The Go-Giver is making its way around the world: in addition to the Afrikaans, Danish, Dutch, French, Hebrew, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Spanish, Thai and Turkish, we just learned that two different Chinese editions are now available:

The simplified (modern) Chinese, used in mainland China and Singapore, and the complex (traditional) Chinese, read in Hong Kong, Taiwan and most Chinese-speaking communities outside the mother country.

These two Chinese editions bring the total foreign-language editions of The Go-Giver to fourteen (the magic number for musicaologically-inclined Bach scholars).

According to Google Translate, the complex Chinese title means:

“Given the power: to change the lives of five adventure.”

Accdg to Babelfish, it means,

“Gives strength: Changes the life five fortuitious encounter.”

Hmm.

I suspect it’s closer to this:

“The Power of Giving: Five fortuitous life-changing encounters.”

Know anyone who reads Chinese?

Would you rather live as the ant, or the grasshopper?

Before we answer that question, perhaps we should question the question.

We all grew up with this idea, that there are two ways to live. You can live like the good, modest, industrious and frugal ant, and sock away crumbs for the future. Or you can live like the irresponsible and spendthrift grasshopper, dancing and fiddling away the days in sensual pleasure and artistic elation, without a care for the future.

In some ways the imagery of this fable has done us more harm than good. Does it really have to be an either/or thing?

Sure, it’s good to be responsible and frugal. It makes sense to prepare for the future. But look at the ant’s lifestyle! Do you really want to be a cog in a gigantic ant colony, pushing little crumbs of dirt around, day after day, for the rest of your life?

Let’s face it: you are neither an ant or a grasshopper.

You are a human being.

What does that say about the disposition of your future?

Yesterday I did the interview with Glenn Garnes (sorry, don’t have a link to it yet), who asked, were the characters in The Go-Giver based on real people, or wholly fictional?

“Half and half,” I told him. “Yes, it’s fiction, but there are bits and pieces of real people there—and also bits and pieces of real-life dialog and events.”

Glenn got such a kick out of some of these behind-the-scenes Go-Giver reality tidbits, I thought I’d share a few here:

In chapter 2, Pindar tells Joe about a conversation he once had with Larry King.

This conversation is a nearly verbatim account of an actual conversation Bob Burg had with the real Larry King, backstage in the green room, when they were both speaking at the same event.

A few pages later in chapter 2, Pindar tells Joe, “The majority of people operate with a mindset that says to the fireplace, ‘First give me some heat, then I’ll throw on some logs.’ Or says to the bank, ‘Give me interest on my money, then I’ll make a deposit.’ And of course, it just doesn’t work that way.”

The fireplace-and-logs image was something Bob Burg and I had both heard from Bob Proctor. After the book came out, I was poking around in the classics of the success literature (while writing John Assaraf’s The Vision Board Book) and discovered that Proctor had gotten it from his teacher, the great Earl Nightingale.

And what about Pindar himself?

The Chairman is in fact a thinly veiled Proctor. (See? The names are even similar!)

It was only after the book came out that I remembered this additional thread: when I was nineteen I studied composition in music school in New York with a wonderful man, now justly famous in choral music circles, named Peter Pindar Stearns.

Click over to his web site: I ask you, is that the face of a wise mentor, or what?

Many people have asked us, Is Debra Davenport a real person?

Sort of. She was based (very loosely) on a friend of Bob’s, the supersuccessful Realtor® Terri Murphy (Bob describes her in Endless Referrals as “the $14 million woman”) — although I hasten to assure you that Terri’s personal history is nothing like Debra’s.

Debra’s core message of authenticity, and the law that it embodies (the Law of Authenticity) were both inspired by the example of my sweet wife, Ana Gabriel Mann.

Her name I borrowed from two friends, Debra Hansen and Rita Davenport.

Or so I thought . . . until July 11, 2008, when I got an email from an Eva Petra, who works as executive assistant and publicist for a professional executive coach and motivational speaker named . . . (wait for it) . . . Debra Davenport.

Seriously. I’m not kidding.

“I work for Dr. Debra Davenport in Phoenix, Arizona [wrote Eva], and she speaks frequently about authenticity, self-empowerment, altruism, and a number of other powerful personal/professional development topics. I’m just wondering if this is the same Debra Davenport.”

Um, no. At least, we don’t think so. But then, the lines between fiction and non- are perhaps a little blurrier than we thought.

Note: I posted this same information on The Go-Giver blog, and got this comment from a gentleman named Chris Cree:

“I’ve had the opportunity to meet Rita Davenport several times. My wife was even a guest at her house once. She’s a great lady who embodies the Go-Giver spirit. A fitting example to borrow a name from. Good choice.”

Okay: I’m sitting at my phone, waiting for the real Ernesto Iafrate to call . . .

Having a fun time doing interviews this week. I don’t usually post my interviews here on the blog, but two in a row nudged me to share them with you.

This evening, I spent an hour with Dr. Lisa Van Allen at “Boundless Riches” on TalkShoe, chatting about my parents; how I met Bob Burg; how I love to spend my spare time (hint: cooking with Ana); my three rules for writers; how The Go-Giver happened; my next few books (including one coming out next month); how my wedding turned out to be a celebration of the publication of my next book; why money is like tofu; the five laws of stratospheric success, and which one gives people splinters; who’s behind Pindar; and this and that.

Here, you can click on it and here it right here:

This coming Tuesday I’m on with Glenn Garnes at Relationship Marketing Center on BlogTalkRadio — I’ll post a link to that one after it’s recorded and online.

[Note a week later: here it is.]

Let me know how you enjoy the Dr. Lisa interview!

And, sorry: if you want to know how money is like tofu, you’ll have to listen to the interview!

The current issue of Networking Times, on the theme of “Success in the Face of Adversity,” is on the stands; I thought I’d share with you my last-page editorial (which you can also read on the Networking Times site here).

Many years ago, I was teaching an adult class in macrobiotic philosophy. After class was over and the students picked themselves up and shambled off to their next class, one woman stayed behind. When the room was empty, she came up to me and said, “You’ve lost a child, haven’t you?”

I was stunned. She was right: I had lost my first son to an illness when he was not quite one year old. But how did she know?

My mind raced back over the previous ninety minutes. There was nothing we’d talked about in class that remotely related to the subjects of parenthood, bereavement, infant diseases, or anything else I could think of that would have conveyed even the slightest clues to that buried bit of personal information.

“I just knew,” she said, and I realized that, looking at her, I just knew too. How? I don’t know. But it showed.

Adversity changes you. It doesn’t simply add an experience to your memory banks, it engraves itself onto your being and alters forever who you are. This is true not only of death and bereavement, but also of such experiences as divorce, disappointment, loss of a friendship, discovery of one’s own deep error, reversal of fortunes, frustration of an ambition, failure or collapse of an enterprise.

I sometimes tell new distributors in our network marketing business that we won’t consider them truly in the business, genuinely committed and in for the long haul, until after they’ve had their first crushing disappointment. Hearing myself say those words sometimes makes me cringe, because it sounds a bit brutal—but it’s the absolute truth.

About your business, and about your life.

Losing a child was an experience so terrible I would not wish it on anyone. Yet at the same time, now that it’s part of who I am, I cannot truly say I wish it gone, either. It certainly made me less cocky (at least a little), and also a bit more capable of empathizing with another’s pain.

Loss and failure shape you; they tend to carve furrows of compassion, understanding and generosity of spirit.

And that was how the woman knew I’d lost a child: she recognized the impact of adversity because it resonated in her, the way an A-440 tuning fork hums when you strike an A on the piano.

While it’s true that loss and failure tend to carve furrows of compassion and understanding, that result is not foreordained. People respond to suffering in different ways. Adversity can deepen character, but sometimes it simply damages character. Faced with difficulty that feels too great to bear, the human being has two choices: break, or bend. In the breaking, we simply become bitter; in the bending, we are humbled and stretched.

You have no choice but to suffer loss; it is an inevitable part of the human journey.

To break or to bend: there is the choice.