Why Healthy Paranoia Is Good

Just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean they're not out to get you.

Napoleon Hill’s work that went into Think & Grow Rich found 17 characteristics held in common of all the successful people. And one of them he identified as accurate thinking. Accurate thinking is dealing with reality in a positive way, but not ignore the reality trying to be a positive thinker. And as it relates to healthy paranoia, it means you deal with reality.

I'm gonna give you one example that nobody likes to deal with. It came out of some experience I had more than 10 years ago and It happened several times.

I worked with the number one expert in retail theft control for supermarkets, convenience stores and drugstore businesses. Now there's a belief amongst the public and the industry that their number one theft problem is shoplifting. A nasty customer who comes in there and steals stuff. But that's not their problem.

80% of their theft is internal, not external. And 80% of their theft is divided pretty evenly between their employees and the people who deliver stuff to the stores.

One of the best stories I can tell you is about this little convenience store that was on record for selling hundreds and hundreds of cases of beer a week, but there was no money.

The owner finally had the place staked out and here goes the beer guy. He wheels in a beer crate and yells to the guy behind the register, checking him in five cases. Then wheels out the back door and wheels around the front the same five cases and yells five cases. And does this five times to check in 25 cases, but he leaves five.

He's now got 20 cases that he can sell for cash to his buddies or to a friend that runs a bar who'll pay him cash under the table.

So here's what I learned about the reality of theft - 5% of adults will never steal (they are wired that way) while another 5% of the people who will steal whether it's necessary or not, but the other 90%, which includes everybody who works for you and every vendor, will steal if they believe they can go undetected.

Now here's the trick to theft control - you cannot control their ability to rationalize it and you cannot control the need to steal. The only thing you can possibly control is whether or not they think they can go undetected.

Now what you will get from everybody is all of the denial stuff. “Well, my employees would never steal from me. We're one big family. We love each other. My employees would never steal from me because I pay them more than all of the others.” Reasons that everybody wants to ignore this information because it's painful and unpleasant information.

But if you wanna run a real sound business, then you indulge in healthy paranoia instead of denial.

So the cookie method: for example, if mama just baked 24 new cookies and she and Johnny are the only ones home and she's gonna run down to the store to get milk, if she doesn't wanna lose any of the cookies, here's what she must do. She's gotta take Johnny to say, “There's 24 cookies there. See 'em? And you and I are the only ones in the house and I'm leaving. And the first thing I’ll do, when I come back in the door, is count the cookies. If there's anything less than 24, you’re the one taking the cookies.

Install the cookie method with your employees and vendors.

Now if you want more strategies and tactics on how to deal with employees and learn more about healthy paranoia factor, let me give you my strategies using my “Brass Balls” course for free. All you need to do is join my NO B.S. Newsletter today and I’ll give you my full course, plus more - see all the details here.