AdSense: does it make cents?

I always tell my clients that entrepreneurship is very similar to doing scientific experiments: one has to be systematic, methodical and, above all, keep track of results in order to improve all the time.

From the little I've read about AdSense, the same seems to apply: it will work and make money for you IF and only IF you are patient enough to learn the game, and then are disciplined enough to learn quickly and adapt as you go along.

Notice that I started to put a little Google ad on the righthand site. :-)

I will keep you posted on how it works out. I just thought the extra money will help to support this blogzine, which is offered free of charge to anyone who's seriously interested in learning the secrets of success.

A blog is like a bikini

I think women have a love-hate relationship with bikinis or swimsuits: they show too much, and that is not good especially if what is publicly shown is not flattering.

Personally, I think every woman is beautiful if she strives to become her true self. This is not always easy in our hypermediatized world where women are socially "forced" to conform to impossibly high physical standards of beauty.

If the situation were reversed, and I was living in a society where I saw everywhere male models that looked like Brad Pitt or George Clooney, I think my self-esteem would be quite low! Anyways, this can be the subject of a passionate debate some other time...

My point here is that every blog is like a bikini: it shows publicly a lot of "information" about the blogger.

For this reason, it's important for bloggers to practice and practice and practice BEFORE they go public. This would avoid a lot of embarrassment.

In the end, a blog is like a lady in a bikini. If the lady is sexy or attractice, she can expect to hear a lot of compliments from men in the surroundings: "Hey Babe, how's it going?" Sometimes, men are more gentlemanly, as in Italy where I heard that men would give candies to women they meet in public places. Scarlett Johansson once related that story in a magazine I read somwhere, and she thought it was sweet.

The only way to know whether your blog is "sexy" enough is to enable people to subscribe. The number of subscribers IS the truth.

Just as a bikini shows the "truth" about a female body (well, unless you've had plastic surgery or such operations), a blog shows the truth about WHAT the blogger knows and, more importantly, the VALUE of that knowledge (this value is reflected in the number of people who subscribe to that blog).

This sexy diagram shows clearly where time should be spent

Ten hours is ten hours, and they are the SAME whether you spend them watching TV news ($0 value) or surfing the Net to acquire valuable technical papers ($5 value) or attending a course/workshop to increase your professional knowledge ($30 value) or increasing/refining your instructional material for teaching purposes ($100 value).

The above diagram simply shows the different "returns on investment," depending on where you choose to spend your time.

Of course, this is a free country, so you can choose WHERE to spend your time, but you CANNOT choose the professional/career/financial consequences of where you spend your time.

The knowledge you have X the knowledge they need

Imagine that all the information and knowledge that you have is a circle. Now imagine that the information and knowledge that they (your clients, employers, etc.) need is another circle.

These two circles overlap. The overlap area is the amount of money that you CAN make.

In reality, you will always make much less than that amount, because:

1. You don't know precisely WHAT you know (i.e. your knowledge is not explicitly documented in the form of a book or a blog)
2. You don't know (or cannot connect with) all the potential clients or employers who could use your knowledge

As you gather more information on WHAT YOU KNOW EXACTLY and WHO EXACTLY NEEDS TO KNOW WHAT YOU KNOW, then you will make more money.

In terms of your professional knowledge (which is what employers and clients pay you for), you either:

1. have valuable knowledge and can use it effectively, but cannot teach it
2. have valuable knowledge and can use it effectively, can teach it, but cannot capture it in words (book, blog, etc.)
3. have valuable knowledge and can use it effectively, can teach it and can write it down (for distribution to millions of people)

The #3 people are the multimillionaires such as marketing guru Jay Abraham, personal development super-guru Anthony Robbins, motivational speaker/author Brian Tracy, spiritual author/speaker Wayne Dyer, financial success author Robert Kiyosaki, etc.

What all these highly successful multimillionaires have in common is that they belong to group #3. That is, they:

1. master knowledge PERSONALLY and can use it effectively to solve problems (professionalism)
   
2. can share knowledge effectively with others in a GROUP SETTING (teaching)
3. can share knowledge efficiently via the MASS MEDIA (books, videos, audiotapes, etc.)

280. This picture is worth a thousand... dollars

How to monetize your mind

Knowledge may be power, but mind is money.

The more you apply your mind to a problem or problems, the more money you make.

You can either apply your expert mind to:

1. a common, relatively minor problem experienced by a lot of people ($$$)
2. a big problem experienced by a few people ($$$)
3. a big problem experienced by a lot of people ($$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$)

As you can see, #3 is where big bucks are made.

But how do you monetize your mind?

Simple: look for problems.

I know it sounds crazy that I'm advising you to go out there and look for problems. But that's really the way to make money.

There are two kinds of problems:

1. Personal problems
2. Economic problems

Personal problems are the problems in your life that you solve, but solving them doesn't make you any richer.

Economic problems are problems that other people experience in life. If you can solve their problems, they will pay you and you will become richer.

Of course, to find out about their problems, you have to become a good listener. Most people are not, which is why they are not even close to becoming rich.

The best way to monetize your mind is to list EVERYTHING that you know on a blog, then ask your friends, family, coworkers, contacts, etc. to ask you questions they may have regarding the topics on which you are an expert.

Okay, here's the secret:

Wait, before I tell you, you have to promise to forward this blog to at least 3 friends! Hey, no free lunches! :-)

Now that we have an agreement between gentlemen (or gentleman and lady) that you will forward this blog to at last three friends, I am ready to reveal the secret:

CLOSE & CLONE

In other words, pay attention to WHO asks you questions about what you know. Then, try to to close a deal with THAT person. Your knowledge is valuable, so it makes sense for you to charge people for it.

Once a person accepts to pay you in order to receive your knowledge or benefit from your expertise (in a consulting or teaching capacity), then you are ready to CLONE that customer.

Cloning means finding other people who have characteristics similar to those of your first customer.

The above is the secret to monetizing your mind.

There are many, many professionals who are experts at what they do, and they get paid well for doing a job. However, they are leaving a lot of money on the table because they don't go out there and look for a customer who can benefit from their knowledge / expertise.

The amazing thing is that once you find a customer, it becomes easier to find a second customer because you have a basic idea of who it is that would likely value your knowledge.

Why have only one employer when you can have 500 customers via the Web?

The secret, once again, is to CLOSE then CLONE.

EVI - Economically Valuable Information

MVI, or militarily valuable information, is also called "intelligence." As in Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

You can real all the juicy details about it in The Intelligence Edge, by George Friedman.

EVI, for economically valuable information, is more likely to be of interest to you.

EVI is any information that allows you to create value of higher quality, or in greater quantity. EVI sources and methods, therefore, are the sort of "holy grail" of the Information Age.

EVI is really what the elite is always looking for. EVI can come in many formats:

- secret
- confidential
- oral
- paper
- electronic

As you go down the list, the value of the information decreases. Books (paper format) for instance are usually more valuable than websites (electronic).

Secrets, of course, are only shared between people who share a common genetic pool (family, for instance) or who are officially or unofficially business partners (that is, their economic interests are mutually dependent).

Are you profiting from the Internet?

The Internet is a global social game.

Are you playing that game to win? Or is the game playing you?

Here's what I mean: the Internet is basically a selling machine. Either somebody, somewhere, is using the Internet to sell you something, or YOU are using the Internet to sell somebody something.

If you look at how much money you made in the last 6 months by using email, websites, or the Internet in general, you can see right away whether you are using the Internet profitably, or the Internet is using you profitably.

The question "Are you making money from the Internet?" is a rather blunt and perhaps indiscreet question. It's like asking a married man, "So how's matrimonial life in the bedroom?"

Yet even though we don't want to share the answer with anyone else, we need to know the answer personally. The question of how profitable the Internet actually is for you, is a critical question that has to be answered by everyone.

The Internet has certainly been quite profitable for Indian programmers and workers, who use it to channel services and software solutions to other countries, especially the U.S.

Whether we want to or not, and whether we acknowledge it consciously or not, the Internet is rapidly becoming a powerful platform for commerce. A great number of people will become rich by using and leveraging the Internet. Will you?

The bottom line is that someone who hasn't made $50 from the Internet so far, certainly won't make $50,000 from the Net in a few months, and most definitely won't make $500,000 in a few years.

Total viral, totally free

Here's a sentence worth memorizing for as long as you live (or as long as you care about creating wealth for you and your family):

Totally viral marketing & zero content cost

"Viral marketing" is like word-of-mouth referral, except that it's driven by a powerful force: self-interest.

"Zero content cost" means you get other people to create the bulk of the value that you then offer to your customers.

Some classic examples of people who made their fortune this way are: Yahoo!, Netscape, Hotmail, Skype, etc.

In the next posting, we'll explore the details.

275. The elite vs the masses

The fundamental difference between ordinary people and the elite, is that ordinary people desperately want to win -- as soon as possible, right now please! -- whereas the elite calmly PREPARES to win.

Abraham Lincoln put it this way: "If I had 8 hours to chop down a tree, I would spend 7 hours sharpening the ax."

Ordinary people follow their impulse; they do what they feel like doing, at any particular moment. Yet, unbeknownst to them, that "impulse" has been carefully planted in their head or environment by society's advertising machine and its creative people, who are highly skilled in preemptively managing public response.

The elite, on the other hand, thoroughly understands the game that society is playing. They don't pay attention to advertising, television, the news or the movies. However, they pay attention, every day, to developing what it is that makes them special and unique.

They understand that being "elite" means being superior in some important way and, therefore, being favored by society.

In the words of Baltasar Gracian, who wrote The Art of Worldly Wisdom, the elite focuses on being intensive, not extensive.

Being extensive means knowing a little bit about everything. Being intensive means being a true master in your field or profession.

In the global economy of today, where so many tasks and services are being outsourced to developing countries, being a master at what you do will become more and more important, if not critical to your economic survival.

The Excellence Economy

It's not how much you know, but how powerful your blow.

Indeed, your actions (and the quality of the resulting outcomes) show accurately what you know. However, what you know doesn't necessarily show how effective you would be in a real-life situation.

Bruce Lee put it this way: "I don't fear the man who knows 10,000 kicks, but the man who practiced one kick 10,000 times."

Don't worry, this posting is not about martial arts. I only use martial arts as an example to illustrate the new success requirement in today's super-competitive economy.

In the old economy, you could be considered a successful professional if you did the job you were hired to do.

Today, it's different. There are so many learning and training technologies out there that you can bet your competitors are getting better and better, every single day.

In other words, it's no longer enough to merely do one's job well. An ambitious person has to continually learn to execute flawlessly the task that he was hired to do.

This drive to excel, by the way, doesn't have to be stressful. It can actually be enjoyable.

The only thing required is to know precisely WHAT it is that you want to become the best at.

The next step, if you are socially courageous enough, is to PUBLICLY state your goal of becoming the best at __________________. In other words, let your friends, family, coworkers, etc. know about your resolve to become the best at __________________.

Once they know, they will be in a better position to help you, for instance by forwarding relevant information, resources or contacts who can help you become the best.

Once again, being the best at what you do is not a matter only for ambitious people. Being the best is necessary for SURVIVAL in today's global economy.

Many experts say we are living in the "knowledge economy," but I think they are behind. We are in fact living in the Excellence Economy.

Once again: "It's not how much you know, but how powerful your blow."

The people who will thrive are

1. the people who are excellent in using what they know to accomplish an important task
2. the people who are excellent at doing what it is that they do

BLUR + Revolutionary Wealth

If you're interested in making more money, there are two books I highly recommend. Ideally, they should be read simultaneously so you can see the intimate relationships between the ideas they contain.

1. Revolutionary Wealth, by Alvin and Heidi Toffler
2. BLUR - the speed of change in the connected economy, by Stan Davis

RW provides the overall historical framework within which we will see the emergence of new ways of creating value and amassing wealth.

BLUR, on the other hand, provides detailed specifics and methods for actually creating value by leveraging three core features of the new economy: connectivity, intangible value and speed.

Are you surfing or serving?

The problem with the real world is that it is not clickable.

In cyberspace, you can always click something and be instantly transported to a different site.

No can do in Real Mundo.

You're pretty much stuck with whatever you got. This brings us to the main problem of millions of people on Earth, who have to drag themselves out of bed every morning and drive/commute to the office.

They are working in the real economy, yet the REAL money is being made in the cyber-economy. (For all the juicy details, you can read The Sovereign Individual, by James Davidson and Lord Rees-Mogg.)

In the cyber-economy, you are Superman. Or Wonder Woman. Nothing can stop you. There are no limits. This is why companies like Yahoo!, Google, Netscape, etc. produced so many millionaires.

There are no limits to space, speed, or spice (spice being the infinite variety of offerings, solutions, products, information, etc. produced by a company, or co-produced by a company and its customers).

Only your imagination -- or more precisely, your untrained imagination -- stands in the way of how much value you can create -- and therefore, how much money you earn.

The major reason why most people have not even begun to use their imagination in creating or finding ways to make money in cyberspace, is because they use the Internet to "surf" when the capitalist elite use the Internet to "serve" millions of people.

With billions of people from China and India joining the global game of capitalism via the Web, the stakes are getting even higher.

There has never been a better time to learn about business because today more than ever, business knowledge enables a person to create and constantly refine a business model on the Internet in order to amass a compoundedly increasing fortune via cyber cashflows.

Talent first, then mathematical leverage

"You have to have a certain amount of talent. After that, it's all mathematical leverage."

---

Having a job doesn't necessarily mean you have a talent, and having a talent doesn't necessarily mean you will get a job.

People who have a job but no particular talent, are "protected" by the bureaucracy; their weaknesses are hidden in a shroud of office politics, ambiguous job description and unclear performance criteria. As long as they have a job, they may think their economic future is secure; but that is only an illusion.

On the other hand, people who have talent but no job, suffer from a different plight: they are unable to "show off" their talent to potential employers or clients. Often, this is due to a lack of marketing or sales knowledge. Also, shyness and lack of assertiveness or self-confidence are also causes.

So while people-with-no-talent should be discreet and keep doing their job every day without drawing too much attention to themselves, and without taking too many risks to upset corporate culture or antagonize corporate managers, people-with-talent should have the opposite strategy:

THEY SHOULD BE AGGRESSIVE AND BE "OUT THERE" AND SELL THEIR SOLUTIONS CONTINUALLY TO ANYONE WHO HAS A NEED FOR THEIR TALENT AND WHO HAS A BUDGET TO FULFILL THAT NEED.

Fortunately, this is not as hard as most people think. All you need to have is a bit of talent. After that, mathematics takes care of the rest.

How does it work?

1. Use your talent to create something of value. Ideally, it should be something you can easily package into a document (CD, file, DVD, website, blog, book, etc.) or into a live conversation.
2. Identify and reach, via various media, all the people who could use your "something of value."

#1 is about being effective at creating value.
#2 is about being efficient at delivering value.

At the beginning, #2 will involve some strategic thinking: who do you target? what is your main message to them? how will you reach them, via which media, when and where? etc.

But after a while, #2 will become regular, ongoing operations to compoundedly unleash the power of mathematical leverage (via viral marketing, for instance, or other hypermarketing techniques like P2P file-sharing).

It is, however, #1 that is the main challenge for most people. If you can create quality content or "something of value" then you are that much closer to FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE.

Think of all the people who sit at home and just write and write and write a high-traffic blog, and make $200 per day on Google's AdSense. (Some make even more money).

It sound almost too good to be true, but it is true: these folks spend their entire time doing something they love (write about their favorite topics) and their bank account, via Google, keeps growing and growing!!

The success secret is that talent is not enough. To become wealthy, you have to understand the power of "Talent X Technology."

270. Revolutionary Wealth

I am shocked that I can be turned on by... a man. The fact that he's 77 years old adds to the shock.

I'm turned on intellectually, that is, by the latest book (Revolutionary Wealth) written by one of my favorite intellectuals -- Alvin Toffler.

Unlike so many authors, Toffler's writing is crisp yet witty and imbued with obvious passion. (I devoured his previous books a few years ago: Future Shock, The Third Wave, Powershift and Creating a New Civilization).

Unlike Thomas Friedman (author of the best-seller The World is Flat), who is a reporter skilled at telling engaging stories, Toffler is an intellectual who can actually guide you to understand the deep, underlying causes BEHIND those stories.

One of Toffler's main messages is that about $50 trillion worth of value is being created ("prosumed") by people all over the world, yet all this value is invisible and undetectable to economists. As a result, we neglect to manage that value profitably.

One (feeble, I think) attempt to capture that value is the following website: www.thisishowyoudoit.com

Like many so-called Web 2.0 companies, it seeks to leverage the content created by users in order to create a viable business model and make money.

Of course, not everybody has the drive, the energy or the motivation to start a website like that in order to generate extra income.

However, what we all have which is of value, is all the knowledge we carry between our ears.

The problem for most people is: How do I package my knowledge and slap a price tag on it?

An easier question might be: How much would you charge a person to sit down with you and pick your brain, for one whole hour?

(In my case, the price is $100, and that hour spent with me to pick my business brain is a solution I call "the 60-minute CEO solution." The client would bring all the relevant documentation (business plan, marketing plan, brochure, website strategy, etc.) and I would review everything in 60 minutes, as well as provide strategic advice and implementation templates, etc. to the client.)

The amount of money you would charge for one hour during which you share everything that you know, is what I call the "magic number."

If you can't come up with that number, and justify it to someone who's interested in knowing what you know -- then I'm afraid you haven't yet entered the Knowledge Economy.

In the new Knowledge Economy, people get paid for what they know, not for what they do.

I understand why most people will, at first, strongly resist this notion that a person can get paid just by sharing what he/she knows. Usually, common sense tells us that we have to DO something in order to get paid.

But that common sense belongs to the Industrial Era, whereas we now live in the Information Age.

People who keep denying the economic power of knowledge, are simply leaving money on the table. They are typically people who hang on to the status quo and refuse to see that our society and indeed our economy -- as well as how companies create value today -- has dramatically changed.

We have, as Toffler wrote, entered the age of revolutionary wealth.

People who read Toffler's Revolutionary Wealth book are incredibly ahead of people who don't heed this brilliant intellectual's advice.

Follow your bliss, have a blast

"Follow your bliss." - Joseph Campbell

---

I admire Joseph Campbell for the important work he has done in making the power and mystery of myths accessible to ordinary people (like me).

His well-known advice for finding one's vocation -- follow your bliss! -- can be further elaborated on, given today's enormous wealth-creation opportunities unleashed by the Internet.

Thus:

Follow your bliss, capture it, then make sure it serves the needs of all the people on this planet who are connected to the Internet.

Campbell has never formally defined "bliss," so let me offer a tentative definition based on two key concepts I use in my career workshops:

Bliss = Talent X Passion

Let's take the example of Esther Dyson, founder of www.edventure.com

Bliss = (analysis, thinking, writing) X (technology, artificial intelligence, futurism)

Not only did she capture her bliss, she made sure it serves the needs of high-level decision-makers in the high-tech industry. (She received an advance of $1,000,000 to write the book Release 1.0).

What is YOUR bliss?

A bliss can actually be a blast, that is, a highly exciting or pleasurable experience or event, such as a big party.

However, in order to become rich (or well rewarded financially) in the pursuit of one's bliss, it's necessary and vital to use it in a way that serves a REAL need experienced by REAL people.

In other words, people have to come to you, put some money on the table and say: "I heard about your product/service. I think it can help me. Here's my (hard-earned) money. I expect to receive something valuable in return. Gimme, gimme, gimme!"

If you can serve the real needs of real people by using the Internet (via Skype, chatrooms, knowledge-sharing via files, Webinars, etc.), then your path to financial freedom might be accelerated dramatically.

What is your economic accelerator? (Part 2)

I wrote previously that an "economic accelerator" allows you to get faster and sooner to your ideal financial situation (one million dollars in the bank, perpetual yearly cashflow of $50,000, etc.).

Another way to put it is that an economic accelerator is something you do which helps you to create MORE value, resulting in MORE money coming your way.

Unfortunately, some jobs are simply "economically challenged": no matter how much value you create, your boss can simply NOT increase your income. In that sense, some jobs (or corporations) operate almost in a Communist-like fashion.

In fact, the more value you create (or the more efficient you become), the more WORK your boss will give you!

Not surprisingly, most office workers do the minimum to get by (below that minimum, you run the danger of getting fired).

The ideal job is one that is "economically liberating": that is, the more value you create for customers, the more income you get.

This is not a utopian view. Warren Buffett, in fact, says that the most important communication to employees has to do with "compensation."

What he means is that employees should know CLEARLY how they make money, and how they can make MORE money.

However, here we run into a phenomenon that is largely invisible yet is no less real: most employees are kept in the dark about how they create value, for the simple reason that if they truly knew HOW they create value, they might then quit the job and become an independent contractor or even a startup company competing with the employer.

Employers prevent that from happening by, of course, making all employees sign a Non-Compete Agreement, forbidding them to compete against the employer for one to two years after they leave their jobs.

Another way employers prevent the danger of employees-becoming-competitors is to HIDE from employees HOW value is actually created for customers.

This seems fair. Indeed, if you were a capitalist and a business owner, you would probably behave similarly. You would hide from your employees the critical knowhow they need, so they would remain dependent on you to make a living. As the saying goes, "Give a man a fish, and he will work for you. Teach him how to fish, and you just lost a valuable employee."

The problem, of course, is that without this value-creation knowledge, you live your entire life without tapping your business potential. Business knowledge, which is key to wealth creation and becoming financially independent, is thus hidden from the masses of people.

As a result, otherwise smart and creative people live an entire lifetime WITHOUT ever benefitting from the capitalist system, which enables and empowers any business person with the opportunity to create massive amounts of wealth by pressing the gas pedal that I call "economic accelerator."

The only person who has his foot on the gas pedal, is the business owner. Everybody else (employees) is a mere passenger, who has no control over their economic destiny.

In future postings, we'll see how you can find your economic accelerator so that you can proactively take charge of how much value you create and, by extension, how much money you make.

Return on words

Einstein said that we live in an age characterized by profusion of means and confusion of ends.

I think it could equally be said that society today is characterized by "profusion of media and confusion of message."

The media is not the message; in fact, the media obscures, even eclipses, the message.

Some people call it "TMI" for Too Much Information, others call it the Age of Information Overload.

The bottom line for all of us, who are mortals and therefore have a limited amount of time to spend on Earth, is that we need to get a clear RETURN ON INFORMATION.

Since information is mostly words (spoken on the radio or TV, or printed in newspapers, magazines and books), then the ultimate criteria by which to judge the usefulness of a media outlet is "return on words."

How does it work?

Easy: just estimate the number of words of a newspaper or magazine article you are about to read. Then, after reading it, think of how your life can be improved by USING the information you just read.

The "return" here is the improved quality of life.

The number of words used by the writer of the newspaper or magazine article, shows roughly the amount of life you have sacrificed in order to read that article. If you spent 10 minutes reading it, then your life -- whether you die at age 60 or 90 -- is shorter by 10 minutes.

Here's another example of "return on words":

The best book to figure out what the new economy is all about is Revolutionary Wealth, by Alvin and Heidi Toffler. I recommend it to all parents who care about the future -- that is, where they and their children will spend the rest of their lives.

The above paragraph contains about 45 words, yet the return can be enormous if you indeed decide to buy the book (as I did) and read it carefully in order to prepare for the future.

The success secret here is that we have to protect and save our time by judging every newspaper, magazine and book we are reading by using the rigorous "return on words" test.

People who don't use that test will be easily deceived by reporters, authors, consultants, etc. who will continually offer low-value information that is not even relevant to helping a person achieve his / her goals in life.

Own a house or own a life

Should you stay at a stable job that doesn't really excite you in order to buy a house and pay a mortgage, or should you rather spend your money on finding your true career even if it means delaying the buying of a house?

This is a tough question. Most people would rather buy a house, reasoning thus: "Instead of paying the rent, I might as well buy a house and eventually own it. Paying the rent is like throwing money out the window."

This line of reasoning is not necessarily correct. It is correct IF and only IF you have already found your true career. For example, if you've always wanted to become a lawyer, and are now working as one, then buying a house is a good idea.

But if you are not sure about your current job or career, buying a house will only commit you financially and, somehow, limit your options. Indeed, you cannot easily quit your job (even if it is not your true career) because then you would not be able to make the mortgage payments.

I totally understand that young people want to settle and buy a house as soon as possible, but there is the danger that you settle too soon. Indeed, once a person commits to a mortgage, he/she cannot easily explore career options. A stable job is absolutely needed so that mortgage payments can be made regularly.

The reasoning mentioned previously, where it is better to pay for a mortgage so that at least you own something (a house) rather than "wasting" money on paying the rent, neglects a truth that perhaps few people are capable or willing to face: that when you buy a house, the house is in fact "buying" your career.

That is, when you buy a house, you own it financially whereas the house (the bank, the fiscal authorities, etc.) owns you temporally. It owns your time every day, 9 to 5. In other words, house ownership ensures that you remain an employee working at a (preferrably) stable job.

However, there are cases where buying a house can actually improve your career, or even help you set up a side business (in addition to your daytime job). For instance, if you use the house to organize meetings where you discuss about career matters and strategies with friends and allies. Or if you use some rooms in your new house to conduct business on the side.

In the end, we all have to face one major dilemma: own a house or own a life.

Paying the rent doesn't necessarily mean you own nothing. You own something called freedom. If you have the discipline to actually do something productive with that freedom (such as systematically exploring all your career possibilities and options in order to find your true career), then freedom is worth paying for.

But if you don't have the discipline or the willpower to find your true career, or if you think you've already found your ideal job or career, then buying a house is the strategically correct decision.

265. Weapon of Mass Instruction

Anyone who controls a "weapon" of mass instruction, controls a means of massive wealth creation.

Mass instruction -- where you teach hundreds, perhaps even thousands of people -- is made possible today by Internet technologies such as RSS (real simple syndication). RSS is simply a free service that allows subscribers to receive your blog postings right in their email inbox.

A blog, for instance, can be a "weapon of mass instruction." I say "weapon" because you can use it to empower yourself in the job market or to grow your business. The key to success is write content that your potential clients or employers will appreciate.

How do you know they appreciate? Simple: create a Subscribe button and see how many people accept to give you their (holy) email address.

Of course, not just anybody can create a blog one day and be able to upload valuable content immediately. There is a learning period where you will have to work hard to create quality content (don't forget: subscribers are one click away from canceling their subscription to your blog).

The success secret is to start a blog TODAY. Do not wait.

The magical thing is that once you start writing a blog, you will notice things and people in your life that will drive you to write more and more on your blog.

Once your blog becomes a "weapon of mass instruction," that is, a tool that allows you to teach hundreds of peoplr about what you do best, the money will come naturally to you in the form of contracts, job opportunities, consulting engagements, etc.

Negotiation: who needs whom?

I posted the following situation a while ago, and asked readers to solve the puzzle. The answer, as promised, is provided below.

===

Suppose you have 26 red cards, and you find yourself in a room with 26 other people and they each have a black card.

Every time a black card is paired with a red card, $100 is generated.

In that case, it would seem fair that you make $50 while the person holding the black card makes $50.

Since you have 26 red cards, you can easily make $1300 (or 26 X $50). And 26 people each make $50.

However, if you were really smart at negotiation, you could easily make $2070.

How would you do it?

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ANSWER: You can make $2070 by "accidentally" losing 3 red cards. In that case, you could ask for $90 while giving each person $10 for his black card. That is, $90 X 23 = $2070.

Each person holding a black card will accept a reward of $10 instead of $50, because they all know that there are three black cards that have zero value (since you "lost" three red cards). It is better for them to get $10 rather than nothing at all.

This little lesson illustrates a powerful concept of negotiation: it's all about who needs whom.

Another lesson, slightly less obvious, is that "power is simply an asymmetrical distribution of knowledge." More on that later.

A third lesson is that "he who makes the rules, gets the gold." In this case, the rules are "made" through artifice: perhaps you did not really lose three red cards, yet it is only necessary to make others believe you did lose three red cards. What if, instead of losing the three red cards, you only told them that you would NOT use three red cards? Then, you would be making a threat, not a warning. A threat is not credible, because you can always change your mind at the last minute, if it is in your interest to do so. A warning, by definition, is something that will happen and that you have no control over (in this case, you are warning the 26 people that there will be three people who will not make any money, since you lost three red cards).

Although a central principle of negotiation is "who needs whom more?", we can see from the above lessons that "who needs whom?" is more about perception than reality. He who master (others') perception, controls reality -- and hence the outcome of any negotiation.

Make money with your knowledge

http://answers.google.com/answers/pricing.html

Answers Google is better than Yahoo! Answers as a business model, because smart people can actually make money from it (and, perhaps, use the money to contribute to a charitable cause).

Charging for knowledge makes sense, not only because it is an incentive for answerers to provide high-quality answers, but also because askers will take the answers seriously and will more likely USE the answer in their own life. We often don't take seriously what we get for free.

But above all, Answers Google signals to the whole wide world that from now on, knowledge is not only power. It is money.

Like I wrote weeks ago, "knowledge is the new money." People who learn how to package their knowledge and sell it on the Internet will become rich. More importantly, they will become richer and richer while working less and less.

Indeed, that is the true economic power of knowledge: once you package it in the form of a digital file (e-book, video, audio, etc.), anybody -- absolutely anybody -- can download it off the Internet and then pay you for it (via, say, Payloadz).

More and more, we will see that in the new knowledge-centric economy, people will get paid for what they KNOW, not for what they DO.

As long as you get paid for what you DO, you will remain an economic slave who has to show up for work every day. But if you get paid for what you KNOW, then you can be anywhere on the planet -- just as long as clients can reach you by phone, and just as long as they can easily download your knowledge from the Web anytime, anywhere.

Life in the knowledge-centric economy can be beautiful, but only if you truly understand the power of knowledge and its value to people.

What is your economic accelerator?

Just as a gas pedal allows your car to go faster, an "economic accelerator" allows you to get faster and sooner to your ideal financial situation (whether it's one million dollars in the bank, or a perpetual yearly cashflow of $50,000).

So what is YOUR economic accelerator?

In other words, if you wanted to make MORE money, what do you have to do? Some answers:

1. Work overtime
2. Get a second job
3. Beg a rich boyfriend or girlfriend for extra money every week ("I'm financially unhappy; don't you want to make me happy?")
4. Start a side business (but don't tell your boss)

All of the above assumes that you cannot make MORE money doing your current job. Indeed, for most jobs, it doesn't matter how hard you work, you still get the same yearly salary.

However, there ARE jobs where the more output you produce, the more money you make. For instance:

1. On-commission sales people
2. Business development directors
3. Account managers

These are the jobs where the economic accelerator is fairly easily identified. Income is a direct reflection of outcome, so the more (or better) your outcome produced for the employer, the greater your income.

If you find yourself in a job where there is no clear economic accelerator, you may be getting a bad deal. Of course, your fixed salary is an inherent and necessary feature of the capitalist system: it is by keeping labour costs fixed and low that capitalists (business owners) can make more and more money over time.

The reason the profit rate -- that is, the gap between your fixed salary and the increasing revenues of the business -- keeps growing is that the marketing, sales and production systems of a company keep getting better and better, therefore revenues keep increasing. However, your salary remains the same. Therefore, the poor (employees) stay poor while the rich (business owners) get richer and richer.

People who have basic knowledge of business, can immediately determine whether their job contains an economic accelerator.

One thing is for sure: people with business knowledge play the capitalist system well. This is why the odds of becoming a millionaire, if you own a small business, is 1,000 to 1 (of course, these odds keep improving as you become better and better at running your small biz).

People without business knowledge always end up being exploited. The only way they can get out of this vicious cycle of exploitation is to identify the economic accelerator in their job, floor that "gas pedal" in order to make as much money as possible, then launch a business of their own.

The simple truth, which few people will tell you and which few people will believe, even if they hear it, is that being an employee is the most difficult way to make a living and also the least profitable.

There are three other options, which I'll explore in greater detail later on: being a free agent, being a business owner, and being a professional investor.

The great danger of small deception

There are so many freely available technologies and methodologies to create wealth today that the only remaining obstacle to financial freedom is our very own mind.

Or, to be precise, what we allow our minds to absorb, think, analyze, conclude and design.

However, the vast majority of people do not yet see HOW to create massive amounts of wealth for themselves and their families. Why?

Because of what I call small and subtle deception.

Since the dawn of civilization, the ruling elite have understood that "the secret of power is to keep power secret." (They even keep THAT statement secret -- well, now you know!).

To make SURE that the masses do not have access to power, the elite therefore have used all kinds of psychological manipulation (like inducing people to believe in the divine right of kings). With the advent of the mass media, psychological manipulation can be achieved on a massive scale.

Indeed, if the media is the message, as Marshall McLuhan prophetically submitted, what exactly is THE message? The main message to the masses is that "everything is fine, keep doing what you were doing, we (the capitalists) will get rich, you stay poor, but that's okay, that's the way it was meant to be. Nothing you can do about it. Go back to work."

That's what I call small, innocuous deception which, at the same time, has huge implications for how much wealth you can create. This very employee mentality, which Robert Kiyosaki denounces in his books, in particular Rich Dad Poor Dad, is causing otherwise creative people to stay poor.

I don't necessarily mean "money-poor," but "time-poor." You can make $90,000 a year, it doesn't mean you are time-rich. The question is, What is more important to you: how much money you accumulate in the bank, or how much free time you enjoy every day?

Is it possible that whereas before, the goal was to make a lot of money, now it is to have as much life as possible?

With the rise of alternative sources of information (such as this blogzine), the race toward financial freedom is now open to all. Business education is also more accessible. In fact, so many people around me are launching their own business, without any formal business training, that I felt it was a good idea to create a special workshop for them, if only to increase their chances of success in the tough world of business (http://businessmodelworkout.blogspot.com).

But achieving financial freedom won't be easy. It takes a lot of desire. You almost have to be "financially horny." Yes, I know that combination of words will shock people, but that is really the reality of entrepreneurship. If you don't want it bad enough, you will never get it.

It was in fact Andrew Carnegie, whose success principles are captured in the best-seller Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, who said: "The first principle of success is desire."

Yet, when you ask most people what it takes to succeed in business, they will usually answer something like "a good product" or "it takes money to make money" or "guts" etc. Nobody will answer: "You have to be really horny."

Fortunately, passion and desire are things we were born with. Just look at kids. When they want something, they want it NOW NOW NOW. They won't wait. They will nag and nag and nag until they get it.

Why did we lose that urgent sense of desire? That passion?

The good news is, it's never too late to free our minds and our hearts.

But to free your mind, as Morpheus advised Neo, you have to accept the fact that most of what you know is no longer true. This no-longer-true knowledge is what Alvin Toffler calls "obsoledge" (obsolete knowledge).

Many people think that to become rich, we have to compete against other people. In particular, compete at the intellectual level (strategy-making, product development, etc.). In other words, business as a game of "mind-to-mind combat."

However, it is becoming increasingly true that we individually also have to engage in "knowledge-to-knowledge combat," that is, pit every piece of knowledge we have against other pieces of knowledge, and only retain the superior knowledge.

This is what I've tried to do with this blogzine. I try to share only the best knowledge I have with subscribers and readers. (By the way, please feel free to share this blog with your friends and family).

In the end, the small deception and fairly innocuous falsehoods vehiculated by the mainstream media presents a great "danger" to people, because it distracts them from the real source of power -- self-knowledge.

Without self-knowledge -- that is, knowing what you are really good at, what you stand for, how you truly feel about things and people, and what purpose you think your life has -- a person can float through life and be easily manipulated psychologically to do things that only advance other people's agenda. In such a case, no personal power is ever developed and nothing important is ever achieved in one's life.

260. "Oh my God, I just killed my career!"

Exactly six years ago, I killed my career. It felt like I committed professional hara kiri, the Japanese ritual suicide by self-disembowelment on a sword.

Although I was pretty good at what I was doing (project coordinator / account manager) and brought a sizeable six-figure revenue to the company -- in fact, the boss of my boss wanted me to work for him, which would have put me on equal footing with my own boss, I felt there was no honour in my job.

The job itself is honorable, but I did not feel it was honorable for me because I felt I was capable of doing more with my career. So in a moment of blinding mental clarity, I called for a meeting with my boss, and gently announced my resignation.

That fateful Friday afternoon, as I walked out of the office for good, I look up at the cloudless blue sky where the sun was shining unusually bright, and whispered to myself: "Oh my God, what did I just do?! I just killed my career!"

Now that I look back, I realize I was unsually sensitive karmically speaking. I did the right thing by quitting a job where my heart and soul was not fully invested in (although my little brain did a pretty good job at it).

But my career turnaround decision is not as courageous as what Peter Drucker did at the beginning of the 20th century, when he quit his lucrative investment banking job to become a writer. He basically became poor overnight and engaged on an arduous path when he left his banking job, since writing in those days (or even now) is not a very profitable nor stable job.

Yet Peter Drucker has become the father of modern management, a super guru who has advised and still keeps advising (even after his death) people who care about management.

From my own experience and from reading about other people's experience, I conclude that human beings usually have two careers: the first one is one imposed by society or, to be more precise, one that we choose after we have been brainwashed by society into believing we should "get into this field or that field because that's where the money or opportunities are."

The second career, the true work we were born to do, usually comes in a moment of mental clarity as a person matures and realizes that a career is not just a financial instrument, but a legacy and a visible signature of who we truly are and what we are truly capable of achieving.

Today more than ever, with so many proliferating information and communications technologies, individuals have the power to design, shape, develop and accelerate their careers in a way that was not even imaginable a few years ago.

We can do so much! The only question is, Do we have the guts to walk the path that is uniquely ours? Do we have the courage to pursue our dream in this life? If not in this life, then when?

How much control do you have over your life?

One easy measure is the Verified Information / Hearsay Information ratio.

Verified information refers to information that you can actually verify for yourself, and that you therefore personally can trust. This is the kind of information that you can use to make important life decisions.

Hearsay information refers to information that you heard or read from another source, such as newspaper or TV, and whose veracity, validity, accuracy or authenticity you can simply NOT verify either because you do not have access to the information source, or do not have the intellectual skills to verify whether the information is true or not.

The tragedy in life is that most people make important life decisions based on Hearsay Information. We somehow believe what other people say, without realizing that every person who talks to us has a specific agenda for saying what it is that they are saying.

Even members of your own family, or your friends, or your affable coworkers will have their own agenda to promote and advance every time they talk to you. There is nothing wrong with that, of course, because you probably have your own agenda when you say something to them.

The important thing is to be able to VERIFY everything that other people say.

Over time, I've had to learn a skill that I think has helped me to distinguish between good advice and bad advice. I first think about the other person's agenda before I listen to his/her advice.

I always ask myself: "Is it in his/her interest to tell me what he/she is telling me?"

If so, then I don't really pay attention to the piece of advice. I am now especially suspicious about people who seem to go around offering advice when their advice is not solicited at all.

How do you verify the information you are getting from other people?

You create what I call verification filters, which are simply heuristics that help you to screen OUT the information that cannot possibly be useful to you.

As a matter of information management policy, I automatically screen out from my mind:

• news from TV
• advice from baby boomers who hang on to the old economy
• advice or information from people who have something to gain from their advice or information being more widely circulated (e.g. more prestige for them)
• advice or information from people whom I do not consider "winners"
• etc.

People often complain about information overload, yet that is not the real problem. The real challenge is to have clear goals, so that you can easily and quickly determine WHICH information or piece of advice is relevant and can actually help you to reach your goals faster or more reliably.

If we say that the problem is "information overload," then we are blaming other people. But if we accept that the problem might actually be "lack of clear goals," then we can begin to take responsibility for our own lives.

In the end, the easiest and fastest way to gain total control over our lives is to simply press the red button on the remote control (it's the button call "Power Off"). Then, all we have to do is write on a piece of paper a clear goal, and begin to gather information and resources, and do things that will help us accomplish that goal.

A lot of people compliment me on the achievements in my life, but I maintain that I don't have more talents than anybody else. I just developed early in life a sort of ruthless mindset about protecting my time, and an absolute commitment to verify all the information that I come across.

My head is so small that I cannot afford to let in any information that will not be useful to me in getting what I want from life, which is -- EVERYTHING.

A time of hope, humanity and heroes

An insight recently was revealed to me mysteriously (as usual!): "A man can protect a woman, but only a woman can save a man."

He can protect her because men are usually stronger physically than women.

But she can save him because women are generally more moral than men. Indeed the average woman is more sensitive morally than the average man. Therefore, a woman can inspire a man to act in a way that is honorable and moral, and it is this very inspiration that gives him the strength to overcome his fears.

In my own life, I've learned from women that it's not really how much you know, but how much you care. You can have all the knowledge in the world, yet it's useless if you don't care.

A recent fascinating example of someone who cares is Bill Gates: he announced that he would step down as chairman of Microsoft so he could spend all his time working at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has a budget of about 18 billion dollars.

It's great that he decided to make the world a better place. Someone with his talent and resources will definitely leave a mark in this world.

At the same time, because he has been so successful and has amassed such a great fortune, most of the richest and most powerful men and women of our time respect him. Therefore, his decision is sure to affect and influence their perception about the urgency of doing something to help people who are suffering on Earth.

Al Gore is another example of a man who uses his talent (political savvy, media mastery, oratory skills, etc.) to do something worthwhile that will help to save the planet. His movie, An Inconvenient Truth, is sure to transform people's perception about the urgency of doing something to save the environment, where our children will spend their lifetime.

But let's get back to men protecting women, and women saving men.

I believe that men should protect women as much as they can, for the simple reason that a woman is the best thing that can happen to a man.

If a man lets a woman enter his heart, she can transform him in a way he could never imagine before. Any man who has fallen deeply in love understands this truth. It is as mysterious as it is powerful.

In fact, the French have a nice quote about it: "Derriere tout homme evolue, il y a une femme epuisee." (Behind every evolved man, there is a woman who is exhausted).

In more romantic terms, we might even say that the more a woman becomes a princess (that is, a lovely being endowed with a sense of morality and of compassion of breathtaking beauty), the more her man will strive to become a valiant and fearless knight.

It is quite possible that today we are seeing a return of the age of chivalry. Indeed, it seems we have reached a point in history which I call "a time of hope, humanity and heroes."

Hope, because never before have human beings been so empowered by all kinds of information and communications technologies.

Humanity, because never before in human history have we felt so close to people who are suffering in other countries. The global outpouring of sympathy and concrete financial help after the tsunami is the proof that we feel a sense of compassion toward those who suffer at the other end of the globe.

Heroes, because many of the men and women who have spent years perfecting their skills, their intellect and their art, now suddenly feel the moral urge to use their talents to serve the common good. (Think about U2's Bono and his work in trying to alleviate world poverty by lobbying powerful nations and asking them to erase the debt owed by developing countries).

In that context, it seems the key to success (in the global sense of the word) will be to sharpen our moral clarity and reaffirm our moral conviction. This will help us succeed because faith in the rightness of what we are doing is like an invincible sword.

With it, we can do anything. Without it, we cannot do much.

As they say, "inflexible in faith, invincible in arms."

Buy the future for $40.00

Once every ten years, I go all out and recommend a book to all friends and family. A book that they must read if they are to survive in the future economy.

The time has come, and my unreserved recommendation is Revolutionary Wealth, by Alvin and Heidi Toffler. I've read all their previous works, and they have never disappointed.

(In fact, in the 80s, they predicted that by the year 2000, people will start working from home. In June 2000, I indeed started to work from home as a translator!).

They have always been sharp and prescient in their predictions, and this book, once again, is no exception to their unusual foresight about the future. The writing is as exciting as it is crisp. And their piercing vision into what the future holds for us has not diminished a bit in clarity, compared to previous works such as The Third Wave or Future Shock.

You can read the first chapter free HERE.

I bought the book myself, and I believe it is really what the future holds in store for us.

In other words, you can buy the future for only $40.00, and gain a competitive edge over others by learning first about the future and preparing for it today.

Information is death

You've heard the following before:

1. "We live in the Information Age"
2. "Information is power"
3. "There's too much information"
4. "Information overload is a major problem"

What you might not have heard is:

INFORMATION IS DEATH

This statement is true because:

To be useful, information first has to be "consumed" by the human mind, which means that you always lose precious time (i.e. life) when you absorb information. Therefore, the more information you read or absorb every day, the more life you lose. Reading, watching TV, studying, etc. are all comsumption activities, where as you consume information, INFORMATION CONSUMES YOUR LIFE.

We often don't realize this fact (that information kills your life one minute at a time) because "consuming information" indiscriminately has become a habit that we somehow blindly accept without challenging its basic premise.

Indeed, most people will agree that "information is good, that it's better to be informed about what is going on." Yet very few people can tell you what they actually DID with the information they got from the (professional, competent and quite friendly) TV news anchor yesterday evening.

In other words, every day, millions of people spend about 30 minutes getting information from the six o'clock news program without doing anything with it.

That is, every day, millions of people have their minds filled with useless information.

To understand why this is alarming, imagine that every day, at precisely six o'clock, someone rings your door bell. You open the door and ask politely: "Yes, can I help you?"

The man in front of you says: "We're here to bring in some sensational furniture. But you can't do anything with it. It's just there for you to look at it and perhaps discuss it with coworkers around the watercooler. It's just there to occupy the space in your living room. We'll come back every day, at precisely six o'clock. We'll do this for the next 20 years."

Intrigued, you ask the man: "But why would I let you enter my house, put into my living room this furniture which I don't need and cannot use?"

He answers: "Oh, because everybody in the neighborhood is doing that. Beside, all the useless-furniture people as well as all the movers and truck drivers need to have regular income. It's our job, you know."

Somehow, in a moment of temporary insanity, you accept. That's when you lose a big chunk of your life, because every day, these people -- the useless-furniture and useless-information professionals -- invade your living room to deliver stuff that is of no use to you.

Some readers might be shocked that I'm against the news media, but I should mention that I did receive journalism training at Concordia University and have worked as a journalist for a newspaper.

On the other hand, information is life for a certain group of people. They're called "capitalists." To be more precise, it is not their information that is valuable to these business people, but YOUR attention. As long as they have your attention, they can sell you something.

First of all, they get your ATTENTION. Then, through clever psychological manipulation, they get your INTENTION (to buy, what else, their products and services). Finally, they get you into (lifelong) DETENTION.

Detention is secured by the highest and ultimate marketing skill: the ability to create lifelong dependency on a product, service or company.

Marketing is, ultimately, the preemptive design of innocuous yet effective small-step commitments leading to lifelong, inescapable addictions.

This is why I submit that every piece of information is a mini Trojan horse: there's always a psychological trick that will move you closer to the goal of the information provider.

99% of the information in society is death. It does not bring life nor does it enhance your life. It just keeps you in a perpetual state of economic dependence, because it influences you to overspend and get into debt so you become the lifelong economic slaves of capitalists. If you did not depend so much on your job, then you would be able to quit anytime, and that is highly disruptive for any business enterprise. So they will do anything to prevent that from happening.

So what is the cure? How do we escape all the useless information that advertisers and companies are throwing at us?

The first step is to realize that just as "information is death," so "instruction is life."

255. Stop shopping, start shipping

Friedman talks about "uploading" in the second version of his best-seller, The World is Flat. He says that anyone can create content, upload it on the Web and possibly make money that way.

I totally agree. Payloadz is just one free service enabling people to create (digital) value and sell it online.

However, I don't think you can make a lot of money selling knowledge as a standalone product. That's because knowledge has value only when it is appropriately applied in a particular situation to solve a problem.

In other words, the Internet allows people to sell (hopefully cheaply) their knowledge, but ALSO to connect with buyers of such knowledge in order to help them apply the knowledge properly in THEIR situation. This knowledge application part -- the service part -- is where money will be made.

So basically, a knowledgeable person makes money in two ways:

1. By selling a knowledge product (which can be uploaded to a blog so that anyone in the world can download it)
2. By selling a knowledge service (by enabling the buyers of the knowledge product to contact the knowledge seller in order to receive consulting or coaching services)

# 1 must happen before #2 can be possible.

Which is why I think that smart and ambitious people will realize that at one point, they will have to "stop shopping and start shipping."

That is, they will package everything they know into a CD or binder, etc. and ship it to potential customers. (Uploading it to the Web is also a good idea).

After that, it is just a matter of keeping in touch with the knowledge buyers in order to help them apply the knowledge so they can improve their lives.

Chorebuster

http://www.chorebuster.net/

Chorebuster seems like a great collaborative work software. It's free, and it allows you to share the workload with several other people.

Teamwork becomes automated, and everybody saves time.

For instance, if a work group is formed and it has 12 people, then the work is divided equally in 12 parts, therefore each member of the group gets 12 times the "return on investment."

Being 100% right is key to success

Being right half the time beats being half-right all the time.

- Malcolm Forbes

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So why are people half-right all the time? It's because they rarely push their thinking to the ultimate, inevitable conclusion.

In their defense, it is not easy to sustain a chain of reasoning for a long time. After all, we don't live in Greece and most of us have not had the priviledge of knowing someone like Plato or Socrates, who could go on and on with philosophy and rhetoric.

I think the key is to choose a few topics about which you MUST ABSOLUTELY BE RIGHT. Those are the issues about which you CANNOT AFFORD TO BE WRONG. (I will stop with the CAPITALS because it looks so dramatic and might stress out a few readers).

However, since time is limited, we have to choose to spend it either on:

1. getting more information (from magazines, books, other people, TV news, etc.)
2. OR examining our own thinking and reasoning on the few issues that really matter in our lives

Number 2 is obviously more important, yet most people (including university-educated people) are not doing that critical examination of one's thinking.

Why?

Simply because we do not see what we think. Our mind is like a black box. It's completely dark in there.

This is why having a coach helps. The coach will point a sort of flashlight into your (dark) mind, and show you what you are actually thinking. He will then ask you if that kind of thinking is, according to you, correct or not. If not, then you can correct it yourself or with his help.

Why would a person need a "thinking coach"? Because the quality of one's thinking determines the quality of one's life, whether it be materially, financially, socially, politically, etc.

If you're in business, and your business thinking is wrong, you will fail.

If you're learning a new art, and your thinking about it is wrong and not based on classic principles, you will fail as an artist.

This is why hanging around with a role model is so helpful. After a while, you pick up the same thinking habits. It's easier that way.

Another good way to make sure you SEE your thinking, is to write it down. You can write a blog, or simply keep a daily journal.

No passion , no girlfriend

In 2005, I developed a workshop called Career Brainstorming (http://careerstorm.blogspot.com) and during that workshop, we basically help people explore and develop four dimensions of their ideal career.

One dimension is called Passion.

It recently occurred to me that for some reason, men who have boring jobs are missing out on the opportunity to develop their passion. Would a woman, in her right mind, go out with a guy who has no passion for his work?

If he cannot feel alive at work, would he be able to make her feel alive? Very unlikely.

To compensate, he could perhaps offer a nice house or a nice car, but eventually, another guy will come along who has a BIGGER house and a BIGGER car (possibly even TWO!).

Sure, there are women who are predominantly looking for a guy who offers financial security, but then I submit they are "in love" with the man's wallet or his bank account, rather than with him.

My point is that trying to find a career that one is passionate about, seems to offer the added benefit of making a person more appealing to members of the opposite sex.

In fact, in the West, we are used to dividing and separating the various parts in our lives, like "work" and "family" and "social life." But I think it's wrong.

Every human being is one person, one (hopefully) integrated personality.

If you're passionate at work, it will definitely make you also passionate in your social life. This then increases your likelihood of finding a girlfriend or perhaps even true love.

The main question I often ask myself is: "Is it possible to find true love, if you have not found your true self first?"

Capitalism is all about organizing, controlling information - Part 2

The proof that capitalism is all about managing information is that companies like Amazon, eBay, Yahoo!, etc. became success stories in a relatively short time by leveraging the power of the Web as an information management platform.

Specifically, these Internet companies are particularly good at managing customer information in real-time. Their secret is that they offer something of such value that customers (or prospects) keep coming back to their website.

In a very small way, this is what I'm doing with this blogzine as well. I started small but now have a solid subscriber base. Over time, as I recruit more and more contributors to write articles and submit items related to success, I foresee a much bigger subscriber base, perhaps something like Lifehacker's.

You can do that too. If you're not a natural writer, you can create a blog to which many people can contribute. The important thing is to create a blog as soon as possible and to learn as you go along.

In the end, I think that eventually everybody will become a portal. It's not that difficult. All you need is a subject you truly care about.

For instance, a nice lady I met at a calligraphy association in Montreal actually created a highly popular portal for calligraphy. Her site is known throughout the world! Visit it here: www.cynscribe.com

250. Capitalism is all about organizing, controlling information

We are all experts at self-denial

Perhaps for sanity reasons or for psychological survival, we all seem to be experts at self-delusion and self-denial.

"The truth shall set you free" sounds really nice, but we would much rather avoid the truth at all cost. Especially the truth about ourselves.

Winston Churchill once wrote: "All men stumble upon the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and walk away as if nothing happened."

Yet the truth about ourselves seems to be the foundation for any kind of success in life.

"The truth shall set you free" is a pleasant statement, but the second part (which nobody tells you about) is: "but first, it will set you on fire."

The second part sounds like hell, if you ask me!

Yet, it seems to me that we can only get to heaven if we first accept to go through hell.

In other words, heaven is not "up there" and hell "down there."

Rather, heaven is located on the other side of hell. Only the brave and the valiant and the worthy will accept hardship and pain and a bit of suffering to get to heaven.

Most of us, of course, would much rather choose the comfortable sofa, a nice TV show and the comforting feeling of having the remote control firmly in our hand.

This lethargic state can go on indefinitely, unless someone in our surroundings has the courage to say: "You are such a loser!" or "Your life is going nowhere, can't you realize that?"

However, there is an easy way to find out whether you are engaging in self-denial about your career or your life.

Ask yourself, in terms of how you manage your career or your life: "Am I an inspiring example or am I a horrible warning?"

Like, listen, believe, buy

You probably noticed, as I have, that successful people seem to be likable people.

In fact, the likeability factor is one of the three keys to success mentioned by Tim Sanders in his book Love is the Killer App. (He's the former chief solutions officer for Yahoo!).

(The other two factors are an attitude of abundance, and knowledge).

But what's the link between "being likable" and "being successful"?

After all, the most popular cheerleader (or quarterback football player) in high school doesn't necessarily become the most successful person of her graduating class.

What I found is this sequence:

1. If people like you, they will listen to you
2. The more they listen to you, the more likely they will believe you
3. If they believe you, they will buy from you

So we have:

• LIKE ---> LISTEN ---> BELIEVE ---> BUY

Whether you're a job seeker or a high-powered executive or a launching entrepreneur or a free agent, you always need people to buy your services.

But before they get to the "buying stage", you have to make sure they like you, listen to you and believe you.

Someone cannot believe you if they did not listen to you. Likewise, no person will listen to you if they don't like you.

How to get strangers to instantly like you? Dale Carnegie wrote How to win friends and influence people, I highly recommend it.

You have no time to read it? That's okay, here's a one-line summary or master advice from Carnegie: Be genuinely interested in other people by asking them sincerely a series of questions that will encourage them to share information and stories about themselves.

From pros to prose

From new FREE services such as Nuvvo (www.nuvvo.com) and Blurb (www.blurb.com), I can see the rise of a major phenomenon I predicted 4 years ago: the trend whereby "pros become prose."

In other words, every single thing that you know as a professional, will eventually become a text (textbook, blog, website, e-learning application, video game, etc.).

When that happens -- when you become more "prose" and less of a "pro" who has to show up for work every day -- you will become rich. Oh, financially free also.

It is because I believe so many people will finally "get it" and embark on the road of financial freedom via knowledge packaging, that I created a seminar called "Professional Services Productization."

This revolutionary seminar is basically teaching people how to "productize" their knowledge, experience, expertise, attitude, energy, philosophy, etc. That is, their entire human capital will be captured and accessible in a single product that they offer for sale on the Web (via Payloadz, for instance).

Of course, this idea is not new. Except that previously, only the "top guns" were able to productize their knowledge (www.henrymintzberg.com, www.tompeters.com, etc.).

However, through the vast distributive power of the Internet, even a moderately competent professional today can share his knowledge and knowhow with a potentially limitless audience. In other words, his margins -- which are necessary less than those of top professionals -- will be compensated for by the volume of customers he can attract on the Web.

Who will teach you freedom?

To achieve financial independence requires a powerful teacher, someone who will teach you the Art of Freedom.

Freedom in the sense of Morpheus telling Neo: "Free your mind."

Freedom in the sense of awakening your eternal soul and unleashing its invincible powers upon every single moment in time and space.

So how do you find such a teacher?

He/she has to fulfill three conditions: Position, Priority and Power.

1. He/she (I'll use the masculine form from now on to lighten the text) is highly favorable to your achieving freedom. A parent, for example, is highly favorable to his children achieving freedom. This is called his Position.
2. He puts you at the top of his list of priorities.
3. He has the power to help you, and has access to resources, connections, knowledge, etc. that you need.

It is difficult to find a teacher with all three qualities, but at the same time, when you are ready to become a disciple, the teacher will appear. The more pain and hardship you are OBVIOUSLY willing to endure, the more willing a masterful teacher will be in transferring to you his secret knowledge. No master would share his secrets with the unworthy.

Life has a mysterious way of sending powerful teachers to us when we need them most. The only bottleneck is our readiness to learn and totally submit to the teaching.

Fake boss vs real boss

We all have two bosses, one is fake, the other is real.

A fake boss is someone positioned immediately above you in the corporate hierarchy. He's supposed to care about your performance, but it's not critical that he cares, really. In fact, he cares much more about his job and, of course, doing everything so he can keep it. This is normal human behavior.

A real boss, on the other hand, is the actual owner of the business. He has a deep interest in your performance for the simple reason that ...

His financial gain DEPENDS on your economic performance.

"Economic performance" means how effectively and efficiently you create value for customers.

"Financial gain" means the return on investment that you get from selling your products or services in the marketplace.

Every smart boss, of course, is highly skilled at helping you achieve superior economic performance while giving you a relatively inferior financial reward.

The difference between your superior economic performance and your inferior financial gain IS the source of profit for your capitalist boss. As this gap increases over time (it's called the "profit rate"), your boss gets richer and richer. Your boss thoroughly understands the game of capitalism, therefore he wins. Most employees do not understand capitalism, therefore they lose.

The success secret is to identify the real boss, and learn business secrets from him. A fake boss (someone you report to, according to the organizational chart) doesn't understand business or capitalism, because if he did, he would be a business owner (the real boss) instead of a fake boss. You can't learn much from him from a business standpoint. He may be a good manager, but he doesn't understand business.

To borrow from Robert Kiyosaki's terminology, I guess you could say that there is a Rich Boss, and a Poor Boss.

No Will, No Way

Capitalism is the sum of all fears.

In other words, a small group of capitalists keep the masses in a perpetual state of fear, so that everybody shows up at the office every day, doing what the business requires. The business, of course, is designed to make the rich richer and as to the poor, well, they'll just have to cope and do what they can to survive until retirement time.

I'm not saying that being an employee is bad, because it is indeed the responsible thing to do. But a career that has no exit strategy cannot have a good ending.

A person who puts in the hours every day, without having a clear strategy for exiting the game and becoming an independent professional, simply doesn't understand the game of capitalism.

The proof that being a business owner is better than being an employee, is that rich and wealthy parents send their kids to prestigious business schools. These kids don't become employees working for someone else.

Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr, for instance, graduated from the prestigiouis Wharton School of Business. I doubt they will ever work for another mortal.

The reason why most people remain in a state of economic slavery (i.e. being an employee) is not because of a lack of knowledge (business knowledge, for instance), but because of the perpetual presence of fear.

Fear is broadcast on every TV and radio broadcasting station in the country (in the U.S. and in Canada).

Not surprisingly, as has happened in my case, avoiding the society of the hopelessly brainwashed has been salutary to me. I have gained such strength and such fearlessness from meditating in absolute solitude. I recommend it to anyone who wants to feel their own personal power.

The center of power is illustrated by the W in "POWER," which stands for Will.

If you have the Will, there will be a Way.

No Will, no Way.

Is your career D.O.A.?

D.O.A. = Dead on Arrival

The arrival of the future will kill many jobs and, by extension, many careers. A legion of losers will be created, as James Davidson wrote about in his book The Sovereign Individual.

The only jobs that will be spared an early demise are those that cannot be:

• Digitized
• Outsourced
• Automated

Digitization means capturing in a computer file or Web-based audiovidual document your valuable knowledge. Example: many trainers have had their jobs slashed and replaced by e-learning programs.

Outsourcing means your job can be done more cheaply by someone else (who is usually more hungry and accepts a far cheaper wage). Example: call center workers in North America are replaced by call center people in India.

Automation means an expert system or a computer program can perform, flawlessly and ruthlessly, the physical or intellectual operation you were paid to do. Example: software applications that can advise people on their legal options. Some of these applications are doing the analytical and advisory work previously done by a divorce attorney. For instance, instead of consulting an attorney, you can now download an application that asks you to fill out a few details, and can instantly give you all the (legal or other) options at your disposal.

The art of seduction

There's a book called The Art of Seduction, by Robert Greene, which I highly recommend. I don't really use it to seduce women, for the simple reason that the beautiful women I've met over the years are just too smart to fall for any seduction trick.* In fact, I'm the weak-minded chap who falls victim to the web of seductive ploys that women unleash upon me.

Like the French saying goes: "L'homme court apres la femme jusqu'a ce qu'elle l'attrape." (A man will chase a woman until she catches him).

The book is instructional in that it shows the very same techniques that society (and the capitalists who run society) uses to enthrall people and seduce them into a lifestyle that keeps enriching capitalists.

John Kenneth Galbraith wrote, in his little red book The Economics of Innocent Fraud, about how society's elite hires the best writers, artists and advertisers to "manage public response." (George Orwell would call it "mind control via the secret thought police.")

However, Galbraith doesn't mention the specific ploys and techniques used against the people to subdue and control their imagination in a way that serves the interests of the ruling class.

Robert Greene does. He actually also wrote another book called The 48 Laws of Power, which I also highly recommend.

* I've noticed that I prefer beautiful AND smart women because only an intelligent woman can be creative enough to multiply her natural beauty and sensual appeal through the artful use of intellect and imagination. The equation goes something like this:

Sexual or Romantic Appeal = Beauty X Intelligence

Who can you trust?

Everybody has their own (often hidden) agenda. Also, they will always promote a philosophy that validates their own biography.

In other words, the overwhelming majority of people will lie to you. It's not that they are bad people or have bad intentions. And it's not always an outright lie. But they will hide parts of the truth or they will present the facts in a way that leads you to jump to the wrong conclusions.

Why do people do that? Because they want to control you. This is how people achieve power, whether it's social, economic or political: by controlling other people's knowledge and perceptions.

So who can you trust?

Who will give you valuable information and knowledge that will help you to liberate yourself so you can realize your full potential?

Only one person: the person whose economic interests depend on your performance.

Example: if you bought a Second Cup franchise at $150,000, you can be sure that the franchisor will always tell you the truth about your performance and will do whatever is necessary to transfer to you the required knowledge so you can perform well. The reason, of course, is that franchisor only succeeds if and when the franchisee succeeds.

Since a percentage of the franchisee's monthly sales is paid to the franchisor, the vital economic link motivates the franchisor to empower the franchisee as much as possible to continually ensure greater success.

However, in one's private life, there is no such economic link. People in your network don't necessarily want you to succeed, because then it would reflect badly upon them.

For this reason, even friends sometimes withhold information or resources or opportunities from one another. This is not about morality, it's simply a survival instinct.

But it doesn't change the fact that vital information and knowledge will always be hidden from you, UNLESS there is an economic link whereby the more you succeed, the more someone else succeeds. Only then will the other person be motivated to give you all the knowledge you require to succeed.

This is simple to understand, yet most people go through life getting information from people who have absolutely no interest in their achieving success.

This is precisely why there are "success secrets" everywhere yet they are hidden from people's view or consciousness. These secrets are only transferred from father to son, or mother to children. This is why rich families remain rich, while poor families are stuck working for capitalists their whole lifetime.

The success secret is to find someone who can teach you important things, and to create a formal arrangement whereby he/she gains economically from your performance in business.

240. Own everything except life

There's only one thing that every person on Earth truly owns, and that is his/her life.

In other words, your time is the only thing you truly own.

Yet, most people living in civilized society are persuaded, through the educational system and other mass institutions like the news media, that one should work hard to own STUFF while giving up our own FREEDOM (freedom being defined as control over what we do, where and when and with whom, every day).

That's basically the deal we all get: give up your daily freedom, five days a week, and you shall be able to buy stuff. In other words, FREEDOM = STUFF.

We give up control over our time and life, and in exchange, we get a paycheck to buy the necessities in life.

In general, this is a fair deal. If you're in your early 20s, working for a company (that is, for a capitalist who owns a business) is a good deal: you get paid a decent amount of money while learning and acquiring marketable skills that you can use in future employment.

However, the older you get, the more this deal (of giving up your freedom in exchange for money) becomes more and more intolerable.

That's because your time is worth much more. For example, you might become a parent so the time you spend with your kids (especially when they're young) is priceless.

But since most professionals (even those with 20 years of experience) have never learned business, they are not able to become independent professionals and are not able to launch their own business.

Without launching a business venture that they own, they can never own their freedom. They are forever slaves to capitalists who will use their skills at the cheapest market rate, and hand out pink slip when their services are no longer required or no longer of strategic importance (that's when they outsource your job to a low-cost provider).

Conclusion: the only way to truly own your life, is to own your business.

But to own a business, you must thoroughly understand business.

People who don't understand business, end up owning a lot of stuff in life, but the one thing they never own is the most important of all: LIFE.

Let's talk!

Dear readers / subscribers,

Since I want this blogzine to be of maximum usefulness to you, I invite you to send me any question you may have regarding any of the 240+ postings so far. I will respond to you as soon as I can. This way, you can better understand the knowledge contained in this blogzine and perhaps it can be of better use to you in your own life, situation, career, business, etc.

Thanks,

Peter

Habit is dumb, practice is smart

A habit is a practice that never gets better.

A practice is a habit that keeps getting better.

A habit is dumb, whereas a practice keeps getting better and better.

Most jobs are mere habits. Once you learn how to do something, you just keep doing it. You don't really improve, and the proof is that your salary stays more or less the same year after year. (The little raise most people get is so laughable it's almost insulting).

Law practices or consulting practices, on the other hand, are a different matter. You rise up the ladder fairly quickly if you are good, eventually becoming a partner who owns a stake in the company.

That's why they call it a law "practice" or a medical "practice": the more you practice, the better you get. And the more you earn.

The success secret is to identify all the habits in your life, and turn them into opportunities to practice something.

To make the practice interesting, keep a balance between the "level of difficulty" and your "skill level."

If you try something too difficult, you will fail and might feel depressed. If you try something too easy, or for which you are overskilled, you may find it boring.

The key is to remember that a habit usually doesn't generate feedback, which means you cannot improve.

Practice does generate feedback, and to the extent that you understand and learn from the feedback, you will become a better person.

Negotiation is key to success in life

A Japanese friend of mine, a very smart lady who was often the best-performing investment counselor at a major securities firm in Japan, once said something that I never forgot: "I'm a good negotiator because there is nothing to negotiate."

With that statement in mind, would you like to play a game to test your negotiation skill?

Suppose you have 26 red cards, and you find yourself in a room with 26 other people and they each have a black card.

Every time a black card is paired with a red card, $100 is generated.

In that case, it would seem fair that you make $50 while the person holding the black card makes $50.

Since you have 26 red cards, you can easily make $1300 (or 26 X $50).

However, if you were really smart at negotiation, you could easily make $2340.

How would you do it?

Feel free to email me your answers at omnidigitalbrain@yahoo.com

I will reveal the answer in a few days.

Opera & audio-cognitivity

Cognitivity = cognition + productivity.

The more you know, the more productive you can be.

Opera (www.opera.com) offers a free browser that allows you to increase your audio-cognitivity: that is, you can select a text from any Web site, and right-click and select "Speak."

Then, the highlighted text will be spoken by a neural-sounding voice. You can do something else while listening.

It's really cool. And productive too.

Feedback & Feet Forward

Anthony Robbins once said: "Change is automatic. Progress is not."

Progress is difficult because it requires feedback that is OBJECTIVE and PRECISE.

Since we are rarely objective about ourselves, we can rarely give ourselves good feedback. And when we do provide feedback to ourselves, it is not precise enough.

Yet, feedback is critical to progress and success.

If the feedback is systematically provided to you, from an objective source, and in a timely manner so that you can act on it, then what you have is a wonderful self-improvement system.

For this summer's tennis tournaments in Montreal, I started practicing against a wall. Painted on the wall is a white line, which is supposed to represent the net.

This wall is my "magic coach." It provides me with objective, real-time feedback, enabling me to continually improve my forehand and backhand.

I can even accelerate the tempo of the feedback by moving closer to the wall, so that I hit the ball after one bounce and not two (this fast rhythm trains my footwork too).

My point is that in any type of work that you do, there IS a way to create such a "magic coach" who will always give you real-time, accurate and valuable feedback on your performance.

Without feedback, there can be no feet forward. Without feedback, you will be stuck where you are, without the possibility of improving yourself in order to perform better in your career or in business.