Note: I apologize if the word “asshole” offends you, but for the purpose of this post, I am going to have to use the word quite a bit. Earmuffs please.

I got into a little debate over at On Moneymaking tonight about whether you have to be an asshole to be successful. Jon’s post there suggests that you should accept becoming an asshole if you want to be successful in life.

I know about a dozen people that make over $1 million per year, and I’d imagine all of them are called assholes on a regular basis. The two seem to go hand in hand, and I think there are reasons why.

Extreme Success Requires Extreme Focus

Jon goes on to note that focus requires giving “all of your attention and ignoring everything else” and comments on a pattern for wealthy, successful people that I don’t quite find to be true.

Frequently, they’ll:

• Leave behind a trail of broken marriages and forgotten children
• Lose the life savings of their friends and relatives on an ingenious but doomed business
• Refuse to lend anyone money or give to charity
• Avoid unnecessary expenses to the point of miserliness
• Treat everyone that can’t help them as if they’re expendable

In the end, Jon implies that all successful people are assholes in some capacity, and you should be willing to be called an asshole to be successful.

Frankly, I just don’t agree with his suggestion. Even if you put your all into your work and some call you a “workaholic,” true character is what shines through and labels someone an asshole. I don’t think that many people legitimately label you an asshole just because of your wealth or success, and the few that do should be proven wrong by seeing your actions and character.

James Chartrand of Web Content Writer Tips and I went through several exchanges in the comments before finally coming to the realization that we actually agree. You can follow our long exchange in the comments.

James and I both agreed that you don’t need to be an asshole to be successful, and although you may run the risk of being called one, you don’t have to act like one to be a success.

From James:

Do people need to be assholes to be successful? No. But they do need to be focused and have drive and determination. They need to put themselves out there – and risk being seen as assholes.

The basic gist of my argument is simply this:

I don’t think that to be successful, you need to give up not being considered an asshole. Yes, stop obsessing about what others think, but don’t let that also lead you to fall into a philosophy of accepting your asshole-ism.

There’s a large difference between being an asshole and being successful, and I hope that many of the future moguls of America don’t take his advice to become miserable people because they think being an asshole is the only road to success.

On a minor note, Jon starts off using these examples as asshole successes:

What do Simon Cowell, Steve Jobs, Dr. House, Bill Belichick, and Donald Trump have in common?

Eliminating Dr. House because he’s not real, I had to argue that Bill Belichick while quiet, internal and often misunderstood by the press is no asshole. As for Steve Jobs, when did taking a $1 annual salary and refusing bonuses when coming back to save the company that you founded make you an asshole? I must have missed something with those examples.

My example of a very non-asshole success: Bill Gates. He is retiring to a life of philanthropy, has a successful marriage with children and I doubt he ever lived miserly during his rise in business. The only hit you have on him is running off with the idea for Windows, but can you blame him?

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In what can only be described as the fulfillment of my winter break spiral towards greater levels of nerd-dom, I spent my free time reading Game Over: Press Start to Continue: The Maturing of Mario by David Sheff with some new chapters contributed by Andy Eddy.

Sheff and Eddy’s narrative works both as a fan service and informative business manual. The evolution of Nintendo from a hanafuda card producer to the international leader of the electronic entertainment industry is fascinating–more because of the gradual transition the company takes from traditional business practices to innovating, aggressive tactics than for all the gaming nerd facts. In all truthfulness, I enjoyed the gaming nerd facts as well though.

Shrewd decision-making and almost omniscient planning got Nintendo to the top of the entertainment world, and depending upon what console fanboyism you believe, Nintendo still retains a large market share–especially post-Wii launch–in the gaming and entertainment industry.

The Japanese leadership of Nintendo, led by the third president of the company Hiroshi Yamauchi, made such extensive plans during the early years and development that plans never had to drastically change throughout their rise to domination during the 1990s. The initial plan was so good that Microsoft may have even borrowed from it with their launch of the Xbox.

Back when Nintendo first launched the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in the United States, Yamauchi had a dream of integrating an Internet connection (dial-up at the time) to provide a network for its users. This network, Yamauchi thought, would increase their install base and provide greater applications for their console.

Nintendo established a network in Japan allowing stock market access and banking, but due to protests against Nintendo including a lottery service that could fall into the hands of minors, Nintendo never launched its grand network in the U.S. In fact, they practically gave up the idea completely because Nintendo never attempted to integrate a network into a console until their latest offering–the Wii–even though it was part of Yamauchi’s original business plan for the NES. Some say that Minoru Arakawa, Yamauchi’s son-in-law who ran Nintendo of America, never fully accepted the dream.

“By the end of 1992, it appeared that Nintendo would miss out on the enormous opportunity. If it did, the reason would be a lack of vision and commitment to it. Jerry Ruttenbur said the network never flew because Minoru Arakawa didn’t support it in spite of a sound business plan and projections of huge profits. ‘It was Yamouchi’s dream, not Arakawa’s,’ Ruttenbur said. ‘Arakawa never bought into it.’” (Game Over, pg. 397-8)

With the Xbox, one of the crucial selling points at launch was Xbox Live, the premium service that allows all Xbox gamers to connect, compete and share online. Microsoft had both better timing and a greater extent of networking experience when they entered the market, but the fact that their plan was so similar to Nintendo’s original for the NES makes me wonder whether Bill Gates read Game Over.

For more on the history of the industry, read Game Over or check out Play Value, a podcast from ONnetworks that covers the rise of Nintendo and the entertainment industry.

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When I heard the news that Heath Ledger was found dead yesterday, I couldn’t help being a little skeptical. Not to be disrespectful of the dead, but I thought in the first minutes of the reports that it might all be a clever ruse by a very risky marketing team.

Let me take you back in my experience leading up to his death.

I had been researching the viral marketing campaign for The Dark Knight in preparation of doing a post about the numerous things they were doing right to get fans involved. Not having even participated in any of the ARG–or alternate reality game–action, I was still excited to read about all of the various games put together for fans of the movie.

The campaign is being done by famed 42 Entertainment, known for the Halo 2 ARG ILoveBees. It has created a deep reality spanning both the Web and real world for the fans. You can read all about the various elements of the viral marketing efforts in the “Marketing” section of the Wikipedia entry for The Dark Knight.

Recently, clues from the viral marketing campaign led fans to various bakeries in cities around the country where they received cakes containing hidden evidence bags with a real cell phone inside. After following the given instructions and calling a phone number from the cake, fans were left waiting for the Joker to call.

The second factor in my skepticism came from a podcast by Revision3 called The Totally Rad Show. In a recent episode, co-host Alex Albrecht mentioned how he felt Christopher Nolan was really taking up the idea that the Joker was “undead” since he is killed before coming back to life as one of Batman’s greatest villains. Many reports online were citing the many surprises awaiting moviegoers in Nolan’s imagining of the Joker.

Now that we are up to speed, enter the news of Heath Ledger dying just weeks later. The idea crept into my head that this news might be part of the campaign as well.

Obviously, this theory was blown out of the water after numerous official, confirmed reports of Ledger’s body being found and the reactions of his family. For those few minutes before more information was known, I theorized that 42 Entertainment might have blown the ARG open.

Can you imagine how insane that level of depth and immersion would have been? People were rushing to CNN.com to see the breaking news headline that Heath Ledger was found unresponsive and possibly dead. In that moment, what if, as the Joker himself says, “It’s all part of the plan.”

Of course, they would have had to retract the staged death quickly and made sure that the correct information was known. It would have been controversial.

If Ledger had prepped his family and close friends for the news and the ARG team was ready to go with the next stage–a Joker call from the beyond perhaps–that would have been an epic ARG event. If they had staged the faking of his death in a few months, just before the movie’s release, the stunt might have made a huge impact with fans and the mainstream public as well without breaking fans out of the ARG state of mind.

Despite how impossible it seems, part of me almost wishes that this theory was the truth. We wouldn’t have lost a talented actor so young in his career, and the move would have completely blown any ARG to date out of the water by bringing participants down to reality with the idea of death before pulling them deeper back to the game with the reveal.

What a great way to re-introduce the character of the Joker for longtime fans looking for new life in the Batman saga. It would have been interesting.

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I work two jobs. My first job is a day job that pays me enough to be full-time where I get to practice public relations, and my second job is blogging on my three current sites, ugachaka.net, Fantasy Football Fools and here at wannabeMogul.com, which doesn’t exactly pay me full-time but one can always dream.

Both jobs allow me to exercise my passions. Blogging lets me explore my passion for writing, sharing and interacting while experimenting with online marketing. Working in public relations helps me grow my PR, networking and business skills. In both of these roles, I have fun.

After reading what Seth had to say today about workaholics and passionate workers, I think it’s safe to say that I am a passionate worker but NOT a workaholic.

The passionate worker doesn’t show up because she’s afraid of getting in trouble, she shows up because it’s a hobby that pays. The passionate worker is busy blogging on vacation… because posting that thought and seeing the feedback it generates is actually more fun than sitting on the beach for another hour. The passionate worker tweaks a site design after dinner because, hey, it’s a lot more fun than watching TV.

I come home from one job to jump into the next because it IS a lot more fun than watching TV. Maybe more post-college workers will start to be this kind of workaholic now that the Internet allows you to easily enjoy a two-job lifestyle.

The best advice I can give to any college grad is to look for a job that you are passionate about. If you can, at least when your friends acuse you of being a workaholic, you can tell them that you are just a passionate worker.

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