Official FranklinSquires Website, by Rick Koerber

By Les McGuire*

I can’t tell you how many times a week people see the car I drive and ask me what I do for a living.  For a Producer, this is the golden question.  It creates an ideal situation for me to create value for a stranger, with whom I would not otherwise be talking to.

In addition to these questions, I also have people who know me outside of business or who meet me through a friend, and who know my religious convictions, regularly ask me why I’m so materialistic, driving such expensive cars.

Its actually a really simple concept.  Can you imagine yourself at a gas station filling up your 1999 Camry, walking over to the guy pumping gas at the next pump and saying, “Hi. My name is Les McGuire. Let me tell you what I do for a living. I help people learn and apply the principles of prosperity.”

How to you think that conversation might go over? How do think it might change if the guy says to me, “Hey man, that’s a sweet car, what do you do for a living?”  Now, here’s the perspective shift.  Do you think my opportunity to create value for him has been increased?

This is the point.  Material wealth is never an end in and of itself for a Producer.  It’s all about what is going on in the mind of a man, that determines the deeper issues of morality, responsibility, intention, and the true condition of his heart.

The most obvious principles in the examples I’m going to share here, about cars, are 1) People are assets (and in the most strict sense of the meaning of this phrase, cars are not.) 2) Exchange creates / expands wealth.

Here is a question to ponder: As a tool of production, how is a billboard on the freeway different from an expensive car?   What is the main purpose of a billboard? My answer is: To start a conversation with someone you otherwise might not have been able to reach.
What is the main purpose of my car, as a resource of production? The same.

Let me illustrate my point with a few examples.  When I first thought of this concept, it was only a hypothesis, but my idea was, “I wonder what would happen if I bought a car that caused people to ask me what I do for a living?”

I suspected that it would create opportunity for me to create more value, build new relationships, and teach more about fundamental principles.  But, I wasn’t positive. So I tested out that idea by buying my first Mercedes.  It was a white S class.

Wow. What an immediate impact it made. In a macroeconomic view, that car never cost me a penny.  Why?  Because, from the moment I started driving the car, I found new opportunity to immediately begin creating more value in the marketplace than I had been doing before.
I think that car made me at least an additional $5000 per month from the day I bought it. My payment was $622. How’s that for a return on investment? The bummer was that now I had to drive around in a sweet Mercedes. Tough life.

Of course there is another side to the story.  Not all opportunity has come through positive responses to the car I drive.  Some of the most important opportunities I’ve had to teach fundamental principles, have come in much more frustrating circumstances.

Some people, because of scarcity, chose to believe that by purchasing this new Mercedes, I had actually just become a bigger consumer and was indulging my selfish, materialistic desires.  People with this mentality, also have a very difficult time accepting my “billboard” analogy.

When I started driving around in the Mercedes, several people felt justified in their scarcity frame of mind, because they also knew that when I bought the car I didn’t actually have much money.  The people in scarcity just saw me as if I were putting on a big show.  There is some truth to that idea; my intention was to put on a type of show.  What I was actually doing was what I call guerrilla marketing, or taking value to the marketplace in a unique and innovative way.   On a side note, businessmen who live in scarcity, often find their businesses struggling because they can never seem to find their way past their own scarcity mentality to engage in successful marketing.  They often view marketing and sales as an undesirable side of business, they neglect it, and when their business fails to grow like they hope, they justify their position to themselves by becoming bitter and condemning the world that doesn’t reward them appropriately.

Now, to get back to my experiment, man did it pay off.  I found that even though I was still talking to people about the same concepts and principles that I always had been, they were suddenly listening to me like they never had before.

Interestingly, before people would assume-perhaps because of my age or the car I drove, etc.-that I didn’t know what I was talking about.  Now, after I start driving around in a nice Mercedes, suddenly everyone seems to be listening to me, and responding as if I probably do know what I’m talking about. I was no smarter.  I wasn’t saying anything different.  But, now I was attacking the kind of attention that enabled me to create more value, and in one-on-one conversations, people were listening in a way that allowed me to create value for them like never before.

This is when I first started to really understand the principle that “Exchange expands wealth”, because I found that as a direct result of my car experiment, I found more and better opportunities to exchange with people than ever before.  As a result, my wealth started to grow exponentially.

In case you are still struggling with the concept, imagine this scenario.  A friend of mine wants to introduce me to his other friend who is very wealthy and successful. So, he sets up a lunch meeting. While they are waiting for me, I pull up in a high-end Mercedes. I get out of the car, walk over to them casually, my friend introduces me and says, “This is my friend Les, he knows more about money than anyone I’ve ever met.”

How do you think this goes over in the mind of the successful person I just met? How might his mindset be different if he had seen me pull up in an S-10 pickup? I admit it’s not the biggest deal in the world, but if you think the messages you are sending, even with the kind of car you are driving, makes no difference-you aren’t thinking.

I met another guy who was 35 years old, had almost 500 employees and was worth over $35 million. He is regularly hit up with supposed opportunities to meet people constantly. Most of the people he meets in situations like that, kiss up to him because they are all trying to get something from him, and its usually money.  This is the life he is used to.

He and I met casually and struck up a small conversation.  As it turned out he had a sweet Mercedes SL55 AMG. I told him that I had one as well. He asks me about it and I briefly described my SL65 AMG.  Surprising to me, he then told me he’d never heard of the SL65.  I explained to him that it was the same car as his, but instead of a supercharged V8 mine has a Twin-Turbo V12. His response?  “Cool. I’d love to see it sometime.”

Now, does this make him want to do business with me? No. But does it help the conversation move forward in a productive way, and does it affect how he views me and how he listens to what I have to say in the future? You’d better believe it.

If you think it makes no difference, I just suggest you ask someone who has a car like this and understands this principle and you might be surprised at what you’ll find.

If you think “a car is a car”, it gets you from point A to point B and has no other influence on productivity at all, you may well be right-as far as a description of your potential.  However, if you think you are making a statement that is true for all of us, then you are seriously mistaken.  Remember, it isn’t about the car. It’s about the people you have the opportunity serve.

Don’t let scarcity mentality cause you to fall into the common trap of judging people negatively because of the car they drive-or don’t drive. At the same time, also recognize that in the world in which we live, many people are already in this trap and the question is, “How will you use this knowledge, now that you have it?”

I don’t criticize or judge people for not driving expensive cars, and my friends who drive nice cars don’t judge those who don’t, either.   Pretty much all of the judgmental, spiteful attitudes I’ve seen, relating to cars, come from those who criticize others for driving nice cars.  It’s easy to call people with nice cars selfish, greedy, foolish, egotistic, and all sorts of other bad names.  But, I would suggest to you that its not productive, and more importantly, its not a virtue. Be careful of judging people too quickly based on appearances. Things are not always as they seem.  Once you realize this you are empowered to do two things.  First, to see past material considerations and actually build relationships with people (who are the real assets in exchange) and second, to use this knowledge to attract the attention of others who might be so judgmental-or those who have learned the lesson you’ve now learned.

I love Ayn Rand’s statement that there are no contradictions, only false premises. If you hear a guy speaking the language of producers, teaching principles, running multiple successful businesses, and you think that person must be inherently selfish, greedy, materialistic, judgmental of others, and prideful, because of the material wealth that surrounds him, I invite you to question your premises. Something is not adding up.

If you believe that principles govern, dollars follow value, exchange expands wealth, people are assets, etc, yet you see others apparently violating these principles and prospering-you should question your assumptions.  Either they aren’t as prosperous as they appear, or they aren’t as bad as you are judging them to be.

I love driving $200,000+ cars because it invites people to come to terms with this dilemma early in their relationship with me.  They either think I’m a jerk and go away, which is fine because it probably spares me a lot of wasted time and headache working with a person who it is highly unlikely would be open-minded to principles of abundance-regardless of the car I’m driving.  Or, they recognize it (sometimes learn from it) and we are able to produce amazing results together. I have literally dozens of unbelievable producers in my life, right now, as a result of this basic idea.

I hope this has been helpful. Now, you might have a better understanding of why, when I met Rick and saw his ‘93 Honda Accord, I told him I thought he should buy an expensive car.  He resisted this idea for a short while, but then had some experiences that helped him see what I’ve been explaining.  Once Rick grasps a principle, you can count on him to take it all the way.  When he finally saw what I’d been trying to show him, I think he went out and bought something like five cars all within a day or two!

Remember, it’s not about cars. It’s not even about the people who drive them.  It’s really about the thousands of people who might be able to serve, if you could simply attract their attention in a productive way.  If you are a producer, a car is not just a car.  It’s a resource of production, like everything else. The real fun is finding what you enjoy and are passionate about anyway, then figure out a way to go produce with it.

End Note:  Even after reading the examples I’ve illustrated, people are constantly asking me questions that reveal to me that they are still not grasping the concept.  It is not about the car, the kind of car, the details of the car, or anything like it.  In order to try and reach those who are still not grasping the concept-I want to tell you the story of the Glick.

When I was 22, I lived in Hawaii for 4 months.  I was driving limos for Japanese tourists, using my language skills as a newly returned missionary from Japan. Upon first arriving on the Big Island, my buddy and I (”Stu” from Mesa, AZ)  realized we were in trouble without a car.   So, I called my dad and begged for some cash (socialist). He sent us $500 and we bought the sweetest 1977 Mazda GLC Station Wagon you’ve ever seen.  It was cleverly named, “The Glick”. It ROCKED.

The Glick was a total rust bucket. Every morning on our way to work, our daily routine was to pop the hood and add a quart of oil (it leaked about a quart a day.) We bought oil by the case.

The gas gauge didn’t work either.  So, we bought a one-gallon gas can, filled it up and kept it in the car. We would just drive until we ran out of gas, then put the extra gallon in and drive to the gas station. We once actually ran out of gas between the ordering microphone and the pickup window at the McDonald’s drive through. That was sweet.

That car was a total tool of production for us. In Kona, the locals seemed to look down at tourists. But our car was a quintessential surfmobile (it even had an old, beat up bumper sticker that said “Proud parents of a Kamakai Elementary School student”). So everyone treated us like locals, not tourists. Within about a month, we’d drive down the road (Alii Drive) and all the guys hanging out on the side of the road would “shaka” us, etc. We were “in”. The car was perfect.

Because we were hitchhikers when we first got there, we had a policy of always picking up hitchhikers once we had the sweet ride. They thought we were exceptionally cool. And we had no fear of loss because 1) who would want to steal the Glick, and 2) if they did, where would they go?

That was the perfect car for our situation, which proves the point again…it’s not about the car.  When we left Hawaii, we sold the Glick for about $500.

The Glick is a great example because it illustrates the same idea as my Mercedes S class experiment.  It’s not about the car, its about how you can use the car for productive purposes.  This is true of all material “assets.”  The question is not, “Should I purchase this or that?” The more valuable question is, “How can I produce with this or that?”

Now, make not mistake-the billboard analogy doesn’t mean that this is the only purpose a car serves, it’s just one of the many productive things cars can do.  In my current situation I have more cars than drivers at my house.  So, I lend my cars out to people all the time. It’s nice when a friend’s car is in the shop or having problems to just be able to say, “Hey, come drive mine for a few days.” It’s always about creating value…people are assets.

Let me share one final observation.  I invite you to consider that stewardship grows and increases as it is used productively.  If this is true, and I suggest that it is true, what does this imply about money or other forms of material “wealth”?

If you are a wise steward, your stewardship will grow, until eventually you receive, “all that the Father hath.”  (This, by the way, is a lot.)

There is no virtue in poverty, and no sin in prosperity. The sin is in where your treasure is, and I don’t believe you can tell where a man’s heart is just by looking at how much wealth he has-or doesn’t have.  You can’t tell such an important thing about a person without more information.  So, being slow to judge is a wise approach, lest you be judged as you judge others.

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* This essay is a compilation of several online posts made on the FranklinSquires discussion boards prior to his death in the tragic June 2006 plane crash in Utah County, UT. Some edits and revisions have been made for clarity and continuity. Almost all of the language, however, is still in the form first written by Les.