How to Succeed in Business

(In response to Phone Holsters)

There are a couple of common misconceptions about how a person can make it in the business world. The first big one is that people assume in order to be successful, you need to have the drive, motivation, and business degree from Harvard. People think you have to be the smartest person in the room, the most savvy, and be rocking a $2000.00 dollar custom Italian suit. The other big misconception people have is that the only way to make it to the top is to know people. Sure it always helps if your dad is the CEO, but it isn't as necessary as you might think.

Using family to get ahead is so much easier than sleeping with that sweaty HR guy

In reality, all of this is crap! You don't need to know someone, you don't need to be all that motivated, and you don't even have to have a fancy education. Hell you don't even need to know what to do! Now someone is undoubtedly asking, "Well then Mr. JM, what do we need to do in order to succeed in this world?" Well the answer is quite simple...fake it!

Most of my former girlfriends would be good at business

Succeeding in life isn't about knowing anything, its about pretending like you know everything! It's about appearances. It's about walking into a room with millionaires with exactly $20 dollars to your name and acting like you could buy out every one of them. If someone comes up to you and starts asking about how you would restructure the financial hierarchy of the subordinate infrastructure of a multinational corporation, you do what I just did and string together a bunch of large and fancy words into one sentence that sounds like it could mean something . If they ask you about your education, you don't tell them you got a liberal arts degree from JMU, you tell them about how the real world enhanced those business courses you took. I'm not telling you to lie, I'm telling you to spin the truth. If you speak with confidence, people will listen no matter what you are saying. Just ask Hitler.

"I have no business education, no formal training, and live in a cardboard box!"

It isn't enough to sound like you know what you are doing, you also have to look like you know what you are doing. How do you do that? It's simple. For starters go out and buy one of those knock off Rolex's, because no one is ever going to notice. Then go out and find a $30 suit that looks decent, sew on a designer label, and wear it with pride. Everyone will think the suit is about 10 times more expensive than it really is!

This is a good start, but it isn't quite enough. Now that you look expensive, you also have to look busy as to prevent people from coming up and talking to you. This is where my previous post on Technology comes into play. If you have a headset on at all times, with a phone in hand, an iPad and a laptop in a man purse, and two phones holstered around your belt, everyone knows you are ready for business. No one is going to come up and talk to you and interrupt you because they don't know if you are on the phone with a million dollar client or not. Sure that phone in one of your holsters might just be a cardboard box you painted black, but who is going to notice?

OK, even I admit this might be pushing the limits a bit...

Appearances my friends. Thats the name of the game. It isn't about what you know, who you know, or even if you have a job at the place you are currently pretending to work at. All that matters is that job title and never giving a straight answer to anything. Business 101.