Mark Ford

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Friday, December 22, 2023, Delray Beach, Florida

December 23, 2023 No Comments

Four Popular – but Really Bad – Ways to Manage Your Most Valuable Employees

I’ve written many times before about how just about everything the experts recommend for boosting employee morale and productivity doesn’t work when it comes to executives and creative workers. In fact, most of the time, these practices only make things worse.

I will go into each of them in detail at some future point. (If you’re especially interested in any of the following, let me know and I’ll make sure to write about it.) But for the moment, I thought I should put them down briefly, in case you happen to be paying someone in your HR department to do any of it.

1. Making compensation entirely non-discretionary. In my early days as a manager of hundreds of people, I fell in love with compensation schemes that were automatic. Except for a few categories (line workers and certain kinds of salespeople), these were always problematic and required intervention by me to straighten out the problems. Later, I learned that my eagerness to adopt automatic rewards and salary increase schedules was motivated by my desire not to do what a manager must do: have many sometimes difficult conversations with all direct subordinates.

2. Being there for your employees’ personal problems. Being the boss is similar in several ways to being a parent. The most important: As a boss, your job is to boss. You can’t be a good boss and a good friend at the same time. Taking on that role may make you feel good temporarily. But you will end up causing yourself all sorts of awkward and unnecessary problems and causing your friend/employee to be angry with you.

3. Playing close attention to your employees’ work quality. If your job includes teaching your employees the initial ropes, take your time and do it properly. And as soon as that’s done, tell them that, from then on, it will be up to them to do their job well, to solve the problems they encounter, and to come to you with questions only when they have figured out a few possible solutions. To get the best out of anyone in a working/ creative environment, you have to make them responsible for doing their jobs by using their own intelligence and ingenuity. If you continue to hover, you will reduce your employees to mechanical devices and yourself to a line manager that can never move up in the ranks.

4. Employee-of-the-Year Awards. This may be the dumbest idea ever. I’ve encountered it several times in my career. And in every case, it turned out to be a disaster. I am confounded by what kind of idiot came up with this idea and what kind of idiot bosses thought/ think it’s a good one! It’s not hard to figure out what’s wrong with it: You make one good employee happy and dozens of equally good employees angry and possibly looking to work elsewhere.

The Economy & Investing

December 23, 2023 No Comments

What Is the Future for Stocks Over the Next Five Years?

Just before publication, I asked Sean MacIntyre, who, along with my broker Dominick, has been managing the stock portfolio I set up ten years ago, if he could tell us what he foresees for stock investing in the near future. This is what he had to say…

For one of my recent video posts, I wanted to answer a simple question: “What does the economic data suggest the S&P 500 will do over the next five years?”

I did a regression analysis of the five econometrics most highly correlated with future returns. Here’s how they’re suggest the S&P 500 will perform in the next five years based on past trends:

* US Housing Starts: 8.5% per year
* Fed Interest Rates: 8.9% per year
* Delinquent Auto Loans: 14.1% per year
* 10-year Treasury Yields: 6.7% per year
* Shiller Excess CAPE Yields: 8% per year

Average it all up and you get what the market has just about always done: 9.2% per year.

Honestly, this finding was a little frustrating. I wanted something more definitive so I could declare that we “BUY NOW” or “CRASH INCOMING.”

But all these data suggest things will be as they have always been. And “average returns” has always been a mixed bag.

The market could climb from here and then fall, as it did for folks who bought in 1998 or 2020.

The market could go all over the place, as it did in the 70s.

Or the market can drop for years before climbing again, which seems most likely at the moment.

Each of these scenarios ends with people achieving “average returns.” They are mathematically the same.

But they are psychologically very different. After all, how excited will you be about buying more stocks if they fall for the next two years?

The point is, we can’t know what the future holds. Given enough time, things tend to average out to what they’ve done historically.

It’s just a matter of investing with the right mindset, patience, and an understanding of everything that might happen along the way so that you don’t make emotional decisions that destroy your wealth.

If you want some more investing tips, economic insights, and findings both exciting and disappointing, check out my YouTube channel here.

Notes From My Journal

December 23, 2023 No Comments

Things I’ve Been Thinking About Lately:
Does Personal vs. Political Hypocrisy Matter?

I’ve noticed that there is often a gulf between the political and the personal when it comes to theories about what is right and wrong.

And a parallel difference in what people believe about how governments should solve problems and how they solve these same problems in their own lives.

I’m not exempt.

For example, I am theoretically opposed to everything about Communism, including the massive and authoritarian distribution of wealth. The idea is so obviously idiotic, it seems to me, that I shouldn’t have to provide historical examples to prove how destructive it is.

Yet, in my personal life, it is not infrequent that I find myself giving cash and other sorts of financial assistance to people to help them achieve or acquire something sensible and helpful to them.

In doing this, I recognize the hypocrisy. But I repress my internal critic because I enjoy the experience. And, after all, it’s my own money. I can do what I want with it!

Over decades of giving away money this way (privately and personally as opposed to contributing to charities that I control), I have developed some “rules” I try to follow to mitigate the many forms of damage that giving people “free” money creates:

* I don’t give money to anyone that asks for it. The idea here is that I consider asking for money to be a moral flaw. That’s my rule. I do break it from time to time.

* I attach zero expectations to my gift. The moment it goes from my hand or bank account to the other person, the transaction is finished. And I have no interest in knowing if the recipient did with it what they said they would do. The pleasure is in giving the money. Finding out later that I was bamboozled or the person I had hopes for failed will only bring me unhappiness.

* I do expect a thank-you. And a sincere one. As GG, a Zen master and friend of mine once said, “Gratitude is what nature demands from a gift. Without it, the exchange is unbalanced. That said, I prefer thank-yous that are short and sweet. If they are longwinded or groveling, they are embarrassing.

Interestingly, these rules are pretty much the opposite of the rules my family and I have established for FunLimón, our community development center in Nicaragua.

There, we:

* Give financial assistance only to people who are willing to not just ask for help but ask for it formally and provide justification for what they want.

* Make it clear that when they get or borrow money from FunLimón, they accept the obligations that come with it, including, in some cases, paying it back (with or without interest), paying it back in labor, or “passing it forward” in the future.

* Require recipients of our financial aid to keep us posted on their use of our funds and meet certain requirements as they spend the money.

* Demand a formal thank-you, because we believe that saying thank you is a moral obligation.

So, that’s how I – a diehard free market/ Libertarian thinker – commit hypocrisy.

My left-leaning (and outright Socialist) friends are hypocritical in the opposite way.

They believe deeply in the redistribution of wealth – so long as it is the government or someone else that is paying for it. Ask them to contribute their “fair share” of the cost of whatever redistribution of wealth they are advocating, and they’ll tell you that they pay taxes… and, anyway, they are strapped for cash. “Let the one-percenters pay for it,” they say, looking me up and down.

Here is a funny video clip that demonstrates this.

This clip is about letting illegals stay in their homes. Watch till he asks if they could take in a migrant.

The point is that there is very often a gulf between our political/ social/ economic views on how companies or countries should redistribute wealth and what we do as private citizens with our families, our friends, and even strangers.

I don’t know if there is an “answer” to this contradiction. I justify my hypocrisy (in redistributing my own wealth to needy people) by pointing out that the money I’m giving away is my money. Even Ayn Rand would admit that there is nothing about free-market Capitalism that prohibits private charity.

On the other hand, I can’t think of a good justification for the hypocrisy of the Left. Can you?

News & Views

December 23, 2023 No Comments

Health Watch

The High Cost of Mediocre Healthcare in America

The US spends more per capita on healthcare than any other country in the world. And yet, it ranks 59th in the world in terms of life expectancy.

The longest-living populations are from Hong Kong, Macao, Korea, and Japan.

Those Asian countries/ cultures are followed by the Scandinavian countries (Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Norway) and most of the advanced Western European countries, such as Spain, Portugal, Italy, and even Ireland. Also, interestingly, the populations of many wealthy Arab countries (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, UAE) live relatively long lives.

All of that I can understand. Studies have shown a clear correlation between wealth and health.

However, there is also a handful of countries I didn’t expect to find in the top half of the list, including Estonia, Albania, Guam, and mainland China!

To make matters worse, life expectancy in the US in the last three years has gone down by three years. Which puts us below countries like Iran, Jordan, and Tunisia. (This is likely due to COVID and the COVID vaccines, but the Biden administration says it’s due to global warming!)

Will Dr. Fauci Be Next?

According to questionable Italian and German news networks, Italy’s former health minister, Roberto Speranza, is being investigated for “omicidio.”

Recently, several emails were “discovered” that indicate that, from the very start of the COVID vaccinations, Speranza knew the shots were “killing people.” And yet, according to one probably unreliable source, he gave orders to local health authorities to conceal deaths and serious side effects in order to reassure Italian citizens of their safety and not jeopardize the vaccination campaign.

Trends in Wokeness

You Can’t Be More Au Courant Than This

Since Biden was elected, many Republicans have been accusing the Justice Department and the FBI of being out of touch with the common sentiments of average Americans by classifying parents of school age children and conservative Catholics as “domestic terrorists.”

Progressives don’t see things that way. They prefer to think that these federal law enforcement agencies are merely keeping up with the latest trends in social justice, which they support.

One example: A recent email from the bureau to employees announced that “effective immediately… the FBI has officially adopted the LGBTQIA+ acronym in place of LGBT+.

“This change was proposed by Bureau Equality, one of our nine Diversity Advisory Committees, and approved by FBI executive management to help promote a more welcoming workplace for members of our LGBTQIA+ community.

“LGBTQIA+ stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/ Questioning, Intersex, Asexual/ Aromantic, plus,” the email explained. “The ‘+’ represents other gender, sexual, and romantic identities not covered by the letters of the acronym.”

Satan Enters Tennessee Elementary School

Chimneyrock Elementary School in Cordova, TN, is having its 15 minutes of fame after accepting into its after-school curriculum a chapter of The Satanic Temple.

According to a flyer posted by the group, the Chimneyrock Elementary After-School Satan Club “will not attempt to convert children to any religious ideology.”

On the contrary, a spokesperson said, the Satanic cult will teach children to “think for themselves.”

Meanwhile, in Jolly old England…

A neighborhood council in London decided to cancel its annual “Hanukkah lights installation” because it might upset “some of the newer residents” (i.e., Muslims), according to a leaked memo.

Wins and Losses in the Gender Wars

Another Biological Boy Shows Girls What Biological Girls Are Capable of.

A young Irish child recently secured a position in next year’s Irish Dancing World Championship by shrewdly changing his gender at the last possible moment from boy to girl.

After finishing a disappointing 11th place as a boy in a local contest, he entered a subsequent competition as a girl, and easily won first place with a “muscular, animated performance,” according to an unreliable source.

What is known for sure is that the young lass is on her way to competing against other young lasses.

Meanwhile, in DeSantis-land…

A new bylaw has disallowed public schools from allowing “biological” boys from participating “as a female” in female sports.

Policy 16.11.6 states that the “use of an ineligible student… may subject the school to a monetary penalty of a minimum of $100 per contest and/ or other sanctions.”

The first test of the policy was reported on when it was learned that a biological male had played more than 30 games of volleyball for Monarch High School, brilliantly performing by smashing opposing players with “her” powerful slaps.

On the Global Warming Front

UN to US: Eat Plant burgers to Save the Planet

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) brought a zany idea to COP28, the recent climate change conference in Dubai.

The idea is that “the United States and other wealthy nations” should help ease global warming by “foregoing meat consumption in favor of plant-based diets, including plant-based faux meats.”

This, just months after the University of California, Davis, published a study that concluded that lab-grown or “cultured” meat is up to 25 times worse for the climate than natural beef.

The conclusion: “Results indicate that the environmental impact of near-term animal cell-based meat production is likely to be orders of magnitude higher than median beef production if a highly refined growth medium is utilized.”

The Biden Beat

Recent Notable Moments from POTUS

President Biden couldn’t make it to COP28. Apparently, he was too busy holding an auction for 44,000 acres of oil and gas drilling rights.

Then there was the text he sent calling for a cease-fire in the Israel/ Palestinian war, joking about tossing around the old “nuclear football” and referring to Trump as a “former governor.”

And Finally…

California City to Tell Israel What to Do

In Oakland, CA, officials invited the community to a City Council meeting to talk about whether the city should “call for a cease-fire in the Middle East.”

According to one source, “Speaker after speaker took to the microphone to deny that any atrocities took place on Oct. 7 or to show support for Hamas. “Calling Hamas a terrorist group is racist and plays into the genocidal propaganda… that we should be doing everything possible to combat,” said one person at the meeting.

Worth Watching

December 23, 2023 No Comments

BlackBerry

Released May 12, 2023
Directed by Matt Johnson
Starring Jay Baruchel, Glenn Howerton, and Matt Johnson
Watch Time: 2 hours

The Plot

The story of the rise and fall of the first smartphone.

What I Liked About It

The story behind this comedy docudrama (the factual story) is dramatic, sometimes exciting, and ultimately edifying. It stimulated lots of thoughts about my own experiences as an entrepreneur and made me feel better about my marketing rule: Try to be number two.

What I Didn’t Like

The denouement, like most stories in life, was half-sad.

Critical Reception

* “This is one of those whip-smart, character- and story-driven gems that grabs you from the start and never lets go.” (Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times)

* “A corporate comedy of errors – but the film really shines thanks to Howerton, whose towering, shark-like performance makes him a villain for the ages.” (Beth Webb, Empire Magazine)

* “What emerges from the electronic noise and fussy aesthetic of BlackBerry is a compelling portrait of a company that flew too close to the sun.” (Katie Walsh, Los Angeles Times)

You can watch the trailer here.

Shucked

The Broadway production opened April 4, 2023 at the Nederlander Theatre
Music and lyrics by Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally
Book by Robert Horn
Watch Time: 135 minutes, with one intermission

You’ll need to get to NYC to see Shucked with the Broadway cast before it goes on tour. I saw it last weekend with K and a bunch of the extended family. It was a packed house, and the show got a standing ovation.

The Plot

What do you get when you pair a semi-neurotic, New York comedy writer with two music superstars from Nashville? A hilarious and audacious farm-to-fable musical about the one thing Americans everywhere can’t get enough of: corn.

What I Liked About It

Although the theme is corn and the major motif is corny humor, the script and lyrics are very smart. The play works as a musical comedy, but also, somehow, as a feel-good, we’re-all-human dramatic story in the midst of all the hateful culture wars going on outside the theater.

What I Also Liked About It

My niece, Isabelle McDalla, has one of the leads as an ingenue.

Critical Reception

Reviews were mixed. Critics tended to praise the comedy and acting but didn’t love the music. Still, the show received nine Tony nominations and won one: Alex Newell for Best Featured Actor in a Musical (which makes Alex one of the first openly non-binary performers to be nominated for and win a Tony).

You can watch an ad for Shucked here.

Worth Reading

December 23, 2023 No Comments

“Robert De Niro at 80: The career of an indelible movie icon”
By Calum Russell in Far Out Magazine
Read Time: 10 minutes (20 minutes with clips)

“After rising to public consciousness in the 1970s, De Niro has occupied a space at the very pinnacle of Hollywood ever since, magnetising adulation from fans for his radiant style and on-screen charisma. Forming a strong bond with filmmaker Martin Scorsese, with the pair collaborating on some of cinema’s most feverous crime dramas, De Niro has also worked with some of the craft’s most pertinent names, including Francis Ford Coppola, Sergio Leone, and Quentin Tarantino.”

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