Spinny Johnson—basketball virtuoso and valued friend of Art Freedman and me—emphasizes personal accountability with his saying, "If it is to be, it is up to me." In Making Money Is Not Illegal, Immoral or Fattening, Art tells a story to illustrate the same point:
"I'm sitting down with a couple of retailers in Chicago at dinnertime. The reason I'm sitting down with them is that they're very, very close to going out of business. So I'm sitting there, and the woman just starts beating up their co-op about everything. Oh, they did this wrong, they did that wrong.
"I've got about fifteen seconds worth of patience for that. I carry around with me what's called a retailer two-by-four. So after those fifteen seconds, I take that retailer two-by-four and just go whack, right upside the lady's head. When she comes to, she says, 'Why in heaven's name did you do that?' I answer, 'Well, we've got about two hours. If you want to sit here and talk about everything that went wrong for those two hours, I'm going to get up and leave because that is totally unproductive, and my time is worth more than that. If you want to talk about how to learn for the future, where you are today, where you need to go, and how we get you there, and you want to make a difference in your business, I'm your man. Otherwise, I'm gone.'
"I'm not going to spend twenty seconds with somebody who wants to blame other people for what went wrong. It is absolutely nonproductive. Nobody wins from it, and all the retailers are who do that is what I call energy vampires. They suck the positive energy right out of you."
Our book readers can see more on page 29.
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