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
How You Can Give Away Money Without Paying Even MORE Taxes on It
I know. This sounds obnoxious. But one of my top financial priorities these days is giving away the wealth I’ve accumulated. What most rich folks do is hoard everything they’ve got until they croak. Then they…
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Copywriting: A Great Freelance Gig, But Is the Market Overcrowded?
I’m retired but I need income. What’s the best part-time retirement job? I’m sick of the nine-to-five. How can I make good money working from home? Whenever I’m asked these questions, I do my best to list four…
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6 Ways to Maximize the Potential of Your Superstars
CB recently wrote to me about one of his superstars – a promising young (23-year-old) copywriter who has already contributed many great ideas to the business. In fact, he’s so good, that CB is worried about…
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The Chicken Entrepreneur Approach I Used to Become a Valued Partner in Dozens of Multimillion-dollar Companies
I write a lot about entrepreneurship and real estate investing. And since I’ve started a bunch of multimillion-dollar companies and own dozens of properties, I feel confident to talk about what I’ve learned…
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The “Extreme Poverty Problem”: Hans Rosling Explodes Yet Another Myth
Answer this: In the last 20 years, the percentage of the world population living in extreme poverty has: Almost doubled? Remained about the same? Dropped by two-thirds? The correct answer is C. The number of…
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A Brief Answer to a Surprise Question: The 3 Cornerstones of Career Success
After my speech, I found myself surrounded by a cluster of people wanting to say hello or ask a question. This surprised me because these were employees, not readers. Like matriculated students attending…
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Two Vitally Important – and Completely Opposite – Business Management Strategies
Managing a growing company requires competence in two business strategies: centralization and decentralization. Decentralization, as the name implies, is the process of spreading out the business from the…
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When Making Tough Business Decisions, You Can’t Depend on the Facts
Years ago, a professor of philosophy introduced me to a concept that has helped me make business decisions time and again. We were discussing Nietzsche, the German philosopher and poet. I knew a little bit…
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So You Want to Be Happy?
Start by doing this: Spend less time thinking. “Homo sapiens” means thinking human. But for the great majority of our species’ development, we did very little serious thinking. Most of our brain activity was…
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Would You Like to Start a Serious Art Collection?
“What do you think of this painting?” he asked me. “They want $250,000 for it.” SP is a former protégé and current partner. He’s had a very successful career. He’s got a beautiful house and lots of expensive…
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Lessons From What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars — March 13, 2019
Part 2: Misunderstanding “Investing” As a student of literature in college, I came into my adulthood knowing little to nothing about investing. That did not deter me from making money, but it did diminish my…
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Lessons From What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars
Part 1: The One Secret That All Successful Money Makers Know and Use It was the only one left in my audiobook library. I didn’t remember buying it. I’d never heard of it or its authors (Jim Paul and Brendan…
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Ego Is Reptilian
The young woman sitting next to you on the plane is on the phone. She is not whispering. She doesn’t care if you hear her. She says, “Sure, I can go to the gym and work out like crazy and become a ripped bitch…
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Breaking Up With William: A Misunderstanding of the Very Important Matter of Economic Fairness
I knew that William was a potential superstar the moment we started talking. He was smart and funny and confident – real confidence, not bluster. He wasted no time establishing himself as a valuable employee…
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What You Should Ask Your Money Manager… Right Now
Money managers – just like your broker, banker, and insurance agent – make their money by selling you a service. If you don’t know what exactly they’re doing for you or how much they’re charging you, you’re…
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A Great Myth of Direct Marketing Why You Should Not “Go Easy” on Your Customers
One of the most commonly debated topics in direct marketing is how much and how often one should market to a customer or potential customer. The most common answer is: Enough to make sales but not so much as…
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Principles of Wealth #26
The financial industry promotes the idea that life insurance is something every sensible person should have. In fact, life insurance makes sense only in certain circumstances. For many people, it is…
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How to Maintain (or Regain) Control of Your Growing Business
If you are in the fortunate position of seeing your business grow to the point where you have more than 50 employees, there’s a good chance the grip you thought you had on it will begin to slip away. There is…
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Ego, Inspiration, and Achievement
It’s impossible to see the pyramids of Giza, the Colossus of Rhodes, or the Great Wall of China without thinking about the will it must have taken to build these wonders of human creation. They were built…
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Are You An Information Addict?
“Let’s have lunch,” DK said in his email. “There’s something I need to talk to you about.” Two days later, we were eating chopped chicken salads at City Oyster on Atlantic Avenue. We talked a bit about family…
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How to Come Up With the Idea That Will Make You Millions
When people start a business for the first time, they often do so with an idea for a particular product that they believe to be both brand-new and also acutely needed – some sort of “better mousetrap” that…
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The Challenge of Charity: My Failure to Help Marcus and Gabriela
First I felt ashamed. Then I was hopeful. Then I was disappointed. Now I’m resigned. Marcus and Gabriela came to work for us in 1999 after we built a second home in Nicaragua. Marcus tended the landscaping…
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Who’s the Richest Author in the World?
If your number one goal in life is getting rich, becoming an author is not a great choice of occupation. The average writer in the USA, according to ZipRecruiter, is $39,179. To put that in perspective, it’s…
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Principles of Wealth #25
“Hard money” advocates and precious metals dealers contend that gold is not only the safest way to store wealth but also a very good way to grow wealth. The truth is, gold is a valid way to protect wealth from…
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What You Can Learn About Investing From a Las Vegas Casino
The last time I was in Las Vegas for more than a business meeting was when my children, now grown and with children of their own, were in high school. We spent a week there, marveling at the mega-hotels…
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Four Proven Ways That Employees Can Get Big Raises and Retire Rich
It’s commonly said that you can’t get rich working for someone else. That the only way to achieve financial independence is to own your own business. This idea feels true when you are stuck in a thankless job…
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A Letter From a Man Whose Mother Is a Bank
I received a letter this morning that began as follows: Dear Mark – I hope all is well with you and yours. I want to reach out to you because you can help me… I looked at the signature. A name I didn’t…
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Principles of Wealth #24
The banking industry promotes the idea that money stored in cash instruments (such as saving accounts, CDs, and money market funds) is safe money and a riskless financial strategy. But it is not true. Cash…
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10 “Truths” About Building Wealth That You Won’t Hear from Your Financial Advisor
When I “decided” to get rich, I didn’t know the first thing about creating wealth. I was an editor. I wanted to be a novelist. I’d never taken a course in finance or economics. Plus, I was broke. But I had a…
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Timothy Leary, the Psychedelicists, and the Doors of Perception
In August 1960, Timothy Leary (a Harvard professor) traveled to Mexico to explore the ceremonial use of psilocybin mushrooms by the indigenous Aztecs. It was there that he ate the psychedelic mushrooms for the…
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Your Ultimate Productivity Guide for the New Year
Most ambitious and successful people set goals and use task lists. I’ve seen those task lists. They’re usually handwritten on lined paper – pages and pages of “things to do” with no way to sort out what’s…
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So You Don’t Believe in Making New Year’s Resolutions? Why Not?
Ask 10 people if they make New Year’s Resolutions and nine of them will tell you they don’t. So I’m guessing you don’t do it either. And if that’s true, you’ve been squashing an impulse that’s key to success…
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Final Countdown to Christmas: Only One More Day!
It’s Christmas Eve and you’re stressed. No wonder. You’ve been working double-time while attending to all your holiday obligations and trying to enjoy the festivities. And so it’s no wonder that you feel you…
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10 Quick Ways to Improve Yourself Every Single Day
It’s that time of year when most people start to work on “resolutions” for next year. But don’t wait until January 1 to put those resolutions into action. Significant, life-improving change takes a long time –…
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Learning, Practicing, and Understanding
Thursday, December 20, 2018 Delray Beach, FL.- What’s going to be on your list of New Year’s Resolutions for 2019? Do you want to become a masterful writer? Marketer? CEO? Whatever your goal is, know this…
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Principles of Wealth #23
Tuesday, December 18, 2018 Delray Beach, FL.- Wall Street promotes the idea that investing in stocks and bonds is the sensible way to grow rich. But a strategy that focuses solely or even primarily on stocks…
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How Good Are Your Products? Why It Matters Even If Your Customers Can’t Tell
Thursday, December 13, 2018 Delray Beach, FL.- My family has a small interest in a Craft Beer Brewery owned by friends of ours. Because our interest is small and because they are friends, I do my best to limit…
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Got a Tag Line? When It Makes Sense to Have a Personal Brand
Tuesday, December 11, 2018 Delray Beach, FL.- A colleague refers to himself in his publicity as “the world’s most ___-ed man.” Good idea or bad idea? Epithets have power when they are short and apt and…
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My No Brainer “System” for Knowing When to Buy a Stock
Sunday, December 9, 2018 Delray Beach, Florida.- Most of the stocks in my core investment portfolio – my Legacy Portfolio – are dividend-paying stocks. And since I don’t rely on cash from those dividends for…
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The Wide Reach of the Blame-and-Shame Industry… or, How to Stop Waiting for Deus-ex-Machina Solutions to Unfairness and Inequality, Part 2
Wednesday, December 5th Delray Beach, FL.- Aiden, a reader from South Africa, wrote recently, taking me to task for the essay I wrote about the very hot (in certain circles) topic of white male privilege…
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The Wide Reach of the Blame-and-Shame Industry… or, How to Stop Waiting for Deus-ex-Machina Solutions to Unfairness and Inequality, Part 1
Monday, December 3, 2018 Delray Beach,FL.- One of the first things a copywriter learns about selling diet products is that it is very important to say, at some early point in the sales message, “It’s not your…
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Intimations of Mortality
Saturday, December 1, 2018 Delray Beach, Florida.- My friend Alec sent this brief note to me this morning: “A light went out in our bathroom. I remember that I changed it 14 years ago. I showed my son how to…
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Odds Stacked Against You? Stop Bitching and Get to Work!
November 24, 2018 Nicaragua.- NP believes that when parents hit their seventies they should start giving away their assets to their children as fast as they can. “Making them wait till you die is…
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Breaking Big: The “Ready-Fire-Aim” Strategy That Took One Company From $8 Million to More Than $1 Billion — November 15, 2018
Thursday, November 15, 2018 Chapter 1, Part 1 The 5 Stages of Entrepreneurial Business Growth Delray Beach, FL.- For the first half of my business career, I spent almost all of my time doing. I was an…
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Principles of Wealth #22
Tuesday, November 13, 2018 The efficient market hypothesis is bogus. The stock market, its sectors, and its individual stocks are often mispriced. But that doesn’t mean speculating on those errors makes sense…
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How Never to Begin a Blog Post, or… The Most Important Secret of Storytelling
Sunday, November 11, 2018 Delray Beach, Florida.- Should I tell him? Will he listen? Will he feel I’m butting in? I had just read a company blog post from a colleague. It was an important post. And he was…
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Tribalism and the Mid-term Elections
Wednesday, November 7, 2018 Delray Beach, Florida.- Milo Yiannopoulos, the social critic and provocateur, gets into trouble with both the far right and the far left for mixing his intelligent insights and…
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White Male Privilege: Where Do You Stand on the Social Justice Scale?
Thursday, November 1, 2018 New York City.- “That’s because you are a privileged white male,” she said. She was explaining why my perspective on… I don’t remember what… was wrong. Not just wrong, but invalid…
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What Happens When We Die?
Everything in the universe exists in a continuous state of fluctuation, from extremely contracted to extremely expansive. Planets. Rocks. Galaxies. Humans too – our bodies and our minds. I once heard a…
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Am I a Hypocrite?, How About You?
During the Kavanaugh spectacle, the line of thinking I was espousing elicited two very different comments. My left-leaning interlocutors called me a privileged and misogynistic white male, while my…
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