Hey, it’s STILL April and therefore I’ll take the liberty of extending April Fool’s Day to the entire month with this little ditty. My MSP friends won’t be surprised by this, but the “Nigerian Prince” e-mail scam STILL manages to separate fools from their money to the tune of MILLIONS every year. This is the most recent version I recently received, now playing on the Russia–Ukraine war:
Attn: Dear Friend,
I’m a Russian businessman, Everybody is aware of the war going on between Ukraine and Russia, Russia is under serious economic sanctions all over the world. I need an anonymous partner to entrust huge amounts of money amounting to millions of Euros for secret investment. which is very lucrative. Please get back to me with your contact information for more details.
Your Sincerely,
Dmitri Gorodilov
Many of us would laugh at or simply ignore this obvious scam, knowing that the only reason it still exists is because Darwinism hasn’t successfully eliminated ALL of the idiots among us. However, there are a lot of smart people who, through being pressured into “tolerance” for everything and everyone, a desire to fit in, to be one of the “cool kids” or simply not wanting to rock the boat, allow themselves to be suckered into believing cons as bad or worse than the above, behaving in a VERY foolish way.
A con too many business owners fall for, popularized by Pollyanna rhetoric on how to be a good leader, is that you should always be gentle, forgiving, understanding and tolerant of ALL employees, elevating their needs above your own, allowing them as much freedom and flexibility as they need and never, ever be demanding. Nuts.
I’m not saying you should treat them poorly. You’re an idiot if you do. But a COMMON fear among many business owners is looking like a d**k because they need to hold their employees to certain performance standards and results. That fear causes them to TOLERATE poor performance and low productivity, which then hits them in their pocket with low to no profits while everyone else gets paid. If you tolerate mediocrity, it becomes your culture, and when it becomes your culture, it’s VERY difficult to root out, often forcing you to fire nearly everyone and start over.
Another con sold to us is “the customer is always right.” Former chairman and founder of Southwest Airlines, Herb Kelleher, famously said that the customer is NOT always right, and thinking they are is one of the biggest betrayals a boss can commit against their organization and employees. A much-shared letter from Herb to a chronically complaining customer who hates pretty much everything about the airline summarizes his stance perfectly, when instead of attempting to calm her down and keep her as a client – or worse, change his strategy – he simply tells her, “You’ll be missed,” and continues doing business exactly as he has been.
Today, bad-behaving customers don’t just go away. They feel the need to bolster their narcissistic self-importance by writing scathing reviews about you, MANY containing half-truths to outright lies about you and what happened, fearing zero repercussions. This is even worse on social media sewers like Reddit where the trolls can remain anonymous. (Another IDIOT move – allowing an unknown troll on Reddit with ZERO credibility or authority to sway your opinion or decisions.)
You cannot allow one of these a-hole clients to cower you into attempting to appease or tolerate them. I foolishly made that mistake in the past, overlooking seriously BAD behavior from members, hoping they would course-correct, attempting to coddle them in a futile attempt to prevent them from bad-mouthing me online. Guess what? They NEVER get better; instead, they continue to do more damage until you’re FORCED to fire them – and they proceed to attempt to ruin you anyway. Just like a puppy who starts to curl up to crap on your rug, you don’t give them a treat and praise them – you yell, grab them and QUICKLY get them off the rug and out of the house. Anything less is FOOLISH, unless you don’t mind living with the smell and stains.
Another FOOLISH decision: letting the woke crowd and complainers intimidate you into changing your marketing and advertising, products, services and business strategy. Budweiser learned this the hard way. WeightWatchers seems to have NOT learned when they moved away from their successful weight-loss approach to one of “wellness,” to appease the body-shaming crowd who think “dieting” is a bad word. Now they’ve gone completely off THOSE rails by selling Ozempic and Wegovy drugs. I predict this is the final nail in the coffin. We’ll see.
Athleta, one of my favorite brands, is also struggling with sales trending down, blaming competition. I think it’s because of an overcorrection in using a disproportionately high number of obese women in their ads (I say “overcorrection” because having plus-size models is absolutely appropriate, but they went too far). In some of the catalogs I’ve received in the past, nearly half of all the models weren’t just overweight, but seriously obese.
Many people, including myself, find these pictures jarring – not because I think less of these people, but because I find it hard to look at any human being who’s in a terrible state of health. I would find it equally disturbing to see pictures of women who are radically thin, suffering from anorexia. Further, this is a line of FITNESS clothing. Yes, “athleisure,” but athleticism IS in the name, after all. Do I think they should use those models? Of course – for their plus-size clothing. But not representing 50% of the images on their websites and catalogs. More recently, they have backed off this and are back to featuring more fit women. There may be hope.
Years ago, when first starting my business, I was sternly told by some clients that I could NOT do a group Mastermind. They said I MUST have small groups that meet, not one large one, as evidenced by how all the other peer groups were currently run. EVERYONE accepted this as the “truth.” Another well-known author and “guru” claimed it was “impossible” to have a group of more than 25 people. Those were the natural “laws” of how we organize. Some clients even threatened to leave if I went ahead with my plans.
Well, guess what, folks? They were all WRONG. Now I’m getting knocked off and copied – the pioneer who went against what EVERYONE told me to do is now the leader. Remember, the person brave enough to say, “The Emperor has NO clothes,” is often shouted down, protested and cancelled. It’s hard to stand alone and stick with what you KNOW is true and right when so many others are against you.
But like Mark Twain said, “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect.” Maybe you ARE the fool, after all.
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