The usefulness of con men

Regularly you read or hear about people who feel conned. Is that justified? Con men are often successful because they appeal to human weaknesses. And I state that con men are useful in our society. Why?

First some background. In the Catholic church human weaknesses are described beautifully as cardinal sins:

Pride / Vanity

A con man sells you something by appealing to your vanity. You will be more beautiful, or it will give you a better feeling. Until you realize how much you paid for it… Fake jewelery with magnificent certificates of genuineness, land that lies 10 meter under water, it still happens today. Especially to people who now think: ‘this will never happen to me’, they probably have a lot of this weakness.

Greed

Easy money. Gold fever. Many many people are susceptible to this one. Gambling is an obvious one. But also participating in pyramid schemes (pay money, and recruit other fools to participate hoping you’ll make a big profit). For entrepreneurs often deals are offered that are ‘too good to be true’ which is usually the case.

Lust

Call it the immaterial variant of greed. Beautiful ‘femme fatale’ spies gaining your trust and stealing your secrets. Maybe also the fine looking lady / gentleman selling you something very expensive using other than pure business reasons? Sex sells, after all…

Jealousy

The neighbours have it (or your competitor), so you need it too. ‘Your competitor is doing much better by trading with China. We have excellent contacts over there, so do business with us!’ Fine if that is true, but check it out before you pay any fees!

Gluttony

I think not so often used by con men.

Anger / Wrath

Con men rarely use this one. To make someone angry is a risk in itself.

Sloth

Not checking what a con man says. ‘It will probably be OK.’ But also: not thinking. Does that story check out? If it’s too good to be true, it’s too good to be true!

So why are con men useful? In all cons you can see pretty quickly which human weaknesses of the victims were triggered. You could call the seven cardinal sins ‘ego’. In Buddhism it is said that the human ego is cause of all human suffering. And that letting go of your ego brings you further.

Con men confront us painfully with our weaknesses. If we are prepared to really deal with that we can learn a lot about ourselves. If we don’t and only blame the con man we deny our own role in the con. The next time we’ll probably fall as hard for a similar con. And let’s not fool ourselves: we all are sensitive to some kinds of con. The trick is to learn when and how your ego gets the better of you. And then also look at this Wikipedia article.

In short, be conned regularly! A good exercise in humility and self knowledge.

This piece was published before (in Dutch) on www.higerlevel.nl

Going for Broke

Becoming bankrupt is connected with all kinds of negative emotions and associations. But what is bankruptcy and why is it seen as negative and what can you learn from it?

What is bankruptcy? According to Wikipedia bankruptcy is “a legally declared inability or impairment of ability of an individual or organization to pay their creditors.” In short: you, or the company, can’t pay the debts from current or future income.

Why is bankruptcy considered to be negative?

• A bankruptcy causes serious consequences for the creditors. They will be paid less or not at all what they are entitled to. For some suppliers this may lead to their own bankruptcy.
• A special class of creditors are the investors. They believed in you and the company and put their own money in it. Probably they lose most of that money because investors are usually at the end of the line of creditors.
• For the company’s employees a bankruptcy is often the end of their job. They have to quickly find something new. Their insecurity increases. It may also be a loss of money (out of a job for a while, or having to accept a job with less salary or on a lower level).
• The customers have to look for a new supplier. For mass products or standard services this may not be too serious except a waste of time but what if the supplier of your custom made software goes under? Or the supplier of tailor made production machines? The customers will be forced to quickly find alternatives, a complicated and unforeseen activity which means they can spend less time on things they wanted to do (earn money, for example).
• As entrepreneur and company owner you want to be successful and an important part of that is earning enough money for yourself and the company.

Besides this nobody wants to be associated with losers. The entrepreneur will learn that he will be treated differently: pitied, ignored, treated with anger or sadness, loss of self-determination (the receiver will make many decisions for him, or he is subjected to a debt restructuring process). Also, nobody wants to be associated with losers. The entrepreneur himself may fall in a victim role (’everybody is against me’) and / or will blame himself (’I'm good for nothing’). From a successful entrepreneur to a loser is especially in our Western society a big blow for our ego. The more an entrepreneur is united with his success and his company the more painful the confrontation with a bankruptcy. The ‘natural’ reaction is to shut out the pain, to ignore it. To blame others or to lose yourself in a depression, apathy or other self-sabotaging behaviour. Though this is ‘natural’, it isn’t effective.

So what can you do?

• Analyze what happened on the road from success to bankruptcy. What are the facts, what have been the turning points? Was it a pratracted story, or sudden disaster? How come? What was your own role in the story? I recommend not to analyze this on your own but with someone you know and trust, and who is not afraid to ask some searching questions about it. Reveal all the dirt. Write it down.
• From this analysis sift the points that you should avoid in the future. Often you will need to learn new behaviours. Take the time for that.
• Apologize. To your employees, your customers, your investors and your suppliers. Prepare vor possible negative responses but remember: as long as you are open and honest, most people (maybe not at first but then later) will respond positively. If you want to, promise them to redress all the financial damage you’ve caused.
• Look for support. With people who have gone bankrupt before, how did they change what they needed to change? With family, friends, acquaintances and business connections. Be honest about you needing their support. At least morally and maybe also in other ways, for example restarting the company, starting a new one, with a job, or a loan.
• Also remember: however painful a bankruptcy can be, nobody dies of it. Learn from the past but don’t get stuck there.
• Plan for the future. What will you do? Start a new company? Rebuild on the foundations of the old one? A job? Whatever it may be make it realistic and make sure you are supported and keep yourself sharp and focussed.

this piece has been published before in Dutch on ikgafailliet.nl

Business improvement: what are we talking about?

What do we mean by business improvement? In general people tend to think about improving parts of a business (e.g. production, sales) or even parts of a business process (e.g. improving new leads generation within sales). This is usually because we are responsible for a small part of the business, so we focus on improving that. Our environment supports that by rewarding us for perceived improvements. Perceived is the key word to me: is it really an improvement that ultimately improves the bottom line? Or is it more like window dressing?

In my view, improving a business should either measurably improve the profit, or the continuity of a company, and preferrably both. Otherwise it’s not an improvement.

So what about improving e.g. working conditions for personnel? To me, the same applies: either it improves profit levels or business continutiy, or it’s not an improvement. Maybe this sounds harsh. However, business continuity for me is also: can a company stay in business for the long run? To me: only when it respects it’s environment, including the people it employs.