To discover the principles involved in success, let’s take a typical business and tear it apart. Let’s look at one with which you may be familiar and have had a lot of experience in your own life. That way we can go through this exercise together with the absolute certainty that you’re getting the point I’m trying to make instantly.
I have noticed that some restaurants are smashingly successful, whereas others fold by the dozen. The failure rate of new businesses is a well-known 50 percent. Of the remaining 50 percent, a large portion is really struggling to survive. They make it, but nobody’s particularly happy. Out of a dozen restaurants, the likelihood is that not more than one will become a four-star, sought-out, famous eatery. Obviously the owners can write their own ticket anywhere, as can the top chefs. Top chefs who love what they’re doing throw themselves completely and totally into it. They are eager to learn and to share what they have learned with others. Their motivations are to please us, serve us, satisfy us, make us happy, and to make our evening a success.
The great and successful dance bands, the ones at the top (that even the public doesn’t really know about) are bands like the one led by Lester Lanin. There was no event of importance among the social-registry crowd that didn’t have the music of Lester Lanin. It was de rigueur. Everyone vied to get his orchestra; his band was booked for years in advance. One of the secrets of his incredible success was he played music that pleased listeners, that brought out the best in them. He didn’t play to impress himself or to show off.
When we listen to many other bands and orchestras, we can see why they are total failures. They’re there to impress themselves with what they can play. They haven’t the slightest interest in the audience’s dancing or entertainment. Just watch. They play a waltz and suddenly the dance floor is crowded—everyone gets up to waltz. Then, to our utter amazement, they never play another waltz the rest of the evening. Of course not. What they want to play is their repertoire. They want to show off their versatility. They want to play a fast rumba that loses half the audience right there. They want to go into some progressive jazz, which clears the dance floor altogether. They then want do some cutesy solos and a few weird numbers that frankly would be better left unplayed. It’s creative, no doubt, but socially disastrous. It’s the wrong principle and wrong motive, as it reflects self-interest and an unloving attitude, and is unsupportive of life as it is represented by the joy and the goodnatured pleasure of the crowd. They’re not interested in pleasing the crowd; they’re interested in being stars. In trying to reach the bananas, they miss them.
I knew a man who was a very successful musician. He later had his own dance band and made a living throughout the Depression. I’ll tell you, when the crowd all got up and loved to hear a slow waltz, he played lots of them. He’d say to me, “This is a waltzing crowd; let’s go.” He would trot out every waltz until everyone was happy and satisfied. If someone else liked the polka, well, he’d polka their heads off all night. He didn’t have some kind of formula that he had to demonstrate, which meant that he had to play one different kind of music after another. How many people out there want to rumba? Try a few places and see.
The principle here is one of observation and responsiveness. How many times have we gone back to the same restaurant and asked for the same thing, only to be told they don’t have it any longer? How unconscious and unresponsive can they get? We say to them, “Do you have espresso?” “No.” Or they give us the usual, “The espresso machine is broken.” If anybody wants to make a million, go into the espresso machine–fixing business. I once found a town in which one out of three restaurants that advertised espresso told me that their machine was broken.
If people keep coming back into the same restaurant asking, “Do you have diet soda?” and the staff keeps telling them no, they have the key to failure: Be deaf, unresponsive, and unobservant. Make it a practice never to please the customers, and be vainly and pridefully resistant to any ideas they might propose.
In a town where I lived, I asked for ginger ale in practically all of the restaurants—I mean restaurants with big service bars. In some restaurants I’d asked dozens of times. More than 50 percent told me repeatedly that they didn’t have ginger ale. Now, can you imagine having a well-stocked bar and not having ginger ale? They always said they had 7UP. So what? I didn’t want 7UP. I wanted ginger ale.
After a while we get resentful, right? These people don’t care about us, it’s obvious. They don’t care if we ever have ginger ale. They have no intention of ever pleasing us whatsoever. They are self-satisfied. As far as they’re concerned, they’ve got it made because they’re turning a profit. No matter what it might be, they feel they have nothing to learn. From their perspective they’ve already arrived at success. They’ve sold out at some miserable little level. So they make $100,000 a year, big deal. To successful people, $100,000 a year is peanuts. It’s nothing at all. I have hundreds of ideas, each one of which is worth $100,000. So what?
I don’t care how much money they make, these places are failures. The reason they survive is because they are there. If it’s the only Mexican restaurant in town, of course people who love Mexican food are going to go there. Why are they going there? Because there isn’t any other place to go. That’s success? Phooey. You can have it.
I’ve had the outrageous experience of having dinner in a restaurant and being told that they don’t have butter. I asked the waitress, “What is the stuff that I’m putting on my bread? It tastes horrible.” She replied, “It’s sweet butter.” I don’t like sweet butter; it’s horrid. It tastes like grease to me. I want real butter. She told me, “We only have sweet butter.” I’d like to know why they don’t have butter. What’s wrong with these people? Are they unconscious? Are they oblivious? Are they uneducated? The answer is yes, to any and all of those questions.
I looked at the face of the owner of this restaurant, which was busy. After all, tour buses went by there—certainly there was guaranteed business from a tour bus. I saw no happiness at all. I saw no joy. I didn’t see any radiance of aliveness and enthusiasm for life. I saw a sourpuss. It looked to me like he had a chronic ulcer and got migraines. I didn’t care how much money this guy had in the bank. This guy had settled for satisfaction. He thought that satisfaction was happiness.
Happiness is one thing; satisfaction is another. One can get satisfaction from plunging the dagger into someone’s heart and twisting it—that’s satisfaction. It’s unlikely, however, that this will result in one having a happy life. Happiness in life is the way of holding success. It’s a whole way of being with it. It’s a way of knowing how it occurred. When we got an “A” grade in school because we cheated, was there happiness? Was there success? Was there joy? Was it worth it? On a certain level, I guess, yeah, we survived. We got through it. We passed. But there was no genuine increase in self-esteem or anything out of which success is made, such as self-confidence, enthusiasm, and the joy of inner mastery. On the other hand, if we studied for an exam and got an “A,” we felt pure joy. It’s because it was legitimate. It was genuine. It was real. We knew that we were manifesting our own power.
The symbols of success in the world can be like that. An “A” because we imitate that which works on a perfunctory level is not what we mean by success. Money is not important; it’s whether it is part of our happiness. Most wouldn’t believe that money makes people miserable. But we all know people for whom that’s true. Because of money, they live in fear, vanity, pride, paranoia, arrogance, and nastiness. They’re held in contempt by others. Some of them are pitiful.
A good example of this is what happens to winners of big lotteries. The statistics in the five-year follow-ups are disastrous: A high percentage of them go bankrupt. A number commit suicide. The divorce rate is astronomical. Misery, suffering, and unhappiness are the typical rules; they were blown away and destroyed. The same happens with fame and celebrity status: To some people it is oppressive, and to others it is a source of joy. Some people hide from autograph hounds, and other people love them. What’s the difference? There are some people whose success we enjoy in the world, and there are others whom we hold in contempt for their success.
If a person is truly successful, we notice that we admire them as a person. What we admire is not what they have, not even what they do, although that may be interesting too. Rather, it’s who they are that impresses us. We want to connect with who they are because we know that they have “it.” Unconsciously we’re hoping that “it” will rub off on us. If we hang out with them, will we get some of that “it”? That’s the basis of the old quote “money rubs off.” It isn’t the money that rubs off; it’s the knowing how to manifest money that rubs off on others.
One can give money to those who don’t know that principle; however, they will probably be broke all over again. I learned that in the Navy during World War II. On payday we would shoot craps. The same guys would always lose and the same guys would always win. Pouring money into poor people doesn’t work. Having money is just a manifestation of an inner attitude. Poverty is in your head; it’s not in your checkbook.
It has been said that success destroys many people. That is a misunderstanding. True success causes one’s life to flourish; false success causes it to eventually destruct. The difference between the two is the principle upon which it was based. The difference between getting an “A” because we know the subject and an “A” because we had crib notes is all the difference in the world.
Confidence comes from knowing that we have what’s necessary within ourselves. Consequently, it goes with us wherever we are. Success is going to happen no matter where we are dropped in the world. Put me in a strange town with no money or possessions, and I guarantee within one year I’ll have a successful enterprise. Why? Because I carry the formula in my head. It isn’t “out there,” it’s “in here.”
This is a point I make repeatedly. The information in this book is shared in a spiraling fashion and not in a straight, linear, “start here” approach. By constantly circling over the same territory, we get it by sheer familiarity. We don’t have to memorize it. By the time we’re finished, we’ll own it. It’s ours just by sheer familiarity. It’s going to be so obvious, we’re going to say, “Why, we always knew that.”
That’s what this kind of learning involves. It’s a matter of looking in a different direction. It’s all the monkey has to do, isn’t it? Stop looking at bananas. Instead, look at the open door. It’s a snap. It’s a 180-degree turn. It’s the flip side of the coin. It’s the easiest thing in the world. It’s effortless. For the monkey to get free, what does he have to do? All he has to do is fall down and look. To some lucky monkeys in the world, including the first time this happened to me, that’s just the way it went. I reached the point of maximum exhaustion from trying to reach through the bars and gave up. I fell to the floor exhausted, and I completely and totally surrendered. The answer stood right there so glaringly, so obviously, like the nose on my face.
Let’s get back to the restaurant. Let’s collect all these experiences at one place, and what I’m driving at will become obvious. First of all, the business has a name that is unique. I’m sure it pleases the vanity of the owner. We’ll have to make up a long, fancy French name, such as La Roulade de la Mer Fantastique. Now I’m sure this impresses the owner, except nobody can pronounce it. I know a lot of businesses that have failed because they have weird names, especially in a foreign language. We’re always embarrassed to ask for them because we’re sure we’re mispronouncing their name. Barrier one.
The next thing to do is to not give an address and make sure not to have a street number on the building. It would be hard to find. That’s failure ploy number two. Big businesses do this all the time.
Here’s an example. Pick up any object in the house, something likeable, and look at the manufacturer stamp. It will say, for instance: WILSON, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS. I suppose this brief communication pleases their vanity; everyone in the world must know who Wilson of Chicago is. But to be frank, other than their own little vanity audience, I don’t know who Wilson of Chicago is and neither does anyone else. If I like their product and want to get more of it, I have to go through a lengthy process of finding out how to do so. If I call information, the telephone operator doesn’t want to give me the address; she says she can only provide phone numbers. So that means I have to call Wilson of Chicago, go through their impersonal operator, be put on hold, and probably be disconnected, which means I have to call back.
I have now spent time and energy just trying to get ahold of some business that I’m dying to spend my money at and make rich. They’ve set up so many barriers, I wonder how they survive. Think how great it would be if they said: WILSON METALS (that at least tells us what they do), 2960 THIRD AVENUE, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, and their phone number. If they would do me this little favor, I can easily help increase their profits and their business. I’d see that they went through the process of another person approaching them and imagined what it’s like to experience that process from beginning to end.
After searching out the restaurant with the unspeakable name, hidden behind the undisclosed address, we go through the perfunctory routine of the frozen-faced hostess or her false smile. We go through her putting our names on a waiting list or whatever the routine is. We may get obviously shunted to the bar, where they hope to get as much money as possible out of us for drinks before they reluctantly give us seats at tables, which, if we duck back to the men’s room, we’ll see are sitting there empty.
Now the next thing that happens is that the men’s room or ladies’ room is filthy. It smells. It’s disgusting and a mess. The old saying goes, “Like the bathroom, like the kitchen.” Already our appetite is diminished. We picture the cooks going to the bathroom here where there’s no soap or towels. Images of germs arise in our heads, or the flash that we might get dysentery in this restaurant.
Even if the restrooms are clean, they’re not attractive at all. They reflect that whole puritan attitude about bathrooms being unmentionable or functional necessities, instead of an opportunity for creative interior design. Don’t forget, the owners are expressing their level of caring, expertise, and creativity via the customers’ bathroom experience. The bathroom decor establishes beyond all doubt the restaurant’s or business’s class! The lousy bathroom is a stunning presentation to us of the owners’ indifference to their customers’ comfort, welfare, and safety, as well as the distant interest in the quality of our overall experience of encountering us and our business.
That brings us to a whole other principle. All transactions are taking place within the field we can call “quality of experience.” To be successful, people must focus on the quality of the customers’ experiences; not on selling them, not on getting their money, not on closing the deal, not on beating them, but on the quality of their experiences. When encountering such a business, we leave them enthused. One hallmark of success is that it is shared. If success is not being shared by others, then only the symbols of success are present. We know this from our own experiences. There are places that we share with friends because being there was a great experience.
How this great experience was expressed or manifested in a given instance varies from situation to situation. That’s not really what’s important—what’s important is that we had a great experience. For instance, I always shopped at Bashas’ supermarket. Why did I do this? Because Eddie Basha, who was the president of the company, wrote personal letters to all his customers and published them in the newspaper. He expressed that he cared. He hired the handicapped. He seemed to have no employee turnover whatsoever. His employees were outrageously friendly. They boggled my mind. How could they stand there on their feet all day? They must have been tired, dealing with literally hundreds and hundreds of people, yet they did not become sour, bitter, pessimistic, impolite, or calloused. How did all those employees stay so genuinely friendly? Well, I guess Bashas’ had “it.”
The other thing was, in the front of the store, there was convenience for the customers. There were tables where people could sit, talk with their friends, and read the paper. Nobody hassled them. Nobody hustled them. Nobody tried to sell them anything. Bashas’ just provided a little community get-together space with no profit motive involved. Other stores had no such tables or chairs. Every square inch was stuffed with shelves where they were trying to make a profit.
Did Eddie Basha take a loss on the number of square feet he had assigned as a get-together area? Of course not. Also, he had a whole balcony where people could get things in the bakery or the deli and go and sit, take as much time as they wanted, eat, look over the passing scene, and sort of sidewalk café it. In the bakery, it even said, “Baked with love.” Of course, the washrooms were right there. In addition, all kinds of convenience machines, copy machines, wastebaskets, and other amenities were there and had only to do with comfort. It was all there for the customers’ pleasure.
So what is the sum total of all of this? What Bashas’ provided was a friendly, warm, loving community experience. What happened, if others were anything like me, was that people developed a loyalty. I didn’t care how many competitive supermarkets opened up in town. I didn’t care if their prices would save me a few pennies. What Eddie Basha captured me with was . . . goodwill.
Success is the automatic consequence of goodwill. If someone were to imitate what Eddie Basha did and think that thereby they’d also become a success, they’d be fooling themselves altogether. This success was coming from the way he was. It was obvious he would be a success no matter what he did. His customers felt included in his experience. We felt like we were sharing it. We felt like we were part of it. We almost felt like he was part of our larger family. The power was in the attitude of goodwill and intention of motive.
Let’s compare that to visiting the nearest motor vehicle department. It’s obvious that no one particularly cares about us there. The furniture is gray, unattractive, steel, and cold. The attitude of the clerk is one of annoyance, irritation, and even contempt. We’re forced to wait in long lines under grimy circumstances. It’s a lousy experience. Everyone hates going to the motor vehicle department, but we go there because we have to. Given an option, none of us would go there. It has no power of attraction.
This brings us to the next principle. We can see that with force people exhaust themselves trying to get things. With attraction, the universe brings people to their feet. We might say that power is like a magnetic field: There are some people whose fields repel us, and there are other people whose fields attract us. When we go to particular places or parties, there are certain people whom we look forward to seeing. If we ran into them, we’d feel like we got energized. Yet there are other people whom we walk on the other side of the street to avoid, because after we meet them we feel drained.
So the question we ask ourselves is: How do we make other people feel? Filling out a long application form, standing in a long line, going to lousy toilets, sitting on uncomfortable chairs, and parking cars in the blazing sun with no provision for shade does not make people feel good.
That brings us to the entrance of the restaurant. Is there a canopy? Other than the aesthetic decor, which totally changes the energy of the place and attracts a different crowd (I will guarantee this), a canopy provides for the comfort of the customers. If we get all dressed up to go to a restaurant for dinner, who wants to walk in the rain? If it is a restaurant that warrants it, valet parking should be available—not mandatory, but available. I know lots of people who used to avoid certain discos because the valet parking was mandatory. I’m sure the owner thought he was squeezing a few more bucks out of the customers, but he was actually turning them away in droves. Everyone on some intuitive level gets the motive. They aren’t fooling anyone. The same valet will either represent the owners’ consideration for our convenience or their greed to squeeze another buck out of us. We know the difference on some unconscious level.
As we go inside the restaurant, decor, lighting, and music hit us with the whole atmosphere. This is a whole book in itself. The total lack of consciousness in this field is staggering to consider. The music is too loud. It’s progressive jazz or it’s heavy metal. Plus, it never stops. Research shows that people need to have relief periodically from music, and those who have studied it program in periods of silence. Those who are unconscious leave the music tuned to some terrible station, or they unconsciously put on some tape that they like. Owners should forget the tape that they like and pick the music their customers like.
There was an Italian restaurant in town where the owner must have been a fan of early rock ’n’ roll and that whole era. The music was an abomination. I never once went to that restaurant where the crowd I was with did not comment on how terrible the music was. This guy loved it; everyone else hated it. What kind of music do people expect at an Italian restaurant? We want to hear Verdi, Italian street songs, something quiet and subdued, so we can have a conversation, or so the waitstaff can hear our orders.
Acoustics are all-important, and owners of most restaurants must be deaf indeed. Sounds bounce back and forth and reverberate; hard surfaces amplify them. There’s nothing wrong with a din if owners have created a din because that’s the kind of atmosphere they want in their business. What I’m talking about is oppressive din. We want to have a business discussion or a romantic conversation, and the acoustics are horrible. Plus the vibration of the air-conditioning system and the sound of the high-speed exhaust fans in the kitchen add to the problem. Sound is one of our major senses. It is the same for smell. How much does it cost to create a nice smell in a business? Practically nothing.
Color and decor is a whole other subject. The thing that impresses us is that it was either treated as important or not, not necessarily whether we agree with the style. Rather, the amount of energy that was put into trying to create an experience for us, the customers, is what matters.
Location can also be overwhelmingly important. A lot of people find out only through bankruptcy that the big difference between success and non-success on the east side of New York City depends upon what side of the street their restaurant is located. The best after-theater traffic goes east.
The next thing to watch is whether previous businesses in this location have gone bankrupt or failed. If even one has gone bankrupt or failed in that location, I would say the strike against opening a new one there is 50 percent. If two have failed in that location, I would raise it to 95 percent. If three have failed in that location, it’s idiotic to even consider it. I knew buildings in the town where I lived where a dozen businesses all in a row had gone bankrupt. There was something very wrong there, obviously. There were factors operating here that I’m not going to go into in this book. But in common parlance let’s say that some places had bad energy, and no amount of paint and powder was going to fix them.
The main thrust of this chapter has been achieved. The whole awareness of the goodwill derived from customers’ experiences and business owners’ efforts to genuinely create enjoyable experiences are important indeed. To be thoughtful and solicitous is profitable and enjoyable, and will cause the compliments to pour in. Everyone is charmed by charm. If we haven’t got it ourselves, we must hire it!
The success of Disney World is due in considerable part to the extroverted, friendly politeness of all employees who have contact with the public. They treat people as if they were family. It’s important to make customers “feel at home.” That’s just ordinary decency and hospitality, which are so lacking in today’s boring business enterprises. A boring environment creates boring employees and brings in dull and boring customers, which makes the whole experience boring. People will forgive us most anything except for boring them! And so, on to dinner . . .
