Top Dog: To Be Big, Think Big

By Gene Landrum

This is a book on the world Icons such as Madam Curie, with two Nobel Prizes and ends with Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, an online winner.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Dec 13, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543920529

Book preview

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Preface - The Nature of a Top Dog

It is not Goethe who creates Faust, but Faust who creates Goethe – Carl Jung

I was excited about writing about those I have researched over the years and saw them as Top Dogs. I have also talked about their ability to avoid the ‘Bad Dogs’ to reach the pinnacle of power and renown. How did I do this? I woke one night at 3am thinking about the people who have risen to the top in various venues. I got out of bed and wrote and in a week, I had written in excess of 50,000 words in 150 pages. What did I find? For starters, a Top Dog is innovative – creatively destructive. They tend to use their imagination and talents to launch new products and services. They are seldom interested in ‘what is’ but in what ‘might be.’

Those with Top Dog insights quickly learn that family, friends and mates question their ideas and habits. I have paraphrased this as, "Be what you are not and you will likely become more than you could otherwise be." Here is an outline:

Table 1 – Top Dog Transformation

*    Joe the Plumber builds Skyscrapers

*    Mary the Waitress quits to launch Food Chain

*    Billy the Kid T-Type becomes the leader of firms

*    Secretary Silvia wins election for Secretary of State

Where did the above aphorisms originate? I was the quintessential entrepreneur, having started five businesses and taking three to $100 million in sales within two years. The most noted of these businesses was the Chuck E. Cheese chain of family entertainment. All this was about being a Top Dog who is fearless but driven by a creative bent to change the world by daring to go where the pack fears.

Why is Fear So Motivational? The major reason is due to fear being a brain thing that actually fuels the psyche to be safe. It is what Fred Smith, later in this work did when out of cash and about to lose his Federal Express and instead of returning to Memphis to liquidate the firm, he catches a flight to Las Vegas, plays blackjack all night, wins $27,000 and save Fed Ex. Another example is when Joe Average fears waking up at age 80 wondering why he didn’t have the guts to chase his dreams or Mary Normal fears not dressing as a slick chick at the golf club.

Mark Twain was the quintessential example of a Top Dog author. Here is a picture of him contemplating his stories in Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. He and Nikola Tesla were similar in the way they refused to abide by logic to live or write. Were they normal? Hardly! Twain felt ‘home is where the art is,’ and dared live in a similar way to the heroes in his books.

Mental-dysfunctions can interfere with peak performance but they can also lead you to go where the pack fears. Nikola Tesla, the A/C inventor felt a wife would want a home and family and would interfere with his creativity, thus he refused to ever marry. Fear of failing was rampant in the lives of both Twain and Tesla.

Since the 9/11 debacle in America fear has pervaded the psyches of most people. Psychiatrist David Hawkins offered insight into this when he wrote, "The proliferation of fear is as limitless as the human imagination." Those individuals who permit fear to permeate their work become a victim and seldom reach the summit. Since those Twin Towers toppled in a fiery quagmire America is aware of the sinister threat of people who hate what they don’t have and will go to great extremes to destroy what you have. This sinister enemy has permeated our shores which was illustrated once again in Fall of 2017 when a mad Islamic ran down and killed eight innocent New Yorkers and maimed eleven others who will live with the event the rest of their lives.

Philosophy of Life & Mind-Myopia

Plato offered valid advice on Radicalism writing, "Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety." This is validated in the paradox of anxiety since it has the power to make us or break us. The strong are able to see past this debacle and remain fearless due to a robust inner sense of self. Those who buy into a dilemma are weakened by their Mindsets. In the profound wisdom of Oscar Wilde who wrote, "The underlying nature of optimism is sheer terror." Meryl Streep, the Oscar winning actress, admits to being insecure as do all of those in this work who have challenged those in power to take power.

Many wannabe’s live in fear or rebuke by those in charge. This was true for the all-time baseball hit leader Pete Rose who was found betting on horses and his games and so was banned from being in the Hall of Fame despite having more hits than any other player. In 2017 they finally erected a bronze statue commemorating his role at Riverfront Stadium since he had broken Ty Cobb’s record with 4,256 hits while #2 is 43-year old Ichiro Susuki with 3,080 – a difference of 1176. Rose also holds the record for the most 2-hit games, 3-hit games, 4-hit games and 5-hit games. To break Rose’s record a baseball player would have to have 200 hits a year for 21 years. It will never happen. Yet, Rose is still barred from being in the Baseball Hall of Fame for betting, not on the Reds games but on other games. The irony is that is the true nature of a Big T personality like Pete. Rose in 2017 said, "When I played if I took 10 or 15 games off I knew I would never get 200 hits and I got pissed if manager Sparky Anderson took me out of the lineup."

In America the 9/11 debacle left scars on New Yorkers with many fearing the terrorists might return. The wars in the Middle East are taking a toll on the well-being of many Americans. Then one day in 2017 a quiet and shy Muslim Sayfullo Saipov drove a rental truck down a Manhattan sidewalk and killed eight, injuring 11 others to the chagrin of New Yorkers. What many quiet people don’t quite get is that when you internalize agony it messes with your attitude and warps behavior. The irony of all this chagrin is that Saipov could have easily been deprived of doing his ill-deed after his driver’s license had been suspended in 2015. He also did not have a valid car registration or insurance policy. A Middle-Eastern friend said, "He is like a ghost as he comes and goes and nobody sees him." They saw him driving down a New York sidewalk killing innocent people.

Management gurus recommend organizations stop getting mired in all this s front-page furor. Those in power are paranoid about today’s mental maniacs, many of whom have taken over the minds, hearts and souls in America and worry about where it will all end. This book looks into the nature of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in Top Dogs. I feature mostly men but have written about Madam Curie and Ayn Rand as Big T wunderkinds. My most auspicious chapter on those that push the windows of opportunity is the one on Auguste Rodin, the creator of The Thinker.

This incredible work by Rodin is on the cover of this book primarily because he was one man who pushed the limits of creativity in The Thinker that was finished in 1902. and can be seen in his museum located in Paris, France. I felt the Thinker was appropriate since it is about thinking about the mundane world in which we reside. For those who have not viewed this awesome work take a trek to Paris as he sits in front of Rodin’s Museum. Another European with such a bent was George Bernard Shaw who wrote Pygmalion, that became My Fair Lady, to look beyond convention when being creative. He told the world, "The Power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who haven’t got it." ‘Touché!

I found it interesting in studying Thomas Edison that he admitted to sleeping only four to five hours each night but lived a vibrant life until age 84 back when the life expectancy was around fifty. That is what I call mind over matter. It is akin to someone telling you, "You can’t do that. It’s not in the budget. When that happens run fast to a place where budgets are not treated as bibles. Dr. Tara Field told the world, Ninety percent of aging is based on attitude." This was validated in California shown in this table on Innovative Creativity:

Table 2 - California’s Innovative Creativity

➢   First Animated Films @ Disney

➢   First Integrated Circuit @ Fairchild Camera - Noyce

➢   First Stereo System @ Ampex in Sunnyvale

➢   First transcendental function calculator at HP in Palo Alto

➢   First MPU @ Intel – Bob Noyce in Sunnyvale

➢   First Video Game @ Atari in Los Gatos

➢   First programmable PC at Apple in Cupertino

➢   First Family Entertainment Restaurant Chuck E. Cheese

➢   First Routers – CISCO & Tesla Electric Car in Silicon Valley

➢   iPOD’s, iPHONES, iPAD’s at Apple

➢   Social Networking : Facebook, eBay, Twitter, Craig’s List

Why do most Big T’s live on the precipice? Look at the West to East innovation that occurred in America. Pilgrims from Europe landed on the East Coast of the US and moved west to California, the home of today’s Silicon Valley. The above table offers insight into what I have labeled Maniacs on a Mission. In this world men tend to bigger risk-takers – high testosterone than women. It is also a fact that the young are more risk-taking than those with grey hair. Big T’s have a unique way of living and playing with a propensity to be the very first at work and the very last to leave. Big T personalities also have difficulty relaxing when on vacation and like Fred Smith have far more traffic violations than the norm.

In 2017 a USA Today survey found LA had the worst traffic of any city in the world. Ironically, it is seen as the idyllic start-up vista and why UCLA and USC graduates have classes on the nature of being unique to win big. Here is a Table on the Big T personality on their mission to win.

Table 3 – Big T’s as Maniacs on a Mission

Psychologist Frank Farley came up with the Big T concept

✯  Those who finish their meals first

✯  They’re 1st at work and last to leave

✯  They walk, talk, work, drive & sleep fast

✯  Most have difficulty relaxing even on vacation

✯  They multi-task and juggle many balls at one time

Entropy & Entrepreneurship

As discussed earlier Ilya Prigogine was a Russian scientist who developed a concept he labeled dissipative structures and won the Nobel Prize for it in 1977. Prigogine had great insight. He was a guy willing to bet big to win big and told us in his work on crisis and creativity, "Entropy is the evidence of decay as well as the first step in creation. Breakdown is the harbinger of breakthrough." This came out of what was labeled Order out of Chaos in 1984 in which he wrote, Psychological suffering, anxiety and collapse lead to new emotional, intellectual, and spiritual strengths. Confusion and death can lead to new scientific ideas.

When things go bad we hit the proverbial wall or what Prigogine labeled a ‘bifurcation point’. We either go under or climb above it all. Building muscles or business acumen lies just beyond the bifurcation point – until actions begin to hurt they are not likely to help. In Eight Keys to Greatness I once wrote, "If you haven’t visited the bottom it is highly unlikely you will ever make it to the very top."

In the chart on breakdown and breakthrough we found that the two are inextricably tied together. At times we are way up and at other times we hit the bottom of the barrel. When up we find ourselves in a place I labeled Icon-Ville. Notice the illustration between Transcendence and Chaos and my discussion of Innovation that Harvard found was ‘creative destruction.’ It is about winning big or losing big. As discussed there is some strong evidence that shows Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are on-the-edge while those back east take the safe and sane roads when launching a new idea or product. It is a fact that most innovation materializes in California and then migrates east. It is akin to the words of Kipling:

Table 4 – Kipling’s IF

If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs;

If you can dream-and not make dreams your master;

If you can think-and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two imposters just the same;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings and risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, and lose, and start again at your beginnings and never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, yours is the earth and everything that’s in it,

And-which is more - you’ll be a Man, my son!

In addition to this I was always listening to motivational music when reading playing checkers. Tunes such as Up a Lazy River, I Believe, What a Feeling and King of the Road. It is truly amazing how a song can become a motivational agent when driving to see a client or waiting at for an important phone call to close a new business deal. This is just one more agent of Top Dog thinking well outside that proverbial box and doing what works and in Kipling’s words, ‘That’s being a man, my son.’

Be an Upbeat Top Dog

Sears is primal example of losing out due to their antiquated mindsets. Top Dogs at Sears never understood the age of visionaries, not micro-managers. Their problem was what is labeled a ‘brick and mortar’ mindset when their genesis was the iconic Sears Tower hovering over the city of Chicago, Illinois. They became America’s demigod of retailing with Kenmore appliances, Die Hard batteries, Allstate Insurance and real estate holdings that boggled the mind of adversaries but the Top Dogs became content and never again grew and were bought out by K-Mart. It once had 3400 stores and a stock price of $144. They now have 1250 stores and a stock price of $4 and those are in jeopardy. Talk about not knowing how to fly the plane or run the joint. Ugh!

Otis Reading wrote about Top Dogs in lyrical form. One of his more majestic tunes was about leaving your abode and heading west:

I’m sittin’ on the dock of the bay

Watchin’ the tide roll away;

I’m sittin’ on the dock of the bay

Wastin’ time

Left my home in Georgia

Headed for the ‘Frisco bay….

There is a wealth of stories that show that the mind is a solution for this Top Dog Syndrome. One of the most memorable is about a Notre Dame Football star Mario Tonelli. Mario was an All-American running back in 1937 and starred in the defeat of USC in the Rose Bowl that year.

Sitting in the stands that day was a Japanese exchange student watching this superstar regale the fans. A few years later Mario found himself in the infamous Bataan Death March in which 10,000 American GI’s perished. Mario had dropped from 200 pounds to 125 and had contracted Malaria and was close to death. Then a Japanese soldier walked up to him and took his Notre Dame ring. The soldier was bragging about his prize in their quarters when the commanding officer, the same man who had been a USC student watching Mario star in the Rose Bowl back in 1937, saw the ring and recognized it. He took the ring from the soldier and found Mario and put it back on his finger. Mario wept with emotion and later told the media, "It gave me hope to finish the march. I saw it as a symbol that god wanted me to keep on going."

On MacArthur’s return to the Philippines Tonelli was shipped back to Japan to Nagoya prison. By this time the one-time All-American had shriveled away to only 100 pounds and he believed life had passed him by when a Nagoya prison guard issued him an outfit. He looked down and saw the #58 on his prison garb - the same number as his Notre Dame jersey. Mario later said, "A surge of energy surged through me that day and I knew I was going to make it."

This book is about the paradox of an incredible individual like Charles Krauthammer. Here is a 67-year-old man who was paralyzed from the waist down after he was injured in a diving accident while in his first year at Harvard Medical School. Charles spent 14 months in a hospital prior to returning to medical school. He became a renowned psychiatrist involved in the creation of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders III and earned a Pulitzer Prize as author and does a weekly panelist on PBS news program Inside Washington. He is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and a nightly panelist on TV news.

His father was from Ukraine and his mother from Belgium and he was speaking French when quite young. He remained with his Harvard Medical School class during his hospitalization, graduating from Medical School in 1975. Since 1975 has practiced psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital and has specialized in abnormal behaviors of visionaries. In 2013, Krauthammer published Things That Matter: Three Decades of Passions, Pastimes and Politics, an immediate bestseller that remained on the New York Times bestseller list for 38 weeks, 10 weeks in a row at #1. Ironically, Charles is similar to Michael Dell in that he is Jewish but not religious, but both fit my Top Dog syndrome. Most of the good and bad of all this is stored in the unconscious minds of us all. It is like an iceberg where the above the water part is conscious but most of it is below the surface and equivalent to our unconscious drives and motivations. It can be equated to the classic song "The Horse with No Name" that finds itself in a desert with no idea of where it is headed or a destination.

Introduction - Top Dogs Think Big

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail

Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is a myriad of data that shows the world’s Top Dogs are bred, not born. Why? Those in this work were not genetic wunderkinds or possessing a MENSA IQ (140+). Their eminence was born of experiential insights that were more due to a driven Mindset than anything else. It was about desire and drive and an experiential soul. This is strange in that it isn’t about marrying the right mate or having some uncanny insight, but a driven mind and soul, becoming what you desire to be no matter family, friends or fools say. Think about who you play golf or tennis with and who you go to a movie with or are hanging with in a café. It is what I refer to as ‘chasing your bliss’ in life, work and sports.

What is bliss? It is not genetic, but being what some authors say, ‘be a happy camper.’ With the opposite sex it is about being a friend before trying to end up in the sack. Example! A couple who both enjoy travelling should spend a month a year travelling to Europe, Asia or to a Caribbean Island. It is about enjoying the ‘now’ in life instead of the ‘how’ or the ‘why.’ The Hollywood movie skit of falling in love at a fountain is very seldom possible just as being promoted to the Top Dog by hanging around CEO’s and Board members is possible. The bottom line here is to be in charge of your life or work do Dr. Gene says, Take charge.

It has been found that the Top Dogs who work diligently end up with the most gold. Empathy is crucial as the Top Dog who has it is better able to handle the flakes in their wake than those without the ability to understand others.