The Lazy Way to Success

Does he or doesn’t he . . . work hard?

Some readers out there in Blogville don’t believe me.

“Are you for real?” they question.

“How can you grow a business from scratch to employing 1100 people without work hard? It just isn’t possible,” they shriek in disbelief.

“Clearly you ‘busted your butt’ to grow your businesses. There can be no other way,” they conclude with righteous conviction.

Crushed to see my veracity challenged, I have decided to use this week’s post to answer these skeptical, suspicious souls.

Let me first explain my involvement with the game of golf. Please bear with me as it relates . . . eventually.

I love golf. I love everything about it. I don’t think there is a more satisfying experience in all of sports than executing the perfect golf shot and watching the ball scrape the heavens to the joyful accompaniment of celestial hosts oohing and aahing their appreciation in four-part harmony.

Golf is a game. And games are to be played. So I play golf; I don’t work golf.

Now here is the punch line:

I approach business the exact same way as I approach golf. Business is a game to me. It is like a giant board game, only more fun because there are more pieces, more players, more variations, more rules, more dice, more unpredictability, more possibilities, and more ways to win. There are even chances to create new rules if the traditional ones don’t suit you.

I love to play the game. I adore all the challenges that business offers (and some of those challenges are even self-imposed like wanting my enterprises to be socially responsible). Just like I love doing cryptograms or crossword puzzles in the newspaper, I get totally juiced trying to figure out business conundrums and tackling business problems. It is so much fun playing this game that defining it as “busting my butt” doesn’t compute. For me, golf isn’t work; it is fun. For me, solving cryptograms isn’t work; it is fun. For me, doing business is not work; it is fun.

I have never busted, nor will I bust, my butt. I simply and unequivocally don’t believe busting a butt accomplishes anything. I vastly prefer my butt in its pristine, unbusted state as it comfortably resides in its organic cotton habitat.

“Okay, then,” some readers may counter, “you must be gifted/lucky/talented/blessed.”

Guys, I am not any more gifted than anyone else. In fact, I may be LESS gifted than most. I am not particularly smart. I don’t know finance. I don’t know technology. I don’t know law. I have no expertise in anything. I don’t have a good memory. Things go in one ear and out the other. I don’t have a long attention span. I don’t have a comprehensive vision that can hold many details/issues in my mind at once. I read excruciatingly slowly. And whatever intellectual capability I have is easily derailed by the slightest fluctuation in my emotions.

But, even still, I built some substantial businesses. Two of my businesses were named to INC magazine’s list of the fastest growing companies in America four times. In 1995, one was even ranked #2 – the second fastest growing company in America.

Here is how I was able to do it.

I did not do it with hard work. I did not do it by busting my butt. I did it by having fun – so much fun that people were attracted to that fun. I then picked the most competent attractees to be on my team and off we went. Whatever “hard work” there might have been, I had long since turned into a game and we had fun “playing” it.

We had fun and by having fun we discovered stuff which led to more fun which led to more discoveries which led to more fun and so on. In my opinion, when the fun stops, that is an indication that the end is near. Preserving the fun, nurturing the fun, and stoking the fun are the keys to a thriving organization.

Hard work is not the formula to success. If you think it is, then you have been misled. If you are espousing it, then you are misleading others.

You are welcome to confront Goliath thinking work hard will defeat him. You can even think your blood, sweat, busted butts, and smashed skulls are badges of work-ethic courage and righteous sacrifice. But in my mind they only point to the sheer stupidity and futility of doing hard work.

Isn’t it smarter and more effective to stand away from the fray so you don’t have to smell Goliath’s foul odor and lazily defeat him with a mere flick of your wrist? That way you don’t have to discharge a bead of sweat, you get home before lunch, and you take the rest of the day off.

And how did David perfect that solution? While he was tending flocks, he “played” around with his sling and got good at it. He beat Goliath via an entertaining pastime.

If someone is working hard, it means only one thing – that that person didn’t use his intelligence, or his creativity, or his light-heartedness to find an easier, more enjoyable, more effective way of doing the same thing.

Hard work should be avoided at all costs. Instead have fun, play games and laugh. Don’t collaborate, co-playorate. And co-create. And co-discover. And, as a result, co-get-superrich.

Workaholics are lame. Playaholics got game.

www.lazyway.net

P.S. Next week's post (maybe) -- Dealing with hardships, setbacks, failures, obstacles, betrayals, and three-putts

The Secret to Making Lots of Money

Why does one person succeed wildly while another equally capable (and seemingly deserving) person does not? Some say the difference maker is luck. They are probably right. But it goes deeper than that.

There are two kinds of good luck. One kind of luck wins lotteries. I don’t pay much attention to that kind. That luck is too unpredictable, too undependable, and much too rare.

I like the kind of luck that is predictable and can be structured so that it is an expected component of daily life. This kind of luck I call support of Nature and it is a necessary ingredient to becoming successful and generating wealth.

To understand how to gain this support, we first must be clear on what we have control over and what we do not.

We have control over our actions.

We do not have control over the fruits of our actions. The fruits of an action are Nature’s domain, not ours.

It is vital to understand this so we know where and how to put our attention, and where not to.

Here is why it is relevant.

Everyone wants money. That’s a given. Money, however, is a fruit of an action. There are lots of possible fruits of an action and money happens to be just one of them. Other fruits may be materiel, people, circumstances, opportunities, recognition, etc. We have no control over what fruits or how much fruit comes from an action. That is Nature’s domain. We only have control over our action.

With this in mind, it then makes sense to perform action that gets Nature to shower us with fruit. In other words, we have to perform action that attracts Nature as an ally.  When our activity is in harmony with Nature’s purpose, we gain her invaluable support and anything can be achieved. But it cuts both ways. When we irritate Mother Nature, in other words when we violate her laws, we get punished. Nature is perfectly, impartially just – generous when we’re good and harsh when we are not.

For example, if we eat, drink, and inhale junk, poison, and empty calories, Nature doesn’t mess around. We will first get dull and then we get increasingly sick until hopefully we mend our ways.

Monitoring the support we get from Nature is a wonderful way of gauging the correctness of our course of action.

Now here is the problem with focusing on money.

When we focus on money, no matter how much we think we need it or want it, it is an empty focus. We are focusing on a fruit we have no control over. In fact, focusing intently on money (or any fruit) is a retarding focus because it drains us of our power. When our focus is on the fruits, Nature isn’t impressed, isn’t amused, and isn’t inspired to be generous. As a result, any fruit that comes will be pedestrian and/or incomplete.

If, however, we want the whole package, it is vastly more intelligent to focus on our activity exclusively. If fruits of our action show up then we know we are on the right path. That is when we know our activity is in tune with Nature. If no support of Nature comes, we know we need to make a course correction.

Here is what impresses Nature – enthusiasm, love, giving, developing our unique gifts and qualities, doing stuff that promotes health, clarity, and creativity. Nature has endowed each of us with a marvelous array of talents. She is delighted when we use them and share them with others. And when we do she rejoices and supports our activity.

The key to knowing if we are utilizing her gifts is when we love something deeply. Then an amazingly cool thing happens. When we love something, Nature rewards us with a deeper insight. We begin to appreciate subtler values of that which we love and because subtle is more powerful, we begin to see ways to harness that subtle. The result is we do less and accomplish more. And if we accomplish more, we make more money.

Of course, there are some folks who have painted themselves in a corner due to bad choices and other violations of Natural Law. Those folks have obviously got to let the paint dry before they can venture forth with complete freedom. But what hastens the drying process is focusing on that which pleases Nature. And what pleases Nature is developing and sharing the gifts/talents/good qualities she endowed us with.

Simply put, when we are doing things we love, we are true to ourselves and are in harmony with Nature. Nature will reward and encourage that direction with fruit. It is a win-win-win if there ever was one.

www.lazyway.net

Top 10 Signs You're Made to be an Entrepreneur

Someone forwarded me a request for information put out by a USA Today reporter. He was writing an article about entrepreneurial personality traits. He wanted suggestions from "experts" in compiling his list. The idea was to help people decide whether they should seek self-employment or not.

I was intrigued by the idea so I submitted my list to him. He did not email or call back so I assume either he was not amused or my submission was not his cup of chai. In any case, I thought my list was cool so I now present it to you and wait (with lazily suspended breath) for your insightful reaction.

P.S. Additions, enhancements and/or subtitutions are heartily encouraged.

Fred's Top 10 Signs You're Made to be an Entrepreneur

10. You are unemployable. You can’t hold a job. You don’t want to hold a job. And you react to getting a job the same way a cat reacts when you try to give it a bath.

9. You are anti-authoritarian. You can’t fathom the thought of being anything less than Boss, President, Chairman, Don, and/or Emperor.

8. You have the uncanny ability to get other people to do all the work.

7. You are always looking for and/or seeing economic opportunity everywhere and in everything. While at a concert, you occupy yourself by estimating the evening’s take and its gross margins instead of listening to the music.

6. You spend more time and energy looking for easier, faster, cheaper, more effective ways of accomplishing something than if you just did the task outright.

5. You would enthusiastically trade a life-time pass to Disneyland for one ride in the Vomit Comet. In other words, you would give up a secure, even-keeled, bland existence for a life that whipsaws uncontrollably between exhilaration and terror.

4. You don’t see lack of money, lack of knowledge, and lack of experience as barriers to entry. You are also not deterred by the existence of formidable competition.

3. You favor multiplication over addition and you lull yourself to sleep by calculating price-earnings ratios.

2. You would happily invest your home’s equity and your life savings (and your mother’s life savings) in your start-up.

And the Number One sign you are made to be an entrepreneur . . .

1. When you project future earnings, your spread sheet shows that by Year 5, you can buy Argentina and sell it to Brazil.

www.lazyway.net

Your Calling and The Real World

Last week, one of this blog’s treasured readers politely suggested that my take on life wasn’t practical for the real world. He suggested it was far more practical to compromise – to divide one’s life between a “tolerable” job/career to pay the bills and an “after(job)life” characterized by a passionate pursuit of something or other.

For the record, I am not a big fan of the so-called “real world.” The real world has been built on the fraudulent premise that hard work has value.

So here it is at point-blank range: Hard work is worthless. No, it is worse than worthless. It is downright harmful and should be avoided at all costs. 

I believe everyone has the potential for greatness. Realizing that greatness is everyone’s birthright. Pursuing anything else cheats you, cheats the real “real world,” cheats the Universe, and cheats whatever Power administers the Universe.

I see squandering the better part of one’s day when one is most energetic, most alert, and most creative on some “tolerable” job as a tragic waste of one’s gifts and time. Far better is to identify, develop and enjoy those gifts.

But, but, but, what about money?

Okay, I will concede (for the sake of expediting so I can get to my main point) that money is necessary. We all seem to need it and/or want more of it no matter how much we have already.

In my experience, I never put much (any) emphasis on amassing money. I tried a few jobs here and there whenever I thought I absolutely needed money. However, immediately upon being hired, I felt like I had just been sentenced to a prison term, that I had made a boneheaded deal trading my priceless freedom for a small fistful of dollars. I never lasted long in those jobs. It was always a matter of weeks before I ran out screaming (or was thrown out by some screaming boss).

Here is my “work” resume since graduating from Rutgers University in 1968:

• December 1968 – January 1969, Case Worker, New Jersey Board of Welfare, New Brunswick, New Jersey. Fired after two months. Became radicalized after seeing excessive poverty and dealing with an insensitive bureaucracy. (Not too many people hold the rare distinction of being fired from a civil service job.)

• Summer 1969, Truck Driver for Salvation Army in San Francisco. Quit after 5 weeks when I earned enough to pay off a speeding ticket that I got in the desolate California desert of all places. (Yes, I lived on Ashbury Street, one half block from Haight.)

• Fall 1969, Factory Worker, Simulaids, Woodstock, NY. Made first aid training devices. Quit after two weeks. Bored out of my gourd.

• Winter 1969, Short Order Cook, Sled Hill Café, Woodstock, NY. Quit after 3 weeks. Hated the late nights and having to deal with meat. (I’m a vegetarian.) Met some cool rock stars, though.

• Winter 1969, Welder in a gun factory, Woodstock, NY. Made replicas of antique rifles. Quit after 4 weeks. Hated the entire scene.

• Summer 1970, Maintenance Man at a summer camp, New Paltz, NY. Quit after 4 weeks. Camp season was over and I got bored/grossed out stacking the urine-soaked mattresses in the storage shed.

• Fall 1970 to present, retired from the idea of doing any type of work whatsoever – hard work, soft work, smart work, or whatever work.

But, but, but what about money?

Whenever I seemed to need money, it appeared. It’s the damnedest thing (or better put, the undamnedest thing) but I have found that it is all a matter of deserving and desiring. If I thought I deserved it then I desired it. And then it came. I’ve never gone without. It has nothing to do with work or effort or jobs or careers. It seems to do the trick because I live comfortably. (If you want to tour my home, click here.)

So in the meantime, instead of obsessing over money, I stay true to myself. I just do what I want to do and learn what I want to learn and enjoy what I want to enjoy and sometimes I get so wonderfully and powerfully caught up in some project and I start dreaming expansive daydreams and I go for it with every ounce of energy and enthusiasm and love that I can muster. And I will argue to my dying day that that experience is not work and should never be considered work. It is "fun" in the fullest, most glorious sense of the word.

And the money . . . it just takes care of itself.

Each of us is beautifully unique and generously endowed with all the tools to be great. Each of us has to discover that and develop that. That is our full time job. In my opinion, spending the better part of life in a “tolerable” job is not the formula for greatness (or even wealth, for that matter).

You have got to love what you do. That is the imperative. If you aren’t in love with what you do, then you’ve got to find it. And by doing so, you will transform this so-called “real world” into a vastly better place.

www.lazyway.net

 

Lazy Advice to This Year’s (or Any Year’s) Graduates

I want you to make a list of what is most important to you. Please give it enough thought so that your list has at least five items on it.

If “making money” is on your list then you can stop reading my advice. I can’t help you. Either you are hopeless or you didn’t think (or haven’t yet thought) deeply enough about what is truly important in life.

If you are entering the so-called “real” world or if you are extending your stay in the “unreal," here is my advice:

Fall in love.

Not necessarily with another person, although that is nice, but fall in love with some area of knowledge. Don’t study a subject or take some job just because you think you can make a lot of money at it. Pursue a direction because it inspires you, because it feeds your soul, because it challenges you and causes you to grow as a person, because it advances the human condition.

If you study something or pursue something for the money that it may bring, you may make your money, but you will end up being one dull, unhappy dude and, the truth be told, quite unfulfilled because the money that you thought would be great, will turn out to be not enough. I can guarantee it.

Here is a sad truth about money. If you chase it, you will never think you have enough of it. Chasing after bucks (or quid or euros or whatever) will never fulfill you as an individual. NEVER.

Instead pursue your passion. Love something with all your heart and soul. That is the key to great success. By loving something, it reveals its secrets to you. By loving something you discover subtler and subtler truths. Power, my dear friends, resides in that subtle. That power will deliver the success you would like to have. Success (defined however you like – in terms of wealth, name, fame, power, love, health, happiness, knowledge, and any combination) comes as a side effect of doing what you love.

So studying or pursuing law/medicine/accounting because of some desired future salary will doom you to a lifetime of hard work and drudgery. And emptiness.

But if you do what you love, you will never work again. And I promise that you will be happy, powerful, healthy, wise, and enormously rich in all that matters.

www.lazyway.net

Organic Musings of the Concept of Calling

In my opinion, a calling has to be socially responsible. It must help create a more just, loving, and sustainable world.

I bring this up because last week I learned that some brain-dead local farmer used a virus to kill off the wild rose on his property. The wild rose is the state flower of Iowa and it spreads like crazy. Many consider it a nuisance. In any case, the virus apparently escaped this farmer’s land and spread far and wide, infecting and destroying everyone’s ornamental rose bushes. Our garden was not immune and we lost many beautiful plants. Major public rose gardens were also similarly damaged.

The pursuit of agriculture could be a calling for some. Collaborating with nature to grow beautiful, nutritious things is a great fulfillment. Tragically, many who practice agriculture do it in a way that is anything but socially responsible. These misguided folks have come to regard Mother Nature as an enemy that must be battled. This rose-killing farmer is an example of this warped thinking. But the problem is not just an isolated farmer or three. The way agribusiness conducts itself in general is morally and spiritually bankrupt, short-sighted, corrupt, and driven by greed.

Agribusiness is polluting our (yours, mine and everyone’s) air and water, depleting and eroding our soil, and poisoning our food. We unwittingly ingest all the environmental toxins which agribusiness indiscriminately pours on the earth. And since these toxins cannot be metabolized, the body stores them in the fatty tissue where they have a 40-year half life. There is no way to get rid of them from the body. And studies show their concentrations are increasing at an alarming rate.

Studies also show that these toxins have been associated with hormone disruption, immune system suppression, reproductive disorders, several types of cancer, and other disorders such as allergies. But farmers and the manufacturers of these poisons don’t care. They happily dump still more of it on our dear Mother Earth and, as a result, more and more of it ends up in our bellies and permanently in our bodies. Even if one government bans a substance because of the environmental havoc it causes, the manufacturer happily sells it for use elsewhere in the world.

And God only knows what future disaster awaits us with all the genetically modified organisms Monsanto et al are foisting on our planet.

(Is there a larger environmental anti-Christ than Monsanto? They are responsible for one ecological catastrophe after another – DDT, Agent Orange, rGBH, dioxin, PCBs, and Roundup. And now we are trusting Monsanto, a company guilty of lying and covering up their contaminations, when they tell us that their genetically engineered seeds are safe. In my view, Monsanto is a modern day Dr. Josef Mengele, the Nazi Angel of Death. Actually Monsanto is worse because it is more unconscionable.) 

This is why eating organic food is so absolutely important. While, on one hand, we may want cheap food for budgetary reasons because organic, on the surface, is not cheap. But in the long run, if we factor in the deleterious, even disastrous, effect on our health and environment, non-organic food may turn out to be astronomically expensive while organic by comparison would be quite cheap and highly intelligent.

Furthermore, organic food tastes better and has a higher nutritional content. The farmers who are growing it should be supported. They are striving to be in tune with Mother Nature and we owe it to ourselves and to our planet to make sure they continue. None of us can follow our callings if we are sick from all these poisons. Besides, if more people buy organic, prices will come down and purveyors of poison will be put out of business. That day can’t come soon enough.

And don’t get me started on the barbaric way livestock is raised. Even Nazi concentration camps were more humane.

Bon appetit.

P.S. There just happens to be a place that has a proven method that is able to purge fat-soluble toxins from the body. They are right around the corner (a long corner) about one mile from my house.

www.lazyway.net

 

Thoughts on Finding One's Calling

I’ve been thinking about the concept of a calling.

Such a concept would only exist in an orderly universe and I believe this universe is one such place. In my view, the purpose of life is to progress, evolve, and grow to fulfillment. If one’s activity meshes with that purpose then one’s growth to fulfillment is accelerated.

A calling is not merely a profession or job. That is too superficial a definition. A calling must embody a higher purpose. It must involve service. It is the avenue through which one makes the greatest contribution to everyone else.

As a result, a calling affords an individual the greatest possible growth, success, and happiness.

I believe each of us has a calling and we are all endowed with the necessary talent, creativity, intelligence, and insight to find it and to fulfill it. 

Tragically most people don’t even believe they have a calling in life. Instead, most everyone “works for a living,” which really means most everyone “suffers to survive.” People have created an unhappy, unhealthy, and unsuccessful world for themselves.  And then they turn around and teach the younger generation this same fruitless pattern of behavior, claiming hard work is a virtue, as if there is some great benefit to suffering.

The solution to finding your calling isn’t complex. It is contained in the answer to this question: What do you give, the giving of which fills you with great happiness?

What could be easier? Give what makes you happy to give. That way both you and everyone else receive the maximum.

www.lazyway.net

 

 

 

 

The Greatest Wealth

Health is the greatest wealth. Money, yachts, private jets, fancy cars, vacation homes, and cashmere socks are fairly worthless if you are too sick to enjoy any of them. But health is all too frequently sacrificed in pursuit of material success.

I read recently where researchers have found that Americans are significantly less healthy than folks in England. We Yanks have much higher rates of diabetes, heart disease, strokes, lung disease and cancer. Our blood pressure is higher and we die younger. This was consistent no matter what the income or education level.

This finding is particularly curious since Americans spend twice as much on health care than the Brits but Americans are twice as sick. (Diabetes: US 12.5%, England 6%. Cancer: US 9.5%, England 5.5%)

What factors explain this sorry state? Off the top of my head, I thought of a few.

1. We as a nation have abysmal eating habits. We eat deep-fried, processed, chemically altered, genetically-engineered, nutrition-free, highly sugared calories that are also laced with environmental toxins in the form of herbicides, pesticides, antibiotics, and chemical fertilizers. Yum! 

2. We don’t exercise. Instead we watch mind-rotting television programs.

3. We indulge in an epidemic of bad habits.

4. We deprive ourselves of sleep.

5. We are unhappy in our roles as wage slaves.

6. We are under enormous occupational, societal, environmental, and militaristic stress.

7. Our health care system stinks.

Our health care system, which is really a disease care system, is controlled by drug companies whose approach to health is to sell wares that attack and/or mask symptoms while giving us a raft of undesirable side effects. These drugs cure nothing. But most horrific of all, these pharmaceutical companies have turned our nation’s doctors into pill salesmen and our medical schools into product training seminars. 

The three concepts you won’t find taught in today’s pharmaceutically-sponsored medical schools are prevention, nutrition, and strengthening the immune system. On the other hand, what you will find is this pill and this pill and this pill and this pill and this pill.   

And what do we get for this kind of health care? We get a medical profession that is the third leading cause of death in the United States (after heart disease and cancer). The phenomenon is called iatrogenic disease. Iatrogenic disease is disease that was induced in the patient by the medical profession. It has been estimated that 250,000 people die each year from iatrogenic disease – negative effects from drugs, infections in hospitals, doctor errors, hospital errors, unnecessary surgery, and medication errors.

Just thinking about it is enough to make one sick.

So here is the solution – let’s fix what is broken and live a life that doesn’t incur death-hastening stress. Let’s do what we love, laugh, eat organic, and go to bed before 10PM. That may not prevent or cure everything but it is a great platform on which to start.

www.lazyway.net

 

The Story of Zen Spam

Perhaps I’m jaded but it seems to me that I am getting less spam these days. My spam filter catches most of it and I scan each day’s haul because every now and then a correspondence that I really want gets snagged.

On the other hand, occasionally a pharmaceutical come-on or an investment pitch will slip through to my mail box. And of course I get two or three e-mails each month from Africa respectfully informing me that I am entitled to benefit from some enormous quantity of legitimately earned funds that needs to be removed from a politically unstable regime.

Hopefully the reason for less spam is that spammers are realizing that spam is no longer an effective marketing tool. I’m definitely getting less pornographic spam. Maybe those spammers have realized that at age 60 I’m a lost cause.

A couple of years ago I attempted to reinvent spam into something relatively positive. Its purpose was still marketing but the idea was, instead of being a blatant advertisement, to give the recipient something of value – something funny or inspiring or cute or insightful or uplifting so that there was a positive payoff for opening the unsolicited email. And in the event the piece piqued curiosity, it contained a link to the website that sold something.

I dubbed the concept Zen Spam.

I experimented with Zen Spam to get media attention for my book. My friend who has a huge database of every reporter in North America would send me slices from it (like all the Lifestyle reporters, for example). I’d compose an applicable Zen Spam and send it off.

My most successful had the subject line “Agatha Christie on Laziness.” The body gave the following quote:

“I don’t think necessity is the mother of invention. Invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly laziness, to save myself trouble.” Agatha Christie

At the bottom, I also included the web address for my book.

It actually worked amazingly well. Many newspapers including The New York Times and Los Angeles Times did articles about my book as a result of my sending them Zen Spam.

I stopped doing Zen Spam, not because I got the anti-spam religion (which I did, at least for now), but because articles in the mainstream media didn’t drive traffic to my book’s website as effectively as getting reviewed on various Internet sites. (My book is only available over the Internet.)

In any case, the thrill of reaching huge numbers of people with a mere keystroke is irresistibly intoxicating. 

Perhaps Zen Spam will evolve spam into an art form that is welcomed. I won't hold my breath though.

www.lazyway.net   

How to Succeed Without Working (recording)

A couple of weeks ago I conducted a teleseminar. Several people who missed it  asked if it was recorded. It turns out it was and here is the link to get a copy. There is no charge.

http://www.lazywayebook.com/get_fred_call.html