Claw Your Way To The Top Page 7

  PROSPECT: I didn’t give you an appointment. You got in here by sedating my receptionist with chloroform.

  SALESPERSON: Ha ha! Bob, Bob, Bob. I can’t put anything over on you, can I? But seriously, Bob, wouldn’t you agree that Adolf Hitler was a bad person?

  PROSPECT: Well, yes, but I ...

  SALESPERSON: And don’t you feel, Bob, that child abuse is wrong?

  PROSPECT: Of course. Sure. I mean ...

  SALESPERSON (swinging a watch back and forth rhythmically on a chain): And would it not be correct to state, Bob, that in a right triangle, the square of the hypotenuse equals the sum of the squares of the other two sides?

  PROSPECT (getting drowsy): Whatever you say.

  At this point, if you have the prospect in a positive enough mood, you may be able to simply take his wallet. Otherwise you should go on to Rule #5.

  Rule #5: Ask For The Sale

  Be direct. Something like: “Bob, how about a large order for whatever it is I’m selling?”

  Usually the prospect will balk, offering any one of a number of standard excuses, such as:

  “I want to think about it.” “I want to talk to my husband or wife about it, depending on what sex I am.” “Get out of my sight before I kill you and feed your pancreas to rats.”

  This is normal sales resistance, and you must not let it faze you. Go back and repeat your presentation, very slowly, starting with “Hi, Bob! Great to see you, Bob!” Try to get the prospect to voice specific objections so you can overcome them (“Are you saying, Bob, that you think Adolf Hitler was not a bad person?”). Do this as many times as necessary, until Bob comes around. Remind him that if he doesn’t, you may have to take him to Lunch (see chapter 6).

  Chapter Nine. How To Go Into Business For Yourself

  The story of America is the story of individuals—the Henry Fords, the John DeLoreans, the Speedy Alka-Seltzers, the Don Corleones—who started out alone, with little more than a dream and a willingness to work toward it, and ended up running large organizations and eventually either dying or getting indicted. Chances are that you, too, have an idea for a business percolating inside you, an idea you’re sure would work, if only you gave it a chance.

  Well, why not? What, really, are you getting from your company job, aside from a steady paycheck, regular raises, job security, extensive medical benefits, and a comfortable pension? Hey, if that’s all they think you’re worth, well, in the words of the popular country-and-western song: “Take This job and Let Me Hold onto It while I Start My Own Little Business on the Side.”

  Step one is to find out what legal requirements you have to meet to register yourself as a small business. In most states, this is a two-part process:

  1. You have several boxes of cheap business cards printed up with the wrong phone number.

  2. You go around and pin your card onto those bulletin boards you see in supermarkets and low-rent restaurants, the ones with 10,000 other business cards that look like the one shown here.

  Steve A. Clegel

  Accounting and Light Masonry

  “Since April 3, 1986, at about 4:30”

  Tax Implications Of Going Into Business For Yourself

  The tax implications are that you can deduct every nickel you ever spend for the rest of your life, including on bowling accessories (see chapter 10, How Finance Works).

  Three Surefire Business Concepts

  Over the years, I have thought up several business concepts that are so obviously brilliant that the only way they could conceivably fail would be if somebody actually tried them. This is where you fit in. Pick any one of the concepts below and invest your life savings in it. If you are not completely satisfied that the concept was not all that I said it was, if not more, then you do not owe me a cent. Sound too good to be true? Well just wait until you see these concepts!

  Concept #1: The Electric Appliance Suicide Module

  This concept is based on the known fact that it is impossible to get electronic devices repaired. Let’s say you have purchased a videocassette recorder, and after a while, because of normal wear and tear such as your nephew Dwight stuck a Polish sausage into the slot and pushed the fast forward button, it stops working.

  Now you have two options. One is to take it back to the store where you got it, which will send it back to the “Factory Service Center.” Here’s what I have to say about this option: Hahahahahahaha. Because the “Factory Service Center” is in fact a giant warehouse containing hundreds of thousands of broken electronic devices, including 1952 Philco television sets. The staff consists of two elderly men, named Roscoe and Lester, who will poke around inside your VCR with cheap cigars and go, “Lookit all them wires in there!”

  Your other choice is to take it to a local “repair shop,” which will consist of a sullen person standing behind a counter with an insulting sign.

  Obviously, neither of these is an acceptable option. So the logical thing to do, when an electronic device breaks, is to just throw it away and get another one, right? But you can’t bring yourself to do this. You paid $700 for it, and you’d feel guilty. So you put yourself in the hands of incompetents and thieves.

  This is where the Electric Appliance Suicide Module would come in. It would be a device costing $29.95 and consisting of a small, powerful explosive charge, coupled to a tiny electronic “brain,” which the consumer would implant inside his VCR or television set via a simple procedure requiring only a screwdriver and three beers. They way the Suicide Module would work is, as soon as the brain sensed that the appliance was no longer working properly, it would set off the charge. For safety reasons, this would occur in the middle of the night, when the consumers were asleep. The consumer would be awakened by a large BLAM!! in his living room, and he’d come rushing out, and there, where his television set used to be, he’d see a grayish cloud of vaporized plastic, and he’d say: “Huh! Time to get a new TV!” Besides eliminating a lot of consumer guilt, the Suicide Module would probably provide a very powerful incentive for appliances to perform well. They would work their little diodes to the bone, for fear that otherwise the Suicide Module might think they were starting to come down with something.

  Concept #2: The “Mister Mediocre” Fast-Food Restaurant Franchise

  I have studied American eating preferences for years, and believe me, this is what people want. They don’t want to go into an unfamiliar restaurant, because they don’t know whether the food will be very bad, or very good, or what. They want to go into a restaurant that advertises on national television, where they know the food will be mediocre. This is the heart of the Mister Mediocre concept.

  The basic menu item, in fact the only menu item, would be a food unit called the “patty,” consisting of—this would be guaranteed in writing—”100

  percent animal matter of some kind.” All patties would be heated up and then cooled back down in electronic devices immediately before serving. The Breakfast Patty would be a patty on a bun with lettuce, tomato, onion, egg, Ba-Ko-Bits, Cheez Whiz, a Special Sauce made by pouring ketchup out of a bottle, and a little slip of paper stating: “Inspected by Number 12.” The Lunch or Dinner Patty would be any Breakfast Patties that didn’t get sold in the morning. The Seafood Lover’s Patty would be any patties that were starting to emit a serious aroma. Patties that were too rank even to be Seafood Lover’s Patties would be compressed into wads and sold as “Nuggets.” Any nuggets that had not been sold as of the end of the month would be used to make bricks for new Mister Mediocre restaurants.

  Concept #3: The “Bingo The Leech” Licensed Character

  If you have young children, you know how they tend to develop powerful attachments, similar to cocaine addiction only more expensive, to the toy industry’s many lovable and imaginative licensed characters such as (for girls) Rainbow Brite, Strawberry Shortcake, Wee Whiny Winkie, The Dweebs, and The Simper Sisters; and (for boys) He-Man, The Limb Whackers, The Eye Eaters, Sergeant Bicep, and Testosterone Bob’s Hurt Patrol. Once a child
gets one of these characters, he or she suddenly just has to have all the others in the set, plus the accessories, all of which are—believe me when I tell you this—Sold Separately.

  So I have come up with this concept for a truly irresistible licensed character named Bingo the Leech. Bingo would be an adorable little stuffed leech with big loving eyes and a tube of industrial quick-drying epoxy concealed in his lips. When a child picked up Bingo at the store and squeezed him, Bingo would emit some epoxy and become permanently bonded to the child’s skin, and the parent would have to buy him so as to avoid shoplifting charges. Then the parent would have to buy all the other members of the Bingo family, because only by combining their lip secretions would you obtain the antidote chemical required to get Bingo off the child before it was time to go to college.

  Chapter Ten. How Finance Works

  DETROIT—The General Motors Corporation reported today that it lost $64.6 million in the first fiscal quarter.

  “We have no idea what happened to the money,” said top GM officials, in unison. “One moment it was lying on the dresser, and the next moment it was gone! We could just kick ourselves! Ha ha!”

  Who Should Read This Chapter

  At some point in your rise to the top, you may find yourself appointed to a job where you have to know something about finances, such as as Controller or Treasurer or Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. If this happens, you should read this chapter. But I warn you: this stuff is deadly dull, as is illustrated by accountants. You never hear people say: “Let’s have some fun tonight! Let’s go find some accountants!” So unless you have no choice, you should skip this chapter. I myself am going to require powerful illegal stimulants to write it.

  How Corporate Finances Work

  You look at a big corporation, with giant expensive buildings filled with tasteful carpets and big desks and rental plants and well-paid employees making Xerox-brand copies of the crossword puzzle, and you wonder, “How on earth do they make any money?”

  The answer is, they don’t. They lose money hand over fist. Read the business section of any newspaper, and just about every day you’ll see a story like the one reproduced above.

  The reason these executives can afford to be so cavalier is that they know they can always get more money—any amount, any time—by means of a process so simple you are going to laugh when I tell you about it, unless you have already fallen asleep at this point. All they have to do is print up some “stock.” A stock is basically a piece of high-quality paper, similar to what certificates of appreciation from bowling leagues are printed on, except it has a nice border and a statement such as the following printed on it in an attractive and historic type style:

  Whe bearer, hereinafter beknownst as “the bearer,” is, excepting those provisions which shall causeth “the bearer” to be excepted from these provisions, notwithstanding, hereby—and we are by the way also talking about “the bearer’s” heirs and assigns here—entitled to one (1) share (share) of (of) “stock” in

  “the corporation,” and all that this doth entail, such as the VIP lounge, if any, and of course profits insofar as and to the extent that there are any profits after executives of “the corporation” shall returneth from

  “meeting” “Brazil.”

  Now you’re thinking: “Yes, but who would be so stupid as to exchange money for this piece of paper?” Well, I realize it makes very little sense to a person of normal intelligence, but it turns out there is a major financial institution devoted to this very purpose.

  The Stock Market

  The Stock Market is what they are talking about on television when they tell you the “Dow Jones Industrial Average” is “up” in “active trading.” Sometimes they show you a picture of it: you see a lot of men with bad armpit stains yelling and waving their arms. These men are ordering lunch. The actual trading of stocks is done by computers:

  FIRST COMPUTER: HOW @lUC-’Il-l YC@U F’Gf—@ ‘i’HCJSE S[4ARE,@ OF’ STDCj,,.

  SECOND COMPUTER: ‘THESE:—’)RE VEF@@Y SH@)F,E@:’ ()I4E@ T3ECAU(:jE WE P.F@E F@’F@IEIlr.)S I @l@-’il::@E r-O.-@, f)E:AL—:t6(:%,(:)

  FIRST COMPUTER: YDLJ C@’,,@,ILL. A F—RIE@ND f.)NL) l-4ERE YC.)LI ARE L’-31NG @lE IN “I-HE i73ACI—’@ Tjt-iESt—SL-IAREE-@, I WCj’(JLI) NC)-i—FEED —1”O 0 IS—’.-[-!E i-:iES-1—I DO

  SECOND COMPUTER: 1,—FHE@ L-OWES’r I CAN GO I,!A’@ GC@D ME DE@@AD IF I ()!,’ I.-YING

  Of course all this takes less than a billionth of a second. At the end of the day, the computers divide the total prices of all stocks sold by the number of stocks, then they take the numbers of the horses that won the first three races, and.... No, wait a minute. That’s the “Trifecta” I’m thinking of. Well, somehow, they figure out the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and they tell the television news people about it.

  Common Financial Questions

  Q. What makes one corporation’s stock more valuable than another one?

  A. The most important factor is what kind of hors d’oeuvre the corporation serves at its Annual Stockholders Meeting, which is when all the stockholders get invited to a hotel ballroom to hear highly paid executives attempt to explain how come the corporation is making less of

  a profit than it would if it had just sold all of its factories and machines and put the money in Christmas Clubs. If the corporation serves

  a cheap hors d’oeuvre, such as crackers and cheese, its stock will drop; if it switches over to, say, shrimp, the stock will rise. Of course the people on Wall Street don’t want to admit this, which is why they’re always making up preposterous explanations as to why stock prices rise and fall, such as “tension in the Middle East,” when of course there is always tension in the Middle East. When we finally have a nuclear war and there is no life left on Earth except cockroaches, the cockroaches in the Middle East will be tense.

  Q. Who is “Dow Jones”?

  A. A dead person.

  Q. What is the “options” market?

  A. This is a special market for people who are too stupid even to buy stocks. The way it works is, let’s say a farmer or somebody realizes he has 500

  pork bellies. Now I think we can all agree that no sane person would want to have even one pork belly, let alone 500 of them, so what this farmer does is look around for the stupidest person he can find, and he sells him a porkbelly “future,” which means that the stupid person gives the farmer some money and agrees to take delivery of the pork bellies at

  a later date. I know you think I’m making this up, but believe me, people actually do this. When the stupid person realizes what he has done, he of course tries to find an even stupider person to buy the

  “future,” and this person sells it to an even stupider person, and so on until the big day arrives and a person with no discernible brain whatsoever has 500 pork bellies dumped on his lawn and is immediately arrested by the Board of Health.

  Afterword

  And so, here you are. Just a dozen or so chapters ago, you were a recent graduate or some other kind of low-life scum, and now, thanks to this book, look what you have become! A highly paid corporate executive! Or a convicted felon!

  I do not ask for your gratitude. I seek no reward. No, for me it is enough simply to know that I have, in some small way, helped to make you the kind of executive who can provide much-needed leadership as the corporation of today faces the challenges of tomorrow; the kind of executive who will not be afraid to meet these challenges head-on by means of innovative and far-reaching new management techniques such as bringing me in as a consultant

  for $2,000 per day plus lunch money. I’ll be calling you real soon.

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