They sell hope, not victory

Casinos and lotteries sell hopes, not winnings. Yet they make a lot of money. Why?

Probably because they sell hopes to people who are mathematically challenged. I don't mean to offend anyone when I say "mathematically challenged," but only to submit that most people cannot predict, explain nor control the "doctrine of chance."

The doctrine of chance refers to the mathematics of odds. If you know how to calculate the odds, you will be able to make correct (i.e. profitable) decisions in life.

What happens, of course, is that we often let our emotions take over our rationality.

Why?

Probably because the news media and the advertising industry constantly seek to bring out an emotional response from us. Not surprisingly, we don't often use our rational capabilities.

We are conditioned to respond to strong emotional stimulus like greed (remember the Dot Com days?), fear, sex, violence, etc.

The fact is, the mainstream media is fundamentally dumb.

You can gain more instruction by reading a non-fiction book for 2 hours than you can by watching TV news for 20 hours.

The mainstream media has a huge commercial interest in keeping citizens in the dark. That's the real "Da Vinci Code": keep the masses in the dark, so they keep working hard for capitalists and keep paying taxes.

I stopped working for capitalists in June 2000, and started working for myself ever since. I think it's only a matter of time before a critical mass of people realize the same thing I realized six years ago: that we are constantly being deceived by the mass media, the advertising industry and even people close to us who are more interested in maintaining the status quo than to risk change.

One of my intellectual heroes, Dr Edward de Bono, in fact said the same thing in an interview; he said one of his mistakes was to assume that other people are interested in change and progress just because he was interested in change and progress.

In the end, the government, the ad industry and perhaps even your employer are more interested in giving you hope than they are in giving you the tools to really succeed.

As a quote in the Harvard Business Review magazine said, "Give a man a fish and he will work for you every day. Teach him how to fish and you just lost your leverage."

The success secret here is to realize that people will never reveal to you their success secrets, because then they would lose their edge. To get to know other people's success secrets, you have to read between the lines and also infer all possible facts and methods from the visible aspects of their actions and behavior.

Managing reality vs managing truth

What is real can be measured, which leads to greater and greater efficiencies, whereas what is true is a bit too mystical and nearly impossible to measure. You can only manage reality, you cannot manage the truth.

This Reality vs Truth duel is in fact central to the first Star Wars trilogy (A New Hope, etc.).

Darth Vader totally focused on Reality, whereas the young Luke Skywalker focused on Truth. ("Trust your feeling Luke," Obi-Wan would whisper to him).

I guess the success secret here is to learn to manage and leverage both reality and truth.

You manage reality when you do everything in your power to gather information about what is going on in your industry or profession.

You manage truth when you do everything in your power to learn more about your passion, your talent and your sense of purpose.

Obviously, managing truth is much harder to do. However, as we have seen with the great men and women in history, being intimately connected to one's talent, passion and purpose enables one to often rise above the reality of the times and to make a distinct mark on history.

Here are names of a few great human beings who did just that: Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, Pope John Paul II, Martin Luther King, Gandhi, etc.

They were all intimately acquainted with the reality of their times, yet they used their unique talent, passion and moral purpose to transform their own lives and the lives of millions of other people.

What's real vs what's true

I think the success secret, when it comes to one's work life, is to follow a process comprising four distinct phases:

1. Explore
2. Decide
3. Commit
4. Perform

Most young people, upon graduation, don't get the opportunity to explore career options. Even with cyber-mentoring services like Academos.qc.ca (which is excellent, by the way, and I'm a mentor there to a couple of kids), young people don't get a chance to fully explore career options.

Rather, what happens is that a new college or university graduate would jump on the first job opportunity whose requirements match his/her qualifications and skills.

In other words, for the overwhelming majority of people, we start our career at Step 4 (Perform). We skipped Steps 1 to 3.

We never really explored our career options, therefore we were never really in a position to decide truly. Because we never truly decided, we never really committed to any career decision.

As a result, even after a few years of job experience, we end up floating from one job to another (in the U.S., 2.6 million people quit their job every month). We can't really blame Monster.com for all that job hopping. It's just the reflection of a modern plight: lack of clarity about one's true purpose and authentic vocation.

Einstein put it this way: "We have profusion of means, but confusion of ends."

In other words, there are jobs everywhere. It's not that hard to find a job. What IS hard is finding one's true purpose in life.

You might ask, "What's the difference between a job and a career?"

A job has more to do with reality, whereas a career (an authentic career) has to do with truth.

Reality is what is out there. It's, well, real. You can touch it, feel it, kick it.

Truth is quite different. It's about your purpose, your passion and your talent.

Let me illustrate. You can have a REAL career yet your career can be quite UNTRUE. For example, you can be a highly paid executive who owns two houses, three cars and has a lot of money stashed somewhere in Cayman Islands. Yet, all your material possessions and your daily work may have little to do with who you truly are. In that sense, your career is NOT TRUE, although it may be very real (at least to other people who look at you from outside).

What's real is easy to measure, what's true can only be felt.

The thing that is most real for people, when it comes to a job, is the salary they get.

However, as we stress in our Career Brainstorming workshops, there are three other critical elements: your talent, your passion and your sense of purpose.

Without these three dimensions, a career is "flat." It has no excitement, it is merely an economic tool, and one's life becomes a financially motivated routine without heart or soul. We are dead before we die. We go through life like a drifting piece of wood.

But why, you might ask, are people so lost today when it comes to their career?

The answer, I think, is because the industrial revolution forced us to pay attention to what is real, not what is true.

More coming up.

Just do it

I would just modify Nike's famous slogan to "Just do what you're supposed to do."

In fact, this is the key to success according to the late sage Peter Drucker. He wrote that one should:

1. Determine what is the main task in one's job (or business)
2. Spend as much time as possible doing precisely THAT task (delegate or outsource everything else)
3. Create a way to measure one's performance of that task and outcome from that task

If you're a full-time student, study. If you're a writer, write. If you're a singer, sing.

All this sounds fairly simple and perhaps even the most common of common sense.

But in real life, it's really hard to do just one thing, in the same way that it's hard to invest your money in only one company.

How do you know if THAT company is a real winner and will yield a high payoff in the long term?

As a result, we prefer to invest in mutual funds or a diversified portfolio in order to mitigate the risks.

Similarly, in our own careers, we prefer to do many things because we can never be sure exactly what is the ONE THING that we should be doing.

Often, the result is that we may do moderately well many things, but we don't really shine in doing any particular thing.

And because we never become truly excellent at ONE THING, we never earn the kind of income and prestige that greatly successful professionals do.

I mentioned before that one should perhaps "just do what you're supposed to do," but how does a person get to know exactly what he/she is supposed to do in this life?

Because the process of finding one's talent and purpose is so mysterious (not to mention soul-wrenching!), we usually prefer Nike's advice: "Just do it." Just graduate and get a job already. Everything will fall into place once you have a job.

Every month, in the U.S., 2.6 million people quit their job perhaps because they realize that "just doing it" is not worth it anymore. They want something more out of their work life than just a paycheck. They want passion, they want meaning, they want reward and recognition, they want to use their talent, and they want everything to happen before 5 PM so they can get home in time for supper.

I think the success secret, when it comes to one's work life, is to break down "just do it" into distinct phases:

1. Explore
2. Decide
3. Commit
4. Perform

In fact, the Career Brainstorming workshop I developed in 2005 encourages people to fully explore all their options before they decide. We also show people how to create "commitment mechanisms" so that after you decide on a career, you can't easily reverse your decision (this is needed because, whether we like to admit it or not, most of us lack self-discipline). Finally, we teach people how to design performance-tracking systems for ensuring that they stay at the top of their game.

More details in the next posting.

Generating insights from merging ideas

The above diagram illustrates an important phenomenon, I think.

It's the idea that valuable insights ("valuable" in the sense that you can develop new products or services or ways of competing commercially) can be discovered when you merge the thinking of various books.

This is like the well-known principle in metallurgy whereby an alloy, which is made up of different metals, is stronger than a single metal.

It's important to note that you can't really merge "books"; you can only merge the ideas or, better yet, your own understanding of the content of each book.

A book may contain information of the "fuel" type whereas another book may contain information or ideas of the "oxygen" type. By mixing them together, you get combustion, hence energy.

Where does this mixing take place? In the human mind, of course.

Without this mixing in the human mind, books remain very static, quite valueless (as when they gather dust on a bookshelf or in a library).

Another place where this (potentially explosive) mixing occurs is in a conversation. Einstein knew this, which is why he created the Olympian Academy, an informal group that got together in coffeehouses to debate and discuss ideas in science.

Bill Gross, the well-known entrepreneur, for his part uses a different method for mixing ideas. He would read magazines, books, newspapers, etc. and record (in an Excel sheet) interesting ideas that he comes across. Then, he would rate these ideas using various criteria, and I'm guessing that he would perform various permutations and combinations to see the "offspring" of various ideas merging.

Not surprisingly, he's always full of million-dollar ideas!

Remember: this technique is what he shared with the media. Imagine all the secret techniques he uses to combine ideas, which he does not share with the public.

200. Think "earnings per minute"

People who get rich don't think about "yearly salaries" and they definitely don't read salary surveys.

They are more concerned about "profit rate," which is grossly defined as the rate at which you "work less and less while earning more and more."

For them, the expression "time is money" has an added dimension. It doesn't just refer to the fact that "time is precious" but also that "how you use other people's time IS the way to make money."

But why should you learn to use other people's time?

It's because people will never give you their money unless they give you their time first, and if they don't give you their time, they most certainly will never give you their money.

What is the best way to get people to give you their time? Teach them something valuable or useful.

Progressive.com for instance got it exactly right. They openly share information even about their competitors (!) so that potential customers can make the right choices.

The world is indeed moving towards greater transparency. If you know something valuable, you should let all your connections know RIGHT AWAY. Unless your info has to do with some nuclear launch code, it will most likely become obsolete soon. If you don't share it now, it will be worthless in a few days / weeks.

By the way, the CIA does sell its intelligence products to allied nations. The intelligence community is a very "incestuous" circle where everybody sleeps with everybody else, it seems.

Anyways, I was saying that teaching is the best way to sell. When you teach, you necessarily sell. But when you sell, you don't necessarily teach.

Most people I know are very smart, yet I'm surprised they never looked into the possibility of setting up a blog to share their knowledge. I don't think it's laziness, I think it's just that people are not used to share their knowledge.

Even universities still don't get it. In their communications with alumni, they never teach anything new. They only invite alumni to events like barbecues or ask for donations, etc. They're universities, they should teach!

I suspect individuals will catch up and leverage technologies sooner than institutions.

And it's so easy! With www.audioblogger.com or www.odeo.com, you don't even have to type! You can just record your voice and talk about a topic you are knowledgeable about.

Blogging (whether through texts, audio files or video files) is a GREAT way to establish your credibility. It makes it so much easier for people to trust you.

At this point, I should explain what I mean by "earnings per minute."

Actually, it should be "earnings per minute per person."

It's the idea that you can "earn" a lot of money by capitalizing on every single available minute of every person you know, or who knows about you.

Indeed, in the new economy, making money is not about selling your time (which is what most workers do), but buying other people's time and using it to sell something to them (whether you made that something or bought it from someone else).

How do you buy other people's time? With knowledge -- the new currency of the cyber-economy.

About Charlie Munger

Charlie Munger is Warren Buffett's friend and business partner. He is a wise billionaire who, unfortunately for the rest of us, did not write many books. However, he did reveal something that I found missing in all the books written by multimillionaires.

Namely, he provides insights as to how to structure your mind for always thinking profitably. In other words, if you structure your mind to think correctly at all times, you will become rich.

Warren Buffett in fact admitted that Munger "rewired" his brain.

I came up with this line to summarize what I feel is the essence of his teaching: "We never stop learning because we never stop being deceived."

But how does this billionaire learn? His method is the "continuous acquisition and progressive integration of mental models into his reflexive way of thinking."

In other words, he is continually sifting through books, from a great variety of disciplines (biolography, math, politics, psychology, etc.) to find the key operating principles in each discipline. Then, he integrates those principles or mental models into his habitual way of thinking.

In other words, he's not just reading books and merely acquiring knowledge. He is significantly altering the very structure of this mind and his way of thinking, so that his mental performance is continually improved as he makes strategic decisions.

Below is an excerpt from a book about him. Email me at omnidigitalbrain@yahoo.com if you want the whole chapter. Mention "charlie munger" in the subject heading. For subscribers only.

---

"One of the most elusive, intriguing, and independent business leaders in America, the 76-year-old Munger said it was his goal to stay just below the wealth-level required to be named to the Forbes richest Americans list. It would help him stand just outside the limelight. The strategy
didn’t work.

In 1998, Munger’s fortune was calculated at more than $1.2 billion. On the richest Americans list, Munger ranked just below the family heirs to the Levi Strauss fortune. He ranked just above Michael Eisner, head of the Walt Disney Company; hotel heir William Barron Hilton, and most surprisingly, higher than Silicon Valley computer nabob Steven Jobs.

Like Warren Buffett, Munger inherited no wealth. He built his fortune on the sheer power of his will and his business acumen."

- From the book Damn Right!

Proactive knowledge-sharing with one's connections

http://superpeterpartnership.blogspot.com/

Above is something you will begin to see more and more. It's people using the Web to empower one another.

I created that form to rapidly share my knowledge with people I meet. This proactive transparency on my part will hopefully signal to people my desire to build win-win partnerships. The form basically says "I'm most willing to share my best knowledge with you, you can count on me."

Failure happens by default, success by design

"It is a fundamental human right to have a career you are passionate about and that utilizes your natural talent and uniqueness."

- Speech excerpt from an address at UNESCO (United Nations) circa 2010, by federal career activist Peter Nguyen from the Canadian delegation

===

In 2005, I had a flash of insight and developed with my sister Zoonie a powerful and liberating workshop to help people design their ideal career. Called "Career Brainstorming," this workshop aimed at:

1. teaching people the fundamental elements of a great career
2. how to design an ideal career for themselves

A few months ago, I read that every month, 2.6 million people in the U.S. quit their job and go looking for a better job.

It is obvious to me that people are looking less for "job success" but rather are looking for "career success."

Yet, we never took the time to define exactly what a career is.

In our Career Brainstorming workshop, we submit that a career must contain four dimensions:

1. your talent (what you're good at)
2. your passion (what you feel strong and positively about)
3. the world's need (the real need that you are fulfilling in the world)
4. your sense of purpose (the sense that what you do is important, that it is meaningful, that it's part of your legacy)

I've shared this framework with so many people, and the reaction of every person is the same: "But of course! That's quite right!" And then they go on to ask me tons of questions about it.

People recognize these four dimensions of a career, yet have never been able to phrase them so concisely before.

The very simplicity of this framework makes it a powerful career design tool.

It it sounds like I'm trying to sell my workshop, don't worry; I'm not!

I'm more than willing to give away this framework and all associated ideas. Why? Because it has the potential to transform people's views about work, their career and the role they play in society.

When I was struggling in 1999 to find my true career, I did not have such a tool to help me. So I did suffer quite a bit and went through periods of severe self-doubt and existential confusion.

This is why Zoonie and I are so excited about sharing this career design framework with anyone who's interested. We believe it can help avoid a lot of confusion and pain and frustration.

However, this workshop is only for people who are serious about finding their ideal career and are honest enough to ask and answer questions such as:

• "Am I really using my talent at work or am I just wasting my time pushing paper and doing computer stuff?
• Do I really feel alive at work or am I just being courteous and polite?
• Do I know the purpose of my work or am I just working for a paycheck?"

The late Peter Drucker, one of my favorite management thinkers, asked this question when people came to him for career advice: "What do you want to contribute?"

The blunt truth -- and not everyone is ready to hear this -- is that most people don't know what they want to contribute. We merely go through the motions day in day out. And then one day, we come to the end of life and look back without clearly seeing what we have accomplished.

Sure, it's hard to imagine yourself at the end of your life and looking back.

But here's an exercise that will help you to clearly see what your career will like: just think about what you accomplished last week, as well as the emotions you felt and the performance you achieved.

Multiply all of that by 50 and you get precisely what your career will be like for the coming year.

If last week was boring, expect 50 more boring weeks.

If last week was stressful, expect 50 more stressful weeks.

If you did not use your true talent last week, expect to NOT use your talent in the coming 50 weeks.

The fundamental thing to remember here is that failure always happens by default, and that success always happens by design.

Unless a person sits down and seriously designs his/her career, it will simply not happen.

Note: if you're interested in receiving (free of charge) the workshop slides that I use during the Career Brainstorming workshop, please write to me at omnidigitalbrain@yahoo.com

Networking = $$$

As the diagram above shows, networking is, in addition to being a great way to meet people and make new friends, a systematic way to secure cash or cashflow options!!! (A cash option is the tangible possibility of obtaining a contract or job, whereas a cashflow option is the tangible possibility of striking a win-win partnership so that both you and the other person wins financially).

Each green rectangle is a dollar bill (it can be a $5, or $100, etc.). As you can see, some connections are worth more economically. Those are the ones that should be "cloned" (that is, you identify their characteristics and then you try to meet more people like that).

The white rectangles refer to connections who, in the words of Tim Sanders (author of Love is the Killer App), may be "funny" but they are not "money."

Of course, there is no moral judgment as to whether it is better to be funny (entertaining, etc.) or money (business-smart, well connected, influential, etc.). But in a business context and given the short amount of time we have every day, networking for business purposes requires that one be selective about who to network with.

Financial credit vs social credit

If you went into a bank and wore a mask, but calmly ask the bank manager to carefully review your credit rating (from Equifax, etc.) and to consider your assets (house, car, etc.), he would likely give you a loan.

The bank manager doesn't really care what you look like, as long as your "financial credit" looks fine.

However, something new today is emerging: social credit or social capital.

Stephen Covey called it "emotional bank account" but I think it's more than just emotional: it's how you socially (even in cyberspace) interact with other people, in a way that builds trust and boosts your credibility.

Over time, as trust and credibility builds up, it makes it much more likely that the other person will trust you and will do business with you (or give you job or contract opportunities).

Financial credit is built by your financial history, that is, how you behaved financially: paying debts promptly and in a timely manner, etc.

Social credit is a little more complicated, but also more fun. It's how you helpfully interact with other people. It's how you go out of your way to be of service. People tend to remember who did favors for them. It's the universal principle of "reciprocity": we tend to help people who helped us in the past.

Why is social credit important?

Because that's the way to multiply business / job options. You never know where your next big business or job opportunity will come from.

Building your social credit is like getting an insurance or preparing for your big business opportunity, which will come sooner or later.

Jigsaw, 60,000 users, 3,000,000+ names

As of April 2006, Jigsaw (a different sort of Linkedin) had already gathered 60,000 users and over 3 million names in its databases.

The really interesting innovation here is that they somehow managed to outsource the marketing (i.e. generating potential clients) and the production (i.e. building the databases) to its users.

Since business is all about 1. marketing 2. selling and 3. production, Jigsaw therefore managed to outsource 66% of its operations!

This is truly a frightening business model, which resembles eBay in that users actually create the content that constitutes value.

However, eBay doesn't reward users for bringing in new users.

The success secret here is that competition will be more and more about "business model innovation," something that strategy guru Michael Porter has already mentioned.

But what about professionals or people who are not in business for themselves?

There's what I would call "professional model innovation." It's about how to design new ways and channels through which you can deliver your professional knowledge, knowhow, skills, etc. to a potentially limitless audience via the Web.

More on that later.

The problem with the world

(There is one day out of 365 when I get philosophical. Today is that day.)

This blog is about success, but we often forget how success -- the true kind that is priceless and that nobody can take away from you -- is intimately linked to one's inner peace.

In my own search for inner peace, I became an accidental intellectual (that is, someone who uses the power of ideas and words to try to effect positive change in the world).

After several years of hard thinking, I came to this sentence which I think summarizes the problem with the world today:

"Manhood needs repair, motherhood needs support and womanhood needs inspiration."

Womanhood needs inspiration because today, women can do ANYTHING. At work, in business, in the media, in politics, in the arts, etc. there are few limits remaining that will block a woman's pursuit of her dream.

The only remaining obstacle may be herself. In other words, a woman's attitude about what she can achieve, might be the ultimate obstacle to her realizing her full potential.

Perhaps this is why women need inspiration and need to see visible role models who show the way. This is probably why Oprah is so popular (and so rich! The woman is worth 500 million dollars!).

This is why I partnered with my sister Zoonie and created a company dedicated to helping women advance in their dream career (www.talentelle.com).

Manhood, for its part, needs repair. This is obvious to everyone. Wars, corruption, drugs, etc. are all the result, I think, of men being largely misguided about what it means to be a man. There are correct, highly productive ways of channeling our male energies to create something enduring, something that will benefit mankind.

But there are also misguided ways of expressing our virility. Destruction, chaos, danger, etc. are the result of those misguided ways of expressing one's manhood.

I believe too many men associate manhood with power, whereas it might be more compassionate and productive to associate manhood with bravery and magnanimity. In a post-9/11 world, all of us men have the opportunity to redefine manhood, and how we redefine it will influence what we do to create a better, more peaceful world.

Motherhood needs support, and one great book I recommend is The Price of Motherhood, by Ann Crittenden. In the book, she explains why motherhood, the most important job in society, sadly is also the least recognized and rewarded job.

What do manhood, motherhood and womanhood have in common? Humanity. The need for all of us to survive in a world that is becoming more and more unstable, dangerous and risky.

In the end, we live in one world, one that is becoming more and more connected. I think that it is possible to shape our pursuit of individual success in a way that also serves collective justice.

After all, what would be the point in being successful if the world around us crumbled and we collectively forget how important it is to gently reform manhood, unconditionally support motherhood and enthusiastically inspire womanhood?

192. What beats printing money?

Details HERE.

191. The only limit to wealth

I can reach anyone on the planet, provided they have an Internet-connected laptop. Soon, thanks to visionary Nicholas Negroponte's $100 laptop project, which aims at providing kids in developing countries with such minimal yet fundamental computing power, I could basically reach millions of kids. You could, too, if you have a product that is wanted and reasonably priced.

Anyways, my point is that distribution (of anything!) is no longer the main commercial barrier. The only limit today to how much value you create (therefore, how much money you make) is imagination.

But imagination, or creativity, is not enough. One needs to have what author Richard Bach calls "business genes" to be able to convert ideas into business ventures, products, services, or any form of marketable value.

Not surprisingly, more and more people are going back to school to pick up a business degree. Out of 100 applications to the full-time BCom programme of McGill University, only one candidate is accepted. It's that competitive.

But from my experience, I don't think business education is the real constraint.

Assuming you learn about creativity (from Edward de Bono's books) and master some of the techniques for systematically generating news ideas, the main constraint is your understanding of what capitalism is all about.

Capitalism is now the only (economic) game in town, with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Yet I've noticed that most people who decide to launch a business venture do not have a clear idea of what capitalism is really about. As a result, they launch a business and do the usual stuff (feasibility studies, preparing a business plan, etc.) but still maintain an "employee" attitude.

The employee attitude is thus characterized:

1. waiting to be told what to do
2. lack of initiative
3. lack of interest or involvement in business planning / execution
4. no new ideas
5. refusal (conscious or unconscious) to change
6. refusal to see reality
7. lack of self-knowledge (strengths, weaknesses)
8. lack of awareness about competitors
9. no systems thinking
10. no interest in the customer, or in customer satisfaction / delight
11. no understanding of what "capital" is

This list may seem depressing, but actually, employees only have to hang around and talk (as often as possible) with entrepreneurs to see right away that it's not that hard to change one's attitude. We just need to adopt the successful attitude and thinking habits of business people.

In the mind of a true business person, there is no limit to wealth. All the psychological obstacles, doubts, fears, etc. have been dealt with.

The only thing remaining is the focus on customer needs, and the quasi-obsession with becoming the best at what one is doing.

190. How to print money

How did Bill Gates become rich? How was he able to surpass his good friend, Warren Buffett, as the richest man in the world?

Simple: whereas Buffett is good (actually great!) at moving money around (a process called capital allocation), Gates is great at "printing money."

Money, of course, doesn't exist. Only poor people think that money exists.

Only value exists, and Gates became a master of the art of printing value.

How?

Take a look at Windows 95, for example. It required $100 million dollars to create the FIRST copy of that software application. The second copy costs... $1 (perhaps even cheaper).

The ratio 100 million to 1, is called the "sunk-to-marginal cost" ratio.

In other words, wealth is made in the "original creation," not in the "standardized production."

Similarly, Nike makes a lot of money from its product designs, and actually outsources the manufacturing and distribution to other companies. It's funny that Nike's slogan is "Just do it" whereas in real life, Nike just won't do it and will outsource it instead!

My point is that the key to wealth seems to be:

1. Design value / money
2. Print value / money

Value is best defined as something that someone will give up a part of his / her life for.

For example, imagine a woman named Julia. She gets paid $30 an hour as project manager. In other words, she gives up one hour of her life in exchange for $30.

If you want her to buy your product and it costs $30, then you are basically asking her to give up one hour of her life.

When you look at it that way -- that value is something people will actually agree to give up a part of their LIFE for -- you realize immediately how "value design" is a highly sophisticated skill that requires training, refinement and continuous improvement.

There is one author, however, who wrote books about how to design value. (The name of this author is emailed only to subscribers of this blog).

No one can become rich unless he/she masters value design. Once a person learns how to design value, he/she can then easily "print" that value. That is, he/she will have the supreme ability to print money.

189. Understanding is power

A person can either believe one of two things about the Internet: it changes everything OR it changes nothing.

Since most people are concerned about how they make a living (and how they can keep making a living and earning a decent salary), the main question about the Internet is: "Does it change the way I create value and get paid for it?"

One of the major (I think) insights I stumbled upon is that either people use the Net to get information OR to get instruction.

Information is the content, whereas instruction is the structure.

Information can come into one's mind and leave it just as quickly. Instruction, on the other hand, if properly understood, can empower a person and forever change the way he/she looks at the world.

Instruction can be a single line revealing a critical insight. It can also be a thought that occurs to you as you observe something.

For example, a few years ago, I took a look at the revenues I generated for one of the corporate accounts of my employer and saw that it was rapidly increasing due to my business development efforts (it reached a six-figure number). I compared it to the income on my paycheck, which did not change from week to week. It was right then and right there that I finally understood what capitalism is all about.

This is why I say that "understanding is power." Knowledge is not necessarily power. I graduated from McGill University with a business degree, yet I can't really say I understood business or capitalism after they gave me that fine-looking BCom degree. (This being said, McGill is certainly one of the finest schools for management studies).

Tim Sanders, former Chief Solutions Executive for Yahoo!, wrote in his book Love is the killer app that one should read books, not newspapers or magazines or TV news.

He says that books contain knowledge and instruction, whereas magazines and newspapers merely contain low-value information (or worse: fads).

Sanders also wrote that one should choose whom one is talking to. According to him, some people are "funny" and some people are "money."

If you talk to people who are money, you will learn a great deal. I've been lucky to be able to meet and talk to people who are money. One can learn a great deal from them.

In fact, I had supper a while ago with a millionaire. I kept staring at his head, wondering whether he had a bigger brain that I! My conclusion is that our brain size is the same, but that he understood something I was trying to understand.

He not only understood something critical, he also MASTERED that principle utterly and completely. Publicly available records show he makes 3.4 million dollars a year (Canadian currency).

But it's not really that precise number ($3.4 M) that interests me, it's the (secret) principle of leverage that he's using.

Rich people all became rich by using some form of leverage (obviously, they took Archimedes seriously when he wrote, centuries ago: "Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand, and I will move the Earth.").

Media leverage, intellectual leverage, informational leverage, mathematical leverage, financial leverage, social leverage, etc.

Depending on our situation, strengths, education, training, social circle, etc. we all have access to certain forms of leverage.

Certainly, most people intuitively understand the leverage they have. But the success secret, I guess, is to so thoroughly understand the nature and structure of that leverage that one can systematically exploit every ounce of competitive advantage afforded by that leverage.

Here's an example of media leverage: studies show that one of the ten most common millionaire occupations is newsletter publishing. Obviously, these publishers understand that paper, coupled with the postal service, can create a media or distribution sort of leverage that multiplies the number of subscribers.

Here's something else that might be useful to understand: leverage comes most easily from some sort of system. If you can step back and look at the systemic nature of things, and how a system can predict, explain and control the behavior of things and people, then you are in a good position to discover sources of leverage in that system.

Peter Senge's excellent book, The Fifth Discipline, provides the powerful underlying knowledge concerning systems thinking, if you are interested.

188. The REAL Da Vinci Code

Yes, Dan Brown is a genius for creating fiction that so enthralls the masses that a lot of people actually believe it is true.

I saw the movie yesterday, it's slow-moving but decent. The historical flashbacks were quite interesting.

There was actually a line uttered by Tom Hanks in a hectic and desperate tone that somehow reveals many truths about society: "We're being dragged into a world of people who believe it's real -- real enough to kill for!"

The REAL secret code, however, is not about faith or religion (although faith, in the heart and in the hands of certain charismatic leaders, can actually become a weapon and an instrument for positively (or negatively, as with Hitler) transforming the mentality of the masses).

A more accessible code, or power, is the nature of capitalism.

We all live, every day, under the regime of capitalism yet very few of us can explain what capitalism really is.

As mentioned in a previous posting, capitalism is the "cult of capital." Its practitioners can "see" the capital code everywhere, in the same way that a devout religious person can "see" God behind every phenomenon and event in life.

Even Einstein hinted at this when he said, on the evening he received his Nobel Prize, that "compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe." (I will leave it up to you to make the link between "compound interest" and "the nature of capital." You will be fascinated by the truth you find.)

Another hint of the secret code behind capitalism was provided by no other than Master Pablo Picasso himself, who said: "Give me a museum and I will fill it."

It may take a while before you understand what Einstein and Picasso are really saying, but I think the power of a secret comes from exactly that; in other words, the real power of a secret does not come from the secret being divulged, but from one's continuous obsession with thinking about it and exploring it from every possible angle.

By the way, this is the same reason Napoleon Hill never actually revealed the secret of wealth in his book Think and Grow Rich. However, he did say that by reading the book and thinking seriously about it, the secret will become apparent to readers. Same thing with the book As a Man Thinketh, by James Allen.

In the end, it was Leonardo Da Vinci himself who revealed the only secret worth knowing -- and it has nothing to do with religion or conspiracies supposedly concocted by covert Vatican forces.

A writer once asked him what was his greatest achievement. He said: "Leonardo Da Vinci."

In so responding, he preceded by centuries the work of psychologist Abraham Maslow, who concluded that the ultimate need of human beings is self-actualization.

187. What's your unfair competitive advantage?

Everybody is lucky in one specific way. We are all blessed in having at least one specific talent or feature or advantage that make others go: "Oh, man, it's so unfair that he/she is so lucky!"

That's what I call an "unfair competitive advantage" (UCA).

Once you are able to identify your UCA, you can basically leverage it infinitely.

For example, in my case, I am able to offer a certain secret service to corporations that enables me to get into basically ANY company.

The problem, of course, is that most people are not aware of their UCA. As the saying goes, "We are always the last to see our own merit."

Yet, identifying our UCA is a must. As another saying goes, "If you don't have a competitive advantage, don't compete."

All of this sounds like common sense, yet I've seen so many people go into business or go into the job market without having a clear idea of their UCA.

In the end, a UCA is anything that enables a careerist or business person to leave his rivals not only beaten, but also puzzled as to how he was able to win so effortlessly.

185. Secrets behind capitalism

Since 1989, after the fall of the Berlin wall, capitalism has been the only remaining economic system in the world.

Yet, most people would not know how to properly define "capitalism."

If it's the only game in town and it's the only way to get rich, wouldn't it be useful to be able to define it, understand it and play by its rules?

In the next few postings, I'll elaborate more on what capitalism actually means. Hopefully, this can clarify for people how they can better strategize to win under the capitalist regime.

For the sake of research, I also set up a survey at http://bmw-survey-001.blogspot.com/, so that respondents can try to test themselves. All respondents will receive a personal email from me that will, hopefully, help them to better understand capitalism.

The bottom line is that now more than ever, EVERYBODY needs to clearly understand what capitalism is all about.

More and more people every day are realizing that being an employee is a loser proposition. I don't say "loser" to offend anyone, but just to accurately reflect the fact that you cannot possibly win as long as you remain an employee.

To be a real winner, a person must know how to "score economically." He / she must know clearly how his/her actions will impact the company's bottom line. If not, then one will always be at the mercy of the chief financial officer who can decide, any time, to slash a position.

Countless employees from Ericsson, Bell Canada, Bombardier, etc. have seen their jobs being suddenly eliminated.

It's not that these companies are bad or that the laid off employees did not contribute to the company's success. It's just that their contribution were no longer seen as critical or advantageous enough to justify their being on the payroll.

Once again, by knowing more about capitalism and business, ANY employee can dramatically improve his strategic position within the company and proactively manage his/her career better.

There are many secrets behind capitalism, and all these secrets, of course, are kept secret by capitalists. ("The secret of power is to keep power secret.")

One secret, for example, is that "capitalism is the cult of capital."

Another secret is that "money IS NOT capital." This confusion is often found in the general population, as most people mistakenly believe that money is capital.

Capital is "concentrated productive capacity." It is what allows you to create wealth.

Stay tuned. More to come.

Dear Subscribers

Please note that I've changed RSS suppliers: instead of Bloglet, I am now using Feedblitz to deliver to your inbox the postings from Real-Time Success Secrets.

I just wanted to reassure you that I am still keeping your email under the strictest confidentiality.

Thanks again for your support and, please, do not hesitate to write to me if you have questions about the postings.

Cheers,

Peter
omnidigitalbrain@yahoo.com

184. The Yin and the Yang

Yesterday, I was part of a panel of 18 consultants, business advisors and experienced entrepreneurs who listened to the 3-minute presentation of 20 women entrepreneurs.

It was a great experience because I could see, right then, right there, that these women were becoming who they were meant to be. They had a glow that made them quite beautiful. They had a dream, but also the courage to pursue that dream. The first expression of that courage was to enroll in an intensive entrepreneurship training programme at the Women Entrepreneurial Center of Quebec (www.cefq.ca).

I joked with one participant that "the woman's way of doing business is the future!"

I was actually serious. Capitalism, and business in general, is simply too "male." Women entrepreneurs (including the highly capable and inspiring female bosses that I've had in the past) bring something to the workplace and the business world that men do not bring (through no fault of theirs, of course).

Don't get me wrong, I've learned a great deal from male bosses and male business collaborators. But women are fundamentally different. They add an extra dimension to the world of work and to business.

In fact, when you look at the successful business people out there -- the billionaires, you can see right away that they exhibit qualities that we often associate with women: emotional intelligence, creativity, intuition, relationship-building, etc.

Steve Jobs, Mark Cuban, Donald Trump, Richard Branson, etc. all do business by expressing both their male and female natures. Trump for example says that he does take things personally. Yes, I know, some people will say that Trump is a bit macho and typically male, but notice how he treats his hair with great care! Isn't that a sign of feminine concern? :-)

Jobs, Cuban and Branson also express who they are through their business ventures and business ideas.

So what is the success secret here?

I think it has something to do with embracing both the Yin (feminine aspect) and the Yang (masculine aspect) of our nature.

Whether we want to or not, the world (especially through the Internet) is becoming more "feminine"; that is, we currently see the emergence of de facto phenomena like trust-based relationship-building, intuition, creativity, sensitivity to culture and diversity, nurturing of people, focus on balance, embrace of life as a whole (without the need to compartmentalize "areas" like work vs family), etc.

183. The Da Vinci Code

The Da Vinci Code movie came out today. I want to see it because I like Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou.

But to tell you the truth, I came across much more powerful "secrets" when I was a teenager, when my father gave me a little book written by the founder of Opus Dei himself, St Josemaria Escriva.

Sample here: http://www.escrivaworks.org/book/the_way/point/30

You don't have to be Catholic to appreciate his unrelenting advice to young people to be without compromise and to commit wholly to what one is doing. Excellence is the name of the game.

Unconsciously, I guess I assimilated the advice provided in that book, which I've found quite useful in my formative years.

But even though I like to think that I've developed (incredible) self-discipline, I'm still too feeble-minded and cannot resist going to the movies to see The Da Vinci Code!

182. Technoleverage blog launched

I'm delivering a workshop called Technoleverage 101, to teach people how to strategically use freely (or cheaply) available technologies to empower themselves personally, professionally and commercially.

You can check out this blog for the latest developments: http://technoleverage.blogspot.com

181. Goggles vs Google

goggles

A pair of tight-fitting eyeglasses, often tinted or having side shields, worn to protect the eyes from hazards such as wind, glare, water, or flying debris.

---

There's goggles and there's Google. Google is about access to information, whereas goggles are about your ability to assess information.

One is about quantity, the other is about quality.

If you don't have the right goggles, Google cannot help you. I would define "goggles" here as mental eyeglasses to protect you from bad, irrelevant, glitzy-but-useless information.

How do you develop those "mental eyeglasses"? Just search this blog for the key words "Charlie Munger" and you'll know what I mean. He calls them "mental models."

So anyways, how do you evaluate the quality of the information you're getting?

One trick is to ask yourself: How does THIS information help me to reach my goal? (Of course, you have to have a written goal first).

Watching TV news is useless, of course, because the anchor news person, no matter how likeable and friendly and confident-looking, cannot possibly know what YOUR goal is. As a result, he / she cannot help you -- that is, cannot give you the information you need to make better decisions in life.

If you watch 15 minutes of TV news every day, that's 15 minutes you'll never get back. Ever.

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against news people; I have friends who are reporters, editors and anchorpersons.

I guess the success secret here is to focus on the quality of the information you're getting. One cannot make good decisions with bad information. (Garbage in, garbage out).

Oftentimes, a small amount of good information will come to you while being buried in a lot of irrelevant information. The key, as mentioned before, is to wear mental "goggles" so you can rapidly extract the good / relevant information (sometimes called "intelligence") and make better decisions in your career, your business or your life.

180. Talent and Opportunity

In his book Leverage, Darby Checketts wrote that "you can have all the talent in the world, but until someone gives you the opportunity to use it, it's not of much value."

That is so true.

Many friends have given me the opportunity to exercise my calligraphy talent, my writing talent and my business innovation talent. Recently, it has been my sister Zoonie (www.talentelle.com) who has given me ample opportunities to develop my instructional design talent.

In your life, there are also lots of people who can give you the opportunity to exercise your talent. You just have to be always alert and always ready to serve other people.

My secret is that I rarely focus on the money. I've always heeded Einstein's advice "to be a man of value" rather than to try to aim for "success" or "money."

179. The world is yours (not flat)

Thomas Friedman sold 2 million copies of The World is Flat, which contains some 500 pages.

Now, Friedman has come out with an "updated" version that has... 600 pages.

There's a line in that updated version that struck me. An Indian interviewee told Friedman: "In India and China, we know EXACTLY what we have to do. We will do in the near future exactly what you Americans (and Canadians, I assume) are now doing. Your job is to invent the future."

A better strategy or terminology, I think, is to "design new products." It's more down to Earth than "invent the future" (unless you're Steve Jobs!).

If you can design new products, which hopefully should either be digital (for e-commerce) or easily shipped anywhere on the planet in 36 hours via FedEx, then...

The World is Yours.

Indeed, the book title The World is Flat implicitly says that "the world is theirs" (the 3 billion new capitalists from India and China). The world is theirs because they can now "plug" into the global capitalist system and create value, thereby building their wealth and future.

The World is Yours is not descriptive, but more prescriptive as an idea. Friedman says in his book that Indian and Chinese workers are using their education and intelligence to leverage the Web's power to create and distribute value.

In the West, we have to use more than mere intelligence and education. We have to use our imagination to create new products and upload them onto the Web (in fact, there's a whole chapter in Friedman's updated version about the uploading phenomenon -- which goes beyond open-source software development. Anyone today can become a creator and sell his / her creative output on the Web).

My conclusion is that if you think that the "world is yours," then it shall be. It's just a matter of realizing that opportunity is now here, and we must seize it.

(Try this. There are two ways of reading this sentence: opportunityisnowhere).

"The world is yours" is in fact the prophetic message that Tony Montana saw on a blimp high in the sky, right after he killed his boss (who obviously wanted to stop his savage capitalistic ambition).

What does that scene mean? That you have to get rid of your boss in order to finally understand that the world is yours?

I think it just means that in today's Flat World, we are all on our own. We have to think like business people and make our own moves.

I guess the success secret is, "Think like a capitalist" (fire your boss if you have to).

178. BMW workshop

I developed a six-hour business workshop called BMW, which I'm teaching to first-time entrepreneurs in Montreal.

At $600 per day, it's not exactly accessible to people with a limited business training budget.

So I decided to create a blog where I share most of the principles, insights and ideas from that workshop. You can check it out HERE.