The Love of Money is the Root of All Evil?

"So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d'Anconia. "Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?

"When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears not all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor–your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money, Is this what you consider evil?

"Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions–and you'll learn that man's mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.

"But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is made–before it can be looted or mooched–made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced.'

"To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return. Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss–the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery–that you must offer them values, not wounds–that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best that your money can find. And when men live by trade–with reason, not force, as their final arbiter–it is the best product that wins, the best performance, the man of best judgment and highest ability–and the degree of a man's productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil?

"But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires. Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality–the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind.

"Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants: money will not give him a code of values, if he's evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he's evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent. The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

"Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth–the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one, would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve the mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

"Money is your means of survival. The verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence. Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men's vices or men's stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment's or a penny's worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you'll scream that money is evil. Evil, because it would not pinch-hit for your self-respect? Evil, because it would not let you enjoy your depravity? Is this the root of your hatred of money?

"Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Is this the root of your hatred of money?

"Or did you say it's the love of money that's the root of all evil? To love a thing is to know and love its nature. To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money–and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it.

"Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.

"Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another–their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.

"But money demands of you the highest virtues, if you wish to make it or to keep it. Men who have no courage, pride or self-esteem, men who have no moral sense of their right to their money and are not willing to defend it as they defend their life, men who apologize for being rich–will not remain rich for long. They are the natural bait for the swarms of looters that stay under rocks for centuries, but come crawling out at the first smell of a man who begs to be forgiven for the guilt of owning wealth. They will hasten to relieve him of the guilt–and of his life, as he deserves.

"Then you will see the rise of the men of the double standard–the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money–the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law–men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims–then money becomes its creators' avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.

"Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion–when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing–when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors–when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you–when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice–you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that is does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot.

"Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked, 'Account overdrawn.'

"When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, 'Who is destroying the world? You are.

"You stand in the midst of the greatest achievements of the greatest productive civilization and you wonder why it's crumbling around you, while you're damning its life-blood–money. You look upon money as the savages did before you, and you wonder why the jungle is creeping back to the edge of your cities. Throughout men's history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, whose names changed, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor. That phrase about the evil of money, which you mouth with such righteous recklessness, comes from a time when wealth was produced by the labor of slaves–slaves who repeated the motions once discovered by somebody's mind and left unimproved for centuries. So long as production was ruled by force, and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little to conquer, Yet through all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men exalted the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers–as industrialists.

"To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money–and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man's mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being–the self-made man–the American industrialist.

"If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose–because it contains all the others–the fact that they were the people who created the phrase 'to make money.' No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity–to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words 'to make money' hold the essence of human morality.

"Yet these were the words for which Americans were denounced by the rotted cultures of the looters' continents. Now the looters' credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt, your greatest men, the industrialists, as blackguards, and your magnificent factories as the product and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip-driven slaves, like the pyramids of Egypt. The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide– as, I think, he will.

"Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns–or dollars. Take your choice–there is no other–and your time is running out."

 

-Ayn Rand through her character Francisco D'anconia in Atlas Shrugged

Will You Sell Your Soul For Money?

I am going to open the door today and invite you in my home. As I write this it is exactly 2 days after the Packers won the Superbowl, though it's likely a few months after when you are reading it. That makes today the Tuesday after Superbowl Sunday.

I guess the date isn't really important, I am just trying to set the scene. As it turns out I had to take 2 days off this weekend, I normally only take one, so Monday was REALLY busy. On top of that My beautiful wife, Rachel, had dinner done 30 minutes earlier than usual. Ouch!

She came in my office at 5:30 (I usually work until 6:00) and told me dinner was ready. Then she said the most wonderful words, “If you're not done yet don't worry about coming out.”

YES! Score, I can work a bit later and catch up!

I can tell you, that was a mistake. It became obvious she was very stressed hearing her trying to get the kids through dinner. I stopped working and went out to help get things under control and the kids to bed.

By the way, I should mention my children are very well behaved. That said, there are 4 of them, one only 4.5 months old. Handling that many children by yourself, even if they're well behaved, can be stressful. Anyway, back to the story.

During the time I was out with the family it became abundantly clear I had made a bad decision in working late. Well what's done is done. I tried to be in good humor, but it just wasn't going over. We got the 3 older kids to bed and Rach took Amber (4.5 mos) in the other room to feed her.

I got my dinner out of the refrigerator and heated it up. One of the hints she's mad at me is when she puts dinner away before I can get some. If she's not, she'll leave it out or make me a plate before she puts everything away. Then, following my bad decision with a good decision, I decided to go back to work. (When my beloved is mad it's far better to leave her alone to calm down for a few hours than to insist on trying to make things better.)

While I was in the office working, Rach came back and proceeded to let me know about all the mistakes I had made in the last few days. I had asked to her take care of petty cash for one of our businesses, but not given her any information about what to do, and I was spending to much time working on non-profit generating businesses, instead of the business that's “paying the bills.” I should spend more time with our contracting company and not with this consulting/publishing business I am working on.

See, on December 8th, 2010 I woke up, got out of bed and walked into my bathroom in my 3500 sqft “McMansion” and looked at myself in the mirror. When I did I thought, “I don't want to go to work! I don't want to talk to insurance adjusters, deal with the unreasonable customers who I am married to until the job is finished. I didn't want to get a call from a subcontractor, like I normally do, telling me they couldn't get to the job because…oh I don't know…they lost their keys. (No joke that was one of the excuses one time.)

I saw myself in the mirror and I knew our business was sucking out my soul. I hated it, hated what I did for a living, and I was starting to hate the people I employed-who are good people and don't deserve it. I was getting to the point where I saw them as mooches showing up every other Friday with their hand out. I hated it!

Just to be clear, my feelings about that are completely unfair to the people who work for me. They're hard working, smart, dedicated people who deserve better than to be seen in the light I was seeing them in.

I was becoming a grump at home, I was miserable to live with, and my life was headed to a bad place. It all slapped me in the face when I looked in the mirror that morning.

That morning I got out of the contracting business. That morning I became a publisher, a consultant, and a business philosopher.

Of course I had been doing all these things, just as a side line. On December 8th, 2010, they became my profession.

So when my wife said I should be paying more attention to my contracting company because it was paying the bills, I thought to myself, “I will not sell my soul for money!”

It occurred to me, it's not us entrepreneurs that sell our souls, it's the working stiff. The employee. The person who hates their job and goes to work anyway. The person who lives 5 days to take off 2.

The person who relates to the song, “I don't have to be me 'till Monday.”

I didn't act irresponsibly. I got together with my employees and told them my decision. They decided they would like me to train them to handle what I did for the company, and I am. The contracting companies are still going at this point. Some adjustments are in order, and a few people are unsure, but all in all they're bringing in money and I don't have to be there.

In the meantime I am setting up systems so I don't have to work in the business. A couple of hours a week in meetings and handling the marketing (which I like anyway) and I can focus on what I love, helping entrepreneurs do better in their business.

It is not we entrepreneurs who will sell our souls for money, it is they who do. We, entrepreneurs, more than anything else, protect our soul. No we're not whimsical, no we don't act impulsively (or at least we try not to) but we do protect who we are at our core. If something is making us miserable, if we are selling our souls for our business, we quickly claim back our soul and go on to the next thing.

Funny thing is, those who sell their soul for money do so for just a pitiful sum compared to our financial rewards.

Next time someone scowls at you for making decisions in your business for financial reasons, reasons that benefit you, just remember, they're the ones who have bartered their soul for a pittance of money dripped in each week. We're the ones who protect our souls and therefore are richly rewarded.

Make your decisions without guilt and without remorse. You're the more moral creature, you still have your soul!

PS. Today, the day after my late night, Rach is her normal wonderful self. She was last night before bed. I got her to laugh a few time, though she tried not to. A few hours to relax and a good night sleep and she's the Love of my Life again. Just thought I'd let you know. Until next month! Oh yeah, she was mistaken about the non-profit generating business as well, but I saw no reason to point out her mistake at the time.

The Prince and the Princess – Marketing Lessons From Children

I'll tell ya, boys and girls are different. I don't mean different in the obvious ways. If you have a son and daughter you know what I mean.

My daughter loves movies about princesses, where a prince comes and saves the princess from a dragon, an evil witch, or a wizard, or releases the princess from an evil king or queen.

For those of you crinkling your nose at the outdated stereotypes, remember my kids aren't old enough to understand the politically correct view. This is what's in their DNA, it would seem. It's an important thing to remember when marketing!!

My son, on the other hand, loves to watch movies about a prince who sets off on a long journey to go rescue a princess from a dragon, an evil witch, or a wizard, or releases a princess from an evil king or queen.

In case you missed it, they're watching the same movie. The difference is, my son is jumping around with his “sword” (ie. anything that could remotely look like a sword) and my daughter is watching dreamy eyed as the prince saves the day.

There are 2 important lessons in this observation. The first one is, you have to connect with your market. If you tried to connect with my son by talking about how “dreamy” the prince is, he'd run, not walk, away as quickly as he could.

On the other hand, talk about high adventure and how strong and tough the prince is, and you'd've lost Morgan in a heartbeat.

You have to speak the language your market wants to hear! Write to your customers, and don't worry about anyone else.

The other lesson is how much difference there can be in the way different people see the same thing. One person sees a flower, another a weed. The question is, how is your prospect gonna see your ad?

You know, now that I think about it, there's a third lesson. I mentioned it earlier and I want to highlight it now. We are pre-programmed, either by conditioning or by genetics, with certain ideas about the world. These ideas, or archetypes, have been written about for years in psychological texts. The more you can capture them, the more you speak to the unconscious mind of your prospect. It's like having a door directly to their buying mechanism. Hmmm….

Do you think having that kind of access to the prospects unconscious mind might be worth a few bucks?

-EFF

Do They Really Hate Business Owners?

If you are reading this it's very likely you own a business, have some reasonable amount of financial strength/earning ability, or you will at some point in the future. Is it possible there are people who hate you because of what you've achieved, or the ambition you have?

The answer, unfortunately, is yes! Unquestionably! Indubitably! And without a doubt!

There are scores of people, throngs of folks who hate you. They immediately say you must be a thief to have what you have or you're greedy to want what you want.

“No one gets rich without climbing on the backs of other people!”

“No one can make it in business without trying to screw the people they deal with!”

To listen to these people you'd think anyone who has anything of value is Snydley Whiplash from the old Dudley Do-Rite cartoons. You know the guy with the black suit and hat and the black handlebar mustache who was forever tying Dudley's sweetheart to the train tracks.

Don't believe me? Well let me tell you a true story that happened to me just today. I friend and colleague of mine is in Chicago. Chi-Town, The Windy City, Home of stuffed Pizza (My stomach hurts just thinking about it!).

It is a beautiful city, and a very liberal state. Just a few days ago the state legislator voted to increase the income tax by 66%!

Just to be clear, the income tax for individuals in IL went from 3% to 5%, which is a 2/3rd's (or 66%) increase. You might say, “well hell 5%'s not bad.” but that's on top of local taxes, federal taxes, gas taxes, registration fees, tolls, property taxes, sin taxes, etc. etc. The list is too long to name here, and besides it is a HUGE tax increase.

So anyway, my friend (By the way his name is Paul DaCosta -PaulDacosta.com- and if you want to invest in Real Estate I suggest you look at his program. It's more like a partnership so you don't take all the risks and have none of the work.) was taking a ride in a cab. He's big about making conversation with the cab drivers, and he's a really casual guy. You'd never guess he owns and manages Millions of dollars worth of real estate in several different states.

So Paul asks the guy, “What do you think about this tax hike? Do you think it'll hurt your business?”

The cabbie responded, and I quote, “Screw those rich bastards. It should've been 100%. They steal their money!”

That's right, this sour puss, angry, unintelligent guy thinks the State should steal more money from “the rich.”

Before you blow this off as the rantings of one short sighted cabbie, I'm here to tell you that sentiment is far greater than you might believe. A majority of the people you run into hold this idea to one degree or another. Heck, I bet you even have this kind of belief stuck deep down in your subconscious somewhere.

Like it or don't like it, believe it or not, the truth is, this kind of thinking is a common denominator in our culture. We all were taught, at some point in our life, the rich must be taking advantage of others.

You might have a higher threshold than the cabbie I mentioned, but the assumption that anyone over a certain level is a thief is likely there.

Of course, here are the problems with that belief. First and foremost, when it comes to entrepreneurs, it's simply not true.

You might be able to make the argument about people who use government force to seize millions and billions, or to lock out competition.

If you got rich that way, perhaps there's an argument that you're a thief. But those guys are massive corporate hacks who do billions and billions in business each year.

Think Wall Street. There's not a true entrepreneur/capitalist in the upper management in any bank on 'The Street.” They're all fascist, that is they believe and want private property with government control.

Why? Because government control ensures a lack of competition, and keeps them dominate without the need to compete. In short, it locks up their oligarchy on the US banking system.

So maybe you can make an argument for some folks, but for entrepreneurs who run entrepreneurial businesses, that's not the case.

For you, my friend, the idea that you must've lied cheated and stolen is false, false, false. For the self made millionaire, multimillionaire, billionaire who made his or her money in honest trade, the cabbies description is just not true.

And here's the truth, most of the rich in our country are self made, they are folk who made their money with honest, hard work, proper wealth attraction, and giving more value than they received in payment.

Some started a business and went public, some franchised and got rich, some just worked hard and invested their money wisely. No matter the path they took, a vast majority of the rich/wealthy in our country got rich by honest hard work that helped hundreds, maybe thousands of other people.

And there's the key, and why I say the cabbie is a bit dim-witted. When you build a business, you help employ people, you spend money with businesses and those businesses employ other people. When you engage in honest trade and gain a benefit from it, you also give benefit.

You can't make money without helping others around you. Local businesses, national businesses, employees, vendors, etc.

No matter if you're a sales person or a business owner, all entrepreneurial people create value, or they go away.

Our good cabbie has a job as a cab driver because someone started a cab service. They put up their money, looked for investors to invest worked late into the night, likely drove the cabs themselves for many years. They had competition and had to work hard to make sure they got the call and not another company.

It's very likely the person who started the company started with nothing, as many entrepreneurs do.

He/She likely became rich as a result of a good endeavor and hard work.

And our ungrateful cab driver would tax more money away from the owner of the company because he/she “stole his/her money.” Not only is that immoral, it's dumb. Higher taxes always lead to less economic activity, which means the our cabbie friend could easily be out on the street.

And it's very likely you have the same idea about someone who earns or has a net worth over some number.

Maybe 250K/Yr is OK with you but a million is just too much! I mean how much does someone need?

A million good, then maybe 50 Million or 100 Million. I mean really, they should just stop being so greedy.

100 Mil good? Then how 'bout a billion net worth? Surely at that point there has to be something dishonest going on! I mean really, a billion dollars!?

At some point in the argument you're gonna find an uncomfortable feeling about how much money someone is making.

I'm not saying you should go for the same goals as those other people. You should strive for what you want, but at some point, somewhere as we go up the money ladder, you start feeling woozy.

The source of that woozy feeling is the same as the source of our cabbie's vitriol about “the rich.”

That woozy feeling is what's holding you back.

Here's the truth, and you can listen to me now and believe me later, as long as you have that woozy feeling, as long as you feel like it's only OK to make a certain amount of money, and anyone earning more than that number must be a thief, you are seriously hampering your ability to succeed in business.

The truth of the matter is, that woozy feeling is just as misplaced, just as ungrateful to the blessings you have, just as misguided and just as stupid as our cabbie friend's statement.

I'm not one to talk of always being “of service,” but here's the truth. In order to get rich you have to pull others with you. No you don't have to make them rich too. But you have to help others.

At some point you need to hire people. Well, when you do you make a huge difference for that persons and their family.

You will need to buy something to resell, some buy materials to manufacture something or offer a service, you'll need printing, advertising, and accounting services. Very likely you'll need legal services at some point.

When you start a business you create value, create wealth, spread money around the local community and the nation. You help make employees, vendors, etc wealthy.

The truth is the rich entrepreneur doesn't steal his money, he/she helps others make more money.

As George S. Clason wrote in The Richest Man In Babylon, “Wealth is created where man puts his attention.'

So get your mental road blocks out of the way. When you see an ultra rich person, and you feel that woozy feeling, remind yourself of all the good he/she did. All the people he/she employed, all the vendors he/she made rich, all the children that were able to go to college, all the families that were able to buy a house, all the employees who were able to retire wealthy*, think of all the people who that man or woman helped achieve their goals, and then see if that woozy feeling is still there.

And we haven't even talked about charities and who really supports them. Here's a hint, it ain't the poor!

Blow out your own road blocks, and you will find it easier to hit your goals, and you might even find you want something better for yourself when you realize getting something better means making yourself a more honest, more ethical, better person.

*I happen to have known the founder of Outback Steakhouse. As it turns out many of his original servers, in the original restaurant, who stayed with the company, ended up being millionaires because of stock he and his partners made available to employees. Imagine that, waiting tables in a low to mid level restaurant and becoming a millionaire. Wonder what those servers thing about the guys who owned the business?

Everte Farnell is a business philosopher, radio host, speaker, writer, and business consultant.

Are We In A Recession Or A Recovery? How Your Business Can Make Tons of Money In Either.

I routinely hear business owners bemoan the economy.

"Oh, with the economy like it is sales are down bad!” or “I just don't know what I'm gonna do if sales don't pick up. Things haven't been this bad since I opened the shop 10 years ago.”

The grumping and griping goes on and on.

When all this first started my competitors in the contracting business I was running were complaining no one wanted to spend any money. I never had any problems, but a bunch of my salespeople and bunch of my competitors cried like a little babies.

It occurred to me the answer was in positioning and sales. We had the positioning part down no problems, but the sales part was giving a few of my guys trouble.

I worked with them, took them on appointments so they could see how I closed 90% of the folks I had an appointment with. I tried to train them, but eventually I had to let one guy go. He just couldn't get it in his head the economy didn't make a damned bit of difference to the customer, it only made a difference to him!

And there you have it. The secret to making a fortune is refusing to believe the “economy” matters to a properly prepared, well qualified prospect.

Now if you're not properly preparing the folks you're talking to, not positioning yourself correctly and just going out (or sending salespeople out) to talk to unqualified unprepared people, well you can blame that one the economy but it's just not true.

Admittedly, the economy has made the prospect pool smaller (someone who can't afford your product or service isn't a prospect.) and has made prospects more cautious, but once they decide they want something they don't care one lick about the economy.

So you have to step up marketing, you have to step up positioning and qualifying, and you might have to raise your prices. If you do, do it.

Here's the truth, prospects, true prospects, don't care about higher price, they care about value. And your value proposition is found in your positioning material. Your positioning material should precede the appointment. Sometimes by a few days, sometimes by a few minutes. Either way, it should precede the appointment.

If you're at a loss about how to position your company, you can get a start here:  http://poolhustlersmba.com/getin-action