I was watching ‘Meet The Press’ a few Sundays ago, and they played a clip, in black and white, from 30 years ago, when oil company execs were grilled over their profit-taking, and politicians and media figures agreed they complete destruction of the American economy was only minutes away thanks to skyrocketing oil prices.

The broadcaster didn’t catch the irony of the same handwringing going on this Sunday. The same hysterical, dire predictions being made. Presumably, 30 years from now, the host of ‘Meet The Press’, former President Hillary, will be showing these clips – and again, some hysterical wailing will be underway.

Yes, we DO have real problems.

Mostly, fortunately, the marketplace itself will sort them all out and re-arrange them and fix some, forestall others.

I don’t mean to downplay the realities. But I also want to FIRMLY make the point that hysterical predictions of doom have been a media mainstay and coffee shop and unhappy hour fodder, day in, day out, for far longer than you or I have been alive.

Most re-occur again and again. Some admittedly do gradually grow in severity over time. Regardless, the important thing for us is not to participate in the panic.

Privately, the responsible businessperson always carefully considers worst case possibilities and, when possible, insures against the worst. But the entrepreneur must focus on the best, on opportunities, on progress.

We know that, factually, the glass is simultaneously half empty and half full. It’s not an either/or choice, as the foolish optimists or cynical pessimists would each insist. It is a situation, a circumstance, a “what is”, nothing more, nothing less.

Publicly, the leader of a business must keep others focused forward. You have a mandated role, a responsibility, to counter woe-is-us voices with your own voice of progress, hope, expectation and success.

Ultimately, general circumstances need never determine your circumstances.

Unless and until you embrace that idea, you operate at the whim of others.

Every once in a while you run up against somebody totally devoid of integrity.

The other day, I screwed something up. I then made it a top priority to get my ‘victim’ on the phone and say: I screwed up. I didn’t ignore it or run and hide from it or lie about it or blame anybody.

But every once in a while, you run up against a pathological person, devoid of conscience. They exist.

In fact, it’s about 5% of the population.

This chunk includes the obviously and blatant evil, like sexual predators and con artists, as well as the more insidious creeps, like vendors who never keep promises, have no intention of keeping promises, and don’t give a damn.

What can you do when you realize you have such a person around you? Get away from them.

In a broader sense, there are people who aren’t so evil, but they are toxic to achievers nonetheless. This includes the incompetent, not just the irresponsible. Or the persistent Time Vampire. Or the persistently negative gloom-n-doomer, like that “Debby Downer” character on Saturday Night Live.

We have laws about putting such people out of their misery. And if you’re a very compassionate type, I think it’s perfectly okay to feel sorry for them. It might even be admirable.

But you still can’t afford to associate or be associated with them, any more than you’d knowingly bathe in toxic sludge everyday, even if you liked or were related by blood to the moron bottling it as shampoo.

By the way, there’s a lot more pain and suffering caused by the incompetent and irresponsible than the evil.

Oh, and when you do find somebody who’s honest, reliable, trustworthy, bright, and competent, don’t let ‘em get away. Create opportunity for them if you must, but don’t let ‘em get away. They really aren’t replaceable.

There’s one of the many success behaviors that may be more telling than others: capitalizing aggressively, relentlessly, quickly and fully on every opportunity.

I have actually seen GKIC Members exhibit at our events, then fail to be at their exhibits. Have opportunities to write articles for our newsletters or e-mail courses or my books and take it casually, hastily do sloppy work, poorly written, poorly constructed to generate response. I see news items everyday that different business owners could grab and use but don’t.

I see a lot of casualness and sloppiness and laziness when opportunities present themselves to most people. Frankly, I still don’t understand it.

I was taught that the hottest fires in hell are reserved for those who squander gifts, like their abilities and their opportunities. I have also been very, very broke – I know what it is like to not do well. To have phones disconnected, cars repossessed, bill collectors calling relentlessly, checks bouncing, even to go hungry.

Also, because I treat opportunities well, eagerly receive them, am grateful for them, act on them, I attract them.

I have the vision to see into the future, all the ramifications of an opportunity. Not because I’m psychically gifted. Because I worked at that skill.

Yes, these days, I turn away a lot of opportunities. More so with each passing day. Things I’d have leapt at five or ten years ago. I’m discovering that only brings more, better and different opportunities of the kind I can accept, that fit my present life. Now, the turning down is by deliberate choice.

Most of what I see going on is not that. It is more of a casual, laissez-faire attitude, a not taking things seriously. Maybe the result of the extended good economy we’ve been in, of doing well without really having to hustle.

Maybe age difference. I’m not sure.

Quite a few years ago, I got to know the author of that book, Success Is Not An Accident, Dr. John Kappas. John is now deceased. He was married to actress Florence Henderson, who I’ve worked with on four different infomercials.

Anyway, I complimented him on the title, because it is one of those great ones you can profit by seeing on your bookshelf even if you never crack the cover.

Like: The Magic Of Thinking Big. Most people think way too small.

Like: Possibility Thinking. Most people think of ways things can’t be done.

Well, a whole lot of people persist in thinking success is an accident. An accident of birth or genetics or freak encounter or luck.

Most who think this must, in order to live with their own lack of achievement. To admit that success is both a methodical process and the outcome of a process virtually anyone can use would be to admit they failed themselves. It is more palatable to say life failed me than to say I failed me, to say I’m unlucky rather than to say I’m lazy or weak or stupid. More comforting but obviously not helpful.

Every successful entrepreneur I know shares several chief frustrations. One is time; not enough time to do what he needs or wants to do, Time Vampires, waste, and so on. Another is a pack of family members who think he’s so much more successful than they are by unfair accident, who resent him, who have no appreciation for his victories, who mooch off of him, who guilt him. Every successful entrepreneur has this in the family.

Read the chapter titled NO GUILT in my new Wealth Attraction book.or grab the Wealth Attraction Course at: http://www.gkicresourcecenter.com/product/wealth-attraction/

Success is very, very, very, very, very, very rarely accident. Even the incredibly annoying, apparently vacuous Paris Hilton is not a success by accident.

Through her own efforts and those of hired, skilled publicists she leveraged being rich and striking in appearance to being famous for being rich and striking in appearance and famous into actual gigs and entrepreneurial activities that actually make actual profits.

That didn’t happen by random lightning bolt. It happened by plan and work.

People often complain about her fame and financial gains, noting she has no talent. But there’s a terrific object lesson there…you don’t need talent.

Personally, I think I have very little if any talent. But I do have some very finely honed skills.

These days I mostly see, work with and hang out with very successful people. But still, occasionally, in the Kennedy ranks, there are those who struggle.

As an observer, it’s not hard to see why they struggle. Success is attracted by being deserved, by practicing certain behaviors.

These people do not practice those behaviors. So success shuns them. You see, failure’s no accident either.

I would like to have you take a step back a month or so, and remember New Years Eve. Picture it in your mind.

Ryan Seacrest and Dick Clark return to drop the ball.

Another year tucked away in the history books. A new one ahead.

For most people, new years resolutions made ruefully, in jest, and hope for a better year. Their life strategy is hope. So for most the new year will unfold pretty much like the old year. Same grievances, same behaviors, same outcomes. I sometimes wonder what these folks are actually celebrating when the ball drops.

A friend of mine, who works nearly as compulsively as I do, was asked “But are you having fun?” The question is asked because most people must separate “work” or “business” from “fun”, and a lot of their “fun” must be artificially induced.

You’re supposed to get wisdom with age, but I find myself more puzzled about this thing we call “fun”, and this thing we call “happiness.”

A lot of people seem to be defying our core genetic impulses in search of fun and happiness outside of and away from meaningful accomplishment. By genetic impulse, I mean that we are hard-wired to invent, build, improve and achieve.

Forward movement to goals. How you can disconnect and separate that from “happiness” is beyond me. I doubt you can, and suggest that the dramatic explosion of anti-depressant drug consumption is a result of peoples’ misguided attempts to try.

Years ago, a book called ‘Prescription For Happiness’ was compiled, with different celebrities and authors contributing prescriptions brief enough to be written on a doctor’s little prescription pad.

For whatever it might be worth, here’s mine:

Strive to get smarter. To do a lot of things better. To do at least one thing so well no one else can match your skill. Set, pursue and achieve a lot of goals. Resist status quo, ignore less creative or ambitious peoples’ criticisms, disapproval or honest confusion. Find something useful and immensely profitable to do that interests you immensely and do it. If you feel you must escape from your regular daily life to have fun or be happy, sit down and re-consider your regular daily life.

Remember the holiday season? You schlepped to holiday parties, visited “friends” you like so very much you only see them once a year, and had all the relatives and spouse’s co-workers and neighbors over to the house to consume the 55-gallon drum of Christmas cookies you bought at Costco. Uncle Buster and his 4th wife, Maxine, former stripper now assistant director of FEMA. Your sister-in-law’s husband, an accountant, with the personality of a dead carp.

Your spouse’s co-workers from the office, who know exactly how much a gallon of gas cost at four different gas stations the previous Tuesday. Your sister Betty, who thinks Dr. Phil is God, President Bush is Satan, and arrived wearing a T-shirt with Michael Moore’s photo on it. Her husband Herb, who described last week’s televised NASCAR race in mile by mile detail.

And, of course, your chronically unemployed son-in-law, equipped with iPod on belt, earpiece in ear, video game thingy in hand, blank stare, slack jaw, displaying only one discernible talent: belching in time with the music on his iPod after wolfing down everything edible in sight.

Your mother, who wonders why you don’t have a good job at a good company like your saintly brother, and keeps asking your spouse to explain what the hell you actually do, anyway. Out of all this, all manner of family drama and trauma, so you get to hear about who said what to who, along with the year’s obituaries, and, of course, the story of Bertha’s gall bladder operation.

Feel a little out of place?

If you read Gene Landrum’s book, EMPOWERMENT, you might feel better. He demonstrates that most exceptionally successful entrepreneurs are “mis-fits” in their families and in most social collections of other people. In fact, not fitting in is something of a pre-requisite for entrepreneurial success. If you fit in with them, you can’t fit in with us. Around them, you are a stranger in a strange land. To them, you are a freak. As it all should be.

So take heart, the more disconnected you felt during these festivities, the more people you got the fish eye from, the more times you bit your lip to avoid actually answering questions like “What’s new with you?”, the more qualified you are for your chosen role as an entrepreneur.

Go get Uncle Buster another beer. Be quiet. Smile, nod, and try not to say much.

I ‘m going to tell you about the 2 things you must do to succeed regardless of how the economy is performing.

Do you ever find yourself asking this question “How can you keep growing your business in a recession?”

I actually got that question, on a teleseminar. Incredible.

Why ?

Because it was asked during a period of prosperity when there were 30,000 jobs “lost” — juxtaposed against the tens of millions lost the last 3 years. First month with job losses in TWO YEARS! You can’t get into a restaurant. I rarely see an old car on the road. Everybody I know is deluged with business.

But I can’t caution you enough, the media is unrelenting in its attempt to extend the “recession”, or at least convince people there is one. If they hear it from Lou Dobbs et al every single day, they will believe it.

It is up to you to contradict and counter the proliferate and loud voices of gloom and doom telling your customers to lock up their wallets and cower in their caves in fear. If you aren’t spreading “positivism”, you’re making a mistake.

By the way, if you stick with any prediction long enough, it will happen. The Bengals won some ball games. There will be a recession. So, just for the record, I thought I’d succinctly answer the thumb-sucker’s teleseminar question – how do you keep growing your business in a recession? (I started mine in the Carter economy.) Here’s the highly advanced, amazing answer. It’s top secret. Keep it to yourself.

The same way(s) you grow it any other times.

Implementing good marketing and sales practices and getting good results is a universal thing, largely unaffected by outside influences. My files include direct-response ads from Harpers Weekly that ran during the Civil War. W. Clement Stone’s ‘Success System That Never Fails’ for selling life insurance in the Depression works just as well today (although we know less manual labor intensive ways, too).

For starters, here’s what you do: you get up everyday and get in front of people who could give you money (physically and/or through media), and you deliver a convincing argument to encourage them to do so. Key words: “get up” and “everyday.” At different times, under different circumstances, it may easier or more difficult, but still, under all circumstances, at all times, money moves around, changes hands, gravitates to the person with a ‘system’ for attracting it.

I rarely get headaches, but today I’ve got a watermelon sized throbber.

Why?

The usual. Ignorance, stupidity, sloppiness and incompetence washing up all around me.

• A client on a deadline who promised to have needed materials in my hands by this morning; nothing has arrived, yet he’ll still expect me to meet my deadline.
• A coaching client who actually told me he can’t keep track of and regularly contact 136 accounts. Wants more software. Needs 136 4×6” file cards and a kick in the ass.
• A woman in front of me simultaneously driving, smoking, putting on lipstick and talking on her cellphone.
• Another client who has lost information sent twice.

It seems a lot of my pet peeves have surfaced today. Pet peeve: people who send me requests and do not provide their FAX numbers to respond. I do not have time to look these things up.

Pet peeve: people with letterhead with their phone and fax in 3 point type that cannot be read without a microscope. (In case you wonder, most of the time I just throw such things out. If I can’t respond easily I don’t respond at all. But occasionally it’s important enough to mandate response. )

Pet peeve: companies that spend a lot of money running an ad to sell something then never answer the phone. Tip: tell people some time when they can get a human. Guy’s advertising a $300,000.00 piece of property I might want to buy. Ran a really big ad with photos. When you call, you get an answering machine with no identification, no reference to the ad, no time given you can call, no other means of communicating. Into the trash. When I was spending front-end ad dollars, I had phones answered.

Pet peeve: clients, coaching members who just don’t get in gear, don’t implement. Fooling around forever to get their mailing p-e-r-f-e-c-t, instead of getting it mailed. Hey, even authors eventually get it – the bragging rights aren’t to the best writing author but to the best selling author.

Pet peeve: people who can’t be where they’re supposed to be, on time, without being babysat. “Oh, there was traffic.” Yep, everyday. In my world, 8:00 AM doesn’t mean 8:10 AM. Martha, Donald, Steve Wynn, the mega-rich entrepreneurs who built it from scratch didn’t get it done and can’t stay at the top by being soft or nice or tolerant or forgiving or sloppy or slow. I’ve studied them all. I’ve talked to some of their employees. The person who books their NetJets flights. Their suppliers. They’re all described as “S.O.B.’s.” But they’re not. They’re just intolerant of ineptitude.

Whatever you tolerate in your world takes root and grows and blossoms. So even at the price of the occasional whopper of a headache, even at the price of being disliked, even at the price of firing clients and suppliers from time to time, I refuse to let the weeds take over the garden. So I let a few folks have it today. To the moon. Now I’m going to lie down in my massage chair with a cold cloth on my head.

Who signs your paycheck? Sound like an easy one huh?

But very few people – employees or entrepreneurs – can correctly answer this question.

Employees think the boss or business owner does. Of course, you instantly recognize that mistake. And you would probably try and educate your staff that it’s the customer who really pays their wages. Even that is simplistic. The money that materializes in the bank account to pay your salary and dividends, profits and perks as well as your employees’ wages is dependent on a more complex collection of sources and constituencies.

For example, in the publishing world, most book publishers, their editors treat the authors like crap. (Only one of my two publishers is guilty.) They think the author is their slave, to be told what to do, and to be tolerated as a necessary nuisance in producing product. Similarly, in Hollywood, writers are treated worst, actors almost as badly.
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Let’s continue our conversation on what to do when tragedy strikes and talk about the 2 sided coins of life. But first a disclaimer: my opinions are my own and not necessarily those of  Glazer-Kennedy Inner Circle.

Every coin has two sides. In the case of New Orleans, one side was filled with tragedy and horror, both immediate, and lingering, long term, to be played out over months and even years. The other side was filled with opportunity. Short term, for many. For non-profit organizations and charities given opportunity to showcase themselves, attract huge numbers of first time donors who will be converted to continuing donors.

For politicians to position themselves. For new celebrities, for authors, for movie producers.

Circulation of news publications soared, viewership of CNN and MSNBC leapt (and ad rates jump with it); almost nothing’s better for the news industry than epic disaster. And the same media that races to profit from a disaster like this will begin sharply criticizing others, in other businesses who do the same.

Stockholders in cement companies, construction companies, Home Depot, etc. benefit when whatever reconstruction is decided on begins.

Stock speculators, bankers, hedge fund managers all reacted instantly; for many, they have a fiduciary responsibility to do so. As the giant swamp is drained, entrepreneurs of every stripe then flood the area, from roofing contractors to souvenir sellers.

Make no mistake, many, many new fortunes are made, big companies’ fortunes enhanced even though many others will lose theirs and never recover. There is unconscionable short term exploitation and outright fraud, left and right. In fact, telemarketing criminals raising money for fake charities leapt to action the first day.

Legitimate opportunism develops a bit slower, but more expansively, with greater staying power, and as much as its practioners may be criticized, without them, without a rising wave of opportunism, no city of any size or type will ever be re-built there, no hospitals, no schools, nothing but swamp.

Well, I did not make any immediate, specific financial or investment moves the day of, the day after, but only because I was so fully occupied with other matters, visiting consulting clients, urgent deadlines.

Otherwise, at the same time I considered charitable responsibility and reaction I would have considered, and acted on, financial stewardship and entrepreneurial responsibility and reaction, and today, I’d be richer for doing so, with no apology in mind.

I tell you all this to make the obvious point; Hill’s; in every adversity lies the seed of equal or greater opportunity. And as a time to make an even bigger, broader point: being a true entrepreneur ain’t for the squeamish. True entrepreneurs wind up with a type of thinking, a speed and type of reaction to the events around them, small and large, that if transparent to others would, sometimes inspire awe, but at other times inspire terror and disgust and send people away screaming into the night. I’m a very serious student of what really makes super-entrepreneurs tick, and recognize their own thinking is itself a double sided coin. (We can, if you like, keep this to ourselves.)