You’re Fired. (Dan’s favorite saying.)

This dates back to when me and my Wealth Coaching Group watched the new series premier of The Apprentice at Trump Plaza in Atlantic City. We agreed; The Donald made the right decision, fired the most deserving — the guy who whined he looked bad because he was “under-utilized.”

The next day in our meeting, Mike Walters talked about hiring a guy who had sold and delivered office furniture to their new offices and turning the guy into his top Project Manager at a good salary. The guy’s sole qualification? While there supervising the delivery of the furniture he’d sold, he observed other delivery guys, cubicle installers, phone guys and construction folk running amok and took it upon himself to take charge of the entire office set-up, staying for more than 10 hours to get ‘ er done. He demonstrated he would step up, take charge and “carry the message to Garcia.’

There are more of the whiners waiting to be told precisely what to do and then doing no more than what they are told than there are take charge, get ‘ er done’ers. Michael was right to create a position for his find. Trump was right to fire his loser forthwith.

In general, we are now mired in collective whining about jobs being outsourced, jobs being eliminated, oh-woe-is-they. In Cleveland, we still have steel workers whining about their jobs going overseas. Pretty much, that whole industry was over about ten years ago. Heck, I know air traffic controllers still whining about Reagan canning them. Geez, I hate whiners.

Once you see the writing on the wall, there’s no profit in sitting there staring at it. People need to be told: take charge of your life. Assert yourself. You were not guaranteed lifetime employment. It says the right to “pursuit of” all sorts of stuff. Key word: pursuit.

If you ARE going to have people around you, my advice is keep saying “You’re Fired” as many times as it takes, as quickly and decisively as required, until you wind up surrounded and supported by a few step up, take charge, get ‘ er done’er types. You want people alert enough to see something that needs doing, with enough initiative to go ahead and do it. I’m fortunate: My assistant does a lot without being told it needs doing or how to do it. The now-very-rare times I find myself working with a client not doing well, not going well, a quick check of the people they’ve got around them reveals the problem.