But as businesses get larger, do-it-yourself is often impossible. That’s why, to grow, you’ll need to surround yourself with a cadre of highly competent, highly trusted, highly motivated managers with an equity position to whom the business’s success matters as much as it does to you. Only those parts of your organization that are directly supervised by one of these individuals, or supervised by a like-minded assistant manager reporting to one of these individuals, will function to the highest quality level. One weak link and the chain of competence and caring is destroyed.

It’s fine to mouth platitudes about the importance of the little people in an organization, and, for sure, they matter. But what really matters is the top people. If they’re good, they’ll see that everyone under them is good (or becomes good, or leaves). I’d gladly trade a million dollars in sales for one top manager, because you can do many times that much with a good manager.

One more word about absentee management. Beware of distance. Out of sight is out of mind. Every caution regarding running businesses or parts of businesses with strange hands goes double or triple when the operation is in a foreign country or different city. Believe me, I know. Unless you’re prepared to sacrifice and deploy your very best people to manage your field operations, you’re best advised not to undertake them at all.

I know this isn’t the common wisdom in the era of decentralization, but remember, autonomy is only as good as the people autonomy is given to, and the rewards system under which they’re allowed to operate. By this I mean that capitalism functions well because the different players (businesses or businessmen) in the game profit or lose depending on how well they satisfy the demands of the marketplace and of profitability. You can’t set up an autonomous operation without letting the managers function in this same manner, judging and rewarding them and their division based on their profitability and productivity, not on arbitrary criteria like the amount of time they’re in the office. You can’t control everything, from near or from far, so let this be your simple rule: Everyone needs a guiding hand. If it’s not your hand, then it better be the invisible hand.

I’ve learned over the years that one of people’s most fundamental needs is to better themselves. The wise can harness this phenomenon for monetary benefits as well. All the products and services you offer will sell much better, or for a much bigger markup, if the idea of self-improvement or upward mobility (not necessarily in the economic sense) is packaged with it. People are thus more inclined to buy products that confirm they are more on the cutting edge (sexier or smarter, richer, younger . . .) or soon will be, than a similar product that just does its job. Perhaps even more importantly, people only want to be involved in activities that confirm them in their dreams. Fat people want to be thin, poor people rich, rich people respected. Weight Watchers, Amway, adult education programs, sports cars—they’re all reflections of people’s dreams and ongoing desires to be more than they currently are. This is good. When people stop dreaming and aspiring, they may as well die. There’s nothing left for them.