Numerous studies demonstrate that good looking people have a measurable advantage in life. How do we determine what is “good looking”? According to neurologist Anjan Chatterjee, it’s because of the way our brains evolved. We are, he says, wired to see as beautiful “the average of all the physical factors that determine reproductive success.”

In men, for example, muscles and high cheekbones are attractive because they indicate strength. In women, an hourglass body shape is attractive because it indicates the ability to bear children.

Conversely, wrinkled skin is unattractive because it indicates old age. And physical deformities are unattractive because they vary from “average.”

Interestingly, what we think of as beautiful is actually the average look of a healthy body. This was discovered by using a computer to blend together thousands of photos of healthy men and women. The result was images that are almost identical to what most people consider to be “good looking.”

Of course, we all know that physical beauty indicates neither goodness nor intelligence. But the “prejudice” to view people that way is deep in our brains. So deep that we need to consciously discriminate against it “if we wish to treat people fairly.”

It took us nearly 17 years to recognize a fact about marketing that we already knew. I’m talking about frequency: how often you should “hit” your prospects with ads.

Instinct tells us it should be not too often. (You don’t want to burn them out.) And that instinct is what was behind the early formulas for sending ads to Internet prospects and buyers. The first rule was the most conservative: Only one email out of five could be a sales piece. Some of our bolder marketers did more. And before long, the rule was to send out seven emails a week, one a day. Four of them editorial; three of them advertising.

That became the dominant formula for at least a dozen years. And it was working fine. The problem, I knew at the time, was that it had never been tested. And then it was tested. And every time a test was done that “hit” prospects and customers more frequently, sales rose.

This is exactly what happened in the direct marketing industry 40 years ago. We went from mailing our customers twice a month to mailing them daily on a non-stop basis until the mailings failed.

A few months ago, I persuaded one of my clients to move from three emailings a week to every day. After two weeks, her sales were up 37%. I checked in with her yesterday to see if those results had diminished. “Far from it,” she said. “They’re up 47%!”

I understand the instinct to limit your advertising. Even after all these years of reality contradicting it, it’s still stuck in my brain.

So what I tell my clients is this: If your advertising is pushy and obnoxious, you will wear away your customer file with frequent emails. But if it is smart and informative and useful, you should increase the frequency until the sales report, not your instinct, tells you to stop.

I probably shouldn’t be reprinting stuff like this, but since I’m part of the group and since it seems that golfers are nearly universally fond of puerile and/or sentimental and/or downright corny humor (and since I’m part of the group), I give you these questions – some of which I’ve actually asked – passed this way by Joey Mac:

• Why do we leave cars worth thousands of dollars in our driveways and put our useless junk in the garage?
• Why don’t you ever see the headline “Psychic Wins Lottery”?Why is it that doctors and attorneys call what they do “practice”?
• Why is the man who invests all your money called a “broker”?
• Why isn’t there mouse-flavored cat food?
• Why are apartments all stuck together?

Got this message today from my brother Justin: “We just closed on the sale of the ‘Seabird,’ our 12-unit apartment building 99 yards from the wide white-sand beach in Pompano Beach. We bought the property from a bank in 2011 for $515,000. We put a few hundred thousand in it over the years, but much of that was from cash flow. So our sale price of $1.325 million still netted us very healthy capital gains. Specifically, we’re distributing just shy of $770,000, including just over $667,000 in capital gains.”

Justin has been building a very impressive real estate portfolio since he quit working for me in 2009 and went out on his own to make his fortune in real estate. I’ve been investing with him since then, and it’s been the best passive real estate experience I’ve ever had. Not just in terms of ROI, but in promises kept and communication.

 Anthony Hopkins is one of the world’s greatest living actors.

He’s probably best known for his portrayal of Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs (for which he won an Academy Award), its sequel Hannibal, and its prequel Red Dragon. Of his dozens of great film performances, my favorite may be in The Remains of the Day. He’s also acted in many theatrical productions and on television. (He starred in the critically acclaimed HBO series Westworld.)

Besides his Oscar, Hopkins has won three BAFTA Awards (including one for lifetime achievement), two Emmys, and the Cecil B. DeMille Award.

I sort of knew all that. But what I didn’t know was this…

Sir Anthony is a talented composer.

It turns out that he’s been a student of music as long as he’s been acting.

I bumped into this fact accidently. I was searching for a piece of music – I can’t remember what it was – when I stumbled on something I liked very much. It was called “The Waltz Goes On,” performed by André Rieu and his Johann Strauss Orchestra. I noticed it was attributed to “Anthony Hopkins.”

“It can’t be THE Anthony Hopkins,” I thought.

I was wrong.

Here is the LINK:  “André Rieu – Under the Stars. Live in Maastricht 5”

This isn’t the only music that Hopkins has composed. He also wrote a concert piece titled “The Masque of Time.” And in 1986, he released “Distant Star,” a single that peaked at No. 75 in the UK.

Anthony Hopkins is serious about music. In fact, I read that in 2007 he retired temporarily from acting to do a musical tour.

In a 2012 interview, he said, “If I’d been clever enough at school I would like to have gone to Music College. As it was I had to settle for being an actor.”

Trivia Question: Can you name another famous actor that had a talent for music and composed a beautiful and memorable song in Spanish?

Hint: He was a silent film star. THE silent film star.

 “Is sweating healthy?”

Never one to be without an answer, I said, “Yes!” And then, “At least I think so.” And then I looked it up. It turns out sweating is useful but it’s not healthy in the sense that it will make you live longer. The primary purpose of sweating, my research says, is to cool down the body when it is overheating. Ideally, the sweat evaporates, thus cooling the skin. (In humid climates, this evaporation is reduced, which is why it takes longer to cool down in Florida than it does in Arizona.)

So I guess the answer is, “No.” But sweating does feel good when I’m exercising. And if it feels good, it could mean the body wants me to keep doing it because it is healthy.

Plus, I read synopses of scientific studies that show that saunas have proven health benefits. Saunas are hot. And you sweat in saunas. So I’m not ready to accept the research. Let’s say this: When you are overheated, sweating is necessary. And since saunas are healthy, maybe sweating is too.

Here’s a good plot for your next TV true crime script… It happened on the Hudson River.

Angelika Graswald and her fiancé, Vincent Viafore, were kayaking on the Hudson River when he disappeared into the white water. She called 911. The police came. Her fiancé had drowned, apparently because someone had removed a plug from the boat and a locking clip for the paddle, the lack of which caused the boat to capsize and the fiancé to drown.

But then, in talking to the cops, the 37-year-old said that “it felt good knowing he was going to die.”

Huh?

In the days after Mr. Viafore’s disappearance, according to the police report, Ms. Graswald “behaved in ways that struck some who knew the couple as unusual, singing “Hotel California” at a local pub and using social media to post selfies and a video clip that showed her doing a cartwheel.

The police also said that, during a lengthy interrogation with investigators, she said that she knew she was the beneficiary of two life insurance policies belonging to Mr. Viafore and stood to receive a total of $250,000.

Her lawyer, Richard A. Portale, argued that she was coerced by investigators and that there was a language barrier between Ms. Graswald, a native of Latvia, and the police.

 My Former Partner’s Amazing Transition

Myles warned me that if I kept writing essays encouraging employees to start their own businesses some of them would leave to do that… including some of our best people. He was right about Tom… and Tim and Josh. They all had great-paying and exciting jobs with one of the financial publishing groups but left to do their own thing last year. Contrary to what I’ve always suggested, they started a business that was considerably different from the one they knew.

I wished them the best but feared the worst. In fact, they made it work. And now Tom, who was a great writer, is writing about it in a daily blog, which I find to be riveting. Here’s an example:

From:

The corner of Federal and Atlantic

Thursday, 10:25 a.m.

 Picture this.

 Tim and I are in Dunkin Donuts. We’re about to meet two very successful businessmen from the aluminum industry. At this point, we have no clients. And no revenue.

 This is our big chance.

 We have printouts. I have a sales pitch in my head. I even bought a limited edition OneBlade razor as a gift to help seal the deal.

 We’re going to ask for $1,500 per month.

 Gulp.

 Then a funny thing happens…

 The men walk in. We make our pitch. They say “okay” like we’re offering a coffee refill.

 And then THEY pitch US.

 My friends and I jumped through The Portal and into The Unknown of kitchen table entrepreneurship 12 months ago. We started with nothing. No capital. No knowledge. No experience. No business model.

 Just the username and password to an Internet course that promised to teach us how to make money online.

 It was a decision of pure faith.

 Now, here in The Unknown, we’re having a great adventure. We’ve picked up treasure. We’ve overcome obstacles. We’ve had to fend off scary monsters. We’ve noticed something else about The Unknown too…

 There are magical creatures and friendly spirits everywhere that help you along your way.

 We started off in this business generating leads for aluminum screen enclosures. We spent months trying to make it work. Terrible business. But it led us to meeting these two men at Dunkin Donuts.

 “We’ve got another product we want your help with,” says one of the businessmen. “It’s got nothing to do with aluminum screen enclosures, but it’s a national product. And it’s very popular. Can you generate leads for that?”

 “Uh, sure,” we said. “We can try.”

 Today, we call these two businessmen “Client #1.” Generating leads for their national product is our most important project. It launched our business. And we’re making nearly $15k a month from them.

 Total luck. But that’s what happens in The Unknown.