In the last issue of PSP* we followed Charles J. Givens as he climbed the success ladder only to see his dream collapse. We promised a second installment and here it is. Givens’ star is again on the horizon, but as we hold our breath, we see it slipping once again into the shadows.

The lessons in his incredible story of rags to riches to rags and back make Charles Givens a model for anyone who has suffered a disappointment. This maverick shows us that attitude with a capital “A” makes all the difference. We all have another shot at the brass ring. For Givens, the brass ring was an elusive ghost until he found the skills to match his burning desire.

PSP: You literally gave away a song which was later recorded over 250 times and sold 80 million records.

Charles Givens: I had written about 200 songs at that time and “Hang On Sloopy” was, in my opinion, one of the poorest. When I first heard the song on a jukebox, my first thought was two words, “Oh s—. ” The minute I heard it, I knew it was going to be a number one song. That night I took a lawn chair and walked absolutely drunk one-quarter mile out into the Daytona Beach ocean with my guitar and sat there for a half hour playing guitar with the waves coming over my head. Ruined the guitar, so the song actually cost me a $500 guitar.

PSP: Then you bought a fancy recording studio.

Charles Givens: Yes and really became a millionaire for the first time, mostly from the real estate, not from the worth of my company.

PSP: What did you use for capital?

Charles Givens: A partner put in land that his grandmother was deeding to him and I put in my two publishing companies and record companies. It was big stuff to me.

PSP: You were only 24.

Charles Givens: Right. The only thing we still needed was $150,000 worth of recording equipment. I went to Minneapolis to ask a multimillionaire contractor I knew to put up the money. It took him five minutes to say yes. I was in heaven. On paper I was a millionaire. I got home to Nashville about 5 in the morning from Minneapolis and at 6:30 in the morning I got a phone call from my partner’s grandmother. She said, “I guess you know your studio burned down last night.” I was in shock. I sat there for a few minutes then called my partner and said, “Let’s go see the insurance company.” We walked in there at 10 a.m. and the agent said, “You’d better sit down.” I knew we were in trouble. He told us that the deed was never transferred from my partner’s grandmother, therefore we had an uninsurable property.

PSP: Did you get any money back from the insurance?

Charles Givens: No, not a dime.

PSP: How did you react?

Charles Givens: It was another turning point in my life. I drove out to the building where the ashes were still smoldering. There was nothing left over a foot high except the bent cover of the concrete roof. I waited literally to see if I would cry, faint or throw up. Then I realized that I had accomplished one of my main goals in life. It was a test. I had always said if I lost everything in one day without it ruining my day, from then on I would be indestructible. I knew nothing could ever beat me in life again.

PSP: So, everything around you was in ashes, but you didn’t let it ruin your day.

Charles Givens: It’s how you handle what goes on, not what goes on, that makes the difference.

PSP: What else did you learn from this?

Charles Givens: Life will never give you anything to deal with that you are not equipped to handle.

PSP: But you are not always aware that you have the equipment to handle it.

Charles Givens: No, you are not.

PSP: How did you pick up the pieces from there?

Charles Givens: I just said, “Okay, now you are free. You can do anything you want to do.” I had been working on the midnight to 8 a.m. shift at a computer company so I decided that would be my next career.

PSP: That was ’66.

Charles Givens: Yes. In two years I worked myself up to executive management by designing computer systems.

PSP: So what you really discovered was that you had talents that you had never used before. How did you put the new knowledge together with the lessons you had learned?

Charles Givens: Well, I had learned how to use other people’s money. Then I found a fluke in the computer system that would allow me to buy unlimited shares of the company stock with their financing it. It wasn’t illegal to do it. They had never thought anybody could figure out how to get more than the 200 shares they allowed for transfer. They would finance it for you and you could make monthly payments. Pretty soon I had thousands of shares. Then I transposed that experience to the stock market by borrowing money on low margin accounts. I thought I was a little smarter than I was, however, because nobody ever told me stocks could go down.

PSP: That was ’67.

Charles Givens: That’s exactly right. Then, instead of using my own intuition when the market reversed, I asked my broker what to do. The minute I began to doubt myself, I began to lose money. Pretty soon I was down to zip.

PSP: Why didn’t you get out sooner?

Charles Givens: It’s the fatal error all novice investors make. Nobody wants to feel like a loser.

PSP: What happened to your wife and children during all this?

Charles Givens: My wife was used to the roller coaster ride. About every three months we would have to live on her salary of $50 a week. After the market collapsed I sold everything to pay off the debts and then settled with creditors by negotiating with them. Then I decided that I had to get into business for myself or I was never going to make it.

PSP: What did you do then?

Charles Givens: Just as I was about to quit my executive job with the computer company, a guy named, of all things, Crawford Bags, called me up and said, “Chuck, how would you like to make $50,000 a year part-time?” He was from Glen Turner’s organization.

PSP: Dare To Be Great, right?

Charles Givens: That’s right. I listened to Glen Turner on tape and said, “I want to meet him.”

PSP: Turner was a very charismatic speaker.

Charles Givens: Incredible. I believed in those tapes so much and I knew with my attitude I could sell.

PSP: How did you do?

Charles Givens: I made so much money. And every time I’d get a bank account full – like many salesmen – I’d quit.

PSP: Why was that?

Charles Givens: I had never seen thousands of dollars actually in a bank account. It had always been on paper before.

PSP: How did you manage to keep making more?

Charles Givens: I’d call up the company and say, “Send me out to the desert.” The desert was any city where they had bad press and I would always work my way back up into the company by selling where nobody else would go.

PSP: And then you would spend it all again?

Charles Givens: We’ve all heard that if people earn more than they think they are worth, they’ll quit working. I did, every time. I began to realize how little I thought I was worth. Three times during one year I went broke and started over again.

PSP: And now one of your major points is not how to make money, but how to keep it.

Charles Givens: That’s right. But, at that time, I’d say, “Well, if you can make it once, twice and three times, you can make it again.”

PSP: What happened after Turner?

Charles Givens: Well, I learned so much about sales and they wanted to make me district manager, but I had moved seven times in a year.

PSP: Seven moves, in a year?

Charles Givens: In that organization you learned what work was. They would call you at 3 in the morning and say by 8 tomorrow night we want you moved to Minneapolis or we want you to move to Seattle. And you showed up – no discussion. I just assumed that whatever they wanted, I would do. I was tired of it. My district manager would call me up at 4 in the morning and say, “What are you doing in bed? Why aren’t you out prospecting?” That was how I learned sales. I would say, “What do you mean prospecting? It’s 4 in the morning.” He’d say, “Isn’t the bus stop open?” So I’d get up and go down to the bus stop and start prospecting.

PSP: What did you sell them?

Charles Givens: We were recruiting people to come take a look at the program to see if they would invest $2,000 or $5,000 in a distributorship. I used to take my Lincoln Continental and park it on the side of the road on Bryerly Park in Nashville, and lift up the hood and stand there in my custom tailored polyester suit and put my foot on the back of the car and throw my coat up over my back. Somebody would eventually stop, pull up in front and I’d run up and get in the front scat of their car. They’d say, “What’s wrong?” I’d say, “Nothing.” Boy, you could see the look of terror on their faces then. Then I would say, “I work for a young multimillionaire who is looking for people who care about people, and you just qualified. So, I am going to give you an invitation to come to a meeting tonight and I want you to bring your wife.”

PSP: You were an expert at getting your point across in 30 seconds or less.

Charles Givens: You had to, it was survival. Now, I had to eat, right? Remember, I am so shy that to walk up to somebody in the hall and just trust myself and start talking was impossible because of that fear of rejection.

PSP: How did you overcome that?

Charles Givens: I would make people come to me. I would go sit do ‘ down in a restaurant. Salesmen always like to use a restaurant as an excuse for not working. Well, I did, too. But I found a way to use that as a sales advantage. All you have to do is ask the waitress to bring your check, then I’d get up and in order to get to meet somebody without me having to be rejected, I would take the check, walk over, look at somebody sitting at a table and say, “How are you doing?”, and lay my check down in front of them guarantees you they are going to come over and find out what’s going on. They always did and you always had the advantage because they are now coming to you.

PSP: So, you needed the money, you had the commitment, you loved the product, and you knew the ingredients of showmanship.

Charles Givens: Don’t forget it was outrageous. The outrageousness helped me overcome the shyness. I could get caught up in being outrageous, making it a personal challenge. That was the way I learned how to prospect.

PSP: What are the key ingredients of a good salesperson?

Charles Givens: First of all, let’s talk about prospecting. I think all the books are wrong.

PSP: In what way?

Charles Givens: I think we’re in an era where you can no longer sell one on one. I think you have to mass sell. I was so dumb in the beginning, I didn’t even realize there were sales principles. It is no harder to talk to 10 people and convince all 10 of them than it is to talk to one. But if you have to talk to one person at a time, you are never going to get anywhere. With Turner each salesman would bring his one or two or three people, but then Turner would talk to these hundreds of people all together in one room. So I figured out that if I ran an ad in the paper, I would bring more in at once.

PSP: Did that work?

Charles Givens: I ran an ad in the paper that said, “How would you like to make $50,000 a year part time?” Believe me, it would get calls. I learned you could line up appointments every 20 minutes.

PSP: Let the prospect do the walking, right?

Charles Givens: Exactly. I was so dumb that I never took anybody else’s word for how it should be done. I figured everybody did it wrong and there was a better way to do it. We began renting buses and airplanes. I mean we were mass moving people. Today, if I were to sell insurance, I would not talk to one person about an insurance policy unless I had a group of 50 in that room. You know, you might have to start out with one in the room, but then it would be 10. And the way you put them there is to give them something.

PSP: Did you use that technique to sell any other product?

Charles Givens: Yes, with my rental properties. I ran an ad in the newspaper, and then when people call you get 20 people and have them show up all at the exact same time. Now, you’ve got a parade going through the house and everyone thinks it’s the hottest thing going if I were selling a number of properties to a whole group of people.

PSP: People still long for the superstar salesman who can do everything.

Charles Givens: I disagree. Why would you take a person’s real talent, which may be closing, and waste it on record keeping and prospecting, or anything else? Or if you’ve got a good organizer and prospector, why waste their talent on follow-up?

PSP: Why did you leave the Glen Turner organization?

Charles Givens: I knew I had all the training that I could possibly take. I drove across country and back looking for a product or an idea to market. Then I had an idea for a yacht club in Florida. Since most people can’t afford yachts, why not put together a yacht club where you can belong, but you can rent the yachts instead of buying. Again I had a partner and we put together a deal with borrowed money and we came right down to the wire on a contract. We did put the deal together and then we lost it.

PSP: Because you weren’t allowed to put docks in.

Charles Givens: That’s how we lost it. And then the third mortgage holder panicked.

PSP: You have been through three ups and downs in a fairly short time. What lessons would you pass on to those people in order to recuperate from the disappointment?

Charles Givens: You have to have the right attitude. Ultimately nothing matters. No matter what you do or don’t do, whether you succeed or fail 100 times or not at all in this lifetime, a hundred years from now, it isn’t going to make a bit of difference to anybody. You won’t even be around, so what difference does it make? How can you really screw up?

PSP: That’s a pretty fatalistic attitude.

Charles Givens: But you can use it positively.

PSP: So what you are saying is don’t take yourself so seriously.

Charles Givens: Right.

PSP: Some newspapers say, quoting you…”If you build your self-esteem to the point of what’s going on on the outside can’t get to you on the inside, nothing can stop you from reaching your dreams.”

Charles Givens: That’s it.

PSP: Instead of focusing on the ashes, you focus on the universe. It’s so much bigger than the ashes.

Charles Givens: The end of anything is always the beginning of something else, by definition. So, if you are standing in the ashes and that’s the end of the recording studio, now you are free to go do whatever else you want. If you are standing in the ashes of a job that you just got fired from, you should say, great, I’m free, free at last. I can go in any direction I want.

PSP: How can you avoid equating your self-worth with what you do?

Charles Givens: By realizing that you came into life with nothing. And when you go out, you can’t take it with you, so everything in life is really loaned to you anyway. Your job, your spouse, your money and everything else and you should treat it as a loan instead of something you own. I think that comes down to the ability to act yourself into a different role. Your job is something you do, it’s not something you are.

PSP: What is the difference between a goal and a purpose?

Charles Givens: A sense of fulfillment comes from having a real purpose, in making a difference, making a change that not just you benefit from but that other people benefit from.

PSP: And a goal?

Charles Givens: A goal or objective is a challenge; a purpose is something that sets you on fire. It’s like your mission in life. The thing is never ending. Goals have a beginning and an end. That’s why sometimes you may feel drained or down after reaching a goal. If the goal is attached to a purpose, it doesn’t end when you reach the goal. It just turns right around into a new beginning.

PSP: Salespeople have a tendency to run after every opportunity. How does that relate to your life?

Charles Givens: Well, I’m such a dreamer and I think a lot of people are. But your dreams can get in your way. A laser beam focuses light so that it can cut through steel, an incandescent bulb just throws it out everywhere and has no major effect other than you notice that it’s there. I was always the incandescent light bulb. Just about the time that I would become successful with one project where it would start to show signs of success, I would be looking for the next thing to do. I did that for years. Part of the reason that I couldn’t hang on to money was because when one thing started to work I’d do another thing.

PSP: The fact that you have the feeling that you can do anything should not lead you to do it.

Charles Givens: That’s right. There’s a difference between the feeling that you can do anything and the need to do everything. And that’s what you have to separate in your life to be successful. When you find something that works, do it again and again and don’t do anything else until you can totally turn that over to somebody else.

PSP: That is a good principle.

Charles Givens: That’s all success is – repetition of success habits.

PSP: Why do most people think that making money is so hard?

Charles Givens: Because of their experience. For instance, if you are standing on a path and in front of you are 100 doors and you are told that the pot of gold is behind one of those doors and you have 100 alternatives and each one of them could take you 25 days once you got through that door to find out whether the pot of gold was there or not, you could spend a lifetime and you’d think that making money was hard. But if somebody says to you, “Not only is the pot of gold back there, let’s eliminate 99 doors. And I’ll show you how to open the door, and on the other side of the door I’ll take your hand and lead you toward the gold,” then you are going to think making money is easy. As important as teaching people, what works is showing them what doesn’t work and eliminating all the alternatives that eat up the time and the money in errors.

PSP: What is your competition?

Charles Givens: Financial ignorance, skepticism and the resistance to change. Nothing happens to you that you didn’t create yourself, but that doesn’t mean you are supposed to take on personal blame.

PSP: What meaning do you find today in pursuing additional wealth?

Charles Givens: Wealth is what happens because of the things I pursue.

PSP: I see you as a leader of people. How do you define good leadership or successful leadership?

Charles Givens: Good leadership is the ability to get behind people and push them beyond their present level of capability.

PSP: Don’t you mean pull them?

Charles Givens: No, push them. You can’t pull them because then you drag them. When you drag people they are not standing on their own feet.

PSP: You seem to throw out enormous challenges to other people. Do you ever hear them complain about burnout?

Charles Givens: Yes, I do. People burn out, not because they are overworked but because of their reaction to what they are doing. There is no such thing as burnout. People don’t bum out, attitudes do. Burnout says you are doing this reluctantly, and if you are doing any job reluctantly, why bother to do it?

PSP: In retrospect what was your biggest disappointment?

Charles Givens: Disappointment to me is like loneliness. I remember experiencing disappointment when my parents promised me a horse and then didn’t get it for me or when my parents promised me I could go to MIT, and then told me that they had to spend the money in my college fund for their business. I see disappointment as incorrectly dealing with the outcome of an event as the end of the path.

PSP: You think people hang onto an idea after it is no longer useful.

Charles Givens: Most people would rather be right than be winners and that’s what gets in their way.

PSP: Thank you.