carefully tape-recorded all the details to see if they
matched in both versions. Then he could tell how
consistent the two stories were. This degree of con-
sistency was his gauge of a person's honesty.
If a person relates a story differently each time he
tells it, you're probably dealing with an un-
trustworthy liar. Habitual liars soon get so used to
changing stories to fit the purpose at hand that they
often forget how they told the story the first time.
There's another closely related clue that should tell
you a person's too crooked to deal with. If you ever
hear a person you trust lie to someone else, it's time
you canceled your trust.
Hardy told me, "If a man lies to somebody else,
he'll lie to you. What makes you believe he'll think
any more of YOll down the line when it'll suit his. pur-
pose to lie to you?"
You see, people live by an internal code they have.
If their code lets them lie to an enemy, they'll do the
same to a "friend" when it will get them something
they want. People basically treat their "friends" the
same way they treat everybody else. After all, it's
easy to reclassify a friend as an "enemy" when he
gets in the way of something you're after, isn't it?
Never trust a person who lies to somebody else,
but says he won't lie to you because you're a pal.
Your "pal" status isn't set in concrete, you know.
Most of the users and con artists I lived around lied
this way-casually and as naturally as they breathed.
So you should be wary of dealing with people who
don't stick pretty close to the truth in every situation They're likely to be ruthless users. And Hardy's tac-
tic can tip you off to who these people are.
Beware of people who "once had money but lost it."
Near ly every con artist I ever met had amassed a
great deal of wealth, but bad luck had robbed him of
it-at least to hear him tell it. The Dallas man, who
later conned me out of $800, claimed to have once
been a millionaire. Hardy claimed to have once had a
great deal of money. And the California con man,
who lived next door to me, claimed that his father
was a millionaire.
But despite all this alleged money in their back-
grounds, none of these men seemed able to come up
with his rent consistently at the beginning of the
month-with the exception of Hardy, whose pockets
were usually swollen with money.
Obviously most of these riches-to-rags stories
would prove pure fiction if a person investigated
them. But they do serve a valuable purpose to the
street-educated listener: They're a dead giveaway
that you're dealing with a charlatan. Of course I'm
not saying that no honest man has ever lost his
wealth. But even if this is the case, you're smart to
avoid any financial dealings with him anyway.
If you hear this old song and dance from someone,
you're probably dealing with a con artist who's set-
ting you up to play the dupe. A large percentage of
the world's con artists use this line to give people
confidence in the idea that a once-rich man has madeEven if a person you know is honest hands you the
riches-to-rags line, you'd be foolish to take financial
advice from him. If he knows how to handle money,
why did he lose all of his? When a man who's rich
now tells you how to invest your money, you might
want to scoop up his advice. Chances are he knows
how to make money better than a broke man does.
For instance, the Dallas man claimed to have been
a millionaire before the recession killed his business.
And at one time he tried to convince me to buy a
used car he heard about for $300. He said I could
resell the car for $ 700 easily within the week, thereby
more than doubling my money. After I declined the
deal, he somehow got his hands on $300 and bought
the car himself.
But this "gold mine on wheels" cost him $400 in
repairs the first two weeks he owned it. And he
wound up having to keep it because he couldn't re-
coup the money he had tied up in it. So much for
taking financial advice from people who either did
have or claim to have had a fortune, then lost it.
A dead giveaway that you're dealing with an
incompetent
The educational world has a word for a teacher
who overlooks the important ideas in a student's
paper, and chooses to criticize instead a misplaced
comma or some such trivial detail. He is called a
"pedant." The business jungle also has a term for a
person who acts this way. It's "a failure."
The person who emphasizes details and fails totake care of the most important things first can only
fail in the business world. In every business I've
seen, you can't take care of all the situations that need
attention, no matter how hard you work. So the
shrewd person lets the nonvital details go and con-
centrates on taking care of the crucial problems.
For exam pIe, an intelligent manager takes care of
sales, the thing that makes a profit, and lets strict en-
forcement of the dress code go. After all, the most
stringently enforced dress code in the world never
made a dime in profit for a business.
A person can't satisfy all the demands on his time.
So when you see someone emphasizing minor details,
it's a dead giveaway that he's an incompetent. While
he's squandering his time on the nonessential, you
can bet the essential is going undone. As ridiculous as
this behavior looks on paper, you'll find it surpris-
ingly common in the business world.
When you see these kinds of perverted priorities in
one of your business associates, don't hitch your
wagon to his star--even if he's your boss. This person
is bound to be a failure. And if the two of you are as-
sociated too closely, you could go down with him.
My first boss fell into this category. Immediately
after I attended one of his sales meetings without a
tie, he bared his teeth and chewed me out royally for
my appearance. But although he enforced white-
glove standards of appearance on his sales force, he
somehow failed to notice that, far more importantly,
all of his salesmen were losing respect for him. Less
than one month after I received my dressing-down