Gene Simmons ‘Me Inc': How to be an army of one
Last thanksgiving during the Macy’s Parade I turned off the broadcast because of the Kinky Boots segment. It was too much for my holiday mindset and I didn’t want to see a bunch of guys dressed in drag running around in high-heeled boots. I wouldn’t consider seeing the play in New York, and I really didn’t want to see it on my television. I gave the LGBT people a chance once to pitch their argument and they gave me the Rocky Horror Picture Show—so that window closed and I’m done with them forever. What a ridiculous movement—no wonder they will remain a minority influence in American politics. However, the following year during the 2014 Macy’s Parade they cleaned up their act quite a lot seeking correctly to appeal to not just the red states across America, but the red counties. If any political map is studied, it becomes obvious that there is a lot of American real-estate that is undoubtedly conservative based and major supporters of capitalist endeavors. Liberals are rare in the core of America and Macy’s was seeking to repair their image with them—so it was with great welcome that the old rock band KISS gave a performance right in front of Macy’s dressed in full make-up and shooting fire at the end of their number just like in their concerts.
The only thing that KISS has in common with people in the LGBT community is that they dress up in strange costumes. The rock group KISS led by Gene Simmons is a comic book inspired unequivocal capitalist endeavor that has been a smartly guided enterprise by the former Hungarian immigrant. Simmons inspired by the Beatles created a stage presence that could have only been established in an American capitalist market combining comic book antics with rock and roll to create for himself over $300 million in net worth. Gene Simmons is a smart guy who marketed his band KISS in a way that redefined the music industry, so it was nice to see the 65-year-old rocker blasting away the streets of New York City on a cold November morning.
Gene Simmons is a unique personality that has always been excessively bold—unflinchingly confident, and unceremoniously blunt. He is the exact opposite to the counter-culture movement featuring socialist peace and love protestors looking for collective salvation—but instead represents raw individualism and self-reliance. As a businessman he has a similar personality as Donald Trump because it takes those types of people to create things from nothing. Not everyone can launch a business endeavor, and even fewer have the ability to manage others toward a task on the horizon only they can see. It takes a unique personality type to perform such a task so it shouldn’t be a surprise that Gene Simmons is the type of direct person that he is. He lives the way he wants to, he believes what he wants, he does what he thinks is right not measuring reaction against society’s gatekeepers, and if you don’t like it, he’ll just breathe fire on you and spit up some blood to assault puritan sensibilities.
Simmons has a new book out called Me, Inc and readers of this site will likely understand that there is a reoccurring theme that taps into the kind of work Ayn Rand was exploring about what makes a great entrepreneur and general businessman so successful. Her explorations were in direct contrast to the socialist movement of the twentieth century as a means of study into American capitalism as opposed to European communism. Not everyone is qualified to manage things–people or resources. Often it is a lonely enterprise conducting life as a visionary where only one or two people can see what the goal is, as everyone else sits around waiting to be shown the path to success. Gene Simmons knows what that lonely road is like and he features those values in his new book.
If someone really wants success in life brown-nosing your way to the top isn’t going to cut it. Sending a potted plant to your boss on Christmas won’t help you achieve the levels of success that lead to boasting around the holiday dinner table, it just makes them a suck-ass. Success is not achieved “through” others, but over them. Most of the time people who decide to stand in the way of your vision will have to be run over to get where you want to go. This notion of collective bargaining and consensus is utterly despicable, and ridiculous. Gene Simmons like Donald Trump has written a book that articulates just that very trait for the would-be successful dreamer seeking to take an idea from murky thoughts into hard reality. In that process people will be run over because they are all too willing to stand in the street to halt your progress and as a visionary, you cannot have compassion for their misery when they force you to eradicate their self-imposed barriers.
Just shortly after watching Simmons KISS performance at the Macy’s Parade I received a parade of texts from well-wishers and brownnosers. Some of those people were sincere and I replied back, most were just looking for a way to get on my good side for some future leverage. My son-in-law and I were at these moments talking about our new plans for the Cliffhanger stories and planning a video shoot to promote it early in 2015. I brought up some names of people to work with and one of them he immediately and ruthlessly dismissed not because the person was a bad person, but because he brought nothing to the table. It reminded me that I was including this person purely out of sentimentality and that this particular endeavor didn’t need to be watered down with such stagnation if we wanted it to work. My son-in-law showed good business sense in his decision and he has not yet read Gene’s new book. But it is those kinds of hard decisions that are required with any business enterprise from music delivery to complicated manufacturing. The coddled masses just do not have what it takes to push an idea of vision across a finish line and sentimentality often leads to destruction of an enterprise. It’s not that people’s opinions don’t have value, but that value often contributes itself to the customer base instead of the creative edge where things are created from nothing. In a nation that is currently struggling under a failed education system taught incorrectly to make decisions by encounter groups, the way to repair the debacle is with Gene’s new book Me, Inc: Build an army of one, unleash your inner rock god, win in life and business. Young people could especially use Gene’s new book as a means of re-educating them into the traits of successful people. They are not learning the correct means to business in colleges and government schools. Performing what is taught in those palaces of stupidity will lead fledgling young business people to crashing defeat in whatever their endeavors might be.
Even liberals got excited when they saw KISS performing in front of Macy’s because there is honesty to that rock group and specifically Gene Simmons that is uniquely American. Americans don’t need to explain themselves just as Gene doesn’t. All that matters in the end are results and America has those results when they act alone. It fails when America seeks consensus with other countries just like people fail when they act aside from the leadership of a visionary. Gene Simmons is a proud individual who offers no apologies. Most of the world could use the message in his new book. He has written it not because he needs the money, but because the old school teacher in him still wants to help people by teaching them to help themselves. Hopefully, many will take him up on his offer. Those who do will greatly benefit.
You can purchase the book at the following link:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0062322613/?tag=mh0b-20&hvadid=7000546533&ref=pd_sl_43ktsu58db_e
Rich Hoffman
