How Every Decision You Make Can Make You Richer – or Poorer

You go to lunch with a colleague. Everything is good. When the waiter puts the bill on the table, the total is $26.

Do you pick it up? Do you wait and hope he does? Or do you suggest you split it?

On the surface, this is a minor decision. But in truth, it is one of a million chances you’ve had, and will have, to become wealthier.

A cheapskate might look at it this way:

  • If I pay the whole bill, I’ll be $26 poorer.
  • If we split the bill, I’ll be $13 poorer.
  • If I can get him to pay it, I’ll be $13 richer.

To the cheapskate, the best decision is obvious. So when the bill arrives, he gets up to “go to the bathroom,” hoping he’ll be $13 richer when he returns.

But I have a different view. Wealth building, like quantum mechanics, often operates according to laws that seem contrary to what is “obvious.”

Paying the tab, in other words, might actually make you richer. Because the $13 you spend on your lunch partner might give you a return of much more than $13.

Your generosity might signal to him that you are the kind of person he can trust. It might tell him you are someone who is willing to give first without demanding recompense. If he sees you in that light, a relationship might be seeded by this small investment on your part. A year later – it is possible to imagine – he might recommend you for a promotion when he himself gets promoted to head up your department.

It depends on your assessment of his character.

If he impresses you as a person who believes – as you do – in reciprocity, you will know that the $13 is a wise investment. If, on the other hand, he shows you that he is a person who believes in exploiting others, the wise move might be to pay only your share of the bill and not develop the relationship any further.

In either case, you are richer.

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Great Truths

The most important things to know in life take a lifetime to learn. Our first lessons come early — but we grasp only the surface. As we gain life experience we gain deeper understanding. All great truths are both simple and complex, easy to understand yet difficult to master.

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Forgiving

The universe is eternally and instantly forgiving. The moment you forgive yourself, you are forgiven. Others may not forgive you, but you can ignore them. Only your own conscience has the power to haunt you. The only people who don’t need to forgive themselves are psychopaths. They don’t need to forgive themselves because they don’t feel guilty. They don’t feel guilty because they don’t feel responsibility. The point is: To live a guilt free life you have to forgive yourself and not worry about what anyone else thinks. Easier said than done. Still.

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Confessions of a Serial Entrepreneur

Q: When did you decide to become an entrepreneur?

I think it was when I was 12 because that was the year that one was legally allowed to work for a salary. I got a job with my friend Brian in a car wash in my town. We worked Saturdays and Sundays, from nine till five, drying cars as they rolled out of the building. Since we were small we were assigned to clean and dry the inside windows. Brian did the front. I did the back. It was a very simple job, mindless really. But it was relentless. We were in and out of each car as soon as they rolled out, about one every thirty to sixty seconds. It was amazingly boring. I found myself looking up at the clock every eight or ten cars. Just three or four minutes had passed. On top of that the boss, an obese, cigar-chomping character straight out of central casting, would pillory us in order to impress his best customers. “What kind of job is that? Do it again!”

I think it was then that I thought, “I got to find a way to make money on my own.”

Brian and I eventually reached burnout. We refused to do interiors any more, we told the fat man. “We will only dry,” we announced. “And the only thing we will dry is the radio antennas.”

We were fired before the second hand of that clock made its next rotation.

I was happy to be free from the car wash but was very soon missing the $30 a week I had been making. So I came up with the idea of writing and publishing a booklet called “Excuses for the Amateur.” It was a helpful guide for my fellow classmates who were too dimwitted to come up with excuses more creative than, “The dog ate my homework.”

The excuses I listed were – and I can’t prove this since it is no longer extant – clever and mildly witty. I sold out the first edition and pocketed more than fifteen dollars, if I remember correctly. “This is what I want to do,” I thought. The next day I got hauled down to the principal’s office a personal critique of my booklet and business idea by Sister Bonecrusher herself.

In retrospect I can see that it incorporated much of what I did in my adult career: writing, direct marketing and sometimes pushing the envelope a bit too far.

Without the prospect of further editions, I put my publishing dreams on hold and got a paper route and some lawn cutting and snow shoveling jobs and before I knew it my weekly compensation as an independent operator exceeded my salaried position at the car wash.
I call this my annus mirabilis.

Q: In Ready, Fire, Aim you say that of all the forms of entrepreneurship the one you least like is retail. What sort of experiences did you have that formed that view?

A: Yes. Nearly every one. During high school I took weekend and evening jobs at a few local restaurants. I worked as a dishwasher, busboy and waiter. I worked hard – at least by the lax standards I kept at the time – but reasons unknown to me at the time I was never a standout employee. My employment as a waiter came to me thanks to my younger brother Andrew who had secured a waiting job at Scotty’s, a steakhouse about fifteen minutes walk from my house.

Scotty’s was
a traditional steakhouse in most respects. The waiters were all mature and experienced men, my brother and I being the sole exceptions. My brother was astutely condescending to the other waiters, which made them think him their equal. I was deferential, which made them realize I was just a kid who had no right to be there. While I worked diligently, whispered criticisms reached Scotty.

Scotty, I should say, was a middle-aged Jew who had decided to speak with a Scottish accent and name the restaurant Scotty. The exit interview, as they call it these days, went something like this:

Mark, me boy. Sit ye down. I’ve something to tell ye.

What is it, Scotty?

I hate to tell ye this, lad, but I have to let ye go.

Let me go, Scotty? But why? I’ve always been on time. I’ve always worked hard. I’ve never dropped a tray.

Ah, don’t make me tell ye, lad.

Tell me!

Well, if ye want to know, I’ll tell ye.

Yes, please.

The truth is, me boy, you’re a hump!

A hump?
Yes, me boy. It’s a sad fact, but you’re a hump.

I never had the gumption to ask him what a hump was. I figured that the lesson – a lesson I’d already learned at least four times by then – was that I was not cut out to be an employee.

Q. That’s very funny. And I can see how that might have soured you on your potential as an employee, but what made you decide that the retail business itself was a bad business.

A: I don’t think it’s bad for everyone at all times. But I do think that it presents the entrepreneur with all sorts of unnecessary and difficult problems.

Q: For example?

A: For one thing it requires a great deal of expense getting started. You have to buy or put money down on a building. You have to outfit that building. You have to buy inventory. And so on. Even a small retail operation – say, a local camera shop – will set you back a hundred grand or more before you open the doors.

I’ve talked in some detail about this in several of the books I wrote (as Michael Masterson) but the kind of entrepreneurial business I like is one that allows you to test the business idea as quickly and cheaply as possible. You can do this easily if you are selling products online. You can also do this in almost any sort of personal service business. But you can’t do that in retail. You have to risk a whole lot of money before you have any idea if the basic business proposition is valid.

Another thing I don’t like about retail – at least from the entrepreneur’s point of view – is that it becomes a ball and chain. Retail businesses generally rely on inexpensive and inexperienced employees to make profits. And good retail managers are few and far between. This means that despite your best efforts you can almost never get away from the business. You must be there – at least a few hours a day – every day the damn business is open.

There are other reasons I don’t like retail. Any would-be entrepreneur contemplating a retail business should read chapter X of Ready, Fire, Aim before taking the plunge.

Q: But surely you acknowledge that some retail businesses make their owners very wealthy. McDonald’s, for example. Or the Gap.

A: That is true but those are not really retail businesses, at least in the conventional sense. They are franchises. Those businesses work on a very different model. You build one store that works and you replicate it over and over again. You make money by selling the stores to others.

Q: Did you ever have an experience with a retail business that worked?

A: Yes. Several. One in particular is a painful memory because I had the chance to be an owner but demurred. It was in 1972. A close friend of mine, Michael, had an opportunity to open up a rock and roll club in Freeport, Long Island. Michael and his partner (who could have been Scotty reincarnated) bought an old bar on Merrick Road. The previous bar had been a “bucket of blood” as they called it, a gin joint for alcoholics and bikers. Mike asked me to help him renovate the building. By that time I had done a lot of work as a freelance carpenter, so I was able to help him design and build out the club into something that college kids would like. Mike gave me the option to be paid for my work or trade it for sweat equity. I chickened out and opted for the cash. It eventually became one of the largest rock and roll clubs on the island. We had national acts like Richie Havens and The Ramones.

Q: What did that tell you?

A: Sweat equity is a very good deal if you (a) believe in the concept and (b) can afford it.

Q: So it wasn’t a total loss?

A: Not at all. I learned a valuable lesson and Mike gave me a job as a bouncer. That was how I met my wife. So I have The Right Track Inn to thank for my marriage.

Q: You mentioned that your first experience in publishing was when you were twelve years old. What was your next experience?

A: I did some publishing during my stint as a Peace Corps volunteer in Chad, in Africa, from 1975 to 1977. I was assigned to teach English literature and philosophy at the University of Chad. The Peace Corps director at the time asked me to write and publish a newsletter for the in-country volunteers. I did that and enjoyed it. It was also during that period that I wrote a book in which I attempted to document some stories and songs that were kept alive by an oral tradition. That book was never published but it gave me a taste for writing books.

After I got back I responded to an advertisement I saw in some Peace Corps publication for an editorial position in Washington, D.C., writing and editing a newsletter called African Business & Trade. I got the job and spent a bit more than four years in Washington, teaching freshman at Catholic University introductory literature courses, working as an editor during the day and attending PhD classes at night.

At first it was loads of fun being an actual journalist. I had no idea what I was doing but I was mentored by a very smart guy named Michael who taught me the importance of thinking about what I was writing before I wrote it. It is mildly embarrassing to admit it now, but I had managed to finish college and graduate school as an A student without ever thinking much about what I was writing.

But eventually the novelty of writing about business wore off. One day I was writing my umpteenth article on countertrade in Nigeria when I fell asleep at the typewriter. When I woke up a moment later I discovered I had finished the paragraph in my sleep.

Q: You jest, of course.

A: No. I swear, it happened. I knew then that I had to get out of the slave-writing side of the business.

Q: So what did you do?

A: Michael had left a few weeks before then. My boss, Leo Welt, was searching for a replacement. I walked into his office and told him that I could do Michael’s job at my current salary. I have no idea why, but he accepted my offer and I became publisher.

Q: How did that go?

A: For me it was a great experience. I had to learn what the publishing business was all about. It turned out it was much more about selling ideas than it was about dutifully researching news and writing articles.

Q: So you became a marketer?

A: A very bad marketer. With Michael gone, I had no one to mentor me. Leo was too busy with his other, more successful businesses. I had to figure out how to sell these newsletters on my own. I did the best I could for the year I was there but I’m sorry to admit that I never figured it out during my tenure.

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Investing, Speculating and Gambling: Let’s Get the Terms Straight

One sensible way to acquire wealth is to buy shares of large, stable, cash-rich companies that pay dividends and hold them for a long time. (I am talking about investing in companies like Hershey’s and Coca Cola.)

This is called investing.

Most people do something else. They buy stocks of large, solid companies whose share prices they hope will increase for some reason. They buy them with the intention of selling them at a profit when they do.

This is called speculating.

Most people would not agree with that last statement. Most people – including most of the professional investment community – prefer to call this second type of financial activity investing too. They don’t like the negative connotation of speculating because it implies undue risk.

Ninety five percent of the investment activity in the world falls into this second category. Even the major media, on which the public relies for common sense, calls this type of transaction investing.

So what is the difference?

Any paperback dictionary will tell you that speculation is characterized by the fact that it is based on incomplete information. And when you buy a stock on the assumption that its share price will rise due to some anticipated short-term event, you are definitely relying on incomplete information.

For one thing, unless you have true inside information, you really have no idea that the event you are counting on will materialize. For another thing – and this is actually more important – you have no certain knowledge that the marketplace of investors will respond to that event by buying up the stock.

So this is one thing that every investor must understand: the difference between true investing, which is largely independent of specific future outcomes, and speculation, which is dependent on them.

If your broker or financial advisor is giving you this second kind of recommendation you must learn to recognize it as a speculation. Then, if you want to speculate, you can.

I am not saying that one should never speculate. (Although I should say this.) But I do think that if you are going to speculate you should not delude yourself by thinking you are making a sound investment.

There is a third way people buy stocks that deserves another name. I’m talking about investing in companies that are neither large nor well known but have the potential to enjoy large increases in their stock prices (which are generally cheap) due to some foreseen event.

The market calls such activities speculation but we should, to be honest, call this by another name. We should call it gambling. Gambling is defined as the purchase of an unlikely chance to profit. Any stock you buy whose chances of having its share prices go up over the long term (and virtually every cheap stock fits into this category) is a form of gambling.

Again, I am not saying that you should never gamble (though I should). I am just saying that you should know you are gambling when you do. Gambling – whether it is playing the slots or Keno, may be a fun way to spend your money. But only a fool would think that it is a way to increase one’s wealth.

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Ken Danz, RIP

I met Ken in 1976 when I was teaching English literature at the University of Chad in N’djamena, Chad. Ken was also on the faculty teaching American literature.

After my stint Kathy and I moved to Washington DC where I worked as an editor for a publishing business. Ken returned the next year and I found him work as an editor and proofreader. When I relocated to South Florida in 1982 the first person I hired was Ken. He arrived by Greyhound Bus looking — well, you know how Ken often looked.

I took him right to JC Penny’s and bought him three new sets of clothes including three clip-on ties. The next night I helped him find an apartment within walking distance from our offices. For the next five years Ken worked as he always worked: punctually and punctiliously. He was one of about five editors and proofreaders we employed. One of them was, like Ken, an ex-college professor. Another had edited the Chicago Style manual. Ken enjoyed the camaraderie of his colleagues. Back then language correctors like Ken were vital and necessary. This was long before personal computers and spell check programs.

When we sold the Oxford Club to Agora Ken came along as part of the package. I knew he preferred city living to life in the Florida suburbs and he told me later that he was very happy to be living in downtown Baltimore within walking distance of work and his favorite theater on Charles Street and within reach of the ballpark and the library.

Ken was always a very private person. Although we spent lots of time going to movies and arguing about them over beers, I never was able to pry any information about his past. I heard that he was a professor at a university in Missouri and had once been married. He confirmed those two facts but never told me another detail.

Ken was extremely bright and well educated. But during our friendship his intelligence was applied only to movies (he was interested in anything tagged as “grim, stark and depressing,” he once told me) and sports (about which I know nothing) and less frequently about literature and English grammar. Still I always considered him a good friend and I think he felt the same way about me.

During the years I was commuting to Baltimore Ken was part of a very exclusive movie club that met once a week. After I moved to Florida we saw one another only occasionally but when we did it was always cordial and private, just as it had always been.

When Jenny Thompson told me that Ken had lung cancer I came up to visit him and try to persuade him to spend whatever time he had living in our guest cottage where he could be taken care and surrounded by friends of his, the former members of the Florida movie club from so many years ago. If you know Ken you won’t be surprised to learn that he was very agitated by the suggestion. It was way too much of a change for him. He had his own plans — to get him admitted into a hospice that Jenny had mentioned to him. He was equally insistent that he didn’t want chemotherapy. “I’m well beyond seventy,” he told me. (That was the first time he had ever mentioned his age and it was not more specific than that) and I’ve had a good enough life,” he said. “I want to do this my way,” he said.

He had — and those of you who know Ken will also appreciate this — a carefully handwritten, eight page treatise which he handed me that provided all the reasons why I should not try to talk him into moving to Florida or having chemotherapy. All his reasons, not unexpectedly, were sound and beautifully expressed. All except one. One of the eight or ten reasons he didn’t want to undergo chemotherapy was that he had “heard that it could make you lose your hair.” As he was reading this sentence to me I couldn’t help but gaze amazedly at the wild outcropping of gray hair mixed with bald patches that constituted his hairstyle that day. But I didn’t argue. There was never any advantage to be had from arguing with Ken.

Last week Alice, who had been kindly taking care of Ken, told me that he was in the hospital after suffering burns and smoke inhalation. His apartment somehow had caught fire. I’ll never know whether the fire was an accident or Ken was just tired of waiting. But he died within a week’s time, which I think he was ready for. Jenny stopped by to see him in the burn unit. She told me he was disconcerted to have visitors but kissed her hand gently and then told her to be damn sure nobody else comes by to bother him.

One final anecdote: in one of my visits with Ken I was attempting to help organize his estate, such as it was. He had, through Agora, a nice sized retirement fund, which he had directed to two old friends from Missouri. So that was fine. He told me he wanted to give me something but the only thing he had was the cash in his savings account that, he said, would be too trifling for “a man of your means.” I told him I thought he should give it to his two friends and he agreed. But the process was very complicated. He would have had to take a trip to the bank that he adamantly refused to do. I figured I would just tell him I had taken care of it and send the money — I figured it couldn’t have been more than a thousand dollars — to his friends and that would be the end of it. Just to be sure I asked him how much he had in the bank. “How the hell do I know?” he shouted. “I put money in there and I pay my bills!” I spent about a half hour sorting through the reams and reams of papers and magazines and bills that filled his living room and found a recent bank statement at last. His account had something like $150,000 in it.

 

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Americans are getting smarter?

Americans are getting financially smarter. They are spending less and saving more. This is something that our leaders should be praising. But they are doing just the opposite. They are trying to encourage us to spend more. Why would they do that? Because of an economic fallacy. Their thinking is this: Since such a large part of our economy is based on spending, the way to have a stronger economy is to encourage more spending. But this makes as much sense as advising a junkie to take more drugs because so much of his biochemistry is dependent on drugs.

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