What a fool I was! And I’m a closer! A methodical, tactical, predatory closer who never uses exclamation marks!
I’ve closed them all. Name a Fortune 500 company, I’ve probably closed it. Name a Tech 100 company, I’ve probably closed it. Apple? Google? Disney? Oracle? Closed ’em. Tens of thousands of law firms and government agencies? Indigenous nations? Closed. Federal judges? Closed. Ask me about that one time when I had a seven-figure IRS problem? Closed ’em for two cents on the dollar.
If you’re gonna run your mouth about being a master closer as the setup to publicly admitting to being a know-nothing, an ignoramus, a mindless mooch blissfully gliding through life on autopilot, you better have game tape.
This clip right here—I’m talking about the hard-sell with soft-touch tactics I successfully deployed 50 years ago as a teenage door-to-door vacuum peddler.
When Mr. Jones looks at Mrs. Jones, he sees a wife. When I look at Mrs. Jones, I see a business. I see an asset manager. I see an entity that has something I want. The trick is to smack Mrs. Jones right in the dopamine, because none of what is about to happen is rational. It’s emotional.
I manage to one question and one question only.
“Will she buy it?”
To get the answer I want, all Mrs. Jones has to do is make one more bad business decision.
She already has the perfectly fine machine my manager sold her five years ago. Mrs. Jones doesn’t know for sure, but she correctly suspects the only difference between my machine and her machine is the color.
Her old machine is hyperlink blue. Her soon-to-be new machine is shimmering gold with shiny accents of chrome.
“Look—you can see yourself, Mrs. Jones!”
I hand her the canister.
“Now that you’re holding it, Mrs. Jones, would you agree, it actually feels lighter, doesn’t it?”
“Hmmm—I think you might be right about that.”
Everything feels dope on dopamine.
Mrs. Jones never saw me coming. But her bad business decision did not trigger a liquidation event. Life went on—until the day I morphed into the hapless Mrs. Jones.
One minute I’m choking down a freebie on National Fried Chicken Sandwich Day 2022. Next, I’m naked on a gurney, flatlining in the trauma center, shitting myself for an audience. They bring my wife back to say goodbye. So much equipment. A dozen medical professionals locked in on her husband of 45 years. Julie kisses me gently on the cheek, whispering, “This is going to be like a $10,000 copay.”
I die on the trauma table. I’m gone. Taken out by chicken shrapnel.
Some quick napkin math indicates that I’ve spent nearly five full years of my life on the road eating 4,000-calorie lunches at Legal Sea Foods.
Of course a widowmaker took me out!
When the Dopamine Cartel looks at you, it sees a legacy business. It sees an asset manager. It sees somebody who has something it wants. It sees the linchpin to life itself.
Your piehole.
When it targets your child, it sees a startup. It sees generational, dopa-fueled recurring revenue that is the stuff of every objectively bad business decision.
I wake up in the ICU with a couple of stents, learn that I died on the trauma table, and promptly declare myself an addict. I ask myself, “Self—what is Big Food’s one-question system?”
“Will they eat it?”
That’s the whole game right there.
Will you eat it?
Once it hits me that Wall Street looks at my piehole and sees a cash register, I issue an executive decree: “From now on, I do the closing!”
In the 70s I was closing Mrs. Jones. On paper, Big Food is a more formidable foe. But the rules are the same and games aren’t played on paper. They’re played on the field.
All I need to do is copy the people who produce our ubiquitous, gastro-culture of death. To secure my body — the entity in which I hold 100% equity — I need to manage to one question and one question only.
“Is this good for me?”
This one question flips the script, taking me from mindless to mindful. This one question takes me from no filter to the only filter that matters. I could care less about wellness for the sake of it. I need to write jokes, funny sketches, and produce world-class corporate and political satire.
I hate to see needless suffering, especially when I am the one suffering needlessly!
On November 9th, I will have been on my Is It Good For Me system for four years. When I walked out of the ICU on November 10, 2022, I was issued five prescriptions my surgeon said I would be on for the rest of my life.
I’ve since been deprescribed.
On June 1st, when Shiny & I decided to build this site, we committed to submitting our intake to public audit.
My July 2026 Sales Report reveals a closing percentage of 92%. In other words, the people who killed me breached my territory 11 times, for a total of 7.73% of my intake decisions. Their multi-billion-dollar business plan choked.
Final Score? Life Points: 394 | Death Points: 33.
If Shiny & Shady’s one-question system catches on—and it will—the people responsible for all the addictive crap we buy from the middle aisles of the grocery store will start ginning up stories in The Atlantic that prey on the pathologies of the Orthorexia Community.
I am not out to delay death. I am prolonging my best work. Parents are honored, sons are grown, synapses are firing, and laughter is the best medicine.
As for you, my gentle reader, Halloween candy is already in stores and football starts Thursday with the Hall of Fame Game. Between NCAA D1 and the NFL, we’re talking nearly 2,000 game-time excuses to open your cash register to pure unadulterated ASSS (Alcohol, Salt, Sugar, and bad Satfat).
I’m a simple man. Execute a culture of death that bankrupts my business and you don’t get my money. Big Food can kiss my ASSS if it can even find the formerly extra-large-turned-medium version.
So what’s my one question for you?
“Do you have your game face on?”
I hope so. Because that’s not Jack in the Box. It’s you in the box!
Keep banging!™