From My Work-in-Progress Basket
283 articles filed under From My Work-in-Progress Basket.
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From My Work-in-Progress Basket
Injustice in the Oldest Sport in America
“Systemic Breedism” Exposed in the Westminster Dog Show “From the equality of rights springs identity of our highest interests; you cannot subvert your neighbor's rights without striking a dangerous blow at…
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Hydroxychloroquine and the Politics of the Corona Crisis
“Just trust yourself, then you will know how to live.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe In his earliest speeches about COVID-19, Trump downplayed the threat and up-played the hope that a vaccine or therapeutic…
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The Pareto Principle, Part III
Entropy and the Impossibility of Equality “If you don’t like something change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.” – Maya Angelou Let’s talk about the Second Law of Thermodynamics… The Second Law…
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The Pareto Principle Applies Everywhere, Even Business
“The way is long if one follows precepts, but short… if one follows patterns.” – Lucius Annaeus Seneca The Pareto Principle, Part II: A Universal Law That Even Applies to Business The Pareto Principle would be…
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Pareto Principle, Part I: The Secret of the 1%
“Give me the fruitful error anytime, full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections.” – Vilfredo Pareto It may be the most important idea in economics – but it also applies to science, to sports, and to…
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Why Billionaire Goals Backfire For Entrepreneurs
“I’m not sure this business is for me,” he said. “Why is that?” I asked. I’d been mentoring TJ, the son of one of my partners, for about a year. I was helping him develop a small business that I’d started the…
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Investment Real Estate Outlook for the Rest of 2020 and Beyond
“The most reliable way to forecast the future is to try to understand the present.” – John Naisbitt Investment Real Estate Outlook for the Rest of 2020 and Beyond On Sunday, I briefly answered a question sent…
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The Hidden Costs Of Asking For Favors
“Gratitude is merely the secret hope of further favors.” – François de la Rochefoucauld The Unpleasant Truth About Asking for Favors I recently intercepted a memo from a partner of mine. It appeared to be a…
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Why It’s Okay to Fall in Love With Your Investible Art
Passion is a popular emotion these days. We are encouraged to be passionate about our careers, our hobbies, and even our ideas. Like most popular ideas, this one is mostly wrong. On the risk/reward scale, it…
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Defining Privilege Beyond The Political Noise
“Tradition has it that whenever a group of people has tasted the lovely fruits of wealth, security, and prestige, it begins to find it more comfortable to believe in the obvious lie and accept that it alone is…
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Tribal Dynamics in Business
Note: The following essay is an excerpt from the upcoming new and revised edition of Ready, Fire, Aim. Tribal Dynamics in Business “The person who knows HOW will always have a job. The person who knows WHY…
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Don't Bore Your Interviewer With Corporate Jargon
“Don’t expect others to listen to what you have to say unless what you have to say is interesting to others.” – Michael Masterson If You’re Trying to Impress Me, Don’t Do This He had been strongly recommended…
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Fine Art As a Long-Term Investment
“There’s something to be said about the art-industrial complex, the collectors who recognize that your work has some sort of future economic value.” – Kehinde Wiley In 1989, a triptych by Francis Bacon sold…
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How Social Media Replaces Deep Reading With Shallow Bytes
The End of Real Knowledge “The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most…
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The End of Intimacy, Trust, and Love
“When I got my first television set, I stopped caring so much about having close relationships.” – Andy Warhol I’ve been thinking about how the world has been coming apart lately. Homo sapiens, as is often…
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George Floyd's Death And The Fight For Justice
“We can no longer ignore the fact that America is not the… land of the free and the home of the brave.” – Fannie Lou Hamer Black Lives Matter George Floyd was arrested, handcuffed, put facedown to the ground…
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Seven Personality Traits Of Entrepreneurial CEOs
“A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.” – John C. Maxwell Hiring Someone to Grow Your Business: The 7 Personality Traits of a Superstar Entrepreneurial CEO So, you want to hire…
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How to Be Happy With Your Money
“He that is of the opinion that money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money.” – Benjamin Franklin How to Be Happy With Your Money It is often said that money doesn’t buy…
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When Your Best Work Comes From Humility
Sebastian was flattered when Michael, his former protégé, asked him to critique the promotion he’d written. After all, Sebastian hadn’t written much copy in the 10 years that had passed since they worked…
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Letting Adult Children Find Their Own Way
We are in a taxi in Paris – the four of us. PB gets a call. She gives us the sorry look and looks at the phone. She smiles. “It’s L,” she says. L is her daughter, her bright, beautiful daughter. We’ve known L…
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Art Collecting: Learn While You Earn
“The only time life allows for happiness is the present. Right now. In this very moment.” – Michael Masterson Investing in museum-quality art will make you richer financially as the years pass, but owning that…
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Finding Truth When Ideology Clouds The Debate
Ever since Trump took office, conversation with many friends and most of my family has been a challenge. They feel about him the way some of my conservative friends and colleagues feel about Hillary Clinton…
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Why Free Charity Offers Often Backfire
In Part 1 of “Free Is a Bad Idea,” I wrote about how “free” is generally bad in business – in particular, how free offers tend to work poorly as marketing campaigns and can actually weaken the long-term…
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Why Free Offers Usually Fail In Business
After many years of mulling it over, I’ve come to the conclusion that giving away things for free is a bad idea. I’m sure that statement will sound odd or even idiotic to many people, but give me a chance to…
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How Simplifying Your Work Life Increases Success
About 20 years ago, I did a little experiment. I wanted to find out if it really is possible to do business from anywhere in the world. So I packed my family off to Rome (one of my favorite cities) for a…
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Let’s Talk About Art…
“There are two ways that art is judged as good: connoisseurship and marketing.” – Michael Masterson Let’s Talk About Art…* “Why did you put ‘art’ in the headline?” my inner editor shouts. “Because that’s the…
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Principles of Wealth #38
“We can all – even the poorest of us – increase our wealth daily by doing some small thing to enhance the value of our property, our knowledge, our skills, and our trustworthiness.” – Michael Masterson…
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When Your Employees Become Your Friends
We arrived at the resort after an arduous journey. It was late and we were hungry, so we went straight to the restaurant. GP was sitting at the big table in the middle of the restaurant with about a half-dozen…
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When Your Great Idea Takes Too Long
I make my living by coming up with ideas. It’s a great way to pay the bills. And I’ve been doing it now for so long that the ideas come easily – on walks, in the shower, while reading, etc. Many of them seem…
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Pandemic Fatigue Drives Crowds Back To Beaches
Every day, more people are walking the sidewalk alongside the beach across the street from my house. A month ago, someone would pass by every three or four minutes. A week ago, it was a steady trickle. Now…
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Learning Wealth Building From A Skeptical Accountant
When I first started making more money than I was spending, I asked my partner to recommend someone to help me do my taxes. “You should speak to Sid,” he told me. He does my taxes and he’s good. Plus, he got…
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When Did COVID-19 Actually Arrive In America?
“Credit is a system whereby a person who can not pay gets another person who can not pay to guarantee that he can pay.” – Charles Dickens K and I were in LA for two weeks at the end of February. We were…
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The Corona Economy, Part II
“Performance is better than promise. Exuberant assurances are cheap.” – Joseph Pulitzer The Corona Economy, Part II Will America Survive It? Alec writes: Today marks the 29th day in a row that I have worn…
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My Last Essay on the Coronavirus (I Promise!)
“Imagine preventing health crises, not just responding to them.” – Nathan Wolfe My Last Essay on the Coronavirus (I Promise!) 5 Important Questions; 5 Conclusions Once again, we were having a family argument…
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Economics And Ethics Collide During Pandemic
“Economics is a subject that does not greatly respect one’s wishes.” – Nikita Khrushchev The Corona Economy, Part I: Will America Survive It? New York City is losing billions in tax revenues, and Mayor Bill De…
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The Coronavirus and Making Friends With Your Devil
A friend of mine, an economist and investment analyst, sent me a note saying that he is “expecting” the coronavirus pandemic to lead to absolute disaster, both in terms of public health and the economy. He may…
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LA Story and More on the Challenge of Charity
One was refusing to eat. The other was smearing yogurt on her face. The toast was burning. And Baxter, the 160-pound mutt, was humping my leg. Of all the childrearing experiences we’ve been reliving on this…
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Big Dogs and Big Asks
Walking down Ambrose Avenue with Baxter at my side, I spotted another dog walker coming up the street towards us. This was my first time walking Baxter since he was a puppy. I didn’t know what to expect, so I…
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What Makes Someone Instantly Likeable
Shaun, my Uber driver this morning, grew up in Atlanta. He had a smooth, caramel-colored complexion and a voice to go with it. He was young and instantly likeable. What made him likable? I’m trying to figure…
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Achieve More in Your Career – Faster and Easier – With a Mentor, Part 1
“It can be no dishonor to learn from others when they speak good sense.”– Sophocles Achieve More in Your Career – Faster and Easier – With a Mentor, Part 1 It can take a decade or more to become the successful…
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Poop Patrol and the Illusions of Getting Rich
“We desire gold not for its true value but for the glittering illusion of value it gives.” – Michael Masterson Poop Patrol and the Illusions of Getting Rich It was a daunting challenge: two two piles of poop…
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Understanding the Optimum Selling Strategy
A sneak peek at a chapter from the upcoming new and revised edition of Ready, Fire, Aim… Understanding the Optimum Selling Strategy Why It Is Critical for Your Start-Up Business In launching a business, the…
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What is the biggest challenge facing internet marketers today?
“I have been up against tough competition all my life. I wouldn’t know how to get along without it.” – Walt Disney What is the biggest challenge facing internet marketers today? This is one of the questions I…
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Argentina's Economic Paradox: Sophistication Meets Systemic Dysfunction
“The ultimate purpose of economics, of course, is to understand and promote the enhancement of well-being.”– Ben Bernanke What You Should Know About Argentina Argentines are sophisticated people. They have…
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Why Customer Surveys Often Lead You Astray
“It’s much easier to fool yourself than to fool others.”– Michael Masterson A Quick Little Marketing Lesson: The Problem with “Listening” to Your Customers “Don’t make assumptions about what your customers…
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The Bizarre Rationale Behind Private Equity Funds
Vanguard, that folksy company that has so successfully catered to middle-income investors for most of my adult life, is opening a private equity fund. It’s part of an attempt to “broaden the company’s appeal……
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Principles of Wealth #36
“Compound interest is the 8thwonder of the world.”– attributed to Albert Einstein Principles of Wealth #36* Most wealth seekers believe they understand “the miracle of compound interest” – how saved money…
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How to Stop Your Boss From Turning You Into a Human Suggestion Box
“Pull the string, and it will follow wherever you wish. Push it, and it will go nowhere at all.”– Dwight D. Eisenhower How to Stop Your Boss From Turning You Into a Human Suggestion Box I have a reputation for…
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Merriam-Webster’s
“I believe we developed language because of our deep, inner need to complain.”– Lily Tomlin Merriam-Webster’s Words of the Decade What Do They Tell Us About These Last 10 Years… and What Does It Tell Us About…
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Masterson’s Law: Why You Should “Fire” 10% of Your Customer Base
“A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large.”– Henry Ford Masterson’s Law: Why You Should “Fire” 10% of Your Customer Base You own a…
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