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I was going to post on the inappropriate choice of Sarah Palin as the vice presidential nominee for the Republican Party, but I am sure that it will be a total non-issue in about two days. Besides, I am fairly sure that many of you would see it as political sour grapes as I was passed up for the number two slot by BOTH parties. The fact that Palin is totally unqualified for the job is just rubbing my nose in it. Turns out I was more qualified for the VP job than the GOP nominee. Who knew?

What I would like to address is the fact that the Republicans seem to think American women would fall for the bait — voting for a woman just because she is a woman. It is insulting to our intelligence to think that we would choose gender over the capacity to lead the country. Trying to pick up Hillary supporters by choosing someone with the right genitalia but whose political views are diametrically opposite Clinton’s is the GOP’s way of saying it believes that women are interchangeable. Gee, maybe we should check to see how many of the second and third wives are younger versions of wife number one. On both sides of the aisle. Don’t believe me? Watch who they replace Palin with. It will be someone like Charlie Crist of Florida — tanned, beautifully coiffed and photogenic. What? You thought Dan Quayle made the cut because of his SAT scores?

The Republicans thought they could get away with throwing in a stereotype instead of a qualified candidate for a very good reason: it works. The American public has an alarming tendency to vote for types, particularly photogenic types, instead of paying attention to actual issues. Most people spend more time planning their yearly vacation than investigating the views and issues of presidential candidates. We judge the candidates on looks and twenty second sound bites. Both parties are aware of this and that is why they are able to sling mud, tell outrageous lies (think Max Cleland) and get away with it. They know that no one is going to check or care.

If you are worried about the direction that the country is heading in, if you are suffering from the results of the collapsing economy, and if you are unhappy with politics as usual, it is up to you to do the hard work and make a difference.

I receive a newsletter every week from Kevin Hogan (http://www.kevinhogan.com), an expert on influence and persuasion and yes, how men can attract women – men need all the help they can get. One of the articles this week focused on the importance of attractiveness in being successful.

I have known since I was a little kid that there were certain guys I could not even HOPE to attract. When the Beatles were big, most of the girls had crushes on Paul. I also had a crush on Paul but I always told people I had a crush on Ringo, considered the least attractive of the Fab Four. Even as a child, I knew I wasn’t attractive enough to get the popular guy. (Of course, if I had any concept of how much money he was pulling in and how wealth makes people suddenly attractive, I would have known that Ringo was out of my league, too.)

As an adult I learned that this was a predominantly female phenomenon (say that three times fast). Men, no matter how unattractive, stupid and broke, for some reason think they have a chance with supermodels. I think stupid would be the key personality trait for this phenomenon.

I bring this up because new research from the University of Texas, Austin proves what I have known since I was seven. (I hope they didn’t get research money for this – they could have just called me.)
David Buss, psychology researcher at the university said, “When reviewing the qualities they desire in romantic partners, women gauge what they can get based on what they got, and women who are considered physically attractive maintain high standards for prospective partners across a variety of characteristics.”

But the romantic aspect is small potatoes compared with the earning prospects of unattractive women. Studies show that unattractive women are promoted less often and with less salary increase than their attractive counterparts to a much greater degree by women superiors than by their male counterparts.

In other words, it isn’t a case of just men promoting attractive women over unattractive women, women do it too and they do it more often. I would venture that women do this because they understand the psyche of women. Unattractive women expect less and are willing to accept less, whether it is a boyfriend or a career.

Back when I was producing shows, I remember overhearing two of my cast members talking about another actress. Apparently the third woman was less attractive than the other two and she had the gall to stand up for herself when she was being pushed around on a minor issue. The other two were up in arms. The basic message from them was, “She is overweight and unattractive. She should make more of an effort to be nice and appeasing.” Translation: Fat people must be funny and happy, otherwise more attractive people won’t tolerate them. For the record, I never hired those two witches again. But they were verbalizing a basic truth: unattractive people are discriminated against, consciously and unconsciously.

In this climate where people trip all over themselves to be politically correct, no one wants to say that looks matter. But the truth is, looks matter. They are a component in your happiness quotient, they are definitely a HUGE component in your success in life, both financially and romantically.

Fortunately for most of us, attractiveness is also subjective and varies widely, not just from country to country, but state to state. In addition, people we like become more attractive in our eyes. I thought this was a uniquely female characteristic, but over the years I have found that men have this capacity, too. So your actual physical looks have less to do with attractiveness than people’s perception of your looks.

So if you are not as attractive as you want to be (and women are MUCH more self-critical than men are on this), what can you do? I was thinking I could use this data to support writing off a boob job, liposuction and face lift as a legitimate business expense. And I think I could do it, too! But that may be a little extreme.

The first thing you can do is start thinking of yourself as attractive because studies show that what we expect is directly related to how we feel about ourselves. So, expect more. Second, exude an air of confidence. Take that list of accomplishments that I had you write down (Day 2 of Love Taps: http://www.dontmakemeslapyou.com/lovetaps.htm) and go through it – every day if necessary. Remind yourself of your successes, skills and experience and arm yourself with that knowledge before you go out to do battle. People trust and buy from people who are sure of themselves. Confidence is attractive.

The third thing is to make yourself more attractive. This is not sexist: this goes the same for men as for women. Take a look at how the successful people in your industry dress, how they wear their hair, what kind of watches they wear and what kind of briefcases they carry. Use them as models. People are attracted to people who are like them. You don’t have to go in for plastic surgery though you shouldn’t feel guilty if you get it, either. But in order to advance, you need to put yourself up at least one level in dress and behavior. (Somewhere I can hear my mother saying, “Stand up straight.”)

If you needed to take a continuing education course to be eligible for a promotion or to keep up with your industry standards, you would spend the money to do it. This is the same thing. Take your emotions out of it. Take away your sense of what is fair and what is not fair. This is business. This is your money and your future. So shoulders back, lipstick on, ego intact. You now have another weapon in your arsenal for success. You.

Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) in an interview this week went on record, doing that little dance that politicians do, claiming that the job of Vice President is not something she wants. Hillary Clinton doesn’t want the job, neither does Barack Obama, Mike Huckabee, or Mitt Romney. Florida Governor Charlie Crist may want the job, but he is playing it coy. What are they, stupid? That is the best job in the United States.

Think about it. The Vice President gets the call sign Air Force Two, but he is basically in the same plane as Air Force One. The Veep attends all the best parties and state dinners. He gets a personal chef, a staff, and limousine service. I don’t know for sure, but I am willing to bet that Dick Cheney isn’t folding towels, picking up a gallon of milk or carrying the pooper-scooper when he walks the dog.

Every so often, a rare occasion indeed, the Vice President is sent over to Congress to break a tie in the Senate. How tough can that be? If you really can’t make up your mind, borrow a coin from someone and flip it. It may be the most honest way a vote has been decided in this country in eight years. Don’t forget, for that service the salary is around $200,000 a year and the medical plan and retirement benefits are outstanding.

The downside to the Vice Presidency is that you are the person sent out to all those state funerals. Kind of a bummer. But since you probably didn’t know the deceased personally, how bad can you feel? Just look sad for an hour, offer your condolences and hope that there is good food back at the house.

The beautiful thing about being Vice President is that nobody really cares who you are or what you are doing. I mean, sure, the President doesn’t want you to be too ambitious, but pretty much you could go shopping on Fifth Avenue and no one would recognize you. Best of all, nobody shoots at the vice president. Now, from time to time, the Vice President may take a shot at someone, but if you are the Vice President, you can pretty much get away with it by apologizing and sending a bottle of good Scotch.

I am, of course, saving the best thing about being Vice President for last. Does anyone know where the Vice President lives? I do. The Vice President’s residence is at the U.S. Naval Observatory. Think about this. I am a middle-aged single woman. Imagine getting plunked down smack-dab in the middle of all those young, Navy guys. Oh, yeah.

I would like to state here and now that I want the job of Vice President and I am announcing my candidacy for Vice President of the United States. Since I am registered as an Independent, I am open to offers from any and all nominees. And I promise I won’t be bucking for your job.

A Valentine’s conversation with a male friend centered on how people in relationships stop working to preserve the relationship, stop appreciating each other. He said that after about five years in a relationship, couples tend to take each other for granted. I, ever the romantic, never married, and obviously in denial, said that it doesn’t have to be that way. But then I started examining relationships that I have observed over the years, including my own friendships.

I started thinking about one of my friendships which is hitting its seventh year. It started out as semi-romantic. My buddy was going through a rough patch in his marriage and needed someone to talk to. Really, he needed someone to assure him that he was attractive and worthwhile and not a loser, which was the feedback he was getting in his relationship. Early in the relationship we did a lot of talking, spent a lot of time together, skipped the physical (smart move), and developed a strong buddy relationship.

Over the years our relationship has changed. I went from having a tremendous crush on him to a different kind of love. I got to the point where I could love him without wanting to have him for my own, an almost pure love where I can just accept and appreciate him the way he is without wanting more. He is my friend and I love him and can overlook his flaws and hangups and hope that he overlooks mine.

But I would have to admit that the attention and appreciation between us has fallen off. He has discovered that I am not a genius (I hate that) and I have discovered that he is not “all that and a bag o chips”. Add to that the fact that he has a wife and family who get his first and most immediate attention, which is the way it should be. Maybe having the kids is part of what interfered with the friendship; he has less time, more pressure, whatever. I have been relegated to a secondary rung in his life. There is less time together, less confiding.

I see the same thing happening in my friends’ marriages. Jobs and kids and the day-to-day reality of making a living take our attention. Maybe we know each other too well. Maybe we think there is nothing left to discover. We know each others flaws. We start anticipating the other’s reaction, assume we know what they are feeling and stop asking what they think about things. There are no surprises left; we are attracted to the shiny and new, not the old and known.

A friend wrote about marriage, “I think often it is just one person that stops seeking in a marriage or forgets to wake up one morning and realize that they are more in love AND share that with the person they love.”

Replace the word marriage with friendship and I can understand what it is like to reach out and find nothing there. Gestures that your loved one would gush about if an acquaintance did them don’t get a mention when you do them. Little things you do to please them are taken as something owed to them.

Love is never equal. One always gives more than the other. You are not supposed to count or measure or keep score in a relationship. But when one person is constantly reaching out, appreciating, making the effort and gets no response or is rebuffed by their partner, they stop trying out of self-preservation, embarrassment, hurt. You get tired of being rejected or ignored.

At what point in a relationship do you stop appreciating the things that your partner does for you? At what point do you stop doing things for your partner because you know that the effort won’t be appreciated or even remarked upon?

Dan Fogelberg asked, “How do you make love stay?”

It sounds trite to say you have to fight for a relationship. It takes two people putting in the effort to make a relationship work. But if one side isn’t stepping up to the pump, the other has to at least have the conversation and point it out. That is probably somewhere in year three. There is a lot of suffering in silence by both sides of a relationship and someone has to say something. Left alone, by year five, people realize the futility of pointing it out to the other side, give up, work out their separate peace and lead half-lives. And as an outsider looking in, all I can say is that is a crappy way to live your life. I know a lot of men and women who are in relationships like that because it is still better to have someone, even if it is a half-dead relationship, than to be alone. And maybe a half-life is better than no life.

So how do you fix it? Or do you just accept it as one of life’s realities and let it ride?

I think one of the most overlooked words in wedding vows is the word “cherish”. People are fragile. Life is fragile. Maybe one reason why my parents’ marriage worked was that my dad had serious health issues and we all realized how precious our time was together. We knew he could be taken away at any moment. My parents worked as a team. They had a partnership that was based on shared goals, respect and most importantly, communication. To the end they were considerate of each other and more importantly, showed appreciation for each other.

I don’t know why the politeness and consideration we give to acquaintances, even strangers, gets lost in a relationship. The truth is, you say things to people you know well – especially family — that you would never say to acquaintances or even new friends. You reach a comfort level with friends and loved ones that allows you to be honest. But honesty does not allow you to be cruel, neglectful or inconsiderate.

Unfortunately, day to day proximity allows people to slide into bad habits. It is like the gradual creeping on of pounds. A weight gain of ten pounds over the course of a year may not cause alarm bells. Three years and thirty pounds later, you should take notice. Something can still be done. At five years and fifty pounds, the situation can seem too hard to overcome. Just like losing weight, it is best to take care of the problem when it is small and easy to overcome. Optimally, the conversation about the way you are treating each other should start early in the relationship and be revisited on a regular basis to keep the relationship on track. Also, people have to have a level of honesty to admit that it is happening. If you don’t talk about it, it just feeds on itself and you end up being two people leading separate lives. Which is not what a relationship should be.

The problem is that the longer the situation goes on, the more initiating the conversation seems like just another opportunity to be shot down. So no one is brave enough to start the conversation. But like gaining weight, the situation is not going to stay at the same level. It will get worse. No matter how far along you are in the relationship, it is worth risking the conversation. If it fails, at least you know where you stand and can make your decisions from there. But if it succeeds, you have given your relationship a whole new life and have re-started it at a higher threshold. You took a risk getting into the relationship; you may as well take at least one more risk to save it.

Self-Limiting Businesses or
Hedy and the Angry Poop

Women are conditioned to be modest, to be the helpers and to maybe aim a little lower. We are taught that it is egotistical to shoot for the top and ego is considered unladylike and pushy.

One of the things that women do is that they consistently take lower-paying or administrative type jobs as a way to get their foot in the door, hoping to be moved into management. Men don’t join the secretarial pool. They are either directed to or apply for the management training program and move up.

We do it in the businesses we start too. Women tend to start self-limiting businesses. Let me give you an example because it so starkly contrasts the way that most people think and the way that millionaires think.

I spoke with a very nice woman named Hedy at a meeting and she had a business picking up dog poop. (You can look it up: http://www.Hedyscoopsdogpoop.com.) For $10 a visit she will come out to your house and pick up the dog poop in the yard. More money if you have more dogs. And when I started to do the math I figured about the most she can make (without taking on employees and employees would be hard to find) is about $600 a week if she gets ten jobs a day and works six days a week. Now, for many Americans, $600 a week isn’t bad. That is about $30,000 a year. But Hedy is out in the Florida heat and rain picking up dog poop. I am not putting her down for the work she is doing; she is an animal lover and likes being outside. She also does dog-walking and other pet care work. I also appreciate a dog-poop-free yard. But personally, I think she deserves to make more than that. Hedy isn’t looking for a full-time job or to take on the world. The business works fine for her needs. But her business is a shining example of many entrepreneurial endeavors: she has created a self-limiting business. She will never be able to work more than about 10 jobs per day or make more money than $600.

Time and again, I see entrepreneurs (not just women) make this mistake when they start their business. People think they are going into business when really, they are buying themselves a job. And not just a job, but a job that limits how much money they are able to make.

Most people who go into business want the freedom of working for themselves rather than under the thumb of a boss, they want to make more money than they would as an employee, and they want to be able to take time off when they want.

And yet, when they start a business, they usually end up working more hours making less money and discover they have more of a job than a business.

Here’s the contrast.

My friend Dave Lakhani is the author of Persuasion: The Art of Getting What You Want (http://www.boldapproach.com). He is an expert in persuasion. Dave was the top salesperson in every company he ever worked in. The same week I met Hedy, Dave spoke at a convention of fertilizer sales people and was paid $30,000 to talk to the group for an hour. Now it was very high-end organic fertilizer, but fertilizer never the less. (He enjoyed the irony.) His job was to get them all revved up and close them, increasing sales to a point way beyond what was expected. Which is what he did because he is very, very good at what he does. Because of Dave the company closed close to a million dollars in sales that night.

Think about this on the most basic level: Hedy and Dave are both dealing in POOP!!!! But Hedy is making $30,000 a year working hard and Dave is making $30,000 an hour to talk.

I asked him about it because I realized that when he decided to become an expert on persuasion, he intentionally put himself in the way of money. People pay big money to be taught how to sell and how to market. Sales training is a huge business but he knew that particular market was over-saturated. So he created a niche that if you did it well, would pay very well. He trains people in persuasion techniques. He also built up persuasion as a market. He said when he started, persuasion wasn’t really a topic or a marketable commodity but it has now been built into something that people know about and want. People want to be more persuasive whether it is in making the sale or getting a date – which is really making a sale, isn’t it?

But here is my point: When you are looking at a business, you need to look at the market potential for that business as well as optimizing your time spent for the money made. When we earn active income, we trade our time for dollars. (Passive income is different, we aren’t talking about that here.) But when you are trading your time for dollars, you need to figure out how to get the most dollars for your time. Efficiency. And you need to figure out how to leverage that in order to make obscene amounts of money for your time. Take a look at the business you are in and figure out if it is self-limiting or if it has the potential to expand.

There are questions you need to ask about your business:

• Does this business give me a healthy return of dollars for my time?
• Am I in an industry that is growing or shrinking?
• What do I do differently and better than anyone else in my industry.
How can I leverage that into making more money?
• What do I want my business to do for me?
• Does this business have the potential to keep paying me if I take a six-month vacation or retire?

If answering the questions leads you to the conclusion that there is a relatively low dollar amount that you can make in a particular industry, or that your industry is shrinking or over-saturated, don’t build your business there. Take the time to analyze your business path before hurtling headlong down it.

How the Red Sox Prepared Me For Dating

I found out a very good friend of mine is a Cleveland Indians fan. Rabid Cleveland Indians fan. As a Red Sox fan, this is on par with finding out your current boyfriend is gay. (“He was always so good about going to Ikea with me…”) We have found our first point of disagreement after a year and a half of friendship. In my state of shock, all I could think was, “Who the hell is a Cleveland Indians fan?” I pictured my buddy and Drew Carey alone in the stands wearing raccoon coats and clutching little Indians pennants. Maybe a little ways from them would be two transplanted Red Sox fans, there to cheer on Trot Nixon. (To his credit, my friend was cheering on the Red Sox for the World Series so he has redeemed himself.)

Now, intellectually I know that the Indians and the Rockies are both great teams and deserve every fan they have. But I am a Red Sox fan. That long-standing tradition of baseball suffering and angst is just not possible for Denver (the team hasn’t been around long enough to be long-suffering) and angst is just not part of the fabric of Cleveland. (Please note that I am not making a mean, incredibly easy joke on fabric and Cleveland. I have my standards. So insert your own Cleveland/polyester joke here. I won’t since they came close to whipping my Sox’s butts.) In true Red Sox war cry fashion, I have to say, “At least it isn’t the Yankees.” And this is the attitude, this is the tradition that has prepared me for the dating world.

Face it, unless you married the guy who asked you to the junior and senior prom, you are probably going to have some bad dating experiences. But if you grew up as a Red Sox fan, you can handle it.

Most years, the season starts off like most relationships. The Red Sox are looking good, looking strong, really impressing us. Right up to the All Star Break. About three and a half months. And if you compare the time tables, most relationships look good the first couple of months. But then there is that slight slip up, a bobble, an error that brings what could have been a lovely evening to an inauspicious close. You start having second thoughts. You really do have a headache.

You can handle this because you have invested just a short period of time in this illusion called hope. You are not totally emotionally invested. (Note: You are lying to yourself.) You have seen them slip and recover before. You know that men need to be forgiven for the things they do that are just, well, guy things. It was a one-time aberration. So it might still be okay. This guy might still be the one. We still have a shot at going all the way. And while you would never voice that hope out loud to anyone, it is clanging in the back of your mind, every time he brings flowers; every time Ortiz slams one home. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Unconsciously, you dial your commitment level back a couple of notches; you turtle back into survival mode. You may check in on the man and the team from time to time, allowing chances at redemption but they are both slipping in the standings. You are already aware that No, he is not the one and No, this is not the year. You just aren’t ready to admit it to yourself yet. That will come at the beginning of September.

But every so often, you have a summer that is everything you could ever hope for. The boys are making plays that are as finely choreographed as a ballet; they are knocking in runs, they can do no wrong. Your dating relationship looks like the montage from every chick flick ever made where the guy is funny and charming and so there for you. You are collectively upbeat and full of life and you are a part of the upsurge of excitement and hope. Everything looks like you are heading towards that golden moment, you are ready to make that commitment in front of God and everyone: “I think we are going to make it this year. I think we can win the Series.”

You hold your breath, waiting for the implosion. They will blow a lead so badly you have to wonder if it is intentional. He will do something unbelievably, unforgivably stupid. It will be the deal breaker. It will be the colossal error that ruins everything. It is the self-sabotage that will tell you “No, this is not the guy for you. This is not the year.” They will fall further and further behind. You will wonder what you saw in him in the first place. You are prepared to be bitter because you have played the fool once again.

You stock your woman-cave with Godiva chocolate and quarts of Haagen-Daaz for the coming crash (after all, you have been here before) and you are prepared to spend the winter recovering from the dreams of what could have been.

You hold your breath, your muscles tense waiting for the fall. And a miracle happens. Incredibly, inexplicably, he comes out of a tailspin and soars like a hawk on a thermal. They sweep the series and sweep you off your feet. That flame of hope that you were prepared to let die catches fire and you are glad that you took a chance on looking foolish. It was worth sticking your neck out, it was worth crawling out on that shaky, straggly limb of hope. Because when it comes to love and the Red Sox, anything is possible.

Several of my girlfriends and I get together once a month or so just to have a talk-fest and keep our friendships vibrant and on-track. It usually starts with a phone call from one of us (there are usually five of us who get together) saying we need a “girls’ night”. Now we are all grown women but we are secure enough not to bristle at the word girls. If you are having trouble with it, get over it.

We get together and eat food that is bad for us and drink champagne and wine in good stemware and just talk. We talk for anywhere from seven to nine hours (we may have gone ten hours one night – we don’t really keep track). And by and large we talk about business. Although last night a good fifteen minutes was spent on hair removal techniques. Hey, we’re girls.

Our common ground is real estate investing. We met each other through our local real estate investors association and we have formed an alliance that sometimes includes doing real estate transactions with each other but more often does not. We did not come together to form a business alliance – an old girls’ network as opposed to an old boys’ network. We work well with men on a daily basis and some of us are partnered in business with men. But what we have done is form a friendship that has become a brain trust of sorts, a small band of smart businesswomen who came together for social reasons and evolved into a mastermind group.

Last night turned into a kind of “hot seat” workshop where one by one we discussed the problems facing us and our businesses and got input from each other as to what direction we should take. The downturn in the real estate market created some tight situations for us and we discussed the various exit strategies for a few loser properties as well as ways to capitalize on the current market.

Several of us do internet marketing. Usually our talks on that center around driving traffic to our sites. (That seems to be the uncrackable egg in internet marketing, doesn’t it? No matter what anyone promises in their sales letters.) Last night we focused on offline methods of generating additional revenue from our clients, from putting advertisements for other related vendors in our packages to referral messages to capitalizing on local festivals. These are all methods that people in business know that they should be employing. There is no rocket science going on here. But even though we know we should be doing certain things in business, especially things like following up with current clients for retention and up-selling purposes, we don’t always get to it. A session with the girls where steps are laid out for you to implement will be followed up at the next session with the question, “Did you implement those steps?”

But the beautiful thing about being reminded of what you need to do is that it usually comes with an offer of help. For instance, I need to book some speaking engagements. My friend Ayla, who is in touch with hundreds of groups, has offered to help me get the word out. In concrete ways. She does this for another speaker and she has the skill to do it. I am working a tradeshow booth for her next month because she has an event going on in another location. But the tradeshow booth I am working will also benefit me because it will put me in front of more real estate investors. My friend Bobbie, who imports goods from Germany (www.mydirndl.com) will be working an Oktoberfest next month. A couple of us will pitch in for a few hours to help her get everything organized and man the booth (okay, woman the booth). Allison doesn’t know it yet, but I will be tapping her to help out with an Auction Event of a house I will be doing in her town. The fifth member of our group, Nancy, who couldn’t make it last night, is a wall of positive reinforcement. Whenever one of us feels like we are the world’s biggest screw up, we talk to Nancy and she pumps us up with her complete and utter belief that we will all be huge successes. And she is right.

Women love to talk and we love to discuss problems and situations ad nauseum. However, if you can find yourself a group of friends who will chew on a subject and use it as a jumping off point for brainstorming and out-of-the-box thinking, you will be light-years ahead of your competition. Not just because of the ideas that will come to light, but because you will have a group of friends who will help you with your project and who will kick your butt if you slack off.

I am very fortunate to have a group of friends who want to discuss concrete ways of making our lives and businesses better. Most importantly, they are willing to act on their ideas. Who do you have in your life who helps motivate you to achieve more? Who do you know that is actively working towards success by attending seminars, reading books, trying new ways to market or hatching new ideas to increase the bottom line? If you want to live an extraordinary life, you need to seek out these people and actively make them a part of your life. They are out there. And they are looking for you, too.

Chatting with a friend today we were discussing a mutual acquaintance who seemed to have gone from one controlling relationship to another. Worse, the guy who was controlling her was a loser. Perhaps, by definition, any guy who needs to control a woman to feel good about himself is a loser. We couldn’t figure out what a bright, pretty, talented woman was doing relying on a guy for advice who obvious was not up to her level. But, I thought, maybe it is all relative. If you grow up in a trailer park and you live in an old single wide, you meet a guy with a double-wide with a washer dryer and his own car, maybe you think he knows what he is doing. You don’t think maybe I should find a guy with a string of houses and apartments to learn from. Because you have never experienced people with a string of houses and apartments. Or it may be a step up for a woman to date the construction foreman instead of one of the workers. If you have never met a developer, the foreman looks good to you. There’s nothing wrong with living in a double-wide or dating a construction foreman. What is wrong is that women go after the guy or what he has instead of working out a way to earn it for themselves. I get so frustrated with women who want to date the guy doing stuff instead of wanting to do the stuff themselves. Which is why I wrote Don’t Make Me Slap You.

Don’t Make Me Slap You is a workbook for women to help them define what they want and lay out a logical plan to get what they want. Without manipulating and/or using some guy to get it. Seems simple. And it is. But it is not effortless. It is not a “read this and feel better about yourself immediately” kind of book. The reason that quickie self-esteem builders don’t work is because deep down people know that they have done nothing to warrant feeling better about themselves. Lying to yourself won’t get you there.

The goal is to move women from the current atmosphere of male bashing (a backlash that does not contribute to moving us forward) to a new level of cooperation and true teamwork with men. A true equality. Not better. Not worse. Equal. We may have different strengths and weaknesses, but by joining together instead of engaging in petty competition, we can leverage each others strengths and alleviate our weaknesses. But don’t worry — we will always have better taste in shoes.