I had just sold over $300,000 at a seminar put on by the new company that bought GKIC, the company that Dan Kennedy founded.

The CEO and I had lunch, and soon, she made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.

For the first time in over a decade, I’d be working for someone else as the Chief Marketing Officer.

My role quickly morphed into developing new product ideas, creating the products, running launches, and selling, selling, selling. And I produced millions in sales.

The original CEO was let go, and the board brought in a new President to pull in the reigns on spending. She did her job and cut expenses to the bone, but it began to affect the quality of the membership, especially live events.

Because I still had an entrepreneurial mindset, my team, headed by my good friend Mike Stodola and I, moved fast and expected the other departments to follow suit. So we brainstormed ideas and implemented them quickly.

That’s different from the speed at that everyone in a corporation operates. Some employees complained about us, and the president called us “Bullies of the company.”

I thought that when sales weren’t where you wanted them to be and you needed a cash flow surge, you did whatever it took and worked as hard as you good to turn it around. That’s what entrepreneurs do. The problem was that most employees didn’t have that mentality.

As an entrepreneur, your main role is not the service you provide; it’s the chief revenue generator. That means you need to get good at sales and marketing. And sometimes, that means working your ass off and demanding more from your team.

Had I been president of the company, I would have fired the employees who couldn’t keep up with the marketing department instead of asking us to slow things down and be “nicer.”

Tomorrow I’ll tell you a story about how we were chastised for making big sales. You won’t believe it.

Kick butt, make mucho DEEnero!

Dave “A Corporate Guy I Ain’t” Dee