Articles from 2017
48 articles · browse by month or scroll through the year.
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Miscellaneous Essays
Why You Need a Good Editor, or… How to Edit Yourself When You Don’t Have One
His email was clever and funny. So too (I thought) was my response. I put the two together and sent it to my editor as a witty brief for publication in this little blog. “I think this is pretty clever,” I…
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Miscellaneous Essays
The Exposure Explosion
You Think Sexual Harassment Is News? Really? Men – mostly powerful white men – are being exposed as sexual predators. They are being punished by losing their jobs, their reputations, and, in some cases, their…
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Miscellaneous Essays
Dressing Like a Billionaire
“Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.” – Mark Twain The very idea of dressing like a billionaire is implausible to the point of being silly. Billionaires, after all, are…
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Miscellaneous Essays
Dividends: Not Life’s Greatest Joy But Great for a Worry-Free Retirement
Marc Litchenfeld tells me that John D. Rockefeller once said that what gave him the “greatest joy” was seeing dividends flowing into his bank accounts. Dividends are income – i.e., cash flow you’ve earned from…
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Miscellaneous Essays
Robert Mugabe’s Career How to Bankrupt a Country and Keep It Poor for 40 Years
On November 21, Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s authoritarian ruler, was forced to resign in the wake of a military takeover. Emmerson Mnangagwa, who had been Mugabe’s right-hand man was sworn in as president, and…
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Miscellaneous Essays
Ho hum. Another Speech About Money or… How to Make Money and Enjoy It
I hate making speeches – and for good reason. I don’t prepare for them. I ignore them until a week or two before the event. Then I suffer anxiety that rises in a crescendo until the speech and then…
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Miscellaneous Essays
A Monthly Budget That Will Help You Grow Rich
Most people don’t manage their income. They bank it and spend it. This is obviously crazy. Some people do try to manage their income by budgeting. This typically means that you look at what your income is…
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Miscellaneous Essays
Getting There the Hard Way: Breaking Through the Pain
I remember the day that my older boys and I had a breath-holding contest. It was my idea. I had just been trounced by the two of them in an underwater-propulsion contest. (Imagine human torpedoes bouncing off…
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Miscellaneous Briefs
How to Make Friends in High Places
“Shallow men believe in luck… Strong men believe in cause and effect.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Conduct of Life Today, I am going to open a little door into your future. First, answer this question: Who in…
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Miscellaneous Essays
Is Armageddon the New Normal?
“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall – Think…
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Notes From My Journal
A Very Rich Entrepreneur You’ve Probably Never Heard About
There are many ways to get rich as an entrepreneur. One way is to create just the right product at just the right time. A second way is to identify, and then cater to, a neglected niche market. A third way is…
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Miscellaneous Essays
Asking for Help… Would You? Should You?
Let’s talk about one of my dumbest weaknesses: the fear of asking for help. It’s dumb but it’s also interesting because it has lots to do with power and politics. Let’s start with an obvious observation: This…
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Miscellaneous Essays
How to Knock Off Your Nasty Old Employer and Have Your Own Nice Little Business
My first real job was as “backseat wiper man” at the Rockville Center Car Wash on Long Island. I was 14 and happy with the $1.25 an hour they paid me. A couple of years later, when I had a summer job as a…
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Miscellaneous Briefs
How to Think “Outside the Box
Much has been made of the importance of thinking "outside the box." To solve difficult problems, it is said, you need the ability to do this. I agree. Completely. Because I've seen supposedly insurmountable…
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Miscellaneous Briefs
Thank God for Your Health
The first wealth is health. Ralph Waldo Emerson I woke up this morning with an urgent sense that I should tell you something that, in a fully awakened state, I realize you already know. But obvious things are…
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Miscellaneous Briefs
The Question of Where
They say the three most important questions you must answer in life are: What am I going to do? Where am I going to live? Who am I going to live with? I think that is pretty close to the truth. If you don’t…
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Miscellaneous Essays
Let Your Business Expand Beyond You Clone Your Brand
AH had done amazing things while working for MM, a competitor of ours. And he did just as well when he came to work for us. He built his part of our company from less than $50 million to more than $100 million…
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Miscellaneous Essays
What to Do When Disaster Strikes
You reach for the mug and knock it over. Hot coffee washes over your laptop. You arrive home and realize you’ve left your bag, with all your IDs, on the subway. Your doctor reads your EKG and says, “Hmm. I’ve…
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Miscellaneous Essays
I Could Tell They Didn’t Like What I Said…
You can tell how well an audience liked your speech if, as you walk back from the podium, you look at those seated at the end of the aisles. If you’ve done well, most of them will be looking at you, smiling…
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Miscellaneous Essays
Creating Memorable Short Presentations 8 Powerful Secrets from TED Talks, NPR, Aristotle and Michael Masterson
For most people, next to the fear of dying, public speaking is their greatest fear. And what’s more difficult than giving a long speech? Giving a short one! “It’s such a little thing,” you tell yourself. “It…
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Miscellaneous Briefs
Why Vegetarians Crave Sweets
If you are a vegetarian, you may have noticed that you crave sweets. Not just sugar in your coffee, but sugary confections like pastries and candy. In The Vegetarian Myth, Lierre Keith, a former vegan…
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Miscellaneous Essays
From Life-Altering Advice to Tips on “Trailing Edge Technology” How Gary North Can Improve Your Life
Gary North, an economist, Christian philosopher and good writer whom I’ve known for 30 years, once gave me life-changing advice. We were talking about our careers. Our backgrounds and lifestyles are very…
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Miscellaneous Essays
8 Things I Know About Direct-Response Publishing
Over the years, I’ve learned a lot about direct-response (DR) marketing. In particular, how to be successful as a publisher of financial information. When I’m talking about the business to new employees (and…
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Miscellaneous Essays
The Art of Being a Great Interviewer (or How Howard Stern can improve your podcast)
Like every great performance artist, great interviewers make the interview look easy. Unfortunately, the apparent ease of what they do encourages too many unskilled and unimaginative sorts to start their own…
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Miscellaneous Briefs
So You Want to Be a Leader? Secrets From Attila the Hun
We sat down at a corner table with Number Three Son, ML (his fiancée), and two friends of theirs who looked to be attractive, smart, and good natured. Just the sort of people one would want to liven up a…
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Miscellaneous Essays
8 Ways to Beat the Blues… and 6 Ways to Manage Serious Depression
In 2011, after having experienced several bouts of mild-to-moderate depression, I was sure I understood it. And I was confident I knew how to beat it. My theory was that it was essentially a malady of…
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Miscellaneous Essays
Having a Supreme and Overriding Goal The Fastest Way to Grow Rich… (And Risk Everything Else)
You’ve probably heard this story already… When I was 33 I decided to become rich and made that my supreme and overriding goal. There were plenty of other things that I wanted to do – like reading books and…
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Miscellaneous Essays
Speak Like a Copywriter: 10 Rules for Having Better Conversations
There are times when I feel smart about my conversations. And there are times when I feel dumb. I feel smart when I give someone a good idea and they gladly agree to try it. I feel dumb when a conversation…
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Miscellaneous Essays
A Short Lesson in Writing Lift Letters
How good are you at judging advertising copy? More importantly, do you know how to fix weak copy when you see it? Test yourself. Read the copy below. It’s a “lift letter,” which is a short letter meant to…
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Miscellaneous Briefs
This is weird. Is this a sign of early onset dementia?
Nobody talked about dementia when I was a kid. I didn’t even know what it was until I was in my 40s. And back then it was described as a kind of “brain fog” that affected octogenarians. It wasn’t something I…
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Miscellaneous Briefs
I’ve done better with real estate than with any other category of investing…
And I’ve done it with everything from limited partnerships to buying and flipping properties to rental real estate and land banking. By far the safest and most lucrative has been buying buildings into which I…
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Miscellaneous Briefs
Beauty and the Brain
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…
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Miscellaneous Essays
Approach a Job Interview as a Life-Changing Opportunity… Because It Just Might Be
WW, a reader, asks for tips on interviewing for a job... Hi Mark, I recently learned about your amazing success through the Mike Dillard Self Made Man podcast (Episode 2). Coming across this episode this week…
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Miscellaneous Essays
Back Pain?
I could not walk more than five minutes without having to sit down. Some nights I barely slept because I couldn’t find a position that would lessen the pain. I went to two doctors: a neurosurgeon and an…
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Miscellaneous Essays
The Fastest Way to Grow Rich… (and Not Risk Everything Else)
You’ve probably heard this story… When I was 33, I decided to become rich. And I made that my supreme and overriding goal. There were plenty of other things that I wanted to do – like reading books and playing…
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Miscellaneous Briefs
How Often Should You “Hit” Your Customers With Advertising?
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…
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Miscellaneous Briefs
Questions You’d Be Embarrassed to Ask
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…
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Miscellaneous Briefs
Making money passively… very passively
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…
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Miscellaneous Briefs
Sir Anthony Hopkins Surprised Me
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…
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Miscellaneous Essays
J’s Amazing Early Success With Her Little Business: Will She Move Her Business Into Stage Two?
I asked J how her business was doing. “Very well, actually,” she said. “I’ve got all the customers I can handle now and I’m still getting inquiries even though I’ve stopped advertising. J is a “nail…
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Miscellaneous Briefs
Briefs
“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…
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Miscellaneous Essays
Starbucks: a Great Company, a Great CEO, an Overzealous Mission Statement
Starbucks is an amazing success. And CEO Howard Schultz no doubt deserves much of the credit. As Travis Bradberry wrote in Entrepreneur Daily, “While many factors contribute to Starbucks’ immunity to economic…
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Miscellaneous Essays
COLLECTIBLE WATCHES
An Australian reader wants to know: I know Mark has bought nice watches in the past, but has also said that a Casio can be just as good. If the subscriber is interested in luxury accessories to wear, a part of…
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Miscellaneous Briefs
The Time You Spend on Your Smartphone: Gold, Wood, or Poison?
There are basically three kinds of activities that you can choose to spend your time on: Golden – meaning activities that improve you Wooden – meaning activities that have no apparent effect on you Poisonous –…
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Miscellaneous Briefs
76 Million Baby Boomers Abscond To Fiji After Draining Nation’s Social Security, Medicare Accounts
From the Onion WOODLAWN, MD—Arriving en masse to the Pacific island nation after fleeing under the cover of night, 76 million baby boomers reportedly escaped to Fiji on Friday after completely draining the…
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Miscellaneous Briefs
Sympathetic and Vulnerable in the Windy City
What the hell, I thought. Let’s try a yellow cab. Surely they’ve improved by now…We arrived in Chicago a bit after midnight last night. Having taken an Uber Black from Newport Beach to LAX four hours before, I…
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Miscellaneous Briefs
Culture > Logic
Joseph Schumpeter, an Austrian economist, had a unique view of free market economics. He had an insight that some of his best fellow economists were blind to. He understood that economics is ultimately not…
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Miscellaneous Essays
Making Your Ideas Soar
Think about how many good ideas you have had or been a part of in the past, either in casual conversation, in business meetings, or at conferences and trade shows. How many of them did you execute? And how…
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