Monday, December 15, 2008

life after success

The Wall Street Journal started a new series of articles, "The Fallen: The declining fortunes of leading business figures." William H. Miller is one of the featured characters. Mr. Miller spent almost twenty years building a reputation as the era's greatest mutual-fund manager. During the last year he destroyed it.

Bill Miller is not a swindler, like Bernie Madoff, just a business man who made lucky decisions for nearly two decades. We love to call that 'success.' A succession of bad moves during the recent twelve months brought his business to its knees. Bad luck.

We are tempted to ascribe a series of consecutive decisions to business acumen when they turn out to be profitable. Luck would be too insulting a label for such a person's skill and foresight, wouldn't it?

And yet, the same man's inability to keep his success on a steady level or to increase it indefinitely shows that he has never been in control of his destiny. It just looked like that for a relatively long time. Bad luck during the past year proves that his twenty years of profit were to a certain degree subject to luck as well.

Now, I am not a friend of the term luck. People's successes are random, and so are their failures. Our endeavors are subject to probability, and it is incredibly dumb to believe that one of us can master it and find a system to succeed all the time and forever.

It's not in the cards, baby! You cannot control the markets, or why do you think a 160-year-old company like Siemens paid bribes of $1.4 billion between 2001 and 2007 (according to the SEC) to round up clients, or General Motors and Ford combined make less money than you do?


Not even banks can handle the markets and manage money: banksters have destroyed tens of trillions of dollars within the past nine years before they begged you and me--the tax payers--to save their worthless asses from the abyss.

The same reprehensible leeches who expect your children's children to assume financial responsibility for the grandest fraud and recklessness economic history has seen, will doubtlessly call the police when a beggar asks for a nickel at their doorstep. I have a thousand times more respect for the dirtiest beggar than for the bank and investment scumbags who called their old buddy Henry Paulson to keep them afloat.


Yeah, I know. I will stop ranting, but you better realize how utterly SCARED our society--liberals and conservatives alike--truly is of a free market. Economic freedom? God forbid! Capitalism, my arse. The last couple of months have shown that hardly anyone wants a free market or capitalism. People want to be saved, powdered, and pampered. We talk a great deal of freedom. Do YOU want it? Are you sure? That would make you a rather exotic animal nowadays.

I am serious: belief in perpetual control of anything is utter nonsense. Success is temporary, and so is failure. One of the most difficult lesson to understand for someone who has never been wildly successful--or lucky--is the fact that there is life after success. Failure can follow success just as easily as a new success may occur after previous success. Freedom has no guarantees, no safety net, and it will never be reliable.

Success is not the end. It is not likely to last. Success will not end your worries. Success makes for an exciting moment, a great day perhaps, and a fun celebration. But success is not a permanent form of life. "Oh, I will get rich one day and then I'll let my money make more money." Too often I have heard that sentence, and I usually assume some kind of brain damage is its cause. Reality works differently.

Even a so-called breakthrough is an isolated event. There is no "other side." Breakthroughs must be repeated if you want them to "last." Your first breakthrough will be one of many to follow, or it was something else. Roll a die, and the probability to get a six will remain identical with each new attempt. Same with success: after each success, you will start over almost at square one.

Here is the crazy part. Someone who has never tasted success is in a similar position as the person who experienced incredible success yesterday!

We have heard it all: 'Nothing breeds success like success,' for instance. And throughout past decades we have endured hoards of seminar quacks selling us that fire walking, bungee jumping, and other exotic nonsense helps to prepare us for business related fear and risk factors. Because "everything is connected with everything else," supposedly.

And if you walk over glowing coals, you will be able to go through tricky business transactions as well. Rubbish! Good grief, every dork can walk through fire without getting burned: just take your stinky socks off and don't hesitate until you are on the other side. Mental preparation? That's only a sales argument to lure you into the seminar. Not more, not less.

Shock of shocks: not even success prepares you for the next success. You need to bring your keister in the right position for upcoming events, similar to a goalie who needs to get back in position after each catch. Getting in position can increase the probability of success, but it won't be any easier the next time. The success after success demands all of you, and possibly MORE of you than the previous winning experience.

But, what about the techniques we have learned? Writing down goals, time management, or new age inspired pseudo-therapy in the name of corporate productivity? Motivational mood elevators, The Secret, communication training, strategic games, or sales boot camps?

PLACEBO effect, baby!

All theories and techniques that you and I have invested too much time and money into, don't have the slightest influence over your next success. Like a placebo, details of your education may "work" in your favor in spite of their existence. Our minds like to identify reasons for successes as well as for our failures. We deny the fact that life is not as linear as we would like for it to be.

What if success is not a succession of events that you can mentally line up in a row, like ducks? We are indeed free to fail after each success. We may be dead five minutes from now.

Depressing ideas? On the contrary: a person who believes to be the greatest failure the world has ever seen is not further away from future success than someone who believes to be on top of the world this minute!

Both got work to do. They are free to go in the direction of their choice. Neither of the two controls the outcome. Everybody else is in charge and equally free to vote with their pocket books.

And believe me, they will!

Egbert Sukop


P.S.: Have you bought a copy of my book yet? 'How to Better Hate Your Job' is likely to turn your stomach inside out, and maybe it has some positive effects on your future endeavors as well. Who knows?

Sunday, December 7, 2008

hope and love

Holy cows!

That's what hope and love are, holy cows begging to meet a cruel butcher. A German friend of mine recently subjected me to a lengthy lecture to show me his utter contempt for my crude opinion that hope and love are not only useless in many instances, but outright dangerous. My friend is a sweetheart of a man, but I still refuse to trust love and hope blindly. It is more relaxing to trust the intentions of someone who hates me.

No, I am not talking about your messed up love life: you will have to sort that one out all by yourself, if you can. But even there, love may be in the way of excessive enjoyment. You can tell, moderation is a four-letter-word in my vocabulary.

Think stocks. You own shares of a particular company, and your love for that company overrides your exit strategy. You are holding on to those shares all the thorny way down, instead of pushing the 'Eject' button with a cool head. Emotional attachment is a hindrance to making--or keeping--money when the market signals you to hit 'Sell.'

Remember the fatal relationship Enron employees had with their Enron shares? The financial mob blamed Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling--and rightfully so--but that did not repay the devastating losses suffered by employees and investors. We don't learn anything by blaming people. Usually we don't recover our monetary losses by taking responsibility either, but realizing our responsibility permits us to actively rejoin the game and the markets. Assuming responsibility provides us with the only chance to participate in the future.

Do you know the most painful forms of responsibility? Being responsible for screwing up is easy. Making a dumb mistake may not be our favorite thing to admit, but we have learned to manage it. The mistake of trusting too much, however, of dogged loyalty, or the realization how 'the power of love' in our peaceful hands can lead to (self)-annihilation is of a different quality. Taking responsibility for doing the right thing at the wrong time can easily shatter our belief in ourselves for a couple of years or decades.

We prefer to swallow some strong substances before we are willing to face the sobering fact that everything we collectively consider as good, may turn into an evil force the next time we touch it. Good natured German folks had to learn that devoted love for their country included the modus operandi for killing tens of millions of individuals and to burn extended parts of the world to the ground.

Good God, how could I get so distracted?!

Anyway, I am confident you understand the idea that your undying love for the shares of a publicly traded company can prove to be a bitter pill that your wallet refuses to swallow joyfully. U.S. Steel used to be synonymous with corporate success, but their steel production today is hardly above their output from 1902. I doubt U.S. Steel executives, their board of directors, and their investors expected a century of stagnation 100 years ago. They expected aggressive growth. But blue chip stocks don't come with the guarantee to remain blue chips.

"If you play enough, accept that from time to time you are going to go bust, because from time to time, everyone, even the best of the best, does. Every professional eventually is faced with having to hardnose the highway." --Doc Holliday, as quoted in Bruce Old's 'Bucking the Tiger'

The professional investor knows that love for a company is costly, sooner or later, and the dumbest thing you can do. And when the love for a stock turns into loss? Yeah, what happens? Right: dear old hope kicks in. Hope, that the market will turn around and your losses will be recovered. Need I mention tulip mania in the 17th century? The tech bubble of the nineties, or the unbelievable banking fraud--fraud is the true name for it, is it not?--that is currently destroying literally trillions of investors' and tax payers' dollars? Yes, hope and pray, and it will all be good really soon.

Now, if it can be a bad move to love a company whose shares you happen to own temporarily, can it not be equally dangerous to love a company you have founded and built yourself?

That depends.

We desire "to do what we love to do." That's awfully sweet! But I am afraid, love for the stuff you do will cut into your profits as well as into your happiness. I am just playing advocatus diaboli once again, and I don't really mean what I say? Wrong! I am serious.

As an example, assume a person who is establishing a business based on one particular product idea she has fallen in love with. It will fail on the marketplace entirely, it will lead to mediocre sales, or it will turn into a roaring success. You tell me, what is the probability for either of these three simplified options?

Exactly. And in the probable case of her beloved product ailing or failing, she will throw good money after bad in the "hope" that it will get better eventually. God, that is so painful to watch! The theory that you should do what you love is the most crappy leftover of the disgustingly pitiful baby boomer generation. It's like Deepak Chopra and Janis Joplin having a baby, or Oprah Winfrey and John Lennon, the most loved fascist of the flower power movement (when everybody agrees with me, there will be peace; brilliant!). Same thing.

Apropos, one thing the poverty versus prosperity thinkers of the 1970s and 80s promoted was abundance. Remember? That is not completely useless if you apply abundance to your ideas and activities. One idea or pet project is likely to fail. A bunch of practically realized ideas are more likely to include a winner. Introduce new products or services to the markets continually, and probability is on your side: at some point it is likely to work for you financially, if you live long enough or cough up new stuff quickly and frequently enough.

You cannot control which one of your products will make money or lose. Falling in love with one of your brain children is threatening your well-being and the likelihood to discover what works for you. Your emotional attachment to that one bloody sacred thing you want to do means almost certain financial doom, followed by hope that will cause you to survive until you are destroyed for good.

Doing what we love or not is not the issue. It's ultimately meaningless. Do whatever you do--no matter whether you love or hate the activity, the project, the product--with excessive attention, the utmost skill you can muster and hell, with your damn love if you must.

That will lead to a steady level of satisfaction you will never reach with addictive dependency on doing only what you love to do. Hope and love work against the ecstasy you expect to gain from them. Screw your imbecilic idea of doing what you love.

Instead, love what you hate to do.

Egbert Sukop


P.S.: Have you purchased my book yet? 'How to Better Hate Your Job.' Grrr ... what are you hoping for? Better times, perhaps?