Articles from 2018
116 articles · browse by month or scroll through the year.
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From My Work-in-Progress Basket
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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From My Work-in-Progress Basket
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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From My Work-in-Progress Basket
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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Notes From My Journal
Success in the Spotlight: It’s More Rock Than Roll
Sunday, December 16, 2018 Delray Beach, FL.- I was late arriving at Steve and Lori’s annual holiday party last weekend. I’d been working on the outline of a new book, and I wanted to finish it while I still…
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From My Work-in-Progress Basket
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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From My Work-in-Progress Basket
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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From My Work-in-Progress Basket
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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Notes From My Journal
Solo Fliers vs. Quotidian Pilots
Friday, December 7, 2018 Delray Beach, Florida.- In every business, the golden current of wealth and power flows to the rainmakers. This is not a factor of ideology. It is a biological fact of the organism…
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From My Work-in-Progress Basket
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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From My Work-in-Progress Basket
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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From My Work-in-Progress Basket
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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Notes From My Journal
Wilderness Man Survives Again
Thursday, November 29, 2018 Delray Beach, Florida.- After a frenetic week with the extended family in Nicaragua, I was in need of rest. The last thing I wanted to do when we arrived at Miami Airport last…
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Notes From My Journal
Steve Jobs on “Why Companies Fail
Tuesday, November 27, 2018 Sao Paulo.- I’m in Brazil, catching up on email before I get to work – and I came across a video by Steve Jobs that Sean MacIntyre sent me. (See the link to the video, below.) It’s…
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From My Work-in-Progress Basket
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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Notes From My Journal
Thanksgiving Morning in Nicaragua
Thursday, November 22, 2018 This year’s to Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade featured a musical vignette from Prom, a new Broadway play that opened to great reviews. My niece, Izzy McCalla has a leading role in…
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Notes From My Journal
I’m back at Rancho Santana for Thanksgiving week…
Tuesday, November 20, 2018 Nicaragua - It’s a beautiful time to be here. The ocean is steel blue and the hills are myriads of green. Because of the recent political troubles, I was initially reluctant to bring…
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Notes From My Journal
The One and Only Secret to a Successful Marriage?
Saturday, November 17, 2018 Delray Beach, FL.- Andy and I were in our late 20s and beginning our careers in journalism. Elka was in her late 30s, working part-time as an accountant for our small publishing…
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From My Work-in-Progress Basket
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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From My Work-in-Progress Basket
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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From My Work-in-Progress Basket
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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Notes From My Journal
More on Micro-Cultures, Financial Success, and the “Nature vs. Nurture” Question
Friday, November 9, 2018 Delray Beach, Florida.- On October 18, I posted an essay www.markford.net/success-in-life-its-all-about-micro-culture about the relationship between success in life and something I…
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From My Work-in-Progress Basket
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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Notes From My Journal
A “Simple Question” With a “That Depends” Answer
Monday, November 5, 2018 Delray Beach, Florida.- “I have a simple question,” RS wrote. “How can you calculate the odds for losing your money before you start a business or invest your capital? I’ve read what…
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Notes From My Journal
Life Is Good… How Did I Get So Lucky?
Saturday, November 3, 2018 New York City.- I’m at Club Macanudo on 63rd Street, in between Park and Madison in NYC. It’s a stately, turn-of-last century townhouse, not unlike Agora’s offices in Baltimore. The…
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From My Work-in-Progress Basket
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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Notes From My Journal
Show Me Your Freak Card
Tuesday, October 30, 2018 Delray Beach.- I liked him the minute he introduced himself. Poised, intelligent, and energetic, he wanted to interview me for his podcast. We did a short, extemporaneous bit on…
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Notes From My Journal
The Perfect Partnership Formula
Saturday, October 27, 2018 Delray Beach, FL– Talk about teamwork… In 1995, a young man named Howard Marks got together with another young man, Bruce Karsh, and the two of them built a $100 billion asset…
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Notes From My Journal
A Fun and Clever Way to Build an Art Collection
Thursday, October 25, 2018 Delray Beach, FL– If you ever want to develop a really great art collection – on the cheap – here’s a clever strategy you can use. I picked it up from an elder statesman in our…
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From My Work-in-Progress Basket
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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Notes From My Journal
An Unexpected Gift From My Father
Monday, October 22, 2018 Delray Beach, FL– My friend Steve Leveen and I once had an enjoyable exchange on the question of whether you should write in the books you read. There were good arguments on both sides…
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From My Work-in-Progress Basket
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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Notes From My Journal
What Am I Doing Here? What Can I Say?
Saturday, October 20, 2018 Bermuda -I’m in Bermuda this weekend, speaking at an investment conference. I’m here to talk about money — making it, growing it, protecting it. I came in Thursday night at about…
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From My Work-in-Progress Basket
Principles of Wealth: #21
When the odds of a particular speculation are extremely long, we refer to it as gambling. And gambling, most sensible people would acknowledge, is a foolish financial activity. Unless, of course, the odds are…
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Notes From My Journal
More On Caring Less: Losing the “Love” of Golf
Thursday, October 18, 2018 Delray Beach, FL– Golf is a miserable way to pass time. Of all the sports and games and hobbies I’ve tried in my life, none provided the level of frustration and self-loathing that…
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From My Work-in-Progress Basket
Success in Life? It’s All About Micro-Culture
There’s a longstanding nature-versus-nurture debate among social psychologists. Wrestling with it doesn’t get you very far, because it’s not a real question. Nature matters. Nurture matters. But what matters…
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Notes From My Journal
Living Through the Premiere of Off the Rails
Tuesday, October 16, 2018 Delray Beach, FL -On Sunday, I gave you a sneak peek at Off the Rails, an autobiographical “coming of age” movie I made a few years ago that only got finished this year. I was in…
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From My Work-in-Progress Basket
Note — October 16, 2018
[Note: I just got back home yesterday, and I’m still playing catch-up. Back to the regular blog format on Thursday… ]
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Notes From My Journal
Fake News and Manipulative Advertising
Sunday, October 14, 2018 Liverpool, England – On the way from the Hotel de Rome to the Berlin Airport, the driver, Franz, asked me about the hurricanes in Florida. He wanted to move there, he said, but his…
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From My Work-in-Progress Basket
Note — October 14, 2018
[Note: No new essays from me this week. I’m out of town and will be busy with meetings and business functions. I won’t have time to do much writing.]
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Notes From My Journal
Survival of the Least Fit
Friday, October 12, 2018 Berlin, Germany– She had the perfect job, the culmination of her excellent and expensive education: senior executive of diversity something at a high-tech company. It was her big day…
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From My Work-in-Progress Basket
Note
[Note: No new essays from me this week. I’m out of town and will be busy with meetings and business functions. I won’t have time to do much writing.]
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Notes From My Journal
How to Accept the Death of Your Good Ideas
Wednesday, October 10, 2018 Berlin, Germany– The first time I put on one of these forums in 2014, it was a great success. It was an open conversation between one of our most successful US-based marketers with…
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From My Work-in-Progress Basket
Out of Town
[Note: No new essays from me this week. I’m out of town and will be busy with meetings and business functions. I won’t have time to do much writing.]
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Notes From My Journal
In Berlin for an Hour and I’m Already in Trouble
Monday, October 8, 2018 Berlin, Germany– The Hotel de Rome, the taxi driver told me, is one of the most “prestigious” in Berlin. It is impressive. It’s housed in what looks like a 17thcentury palazzo, but it’s…
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From My Work-in-Progress Basket
Author Takes Break From Writing For Business Travel
[No new essays from me this week. I’m out of town and will be busy with meetings and business functions. No time to do much writing.]
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From My Work-in-Progress Basket
Breaking Big: The “Ready-Fire-Aim” Strategy That Took One Company From $8 Million to More Than $1 Billion
Tuesday, October 2, 2018 Delray Beach, FL Introduction In 2010, John Wiley published a book I had written several years earlier called Ready, Fire, Aim. Of the 20+ books I’ve written on business and wealth…
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Notes From My Journal
The Danger of Freedom: People Do What They Want to Do, Not What You Think They Should Want to Do
October 2, 2018 Delray Beach, FL - A Boston-based “people analytics firm” named Humanyze has instituted a mandatory parental leave policy for male employees. The motive is to “equalize” the work/parent…
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Notes From My Journal
Creating a Culture of Profit
Monday, October 1, 2018 Delray Beach, FL - You own four businesses in the same industry. They have the same sort of products. The same access to marketing intelligence. And they have unlimited access to cash…
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Notes From My Journal
An Interesting Angle on Teamwork
Monday, October 1, 2018 Delray Beach, FL– You don’t have to be friends with your teammates. You just need something that Michael Bar-Eli calls task cohesion. According to Bar-Eli, when a team has a high level…
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