“I Am Your Work God!” was the colorful title for this section of the book. It was pretty familiar advice I thought in terms of taking the more no nonsense and non emotional approach to running a business. It revolved around handling employees and that you need to make sure that everyone follows orders. It’s that mentality too where people don’t have to like you but they should respect you.

The way Cloutier gives this advice though is a little surprising. Example, he says things like turnover is usually good as you can in a sense constantly get more motivated workers that way. As well, it seems like he thinks the whole notion of a friendly and nurturing environment is garbage as fear is the best motivator. He doesn’t like it when workers think, such as having different ideas on how to do things, as he just wants them to obey.

Another way he puts it is that he feels a business is not a democracy as you should be the end all decision maker. If you are too light then people will make all the excuses in the world costing you time and money where you need to get rid of them. I suppose you can say it’s more of an army commander type of mentality he encourages.

This chapter felt the mellowest so far to me. The title was “Never Take Your Eye Out of The Ball” and dealt with how you need to maintain your skills and presence to stay successful. Example, it’s a like a fighter who wins so many fights that they believe they don’t have to train anymore only to get wiped out by a new person.

The main theme it seemed was how you can’t let what others say about you whether it be a bad comment or a good comment affect you as you need to determine your image yourself. Not getting too caught up with good comments was kind of an interesting twist as I don’t usually hear people say that. Basically, if people start saying you are the best and that you can never fail for example, believing that as if it is written in stone can cause you to be unprepared for disasters or at the same time cause you to lose focus.

He used an example of his old employee Carolyn Kepcher and how appearing on the Apprentice has caused her to get a big head as she didn’t do her job as effectively anymore but rather focused in profiting around her new found fame. As a result, he had to get rid of her.

Overall everything seemed like practical advice. As mentioned, the chapter didn’t seem like it had the same zing as some of the other ones I thought.