer.

  In a corporate environment, insurance isn’t necessarily the first thing on your mind.

  But perhaps it should be.

  Health insurance. Car insurance. Homeowner’s insurance. All sorts of insurance. It’s all worth considering. Do the research.

  You don’t want to sit and stare as your house goes up in flames, or your car is totaled in a wreck you had nothing to do with, and have no financial parachute.

  Farmers are smarter than you are. They have to be.

  A farmer will rarely plant only one kind of crop. He can’t. If he only plants potatoes, and the price of potatoes takes a huge dip in the marketplace, he will be wiped out. So he plants different kinds of crops (get ready for a Wall Street investment term—“spread the risk”).

  This is the most basic form of diversification. Simply put, this means never putting all your eggs in one basket. If you drop the basket, all of the eggs shatter.

  The same business model that a farmer uses is what’s often recommended on Wall Street: Spread the risk. Invest in a few different things. Never just one.

  A good piece of advice for all of you entering the corporate world.

  Is what you do for a living the only thing you know how to do? If so, that’s not good. What happens when that “thing” is no longer in demand? What’s your fallback position? What else can you do?

  Farmers also need to get along with their neighbors. It’s important.

  If a flood wipes out half of the farmer’s crops, while his next-door neighbor is left untouched, he can hopefully count on his neighbor to help him out.

  That’s because the next time a tornado rips through the area, the neighbor might be hit and may need the farmer’s help.

  So, if you’re a farmer, it makes good business sense to get along with your neighbor.

  How about you? You sit in your corporate cubicle. Do you get along with the person in the next cubicle? Do you talk trash about them?

  Remember, they may fly by you on the way up the ladder of success. Your “neighbor” might become your boss.

  Work well with everyone.

  Don’t burn bridges. Don’t trash-talk. Don’t gossip. Not in the workplace. Not at home.

  Find a hobby.

  When you buy a hamburger, do you understand how much each meat patty costs McDonald’s? How much do employees make? How much for the building’s rent? How much for insurance? How much does the McDonald’s franchisee profit with each burger sold? If you wanted to be a McDonald’s franchisee, it would be to your advantage to know all t
hat.

  Do you partner up, or do you use consultants? I highly recommend consultants or short-term employees. If you hire someone, it also means that you may need to fire them, and that can get difficult. In present-day America, unions can still go on strike and shut you down.

  At home, you are the boss. It’s your home, so if you invite someone to your home, they’re allowed to stay. If you decide you’ve had enough of your invited guest, you can ask them to leave. And they have to. After all, it’s your home.

  But if you have a business—which is, after all, still your “work home,” and which you paid for—you invite someone to come work for you. But in business, it’s very difficult to ask them to leave. I find this astonishing.

  There is also the idea that the employer has a responsibility to make sure you go on vacation two weeks every year and still get paid full wages, and that if you work overtime, the employer will have to pay you double and sometimes triple time per hour. The employer also has to pay for your health care, and your maternity leave. . . .

  If you want to build a business in America using the old business model—that is, dealing with lots of employees, labor unions, etc.—the hurdles are nearly insurmountable. Instead, you can work with consultants, who get paid for the work they do, and can be fired or let go at any time, for just about any reason. Or set up your business in a “right to work” state—where unions don’t hold sway, and where you are allowed to negotiate for your own wages without interference.

  If you’re reading this book, there’s a choice you’ll need to make. You can decide you just want to work for a living: pick up your paycheck every week, and have the union protect you (and your health care, your paid vacation, etc.) against the evil employer.