Move 16: Have Successful Kids

This one is tricky. If you have kids, you need them to be very successful. Their success makes you look good. Talking about all the amazing things that they are achieving shows that they come from greatness: you.

Things your kids can do that would be considered successful would included graduating from, or currently attending, a prestigious University. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford are the old standby classics. It is a nice move to drop a college name that they DON'T know about so that when they look it up later they understand just how little they know: Harvey Mudd College, one of the Clairemont Colleges, is a great example of a highly selective private college.

Or your son or daughter could be traveling the world doing a film documentary on hunger for Bono.

Another possibility is that they are running their own venture capital business after getting their MBA from Brown, especially if it is hinted that it is a great foundation for running your own business when the time comes.

Move 1: The Business Card

The first move is to get a new business card. You'll need one that is very plain, overly subtle, with no company name or enigmatic personal details.


There are only four items on the card:

1. Your full legal name with middle initial, centered on the card in a elegant serif font, preferably using small caps.
   
2. A P.O. Box address in New York, London, San Francisco, Rancho Santa Fe, or Beverly Hills.
   
3. A single phone number
   
4. And finally an e-mail address; the best have a subtle message: @post.harvard.edu, @aya.yale.edu, @gatesfoundation.org (if your name is Bill), or some other prestigious domain. Surprisingly @aol.com addresses are acceptable -- for some reason the rich and famous still use AOL as their own private club.

Additional subtlety depends on a very high grade of thick, slightly off-white card stock with a font that is not part of any package of fonts -- you can't have this font without paying full price is an important part of the understated message.