One of the most entertaining television characters of all time is super agent Ari Gold from “Entourage”.
Although many would deem him to be “too arrogant” or politically incorrect to be a role model, a lot can be learned from him …
Besides all of his great lines throughout the run of the series, “Ari” wrote a book called “The Gold Standard” that’s jammed packed with golden nuggets (while I enjoy the hard copy of the book, I highly recommend also listening to the audio version which is read by Jeremy Piven, the actor who played Ari, since he ad libs and gives it a lot of flavour that you can’t get from a physical book).
Anyways, here are some of the gems that I took from Ari (If you’re easily offended or don’t like potty language, best to skip the following):
Ari on following your passion:
“Loving your work doesn’t mean finding a job you can tolerate for eight hours a day, but rather a job that gets you flying out of bed in the morning like a Jack Russell who just had a firecracker stuffed up his ass …”
And on positivity:
“If tolerated, negativity and pessimism will fester, spread, and become infectious. Negativity is a corrosive sludge that will seep in, clog, and choke the otherwise quicksilver linings of your synaptic pathways if you let it. Listening to shit leads to shit work. There’s a mental price to letting pervasive pessimism permeate your headspace … I’m talking about recognizing that there are mental obstructions out there in the form of other people’s baggage and not allowing them to pull you into a psychological cesspool with floaties …”
On problem-solving:
“Napoleon had an excellent system whereby no one was allowed to come to him with a problem unless they also came to him with three possible solutions to that problem”
Regarding selling:
“I like to think of every individual as their own kind of fortified bank vault. If you ask the right questions and pay close enough attention, every once in a while the tumblers line up and you can hear the click, at which point you can kick the door open and see what’s inside”
On eliciting emotion (especially useful for coaches doing business in the online space):
“In every interaction, I want to make people feel something. I’m a chemical agent. Transforming molecules in the room. I’m either bringing sunshine, lightning, or thunder”
And finally, on having a thick skin and not taking things personally:
“When you react to something personally, you become more susceptible to making mistakes. Oftentimes an enemy is goading you with this notion in mind, hoping you’ll fall into an artfully constructed trap … you need to be savvy enough to know when to give in to emption and when to table it in exchange for logic and reasoning. It’s all noise. Sticks and stones. Some of my best business deals have been done with people who, not a month before, were lambasting and excoriating me all over town to anyone who would listen”
If Ari was a real person, he’d undoubtedly credit his massive success to his ability to network. The guy seems to know every big player in Hollywood, and his phone rings off the hook with people wanting to do business with him or giving him a hot referral.
If you’d like to get more business rushing to you by harnessing referral marketing, I’ll be showing how inside the pages of the July issue of the Secret Coach Club hard copy newsletter.
The deadline to subscribe is Tuesday at midnight (EST):
