It’s a reference many of you won’t know, from an old, once popular TV game show TO TELL THE TRUTH. Two pretenders plus one real novelist or ex-CIA agent or astronaut or lion tamer, etc. answered questions from a panel of celebrities, and the panel guessed which of the three was real. Finally, the host said, “Will the real _______ please stand up?” I’ve encountered a lot of pretenders to entrepreneurship. They speak ambition, but then evidence something else entirely. Like the celebrities, I have occasionally been fooled, and invested money or time in a pretender. You are presumably here because you are a man or woman of stated ambition, but how do you know if you are a real entrepreneur?
I’m about to irritate a lot of people – especially those of the “family comes first” ideology. So be it. Because, for a real entrepreneur, everything else in life is arranged to facilitate his entrepreneurial ambition and activities. And everybody in his life buys into that, or they are left sitting on the sidelines unhappy and resentful and he does his best to ignore them, or they are jettisoned. (They don’t call me the Professor of Harsh Reality for nothing.) Oh, and by the way, kids do not benefit from your ever-present hovering and micro-managing. We learned self-reliance and conflict resolution by leaving the house in the morning, drinking water from the garden-hose to save going back inside, and only returning home for dinner or a needed trip to the emergency ward.
There is an ancient cliché: the hen contributes to breakfast, but the pig is committed to it. (Bacon.) You can earn an okay living a lot of different ways, even with your own business, just by contributing. But you can’t be at the top without real commitment. Usually, yours and those most closely knitted to you. And, sorry, the blathering about “balance” is b.s. There isn’t a single person at the top of their field or industry or community or even close to the top of the Income and Wealth Pyramids who lives a Balanced Life. Not one. Ever. No entrepreneur, no CEO, no champion athlete, no head coach with a winning record, no Hollywood star. If they claim it, they lie.
So, a GKIC Member, with something new to promote, a great “turning point” opportunity to raise his visibility and status with our best Members, on which he worked damn hard and invested much in, made possible with my assistance, “had to skip” SuperConference because it is a bit later than most years and he and his family “always” take a Spring Break vacation in this week. He has revealed that he is NOT a REAL entrepreneur, and I’ll be wary of him from here on out. Were he a real entrepreneur, this year’s Spring Break family trip would have been to Dallas or the near-by Gulf Coast in Texas or Louisiana, and his family would have spent a couple days on their own while he did business. Or his young ‘uns would have been in the Young Entrepreneurs/Future Millionaires program at SuperConference, his wife with him “workin’ the room”. I now see him as a pretender. He would say we just have a difference of opinion about values and priorities, and that’s fine – as long as he never insists he has ambition for top prominence, income or wealth, or dares think he should be doing better financially thanks to his expertise and capability. The facts about all this are unchallengeable. Read nearly 1,000 autobiographies as I have, of past and contemporary top achievers in business, sales, sports, entertainment, politics, invention, and the golden thread of unflinching, extreme commitment and sacrifice is impossible to miss. Some of the best, tough truth about this is in the works of Felix Denis, a super entrepreneur, and a keen analyst of how people really become financially independent. If you haven’t read him, I suggest it.
There are tough trade-offs for success. Few and now fewer are willing to make them, or even confront them honestly. That’s why there is (widening) Income Inequality. This President and other socialist ideologues and liberal fools omit the matter of sacrifices made or not made, by individuals and their families, in the discussion of Income Inequality. This is as delusional and deceptive as omitting chosen foods eaten and exercise done or not done in the discussion of obesity. When there is fundamental dishonesty in such discussions, in public discourse, conversations with self, dialogue with family, fog obscures fact, fools’ expectations are created. In coaching, I can never assist anyone who won’t be honest with himself or who insists on believing in unicorns. The color coded Life Balance Wheel the “life coaches” are all equipped with is cute – but only useful if life-coaching people not committed to exceptional success. Since we were just in Dallas, here’s a little cowboy wisdom: if you’re gonna itch to have somethin’ better, you better be ready to scratch for it. And – for Renegade Millionaires: it’s the work, not the clock, that tells you when it’s quittin’ time.
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DAN S. KENNEDY is a serial, multi-millionaire entrepreneur; highly paid and sought after marketing and business strategist; advisor to countless first-generation, from-scratch multi-millionaire and 7-figure income entrepreneurs and professionals; and, in his personal practice, one of the very highest paid direct-response copywriters in America. As a speaker, he has delivered over 2,000 compensated presentations, appearing repeatedly on programs with the likes of Donald Trump, Gene Simmons (KISS), Debbi Fields (Mrs. Fields Cookies), and many other celebrity-entrepreneurs, for former U.S. Presidents and other world leaders, and other leading business speakers like Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy and Tom Hopkins, often addressing audiences of 1,000 to 10,000 and up. His popular No B.S. books have been favorably recognized by Forbes, Business Week, Inc. and Entrepreneur Magazine. His NO B.S. MARKETING LETTER, one of the business newsletters published for Members of GKIC Insider’s Circle, is the largest paid subscription newsletter in its genre in the world.