Tim Donnelly | New York Post
If you’re looking for brutally honest business advice, KISS frontman Gene Simmons is here to give you a tongue lashing.
The legendary rocker, known for his elaborate stage makeup, costume and a proclivity for wagging his long tongue, is releasing a new book of business advice on Tuesday, called “Me, Inc.: Build an Army of One, Unleash Your Inner Rock God, Win in Life and Business.” In it, he distills 40 years of leading the global-phenomenon rock band, which has franchised into a billion pieces of merchandise, including everything from comic books to a coffee shop.
We combed through the book to find the 10 best pieces of advice from the brain of Gene Simmons.
Simmons writes about how when he was 9 years old and living in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, he attended yeshiva six days a week and spent all his free time in the library.
“For the first time in my life, I was in a place where the poorest of the poor and the richest of the rich have the same access to all information for free, on a level playing field,” he writes.
It was then that he promised himself, “I would educate myself, and that I would never stop educating myself. It was my responsibility to keep learning.”
Don’t put all your eggs in one rock ’n’ roll basket
“I seemed instinctively to know certain precepts of good business practice,” he writes.
“I wanted to try for a career in the music industry, otherwise known as forming a rock band. But there was no guarantee it would work. In fact, statistics should have been enough to tell me the cards were stacked against me. So I worked at two jobs at the same time I was trying to put together the band.”