The greatest enemy in life

No blogzine on success secrets would be complete without identifying life's major enemy, which every man and woman has to face at one point or another.

"It is life's only true opponent. Only (it) can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease. It begins in your mind, always. One moment you are feeling calm, self-possessed, happy. Then, disguised in the garb of mild-mannered doubt, it slips into your mind like a spy."

- Life of Pi, by Yann Martel

Have you guessed what it is?

The worst enemy in life is FEAR.

This is why the late management guru Peter Drucker said that every time you see a successful business, it's because someone once made a courageous decision.

The decision to face one's fear is incredibly courageous, and not surprisingly, most people ignore their fears. As Martel pointed out, it is quite easy to ignore one's fears because they work undercover, as spies. Your fears know precisely where you are weakest, and they always attack you there.

My success secret has always been to treat fear the way a martial arts master should treat any opponent facing him: calmly and confident that his training has prepared him appropriately for this mortal combat.

Even in matters as complicated as love and relationships, there may be a way to get yourself out of depression or agony or the horrible feeling of having a huge hole in your being.

Here's what I mean.

Suppose you meet a girl, and you think she's the one. You love her, but she doesn't love you back.

Obviously, that's a very painful situation. You might feel rejected, or -- and this could be worse -- you might feel that there is something incredibly wrong with the universe: you KNOW she's the one, yet why doesn't she love you back?

Yet, if you look at it logically, it goes something like this:

1. If she's NOT the one meant for you, then the special someone you are looking for is waiting for you somewhere. It doesn't help, therefore, that you wallow in self-pity and waste time on bouts of depression while your future wife is waiting for you somewhere!
   
   
2. If she IS the one meant for you, then it will happen at some point, but NOT on your own schedule. In fact, the more you try to push it, the more you might delay (or possibly even cancel) the ultimate event of your merging with her.

Either way, it is a waste of time to focus on it.

My point is that in facing fear, one must be skilled in mental combat. One must master oneself.

15-minute legacy

In the previous posting, I imagined that I had only 15 minutes to live, and that in those 15 minutes, I had to share the best knowledge I acquired during my time on Earth.

There's nothing like the idea of death to help one's mind focus on what is truly important.

Peter's legacy

15:00

Key authors who have influenced my thinking:
Brian Tracy, Edward de Bono, Jose Maria Escriva, Peter Drucker, Lester Thurow, Wayne Dyer, Anthony Robbins, Joseph Campbell, Shoshana Zuboff, Alvin Toffler, Stephen Covey.

Key principles which have helped me in my life:

1. Little by little, does the trick. - Seneca
   
2. Fear knocked on the door. Faith answered. There was no one there.
3. Fearless minds climb soonest unto crowns. - Shakespeare
4. Chinese proverb: "The meaning of life is this: your father dies. Then you die. Then your children die." In other words, I stopped philosophizing too much. Our time on Earth is luck. We have all won the lottery already. Let's just enjoy the prize.
   

Biggest mistakes I made in my life:

1. Not asking other people for help early enough.
2. Not realizing, early enough, that every person I meet is suffering from something. Therefore, I was not able to help them at the time they needed me.
3. Not hugging enough people.
4. Trying to love her, when in fact, I should have done everything in my power to serve her so that she would say, beaming: "Oh, you really love me!"
5. Not clarifying with loved ones my rules. Since they don't know my rules (what makes me feel good, what deeply hurts me), they often hurt me without knowing.
6. Reading too many books, instead of choosing a few key principles and practicing them endlessly until I fully mastered them.

Insights I had that surprised me and seemed true:
The average woman is superior to the average man. The more women I am friends with, the more I grow to become compassionate, balanced, sensitive and nurturing.

Greatest movie I ever saw:
Casablanca. I love the part where Victor Laszlo, the leader of the Resistance, is furious and walks over to the orchestra, ordering them to play La Marseilleise. As he's singing at the top of his lungs, his wife Ilsa looks totally amazed by his courageous spirit. Since I saw that scene, I decided that my career objective is to reach that point: where my wife would look at me with pride and admiration, because I'm doing something courageous for the good of people.

Advice I would give my son:
Love all women and fight for them when you can. And treat YOUR woman like a princess. Without her, life is not worth living.

Advice I would give my daughter:
In all ways, try to think, speak and act like a princess. Because you truly are one. And you deserve absolutely the best in life.

Life Support Network

3:00

Here's an idea you can implement with your circle of friends and acquaintances.

You can create a form to fill out, like the one HERE.

The minute a person in your network of contacts fills out that form, you can then refer the right expert or service provider (also in your network) to the person who needs the expertise or service.

This is a services-oriented process. It's more than networking.

Linkedin.com, for example, is networking. A lot of people might be in your network, but they never meet each other. They never interact with one another. That's quite a boring party!

With the form above, any person in your network that has a particular need, can be helped by another person in your network who has the expertise or who offers the service.

This idea is quite brilliant, I know. So now, I'm going to prepare myself a well-deserved hot chocolate!

How to manage your wealth

Time management is wealth management. Especially for professionals, whose only career asset is their time.

The above is a snapshot of how I monitor the usage of my time. Notice that I measure my productivity or creativity in MINUTES, not HOURS.

Indeed, speed is the name of the game in the new economy, and if you took 15 minutes to write a memo, that's 10 minutes too long.

The success secret for effectively managing one's wealth is to have a macro-view of where you want to go (your true vocation or your ideal career) while ALSO having a micro-view of how you spend your time on a daily basis.

How to get what you want in life

5:00

Here's a good notation system for CLEARLY stating your goals, as well as the means/ploys/tactics available to achieve those goals.

Example:

Make more money
... Work overtime
... Get higher salary at current job
... ... Negotiate higher salary with boss
... ... Change departments
... ... Get a degree (MBA, etc.) to convince boss of one's higher value to the company
... Get higher salary at new job
... ... Network to find new employer(s)
... ... Polish resume and cover letters
... ... Recruit a career agent who will find new job with higher salary
... Launch a business on the side

"Make more money" is the goal, and "Work overtime" or "Get higher salary at current job" is the means to achieve that goal.

The great thing about the above notation system is that it's incredibly simple, and visual too: you can see right away the whole picture.

Instant biographical obliteration

7:00

Instant biographical obliteration (IBO) is a super-skill.

It's when you're able, at any moment, to completely forget who you are, where you've been, what you've lived through, etc. so that your perception of everything and every single thing around you is pure and innocent, like as if you had just been born.

Most people, unfortunately, cannot forget what they've lived through. They carry their biographical "baggage" with them all the time, whether it's consciously or unconsciously.

In other words, we see the world NOT as it really is, but as we are (and as our particular life has programmed us to see).

That is, we only see what our past life has prepared us to see. We don't really experience anything new.

That's why being spontaneous is so exciting and so liberating. It's when you just go with the moment, almost without regard for who you are or what life you've had. You just feel the moment, and you flow with it.

Oftentimes, the wisdom of this "moment" is far greater than your own wisdom or intelligence.

This moment can present you with new choices, or can make you realize you've come to a crossroads, and your life can change dramatically.

Most people cannot create this moment, although many can sense this moment when it arrives.

Instant biographical obliteration is a success secret, because as you master this skill of being able to completely forget who you are, you become more and more capable of creating new minds, new moods, new perceptions -- at will. This enhances and enriches your life in ways you cannot yet imagine.

Master your knowledge by teaching it

2:00

In the previous posting, I talked about mastering knowledge. The best way to really, really master your knowledge is to TEACH it to people.

You can teach it to friends, coworkers, acquaintances, or even strangers (for instance, you can create a FREE account on Odeo.com and then just record your beautiful voice and talk about what it is that you have deep knowledge about).

It is ironic that only through giving away your knowledge (through teaching) can you really "own" it.

Knowledge mastery

In a previous posting (HERE), I mentioned the critical importance of mastering what it is that you know. That is, to convert your knowledge into a skill that you practice over and over again.

The above diagram shows a "river" of knowledge that we consciously acquire, through readings, education, conversations, etc.

The key, however, is not to read or acquire MORE knowledge, but to CHOOSE the few pieces of knowledge that seems to make a BIG difference, and then to practice them until you master them.

It is only through the APPLICATION of knowledge (which is what a skill is all about), that one can create value and, by necessity, get paid more.

Work Reusability

6:00

In his best-seller The Cashflow Quadrant, Robert Kiyosaki separates people into four groups:

1. Employees
2. Free agents
3. Business owners
4. Professional investors

His message is that for fiscal reasons as well as for personal wealth-buiding reasons, it is better to be a business owner or professional investors.

There are details he doesn't mention, and I can understand why: it is better to simplify things so people can quickly grasp the main idea. And his main idea is amazingly correct.

Here, I want to talk about when it may be better to work as an employee rather than a business owner.

The main principle I use is "Work Reusability."

The key question is: "How much of the work you did on Monday is being reused on Tuesday?"

Consider two positions: a manager of a corporate training intranet vs the owner of a small convenience store.

Who do you think is continually reusing his own work and building on it? Who is creating value exponentially?

Secret of wealth creation

Income depends on outcome.

The higher the quantity or quality of your outcome (what you actually produce), the higher your income.

Yet, it is not easy to increase your outcome.

Indeed, creating new or more value depends on your brain's capacity.

And brain capacity depends on how much time you spend in DEVELOPING your intellectual skills.

Most people don't seem to take their intellectual skills seriously. People are more offended if you tell them they're ugly, than if you tell them they're stupid.

In short, people care more about how good they LOOK than how good they really ARE.

And that is why India and China will beat us to the punch in the emerging 21st century.

Looking good is easy. I just have to step into a Harry Rosen store, and if I come out wearing a $1,000 suit, it's a sure bet all the young women will be looking at me.

But the new economy is not superficial, it is in fact deeply grounded in fundamentals. You are either very very good, or you are fired.

I guess the success secret here is to realize that

1. Wealth creation depends on your continually increasing your brainpower
2. Brainpower increase depends on how much time (measure it in minutes if you will) you spend, every day, to challenge your brain through activities that require intellectual skill and mental sharpness
   

Are you a threat to your employer?

The more money you earn as an employee, the more you become a threat to your employer.

This is simply because to maximize profit, capitalists (business owners) MUST keep wages as low as possible.

(In the diagram above, you can see that at one point, an employee (say, an engineer) is costing the company so much ($80,000) that they're seriously considering outsourcing his job to India. If it's not outsourcing, it can be digitization or automation or expert systems. Whatever it is, employers will resort to such labour-reducing ploys because they NEED to keep wages (costs) down for shareholders' sake).

Furthermore, the more unique and irreplaceable and talented you are, the more you ALSO become a threat to your employer.

That's because employers want stability. They don't want star employees who can decide, at any moment, to jump ship and join another company. This would disrupt operations and profit-making.

So on the one hand, you have your human capital. On the other hand, employers have structural capital (equipment, procedures, work methods, software applications and the company-specific way they are used and leveraged, intellectual property, etc.).

The key is for employers to help you build your human capital, but ONLY insofar as it helps you do a better job at the company, NOT anywhere else (such as for competitors, should you decide to jump ship).

All of this is commonsense, yet most people don't think about it in those terms because most people have never been business owners.

What this means, in fact, is that you can never develop a strategic skill set (which would dramatically expand your career opportunities and professional horizons) by relying on the information and training provided by your employer.

The best that employers can do is provide job-specific training. They can NEVER provide career-relevant training, for that would increase your mobility and market value -- two powerful factors that will increase the risk that you leave the company.

Preparation is everything

A picture says it all. The above diagram, for instance, clearly establishes the causal link between what a person does (personal preparation and training) and the resulting help she gets from God, others and the world of opportunities.

The three circles represent three different persons. The little circle represents a person who is less prepared and less trained than the person represented by the larger circle.

2:00

Knowledge / action mastery

8:00

It's just human nature: people will make the least effort possible, at the very last minute possible, when they really have no choice but to make that effort.

In other words, "perpetual reaction to urgency" rules the day.

We decide and act reactively to what is urgent, and we don't decide and act proactively to what is important.

I know this is nothing new, Stephen Covey has written about it in 1985 in his best-seller The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

However, what is different today, 20 years later, is that it is no longer enough to do what is important.

You have to do what WILL become increasingly important. And that is knowledge/action mastery.

Whatever you know or do, you must know it or do it like a master. That is the only way to survive in today's global economy, where anyone from any country can (and often does) compete with you directly.

Note: this is why I recently decided to develop what I call a proprietary Starmaker Technology. The purpose of this technology is to deeply assist people in identifying their talent, and developing it to star status.

Every media is a mind-capturing technology

12

Mass media people are powerful and dangerous people.

They hire a team of highly trained and skilled creative professionals to create content (mostly entertainment) that will capture your attention and, therefore, your mind. Once they've captured your mind, they've captured your life.

It may sound like I'm taking this way too seriously, yet consider this: every day, millions of people sit quietly and obediently on their sofa and watch the news. Most of the news, of course, is fabricated by PR departments staffed by former journalists.

Indeed, the media is a powerful mind-capturing technology. Once they capture your attention and your mind, they can then structure your mind to think in a way that reinforces the status quo. Why? To keep the elite in power and to keep people in the darkness.

It's not that people are stupid or cannot see how this is done. It's just that human minds are easily, most easily influenced by words and pictures. Confucius himself said thousands of years ago: He who cannot master words, cannot master men.

Sure, we may laugh at the ridiculousness of the movie The Truman Show, where Jim Carrey lives in a completely fabricated universe, filled with actors who reinforce the fabricated reality he lives in.

Yet, to one degree or another, we all live in such a fabricated universe.

Of course, it would be great if such a universe knew what your goals in life were, and tried to help you reach those goals. However, the reality is quite different. Mass institutions in our society rarely, if ever, know about the goals of individuals.

Instead, mass institutions want stability. They want human beings that are highly predictable, so they become easier to control mentally, therefore physically.

Therefore, they use "impulses." People who don't have goals, have impulses. They react to stimuli in a very predictable fashion. Ad agencies identify basic impulses (sex, food, etc.) and leverage those hot buttons to death.

The success secret is to pause and reflect on whether, on a daily basis, you react to your goal (if you have one) or to the impulse you have, which may or may not have been created by advertising.

Real-time Success Secrets is expanding!

Due to the growing popularity of this blog, I've decided to create new products and e-services designed to help subscribers and readers to actually implement the success secrets in their lives.

Only subscribers will have access to such products and e-services. If you know friends, coworkers, family, etc. who might be interested, please ask them to subscribe before August 4, 2006. Subscription will not be available after that date.

Thank you as usual for your support!

Peter

Strategy depends on reality

How good a strategy is, depends on how well you grasp the reality in which the strategy is to be executed.

Here's an example.

In the old economy, work was more of a team sport. In the new economy, you have to play the game by yourself. Sure, you'll need a team of people and professionals to support you, but you are basically in the arena by yourself.

This is the new reality.

Yet, most people somehow still depend on others. We still cling to the idea of teamwork. We still prefer to work "in an office, surrounded by other people."

The idea of teamwork was developed so that workers could mutually support and motivate one another, therefore relieving managers who can then spend their time on more strategic stuff.

But "working," per se, doesn't happen in a team.

For example, when was the last time you applied for a job, and you were surrounded by a team?
More likely, you were all by yourself and you were facing either one or two, perhaps three, job interviewers.

Anyways, my point is that in the new economy, we all compete ALONE. That is the new reality.

Therefore, we have to develop a strategy that fits that new reality.

The best strategy is to rapidly build a "deep support network" of professionals, experts, consultants, trainers, coaches, etc. who can support one's career performance.

Victory can be known, not made

5:00

Sun Tzu wrote that "Victory can be known, it cannot be made."

In other words, the ripe conditions for success can be known or inferred by an intelligent mind, and when those conditions are present, one should invest maximum effort into that undertaking.

Since we have limited resources and only two eyes and two ears, we have to rely on a network of "spies" who can then inform us of the conditions. We then decide whether the conditions are right for attack.

Basically, this means that the key to success is to build your own network of insider information providers so you know when to strike.

Www.linkedin.com is one way to build your network.

However, registering with such social networking applications is the easy part. Clearly communicating to your contacts WHAT information you need, HOW it should be delivered to you and WHEN -- those are more difficult issues.

It's difficult because most of us have grown up working in a closed-off environment: the office. Unless you are a salesperson or business development officer, you normally would not be "out there" gathering information.

Yet, without this information-gathering skill, one cannot succeed because one cannot know WHEN the conditions out there are right for proposing a deal or implementing a marketing measure.

How to increase our use of brainpower

5:00

The discoverer of atomic energy once said that we use only 5% of our intellectual capacity.

I think he was right. But if so, then it means that most of us could probably make 20 times more money! (That is, if we used 100% of our available intellectual capacity).

The question is, Did Einstein mean WE use only 5% of our cerebral faculties, or does our ENVIRONMENT only require that we use 5% of such faculties?

I'm not trying to shift the blame to the environment for the underuse of our human intelligence, yet at the same time, I'm keenly aware of the effects that systems (especially the systems that preemptively control our behavior) have on HOW we behave (physically and intellectually).

In short, how much you earn depends on how much you use your brain, and how much you use your brain depends on the social / intellectual system you find yourself in.

For instance, if your work environment requires you to be sharp all the time (e.g. you work as a high-level executive), then you are more likely to use MORE of your cerebral capacity than an ordinary secretary.

The success secret, therefore, seems to create a challenging work environment, or at least to insert yourself in such an environment in order to increase your usage of your intellectual power, which will result in your increasing your income.

Powerful way to micro-manage your time

Above is a screenshot of how I manage my time. Click HERE to download a little script that will help you manage your time.

It takes about 5-10 minutes to set it up, but trust me, it is fully worth it.

Time is the only thing that is truly valuable and that we must religiously manage. Once it's gone, it's gone forever.

Talk It Type It

This is an awesome piece of software you should buy: www.talkittypeit.com

I've been using it for a few months, it is just amazing. You speak into a microphone, and it types everything you say!

Now remember: I type as fast as any good secretary out there, yet I find that speaking is much more powerful. I don't have to pay attention to my fingers, I can just concentrate on formulating precise sentences that precisely capture my thoughts.

And the Talk It Type It application does the rest!

2:00

Writing CAN improve your life

Most people don't suspect the awesome power that a blog can have, not only in promoting one's views and expertise, but MORE IMPORTANTLY, in enforcing a strict sort of discipline in one's thinking and writing.

The success secret here is to realize that the way you write IS the way you think.

If your writing is sloppy, then your thinking is sloppy.
If your writing is disorganized, then your thinking is disorganized.
If you have a hard time writing, then you have a hard time thinking.
If your writing is not good (according to an objective observer), then your thinking is not good.

In other words, writing helps you to think better, and thinking better helps you to have a better life (career, family, relationships, business, etc.).

I speak from experience since I DID notice that my thinking and life have been much better since I started blogging (about two years ago).

Bankism vs capitalism

Above is a neat diagram I created for my clients to help them understand what business is all about.

The green boxes represent "money" and the blue boxes represent "capital" (that is, money that has been converted into a money-producing instrument or tool).

In this case, the capital happens to be business cards. The 5 navy blue boxes on the right represent the business cards that actually produced results (sales of $10, $20 or $50).

The initial investment of $50 to print 1,000 business cards, yielded total revenues of $150. That's a return on investment (ROI) of 200%.

If you don't understand how business is played, then your surest bet is to put your money into the bank (bankism).

But once you understand how business is played, you can become a capitalist-entrepreneur and manage your business until you get a ROI that is as high as it can be.

Educational system crushes personal power

"He who does not plan and takes the enemy lightly, will certainly be captured by him." - Sun Tzu

Any individual who wants to achieve financial freedom realizes, sooner or later, than society is massively against that wish. Society will do anything to crush the spirit of initiative and any sense of personal power that an individual tries to develop.

Society (mass institutions) therefore is the enemy. Here's a delicious excerpt from the movie The Thomas Crown Affair, where the hero -- a highly intelligent man who seems to have mastered the workings of society -- somehow hints at being able to defeat society:

The Psychiatrist: I want you to talk about women.
[waits for a few moments]

The Psychiatrist: Mr. Crown?

Thomas Crown: I'm sorry?

The Psychiatrist: Women. You get to talk about women.

Thomas Crown: Oh, I enjoy women.

The Psychiatrist: Enjoyment isn't intimacy.

Thomas Crown: And intimacy isn't necesarily enjoyment.

The Psychiatrist: How would you know? Has it occured to you that you have a problem with trust?

Thomas Crown: [smirking] I trust myself implicitly.

The Psychiatrist: But can other people trust you?

Thomas Crown: Oh, you mean society at large?

The Psychiatrist: I mean women, Mr.Crown.

Thomas Crown: Yes, a woman could trust me.

The Psychiatrist: Good. Under what extraordinary circumstances would you allow that to happen?

Thomas Crown: A woman could trust me as long as her interests didn't run too contrary to my own.

The Psychiatrist: And society? If ITS interests should run counter to your own?
[Crown smiles]

===

The bottom line is that any individual who wants to achieve financial freedom, should prepare for the battle of his/her life.

Being smart doesn't guarantee that you will achieve financial freedom. Being ruthless, on the other hand, might increase your odds of success.

I don't mean ruthless in the sense of being merciless and unkind to other people, but being merciless toward one's weaknesses and bad habits.

I mean ruthless in the sense of doing everything in your power -- every day, every hour -- to allow your future to win over your past.

The past has an incredible advantage over the future, in that it exists already not only in the physical world, but also in your memory. The future is so fleeting, so intangible, so unreal.

People who have succeeded greatly, somehow have mastered ways of empowering their future so it can win over their past.

Thomas Watson, the founder of IBM, gave this advice: Imagine the ideal person you will be in five years. Start TODAY to act, eat, walk, talk, think, etc. EXACTLY the way that ideal person would.

I have never come across a more powerful piece of advice.

Ruthlessness

Ruthlessness is usually defined as "having no compassion or pity."

Yet I've known women who are truly excellent at being ruthless, even though they are very kind and gentle to people.

These women are ruthless in the sense that they know what is right; they know what they want; they know what excellence means, and what price has to be paid -- ahead of time -- in order to secure excellent performance and excellent results.

In order to better understand ruthlessness, I created the above diagram. It seems to show the logical sequence of taking risks, building one's confidence in decision-making, acquiring personal power, which then increases one's willingness to take risks, etc.

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A consumer is a loser

5:00

This is probably hard for a lot of people (especially people who love shopping) to accept, but a consumer is a loser.

A loser of money-capital, as well as a loser who doesn't advance in his/her talent-based career.

Here's what I mean.

Every time you buy something, you invest in the career of someone else, whether it's a movie director or actor (movie, DVD, etc.), a fashion designer (clothes, accessories, etc.), or a chef (restaurant).

The money you spent on them, could have been spent to develop YOUR career and YOUR talent.

Yet, the overwhelming majority of people spend and spend and spend, thereby building the financial future of OTHER people. They even spend the money they don't have yet (ah, credit cards... what an evil invention!).

In the end, every person on Earth believes wholeheartedly either one of two things:

• "I have talent" OR
• "I don't have talent"

People who believe they don't have talent, will work hard in order to get the money so they can spend it on other people's talent (i.e. they buy nice clothes, nice cars, they go to nice restaurants, etc.).

People who believe they have a talent, and are willing to work hard to develop that God-given talent, usually do not engage in blind consumerism. They spend every penny on themselves, and that is probably the best investment to make.

Information technology vs mind technology

Information technology (IT) is no longer a source of competitive advantage.

The new technology to watch for is what I call Mind Technology (MT). This is the kind of technology that will shape either YOUR mind or somebody else's mind.

If it shapes your mind, then it will make you more productive, more creative, more innovative. As a result, you will create more value, and make more money.

If it shapes other people's mind, then it will help you to make money FASTER.

www.45future.com is an example of a simple Web-based technology that shapes the minds of hundreds of thousands of people. The owner(s) of that site are obviously very rich or very smart, probably both.

They are very smart because they master a mysterious principle illustrated by the statement: "The founder of a market is someone who is impeccable in his psychological knowledge of a group of people who have not yet realized that they belong together."

Most people are powerless economically because every day, they interact with technologies and software applications that actually DESTROY their mind and their creative/mental capabilities.

As if that was not bad enough, workers go home after a mind-numbing day at the office, and then watch TV for more mind-destruction!

I don't know if George Bush is still looking for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but one thing's for sure: the weapon of mass distraction in America is television.

Television is like a giant machine-babysitter, forcing millions of people to sit quietly and obediently on their comfortable sofa and absorbing, like a baby being spoon-fed, all the information junk provided by TV broadcasters.

So in a very real sense, TV is a mind technology used by the elite (capitalists, media moguls, government, etc.) to subdue and control the masses.

How I do favors for HR people

2:00

In the previous posting, I talked about finding a way to quickly do a favor for a LOT of people.

One of my secrets is to invite HR people, who work at companies where I think I could get a contract, to download a special report I wrote. Since I use Dropload.com, I know who has downloaded my special report.

Of course, I wrote the report only once, yet I leverage its value over and over again.

In your case, I'm sure you know something that you can package into a PDF document. All you have to do is share it with all your connections, so they will "owe" you a small favor.

The key to power

1:00

If you look at the word "POWER", you see the word "OWE" right in the middle of it.

It makes sense. Power is often built through social connections, and this basically means that the more favors you bestow upon people, the greater the number of people who "owe" you a favor.

Politicians often play this game of "I'll scratch your back if you'll scratch mine."

So I guess the success secret is to find a way to quickly and efficiently do favors for a LOT of people, so you can build, slowly but surely, your power base.

Victory can be known, it cannot be made

1:00

By the above, Sun Tzu means that one has to be ready to pounce on an opportunity that would bring about victory.

Although the conditions for victory can be known, they cannot be created by a person.

All you can do is TRAIN and PREPARE and stay ALERT for the crucial time when the opportunity presents itself.

Sun Tzu

5:00

"Victory can be known, but it cannot be made."

This mysterious teaching by Sun Tzu contains a great amount of wisdom, so let's analyze it and find out what it means.

Sun Tzu also says that "Invincibility lies in oneself. Vincibility lies in the enemy."

The best illustration is a simple comment that my brother Joe gave me, while we were playing in the finals of a doubles tennis tournament. He said: "Peter, you don't have to go for a winner. They will usually make a mistake first."

Now in a tennis game, I usually like to go for winners (that is, I hit the ball close to the line so the opponent cannot return it). I often don't have the patience to rally for a long time. This is probably why Joe beats me all the time!

However, Joe's approach is better: he makes sure that he never makes a mistake (by hitting risky shots, for instance) and then he waits for the right opportunity to hit a winner. The right opportunity usually comes only through the opponent making a weak shot (i.e. not a deep one).

THAT is exactly what Sun Tzu means: make sure you have a perfect defense, so that you can avoid defeat. Then, attack only when the enemy seems to have made a mistake (that is, the enemy has made himself "vincible").

Put that bra back on!

6:00

Women are really, really different from men.

I know I'm stating the obvious and that most men have probably realized that fact by the time they reach puberty.

But what I mean is that women are TOTALLY different in the way they feel, the way they are, the way they work, the way they express themselves and the way they care for others.

A man cannot fail but learn valuable things about life and about love when he hangs around with girls and women.

Since I'm a super-competitive male, I don't really hang around with male friends. I tend to compete (not obviously, of course) against all men. If there's a beautiful female in front of me, then that's it: all males within a five mile radius must die (or at least, they must retire from my realm or face the consequences!). I'm just half-joking, but it's true I have this irrepressible urge to express my alpha gene! (Yes, I know, I need professional help!).

But when I talk to women, it's quite different. I don't compete with them at all. I want to learn from them. I'm desperate to learn from them, so I go: "Oh, come on, stop fooling around! Put that bra back on and teach me something useful!"

See, that's another thing I like about women: they are very sensitive to words. A single word, in the right sentence, can spark and launch a quasi-erotic feeling in a woman's mind.

What does this mean for men? I think it means that a "romantic success" secret could be that one should focus on developing one's linguistic skills.

Destiny is a mathematical calculation

10:00

People often think that destiny is a mysterious thing, an elusive entity or a powerful deity that can take over a human life and shape it according to a plan that is outside people's control.

Nonsense.

Destiny is simply a mathematical calculation that even a 14-year-old teenager can compute.

Here's what I mean.

Everything in life works according to a cycle, and the purpose of these unstoppable cycles (like the sun setting every night and rising again every morning) is to allow human beings to predict what will happen in their world and in their lives.

Similarly, every day repeats itself more or less, and you get in a year what you basically got yesterday (except that the quantity is 365 times what you received yesterday).

If your job was boring yesterday, expect 364 more days of boring work. If you didn't meet anyone (who could be a special someone) yesterday, expect to meet no one in the next 364 days. If you've wasted one hour watching a mind-degrading reality show or mediocre talk show yesterday, expect to waste 364 more hours over the next year (well, okay, it's less than that since there's no talk show on week-ends, but you know what I mean).

In other words, existence obeys Newtonian mechanics with clockwork predictability. Yes, I'm saying that destiny IS predictable!

I can look at how a person managed his career last week, or his business yesterday, and I can easily predict whether he will succeed or fail over the next 365 days. It's not rocket science.

Why are people so predictable?

It's not that they're stupid or ignorant. Most people are intelligent. But to succeed big time, you need a second sort of intelligence, one that will constantly MONITOR and CORRECT your natural intelligence.

Similarly, the best tennis players in the world, no matter how talented they are, need a professional coach in order to show them the REALITY of their performance.

Like Dr Phil says, you have to get real before you can get smart, and you have to get smart before your life gets better.

Unless you have a budget of $10,000 and spend 3 hours with a personal transformational guru like Anthony Robbins, your life will probably go on the way it's been going on for the last 3 to 5 years. Nothing much will change.

By the same token, Robbins himself said that "decision is destiny."

The question is, Who decides what your life will be like? More in the next posting.

A second chance

13:00

A gentleman who's a subscriber to this blog recently wrote to me: "I just have to say that you are a freaking genius." He then thanked me for the good information. Thanks, JS!

I have to say that a lot of people write to me, complimenting me on this blog. I appreciate it, of course, but I feel so blessed for being able to share and pass along the useful knowledge I received.

I come originally from Vietnam, a beautiful country that unfortunately has been devastated by wars (by the Chinese, the French, the Americans). Last time I checked, Vietnam ranked 137th (out of 152) in terms of economic freedom. More than half of the 80 million people in Vietnam earn about $100 US per year.

Through divine Providence, I was able to escape Vietnam in 1975. I was only five years old then.

I feel that my life in Canada is a second chance, which is why I've always felt, even as a kid, that I had to do my best at school and make something out of myself. Not many people get a second chance in life. In fact, 80 million Vietnamese people didn't get a second chance. They are stuck in a socialist country that ranks among the poorest on the United Nations list.

I mention this so readers can get to know me a little better, as well as my deep motivation for maintaining this blog. Perhaps this blog can be a "second chance" to someone out there who could use the knowledge.

This is why I encourage all readers and subscribers to share this blog with loved ones.

I spend about one hour every day to write this blog, and the rest of the day, I'm always thinking about what useful knowledge I can share with readers. In fact, I tell my brothers and sisters to make copies of this blog so they can share it later on with their kids (my nephews and nieces).

I always thought, "The Internet is an amazing invention. If we don't use it to share knowledge in order to empower one another and mutually support each other, then what good is it?"

Thank you for all your encouragements and God bless you all.

Knowledge is the key to wealth creation

I often tell workshop participants that "the presence of fear is just the absence of knowledge."

In the case of a life-and-death situation, such as when you are facing a burglar who is wielding a knife in his hand, then "fear is the absence of appropriate training (in martial arts, for instance)."

But what is "knowledge" exactly?

It is best defined by Peter Senge as "the capacity for effective action."

"Economic knowledge" then refers to "the capacity for effective economic action."

"Economic action" means anything you do which creates value for someone else. If you're taking a shower, for instance, you're not creating any value for someone else. But if you're cooking a meal for four people, then you are creating value for three other people.

The funny thing is that every day, at exactly 5 o'clock, millions of people suddenly are unable to create value.

They're thinking: "My employer is not paying for any time that I spend after 5 PM, so why should I keep working?"

This is the FUNDAMENTAL ECONOMIC MISTAKE made by most people, and that is precisely why they remain poor and economically enslaved to their employers.

Instead of thinking the above, they should be thinking: "Okay, I'll stay at my office from 5 to 6 PM, and during one hour, I will try to create value for BOTH myself and my employer."

In the 90s, I worked for IBM, American Express and CDI Corporate Education Services, and that is precisely what I did. In fact, at IBM, I often stayed till 9 PM to read all the books and magazines and training manuals they had. In this way, I improved my skills and knowledge, which enabled me to contribute MORE to IBM.

Knowledge is really the key to wealth.

The more knowledge you gain, the more money you will make.

If you focus on gaining "economic knowledge," you will be able to create value and deliver it to lots and lots of clients, who will give you a LOT of money.

(By the way, this is what I teach all my business agents -- become one by filling out this form HERE. I teach them everything about my BMW framework for rapidly creating a micro-business: details HERE.)

The problem, of course, is that most employees NEVER receive any useful economic knowledge from their bosses, who will always keep them in the dark about economic and financial matters.

Why? Because the power of any boss comes from his having information that you don't.

He's not a bad person, because if you were boss, you would probably behave in the same way. That's the way it works.

Fortunately for most people, knowledge today is available freely on the Internet. The only remaining bottleneck to people acquiring knowledge and creating wealth from it, is their imagination and their belief in themselves.

Join my business agent network

Regular readers and subscribers of this blog know that my policy is to openly and INSTANTLY share valuable knowledge to empower everyone (including my friends, family, or any person whom I haven't had the pleasure of meeting yet in this life).

The next logical step, of course, is to invite you, dear subscribers, to join my Business Agent Network so we can both create value and make money.

I'm quickly developing a special expertise which I call "personalized cashflow engineering."

PCE simply means that I look at your assets, skills, predispositions, resources, location, etc. and try to design and engineer a micro-business that FITS you.

Why do I do that? Why would I help strangers to set up their business?

Because I love business and more importantly, I love being able to make a difference in people's lives.

If I were a baker, I would bake cookies for you. If I were a singer, I would sing for you. But since I'm a business intellectual, I thought I could be useful to you by helping you set up your micro-business.

If you are interested in letting me help you to create a money-making venture, just fill out this form HERE.

I can't guarantee that I can help you, because a lot depends on the assets, skills and resouces that you have; but I will try my best, you have my word of honour.

Save time with virtual micro-labour

If it takes me only 30 minutes to edit a resume while it takes John 3 hours, then I should be editing his resume.

On the other hand, if it takes John only 30 minutes to set up my accounting system (say, Quickbooks) and it would take me (at least) 4 hours to do so, then John should do it.

In other words, it makes sense for John and I to exchange services.

In fact, except for writing this lovely blog, I could use somebody's help in every other area of my life: cooking, washing my clothes, mopping the floor, buying flowers for my wife (whom I haven't found yet), etc.

If I could have such a "workforce," I could really, really concentrate my time and efforts on becoming the best Generation X intellectual the world has ever seen!

Now back to planet Earth.

In reality, it's tough to find people who are good at doing the stuff I am not so good at doing.

Yet, there's hope, thanks to the Internet. Indeed, we can find people who can do tasks for us on a virtual basis.

Favorville.com is an example, although it's not well organized yet. You do favors for other people for free.

But there will be new websites where people who do favors can actually earn credits, so they can use them to get free services from others.

That will create a market for what I call "virtual micro-labour."

Micro-labour refers to simple tasks that you do for other people; it can take anywhere from 15 minutes to 2 hours.

Virtual means the service is provided via the Internet, Skype, etc.

If you believe that virtual micro-labour will take off soon, then your most strategic move right now would be to build a network of contacts (via Linkedin.com, for instance).

The more people there are in your network, the more free micro-labour you can easily get. This will help you save time, which you can spend on the really important stuff like developing your talent.

Ivanka Trump

2:00

If you get a chance, read the article on Ivanka Trump in Trump magazine. It's inspiring because you learn about how a billionaire teaches his kids.

Trump actually forced his son (Donald Jr) and his daughter to get a job when they were teenagers.

He always drove them to EXCEL at what they did. Ivanka jokes that if they did a bad job, her father would just FIRE them.

Both Ivanka and Don Jr graduated from the most prestigious business school in the U.S., the Wharton Business School.

The future: publishing via email

4:00

I really don't know why they keep printing books, especially on leadership, business, management, etc.

People don't have time to read nowadays. Yet publishers are still stuck on the idea that knowledge should be contained in a book.

I confess I'm a book worm, yet even I don't have time to read books! I just browse through them quickly, memorize five key ideas from each book (using Harry Lorraine's memory techniques) and then apply those ideas in my business (www.talentelle.com).

I browse about 30 books per week.

I predict that publishing, in the future, will use the good old email. That is, publishers will use RSS (like I do on this blog) to deliver valuable content right to people's inbox. Just one paragraph every day, nothing too demanding for the brain.

Calmly working hard

4:00

The main problem I've observed is that people try too hard to get what they don't deserve, instead of calmly working hard so that what they truly deserve naturally comes to them at the right time.

The easiest proof that people try too hard to get what they don't deserve, is that they use their credit cards too much (or buy stuff from companies that offer financing).

I have friends who obviously espouse the philosophy of "calmly working hard" and I can tell you that they are very serene. They never worry about anything. Yet the best things in life come to them: recognition, awards, money, prestige, etc.

They are the true elite.

If you know such people in your life, you are lucky indeed. By merely interacting with them, you naturally adopt their attitude and their philosophy.

3 phases of networking

1:00

The networking process is usually composed of three phases:

1. Visibility, where you attend events and are actually seen by people. Woody Allen said that "80% of success is showing up!"
2. Credibility, where you establish your expert knowledge or do things that lead people to believe you are credible and reliable. Note: David Maister, the guru of professional services, distinguishes "credibility" (people believe you when you say something) from "reliability" (people trust that you will deliver what you promised)
3. Profitability, where you create an arrangement between you and the new trusted contact so that you both win (economically or financially -- that is, you both gain something of value which cannot be quantified (economic value) or you both gain something that CAN be quantified (financial value)).

All relationship-building requires time, and it is usually best to follow the above sequence in the right order.

Unfortunately, many networking novices are in a hurry to "strike a deal" at the very first meeting, and thus ruin what could have been a deep-trust, high-value, mutually beneficial relationship.

Would people invest in your career?

6:00

Here's a scary question: if you had 10 minutes to present your "career" as an investment opportunity, would people invest in your career? How much would they invest? What return would they expect?

Treating your career like a corporation is not a new idea. Brian Tracy, the super-motivational speaker and author, has been encouraging people, for the last 15 years, to treat themselves as the "CEO of their own personal services corporation."

In my own life, I've always treated myself as a free agent, working on contract (by choice) for corporations in the 90s. I only worked as a "permanent employee" for a publicly traded corporation for 7 months, after which time I promptly quit.

Back to the scary question. If nobody would invest in your career, then that is not necessarily bad news. It just tells you that your career might not be going as well as you THINK it is. There's nothing like an objective opinion to help one get rid of self-delusions.

If people won't invest in your career, don't get mad at them. Ask them "why not?", then calmly listen to what they say. Here are some stuff they might tell you:

• "Well, you don't seem really passionate about it."
• "You don't take charge of your professional development."
• "Your salary hasn't been increasing over the years."
• "I'm afraid your job is a prime target for outsourcing to India."

Once again, don't get mad at them. The truth might hurt a little, but it will help you get back on track to have a great career.

Driving is a blue-collar activity

4:00

Driving is a low-value activity that takes away your valuable time. Time which you could have spent reading a book, reviewing your agenda on a Palm pilot, or learning a foreign language through the use of cue cards.

Driving is a blue-collar activity that serious careerists should delegate to bus drivers or taxis or the public transit system.

If you are driving your car to work, and it takes you a total of 40 minutes (per day), then that is a 40 minutes every day that you will never get back.

Meanwhile, your competitor (for the budget, the corner office, the major account, etc.) might be taking the metro or the bus, and learning valuable stuff on his Palm pilot every day.

Every day, your competitors might be gaining on you by investing that 40 minutes into his own professional development through the use of m-learning devices (mobile learning) such as PDAs.

9-to-5 labour vs micro-labour

5:00

Micro-labour refers to people who "work" for you, but not 8 hours a day.

They may work for you one hour per week or one hour per month. Hence, "micro-labour."

(You can see HERE how I recruit business agents who then work for me.)

If you are interested in becoming rich, you have no choice but to recruit people who then work for you. Either you recruit 2 people who work 40 hours per week for you, or 40 people who work 2 hours per week for you.

The result is the same: 80 man-hours.

Without this "labour leverage," it is quite difficult to create wealth. Author Robert Allen talks about the ideal business as being "employee-resistant" (i.e. it has no need for employees), but that is quite hard to achieve.

So how do you recruit micro-labour?

Linkedin.com is one place to go. There are tons of other websites or services where you can connect to other people in order to serve as one another's micro-labour.

A little foresight

9:00

A little foresight can avoid a lot of trouble.

Here's what I mean: Imagine you just realized that you've won the lottery, let's say 5 million dollars.

A normal immediate reaction is to call your family and announce the good news. The news would then spread really fast in your circle of friends, and pretty soon, all the people you know (friends, relatives, coworkers, etc.) would know that you're a millionaire.

However, if you thought about it a little bit, it might make more sense (strategic sense, that is) to call your acquaintances, friends and contacts to borrow $2,000. Of course, you wouldn't tell them that you've won the lottery. You would just tell them that you need a loan of $2,000 for a business venture.

Those who agree to lend you the money, are your REAL friends. You can then choose to reward them appropriately once you cash in on the winning lottery ticket.

That's what I mean when I wrote that a little foresight can avoid a lot of trouble. The trouble in this case, assuming that you immediately inform all your friends, coworkers and relatives of your winning lottery ticket, is that you will never be able to know who really cares about you.

Does capitalism work for you?

5:00

Since 1989, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, communism has been defeated by capitalism. Capitalism, therefore, is the only remaining game in town.

The question is, "Are you playing that game, or is that game playing you?"

Capitalism means the "cult of capital." The idea is to convert EVERYTHING into capital (best defined as "concentrated productive capacity").

Talent, information, insights, ideas, labour, skills, etc. must all be converted into capital. That is what entrepreneurs obsess about.

Capital is power, and the more you concentrate it and accumulate it, the more power you have.

Most people, on the other hand, do not think about accumulating capital. They may save money, but their money is earning only a fixed interest rate. Their money is not capital.

Their money becomes capital only when it is borrowed by an entrepreneur who needs to acquire capital in order to expand his business.

In other words, capitalism doesn't work for most people. On the contrary, most people work for capitalism: by providing their labour to capitalists, they ensure that the capitalistic system functions properly.

Without labour, an entrepreneur may have the best equipment or the biggest cash reserve or the most efficient manufacturing plant, yet he cannot create value. He cannot build wealth.

CEO appointment

Dear Subscribers:

I'm pleased to inform you that I'll be working as the new CEO of Talentelle (www.talentelle.com), a Montreal-based company specialized in training and coaching women so they can succeed in their chosen career.

This doesn't change the fact that I will keep sharing with you, on this blog, the best success secrets I come across.

To me, "CEO" simply means "Chief Empowerment Officer." My job therefore is to continually empower the women VPs that I will recruit, train and coach at Talentelle.

I recently came across a quote from Hillary Clinton in Pink magazine: "For the first time in the history of the world, we are seeing women seen as equal human beings. From this point on forward, we can never retreat."

Not only do I believe women are equal to men, I also believe women have unique qualities, skills and sensibilities that, if used and leveraged, can contribute to a better world.

I'm not too sure of many things in life, but I'm quite sure of this: every woman I've met has enriched my life and has "educated" me to view life in a more compassionate, sensitive and holistic way.

I just wanted to share with you this good news, and also encourage you to share this blog especially with your female friends, colleagues and relatives.

Best regards,

Peter Nguyen

Why we lost our personal power

6:00

Society is designed to make us lose time, money, will and power.

This is why Emerson wrote that "Society conspires against the manhood of all its members."

Society, and all its mass institutions, is designed to continually subvert individual willpower to the goals (implicit or not) of the collectivity.

• Mass media (TV news programs, etc.) make us lose time.
• Companies and their marketing machinery make us lose money (even the money we have not yet earned! Through credit and financing, for instance).
• Corporate employers make us lose will and creativity ("just do your job, don't rock the boat, please")

Together, the above forces conspire to rob human beings of their personal power.

I used to wonder why most people were so negative, but only now do I understand that 95% of the population is negative BECAUSE they have been robbed of their personal power. They don't believe they can do much. So they just go with the flow.

At its simplest, "personal power" means you decide clearly on a goal, and you go ahead and achieve it. Nothing stops you. You act like a Terminator.

Are you building your career?

4:00

Build / Work ratio is a critical career indicator missed by most people.

Here's what I mean.

At the end of every working day, what do you have in your hands? That's what you built that day. You own it.

A freelance graphic designer might have a new logo or brochure, which she designed for a client that day. That work sample is now part of her portfolio. She built a part of her career.

But if you're a middle manager for a corporation, then chances are, at the end of every working day you did not build anything for yourself. Sure, you solved problems for the company, you motivated a team member, you did some paperwork, etc. but you did not do anything concrete for your career.

Therefore, your Build / Work ratio is small, compared to the B/W ratio of the freelance graphic designer mentioned above.

The B/W ratio is a powerful indicator of how fast you are building your career.

If you are only "working" and not "building" career assets (i.e. work samples that you can show to future clients or employers), then your career is not growing as fast as it could be. You might, in fact, be falling behind compared to your competitors in the same profession or company.

Loss of control

2:00

According to a poll reported in Pink Magazine (www.pinkmagazine.com), which serves career and business women, in 2004, 47% of people felt they were in control of their lives.

In 2005, that percentage fell to 37%.

I think the trend is that more and more people will seek companies and organizations that actually empower them, not offer mere information (like most news organizations, whose reporters are highly skilled at telling "stories" but not at empowering readers or viewers).

Rules of capitalism

3:00

RULES OF THE GAME

1. There is a certain amount of money in society. Only the federal government can print more money.
2. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to acquire as much money as possible and turn it into capital (i.e. money-producing tools).
3. In general, the more needs you have, the more you will consume, thereby destroying your capital base.
4. Also, the more easily influenced you are, the more others (ad agencies, marketing companies, etc.) will convince you that you have more and more needs, which you have to fulfill. In fulfilling those needs, you will destroy your capital base.
5. Never lose money (advice by Warren Buffett).

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, we know that the only game in town is capitalism. Above are some of its most basic rules (which, somehow, are ignored by most people).

Women want to be the prize, men want to be the winner

My male friends are often impressed that I can actually approach any beautiful Asian woman on the street and talk to her about the glamorous opportunity to become a cover girl for the newspaper I'm writing for.

The girls I approach, naturally, are very excited about this opportunity. All women want to be "prizes" (in the same way that all men -- well, most of them anyways -- want to be winners).

(By the way, the last cover girl's story can be read HERE. I'm quite honoured to have met Soumaly.)

I guess the success secret to becoming a "prize" is to realize that it's a perceptual game: a woman has to be able to shape a man's perception of her. This is why I find the book The Art of Seduction (by Robert Greene) so useful (especially to young women). It's all about the art and craft of masterfully controlling the male imagination.

For men, however, the success secret to becoming a "winner" is to realize that it's an intellectual game. The smarter you are (book smart + life smart), the more money, power, prestige, leverage, influence, etc. you get. That, in turn, attracts the most beautiful women.

Choose friends carefully, most carefully

One lesson I've learned in life is that I have to decide clearly who I want to hang around with, because these people will decide clearly what kind of life I will have.

Here's what I mean: if you hang around with people who have no goals, then you will also have no goals. If they have no ambition, then you will also have no ambition. If they spend too much money on looking good (fashion, accessories, etc.), then you will also spend too much money on looking good instead of spending money on BECOMING actually good (books, magazines, courses, coaching, etc.).

If you hang around with employees, you will think like an employee. If you hang around with energetic, optimistic, can't-stop-me entrepreneurs, you will become an entrepreneur (by the way, this is proven statistically: people who know at least one successful entrepreneur, are twice as likely to launch a business themselves).

In my case, I only have friends who are business owners. I find it difficult to have friends who are employees (although I have nothing against employees). They think differently. I get along better with business owners who actually control their economic destiny. I learn much more from them also.

My friends own ad agencies, clinics, software companies, biotech companies, newspapers, Internet companies, etc.

Sometimes, it may seem that I'm rather ruthless when it comes to choosing my friends and allies. But in fact, I choose my friends carefully because I'm thinking about my future wife and kids.

If I hang around with people who have low standards and just take whatever life gives them without going for their grand goals, then they will lower my standards, and that will eventually have an impact on the quality of life that my future wife and children will enjoy.

When I think about her and my future kids, I have absolutely no qualms about cutting off ties with people who don't support me or who are negative thinkers.

At the same time, I realize it is hard for most people to be as ruthless. We tend to look at friends as loved ones who provide emotional support. This is good, of course. But in the new, hyper-competitive economy, more will be expected of friendships.

It is good also to remember that as you mentally review all the friends you have and carefully evaluate what they've actually done to improve your life in the last 6 months, they are probably doing the same as they think of you!

This is why I think it is true that if you try really, really hard to be a good friend, then other people will naturally reciprocate and try to be the best friends for you.

Integration / acquisition ratio

7:00

The integration/acquisition ratio is a measure of how smart you become, as a result of reading or getting information from a variety of sources (TV, books, magazines, etc.).

Integration refers to your being able to create a heuristic, based on the information you just read, in order to make better evaluations and better decisions.

Acquisition simply refers to your getting information from books, magazines, workshops, conversations, etc.

As you can imagine, the integration / acquisition ratio for most people is very, very low. We get information from TV, magazines, etc. and we forget it just as fast. In fact, we forget over 90% of what we learn. This has been proven in studies, notably by Donald Laird.

Smart people usually have a very high integration / acquisition ratio. Billionaire Charlie Munger is one of those people. As he reads books, he mentally creates a heuristic or "mental model" which would then allow him to make better decisions.

Anthony Robbins also has a very high I/A ratio, except that he refers to "distinctions" (not heuristics or mental models).

But the idea is the same: you have to start using what you read, and keep practicing the principles you learn from books, instead of reading too much.

It is much better to apply one principle 1,000 times in order to master it, than to read and vaguely remember about tons of ideas or pieces of information.

Blissful Tempo Driver

3:00

A blissful tempo driver (BTD) is a device or way of working that keeps you in a hyper-productive mode.

For example, in my case, I force myself to write a blog posting in less than five minutes. At the end of 5 minutes, I feel a sense of mini-achievement.

This drives me to produce more and more. That's what I call a "blissful tempo."

That's how I was able to write more than 300 postings on this blog (I also write dozens of other blogs).

Be the best at creating & communicating value

5:00

If I had a piece of advice to give to young people, it is:

1. Be very, very good at creating value. Aim to be the best at what you do. (A few years ago, when I moved out of my appartment in downtown, I threw away a two-foot-tall chess trophy. I put it near the garbage and somebody picked it up. I threw it away because I received the trophy for being the 4th best chess player in the province. That's how serious I was and still am, about being #1. Being #4 is almost a disgrace. I believe we eventually achieve the standard we set out to achieve.)
2. Be very, very good at communicating to people the value that you are creating for them.
   

A person can be very talented, yet live poor his/her entire life. Vincent Van Gogh was perhaps a tragic illustration of that.

The lesson: It's not enough to be good. The world has to also believe you ARE good.

Why employees can't launch new businesses

5:00

If we were truly honest, we would freely and openly admit that we live and work under a "forced labour regime." Under this regime, everyone is "forced" to provide a certain amount of labour, in order to receive certain goods and services from society.

Abraham Lincoln said in 1859 that a man should work hard in order to accumulate capital, and then use that capital to buy the means of production so that he can launch a venture and, in turn, hire other people to work as labour. And the cycle then repeats itself, with the new working people saving enough capital to launch their own thing.

Yet, this is obviously not happening for most people. Even people who are able to save money, somehow don't have the inclination or drive or creativity to launch their own business.

I asked myself why, and I think I found the answer.

In a corporate job, your vision and your scope of responsibilities are so narrowly defined that you tend to develop tunnel vision. Worse, you neglect to see the big picture and your creative faculties are not being utilized. As they say, what we don't use, we lose.

As a result, most employees do not have the creativity to create new products or services, let alone new business models.

It seems as though the corporate job system were designed so that employees become more and more dependent on their employers (since they cannot create new value or launch their own venture).

Free CRM software

2:00

I recommend this free service to friends who are entrepreneurs and free agents. It's great if you want a prospect or client to pick up a file on the Internet. The minute he/she downloads it, you are notified by email. ---> Dropload.com

Another great tool I recommend is www.freecrm.com, to manage client relationships. It's not as powerful as salesforce.com, but it's pretty good for small businesses of less than 100 employees. The great thing about it is that since it's based on the Web, you can easily delegate certain tasks, such as data entry, to other people on your team.

Infermation vs Information

4:00

Infermation is valuable information that you "infer" from information.

In other words, the REAL value of a piece of information often is not contained in the information per se, but is created by the intelligent mind that is contemplating the information.

The way to derive infermation from information, is to use what billionaire Charlie Munger calls a "lattice of mental models." This is basically a collection of mental tools that you acquire over the years. These mental tools allow you to quickly seize the matter at hand, and make quick evaluations as to its value.

Anthony Robbins calls them "distinctions." Warren Buffett for instance is better that most people at making distinctions when it comes to investment-related information.

The sharper your distinction, the quicker you can decide.

Fast Pitch Networking

1:00

FastPitchNetworking.com seems to offer a great service. They connect buyers with sellers, by identifying and proposing leads as well as potential business partners.

It's just a matter of time before an entrepreneur creates a similar service, but free of charge. He/she would make money from advertising and the sales of related products, like sales management software, etc.

Transparent performance imperative (TPI)

5:00

In the new global economy, where billions of workers from India, China and other developing nations use the Internet to compete against us, we have no choice but to keep improving not only our technical and professional skills, but also our business skills.

A person has business skill if he/she knows exactly how his/her performance contributes to the profitable growth of the company (read Ram Charan's Profitable growth is everyone's business, it's great for employees who want to learn more about business).

Indeed, in the new economy, we are either very, very good at what we do, or we will be very, very unemployed.

But becoming very, very good at what you do is not always easy.

In fact, it is much easier to do things the way you've always done them. Nobody likes to think hard about continuous improvement. Yet it's the only way to survive in a global economy.

The success secret is what I call the Transparent Performance Imperative (TPI).

TPI says that you should publicly post your performance data, so that everyone can see how good or how bad you are at managing your time.

For instance, I just spent 4 minutes writing this article, I will probably be done in one minute.

By publicly posting the time it takes me to write a posting, I force my brain to think and write in a very concise, efficient manner.

Why and how the rich get richer

6:00

The expression "time is money" is intuitively understood by most people as meaning "time is valuable."

Yet, most people do not know how to capture the value of time.

Here's what I mean. If you stood underneath a waterfall, and I asked you to capture the water, you would just take a bucket and position it so that the water falls right into it. You have then capture the "value" of the waterfall.

Time is like a waterfall, it flows automatically. Yet, most people cannot capture time and, say, reuse it some other time. We cannot "save" time. It keeps flowing and flowing and flowing, and we keep losing it.

So what is it that rich people do, to capture the value of time?

Ah, finally we get to the secret that nobody has ever told you:

For rich people, time is not money. Time is capital.

In other words, with every passing unit of time, the rich have devised ways to create more and more capital (capital is defined here as "concentrated productive capacity").

The easiest way to understand this is to picture your savings account. It earns a certain interest rate. Yet, this rate doesn't change, no matter what you do.

However, for business people, this rate can increase all the time. They call it return on invesment or return on equity or return on assets, but the idea is that a savvy businessperson can structure, organize, motivate, processorize, etc. so that the rate of return keeps increasing.

This is why the rich get richer, and the poor (who cannot do anything to increase their rate of return on capital -- capital being their saved money in the bank) don't.

Share what you know (write!)

2:00

You don't need to be a writer to write (or create a blog).

You just need to know something that most people don't.

This is one of those secrets that nobody tells you, yet it could make a HUGE difference in your financial life: the more you write, the more you promote yourself, hence the greater the probability that you will connect with someone (or a huge number of people) who value what you know and are willing / able to hire you (for a job or contract).

It's your career

In life, we can choose what to do. But we cannot choose the consequences of what we do.

The above diagram shows fairly clearly that there are some activities (in red) that will simply not help a person to get closer to his/her career objective.

Yet, millions of people engage in those activities, often on a daily basis.

Few people do the activities described in green.

This is why only one person out of 20 will ever achieve financial independence. They fully deserve it.

The rest will keep doing what they've always done, and will keep wondering how come they're not getting everything they want out of life.

It may be comforting to blame the rich for exploiting workers, or to point the finger at the government or other institutions for our lot in life. Yet this simple diagram shows that if we want something, it is simply a matter of know precisely WHAT to do, and then just do it.

True self and true love

And now, finally, after having written up over 300 postings on this blog, I am finally ready (more or less, that is) to address the ultimate issue of Love.

Yes, this blog is about success, but success is completely meaningless without love.

First, a true story. Two Spanish young men, slightly drunk but still socially pleasant, were talking aloud in the metro station. One said, with his right index finger pointing in the air: "Ah, la femme, il faut l'aimer ! Il faut l'aimer ! ... Mais ATTENTION, elle peut te detruire !!"

English translation: "Ah! Women! We men must love them! ... But watch out, they can destroy us!!"

What I noticed was that ALL the women on that train, from 16 years of age to 50, had a big smile on their face. It was the sort of smile that acknowledged the awesome truth expressed by the Spanish young man.

---

Now, a quote by Saint Augustine: "The measure of love is to love without measure."

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Next, an insight I recently had: A man can protect a woman, but only a woman can save a man.

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Finally, a simple yet powerful statement uttered by Forest Gump, after he realized his childhood sweetheart Jenny won't marry him: "I'm not a smart man, but I know what love is."

All the above only goes to show that there are so many ways to approach the topic of love. It is so mysterious that it's impossible for anyone to provide sensible advice to a young person who wants to know more about love.

My personal experience tells me that the search for true love somehow goes on in parallel with the search for one's true self.

Is it possible to find true love if you haven't first found your true self? I don't know the answer.

But I've seen many men focus too much on money or material possessions, and then what happens is that they attract exactly the sort of women who need a lot of material possessions. The relationship is more transactional than transformational. But of course, who am I to judge, and besides, one never knows how a relationship will turn out.

On the opposite end, there are men who pursue their passion without planning for a financial future that would satisfy all the needs of their wives and children. That doesn't seem responsible either.

Perhaps only after we have found our true self can we then offer ourselves wholeheartedly to the other person. Perhaps we should work on ourselves before we go "out there" and engage in hectic dating activities like "speed dating" (which seems so inhumane!).

Online dating websites also don't seem very appealing. My argument is that if your own friends and family don't introduce you to members of the opposite sex, then perhaps you have a bigger problem than "dating opportunities."

Of course, I don't want to be close-minded, so if online match-making works for people, well, more power to them and my best wishes for romantic success!

But one thing's for sure: a person who knows who he/she is, and what he/she wants in life, is always more attractive than someone who doesn't.

I used to be quite confused about what I wanted to do in life, and trust me, I saw the slightly confused look on women's face and it was obvious they were wondering whether they should keep seeing me!

In the end, I think it is best to first look for one's true self, and then look for one's true love.

That is, a person could search for a Self Mate instead of a Soul Mate. Looking for a soul mate is hard. I mean, what is a "soul" anyways?

A Self Mate means someone who understands who you are and what you stand for. Of course, this means that if you haven't found yourself, a good idea would be to start looking for your true self first!

I don't think it's necessary to have actually found your true self, but it's better if you're already on the way to becoming your true self.

The tragedy is that if I'm right -- that one cannot find one's true love unless one first finds one's true self -- then there are people who will never experience true love, for the simple reason that they haven't made the courageous decision to search for their true nature and their authentic self.

What ambition is all about

2:20

We do not choose our parents.
We do not choose our historical epoch,
or the country of our birth,
or the immediate circumstances of our upbringing.
We do not, most of us, choose to die;
nor do we choose the time or conditions of our death.

But within all this realm of choicelessness,
we do choose how we shall live:
courageously or in cowardice,
honourably or dishonourably,
with purpose of adrift.

We decide what is important
and what is trivial in life.
We decide that what makes us significant
is either what we do
or what we refuse to do.
But no matter how indifferent the universe may be
to our choices and decisions,
these choices and decisions are ours to make.

We decide.
We choose.
And as we decide and choose,
so are our lives formed.
In the end, forming our own destiny
is what ambition is all about.

Note: I've had the above inspirational text for about 10 years, although I don't know the name of the author. I thought I'd share it with you, dear readers.

Time management technique for bloggers

3:00

You probably noticed that I started putting numbers at the top of each posting. "5:30" means I spent five minutes and 30 seconds writing that post.

"11:30 - 11:45" means I spent 15 minutes writing that post.

The purpose of my putting these numbers is to make sure I write concisely and don't waste time on flowery, literary prose. Indeed, I feel readers get more value when I just write concisely exactly what I mean.

Incidentally, this was also the philosophy of the late Isaac Asimov, who wrote and published 300 books in his lifetime.

Practice/habit ratio

3:20

Here's an interesting exercise to see how fast your life (especially your economic/financial life) will improve.

Count the number of hours that you spend, every day, executing a habit. Then count the number of hours you spend practicing a certain activity (it should be an activity that you are getting paid for).

The ratio of practice-hours to habit-hours gives you an indication of how much money you might be leaving on the table. In other words, the greater your practice-hours (compared to your habit-hours), the faster you are improving, and this usually has a positive impact on how much you earn. (The best professionals or executives always earn more and more over time).

For example, if you spend one hour per day practicing something, and 7 hours just going through the motion of a habit, then your ratio is 1:7.

How to make your readings more productive

11:12 - 11:18

The more you care about other people's goals, the more power you gain as you acquire information from magazines, books and conversations.

Here's what I mean.

Suppose you only care about YOUR goal (which could be a career goal, such as "to become the best management consultant"). Then, as you read magazines and books and as you talk to people, you will only pay attention to information that is RELEVANT to your goal.

But if you cared about the goals of your friends, family, contacts, etc. then as you read magazines and books, you will tend to ALSO notice information that is relevant to THEIR goals.

For instance, you might come across information on how the global IT industry is being reshaped by the arrival of India as a major computing power in the world economy. You would then save that informatin so you can forward it to John, whose goal is to become an IT consultant.

In other words, the more you know about your friends' and allies' goals, the more productive your readings can be.

The key is to know precisely what goals your friends and allies have. This is not always easy. The majority of people do not have goals.

But the few ambitious people who have clear goals, are ideal career or business allies you want to have on your team, because you can help them and they can help you.

Identity is destiny

10:48 - 10:52

Employees are soldiers, free agents are mercenaries, business owners are warriors and investors are advisors to kings.

The above is my conclusion, based on the four types of income earners described by Robert Kiyosaki in his books (Rich Dad Poor Dad, the Cashflow Quadrant, etc.).

As you can see, an employee behaves very differently from a free agent, because he is a soldier who is somewhat protected by his "army" (corporation).

A free agent works alone. A business owner is a skilled warrior who can recruit skilled soldiers or mercenaries to join his team in order to fight on the battlefield.

From this, we can see that the economic option you choose (whether to be an employee, a free agent, a business owner or an investor) will make you think in a certain specific way.

In other words, the person you think you are, will then do what you (unconsciously) think you MUST do, and this determines your economic / financial destiny in life.

That is, IDENTITY IS DESTINY.

For instance, if you believe you are an employee, then like all soldiers you will tend to obey orders and do what you are told.

If you think you are a mercenary, then you will tend to continually sharpen your talent and skill, because how good you are determines whether you get contracts.

305. Master one book

My father, who became quite wealthy before he reached 30 years of age, once walked into my room when I was a teenager and saw all the books I was reading.

He gently offered this piece of advice, which I never forgot: "The man who masters one book is more dangerous than the man who reads a hundred books."

Strangely enough, Bruce Lee said something similar: "I am more afraid of the man who practiced one kick 10,000 times than the man who learned 10,000 kicks."

The two pieces of advice above points to an important distinction that, I think, could help people to figure out how to succeed in today's so-called Knowledge Economy.

Most people tend to agree that "knowledge is power," yet few people appreciate the fact that "mind is ultimate power."

If you patiently and diligently train your mind every day, you CAN defeat society. You CAN shape your destiny. You CAN, if you so choose, become extremely wealthy.

I know for a fact that my father masters his mind. He must have learned when he was very young.

So Peter, what do you mean by "defeat society"?

Society, or all the mass institutions such as government, corporations, schools, the news media, etc. seek to destrategize you every time they get an opportunity to do so. They "destrategize" you by trying to distract you from YOUR personal goals.

They want you to keep doing EXACTLY what you've been doing before, so that they keep succeeding. For instance, the government wants you to stay at your job so they can keep receiving tax revenues. Corporations (capitalists) want you to stay at your job so they can use your labour and keep growing their revenues and capital base. The news media want you to stay exactly in that comfortable sofa of yours, because they need their ratings to go up so they can get more advertisers (and also keep the advertisers they have) -- this is why the anchor newsperson always ends every newscast with "Thanks for watching." He might just as well have added "so I can keep my job."

Of course, most people are totally unaware of this power struggle where the mass institutions continually try to influence the minds of the masses. The reason they do that is to try to control and manage public response.

The only way a person can win, in a mental battle, against all these institutions is if he/she continually builds his intellectual capabilities in order to examine what other people are saying and thinking, and to see their relevance to his/her personal goals.

For example, given my personal goals, the TV news anchor is completly useless to me. I'm sure he's a very nice guy, good family man, very responsible and possibly even charming. I would love to go for a beer with him. But it doesn't change the fact that every day, as a news anchor, he is quite useless to me.

That's because he works for a mass institution, and mass institutions don't care about individuals or their goals and aspirations. Mass institutions just want you to KEEP DOING WHAT YOU HAVE BEEN DOING.

(to be continued)

Internet means of production, Part 2

To benefit from today's knowledge economy and succeed in it, a person has to master the four phases of knowledge management. They can be conveniently summarized by the acronym M.A.P.S.:

1. Make it
2. Accumulate it
3. Process it
4. Share it

"It" can be knowledge, information, digital resources, etc.

From the MAPS framework above, we can see clearly why most professionals don't make a lot of money. Even when they earn $80,000+ a year, they still lose, because they never ACCUMULATE or PROCESS (refine) or SHARE (commercialize) their knowledge, human capital, professional experience, etc.

Most professionals (engineers, software developers, etc.) do create new knowledge, but all this valuable knowledge is captured by corporate systems and is therefore OWNED by the employing organization, NOT the professional.

Thus, not only do professionals make shareholders and business owners RICHER, they also enrich the knowledge bank of these shareholders and business owners. Memos, reports, procedures, plans, proposals, etc. are the documents in which professionals pour their valuable expertise, knowledge, recommendations, etc. Yet they do not own those documents. The minute they quit their job, they are immediately cut off from access to those documents.

This is why it is so dangerous for professionals who don't understand knowledge management. For then, they are completely at the mercy of business owners and capitalists. Even professionals who have worked for 10 or 20 years do not own a single document that they have produced all these years!

They only had a job, they never had a career. Having a career means you can actually show work samples that you did and OWN. A resume is not enough.

Internet means of production

I wrote previously:

"Because people don't write out their thoughts, they keep thinking the same things, and never have news ideas so they can create more value -- resulting in more income for them.

Because they have no new ideas and do not create new value, they are forced to rely exclusively on the financial system to make their money grow.

They are playing the financial game, but they are not playing the economic game, where the payoffs are much bigger."

The economic game is one where you create value. The financial game is one where the value you (or someone else) create is actually priced and sold in the marketplace.

Gordon Gekko (the character in the movie Wall Street) is playing the financial game when he said: "I create nothing. I own."

Yes, owning companies and assets is great. You own the means of production, and you hire labour to operate the equipment and means of production in order to generate profit.

But you knew all of that already.

What you might not know is that you can now actually create value using Web-based means of production.

And these Internet means of creating value are often FREE!

Blurb.com is just one example out of hundreds.

The only thing needed, really, is imagination and creativity.

Ultimately, to become wealthy, one needs to have three things: talent, business knowhow and capital.

In the new economy, capital is becoming less and less important while talent and business knowhow will become more and more important, whether you are an employee, a free agent or a business owner.