No B.S. Business Success In The New Economy. Dan S. Kennedy

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      Bill contributes to my No B.S. Marketing Letter and all other Glazer-Kennedy resources, and provides expert coaching to our Members on “outrageous advertising that is outrageously successful.” You can meet Bill via one of the FREE Webinars provided to new Members, as part of my FREE GIFT to readers of this book. The complete offer is on pages 272–273 or you can go directly to FreeGiftFrom.com/business.

      For example, it says you make your own rules. You feel free to ignore or violate or, at the very least, challenge and test all established norms of your industry. To ignore competitive pricing and, instead, devise a marketing system that has you selling in a competitive vacuum—which happens to be my specialty as a marketing strategist and consultant. You decide to do business on your terms, to fit your preferences, which I talk a lot about in this book’s sister-book, No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs. It says you organize and operate your business to meet your objectives, to suit your preferences, as discussed in great depth in No B.S. Ruthless Management of People and Profits. Andrew Carnegie, one of America’s first from-scratch billionaires and the inspiration for the all-time bestselling book on success, Think and Grow Rich, spoke of the need for a secret sense of superiority. The sense that ordinary rules and restrictions are for ordinary people, not you. This explains why so many super-successful entrepreneurs quite literally change the entire industry or profession they are a part of.

      It also means you govern your own thoughts and emotions, and do not let others dictate how you should think or what you should believe.

      The truly legendary mega-entrepreneurs I admire and have studied exhaustively were or are intensely self-governing.

      Walt Disney, for example, violated the established, universal, ironclad amusement park industry “rule” of multiple entrances and exits. Against all expert advice, he designed Disneyland with but one entrance and egress. Although he did not do so for purely mercenary reasons, it’s impossible to estimate the enormous volume of souvenir merchandise sales that occur precisely because everyone must “walk the plank” past the stores and merchandise carts to get out of the park. In many other ways, as Disneyland, then Disney World developed, Walt insisted on building based on his beliefs, often in direct opposition to how things had always been done before.

      Walt was one of the great “Unreasonable Men”—a description that fits most terrific entrepreneurs. My friend and speaking colleague, Mike Vance, who worked closely with Walt for many years, tells the true story of Walt being told by a waitress that “something didn’t seem right” about the Bayou Restaurant—then abruptly shutting the entire thing down, shooing away all but a few of the customers, sacrificing revenue and creating havoc, then conducting an impromptu focus group to get to the bottom of what “didn’t seem right.” It turned out to be the absence of fireflies, which Walt demanded be fixed by importing fireflies. Time and time again Walt drove his bean-counter brother crazy, demanding things be done, often expensive and difficult things, to achieve the exceptional authenticity the parks are famous for.

      Walt put Disneyland in a location no one thought could possibly work.

      The cliché “he walks to the beat of his own drum” applied magnificently to Walt. As it does to Trump.

      Donald Trump is so famous he needs only one name, Trump. Like Cher. Most established experts in commercial real estate development avoid branding their properties with their name, as the traditional industry belief has been that doing so made it difficult to attract top tenants or to later sell the property. Trump has been sharply criticized and ridiculed for slapping his own name on every building he develops. However, he says that as soon as the Trump name goes up on one, its value pops up by 10% to 15%. Trump is much maligned, criticized, made fun of, and has certainly had his downs as well as ups, but he has also made himself fabulously wealthy and into a famous and valuable brand.

      “Sam Walton was less afraid of being wrong than any man I’ve ever known.”

      —DAVID GLASS, RETIRED CEO, WAL-MART

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