Maybe you are unaware of the toxic mold epidemic in U.S. homes. You will be rudely educated when you go to sell your home, as I was when I sold one of mine. Once there was no “mold detection” and “mold treatment” industry; today it’s a billion dollar business.

Sort of like sexual harassment litigation. Both prove a point: entire industries are created constantly out of thin air. From ideas. From long standing problems no one paid any attention to before. Each one spawning tentacles, each an opportunity octopus.

For about $13,000.00, you can get into the mold detection biz by purchasing a trained “mold dog”. Such dogs outperform detection equipment, putting their sensitive snouts right on the spot of the mold, even when concealed behind walls or under floors.

A mold inspection can run $500.00 or so, so it only takes about 26 jobs to recover the investment in the pooch, not including, of course, shots, flea powder and chow.

I marvel.
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I just returned from a lunch meeting. I had to wait 15 minutes for a table at Applebees. Directly across the street, at 2:00 PM on a Tuesday, the Kohls Department Store parking lot was filled with cars, SUV’s and minivans.

All the carping about high gas prices – gee, did you notice you’ve got THREE cars in your driveway? Did ANY of those gas-guzzling complainer transporters NEED to be in Kohls’ parking lot? I’m in a mid-week, mid-day traffic jam trying to get home, in a small Ohio town. Note; Ohio – the state that the Dems want you to believe is totally populated with unemployed steel workers, clustered around their fireplaces, eating beans from cans.

Just recently, I had three different business owners excuse their failings with ‘the bad economy.’

Nuts.
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Around me, the whiners, with the 512 reasons they cannot do well in today’s economy or in their businesses or in their lives.

One of the tremendous points of leverage for behavioral change we’ve been erasing from society is “shame.” People on food stamps aren’t ashamed about it. Obese people aren’t ashamed; they sue McDonalds. Pro athletes whose teams suck or who get caught gulping steroids aren’t ashamed.

One day on Dr. Phil, there was a young couple fighting; she, grossly overspending, an out of control shopaholic badly in need of a spanking. But the gripe she had about hubby was 100% legit: he had a mechanic’s job, brought home a small paycheck, and was blatantly unconcerned, unembarrassed, unashamed about its size, uninterested in doing anything to replace it with a bigger one.

Nothing shameful about being poor. Shameful to stay poor, in America.
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Since we’ve been talking about turning mistakes into marketing gimmicks, I want to switch gears and focus on regulating our own personal behavior.

Liar, liar, pants on fire.

As you might guess, a lot of people have asked for my thoughts about the previous crucifixion of Martha Stewart. I made a bet that she would go to jail, and pegged the over/under at 16 months.

Her case was so very instructive because she wound up criminally convicted of, and financially destroyed by lying about something that the judge determined wasn’t a crime she could be convicted of. The fraud charge thrown out. Only the lying remained.

While it is a bit simplistic to say she should simply have told the truth when first caught and been done with it, it’s also right to say she should have told the truth and been done with it.
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