You probably wouldn’t even see me, even if we rode in the same bus. I’m five feet nine inches tall, I appear to be of average weight, and I have a face so anonymous that people have trouble describing me. I have tinted hair and eyes disguised by colored contact lenses. People mistakenly tend to think that, if I don’t look like anything, then I must be nothing, I’m just ‘Jim the zero.’
What I do for a living is, I prey on other people’s stupidity. Since there are a lot of stupid people in the world, I make a very nice living by preying on the stupid.
I got started in my business career by cleaning out a high-stakes poker game. As a result, I then had quite a bit of money and the question of what best to do with my capital?
I happened to overhear a conversation between two idiots, waiting in line at a lunch place. The two idiots are chuckling over the fate of an apparently bright, but not too politically aware, engineer. According to the two idiots, the engineer thought that he had developed a winning widget, at home and on his own time. The engineer then tried to get his current employer to develop the widget into a big moneymaker. However, per the two idiots, the engineer’s Department Manager didn’t want anything to do with pitching the widget to his management, since it might result in the engineer getting promoted over the Department Manager. Thus, the engineer runs into the legendary brick wall.
I manage to find and talk to the engineer in question. The engineer is short, has the face of a rodent and he’s afflicted with a nasty stutter. However, behind the loser front is a brilliant man.
I then hire the brilliant, but ugly, engineer and make damn sure that no one that I employ gets in his face. I then sell the engineer’s widget to a buyer, who has the money and the necessary infrastructure to make the widget into a big moneymaker. The buyer gets even richer, I get even richer and the engineer gets a little rich as well.
I then turn the engineer loose on yet another brilliant idea of his. I also hire some support people for the engineer, to speed up the process of making my next few millions. (I make damn sure that the support people know what will happen to them if they decide to pick on the nerd engineer.)
One day, one of my employees, a tall handsome support guy, comes to me and tells me that he can finish the short, ugly engineer’s latest creation and that I should promote the tall, handsome guy. We have a conversation about why I should promote the guy and it turns out that it’s mainly because the guy’s tall and handsome.
I didn’t mention that I’m also a magician? Well, I am. I use a magic incantation on tall and handsome. I chant, “You are fired!” My magic incantation works and I replace tall, dark and ambitious with a competent support guy, then I move on toward earning my next millions.
