This means that business, for all its reliance on business machines and numbers, is an art, not a science. It means also that business schools, even the Harvard Business School on whose advisory board I sit, have limits. For the most important thing an executive needs to know can’t be taught.
‘’If you want to succeed in business, young man, you’ve got to learn how to work with people that you don’t like. And you’ve got to learn how to compromise, you have to forget the past and go on to the future. For in business, you have no permanent enemies or permanent friends – only permanent interests.’’
Politics and economics, like love and sex, like heat and light, are closely connected.
In difficult times you don’t have to stop eating to prove that you are honest.
‘’One day in the early forties,’’ he wrote, ‘’a bright and eager young man named John Johnson came to the office to talk to me about an idea he had for starting a new magazine, a pocket-sized publication that would summarize newspaper and magazine articles about Negro life. I knew the almost continuous financial difficulties The Crisis had, and I told him that in my opinion the time was not right to venture into the field. Fortunately, Johnson ignored me…’’
What can you do by yourself with what you have to get what you want? – and I made some interesting discoveries.
There are so many twists and turns in a life that you never know where a job, however small, will lead you. It’s in your best interest, then, to do every task assigned you well, for you never know when these skills can be utilized later.
Citizens Loan Corporation at Sixty-third and Cottage Grove.’’
Ask not what you want but what the customer or the potential customer wants.
What the world wants to know is what you can do for other people and the world.
Perhaps the biggest violators of this rule are job applicants who tell you how much they need a job and how much it would mean to them. That’s the wrong approach. The correct approach is to tell the customer or potential employer what you can do to advance his interest. The job applicant who studies a company and its needs and tells the interviewer what he or she can do for the company is more than halfway home.
I was writing a letter to twenty thousand Black Americans in 1942. What did they want? The answer was obvious. They wanted what everybody else wanted. They wanted recognition, the good life, and, in Aretha Franklin’s word,
r-e-s-p-e-c-t.
Dear Mr. Brown:
A good friend of yours told me about you.
He told me that you are a person who likes to keep abreast of local and national events.
He said you are the kind of person who will be interested in a magazine that will help you become more knowledgeable about your own people and about what they are doing to win greater recognition for you and other members of our race. Because of your position in the community and the recommendation I received, I would like to offer you a reduced rate on the magazine Negro Digest, which will be published in the next thirty days. Magazine subscriptions will sell for $3.00 a year, but in view of the recommendation we are offering a subscription to you for $2.00, if you send your check or money order by September 30.
What brought us together and made the Levy organization one of the key ingredients in the early success of Negro Digest was the realization, never spoken but clearly felt, that racism was a double-edged sword that cut both ways. It cut deeply into my profits and made it impossible for me to cross the economic equator of race. It also cut deeply into his profits and made it impossible for him and other White distributors to maximize their profits in the inner city. For racial decisions kept White distributors from penetrating into the secret nooks and crannies of the close-knit Black community.
The reason I succeeded was that I didn’t know that it was impossible to succeed. If I’d known what MBAs know now, I would have realized that I couldn’t start a business that way.
I remember waiting with interest to see if multimillionaire Marshall Field would cash his fifteen – dollar check. He cashed it – so did most of our rich and famous contributors. Since that time, I’ve noticed that rich people seldom turn down payments and honoraria. One of the reasons rich people are rich is that they accept and cash all contributions, no matter how small.
I was making so much money that I didn’t know what to do with it.
It was at this point that I realized for the first time the power and witchery of money, which is, with the possible exception of sex, the most fascinating subject in the world. Like sex, money inhabits a realm of magic and sorcery that transcends machines and numbers. Money can be counted, measured, weighted, but it can’t be commanded or predicted.
Always, everywhere, it overflows the experience, giving you more or less than you expected, there’s no balance in the life of money you either have too much or too little. When you don’t have it, you run like the devil to get it. And when you have it, you run like the devil to keep it.
I know a man who made a fortune with a chain of all-night grocery stores. I know a woman who got rich by organizing maids and house cleaners.
Change. That’s the only thing that never changes.
That’s what Longfellow meant when he said there are no birds – or Toyotas or Sonys – in yesterday’s nest.
It’s what Duke Ellington meant when he said that ‘’things aren’t what they used to be.’’
People are always asking me what kind of business I’m going into next. I always say I don’t know. How could I know until people tell me what product they’re going to demand next? To find out what they’re going to demand next, I keep a finger in the air, an ear to the ground, and both eyes on the marching throng. What I’m looking for is a target of opportunity. When it presents itself, I act.
For you’re stronger than you think you are. And what you need – what all men and women need – is an irrevocable act that forces you, on pain of disgrace, jail, or death, to be the best that you can be.
I was particularly impressed by a statement attributed to E.D Nixon, one of the boycott spark plugs. ‘’We were looking for a leader and got Moses.’’
That National Urban League board put me on the fringes of that world and reminded me of the words of my friend and mentor, Earl B. Dickerson, who told me once, ‘’If you want to succeed in White America, you must let your mind roam beyond the ghetto. You must reach out into the world and tap into the minds of the people who are running the country, so you will know how far you can go and what path to travel in order to get there.’’
On the boards of the Urban League and other organizations, corporate executives discussed board business within the context of national and international affairs. They emphasized the latest technology. They discussed the need for fallback positions and projections and long-term budgeting.
To sell effectively, you must tap into the deepest emotions of your client. It’s also important to keep an emotional crowbar in reverse so you will have something to pull out and use at the right psychological moment.
Selling is a matter of finding and touching the M (for money) spot and reaching that part of the person that will make him say yes, whether he likes you or not.
“Whether its $175 or $200 million some analysts cite today, I earned it, and I’m still earning it. I work harder today than I did when I started out. I make more presentations, I call on more clients, I make more speeches and public appearances. In fact, if I were young again, and if I knew then what I know now, I could be even more successful. Young or not, if I get a few more years, I’m going to create a bigger company despite age, despite race, despite the odds.”
Long shots do come in and that hard work, dedication, and perservances will overcome almost any prejudice and open almost any door.
“I believe that the only failure is failing to try.”
Paul Uduk is the creator of Book Writing Clinic.
PS: If you want to learn how to write and publish books as well as John H. Johnson did click here to explore Book Writing Clinic (BWC).
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