From My Work-in-Progress Basket

One Thing & Another

No Comments

Word for the Wise

Preternatural (prih-tur-NATCH-uh-rul) – existing outside of nature; extraordinary. Example from George Will: “Beyond his preternatural affability, there is some acid and some steel.”

 Champagne Trick

A raisin dropped in a glass of fresh champagne will bounce up and down continually from the bottom of the glass to the top.

 

From My “Work-in-Progress” Basket

Principles of Wealth: #11 of 61

To acquire wealth, it is helpful to be able to define it. Fewer than one in ten people can. The answer is “stored value.”

That kid driving the red Ferrari? The doctor with the huge white house on the ocean? The attractive older woman wearing the Oscar de la Renta gown?

They look wealthy, but you can’t tell by their possessions. They might be poor. They might be worse then poor. They might be in debt.

What about your friend that is “pulling down two hundred G’s” a year selling hedge funds? Or that obnoxious kid you met in law school that charges $700 an hour for his services?

They may be rich. They may not be. Income can be an important factor in creating wealth but it is not a measure of it.

There is only one way to measure wealth – and that is the amount of value an individual has set aside for future use.

In financial terms (there are many forms of wealth), we generally refer to this as net worth: the difference between one’s assets and one’s liabilities. I prefer a more stringent definition: one’s net investible wealth. Net investible wealth is net worth minus any assets you plan to keep (and not sell) for the rest of your life.

Making big money and spending big money create the impression of wealth. But true wealth is only what you have put aside for future use.

Quick Marketing Idea: The Emotional Power of Repetition

Why is it that we never tire of hearing our favorite songs?

According Derek Thompson, writing in Hit Makers, it’s because our brains our wired for it. We respond to repetition when it follows certain patterns.

He cites a study on mice:

Exposed to the sound of a B note played repeatedly, the mouse will pay brief attention and then lose interest. But if a minor variation is added – say, the B note followed by a C note – the mouse’s attention will reengage. Not just that, but it will stay engaged for a good length of time even when the “tune” goes back to just a B note.

“A single variation is sufficient to break the mouse’s complacency and return its interest to the music,” the author posits.

Further tests suggested that the most effective pattern for keeping a rodent’s attention was: BBBBC-BBBC-BBC-BC-D. This, Thompson says, “is uncannily similar to the structure of successful pop songs that follow a pattern of verse-verse, chorus, verse-chorus, bridge.”

(It’s also similar to the rhyme structure of some poetry, like some sonnets.)

Advertisers (and propagandists) have long known about the emotional power of repetition. It makes the advertisement more memorable. And it makes it more believable as well. (See D. Trump.)

Suggestion: Lay this pattern over your next medium- to long-term promotional piece before you post it.

Look at This…

https://biggeekdad.com/2018/02/old-man-thinks-hes-younger/

 

 

Continue Reading

From My Work-in-Progress Basket

One Thing & Another

No Comments

Word for the Wise

Claque (KLAK) – a group hired to applaud; a group of sycophants. Example as used by Charles P. Pierce in an Esquire article titled “Nobody Knows How to Play This Game Anymore”: “The bill passed the House because the Freedom Caucus, that claque of unreconstructed extremists who hold the balance of power there, gave in a little.”

 Did You Know…?

Cats spend 66% of their lives sleeping.

 

From My “Work-in-Progress” Basket

Principles of Wealth: #10 of 61

Wealth is neither absolute nor objective. This is so because those things that we value are by nature relative and subjective.

Your Richard Mille watch cost you $35,000 when you bought it 10 years ago, when the company first came into the public view. It worked no better than a $35 Casio. In fact, it worked considerably worse. You had to have it repaired twice and were charged several thousand dollars to do so. If the value you attached to your watch was pragmatic – keeping time and cost of use over 10 years – you’d feel the money you spent was a hugely foolish mistake.

But the company poured millions into advertising and became a status symbol, particularly among wealthy athletes and rap stars. It also raised its prices considerably. The current range is $250,000 and upwards.

Now you are told you can sell your “vintage, first edition” Richard Mille on the secondary market and walk away with $85,000 in cold cash.

Will you do it? That depends on how much you value its objective qualities of reliability and cost of use versus the subjective qualities of beauty, complexity, and prestige.

 

 He Did What?

Although I haven’t written much advertising these past 20 years, I did more than a bit of it for a 10-year stretch during the 1980s. After that, I coached and mentored copywriters, and between 2000 and 2010 wrote a few books on the subject.

Writing persuasive copy was probably the single strongest money-making skill I had back then. And it accounted for the lion’s share of my earnings. But I was always a little embarrassed to admit that it was my primary job. Today, copywriters are looked upon much like actors were during Elizabethan times: otherwise reproachable lowlifes in possession of commercially valuable talents and abilities.

I do remember when, besieged by such opinion, I look refuge in remembering that one of my favorite writers, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) spent many early years writing copy to make ends meet. And he wasn’t the only one.

Here are some other respectable (and in some cases venerated) folks that worked as copywriters before achieving fame in a non-advertising career:

* Sherwood Anderson, author

* Helen Gurley Brown, former publisher and editor (Cosmopolitan)

* Gary Comer, founder of Lands’ End

* Don DeLillo, author

* F. Scott Fitzgerald, author

* Terry Gilliam, director and animator

* Alec Guinness, actor

* Dashiell Hammett, author

* Hugh Hefner, publisher (Playboy)

* Joseph Heller, author

* Tim Kazurinsky, comedian

* Rick Moranis, actor

* Ogden Nash, poet

* Bob Newhart, comedian and actor

* Salmon Rushdie, author

* Dorothy L. Sayers, author

* Fay Weldon, author

Look at This…

https://www.youtube.com/watch

 

Continue Reading

From My Work-in-Progress Basket

One Thing & Another

No Comments

Word for the Wise

Pinguid (PING-wid) – fat and oily. Here’s a lovely sentence from The Bunsby Papers by John Brougham that includes it alliteratively: “Peter was pinguid, plump, and plethoric – she was thin to attenuation.”

Did You Know… ?

If you add up all the numbers from 1 to 100 consecutively, the total is 5050. Keep that in mind. You never know when it will come up in conversation.

 

From My “Work-in-Progress” Basket

Principles of Wealth: #5 of 61

Wealth and income inequality are realities that exist in every economy – even those committed in principle to the distribution of wealth.

Many people today, believing that equality is an intrinsic and achievable good, seek to flatten financial inequalities through government programs and social action. A smaller group, sympathetic to the notion of equality but less trusting of governmental solutions, seek to create substantial personal wealth and then distribute some of that to others. Still others are dubious that financial inequality is intrinsically good and practically achievable. And a final group is sure that equality is intrinsically bad and can only be partially achieved and that only by severe repression.

My view is that human nature is innately opposed to equality. You can, by force, make a community financially equal for a moment in time. But an hour later, individuals within that community will get to work recreating inequality. Some will seek to have more. Some will be satisfied with what they have. And some will seek to have less.

This is the fundamental reason why history has shown us that the goal of achieving financial equality has never been achieved or even attempted.

From my book How to Speak Intelligently About Everything That Matters https://smile.amazon.com/Speak-Intelligently-About-Everything-Matters

Shakespeare is said to have contributed (by far) more words to the English language than any other person in history. He has also contributed some of the best loved and most often repeated quotations. Consider the following:

“All that glisters is not gold.” (The Merchant of Venice)

“Something wicked this way comes.” (Macbeth)

“Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.” (Hamlet)

“It was Greek to me.” (Julius Caesar)

“Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.” (Henry VI, Part II)

“Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ‘em.” (Twelfth Night)

“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” (Henry VI, Part II)

“I smell a rat…” (Hamlet)

Look at This…

https://biggeekdad.com/2017/11/racing-through-edinburgh/

Continue Reading

From My Work-in-Progress Basket

One Thing & Another

No Comments

Word for the Wise

Popinjay (POP-in-jay) – a strutting, supercilious person. Example from Ernest Hemingway: “If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing. A writer who appreciates the seriousness of writing so little that he is anxious to make people see he is formally educated, cultured or well-bred is merely a popinjay. And this too remember; a serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl.”

 Did You Know… ?

In ancient Rome, men in court swore by their testicles. (The word for “testify” comes from the Latin word for “testicle.”)

 

From My “Work-in-Progress” Basket

Principles of Wealth: #8 of 61

The desire to work less is not a vice but a fundamental aspect of emotional intelligence. When combined with commitment, persistence, and common sense, it creates economic efficiency.

I was taught that hard work was laudable and laziness was deplorable. These notions still linger as truths subconsciously, in my emotional intelligence. But some years ago, I noticed that a major motivation in working my way up any organization I joined was the desire to do less of the hard and tedious work and more of what I imagined would be easier and more fun.

From one perspective, you could say that my motivation was laziness (if your definition of laziness is not wanting to work). But when I realized that I was perfectly happy to work 24/7 on projects that inspired me, I decided that I should stop chastising myself for not wanting to make my bed in the morning or spend hours setting up meetings and appointments or doing any task that was innately uninteresting – i.e., that felt like “work.”

I realized that this impulse was a form of intelligence. It is the desire to find more efficient ways of accomplishing a given task. This impulse is an important part of the desire to invent new and better gadgets, to create more efficient work protocols, and to delegate work as you make your way up the power and authority chain.

I now separate the desire to do less of the hard or boring work with the desire to do nothing at all. The first I call the efficiency impulse. The second I call laziness – simple, inexcusable, and unforgivable laziness.

I encourage my proteges to indulge themselves in the former and rid themselves of the latter. I do the same every time I am faced with something I don’t want to do. I ask: “Is this the efficiency impulse I’m feeling or am I just plain lazy?”

Something to Think About

In 1950, there were scarcely 100,000 people in prison. Now, there are nearly 2.5 million.

Look at This…

Wow!

I don’t know who this kid is but she is wise way beyond her age.

She hates the motivational messages that say be the best and she is write. There is, as she says, always someone prettier, smarter, more talented and simply better than you.

Trying to be the best at anything is a fools game.

She says the goal is to be happy and that is true although that needs a lot of unpeeling—which I will do in future messages. But I tell you this: this kid is smart. If I had one tenth the wisdom she has at thirteen….oh, well….that’s exactly what she’s talking about.

 https://biggeekdad.com/2017/12/words-wisdom-13-year-old/

Continue Reading

From My Work-in-Progress Basket

One Thing & Another

No Comments

Word for the Wise

 Retrodict (ret-roh-DIKT) – to use present information to explain or reinterpret or revise knowledge of the past. Example from Jamie Whyte in The Wall Street Journal: “Many are impressed by the fact that climate models can ‘retrodict’ climatic change – that is, use past climatic data (say, from the 1860s) to predict climatic data from the less-distant past (say, from the 1920s). They should not be.”

Did You Know… ?

Top speed skaters can reach 37 miles per hour.

 

From My “Work-in-Progress” Basket

Principles of Wealth: #7 of 61

Every virtue has its opposite vice. The opposite of common sense is foolishness. The opposite of commitment is equivocation. The opposite of persistence is inconsistency.

In understanding what it takes to build wealth, it’s helpful to consider human habits in these terms.

You can make most business and investment decisions, for example, by applying a bit of common sense. Don’t act on facts you cannot verify. Don’t put all your trust in brokers and salespeople, even if they are trustworthy. Avoid investments you don’t completely understand – and if you ignore that rule, don’t invest more money than you are willing to lose. If you put all your money into buying a bridge in the desert and lose it all… well, that’s just foolish.

When it comes to investment strategies (in stocks or bonds or whatever), countless studies have shown that being consistent – sticking to a sensible strategy over a long period of time – is much more likely to make you rich than jumping from one strategy to another depending on what’s going on with the market or what’s going on in your head.

And when it comes to building wealth through a business enterprise or by developing a profession, getting to work early each morning and working steadily till the work is done – even in the face of challenges and disappointments – is not just important but essential.

From my book How to Speak Intelligently About Everything That Matters https://smile.amazon.com/Speak-Intelligently-About-Everything-Matters

In ancient Greece, plays were performed in huge, open-air theaters, and most people sat far away from the action. To help the audience keep track of what was going on onstage, actors wore masks with exaggerated facial expressions. That made it easier to distinguish the good guys from the bad guys, the masters from the slaves, and the male characters from the female characters. (Keep in mind that all the parts were played by men.) And when something about a character’s appearance or emotions changed (e.g., when Oedipus blinded himself), it could be quickly portrayed – even to the folks in the back row – by the actor donning a new mask.

This theatrical convention is represented today by two iconic images: the laughing mask of comedy and the weeping mask of tragedy.

Look at This…

 https://biggeekdad.com/2018/01/hiking-continental-divide-trail/

 

Continue Reading

From My Work-in-Progress Basket

One Thing & Another

No Comments

Word for the Wise

 Pinguid (PING-wid) – fat and oily. Here’s a lovely sentence from The Bunsby Papers by John Brougham that includes it alliteratively: “Peter was pinguid, plump, and plethoric – she was thin to attenuation.”

Did You Know… ?

If you add up all the numbers from 1 to 100 consecutively, the total is 5050. Keep that in mind. You never know when it will come up in conversation.

 

From My “Work-in-Progress” Basket

Principles of Wealth: #5 of 61

Wealth and income inequality are realities that exist in every economy – even those committed in principle to the distribution of wealth.

Many people today, believing that equality is an intrinsic and achievable good, seek to flatten financial inequalities through government programs and social action. A smaller group, sympathetic to the notion of equality but less trusting of governmental solutions, seek to create substantial personal wealth and then distribute some of that to others. Still others are dubious that financial inequality is intrinsically good and practically achievable. And a final group is sure that equality is intrinsically bad and can only be partially achieved and that only by severe repression.

My view is that human nature is innately opposed to equality. You can, by force, make a community financially equal for a moment in time. But an hour later, individuals within that community will get to work recreating inequality. Some will seek to have more. Some will be satisfied with what they have. And some will seek to have less.

This is the fundamental reason why history has shown us that the goal of achieving financial equality has never been achieved or even attempted.

Continue Reading