The 1% Mindset: Nietzsche, the Noble Spirit, and Why Low Pay is Good

By Oliver McCann

Why is it that people give up on their self-help? Oliver McCann shows how spiritual quests often miss out the tough-mindedness that the highest performers have behind their agreeable profile. This first book in the series about the 1% concentrates on careers in an age of austerity, cuts, and economic uncertainty. McCann shows how ethics limit the world. Ought and should, he says, have gone beyond their basic purposes for survival and have invaded every corner of our lives. The result is a limited imagination of the could. The book draws on the imaginings of Friedrich Nietzsche to explain how the noble spirited can go beyond religion and rationality in resuming their self-help and creating new values for themselves and the world. The chapters are:

- Why People Give Up on Self-Help
- Why Ethics Need to be Re-Imagined
- Why More Connections Aren't Necessarily Better
- How Low Pay is a Springboard
- How Low Pay Can Keep Syphoning Wealth up to You
- How to Play the Long Game

This book in the series includes:
• How to shake off the 99% mindset and acquire better habits
• How to make the best from a low paid job or unpaid internship
• How to use a pay cut and an increase in responsibilities to improve your personal standing
• What the global immigration crisis means for your sense of motivation
• An understanding of Nietzsche’s ideas and how they can help you

Whether bought for yourself or for someone else, by employees or by employers, The 1 % Mindset is the way to get back into self-help and see it in a new light.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Oliver McCann
• Release date: Jul 22, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310647826

Oliver McCann

Oliver McCann started his career in many roles – dishwasher, barman, and a string of other low paid jobs – until he trained in Buddhism. He found a new mindset for life and returned to the marketplace to work his way into private equity. He is now an investor with a portfolio of properties and property businesses spanning 76 countries. He is also a passionate art collector as well as a devoted and private family man.

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Copyright Notice and Disclaimer

Copyright © 2015 Oliver McCann

Oliver McCann asserts the right to be recognised as the author of this work.

All rights reserved.

It is impermissible to reproduce any part of this book without prior consent. All violations will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. While attempts have been made to verify the information contained within this publication, neither the author nor the publisher assumes any responsibility for errors, omissions, interpretation or usage of the subject matter herein. This publication contains the opinions and ideas of its author and is intended for informational purpose only. The various terms used in this book’s title, subtitle and contents are either colloquial phrases or phrases quoted from the authors cited and are neither references outside this book to services, products or organisations nor endorsements of any such services, products or organisations. The author and publisher shall in no event be held liable for any loss or other damages incurred from the usage of this publication.

Table of Contents

1: Why People Give Up on Self-Help

2: Why Ethics Need to be Re-Imagined

3: Why More Connections Aren't Necessarily Better

4: How Low Pay is a Springboard

5: How Low Pay Can Keep Syphoning Wealth up to You

6: How to Play the Long Game

Recommended Reading

1: Why People Give Up on Self-Help

‘I tell you: one must have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: you still have chaos in you.’

Friedrich Nietzsche

One of my employees, let’s call her ‘Jan’, once asked me about achievement. She looked tired, and explained that she’d recently stopped a course of self-development, and was thinking about taking something up again. She added that she didn’t know why she hadn’t thought to directly ask someone in the top 1% how they got to be there. She seemed almost apologetic, embarrassed even.

She insisted that she was trying to keep positive. Only she’d found that each time she’d re-started self-help, it was with a new method. Each time she’d think that she’d finally found the right one for her, only to gradually find that it wasn’t. In the process, she’d ended up exhausted and dispirited by all the self-examination and self-reproach from ever newer angles. This constant vigilance in improving herself left her feeling that she was never good enough. And this wasn’t just hard work – it was all-dominating. She’d constantly found herself either working or thinking about work. Ironically, her pursuit of her true self didn’t seem to leave her much ‘me time’ to unwind in. And her self-help workload worked more for itself than her. It was as if it were a jealous lover seeking undivided loyalty and attention. It was as if it encouraged her to give these things by getting her to convince herself that it was achieving results for her. Eventually, the cumulative salesmanship she’d used to convince herself of this got the better of her. She had to admit that maybe little or nothing had changed. And these modest results proved costly. She’d collected a shelf-load of motivational books and DVDs. She’d sacrificed paid leave to go on courses. In all, she’d spent a lot of time, effort and money in pursuing goals that, she felt, had somehow eluded her.

So she asked me where she was going wrong. I told her that she was doing all the right things. So then she asked me what her ‘fatal flaw’ must be. I told her that she’d always seemed a fine employee to me. The fact that she spent personal time on improving her motivation impressed me further. She brightened up at this compliment. Then she asked me what should she do?

I told her two things. The first was that she needed a break. She was doing the right thing already by stopping. She was clearly suffering from self-help fatigue. The second thing I told her was that she needed to drop the ‘should’. There needn’t be any should about what she could do. This point needed further explanation. In fact, I returned to it in our occasional conversations, as I will throughout this book series. I knew that she was letting her sense of ethics get in her way. To borrow from our opening quote from Nietzsche above, ethics had stifled the chaos she needed to give birth to her dancing star. Those oughts and shoulds had tamed her unruly coulds that imagine and invent.

Some weeks later she said something that astonished me. She said that what I’d told her about ‘refocusing from should to could’ was helpful. This was so much so that she’d eventually returned to her books, DVDs, and had even booked a few workshops and a course. Her dream was to set up her own business. She felt positive that it would happen because she felt more confident that she’d stick with things because of what I’d told her. This was great to hear – OK, I’d lose a valuable employee, but I knew she had the makings of an even greater supplier.

The really astonishing thing about this was that she said it’d be fantastic if I could help others who, like her, had given up. ‘You can show those who have that spark’ she said ‘that they can find it. You can show them that they need to persevere to turn it into a fire. And you can show them how to.’

Preparing Your Spirit to Return to Self-Help

What she said ultimately led to this book series. For several years I’d already wondered how my advice could help others. I’d thought a lot about what could help someone turn their spark into a flame. I could have advised on how to borrow for a buyout. But there was already plenty of advice out there on leverage. I could have advised on the right way to buy (or not buy) that Lamborghini. But there was already plenty of advice out there on assets and liabilities.

I realised after my conversation with Jan that what I’d done for her was to lead her to finding her own answers. What she did for me in return was to show me that what I’d shown her was my answer. I could finally see that self-help, like following any practical advice, needs the right state of mind for perseverance. The people I want to help are those who, like Jan, have gotten to the point of giving up on self-help. And it might not be for the first time either.

Well, like Jan, I want you to relax for a while. You’re probably doing a lot of the right things. You might not realise or acknowledge this. The extent of your existing powers are hard to comprehend when ambitions never seem to materialise despite your best efforts.

Yet you’re probably doing better than you think. It can be hard to recognise your progress because of its spiritual dimensions. These underlie all self-help. That’s not to say that The 1% Mindset is necessarily a religious or even spiritual book. It’s to say that all its practical advice is underpinned by propositions that encourage you to tap into a noble spirit in you that can lead your way to going with the grain for yourself.

On the way, you may find my understanding of your need to flourish is, at times, tough-minded. But if it is, it’s only because anyone whose noble spirit hasn’t flourished is someone who’s held back and in need of a hard push. You may have felt this from time to time. I believe that you need both my support and a few challenges. I want to help you gather the strength you need to resume your self-help. And that means shifting your mindset.

This book series will explain why modern societies are held back by a state of mind that I call the 99% mindset. The 99% mindset is costing a lot of people their dreams. Book by book I’ll show you how the remedy – the 1% mindset – needs to be adopted by the few who’ve got the noble heart to embrace it. Furthermore, those few will learn how they have the spirit to lead others so that the few can become the many.

Re-Imagining Ethics Isn't What You Think

When I first told a close business associate of mine – let’s call him Jim – about these books, he straightaway said that I should pitch to some publishers. He said I should hire a production company. He said I should bring in some marketing and sales people, get them to arrange a launch, and then go on a tour and do talks and signings. I know somebody who can organise this, he said excitedly.

I told him that I needed to keep these books at arm’s length. He was puzzled. Why on