The Discipline Question
October 27, 2006

On the flight home from Paris, I had to ask the five-year-old behind me to stop kicking my seat. Several times, in fact, as his oblivious mother flipped through her US Weekly. That little incident reminded me of a recent Wall Street Journal article in which writer Jeffrey Zaslow raised the question of whether it's appropriate to reprimand strangers' children when they misbehave. Seems there's a drastic divide over what people think.

Take Zaslow's three examples ...

Case Number One: Don McCauley, owner of A Taste of Heaven Cafe in Chicago, was fed up with what he saw as a growing problem - mothers allowing their children to run around his restaurant, screaming. Finally, last fall, he posted a sign that read, "Children of all ages have to behave and use their indoor voices."

Many customers praised him - but some offended mothers organized a boycott against his place.

Case Number Two: Also in Chicago. A woman was enjoying her morning coffee at Starbucks. She noticed that a little girl was opening artificial sweetener packets and sprinkling them around the room "like fairy dust."

"Honey, should you be doing that?" the woman asked the girl.

"I beg your pardon!" the child's mother barked. "Don't call my daughter 'honey' - and whatever she does is none of your business!"

Case Number Three: Victoria Juster, a member of the Long Grove, Illinois school board, was driving behind a school bus. Through the back window of the bus, she saw two kids hitting and choking each other. When the bus stopped, she stopped behind it, asked the driver for permission to board, and reprimanded the children. Later, the parents of the students demanded that Juster resign from the school board, saying she had no right to board the bus and scold their children.

"Why are we reluctant to reprimand other people's children?" asks Zaslow.

"Too many parents," he says, "don't want to be told when their kids do something wrong. They are defensive, worrying that any criticism reflects poorly on them. Or they are overprotective, fearing every stranger is a potential predator. Or they are indulgent, thinking they must protect their little darling's self-esteem."

There is an organization called the Gurian Institute in Colorado Springs, CO that believes children are healthier, happier, and better adjusted when they grow up in communities where other adults, not just the children's parents, take an interest in their behavior. Founder Michael Gurian advises parents to establish teams of five or 10 friends and neighbors to "mentor, admonish, and love" each other's kids.

That's what my parents did. I was regularly praised and criticized by my parents' neighbors, including Mrs. Cronin, Mr. and Mrs. Matuzzi, Sadie (the little old lady who lived down the block), and Al, who ran the local deli. In my young world, teachers, coaches, and policemen were allowed to engage in full-contact disciplinary measures. And strangers felt comfortable yelling at you for any and all civil infractions.

The knowledge that my public behavior was subject to almost universal adult criticism curbed my enthusiasm for bad behavior. But I never felt that my creative impulses were smothered. Nor did I ever feel abused. In fact, were it not for that extra supervision, who knows how I would have turned out?

I'm grateful to all those adults who cared to intervene in my upbringing. I feel sorry for children growing up today in communities where such intervention is seen as intrusive.

Return to this issue of Early to Rise.

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posted by M. Masterson @ 4:08 PM, ,




Privacy in California, and Japanese Blogs
October 17, 2006

Patricia Dunn, the ex-Hewlett-Packard chairwoman, was indicted. Good. Who did she think she was? Under what moral scheme did she think it was justified to launch an illegal investigation into the private lives of Hewlett-Packard board members, just because she was upset that one of them might have leaked information to the press?

Privacy is quickly disappearing from our culture - but it's good to know that at least in the courtroom of one California judge the concept has some merit.

------------------------------------------

According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, blogs are even more popular in Japan than they are in the USA. "It may be that they represent an appealing outlet in a culture that discourages public self-expression," says Yukari Iwatani Kane, who wrote the story.

By April, Japan had produced 8.7 million blogs, compared to an estimated 12 million in this country. On a relative basis, considering that Japan's population is about 120 million compared to 300 million here, that's strong.

A great story about a Japanese blog: A Japanese businessman went online a few years ago to secretly complain about his domineering wife. Under the pen name "Kazuma," he chronicled how she snatched food from his plate, sent him shopping in a typhoon, and made him sleep in the living room when he caught a cold.

Now his wife is a superstar. Dubbed Oni-yome (Demon Wife), she's the main character in a book, a television drama, a comic-book serialization, a videogame, and an upcoming movie.

More power to the Internet for democratizing creative production.


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posted by M. Masterson @ 9:12 AM, ,




How to Become a (Multi) Millionaire - for Sure - in 7 Years
October 6, 2006

If you aren't yet a millionaire, this message is for you.

On Tuesday, my fourth book with John Wiley & Sons will be on the bookshelves. The title: Seven Years to Seven Figures: The Fast Track Plan to Becoming a Millionaire.

The title makes an audacious promise. I'm sure more than one critic will write it off as irresponsible. "The ordinary person can't become a millionaire in seven years," they'll say. "It's wrong to give people false hope."

When the title was first suggested, I had the same thought. "Yes, this idea could get people motivated. But is it realistic?"

I thought about that question for some time, and concluded that I wouldn't make any promises in the book that I couldn't keep. My big promise - a seven-figure net worth in seven years or less - seemed a likely candidate for the chopping block. But when I mentioned my concern to my writing assistant, she asked, "How long did it take for you to make your first million?"

I thought about it and realized that it took me about two years to become a millionaire after I'd made up my mind to do it. What's more, I realized that most of the people I'd mentored had also done it in less than seven years. For example:

Justin Ford, ETR's real estate expert, went from bankruptcy to multimillionaire in six years.

Brad Solomon turned his dead-end accounting job into a $4 million fortune in six years.

Alan Silver built a profitable direct-response company and a multimillion-dollar net worth in five years.

Just about every wealthy person I know, in fact, accumulated their wealth in a relatively short period of time.

So I stuck with the title and embraced the challenge. Seven Years to Seven Figures would be a get-rich-quick book, to be sure, but it wouldn't be based on some idea or investment program that I wanted to sell. It would be based, instead, on actual experience - mine and that of people I know who became wealthy in seven years or less.

I profile eight of those people in the book. If you read it - and I certainly hope you do - you'll come to your own conclusions about how they did what they did. You can follow their stories and see exactly which strategies and techniques made them wealthier ... and which made them poorer.

I also give you my interpretation of what did and didn't work, so you can compare your conclusions with mine. And at the end of the book, I summarize what I think are the key principles of wealth building - the essential truths that underlie most of their stories.

Here's a sneak preview.

Super-size Your Income

The stock market won't get you wealthy in seven years, because stock investing gives you neither of the two things you need to accumulate money fast:

1. A dramatically higher income than you are getting now.
2. A dramatically higher rate of return than you are getting now.

Let's talk about that first objective: supercharging your income:

You can't become a millionaire in seven years with an average ($60,000) family income. Truthfully, if you want to develop a seven-figure net worth in seven years or less, you have to earn a lot more than $60,000 a year. At the very least, you need to double that. And you need to get to that $120,000+ level fast.

You can see how the people I profiled in Seven Years to Seven Figures did just that. When you get through reading their stories, it will be obvious that there are basically three ways to do it:

* Do what you're currently doing for a living ... but do it better.
* Develop a financially valued skill.
* Augment your income with a second job or home-based business.

Put Your ROIs on Steroids

Getting your income up to the six-figure level will give you a richer lifestyle, but it won't make you wealthy in seven years unless you also invest a big portion of that extra income at an above-average rate of return.

Most financial planners argue that you should be satisfied with a four to six percent return on investment (ROI). I think that's ludicrous. During the wealth-building portion of your life (during the next seven years), you should shoot much higher. If becoming a multimillionaire is your objective, you will have to achieve a net ROI of 20 to 25 percent per year.

As I've said, you can't get that kind of return by picking the "right" stock and sitting back. To get huge returns on the money you'll be socking away during the next seven years, you have to do two things:

1. Invest in businesses that you understand.
2. Invest in businesses that you control.

Knowledge and control - those are the key elements. Most investors are too lazy to learn about what they put their money in, and they're also too timid to assert control. Having control means keeping tabs on market fluctuations. It also means being willing to make tough decisions based on those fluctuations. Most of all, it means being involved with sales and marketing - the pillars of every business, large or small.
In Seven Years to Seven Figures, you'll read about people who enjoyed super-high ROIs by (a) becoming knowledgeable about particular businesses and then (b) investing in them as insiders.

You'll find out how they did it ... and how you can too.

I can't promise you that reading Seven Years to Seven Figures will turn you into a millionaire by 2013, because I can't foresee what you're going to do after you read the book. Most readers will either (a) immediately disregard what they learn or (b) make themselves promises they won't keep.

But a few will use the book to change their lives.

I hope you're one of those few.

I hope this book will inspire you to change your financial habits, because it will force you to realize that what you have been doing until now hasn't produced the results you have been looking for.

I hope you'll find useful, wealth-building ideas that you can put to work right away. And that after you've implemented a dozen wealth-creating changes, you'll read the book again and find more ideas that will take you to the next level of wealth. And then, when you have attained that level, you'll do it again.

Most of all, I hope that when you read this book you'll realize the doubters and naysayers are wrong. Getting reasonably wealthy, reasonably quickly, is not a pipe dream but an achievable, short-term goal that you can work on the day you lay eyes on the first page.

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posted by M. Masterson @ 2:22 PM, ,




The Increasing Importance of Small Sales

I started reading The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More. It's a very good book based on one good idea - that the economy is being greatly changed by the Internet. Whereas in the last 100 years businesses have been looking for hits to provide profits, an increasingly large share of profits are coming from the "long tail" - small sales of niche products.

Author Chris Anderson theorizes that the "emerging digital ... economy is going to be radically different from today's mass market. If the twentieth-century ... was about hits, the twenty-first will be equally about niches."

In companies examined, long-tail revenues were currently bringing in 25 percent of sales and the trend was accelerating.

I happened to get a report from one of my clients on their e-book publishing activity. Sure enough, a few titles accounted for 75 percent of the sales. The rest were just twos and threes of many titles. The key for them is to automate the order process, because the storage and delivery of these lesser-selling titles is just about zero.

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posted by M. Masterson @ 9:19 AM, ,




Food for Thought: The Unlimited Potential for Creating Wealth
October 4, 2006

The truth is this: Some forms of wealth are limited. Others can be recreated. Natural resources (coal, oil, natural gas, etc.) are available in limited supply. Human resources (intelligence, creativity, and skill) are available in infinite quantities.

Most of the products of intelligence, creativity, and skill are also unlimited. As long as there are 100 people living on this planet, there will be 100,000 possibilities for creating wealth.

A hundred years ago, there were horses and buggies, telegraphs and steamships. Now there are cellphones, three-car garages, and jumbo jets. There are washing machines and refrigerators. Antibiotics and polio vaccines. TVs and satellites and MRI machines.

All this technology was invented, and it has not only enriched our world but has also made more than a few people wealthy.

Here's another example, much closer to home. My house was built 10 years ago. It replaced a smaller house, built in the 1960s. Before that house, this spot was an empty bit of beach. Something - a very nice house - replaced nothing. That makes my little piece of real estate part of a vast and growing economy.

See what I'm saying? Wealth - whether in the form of technology, ideas, or property - is created all the time.

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posted by M. Masterson @ 10:49 AM, ,