“…like a rocket ship and keep on going. Who knows how high this stock could go? The twenties? The thirties? I mean, if I’m even half right, those numbers are ridiculously low! They’re nothing compared to what this company is capable of. In the blink of an eye the stock could be in the fifties or even the sixties! And I’m not talking about some far-off time in the future. I’m talking about right now, as we speak.
“Listen to me, everyone. Steve Madden Shoes is the hottest company in the entire women’s shoe industry. Orders are going through the roof right now! Every department store in America—chains like Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s, Nordstrom and Dillard’s—they can’t keep our shoes in stock. The shoes are so hot they’re literally flying off the shelves!
“You know, I hope you’re all aware that as stockbrokers you have an obligation to your clients, a fiduciary responsibilityso to speak, to get on the phone with them the second I’m finished and do whatever it takes—even if it means ripping their fucking eyeballs out—to get them to buy as much stock in Steve Madden Shoes as they can possibly afford. I sincerely hope you’re aware of this, because if you’re not, then you and I are going to have some serious issues together after all this is said and done.
“You have an obligation here! An obligation to your clients! An obligation to this firm! And an obligation to yourself, God damn it! You better ram this stock right down your clients’ throats and make them choke on it until they say, ‘Buy me twenty thousand shares,’ because every dollar your clients invest is gonna come back to them in spades.
“I mean, I could go on and on about the bright future of Steve Madden Shoes. I could talk about all the fundamentals—about all the new store openings and how we manufacture our shoes in a more cost-effective way than the competition, about how our shoes are so hot that we don’t even have to advertise and how the mass merchants are willing to pay us royalties to have access to our designs—but at the end of the day none of it matters. The bottom line is that all your clients wanna know is that the stock’s going up; that’s it.”
I slowed my pace a bit and said, “Listen, guys, as much as I’d like to, I can’t get on the phone and sell the stock to your clients. Only youcan pick up the phone and take action. And at the end of the day, that’s what it’s all about: taking action. Without action, the best intentions in the world are nothing more than that: intentions.”
I took a deep breath and plowed on. “Now, I want everybody to look down.” I extended my arm and gestured to a desk just in front of me. “Look down at that little black box right in front of you. You see it? It’s a wonderful little invention called the telephone. Here, I’ll spell it for you: T-E-L-E-P-H-O-N-E. Now, guess what, everybody? This telephone won’t dial itself! Yeah, that’s right. Until you take some fucking action, it’s nothing more than a worthless hunk of plastic. It’s like a loaded M16 without a trained Marine to pull the trigger. See, it’s the action of a highly trained Marine—a trained killer—that turns an M16 into a deadly weapon. And in the case of the telephone it’s the action of you—a highly trained Strattonite, a highly trained killer who won’t take no for an answer, who won’t hang up the phone until his client either buys or dies, someone who’s fully aware that there’s a sale being made on every single phone call and that it’s only a question of who’s selling who. Were you the one who did the selling? Were you proficient enough and motivated enough and gutsy enough to take control of the conversation and close the sale? Or was it your client who did the selling—explaining how he couldn’t make the investment right now because the timing was wrong or he needed to talk it over with his wife or his business partner or Santa Claus or the fucking tooth fairy.”
I rolled my eyes and shook my head in disgust. “So don’t you ever fucking forget that that phone sitting on your desk is a deadly weapon. And in the hands of a motivated Strattonite it’s a license to print money. And it’s the great equalizer!” I paused, letting those last two words reverberate around the boardroom, and then I kept right on going. “All you gotta do is pick up the phone and say the words I’ve taught you, and it can make you as powerful as the most powerful CEO in the country. And I don’t care whether you graduated from Harvard or you grew up on the mean streets of Hell’s Kitchen: With that little black phone you can achieve anything.
“That phone equals money. And I don’t care how many problems you have right now, because every single one of them can be helped with money. Yeah, that’s right; money is the greatest single problem-solver known to man, and anyone who tries to tell you different is completely full of shit. In fact, I’m willing to bet that anyone who says that never had a dime to their fucking name!” I held my hand up in the scout’s honor mode, and said with piss and vinegar, “It’s always those same people who are the first to spew out their worthless advice—it’s always the paupers, who sling around that ridiculous line of bullshit about how money is the root of all evil and about how money corrupts. Well—I—mean— really!What a bunch of happy horseshit that is! Having money is wonderful! And having money is a must!
“Listen to me, everyone: There’s no nobility in poverty. I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor, and I choose rich every time. At least as a rich man, when I have to face my problems, I can show up in the back of a stretch limousine, wearing a two-thousand-dollar suit and a twenty-thousand-dollar gold watch! And, believe me, arriving in style makes your problems a helluva lot easier to deal with.”
I shrugged my shoulders for effect. “Anyway, if anyone here thinks I’m crazy or you don’t feel exactly like I do, then get the fuck out of this room right now!That’s right—get the fuck out of my boardroom and go get a job at McDonald’s flipping burgers, because that’s where you belong! And if McDonald’s isn’t hiring, there’s always Burger King!
“But before you actually depart this room full of winners, I want you to take a good look at the person sitting next to you, because one day in the not-so-distant future, you’ll be sitting at a red light in your beat-up old Pinto, and the person sitting next to you is gonna pull up in his brand-new Porsche, with his gorgeous young wife sitting next to him. And who’ll be sitting next to you? Some ugly beast, no doubt, with three days of razor stubble—wearing a sleeveless muumuu or a housedress—and you’ll probably be on your way home from the Price Club with a hatchback full of discount groceries!”
Just then I locked eyes with a young Strattonite who looked literally panic-stricken. Hammering my point home, I said, “What? You think I’m lying to you? Well, guess what? It only gets worse. See, if you want to grow old with dignity—if you want to grow old and maintain your self-respect—then you better get rich now. The days of working for a large Fortune Five Hundred company and retiring with a pension are ancient fucking history! And if you think Social Security is gonna be your safety net, then think again. At the current rate of inflation it’ll be just enough to pay for your diapers after they stick you in some rancid nursing home, where a three-hundred-pound Jamaican woman with a beard and mustache will feed you soup through a straw and then bitch-slap you when she’s in a bad mood.