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
Honesty, Honestly
“It’s hard to know the truth about people by how they look or even what they say, but you can discover a good deal by rummaging through their belongings.”– Michael Masterson Honesty, Honestly Ralph, a protégé…
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Setting Stretch Goals Without Unrealistic Business Expectations
“There is no intellectual merit in holding conventional ideas but there is sometimes wisdom in doing so.” – Michael Masterson Have You Given Your Business “Stretch Goals” for 2020? “Double your revenues with…
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So… You Want to Get Rich? Really?
“When I was a child I dreamed as a child. When I became an adolescent I stopped dreaming and gave up my soul to desire. I became a man when I gave up desire and began to take action.”– Michael Masterson So……
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My Wealth Building Strategy for 2020
The stock market is as perilous today as it’s been in many years. The warning signs are many: The bull market is superannuated (second longest since WWII), the Treasury yield curve is inverted, and the S&P…
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Fifteen Essential Tips For Building An Art Collection
I’m writing this in response to a young friend who’s decided he wants to start collecting art and asked for my advice. I don’t consider myself to be an expert in any aspect of art, but I have had a fair amount…
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American Teenagers Falling Behind On International Reading Tests
“Books are farms. Reading is harvesting. Talking about what you read is replanting.” – Michael Masterson Just One Thing: American Teenagers Are Getting Dumber Despite decades of effort and billions of dollars…
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The ABCs of Inventing a Blockbuster Big Idea Campaign
“Thaw with her gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer. The one melts, the other breaks into pieces.” – Henry David Thoreau The ABCs of Inventing a Blockbuster Big Idea Campaign I’ve heard…
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The Big Idea Marketing Concept Explained
“An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.” – Charles Dickens The Big Idea: The Biggest Misconception in Marketing Is there a marketing concept more misunderstood than…
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Principles of Wealth #35
“Skill and confidence are an unconquered army.” – George Herbert Principles of Wealth #35* With respect to building wealth, there are two kinds of skills: financially valued skills and financially valuable…
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Risk Management Matters More Than Asset Allocation
“All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.” – Sun Tzu Principles of Wealth #34* According to the financial planning community…
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Why Your Possessions Won't Matter After Death
“If you are not happy now with what you’ve got, you won’t be happy later if you get more.” – Michael Masterson Just One Thing: You’re Not a Pharaoh. Don’t Act Like One Several years ago, The New Yorker…
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Just One Thing: The Economics of Overseas Resort Development in One Lesson
“The most important secrets of every business are almost always invisible to outsiders – especially investors.” – Michael Masterson Just One Thing: The Economics of Overseas Resort Development in One Lesson A…
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Just One Thing: Are You a Grower or a Tender?
Take This 10-Question Quiz and Find Out If you want your business to run smoothly, manage it well. Tend to the details. Think in terms of people, protocols, and production. If you want your business to grow…
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Just One Thing: How to Get People to Like You
I’m perverted in oh so many ways. One perversity of mine is the habit of being disagreeable with the people I care about. If I don’t care about someone, I’m as agreeable as a sunny day in London. I will laugh…
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Please… Don’t Follow My Advice!
There are times when I want people to follow my advice, but not often. Most of the time I want people to listen to what I’m saying with an open mind, and then do whatever they think best. True story… When…
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Principles of Wealth #33
The entrepreneur’s five most important jobs are: (1) locating viable markets, (2) creating desirable products for those markets, (3) designing successful sales campaigns, (4) converting new buyers to multiple…
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Just One Thing: How to Negotiate in One Lesson
JSN, my ex-boss/then partner, was, in most ways, a great negotiator. He was aggressive, highly intelligent, and charming. That very rare combination of assets allowed him to get pretty much whatever he wanted…
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Just One Thing: Mission Statements
You don’t need a mission statement to build your business. I’ve helped build dozens of successful multimillion-dollar businesses without one. The largest company I helped build, which grew from $8 million to…
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Principles of Wealth #32
Most people fear entrepreneurship because they believe it takes genius, courage, and luck. In fact, these factors are rare contributors to success in start-up business ventures. The factors that matter most…
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An Interesting Speculation
I’m a conservative investor. I own mostly income-producing assets with cash and precious metals as a back-up. The stocks in my portfolio are industry-dominating billion-dollar businesses with consistent…
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Principles of Wealth #31
There are several assets that have a higher historical ROI than stocks. By adding one or two of them to your portfolio, you can reduce your exposure to stock market risk while boosting your overall results…
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The Guilt of the Almost-Rich Progressive
“It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocket-book often groans more loudly than an empty stomach.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt Inside the Mind of the Not-Quite-Rich Leftist I’ve never been inside his/her…
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Uber's Promise Versus The Reality Of Ride-Sharing
“You ain’t got to wait on a cab no more; just call your Uber, and it pulls up.” – Trip Lee Uber: A Great Idea, a Bad Strategy, a Cheapskate Market For as long as I can remember, taxi service in the Big Apple…
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Principles of Wealth #30
If you have realistic expectations, you can do very well with stocks. I’m what you might call a chicken-shit investor. But there have been a few times when I’ve taken a risk – invested good money in a…
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Why Listening to Sad Music Makes You Feel Better
“One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.” -Bob Marley I like sad music. Sometimes I love it. Many of my favorite tunes are melancholy. I’m listening to one of those now: Bach’s Prelude…
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Sad Stories in an Age of Pity Porn
“The only thing that’s the end of the world is the end of the world.” – Barack Obama An acquaintance of mine, a bright guy, has created a large Internet following by what I think of as failure porn – telling…
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Twenty Years Of Jiu Jitsu, Basic Mistakes Overlooked
Even when I’m traveling, I try to get in some sort of Jiu Jitsu practice. When I was in New York a few weeks ago, I took two lessons from Paul Schreiner, one of Marcelo Garcia’s instructors and a great student…
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Looking Back on Robert Mugabe’s Career
Last week, Robert Mugabe, the long-time leader of Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) died. He was 95. Looking Back on Robert Mugabe’s Career: How to Bankrupt a Country and Keep It Poor for 40 Years In 1975, I was…
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The Charity Tax Deduction Myth Explained
My brother-in-law is an experienced businessman. Intelligent guy, college-educated, etc. We were talking about Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, and he said something like: “Well, those guys give money to charity…
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Growers, Tenders, Givers, And Takers
The most important factor in the success of your business is people. And that makes the most important decisions you make about people – whom you hire, whom you fire, and what you ask them to do. Some people…
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Principles of Wealth #29
There are proven ways to safely achieve a higher-than-average ROI for certain asset classes under certain conditions. One can, for example, safely double the ROIs on income-producing real estate by using bank…
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Warren Buffett's Hedge Fund Bet And Market Lessons
In 2007, Warren Buffett made a 10-year, million-dollar bet with Ted Seides, a very successful hedge-fund manager. Seides had claimed that, in that time, hedge funds would outperform the markets. So Buffett…
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Myths and Facts About the Gender Pay Gap
I don’t think I know a single woman that is not concerned about the reported gender pay gap in the USA. Moreover, I know several women in my business that believe it’s a personal problem for them. That’s…
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When Senior Executives Stop Working Hard
Are you a senior executive? Do you employ one? If so, watch out. You/he may be dangerous to your company’s bottom line. The problem is Senior Executive Syndrome (SES): the tendency for a senior executive –…
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How to Give a Good Speech Even If You Hate Speaking
I hate giving speeches. Most people do. One study suggested that speaking in front of an audience was number two on the list of what people fear most – just behind death. I hate giving speeches so my usual…
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The End Of Privacy Is Here
You are googling your favorite celebrity online and ads keep popping up for Paris hotels. It just so happens that you are going to Paris for a business meeting next month. You did no searches for “Paris hotels…
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When Credit Theft Costs You Future Opportunities
George is stuck between a rock and a hard place. About a year ago, he came out of retirement to work as a consultant for a large hotel complex in my town. He was brought in to rescue the project after the city…
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The Most Recommended
I saw this little ad in a publication recently: The Most Recommended Path to the Writer’s Life No matter what path you want to take to the writer’s life, knowing how to write persuasively is at the heart of it…
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The Dreaded Business-Termite Infestation! How to Exterminate This Invisible Threat to Your Continued Growth
Every time I take a walk around a company that I’m working with and talk to employees I hardly know, I discover something interesting about the business. As often as not, that something is a problem. Some of…
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Dear Mark…
I'm starting a new company, and I need your advice. I will be selling a line of organic, CBD-based health supplements. My target market is women over 40. From reading Ready, Fire, Aim, I know that I want to…
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New Ideas About Building Wealth, Lesson 1
We were touring an old castle, a stone fortress built by the Crusaders from the ruins of a Roman temple built 1000 years earlier. The fortress was built with limestone and marble blocks, half a ton apiece…
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7 Politically Incorrect Questions I’m Afraid to Ask
We know that money doesn’t buy happiness. So why do we assume that increasing the income of poor people will make them happier? We know that if someone doesn’t want to learn, it’s impossible to teach them…
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Is Poverty Necessary?
I hadn’t read Harper’s in years. Like 20 or 30 years. I remembered it as a magazine of intelligently written essays about meaningful subjects. Reading it, I felt like I was using my time wisely. In the Fort…
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An Argument in Favor of College… or Not
Many of my Libertarian colleagues, who are among my smartest friends, don’t believe in going to college. A recent essay by James Altucher on his blog – titled “Seven Reasons Not to Go to College (and a…
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How to Get Rich as an Employee
It’s too often said – and I’ve been guilty of contributing to this myth – that the only realistic way to become wealthy is to go into business for yourself. While it’s true that reaching billionaire status is…
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A Good Example of Bad “Science
I recently read about a study, carried out by researchers at Yale and Oxford and published in The Lancet, that discovered that “exercise is more important to your mental health than economic status.” It took…
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Principles of Wealth #28
Every asset class has its own inherent ROI (return on investment) range.History suggests, for example,that it is 8% to 10% for stocks, 5% to 7% for corporate bond, 3% to 4% for municipal bonds, and 5% to 8%…
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The Retirement Trap!
I should have said something… He began, 25 years ago, as an accounting executive with a German partner of ours. Bright and ambitious, he rose quickly through the ranks to head of marketing, head of operations…
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Advertising Advice: A 9-Step Process for Producing Irresistible Offers
A huge mistake many, if not most, direct response marketers make is to pay scant attention to the offer. Many years ago, a colleague of mine and I developed a protocol for reviewing and revising marketing copy…
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He wanted to know: Did he need to get an MBA?
At my niece’s college graduation last week, one of her friends asked me whether I thought getting an MBA was worth it. I have no problem articulating my opinions when I’m writing or speaking to the many. But…
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