In successfully accomplishing the first four steps of selling, most of my efforts were directly or indirectly geared toward succeeding at the fifth and most important step: getting paid. Contrary to what most people naively assume, the object of the game is not to close deals. The object is to walk away with chips in your hand.

In real estate brokerage, selling a property is only a means to an end, that end being the pocketing of a commission by the real estate agent. As I have repeatedly stated, there's a big difference between earning a commission and receiving a commission. When I closed a sale, I was fully aware that I had only earned -- not received -- a commission. And to make certain that I never lost sight of what my real objective was, I carried a second card in my wallet that contained yet another literary masterpiece, to wit:

Closing deals is so much trash,
If you, my friend, don't get no cash.

In some of the most trendy success and how-to books, there is usually a great deal of emphasis placed on doing what's in the client's best interest, and I totally concur with the idea of going the extra mile for one's client. Above all, I believe in the concept of value-for-value. Nonetheless, it's curious to me that no book ever seems to address what's in the best interest of the salesman, broker, finder, or other person who puts the deal together -- in real estate or any other field. Above all, I have never seen anything written in any success or sales book about how to accomplish the most important step of selling: getting paid.

I've come to the conclusion that the emphasis of most salesmen, entrepreneurs, and deal-makers is misdirected. It is, indeed, noble to have the client's best interest at heart, but your wife and kids might feel just a bit more secure if you also had your (and their) best interest at heart as well.

I never walked away from a closing without feeling that I had performed a valuable service for my client, so I had no trouble sleeping at night on that score. What was a problem, however, was that the principals in most of my deals seemed to consider me to be out of line if I in any way suggested that I wanted to make certain I got paid. In case you hadn't noticed, there's not a whole lot of altruism in the Jungle.

There is no conflict of interest in doing what you agreed to do for someone and getting paid for doing it. In selling real estate, I found that the only conflict is the one created in the seller's mind when it suddenly occurs to him that if he doesn't pay the real estate agent the agreed-upon commission, it will mean more chips in his pocket. All I did was put a stop to allowing the seller to intimidate me into thinking that my only concern should be his welfare, and that being concerned about my own needs was in some way unethical. Such thinking is sheer, intimidating rubbish.

If you're over 21, you are certainly aware that one of the most commonly used intimidation ploys is to make a person feel guilty for not properly concerning himself with the other person's welfare; i.e., concentrating too much on his own well-being. We hear this kind of gibberish from shameless politicians all the time.

During election campaigns, they love to rail on endlessly about the disparity between "the rich" and "the poor." Of course there's a disparity between people at the top of the financial ladder and those at the bottom. There's supposed to be! That's what freedom and free markets are all about. To paraphrase Will Durant, freedom and equality are sworn and everlasting enemies. Nonetheless, political rabble-rousers have been winning the minds of the masses through class-warfare intimidation since the days of the Greek and Roman Empires.

Remember, the Theory of Intimidation states that the results a person achieves are inversely proportionate to the degree to which he is intimidated. By developing techniques to dramatically improve my posture, I positioned myself for accomplishing my ultimate objective -- getting paid. In the final analysis, what I really did was separate myself from the rest of the pack by learning how to cope with intimidating people and thereby increasing my chances of receiving what I earned.

Specifically, as a closing drew near, I took three important steps to maintain my strong posture:

1. I kept my finger on the pulse of the deal 24 hours a day so I could pinpoint the time and place of the closing.

2. I continued to nurture my relationship with the buyer in the hopes that, at a minimum, I would have his moral support.

3. I showed up at the closing with my attorney, and counted on the Universal Attorney-to-Attorney Respect Rule as my insurance policy if all else failed.

If, despite my strong posture and all the precautions I had taken, the seller still tried to cut off my fingers when I reached for my chips, I dispensed with the niceties and drew my mental saber from its sheath. At that point, tactfulness was set aside, and it was showdown time. Regardless of whether the seller was trying to steal part or all of my commission, I was militant when it came to protecting my chips. My attitude was unyielding, solidly backed by the wisdom of the Bluff Theory, which states: The secret to bluffing is to not bluff.

In other words, never lay down an ultimatum unless you're prepared to follow through with it. Wealthy people, as you have undoubtedly observed, tend to be excellent bluffers. My Type Number One professor taught me the importance of financial staying power. He was always prepared to walk away from a deal, because there was no one deal that was life or death to him. If borrowers thought he was bluffing, they did so at their own peril. He wasn't. When he threatened to walk away from a deal, he meant it. He was always the intimidator, and the prospective borrower either willingly accepted the role of intimidatee or he didn't get the loan. Role assignments were not subject to negotiation with my professor.

If the secret to not bluffing was to have staying power, and if wealth was the backbone of such power, I recognized that I would have to find a substitute for wealth -- at least until I reached a point where I, too, possessed significant financial resources. Common sense told me that the only logical substitute was determination. The nice thing about determination is that it's just as available to you and me as it is to Bill Gates. I simply drew an imaginary line in my gray matter and said to myself, "This is where intimidation stops. Beyond this line, all bluffs get called."

With determination as my substitute for wealth, if the seller started to reach for my chips, I moved swiftly in an effort to throw a monkey wrench into the closing. It was critical not to get lulled into fiddling while the horse was making a dash for the barn door. If I allowed a closing to occur without getting paid, the problem of securing my chips would become infinitely greater.

If the seller did manage to make it through the closing without paying my commission, and if he continued to refuse to pay me within a short period of time thereafter, I then had no choice but to resort to the one thing I specifically had been trying to avoid from the day I first talked to the seller: legal action. Unfortunately, because of the way the legal system works in the U.S., even the winner of a lawsuit usually ends up losing. Legalman's fee-building techniques virtually guarantee this. But if that was the only course of action left to me, I did not hesitate to take it. I wasn't bluffing.

Thankfully, more often than not things went as planned, and I didn't have to resort to legal action. It was a great feeling to be able to trot into the end zone untouched, and exhilarating to look back over my shoulder and see that no penalty flags had been dropped. Then, and only then, could I delight in watching the points go up on the scoreboard.

At that point -- and only at that point -- I had completed the final and most important step of selling: getting paid. When the game was over, I was not always the most popular guy at the closing, but I had long ago decided that I would rather have the seller taking my name in vain as I walked away with my chips than have him talking about what a nice guy I was as I walked away without my fingers.

In the final chapters of this book, I relate blow-by-blow descriptions of the deals I closed during the first complete year in which I put my reality-based philosophy and techniques into action. These deals resulted in my receiving $849,901 in real estate commissions, yet I was the same tortoise who had barked for a $1,250 bone just a couple years before -- with one exception: My shell was now protected by an intimidation-shield coating of the highest quality.