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Swim with the Sharks without Being Eaten Alive (Paperback)
by Harvey Mackay
| Category:
Management, Competitiveness, Personal effectiveness |
| Market price: ¥ 178.00
MSL price:
¥ 168.00
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MSL rating:
 Good for Gifts |
| MSL Pointer Review:
Harvey Mackay's masterpiece is a practical and inspiring guide to personal success. The "Mackay 66" alone is well worth your investment. |
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Author: Harvey Mackay
Publisher: Collins
Pub. in: January, 2005
ISBN: 006074281X
Pages: 288
Measurements: 8 x 6.3 x 0.7 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA00149
Other information: ISBN-13: 978-0060742812
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- Awards & Credential -
The #1 New York Times Bestseller with more than 3 million copies sold. One of the Top 10 MSL Business Reading Recommendations for Young Professionals. |
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- MSL Picks -
Swim with the Sharks without Being Eaten Alive is Harvey Mackay's classic business book and one of my personal favorites. Each business lesson is only about one and a half pages long, so you don't need a shark's appetite to gobble it down.
Some of my favorite Mackay lessons:
- The most important clause in a contract isn't a clause. It's dealing with honest people.
- Mackay's Dad's advice: "It doesn't matter how many pails of milk you spill, just so you don't lose the cow." (Mackay's from Minnesota where business advice is often phrased in terms of cows. Often entrepreneurs make mistakes that cost them money, but that's not as bad as making a mistake that destroys the company. Don't be afraid to be creative and test things to find out what works best. Non-Minnesotans can think goose and golden egg. Mackay says that for the first five years after purchasing a small, struggling envelope manufacturing company with a revenue of $200,000, he "...teetered between bankruptcy and insanity." But, he didn't lose the cow. Today, Mackay Envelope has a revenue of about $85 million, if I recall correctly.)
-Know something about your customer as well as your product. Mackay does an excellent job here. He develops the Mackay 66 which is a profile of your customers. It asks such things as: What are your customer's hobbies? Interests? Political and religious orientation? Knowing the customer is important in relating to him or her.
Mackay says the same principle is crucial to establishing contacts with influential people. Learn something about the person, so you have an idea of their hobbies, interest, values, etc. Then, you'll know what hot buttons interest them. And, what topics to avoid.
For example, many, many, many years ago, when Mackay met Fidel Castro, Mackay asked Fidel how he kept in great shape. Castro, who prided himself on his physical prowess, told Mackay he was an active bowler. (Note to bowlers: Take up jogging. Give up the cigars.) When, Mackay told Castro that he was a champion bowler in college, Castro became excited to have met someone who shared a similar interest.
- Believe in yourself. Mackay, an avid sports fan, discusses runners first achieving the four-minute mile. Many people believed that running a four-minute mile was impossible (for me, it is!), but after the first runner achieved it and showed it could be done, many other runners broke the four-minute mile, until doing so was necessary to be competitive.
- Never give a speech once. Practice it in front of a test audience. That way you'll find out what jokes bomb and can cut them. Mackay is considered one of the very best public speakers in the world, and he gives some advice about public speaking in this book.
Speaking and communication are valuable business skills. Mackay writes: "Learn to use the language. Written and spoken. Anyone who's a word dink has got it made." We word dinks like that! Although I'm not so sure it's fully true for everyone. But, at something over $20,000 per pop for a speech, with a nationally-syndicated small business column, and over eight million books sold, dinking around with words certainly hasn't hurt Mackay.
Mackay writes: "Like most salespeople, I've spent a lifetime trying to build a network of customers and friends... There are two ways to do it: retail and wholesale. Retail means the one-at-a-time kind of contacts that are built up through participation in community and social activities. Wholesale means the recognition, and acceptance, extended by people who don't know you personally but who have heard about you as a speaker, read your articles, or read about your civic activities in the paper."
This is the sort of book I like to reread every few years. I highly recommend it to entrepreneurs and people interested in business. Salespeople, negotiators, and avid sports fans will enjoy it the most.
(From quoting Peter Hupalo, USA)
Target readers:
Managers, entrepreneurs, young working professionals, high school and college graduates and anyone else aspiring to personal and professional success.
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Harvey Mackay is the author of the New York Times #1 bestsellers Swim With The Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive and Beware the Naked Man Who Offers You His Shirt. Both books are among the top 15 inspirational business books of all time, according to the New York Times.
Harvey's books have sold 10 million copies worldwide, been translated into 37 languages and sold in 80 countries. He writes a nationally syndicated column for United Feature Syndicate.
Harvey is also a popular and entertaining business speaker and was named one of the top five speakers in the world by Toastmasters International.
Harvey Mackey is a graduate of the University of Minnesota and of the Stanford Executive Program, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University. He is the chairman and chief executive officer of Mackey Envelope Corporation. He is an internationally renowned public speaker, an avid runner and marathoner, and a number-one-ranked tennis player in Minnesota. He and his wife, Carol Ann, have three children and live in Shorewood, a suburb of Minneapolis, Minnesota.
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From Publisher
This straight-from-the-hip handbook by bestselling author and self-made millionaire Harvey Mackay spells out the path to success for readers everywhere. They will learn how to:
- Outsell by getting appointments with people who absolutely, positively do not want to see you, and then making them glad they said "yes!"
- Outmanage by arming yourself with information on prospects, customers, and competitors that the CIA would envy - using a system called the "Mackay 66."
- Outmotivate by using his insights to help yourself or your kids join the ranks of Amercia's one million millionaires.
- Outnegotiate by knowing when to "smile and say no" and when to "send in the clones."
This one-of-a-kind book by a businessman who's seen it all and done it all has sold almost 2 million copies, and is the essential roadmap for everyone on the path to success.
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Chapter One
"I'd like 15,000 Tickets for Tonight's Game, Please"
The fifteen minutes of fame that the late Andy Warhol promised each of us came to me in the spring of 1984. I was the point man in a nationally publicized effort to outflank Calvin Griffith, the owner of the Minnesota Twins baseball team. Griffith wanted to sell his ball club to a group of Florida businesspeople who would have moved the Twins to Tampa. Another group, consisting of Twin Cities people, with which I was involved, wanted to keep the club there, under local ownership - and see to it that we didn't get caught up in a very expensive bidding war.
Unlike Calvin, we had a secret weapon: Bill Veeck.
In case you don't know who Bill Veeck is, he was the man who, in 1951, as owner of the hapless St. Louis Browns, staged an innocent-appearing promotion that so upset the baseball establishment - and so endeared him to baseball fans - that for as long as the game is played, he will be remembered as the man who "sent a midget to bat."
At three feet, seven inches and sixty-five pounds, Eddie Gaedel, ordinarily a vaudeville performer, gave the Browns one of their rare distinctions. He was the first and only certifiable midget to appear in a Major League Baseball game. For the record, he walked on four straight pitches and upon reaching first base was replaced immediately by a pinch runner. True to form, the runner was stranded on third and the Browns lost the game. But from the uproar Veeck had created you would have thought he'd called Babe Ruth a transvestite.
Veeck also operated five baseball clubs, three in the majors and two in the minors, won pennants, set major-league attendance records, was the promotional genius who helped innovate bat night, glove night, fan appreciation night, players' names on uniforms, exploding scoreboards, the ivy-covered walls of the Wrigley Field bleachers, the expansion of the major leagues, the unrestricted draft, and such yet-to-be-adopted proposals as interleague play.
In a word, he was a visionary. In another word, he was a maverick. My first contact with Veeck was simple enough. I picked up the phone and called him. Veeck prided himself on being totally accessible to anyone. Unlike most club owners, Veeck roamed the stands, schmoozing with his customers, instead of hiding out in a private box, à la Steinbrenner. Veeck had opinions on just about everything, and he loved to lay them on anyone who would listen.
As the situation in the Twin Cities began to unfold, I found myself calling Veeck almost daily. Here's what we were up against: Griffith had an escape clause in his stadium lease that permitted him to cancel if the Twins' attendance did not reach 4.2 million fans over a three-year period. Thanks to an inferior product, attendance over the previous two years had been so bad that by the end of the 1984 season the Twins would have had to draw 2.4 million to reach the 4.2 million total. However, if the total was reached, Griffith would be bound to his lease, and to Minnesota, for three more years.
Though he'd be free once again to leave after each three-year stint, he knew and we knew that once he had announced his desire to leave, the already disgruntled fans would turn on his shoddy product with a vengeance, and he would be forced to endure another three years of horrendous attendance and red ink.
So, unwilling to spend the money necessary to improve the team, he was determined to sell. Just as we were determined to see that the Twins hit 2.4 million in attendance in 1984. And he had only one group to sell to: us.
Our problem was that 2.4 million was an almost impossible goal. Veeck had set a major-league record that stood for fifteen years when he drew 2.8 million with a pennant-winning club in Cleveland. Less than a month into the 1984 season, it was clear the Minnesota Twins were going nowhere.
Confident that there was nothing anyone in Minneapolis or St. Paul could do to bind Griffith to his lease, in late April the Florida group endeared themselves to Griffith. They accomplished this by ridding him of a longtime antagonist, Gabe Murphy, when they bought Murphy's 43 percent minority interest in the club for $11 million.
Griffith then announced that he was open to all offers for his majority interest as long as they were for at least $50 million, which is what the pennant- contending Detroit club had just sold for. Calvin then sat back waiting for the bidding war to unfold between Tampa and Minnesota for the remaining stock.
What he hadn't counted on was the tenacity of the Twin Cities community and the long memory of Bill Veeck. Twenty-five years earlier, Veeck, as the owner of the Chicago White Sox, had voted at an American League meeting in favor of Griffith's move of the Washington Senators franchise to Minnesota. In exchange, Veeck felt he had an agreement from Griffith to support Veeck's bid for an expansion franchise in newly vacated Washington. To Veeck's mind, Griffith reneged on the deal when he voted for another group. It was an act Veeck would not forget. He devoted an entire chapter of his autobio- graphy, Veeck as in Wreck, to Griffithian duplicity, a topic that also included another ancient wound inflicted years earlier when Griffith's uncle, Clark Grif- fith, supposedly reneged on a promise to let Veeck move the Browns' franchise to Baltimore.
What Veeck told me was that if we could mount a buyout Twins tickets sufficient to boost 1984 attendance to 2.4 million, Griffith would cave in and sell to us at our price, knowing that the club couldn't be packed off to Tampa, the fan resentment over his threatened move would be so great he couldn't afford to operate it any longer ...
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| View all 8 comments |
Ted Koppel (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-28 00:00>
Harvey Mackay takes you on an easy reader ride to success in the business world. He drafted the guidelines so that you can get yours. |
Gloria Steinem (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-28 00:00>
... Everything business schools are too polite to teach. Whether you want to play by the existing rules, or change the game, Harvey Mackay's entertaining advice can help you stay alive long enough to do it. |
Jere W. Thompson (President and CEO, The Southland Corporation (7-Eleven Stores)), USA
<2006-12-28 00:00>
Harvey Mackay's [Swim] is about MBUYB - Management by Using Your Brain. This book combines common sense with a sense of humor and Mackay's many years of successful business leadership. No business school graduate should go into the working world without a copy. |
Gregory McMahan (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-28 00:00>
I came across this book a few years ago during a difficult time in my life. I was in the process of failing miserably at yet another professional endeavor, and in the throes of a major personal upheaval. It was shortly after these calamities that I seriously began to read this book. Internalizing just a few of the simple but important lessons in this book has made all the difference for me, and has allowed me to pursue life very much on my own terms.
From this book, I learned that in order to satisfy a demand, you first have to create the demand, the very first lesson of the text, and one that I applied to maximum benefit repeatedly shortly after internalizing it. I also learned that while money is nice, good information is priceless; otherwise, you will not have the money for long. Too many people never learn that lesson. Finally, the most important lesson for me came in the first few pages and had to do with salesmanship. As MacKay says, anyone can get the order if they are willing to say anything and do anything to get it. The real question is whether or not they can get the reorder, as that is the mark of the true salesman. I work with people at the moment that should have learned that lesson, but did not, and let me tell you, it is excruciatingly frustrating to interact with such individuals. People who have not learned this crucial and important lesson simply can not be trusted, and lack integrity. They develop reputations that, in a word, are most un-flattering, and can bring out the worst in people. An appropriate analogy for such people are scurrilous and reproachable politicians - all talk and promises, but very much non-action and non-delivery. Most important, once entrenched in a position with a fancy title and of some limited power and authority, they can and do frustrate any and all attempts at progress and forward locomotion. You would do well to cease contact with these people at the first and most convenient opportunity.
As an aside, I liked his musings on the old cliché "Sell Yourself" - truly a meaningless and overworked phrase if there ever was one. As MacKay remarks, we as individuals often make for lousy products. I also concur with others who found Mr. MacKay's admonishment, Don't Get Mad, and DON'T Get Even, to be wise beyond words. I can affirm that stewing over personal and professional slights and plotting revenge wastes precious time and energy which could be directed towards more constructive and fruitful pursuits. However, I must admit that I have yet to internalize this truest of truisms, as some tress-passes are difficult to forgive. Still, as for most of the other lessons the reader probably already knows them or is familiar with them, but having them placed before you by an unrelated and credible third party always makes for good, sound, positive reinforcement. While some may dismiss most of the lessons in the book as common sense, I have to commend Mr. MacKay on his key insights on the human condition and human relationships.
Which, in the end is what business, and for that matter, everything else, including my profession, science, is all about. I especially recommend this book to those from non-business or professional backgrounds (especially scientists, as many of us are, perish the thought!, unfortunately severely handicapped in the people skills department, this reviewer included) who nonetheless must interact with people. Obtaining this book solely for the lessons on good, effective salesmanship alone would justify its purchase. I have also found that reading this book, in combination with a handy and powerful little volume, Soft Selling in a Hard World: Plain Talk on the Art of Persuasion, by Jerry Vass, can turn even the most reluctant, shy non-people-person into an effective salesperson. One of these days I am going to read Mr. MacKay's follow-up, Sharkproof!, as there are quite a few of those carnivorous, man-eating fish in The Business of Science. |
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