“If his lips are moving, he’s lying”

 - D'Ramirez

 
There are some people you do business with and others you don’t. Wayne Rogers had a simple way of ferreting them out.

Rogers, best known as Trapper John on the television show M*A*S*H, had a second career as an investment and business guru.

According to Rogers, there are four kinds of business deals: good deals with good people, bad deals with bad people, good deals with bad people, and bad deals with good people.

The first two are simple. Everyone wants good deals with good people, and no one wants bad deals with bad people.

Regarding the other possibilities, Rogers said that good deals with bad people will always fail and that a bad deal with good people could potentially work out someday.

Character is more important than talent, a great deal, or promised riches.

It is surprising how many businesses don’t get it. Some sports teams don’t get it either.

The Cincinnati Bengals should be headed for the Super Bowl. Instead, they are watching the playoffs on television. They have a talented football team. They also are making a lot of lawyers and bail bondsmen rich. It seemed like every week during the season, a Bengal did something stupid or criminal--often both.

The team had several players you would never invite over for dinner. Unless you had armed guards around the house.

The Bengals lost five games that they should have won.  A team with more character would have pulled a few out.

Paul Brown, who founded the Bengals, was a believer in hiring well-rounded players.  

When all-pro defensive tackle Mike Reid quit to become a musician, Brown encouraged him to pursue his dream. I don’t know if Brown was alive when Reid started receiving Grammy awards, but he would have been proud. Brown had character and looked for players who mirrored his values. 

As a longsuffering Bengals fan, I am frustrated by the choices that the team’s management has made. 

Because they live their lives in the public eye, it is  easy to spot character, determination, and team spirit in professional athletes. It is a lot harder to spot those traits in businesspeople.

Like everyone in business, I’ve been burned by bad people that I thought were good. However, I have not been burned chasing a deals with people I don’t trust. I know that there is so such thing as a good deal with a bad person.

Even before Wayne Rogers summed it up, I watched my late father do business as a gambler.  In his era, you couldn’t sue to enforce a gambling debt.. All that dad had was a person’s word that they were good for the money.

It worked for him. In a world where trust was everything, a person’s reputation became known quickly.

His philosophy was “don’t do business with scum balls.”

It seems like an easy lesson that some  people don’t get.

I’ve had people tell me about deals that are good too be true. It was because they weren’t true. The people peddling them had no history of ever telling the truth. I heard my dad tell a man once, “I judge horses on past performance, and based on your past performance, you are never getting money from me.”

It is not that hard to figure out who is good and who is bad. Some people will fool you, but if you do some homework and be realistic in your expectations, you will rarely get burned.

The Bengals weren’t realistic in what they expected.  They expected players who know the jailer on a first-name basis to develop character and a winning attitude. 

If a football player or a businessperson has a history of being a troublemaker, they will be a cancer to those around them.  They will bring the good players down to their level.

I hope the Bengals get rid of the troublemakers.  If nothing else, it will cut down on their legal expenses.  Like in business, they should realize that when faced  with a ‘great deal’ from  someone with a dubious reputation, just keep singing, “If their lips are moving, they are lying.”

 Don McNay is Chairman of McNay Settlement Group in Richmond, Ky., where we want good people to be involved in good deals.  He is the author of The Unbridled World of Ernie Fletcher.  You can write to him at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or read other things that he has written at www.donmcnay.com. His award-winning column is syndicated on the CNHI News Service.