The title of this post may lead you to believe that I’m referring to lying, but I’m not. See? The title is deceiving. People who know me personally and professionally know that I feel it’s of great importance not to lie to your customers, co-workers, or employees.

That being said, I think there is a use for words designed to confuse or deceive when you’re having a private business discussion in public. I feel no obligation to assist eavesdroppers in knowing details about the inner-workings of my business.

It’s with this in mind that I subscribe to my late grandfather’s “1% rule” and have adapted it to other areas of my business. My grandfather used and taught his executives to use this rule when discussing business in public places, such as restaurants, elevators, etc. It was particularly useful when we were out-of-town at tradeshows and often in close proximity to customers and competitors.

The Windy Marsh Rule of 1%

If you make something for $1 and you sell it for $2,
you’ve made 1%.

Makes perfect sense.

UPDATE: To answer some questions about why we specifically used the 1% rule: Our company was in the building products industry, which is notorious for having very small profit margins. There are many large companies in this industry (Alcoa, Certainteed, Owens Corning) who could easily drop $100+ million to tool-up and make competing products to our own; thus lowering our very large margins. In order to keep people from wrecking our segment of the market, we’d give them the distinct impression that there wasn’t any money in it. If anyone ever overheard us talking about making 1%, they’d probably think, “Wow, now that’s a tough market to be in. Let’s stay out of there.” It seems to have worked.