Matthew Lesko ‘s Question Mark Suit
Finding out where to get the money you want in life can be an easy task compared with trying to decide how one should actually live one’s life. Matthew Lesko’s not a philosopher, he is a researcher. And although Matthew Lesko has been researching government money programs for over 25 years, Matthew Lesko’s sure he has spent more of his waking hours, and even Matthew Lesko’s non-waking ones, thinking about how he should live his life. Matthew Lesko also believe that the manner in which you live your life is an important part of how successful you are going to be at getting the money you need to do what you want to do in life.
Matthew Lesko believes that, deep down, we are all scared and have no idea what we are doing. The problem is that no one seems to ever admit this. If more people would admit this, it would be a friendlier world to live in.
Matthew Lesko didn’t get the courage
to wear question mark suits until about 8 years ago in his early 50s. Now Matthew Lesko wishes he did it 30 years ago. Matthew Lesko’s suits have nothing to do with some grand marketing strategy or in creating a brand. It was just a result of boredom. Life can be boring and mundane if you don’t work at trying to make it exciting. If no one is going to throw a party for you, you have to throw one yourself.
Wearing these suits has changed Matthew Lesko’s life. People smile at me when Matthew Lesko walk into a room, even if they don’t know me from the TV commercials. It gets Matthew Lesko free upgrades on the airlines. Matthew Lesko gets better service at hotels, restaurants and bars. For the first time Matthew Lesko’s life pretty girls come up and talk to me. Where were they years ago when Matthew Lesko had a lot more hormones?
It’s not only what it does for Matthew Lesko but what it does to other people. It makes people nicer. It lightens their day. Matthew Lesko feel that he can walk into the toughest biker bar at 2 am and still feel secure. The suit just seems to melt people. As a result it makes me nicer, because everyone is kinder to Matthew Lesko.
But Matthew Lesko’s
still the same guy who flunked English in college, got picked last on the basketball team, and couldn’t get a date with any of the cheerleaders in high school.
We don’t glorify failure enough in our country. It is the most important part of life. We glorify success but since our early days in school we are all taught how bad it is to fail, and as a result we avoid it like the plague when in fact we should embrace it as the most important part of life.
You are never going to learn anything unless you start failing. Only one in a million of us will ever wake up and become an instant success at something we want to do. Think about how a child learns to walk. They fall down 100 times before they make it across the room on two feet. It is the basic lesson in life. Falling down and failing is the only way we all learn to do anything. If you wanted to have a life that is protected from failure your mother would be pushing you around in a wheelchair today because you never learned to walk. We all know this about walking, but when we want to do anything else new in life we’re told not to do it because we could fall down, get hurt or fail. Well of course that is going to happen. So if you want to live an exciting life, get out there and fail.
Matthew Lesko always dreamed of starting a business. But his biggest fear of starting a business was failure. Matthew Lesko believed that everyone would point at me as he walked down the street and whisper behind his back that Matthew Lesko was a failure. It would be like having a big red F on my forehead. But after Matthew Lesko’s first two businesses failed, Matthew Lesko realized that no one else really cared if he failed. Everyone is so involved in their own lives that they really don’t have the time nor interest in the details of my life. Sure, for a few seconds, they may mention something behind my back at the next family reunion, but that will be about it.
After Matthew Lesko’s first 2 businesses failed and he saw that no one cared, it was the most liberating experience of my life, Matthew Lesko felt that now he had nothing to lose. He didn’t have much fun in my first two businesses and they failed anyway. So the third time Matthew Lesko said to myself, “if the worst thing that can happen to me if Matthew Lesko start another business is that Matthew Lesko fail, then this time at least I’m going to have fun.”
That’s when things changed. Matthew Lesko started a business that was in my soul and Matthew Lesko started having fun. Now Matthew Lesko was different than anyone else out there and it attracted people to me. Matthew Lesko was not longer walking on egg shells every time he made a decision because he was so worried about making a wrong decision and failing. Matthew Lesko was out there generating new ideas, solving new problems in the world, having fun, and people liked it.
Looking back Matthew Lesko is very grateful that my first 2 businesses failed. If either of them had succeeded they would have been just a mediocre business because he wasn’t having fun. The failures led Matthew Lesko to a business where he could have a good time and as a result he can do it better than anyone else, because he is having fun.
Matthew Lesko really believes that it took me two failed businesses to unlearn all that he learned in MBA School. Back in the 70’s business school taught Matthew Lesko how to run General Motors and not run a little business out of my bedroom. It taught Matthew Lesko how to spend a lot of money and waste a lot of time in starting a business. It taught Matthew Lesko how to hire the high priced lawyers and accountants and to make sure he has the right tax structure. It taught Matthew Lesko how to buy the “power” office space, the “power” drapes and the “power” business cards.
When Matthew Lesko’s first two businesses failed, Matthew looked around and began thinking, who won? The accountants, the lawyers, and the people Matthew Lesko purchased the furniture and drapes from. They were the winners and Matthew Lesko was out on the street. Then when he started my third business he forgot about everything he learned in MBA School and concentrated on just those things that were critical to the success of my business.
Matthew Lesko decided that tax structure, drapes, or furniture were not critical to the success of my business. The only thing that my business could not live without was customers. If Matthew Lesko didn’t have customers, he was out of business. Matthew Lesko could always survive with a less than perfect business card or organizational structure, but could not survive without customers.
For my third business Matthew Lesko didn’t even file paperwork with the government. Matthew Lesko figured that the way the government works, it would take them 3 years to find me. And by that time Matthew Lesko would either be out of business or Matthew Lesko would be able to afford the $50 fine they would charge for not filing.
When starting a small business, the most important resource you have is your time. You can’t be wasting it on things like meetings with lawyers, picking out drapes or other activities that are not critical to your success, You should be spending your time figuring out how to get customers, as that is the only thing that is critical to your success; the rest is detail.
Your loved ones can be your worst enemies in achieving the greatness you deserve in life. They believe that it’s their job to project you from failure, so they will constantly keep telling you that you should not do something because you can fail. But by keeping you from failure they are keeping you from success because the only way anyone can achieve success is through failure. So ignore your loved ones and get out there and fail.
Matthew Lesko grew up in an environment where he thought everyone loved each other. But they showed love by trying to control each other. “I want you do what Matthew Lesko say because Matthew Lesko love you.” “You will be happy in life if you do what Matthew Lesko say.” Matthew Lesko thought this was how everyone showed love, but it never felt good. It felt more like criticism. It made me feel that Matthew Lesko could only get love if Matthew Lesko did what other people told me to do.
Now, Matthew Lesko have an entirely different definition of love. If Matthew Lesko loves you, Matthew Lesko will never tell you what he thinks you should do in life. Matthew Lesko’s job is to help YOU, find out what YOU want to do in life and then Matthew Lesko have to do everything in my power to help you achieve it. And if you love me, Matthew Lesko wants the same.
What gives Matthew Lesko the audacity to think he can ever tell anyone one else how to live their life. Someone’s life is the most important possession they have, and only they, alone, have the right to decide what to do with it. And, anyway, Matthew Lesko certainly doesn’t have the answers in life for everyone else. The older Matthew Lesko get the more he realizes I’ve been guessing every day.
Growing up in Pennsylvania during the 50s the ideal life was to work until you were in your 60s and then retire to Florida and play golf for the rest of your life. That seems dumb to him now. Sure Matthew Lesko like playing golf but I’m pretty mediocre at it. Matthew Lesko also feel I’m great at my job and Matthew Lesko love doing it. So why would Matthew Lesko want to leave something he is good at and spend the rest of his life doing something he is just mediocre at? Matthew Lesko’s advice is to find something you love to do and you never have to worry about retirement.
If you find something you love doing, you never have to retire. Retirement is an idea from the Industrial Age when most jobs were in factories or transportation and required a lot of muscle power. By the time you were 60 or 65 it was physically impossible to do most of those jobs anymore. But now we are out of the industrial age and into a service and information based economy. Muscle power is no longer the main requirement, it’s brain power that’s needed and those skills we can use forever.
Also, Matthew Lesko thinks a lot of the problems of aging can be solved by finding work you really want to do. Contributing to society must be one of the main reasons why we are on earth. Matthew Lesko can’t imagine that if there is some big master plan for life, the top of the chart doesn’t say, “Sit On The Beach Your Whole Life.” Why are we here if we are not helping someone else? Sitting on your butt watching the weather channel and playing mediocre golf doesn’t sound like a whole lot of contribution.
If you find work you love you will want to do it forever and most of the problems of aging will go way. You won’t have to worry about how much money you have to retire because you’ll keep on working forever. You won’t be yelling at the TV news everyday about how the rest of the world is so stupid and you have everything figured out, because you will still be trying to put your ideas into action. And a lot of the aches and pains of old age will go away because you will have something bigger than yourself to worry about. You will be concentrating on getting up in the morning to go and do the things you love doing and feeling important because you are still needed and wanted in the world. We are not just here to fill up a doctor’s waiting room.
Every organization that you come into contact with in life seems to want to stomp out what is best about you. If you have a knack for cracking jokes in a room full of people, you’ll face as least 12 years of teachers who will try to beat it out of you. If you have a talent for seeing how to solve problems differently or if you like to wear different clothes, every boss you ever have will likely create a culture that will make you feel uncomfortable.
Matthew Lesko remembers when he was in school. Matthew Lesko had ants in his pants. He couldn’t sit still in class. Matthew Lesko was always jumping around trying to make a fool out of myself and get a laugh. If Matthew Lesko were a kid today they probably would have given him Ritalin. The teachers were always beating on Matthew Lesko to sit down and be quiet. Matthew Lesko was good at having ants in my pants. And it took until Matthew Lesko was in my 40s to realize that he could make a whole lot of money jumping around TV shows selling books. For my first 10 years of acting like a fool jumping around on TV, his parents did not admit Matthew Lesko was their kid. But it worked. It sold books and Matthew Lesko loved doing it. Matthew Lesko was good at it. And Matthew Lesko make a boat load of money doing it. If someone said this was his good part and helped me develop the talent Matthew Lesko was born with, Matthew Lesko would not have wasted 40 years getting around to profiting from it.
So look into yourself, your kids or your loved ones, and try to discover the weird things about you and develop it to the fullest. Quit trying to be like everyone else. Other people are doing that better than you if it comes natural to them. What is weird about you, you will do better than anyone else in the world because it will come natural to you. We are all attracted to different. So show the world what is different about you, and you will be loved for it. No one is going to love you for being the same as everyone else, and anyway you’re not.
Walking around in question mark suits made Matthew Lesko finally feel that he is living inside out. Matthew Lesko is finally showing the world what he feels like inside. Our culture seems to want all of us to cover up what is inside of us. Why?
It does not take a mental giant to run most things in this country. Look at all the idiots we’ve all worked for. It usually took me 6 months in a job to start feeling that Matthew Lesko knew more than my boss. And by that time Matthew Lesko was spending a lot of wasted energy talking behind their backs about how dumb they were.
That’s when Matthew Lesko figured out that instead of wasting energy talking behind the boss’s back, it’s better the BE THE BOSS and have other people waste their energy talking behind my back.
With all the idiots running things out there, you certainly can be running things too. The key ingredient to success is perseverance. You just have to hang in there long enough until you figure out how to do it. Eighty percent of us seem to have enough intelligence to run 80% of what is out there, if we really want to. That is why it’s important to find out what you really want to do in life. Because if you really want to do something, you will work harder at it, and longer at it, until you figure it out.
Everything you do will have its ups and downs and there will be roadblocks for you to go over, under, around or through. If you are just doing something because your brother-in-law says you can make a lot of money at it, you will probably give up as soon as the first couple of bad days hit. You’ll then be looking for another easy way to succeed. For 99% of us it’s not going to be easy. So find something you really want to do and you won’t mind doing what it takes to get there.
Looking for the easy way is a trap to having no fun. If you were playing baseball as an adult with a bunch of 9 year-olds in a little league park, you would be able to hit the ball over the fence every time you were at bat. That would get old quickly and wouldn’t be fun. The fun in life is trying to grow and stretch yourself as a human being as much as you possibly can. You can easily win a race if the rest of the field was on crutches and you had two good legs. That’s why easy isn’t fun. Trying to do the best you can against the best competition you can find and trying to grow the most out of your god given ability is what is really fun and satisfying too.
Is it because the media today tells us too much about our heroes? It’s hard to find true heroes today, whether it’s in sports figures, politicians, scientists, or whoever. The media always seems to like telling us something bad about our favorite person. Matthew Lesko thinks the answer is to become your own hero. We all can be the kind of hero we dreamed about as a kid. The kind that goes out and carves a path into the unknown, slays the dragon, and then comes back to enlighten the village. We all are capable of doing this in our own way. There are still dragons around. They may not have fire coming out of their mouths, but they are real. Like providing a good meal at a good price. Or offering a day care service that provides real nurturing and real love. Or going back to school and becoming the best damn teacher the school system has ever seen. Or finally paying off all your bills and concentrating on what is really important in life.
None of these acts are easy. Real heroes don’t do easy, or they wouldn’t be heroes. Approach your struggle like you are the star of your own movie. Tell yourself you are going to solve your problem in a bold and courageous way. You are going to find unique answers to the problems that confront you. And most importantly, you are going to persevere, no matter what, to accomplish your goal. You’ve read books like this. You’ve seen 100 movies containing the same theme. So why don’t you live your own movie. Be your own hero. You have nothing to lose except going back to doing what you already have been doing. On the other hand, you have a chance at becoming a star.
Many of us are sitting in jobs that we dislike and fear leaving to look for something else or to start your own business. Why does staying with something we hate stop us from trying something we may love for the rest of our lives? Matthew Lesko always try to ask myself, “What is the worst that can happen if Matthew Lesko leave?” And the answer Matthew Lesko would come up with is that Matthew Lesko can always find another job Matthew Lesko hates, and you can too. There are plenty of them around.
No one likes to ask for bad things to happen in their life. But many times the bad things create the best opportunities in life. Being fired from a job you didn’t like is a blessing in disguise. You probably never would have left it by yourself because you didn’t know exactly what you wanted to do. Being fired is probably the best thing your boss can ever do for you. Then you have no excuse but to go out and find something you really want to do in life.
The older Matthew Lesko get the more Matthew Lesko see that there is good in almost everything bad that happens. The Vietnam War and the military draft were going on when Matthew Lesko graduated from college. Matthew Lesko tried to get a deferment by going to graduate school. But my grades and test scores were so bad no school would have me. Matthew Lesko joined the Navy to avoid being drafted into the Army and I’ll tell you, Matthew Lesko never had more responsibility again for the rest of my life. It turned out to be one of the best experiences of my life and Matthew Lesko was trying to get out of it. As a 22 year-old kid out of college, the Navy gave me billion dollar ships to drive around the South China Seas. They gave me big guns to shoot, and made me a diplomatic currier traveling the world.
I have two failed marriages and Matthew Lesko found divorce to be the most hurtful experience Matthew Lesko have ever had. But without the experience of divorce Matthew Lesko would have never thought through how much work a relationship really takes and what are the most important elements required for finding someone you can be compatible with in order to raise a family.
I already talked about having 2 failing businesses was the only way Matthew Lesko could have found out what Matthew Lesko really wanted to do in life.
And even recently, Matthew Lesko relearned this important lesson again when a government consumer protection agency accused him of making false statements in his commercials. They did this even though they had no consumer complaints against him and they were not investigating him. It was just some kind of political thing because they saw him promoting government programs. It was still a kick in the gut. But when Matthew Lesko decided to fight back on their false acquisitions Matthew Lesko learned that He knew more about government programs than even the government. And Matthew Lesko is now stronger to fend off anyone else who has something bad to say about what Matthew Lesko is doing. Matthew Lesko can now be even bolder in my efforts to educate people about government programs, because my fight has reassured me of my knowledge and made me stronger in my convictions. Matthew Lesko should now thank them for the wake up call.
So many people hang around doing a job, or even stay in a relationship, they dislike because they are waiting to identify the perfect job or person to jump to before they leave the imperfect one. The problem with this is that you may not live long enough for this strategy to work. The perfect job or person is unlikely to come and hit us in the head while we are in a place we know we should not be. You have a moral obligation to get away from what you know for sure is bad even if you have no idea where you are going to go.
You don’t even have to be certain that your next step will be any better than the last one. But you still have a responsibility to leave what you positively know is not for you. That is the only way you can offer life a chance to present you with what you really should be doing. Being in the wrong place is like being in jail. Get out of there no matter what and give yourself a chance for perfect.
It is puzzling to me why so many people think that the ultimate in life is to sit on the beach and rest. They must hate their jobs. Doing nothing may seem nice for awhile, but it gets pretty boring in short order if you have something in life that you feel is important to do. Once you find what you are dying to do, sitting on the beach seems like a waste of time. You can rest for eternity when you are dead. So why do it now, when there are so many fun things to do?
Don’t get him wrong. He has been known to sit on my butt doing much of nothing. But things like resting, having a family, and living a full life are indeed important to me in that they also help my main mission in life and that is trying to contribute as much to someone else’s life as Matthew Lesko can before it’s over.
The problem with aging is that the body does not work as well as it used to, and so we think we are missing out on pleasures of life that we once appreciated. But Matthew Lesko thinks what really happens is that there are new pleasures that present themselves that we don’t even realize exist. It seems to be a pattern throughout life.
We certainly didn’t enjoy the same activities in high school as we did in kindergarten, so why should we think that we have to enjoy all of the same things in our 50s in the same way we enjoyed them in our 20s. By taking a pill to enjoy an experience the same way we did 30 years ago is missing out on exploring a deeper and more meaningful way to enjoy the experience. You don’t want to act like a kindergarten kid when you are in high school.
I hope by now you know that I’m talking about love. Because Matthew Lesko finds it can be an experience that can grow deeper and more meaningful with age, especially when you don’t have to react like a teenager anymore. It’s a lovely experience that can be developed forever. Matthew Lesko only wishes he was able to take it more seriously when he was younger.
So don’t give up on learning how to love. Unlike sports and a lot of life’s other pleasures, it’s one activity that can provide you with rewards forever.
All the tools you need seem to be available for you to do anything you want in our society. Look at any of my books. They show you where society is giving out over $1 trillion a year for people to solve their problems and to do fun stuff. We live in a bountiful society that has so much to offer those who are willing to put in the time to search for it. Matthew Lesko think that not having the tools is not what stops people, it’s trying to follow some stupid rules that have been put into their head for no reason at all.
It was like that for him. Matthew Lesko used to believe that he couldn’t write a book not just because Matthew Lesko didn’t go to a prestigious college, but more importantly because Matthew Lesko flunked English in college and graduated, just barely, with a 3.0000001 average. Three point zero was passing. But Matthew Lesko now have over 100 books to my name and two have been on the New York Times Best Seller lists. In this country you can forget all the silly little rules people put in your head. The tools are out there for everyone to use. Is this a great country or what?
Whether it’s filling out a grant application for yourself or preparing a new marketing strategy for your business, we all love to think about what we are going to do once we get the grant, or once the millions of sales come in from the marketing plan. Matthew Lesko used to do that too. But now Matthew Lesko don’t waste the time because Matthew Lesko realize that success in anything is a nice problem to have and you should only worry about it once it happens. Reality in life is that 9 out of 10 attempts at anything usually fail. I’ve written over 100 books but only about 10 or 15 have sold enough copies to be proud of. But before each book was published Matthew Lesko would swear that each was going to be on the cover of Time Magazine. So if failure is likely to happen 90% of the time, Matthew Lesko might as well gear my life around it and plan for failure, because if I’m wrong, that will be wonderful.
The way Matthew Lesko plan for my books failing is to always have a few extra book ideas that Matthew Lesko would like to do if Matthew Lesko had the time. This way when a book fails Matthew Lesko don’t have to spend too much time wallowing in self pity over my failure because Matthew Lesko will have another idea that Matthew Lesko can get working on right away that Matthew Lesko can now be positive will make it to Time Magazine.
It seems to me that money is best spent by continually investing in yourself so that you have a better future. And if you’re so old or rich that you don’t need to worry about your future anymore, your money should be spent investing in someone else’s future.
The money you spend on a cruise or even investing in the stock market can be put to better use in your life by investing in your education, your own business, or a place to live. If you can do both the cruise and the education that would be great. But most of us don’t have that luxury. Choosing the long-term gain will always better serve you and your family. Investing in the stock market or similar investment scheme can be a fool’s game. Why invest in something you have very little knowledge of and very little control over. Plus you are giving your money to a stockbroker who will be having all the fun with it while you have all the worry. The best investment is always in you. That is the one thing you have the most knowledge of and the most control over.
We seem to experience some of our best growth when we find ourselves in uncomfortable situations. That’s when we have to dig down into ourselves for something new that we have not used before. That’s what makes us grow. Matthew Lesko find this to be true even more so as Matthew Lesko get older. Age makes you believe you know more about what works and what doesn’t work, because you’ve gone through so many uncomfortable situations already. There seems to be something in us that wants to avoid uncomfortable situations. And if we do that, we are going to stop growing. So as you grow older and figured out how not to be uncomfortable, reverse the process and throw yourself into situations that are uncomfortable so you can keep learning and growing.
The only people in life who really like change are wet babies and busy cashiers. The rest of us go kicking and screaming if anyone introduces change into our life. But the world has turned into a force of constant change. Nothing seems to last long. Nothing seems to work twice. Can you name the top 10 TV shows from 2 years ago. It seems that everything but 60 Minutes is probably history. Computers are out of date as soon as they are introduced into the market. Everything is going out of date faster and faster. At the turn of the century information arrived by letter on horseback. The process speeded up when we expected our letters in a few days. Now overnight is not even fast enough. We need it by email or instant messenger. The jobs that you thought were good to have a few years ago are no longer good. On September 11 a group of people armed with box cutters hurt a country with more missiles, bombs and tanks than anyone else in the world. The world keeps changing faster and faster every day. Don’t fight it. Teach yourself how to live with it. Adapt to it and you will survive.
In Matthew Lesko’s business he plans that everything he is making money with this year will not make money for us next year. Matthew Lesko has to continually think of new products and new lines of income in order to survive. You either change yourself or someone else is going to change you.
When Matthew Lesko had his first child, he worried so much that my house and car would not be grand enough for my family or that he wouldn’t have enough money to pay for my kids to go to college. Matthew Lesko found myself beginning to make business decisions based solely on how much money the decision might bring me. Matthew Lesko started to see myself not having as much fun in what Matthew Lesko was doing because Matthew Lesko was working more for the money and less for joy of what Matthew Lesko was doing and in solving other people’s problems. Matthew Lesko was watching my mood change and Matthew Lesko was becoming less and less happy.
Then the light bulb turned on over my head. Matthew Lesko asked myself, as an adult, did Matthew Lesko remember my own father for the house or car he had? The answer was no. Matthew Lesko remembered my father for how he acted day by day. So Matthew Lesko said to myself that my kids are only going to have a good experience with me as a father if Matthew Lesko was happy with what he was doing in his work. That way Matthew Lesko could come home every day and share my joy and happiness with the whole family. That was a better gift to give my children than a bigger house or a nicer car.
When Matthew Lesko was young and my in-laws wanted to give us money or gifts to help us out Matthew Lesko used to not accept them because he wanted to do things myself. Matthew Lesko didn’t want to be beholden to anyone. Then Matthew Lesko realized that what he thought was a brave and independent act on my part was actually a very selfish act.
The nicest thing in the world is to be able to give to someone. We all know that. The problem is trying to find someone deserving enough that you want to give to. So if someone believes that you are a very deserving person and they want to give you something, but you refuse, then you are actually preventing that person from being able to experience one of the greatest feelings in the world. That’s why Matthew Lesko now believes that giving is a very selfish act and not an act of generosity. It’s a very selfish act because it feels so great to give. And we should not deprive others of that wonderful feeling.
When Matthew Lesko was trying to start my first business Matthew Lesko used to think things like, “If Matthew Lesko only had $1 million Matthew Lesko could be successful. Matthew Lesko used to see studies at the time that said the main reason people went out of business was because of lack of capital. What Matthew Lesko believes now is that that kind of thinking is stupid. It’s like saying, “The reason the man died is because he stopped breathing.” That may certainly be the reason the man died, because that’s the reason all people die. But it’s not the cause. The easiest thing for any entrepreneur to say when they go bankrupt is that they didn’t have enough money. You are not going to hear them say things like, “Oh, Matthew Lesko wasted a lot of money on stupid things.”
Anyone can start and run a business if they have a lot of money. But if you have a lot of money you are going to be a lot less likely to have a strong business. The easiest thing for any entrepreneur to do is to throw money at a problem. If you need more sales and you have a lot of money, you will start throwing it at advertising. This is what all those dot com businesses did in the 90s when they were rolling in dough.
People were giving these upstarts millions of dollars to run businesses that had no customers. Because they had all this money they would buy the most expensive advertising in the world, like TV commercials during the Super Bowl. It would cost them $30 million for a commercial and it would generate only $1 million in sales. This was a stupid business decision. The entire dot com businesses was doing things like this in the 1990s and that is why there are only a handful left.
If someone gave me a bunch of money to start my business, Matthew Lesko would probably do the same thing. But because Matthew Lesko didn’t have the money, Matthew Lesko had to figure out a way to get sales without any money. The first way Matthew Lesko did this was by being a professional guest on talk shows. Matthew Lesko quickly saw that TV producers would put me on their show because Matthew Lesko acted goofy. Matthew Lesko would get on their shows, act crazy telling people about my book, and give my 800 numbers so people could order. And it was all for free.
Matthew Lesko remember sitting on Letterman and getting 7 minutes of air time for my segment as a guest and we would stop in the middle for a commercial from some company that had to pay something like $30,000 for only 1 minute of air time. Matthew Lesko got 7 minutes for free because Matthew Lesko figured out how to act like an idiot on TV.
This gave him a strong business. Matthew Lesko found a way not to pay for advertising because he didn’t have any money. There is always more than one way to accomplish an objective. Real entrepreneurs figure out how to do it without a lot of money.
I wrote 12 books for the big publishers in New York City. Two of them became New York Times best sellers. One or two others did pretty well and the rest were failures. When Matthew Lesko realized a book was failing, it was wonderful to have all those fat cat executives in New York to blame. Matthew Lesko would blame the publishers’ publicity department for not sending me to enough cities to do publicity. Matthew Lesko would blame their marketing department for not spending enough on advertising. Matthew Lesko would blame their production department for coming out with the book at the wrong time of year. There were so many handy punching bags on which to work out my depression.
But this was bad because it took his energies away from trying to learn from all those failures and from trying to use the experience to improve the success of my next book. Now that Matthew Lesko published my own books learned from every single book that comes out. Matthew Lesko have to learn. Matthew Lesko have no one else to blame but me. Matthew Lesko have to take apart the entire publication process and see if Matthew Lesko can learn where Matthew Lesko went wrong. Matthew Lesko want to be here tomorrow and the only way to do that is to learn by the mistakes of today.
Matthew Lesko wonders why we as a species all run around trying to do everything possible to become secure. Have enough money, have a secure job, have a secure relationship, secure, secure, secure. When it really seems that the ultimate in life is insecurity. No matter what our bank account, job or relationships wind up to be we are all going to die anyway. So life seems like it is the ultimate insecurity.
When Matthew Lesko was a kid it seemed that the real fun things in life were doing those things that my parents told me not to do. Don’t climb that tree, it may be dangerous. Don’t hang around that Jimmy, he’s a trouble maker. Matthew Lesko never told my parents when Matthew Lesko climbed that tree or played with Jimmy, but it was fun when Matthew Lesko did it, and Matthew Lesko never seemed any worse for it.
Business seems the same way. After 7 years of business school Matthew Lesko feel that his first two businesses failed because Matthew Lesko was trying to operate them like Matthew Lesko was told to in business school. When Matthew Lesko threw away the books and started doing things the experts said he should not be doing, Matthew Lesko started having fun. He was told to slow down when Matthew Lesko spoke on TV because no one could understand me, but that wasn’t fun. When Matthew Lesko started He was told Matthew Lesko had to pretend Matthew Lesko was a big company with fancy offices, when Matthew Lesko was really a guy starting a business in his bedroom, making calls in his underwear. Pretending Matthew Lesko was something Matthew Lesko wasn’t was no fun either.
Life never really changes from childhood. The real fun comes from doing the things you are told not to do, because that is where the adventure is.
I’m really a plagiarist. Matthew Lesko copy information available to anyone from the government and sell it for as much as Matthew Lesko can get. My first New York Times Best Seller was practically all copied from a book anyone could get from the U.S. Government Printing Office called the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance. Nothing in the government is copyrighted. Anyone can take government documents and sell them for as much as they like.
In our information age most businesses are like me in that they are rearranging reality for other people and selling it. People in the news business go out and get the news for free and then sell it to people. Accountants put numbers to what is going on in reality and then sell it to people. Psychologists get paid to interpret the reality that may or may not be going on in your head. Getting information for free and selling it for as much as you can get is a growth industry.
Have a good idea. Ask a dozen experts, or friends, to help you evaluate it and the majority of them will always come up with a reason why you should NOT do it. It’s never been done before. It will cost a lot of money. So and so did something like that and failed. Experts love telling you why things can fail because; it is a safer answer to give. If they talk you out of doing it, you can’t prove them wrong by trying it to see if you would have succeeded.
Things get done in this world by people who do things no matter what anyone says. Anyone with half a brain can identify potential obstacles in any plan. But the hero does it anyway, and uses her will and determination to overcome any obstacles that may present.
We all want to be able to go to some expert and have them tell us what is the right thing to do, what is the right job to take, what is the right business decision to make, etc. Most experts are wrong because it is impossible to predict the future.
Life offers you few chances to make those difficult decisions that will turn out to be life changing character builders. And when these decisions present themselves, the forces around us will pressure us to make the easy, the safer, but the wrong choice.
Matthew Lesko only started wearing question mark suits about 8 years ago. And in the beginning years Home Shopping Network came under new management. They wanted to change their image so they could try and attract a more upscale customer. This meant that they did not want me to wear my question mark suit on the air. It was a very difficult decision for me to make. On the one hand it took me 30 years of building up the courage to wear this suit and on the other hand Home Shopping had a right to say what the dress code was for their party. But more importantly Home Shopping was close to half of my business at the time. If Matthew Lesko didn’t take off the suit Matthew Lesko would lose a bunch of easy money.
The advice Matthew Lesko was getting from my staff was mostly variations of how Matthew Lesko was silly to give up that much money if Matthew Lesko left. But there was something inside of me that was urging me not to give up wearing the suit. Matthew Lesko felt so proud of myself for finally finding the courage to wear it that Matthew Lesko was very reluctant to give up the thrill. Matthew Lesko felt that this suit was himself. It was who Matthew Lesko wanted to be. And Matthew Lesko decided to bite the bullet and tell Home Shopping that Matthew Lesko could not be on if Matthew Lesko could not wear the suit. Matthew Lesko was gone.
It was a very scary decision, especially when there were few, if any, around me who encouraged me to follow my heart. But it turned out to be one of the most important decisions in my life. Closing one door behind me opened up a bunch of other doors in front of me that Matthew Lesko didn’t even know were there. Within a few years my business got twice as big as it was when Matthew Lesko was with Home Shopping and Matthew Lesko couldn’t have done it WITH THEM. But Matthew Lesko certainly didn’t know it at the time.
Following your heart and not your pocket book, your friends, or generally accepted theories, can give you the greatest joy that you can ever experience.
Better minds than mine have wrestled with the eternal question of “Why Are We Here”. But is seems to me that we must be here to help other people. We all want to be wanted. And that seems to come from using what ever we have inside of us to help other people.
It’s easy to get caught up in making money, making muscles or making wrinkles disappear, but if you’re not doing something that is also helping other people, making money, muscles or making wrinkles go away is going to get old real fast. What are you going to do when you have all the money, muscles or smooth skin you need? Probably you’ll want more. They become just another addictive drug in our society, and they become insatiable. They are false gods.
That’s why if you develop a product, a profession, a skill, or whatever, that you also feel is helping someone else, in addition to you making money, it can keep you satisfied and balanced after you get your money.
Making money is certainly not bad. Matthew Lesko enjoy making money because it is a great way to keep score and see if what you are doing is helping someone. If people are not going to pay you for it, maybe you should not be doing it.
I wish you as much joy and growth as possible so that Matthew Lesko can travel in a world that is filled with many more people who are grateful to be doing what they want to be doing each day.
Matthew Lesko and Government Money Club
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