Never say no when a client asks for something, even if it is the moon.CÉSAR RITZ
Ritz added, “You can always try, and anyhow there is plenty of time afterwards to explain that it was not possible.” After Ritz opened his first hotel in Paris in 1898—and shortly thereafter hotels in London, Madrid, and New York City—his Ritz Hotels became synonymous with luxurious accommodations and exceptional service. Shortly after Ritz’s death in 1918, the eponym ritzy emerged as a term for upscale elegance.
Never invest in a one-man gang.HOWARD RUFF, in Safely Prosperous or Real Rich?
Choosing Your Personal Financial Heaven (2004)
This was the third of Ruff’s “Seven Never-Do’s of Investing.” He explained:Although most start-ups are the result of the drive and leadership skills of one intrepid entrepreneur, successful new companies have a well-balanced, talented support team to provide all the necessary skills and experience the entrepreneur doesn’t have.
Other Ruff “never-do’s” included:
Never invest without an exit strategy.
Never invest in a “good idea” that is for everyone.
If it’s for everyone, it’s usually for no one.
Never inject a man into the top, if it can be avoided.ALFRED P. SLOAN, in Adventures of a White Collar Man (1941)
This advice is now routinely ignored, but a half-century ago it was considered bad form to bring in a CEO from another company, and especially another industry. Sloan began his advice by writing: “In an organization men should move from the bottom to the top. That develops loyalty, ambition, and talent, because there is a chance for promotion.”
If you are male, never forget that
ties are the number one accessory for a guy in business.BRAD TONINI, in The New Rules
of the Game for Entrepreneurs (2006)
Tonini, an Australian business consultant, also offered ten “Keys for thinking like an entrepreneur.” One of them was: “Never assume anything.”
Never accept the first offer, no matter how good it sounds.
Never reject an offer out of hand,
no matter how unacceptable it sounds when you first hear it.BRIAN TRACY, in his 2000 book The 100 Absolutely
Unbreakable Rules of Business Success
These contrasting principles were offered as corollaries to “The Law of Terms.” In his book, Tracy offered scores more laws and rules of business success, including:
Never make excuses or blame anyone else for anything.
Resolve never to be caught not having done your homework in advance.
Never allow yourself to wish, hope, or trust
that anyone else will do it for you.
Never trust to luck or hope that something unexpected
will turn up to solve a problem or save a situation.
Never let yourself be rushed into parting with money.
You have worked too hard to earn it and taken too long to accumulate it.
Never dump a good idea on a conference table.
It will belong to the conference.JANE TRAHEY, American advertising executive,
quoted in 1977 in the New York Times
Never allow anyone to get between
you and your customers or your suppliers.JACK WELCH, calling this “a cardinal rule of business”
in Jack: Straight from the Gut (2001)
Never instruct, correct, or reprimand employees in a sarcastic manner.WESLEY WIKSELL, in Do They Understand You? (1960)
fourteen
Never Have Your Dog Stuffed
Book, Song & Movie Titles
In 1943, seven-year-old Alan Alda was diagnosed with polio. At the time, polio was one of the world’s most dreaded diseases, viewed by many people as a kind of modern-day plague. When a case of polio was diagnosed in a community, it was common for frightened parents to keep their children away from swimming pools, movie theaters, and other public places where the odds of contracting the viral infection would be increased. There was no cure for the disease, and there would be none for more than a decade, when Jonas Salk’s first effective polio vaccine became available in 1955.
Alda’s father was Robert Alda, a singer and actor who eight years later would win a Tony Award for his role in Guys and Dolls, and his mother was Joan Brown, a former Miss New York. After the diagnosis, the anxious parents did everything they could to find medical care for their only child. From their son’s perspective, though, the method they chose felt more like torture than treatment.
More than a half century later, as Alda began to write his autobiography, he recalled an excruciatingly painful treatment regimen—originally developed by Sister Elizabeth Kenny—that involved the application of steaming hot woolen blankets to his legs and a stretching of the leg muscles that caused the young lad to feel as if his limbs were being ripped off.
Within a year, Alda was polio-free. And even though Alda’s parents were assured that their son was no longer contagious, the boy was declared off-limits by the parents of almost all of his former friends. In an attempt to raise the spirits of their increasingly lonely child, Mr. and Mrs. Alda one day surprised Alan with a large black cocker spaniel. There was an instant connection between boy and dog, who was soon named Rhapsody (the name chosen because Alda’s father had just landed his first movie role, playing the composer George Gershwin in a film biography titled Rhapsody in Blue).
At age eight, when Alda’s spirits had improved enormously, fate delivered another crushing blow. His beloved Rhapsody died suddenly—and painfully—after eating chicken bones that had been discarded with some leftover Chinese food. The next day, Mr. Alda and his son wrapped the dog in a blanket and carried him to a dry riverbed near their house. As they started to dig a grave, tears began streaming down Alan’s cheeks, and by the time the hole was finished, he was crying uncontrollably. The distraught father, not sure what to say, ultimately proffered the first thought that occurred to him: “Maybe we should have the dog stuffed?” Alan, who couldn’t bear the idea of seeing Rhapsody tossed in a hole and covered with dirt, agreed: “Okay, let’s stuff him!”
Later in the day, Alan and his father found themselves in a local taxidermy shop, trying to describe their dog’s personality and explain his favorite expressions. Six weeks later, the dog finally arrived—but it was far from the Rhapsody that Alan remembered. The stuffed animal was totally unrecognizable, now looking almost like a rabid dog about to lunge. Visitors to the house began to avoid the living room, where the dog had been placed. And when the dog was banished to the front porch, postal workers and delivery people refused to go anywhere near the house. Alda was only eight, but he was learning his first major life lesson:Losing the dog wasn’t as bad as getting him back. Now that he was stuffed, he was just a hollow parody of himself. Like a bad nose job or a pair of eyes surgically set in eternal surprise, he was a reminder that things would never again be the way they were.