From makeup to merchandising: Rock legend Gene Simmons reveals the business strategy behind KISS' 50-year reign as a cultural phenomenon. What We Discuss with Gene Simmons: According to Gene Simmons of KISS fame, pursuing wealth isn't just about personal gain but about creating value and jobs for others. Like a stone thrown into a pond, he sees wealth creation rippling outward to benefit society, even when the wealthy person might not be particularly altruistic. Gene's metamorphosis from an impoverished immigrant child who had never seen television or tasted jam into a global rock star serves as a powerful metaphor for the American Dream's transformative potential. KISS' innovative approach to band sustainability focused on building devoted fan loyalty rather than chasing hit singles, creating what Gene describes as an "album band" culture. This strategy, like planting a tree rather than picking flowers, prioritized long-term growth over immediate success. Behind the makeup and theatrical persona, Gene reveals himself to be an unexpectedly scholarly figure, displaying deep knowledge of theology, history, and business. His ability to counter religious critics with biblical verses and his understanding of entertainment industry economics show how knowledge can be wielded as both shield and sword. Gene demonstrates that reinvention is always possible through decisive action. As he puts it: "Don't like your looks? Change them. Don't like your name? Change it. Don't like where you live? Move." This philosophy of taking control of your circumstances, rather than being controlled by them, is something anyone can apply to their own life's journey, regardless of their starting point. And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1092 And if you're still game to support us, please leave a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally! This Episode Is Brought To You By Our Fine Sponsors: jordanharbinger.com/deals Sign up for Six-Minute Networking — our free networking and relationship development mini course — at jordanharbinger.com/course! Subscribe to our once-a-week Wee Bit Wiser newsletter today and start filling your Wednesdays with wisdom! Do you even Reddit, bro? Join us at r/JordanHarbinger!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: What insights does Gene Simmons share about wealth creation?
Coming up next on The Jordan Harbinger Show. If you have a hit single and you just sing in the microphone, they're paying more money for a ticket than they do for the album. It makes fans. Michael Jackson, without all that dancing and the backwards and the stuff, not the same artist.
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Today on the show, Gene Simmons, lead singer of Kiss. Whether you're a fan or not, Kiss and Gene are legends in the rock scene and have been for decades. I really didn't know what to expect here. And during the interview, well, frankly, he comes across a little bit standoffish sometimes. Though in the end, I think this interview did go in a fun direction. A little vulgar at times.
That's his personality. I guess a lot of corny sex jokes you might also expect if you were like hanging out with a pervy kind of grandpa kind of dude. But we also dive into money, fame, parenting, and even Taylor Swift. All right, here we go with the one and only Gene Simmons. I told my trainer that I was interviewing you. He's from Newfoundland, where your wife is from.
And he told me that he had some mutual contacts growing up. And while the Internet says she's from St. John's, Newfoundland, have you heard about the small town where she's apparently actually from? Dildo. Dildo. I thought that was fake. But since you've heard of it, it's not.
I want to tell you the actual. You want to hear something crazy? Yeah.
That's kind of crazy.
Yeah, it was. That checks the box. See what I did there? We actually went and visited there because there's a dildo post office. She hates it when I mention this. And we ate at the dildo cafe. Overlooking Placentia Bay. No. Look it up on Google and Schmoogle. And there's Captain Dildo. It's a fascia, in other words, a two-dimensional thing of a guy with a beard, just like you'd expect.
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Chapter 2: How did Gene Simmons' background shape his success?
Well, I called my solo record, one of them, Asshole. Just naming a self-moniker, a self-administered moniker. Was that the idea behind that? We all have one. Do you consider yourself Israeli and American, or how does that sort of work in your brain?
It's relative, depending on who's looking at you. I see. So when, as opposed to if, aliens land on the planet, they won't understand the differences. If you're in America, whatever racial group, and you come from the South... How y'all doing? What are you doing over there? You kind of go, snicker, snicker. Listen to how they talk. They're from the south. I'm from the, ah, those northern bastards.
Then there's East Coast versus West Coast. And then you look at middle America. Well, nothing happens there. And they look at you. Everybody's got differences. Then there's old age, young kids. You're an amoeba. You don't know anything. Then there's black, white, Hispanic, all the differences. Even Cain and Abel didn't get along very well. So your definition of yourself is based on to whom.
So if I was, quote, African-American and I lived in Harlem, I'd never think about being black because almost all my friends and almost everybody around me is black. And I don't want to talk for other white people, but there are varying degrees of who your mother was, who your grandmother was. You can be mixed or not mixed or all that stuff.
At the end of the day, you try to go through the stop signs and the different lanes of life, and then you die. So there's not much going on except trying to figure out how to be comfortable in your skin, whether anybody else gets it or not. So I've always been delusional about myself. Yeah.
Yeah, you mention that in the book. Tell me what that means. I mean, I know what it means, but tell us what it means.
How about this? I know Mike Tyson a little bit. We've spent time over the years. And to hear Mike talk, if you just turn off the visuals and the history, you would never imagine that that voice was the most dangerous person on two legs that ever stepped into the ring. That's true. Mindset and will dominates. In fact, if you're about to die in the hospital, doctors try to talk you.
There's such a thing as will to survive, will to live. And you can be self-destruct in your mind and release toxins. And you hurry up the clock where you die. What do they die from? A broken heart. What the fuck does that mean? Yeah, I don't know. No, actually, your body releases negative toxins which kill you from the inside. So Tyson, well, he was always too short to be a heavyweight.
He didn't have a long reach because he was short. He never had the girth or the strength early on. He used to get picked on. I don't want to go into how he survived. He'll tell you that himself. And he doesn't have the lowest voice. And there was an impediment, you know, all that kith and all that.
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Chapter 3: What is KISS's strategy for building fan loyalty?
Did I pronounce that correctly? I think you nailed it. What's up? Yeah, nailed it. Despite the fact that it's a T at the end and not an S, but I still pronounce it S. Yeah. That's incorrect, isn't it?
I don't know. I think it's the popular vernacular.
You tried a vernacular? That's a Dracula, right? Yeah, you start saying what's up in a big corporate event, see how far that gets you. I think you could get away with it.
No. You think you can? I think you could get away with it.
Oh, I could get away with it, but only because of the fame and the money. Somebody who's looking for job security, not going to work.
Not recommended.
Say yo to your boss. Oh, yeah. See how that works. I don't have one, but yeah, I don't recommend that. But it's my culture. I know, but you're fired.
Yeah. So I always heard you had surgery that got your tongue to stick out further, or is it purely genetic? No. I was going to ask how you brought that up to the doctor.
I guess the doctor pulled me out by the wrong appendage. Yeah, maybe.
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Chapter 4: How does Gene Simmons view the importance of knowledge?
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If you're wondering how I managed to book all these great authors, thinkers, and creators, and Gene Simmons every single week, it's because of my network, the circle of people I know, like, and trust. And I'm teaching you how to build your network for free over at 6minutenetworking.com. This course is about improving your relationship-building skills. It's not cringey. It's not awkward.
It's very practical. It takes a few minutes a day, and many of the guests on our show already subscribe and contribute to the course. So come on and join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. You can find the course at 6minutenetworking.com. All right, now back to Gene Simmons. The best sort of cartoons and animation is like that, right?
You ever see a Disney movie with your kids and there's jokes where you go, oh, only adults get that. That's like, that's good as art.
Less Disney and more Fritz Freeling and Chuck Jones and Warner Brothers.
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Chapter 5: What does Gene Simmons say about reinvention?
Yeah, I agree with that. But Hitler didn't do a good job. He left it worse. That's true. Yeah, most people would agree with that. And I actually met somebody who said, yeah, but he built good roads. Okay.
Yeah, sure. Small silver lining. I don't even know how to react to that. Early in the game, I heard you engineered crowds in the early days so that you'd find KISS would be on a stage with another band, put a bunch of girls up in the front row with KISS t-shirts.
Kind of like a, not a publicity stunt, but something to convince, what, A&R and those folks from record labels, like, hey, these people are all here to see KISS. At the very first show. Yeah. Tell me about that.
That's smart, obviously. That's really clever. Well, you're only going to get the respect you demand. You know, you have to assume that people don't have an imagination. Right. Sinatra had the same thing happen. His manager at the time went out and got high school girls and paid them 50 bucks or something to be in the front and do all that stuff.
And they were called Bobby Soxers, Sinatra fans, because they were in school, had those Catholic skirts. They were called that. It's not a religious thing. That was just like an Italian t-shirt. That's what it was called. And those short skirts and the socks went way up the leg. Bobby Soxers. And then nobody else did that in rock because it was not credible. I don't care about credible.
I just care about winning. You're not supposed to do licensing and merchandising. Who said that? Can I please meet that loser? He was probably still living in his mother's basement.
I love the idea of you sort of engineered the crowd, finessed the A&R folks, and it didn't matter because it turned out all you needed was their attention. But you had the goods to back it up. It wasn't all smoke and beer.
Well, I think whether it's the least or the most, Just give me a chance. Again, because the vast majority in the world never even get the chance. So claw, do the best you can just to get up to bat. You may strike out, but if you never swing the bat, guaranteed you'll strike out. You won't even get a chance. All I want's a chance.
Do you know who Shep Gordon is? Does that name ring a bell? I know him well. Yeah, you know him well? Yeah, so he's a friend of mine. And that reminded me of something he would do. He's Alice Cooper's manager, for people who don't know.
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Chapter 6: How does Gene Simmons relate money to purpose in life?
Not in music. Innovators are Elon Musk. Tell me about that. NASA, with all the hundreds of billions of dollars, couldn't figure out how to reuse a rocket. So every time they launched something, they had to throw it away. Elon Musk reused it. Can land take off, land take off. Electric cars outsold all the car companies, changed it overnight. Car companies didn't want to do it. Unions.
See what I did there? He doesn't care. It always takes one visionary, a futurist who doesn't care, just wants to do what they want to do. Alexander Graham Bell, Edison, even Ford at the beginning, who created this kind of assembly line thing, which didn't exist before Futurists don't look at what is. They do what they want to do. So Elon's got the boring company. He's going to have robot taxis.
It's just all this stuff. It's not waiting to ask anybody what they think. He will be the first legal trillionaire.
By the way, within two years. It's impressive. I'm waiting to see if Boring or any of those companies actually do anything. Although, look, I'm a happy investor in Tesla, I'll tell you that. I invested early, and that turned out to be a pretty good shout. Did you invest in anything like that? Do you do your own investments, or are you just kind of... Myself, yes. You seem like the type.
Yeah, stock market watcher.
Including crypto, futures, commodities. What crypto are you bullish on? I'm curious.
And this is not advice. I'm not a financial advisor. You have to say that full disclosure. I'm not a lawyer. I'm a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer. It depends what kind of lawyer and which state. But probably the two safest for me are Bitcoin and Ethereum. And the rest you have to play.
So you do know what you're talking about. That's impressive.
I've got 13 or 14 different cryptos that I play with.
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