Alan C. Fox - People Tools for Business: 50 Strategies for Building Success, Creating Wealth, and Finding Happiness

Advance Praise for

People Tools for Business: 50 Strategies for Building Success, Creating Wealth, and Finding Happiness

We all want to be happy and successful at work and in our lives... Alan Fox shares invaluable insights that can help you make a career out of being happy.

Tony Hsieh

CEO of Zappos.com, Inc. and author of Delivering Happiness

With refreshing candor, Alan Fox shares the invaluable lessons that he has garnered over an extremely successful, forty-five-year career.

Brent Kessel

CEO, Abacus Wealth Partners and author of It's Not About the Money

" Wise and playful. These charmingly straightforward and practical tools will assist you and add joy to your business life."

Jack Kornfield

Psychologist, author, and founder of Spirit Rock Meditation Center

" Read this bookit's like having a long, satisfying conversation with your own professional mentor (and mine), Alan Fox."

Jill E. Fox

From the foreword to People Tools for Business

Praise for Alan C. Fox's New York Times Best Seller People Tools: 54 Strategies for Building Relationships, Creating Joy, and Embracing Prosperity

"This book will change your life."

Bill Cosby

" Alan Fox has great tools for emotional intelligence, wisdom, clarity and directness. Develop and use them to live well, and your life will grow better for it."

Jack Kornfield

Psychologist, author, and founder of Spirit Rock Meditation Center

" People Tools is a gem of down-to-earth, practical advice on wise living. In simple, straightforward prose, Alan Fox illuminates insights that are often in plain sight but frequently overlooked. A very helpful book."

Joseph Goldstein

Author and co-founder of Insight Meditation Center

" Reading People Tools is like having a wise, loving and funny friend take you by the hand, and gently but surely lead you to a better place. Everyone could benefit from reading it."

Sharon Salzberg

Author of Lovingkindness and Real Happiness

Copyright 2014 by Alan C. Fox

All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher.

People Tools is a trademark of People Tools 13 LLC.

This edition published by SelectBooks, Inc.

For information address SelectBooks, Inc., New York, New York.

First Edition

ISBN 978-1-59079-287-2

eISBN 9781590792889

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fox, Alan C.

People tools for business : 50 strategies for building success, creating wealth, and finding happiness / Alan C. Fox.

pages cm

Summary: "Author of People Tools follows up his first book describing simple strategies for success in our daily lives with more advice that focuses on achieving success in business"-- Provided by publisher.

ISBN 978-1-59079-287-2 (pbk. book : alk. paper) 1. Success in business.

2. Success. I. Title.

HF5386.F524 2014

650.1--dc23

2014018644

Interior book design and production by Janice Benight

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

CONTENTS

This book is dedicated to my teachersall of my coworkers, clients, friends, and family whom I have been privileged to work and play with during my lifetime. It is also dedicated to you, the reader, the only one who can truly bring these words to life.

FOREWORD

I n April 2008 my father returned from a tropical vacation far from relaxed. "Sell all your securities," he said. "Now."

He'd spent much of the trip catching up on financial news touting derivatives. But rather than assume the exponential growth in that market signaled an economic boon, Dad saw only the exponential risk of some $500 trillion in promises that banks and insurers didn't have the reserves to keep.

"It's going to be a global crisis, and soon. The worst in our lifetimes."

My broker balked at the order to sellthe market had never been stronger. He enlisted two analysts, who tried valiantly to dissuade me. It didn't workI sold, and a few months later breathed an enormous sigh of relief to have benefitted, once again, from Dad's unconventional wisdom.

Is it surprising that Alan Fox, an accountant and lawyer by training, a real estate developer by trade, a poet and counselor by fate, would predict a financial meltdown most Wall Street pundits missed? Not if you grew up with him.

Dad anticipated the September 2008 financial crisis because he used an approach that has been a familiar part of his business toolkit for as long as I can remember. Being a Contrarian to him means you question your direction, especially when everyone else seems to be floating with the current. There may be wisdom in crowds, but it takes time to redirect them. So remember to look around and consider another way. An over-leveraged investment, or one not backed by reserves, isn't a long-term solution; it's like a plane that's still flying without enough fuel to reach its destination. And when the house is betting against itself, as banks were betting against their own worthless securities, something is definitely wrong.

Thinking contrary to the flow of popular opinion ("Be a Contrarian"), avoiding a short-term solution to a long-term problem ("Solve It Forward"), letting go of anger ("Ask for a Pineapple Fluff"), and other People Tools have been the cornerstones of my father's success in real estate, business, and life.

These tools, culled over a lifetime of business experience, also helped forge my own career path in real estate law. Starting when I was ten years old, Dad put me to work in his accounting department. After school I trudged to his office and sorted piles of cancelled checks that seemed to multiply each week like brooms in The Sorcerer's Apprentice . Important work, he explained. Reviewing his business expenses helped him plan ("Budget, Don't Fudge It"). Comparing expense to income showed him how well his business was doing. And, of course, balancing his business account helped make sure he didn't run out of cash to pay his employees (like me!).

That experience took me three steps up the "Glass Staircase" (confidence, home, experience) before I even knew there was a glass ceiling. At Dad's office I felt both valued and at home, and I gained financial experience that was rare among ten-year-old girls. I confess that at the time this was not exactly the envy of my peers. But now, nearly forty years later, the valueand voidof business mentorship has become an ongoing national debate. Business leaders, social scientists, and management experts have turned their attention to this vital and sometimes elusive component of success, from Daniel Goleman's findings on the critical role of business mentors in fostering socially intelligent leaders to Sheryl Sandberg's frustrated observation in Lean In:Women, Work and the Will to Lead that "searching for a mentor has become the professional equivalent of waiting for Prince Charming."

Wait no more. While the debate rages, read this bookit's like having a long, satisfying conversation with your own professional mentor (and mine), Alan Fox. People Tools for Business is rich with practical insights and techniques you can use right away, at work and in your life.

As a trial attorney, I use a people toolkit packed with Dad's business insights every day. Flame-mail destroy your morning? "Wait Three Days"or three hours, and ignore the invective when you respond. Puzzled by a counterproductive position? Look for the "Hidden Agenda." Settlement negotiations? Try to hit all of your client's goals in one shot ("Multi-goaling"). Issuing an ultimatum? Good luck. And be prepared to face the ultimate "audience of one."