Mark Calvey | SF Business Times

Gene Simmons, who has turned the 1970s band Kiss into a licensing powerhouse, offered plenty of advice on how to succeed in business and life in speaking this week to a private equity audience in San Francisco.
“Spreading the risk is not just good business advice, it’s an important life strategy,” Simmons told 500 people attending the Association of Corporate Growth’s 2012 West Coast Corporate Growth Conference in San Francisco Jan. 17.
Simmons shared some the history behind the creation of Kiss in 1973, while he was working as a New York public school teacher.
“You can’t just do the rock-band thing. You need something else to fall back on,” was his mother’s early career advice. (Asked later who is his most influential adviser, Simmons was quick to say, “My mother. She’s very pragmatic. She’s the smartest person I ever met.”)
“I played in a band because I noticed when the Beatles played on the Ed Sullivan show, all the girls were going nuts,” Simmons said. “That looked like a pretty good job.”
And definitely a step up from his first job at the age of 12, scraping the fat off a butcher’s block and bringing up meat from downstairs.
Simmons was far ahead of today’s career advice to brand one’s self.
“The business model of Kiss was decidedly different than almost any other band that came before us — underlying rights, ancillaries, these are big words like gymnasium,” Simmons said. “I had to find out about trademarks and how to amortize our costs and maximize profits.”

What prompted him to trademark the Kiss face?
“The audience told me everything I needed to know,” Simmons told the San Francisco Business Times after delivering his luncheon address. “Before people were thinking of licensing and merchandising, I noticed people started wearing our faces.
“It is your inferred fiduciary duty to make your name mean something,” he said, noting that the band has issued 3,000 licensing agreements. Kiss Hello Kitty is among the latest offerings, joining Kiss toilet paper, credit card, caskets and condoms.
His many business ventures include Cool Springs Financial Group, which provides life insurance to wealthy Americans, and the popular TV show “Gene Simmons Family Jewels.”
“It’s called spreading the risk,” Simmons said. “Always spread the risk.”
In his wide-ranging presentation, he also touched on what he sees ailing America.
“This system that we have allows almost anyone to become rich,” Simmons said. “But instead of rewarding entrepreneurship, you’ll get beaten up by the press and those who feel they should have the same things you do.
“There’s a disease running rampant in American culture. It’s called entitlement,” Simmons warned. “I don’t want people to feel indebted if someone gives them a dollar. I want them to feel proud when they earn that dollar.”
In other business advice, Simmons says he’s a big proponent of using focus groups, even for marketing powerhouses like Coca-Cola    . (NYSE: KO) The soda giant made a rare stumble by replacing its ubiquitous red cans with white ones late last year to promote its efforts to save polar bears. The cans were confused with the silver-colored cans of Diet Coke.
“Go to the people least qualified and let them tell you whether it will work,” Simmons said. “We all work for the great unwashed masses.”