Choose Yourself! (20 page)

Don’t hit yourself over the head when these thoughts are in your brain. Just notice when these things come up. It’s not like you’re going to get cured of paranoia. But notice when it appears. Water withers the rock away. Every time you notice, the window clears a tiny bit. A smudge is gone. You get a glimpse of the light outside.

You get a tiny bit smarter. Maybe later you have to look for the deeper emotional reasons for why you feel the way you do. And there are a lot of reasons. Everyone could’ve made fun of your acne in junior high school and now you want to be loved by everyone. (Err, maybe that happened to me.) But right now, this second, just don’t get hit by a car when you cross the street.

You can say, “Hey, wait a second! All of those things equal up to more than 100 percent!” Well, what can I say? You’re smarter than me.

HONESTY MAKES YOU MORE MONEY

Admit it: you were jealous of Bernie Madoff. For a split second. That night in December 2008, when you first heard the news, interrupting the ongoing panic of every bank going out of business, every job disappearing, every ATM machine running out of cash, the organic fruit at the farmers market skyrocketing to $200 an apple. For a brief moment, you heard that news and you thought, “He stole $65 billion. Man, I would’ve had cosmetic surgery on my face and then moved to Brazil with that kind of money.”

Then the truth came out. The news that the money was never there in the first place. The suicides. The owner of the Mets managed to get his money back just in time.

A woman from Minnesota called me, crying, saying, “Why is it they keep going on about the poor Jews who lost their money. I’m a Christian and I lost my last $800,000.” Every day, as more news came out, the entire horror story kept getting more real. Madoff in jail. His wife left with a measly million or two and finally the horror of their son killing himself.

But, for a moment, there was: What would I do with $65 billion?

And then, the false reality that went through everyone’s head: the only way to make a lot of money in this world is to lie and steal.

I get that question a lot in my Twitter Q&A sessions: Why is it that you have to be dishonest to succeed in this world? And people don’t believe me when I say that’s not true. In fact, the exact opposite is true. Only honesty will succeed. They say back, “That has not been my experience.”

Nobody asks: Do you have to be dishonest to succeed? People seem to know the answer already, and they want to know, structurally, why is this truth?

Capitalism is still suffering from the mortal blow that was struck in 2008. Everyone was a crook. And Madoff was just the tip of the iceberg. Mubarak’s family ran away with $200 billion by the time he was kicked out of Egypt. Every day I get news in my inbox of another Ponzi scheme. Yesterday it was a $4.9 million hedge fund down in some backwater swamp county in Florida.

“Why?” people want to know. People want some justification. Maybe they are really asking, “Okay, I’ve been avoiding it until now but should I take the plunge and start being dishonest in order to make money?” And then maybe the next question, “Can you give a ‘top ten’ for how to be dishonest and make money?”

The problem is this: they are completely wrong. Dishonesty never works.
Honesty is the only way to make money in today’s world.

Nobody believes me on this. People laugh at me. “Don’t you know anything? Of course dishonest people step on the honest people and have more success.” People want to justify their own failures and use their pretend-goodness to explain why they didn’t start Google, or steal $65 billion, or get that last promotion when the backstabbing bitch from aisle 3 got the raise after doing who knows what.

But here’s the truth.

Dishonesty works…until it doesn’t. Everyone messes up. And when you are dishonest, you are given only one chance and then it’s over. You’re out of the game—at least until you get your act straight and you have to start from scratch with your tail between your legs.

HONESTY COMPOUNDS.
It compounds exponentially. No matter what happens in your bank account, in your career, in your promotions, in your startups. Honesty compounds exponentially, not over days or weeks, but years and decades. More people trust your word and spread the news that you are a person to be sought out, sought after, given opportunity, given help, or given money. This is what will build your empire.

I know this through countless failures. The more times I fail but communicate about it, the more times I make no money at all but let someone have ideas for free; the more times I try to “get mine” but only end up getting stabbed by those who think it’s okay to be dishonest, the greater the number of seeds I’ve planted and the more money I’ll make in the long run.

Be dishonest once, and all of those seeds will be washed away in a thunderstorm of life-killing proportions. A hurricane of despair that will sweep away all of your opportunities forever.

You are left with a desert and will have to start again.

HOW YOU CAN BE MORE HONEST IN YOUR LIFE:

GIVE CREDIT.
Even if the ideas were all yours. Even if you made nothing on them. Even if they were blatantly stolen. Give credit and move on. Hoarding your ideas for the moment when you can shine, will only leave you by yourself in a dimly lit room with only a mirror to stare at.

BE THE SOURCE.
“But if I give ideas for free, what if they could’ve made a billion dollars? I always get screwed by my partners.” If you are the source of ideas, then you are ALWAYS the source. Forget the losers who steal. Move on. You become THE fountain of ideas. People come to the fountain and make wishes and throw money in. Don’t be a trickle of dirty water. Be the fountain and let people know it by giving away all credit and rewards.

A great example of “the source” is Google. Google has absolutely no content on it. There’s nothing there but a little box. You go to that magic box and you enter in a term you want to know about. Let’s say, “motorcycles.”

Then Google is completely honest. They come back right away and say, “We know ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about motorcycles BUT if you go to these ten or so websites, we think these are the best sites where you can find out about motorcycles.”

“Oh! And by the way,” Google continues, “here’s three more sites that know about motorcycles, but we are being totally honest here, those three sites are paying us. Just so you know.”

And then you leave Google. The average person spends only a few minutes A MONTH at Google. In fact, the longer you stay at Google, the less profitable Google is. They want you to get the hell off their site. Every time you leave their site, either their algorithm improves (they learn from what you click on), or they make money (you click on a site that paid them).

And then where do you go when you want to find out about, say, contraceptives? You go to Google. You go to the source.

When I first started in the Internet business, I was advising big companies on how to create a web presence. The one thing nobody wanted to do was to link out to other websites. This was the exact opposite of what has now become the Choose Yourself era.

The Choose Yourself era means you have the confidence to be honest. The confidence to go up against the big corporations that refuse to choose you. The confidence to direct traffic to those people who might have more resources than you have.

To choose yourself you must first be fearless. To know that abundance is everywhere, not just hidden behind the masks you wear to display your skills to the public.

INTRODUCE TWO PEOPLE.
Every day you can think of at least two people to introduce to each other who will help each other. You don’t have to be in the middle. “Take me off cc,” you should say. Let them help each other. Let them benefit. You don’t need to be in the middle and benefit this time. You’ll benefit next time. Or the time after that. Even if it means giving up opportunities for yourself if you think someone else would be better for the job.

Think of it this way: There’s the “linear effect” and there’s the “network effect.” If you live life linearly, your value and resources only go up every time you meet someone new and the list of people
you
know becomes bigger. This is not good enough anymore. You must create your own empire. And you can’t do it one at a time. That’s not an empire, that’s a list.

The network effect, on the other hand, has been well known on the Internet since its early days. The premise is that the value of a site goes up exponentially depending on how many people are using it. The more people using the site who don’t know each other or didn’t learn about the site from each other, the stronger the network effect. It’s the Empire Builder.

How does this apply to you? How many people are “using you?” The value of your network goes up exponentially when you view your contacts and resources not as a list but as a network of nodes on a graph. Think of the number of connections that can connect two different nodes on that graph. It’s exponential compared to the number of items in a list that connect directly to you.

The way you create the network effect is by encouraging people in your network to connect to each other and to help each other.

It feels funny sometimes. Sometimes people say to me, “Oh, I met so-and-so, thanks to your blog.” And I think to myself, “HEY! THAT’S MY SO-AND-SO!” I have to stop that feeling. It’s only limiting. The universe has limitless resources. You have limited resources and limited time. The only way to create abundance is to behave more like the universe.

Set the conditions for life. Then sit back and watch the matings occur. Before long you will have created life, you will have helped create the many great things that your connections will create together. Once again you have become the source.

TAKE THE BLAME.
I messed up in October 2008. I was going through a separation and financial crisis, and I was scared out of my mind. I was managing a little bit of money a hedge fund had allocated me. I was down that month. It was ground zero of the goddamn financial crisis. I would sleep in my hammock until it would rain and storm all over me and the next thing I would know the Dow was down another seven hundred points while I was soaked and sick and angry. The hedge fund manager called me at the end of the month and said, “Look, I’ve called you ten times and you didn’t return the call. Just return the call once and it would’ve been okay. Now I’ve got to take the money back.” He was right. And I told him that. Eventually. We’re good friends now and have worked together since but it took a few years to build back the trust.

“A ‘No’ uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a ‘Yes’ merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble.” — Gandhi

DON’T LEAD A DOUBLE LIFE.
Everything you do takes up space in your brain. If you live a double life (and you know what I mean if I’m talking to you), then that extra life takes up neurons and synapses working overtime. The brain can’t handle it. It starts to degrade instead of grow. Living a double life might’ve given you momentary pleasure but now your brain is heading straight for the gutter. And your finances, which are a reflection of the health of your brain, will fall straight into the sewer with it.

DON’T BE ANGRY.
Anger is a form of dishonesty. Nobody is perfect. It’s a lie to expect the people around you to be perfect. Sometimes I’m angry with my kids. But they are just kids. Sometimes I’m angry at people I’m trying to do deals with. But they have their own motivations, fears, worries, and anxieties. They don’t have to do everything I expect of them. So my anger is really a belief that they should do what I expect them to do. It’s a form of dishonesty when you lie to yourself about the expectations you have of others. Of course, you can’t control your anger. Sometimes it just happens. But note it for what it is, examine it, and try to turn it around, even just a little—in order to learn more about yourself rather than to blame someone else. That’s where the honesty will compound.

NO EXCUSES.
When I lost money in October 2008, it was easy to blame a manipulated market and all the criminals who led it to be that way. When I lost millions of dollars in 2000 to the point of going completely broke and losing my home, it was easy to blame an “Internet bust” and “corrupt CEOs” rather than my own lack of experience in the financial world. Excuses are easy lies we tell ourselves to cover up our failures. One such excuse is, only dishonest people get ahead. This is also a lie.

MAKE OTHERS LOOK GOOD.
This is more than just giving credit. There’s a commonly quoted rule in management, the “Pareto Rule,” which states that 80 percent of the work is done by 20 percent of the people. This is, in part, a product of an inferior standardized educational system where kids for twenty years are encouraged to do the minimum required to pass and make it to the next “level” on some imaginary ladder of success. But everyone wants to be acknowledged for small achievement. Take out your microscope. Acknowledge even the smallest accomplishments of the people around you. Bring more and more of the people around you into the 20 percent. At heart, everyone wants to be perceived as special. That’s because everyone
is
special but are often never acknowledged that way. Be different. Be aware of the smallest movements around you and acknowledge them. Nobody will forget that.

DON’T GOSSIP.
One time I trashed an entrepreneur I had invested in to another investor. Later that day I was supposed to have dinner with the first entrepreneur. By that time, just four hours later, he had heard I trashed him. He never trusted me again. People always hear. And if they don’t hear, they feel, because word gets around. And you can’t predict this. And it’s another way of living a double life.

DO WHAT YOU SAY YOU ARE GOING TO DO.
Be that guy.

ENHANCE THE LIVES OF OTHERS.
In 1999 some of my employees in my first company left and started a competitor company. Some of my partners were mad. I encouraged the employees. How come? Because nobody needs to be my employee for their entire lives. Always help people grow into their own potential. The only thing I tell these people is, “If you ever find me in the gutter with a needle sticking out of my elbow, please help me out.” They laugh and say, “That will never happen.” Believe me. Anything can happen. I’ve been helped out of that gutter more than once.