Bryn and I listened to The Top 10 Distinctions Between Millionaires and the Middle Class during our drive home from Seattle.  It only took about 2 hours to hear the audiobook version so you could probably knock out the paper version in under an hour.  It would be worth your time.

Author Kevin Cameron Smith shares his financial wisdom is easy-to-digest chunks.  He starts out by addressing the goals of various economic classes:

• • • The poor seek to survive.
    • The middle class seek comfort.
    • The rich seek freedom.

It’s not a how-to book or a get-rich-quick manual.  Success is a journey, the author explains.

And since you probably don’t want to read the book, here are the 10 Distinctions.  How many of these apply to you?

1. Millionaires Think Long-Term.  The poor think day to day or week to week.  The middle class think month to month.  The rich think year to year or even decade to decade.
2. Millionaires Think Ideas.  The poor and middle class are consumed by things and other people.
3. Millionaires Embrace Change.  The poor and middle class are threatened by change.
4. Millionaires Take Calculated Risks.  When evaluating an opportunity, ask yourself three questions.  What’s the best thing that could happen?  What’s the worst thing that could happen?  What’s the most likely thing to happen?  If you can live with the worst thing, and the most likely thing if positive, maybe it’s a risk worth taking.
5. Millionaires Continue Learning.  School may end, but education never stops.
6. Millionaires Work for Profits.  The poor and middle class work for wages, while someone else profits.
7. Millionaires are Generous.  See The Go-Giver.
8. Millionaires Develop Multiple Income Streams.  The poor and middle class rely on just one or two, and they’re usually trading hours for dollars.
9. Millionaires Think Net Worth.  The poor and middle class think paychecks.
10. Millionaires Ask Empowering Questions.  Think “How can I realistically double my income?” vs. “How can I get a raise at work?”  ”What would make my life more meaningful?” vs. “What is the meaning of life?”

-Nick

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On the way to New York last week for Affiliate Summit, I was surprised to see this image on the “flight-tracker” screen.  We were supposed to land soon, and we were way off course!

So then I became curious about how many extra miles were added to the trip.

Unfortunately I forgot everything I once knew about solving triangles.  SOHCAHTOA anyone?

It took some googling but I learned the Law of Sines:

So 2546/sin(120) = 2493/sin(B), meaning angle B, up there by Philly, was 57 degrees.

With the sum of the internal angles of every triangle equal to 180, I figured the angle over by SFO was only 3 degrees (180 = 120 + 57 + A).

sin(3) = .052

Solving for a above, I get a distance of 154 miles, which would mean the pilot’s detour added less than 100 miles to the total flight length.

But either I screwed up the math or eyeballed the “given” distances and angle wrong; the real distance between NY and Suffolk VA (approximate location shown) is 309 miles.  Maybe it’s something to do with not taking into account the curvature of the earth?

And after all that it turns out the “flight tracker” map was broken on the plane.  At the time I took that picture, we were really about 200 miles NNE.

-Nick

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PDF files are great, but they create a big headache when they don’t allow you electronically add something so simple as a signature.   When it comes to signing forms and pdf files there are usually only two options.

1. Print them out, sign them, and fax them.  Which brings up two important questions: Who has a fax machine these days?  And who even has a landline with which to fax?
2. Print them out, sign them, scan them, and email them.  Which is very time consuming.

Both of these options for editing pdf files are time consuming, waste paper and printer ink, and generally leave everyone thinking, “There’s got to be a better way!” (It’s even more of a pain for me because the printer/scanner is in an entirely different room.)

All of this is why I’m really excited about this new FREE software I found that eliminates both the printing and scanning/faxing steps.  It’s called Inkscape, and it saved my butt when my crappy imitation printer ink stopped working.

Here’s how I used it to sign and initial several pages of pdf documents.

1. Download, install, and open the Inkscape program.
2. Use it to open the pdf file you want to sign.  If your document is multiple pages, you can only open one page at a time.  That kind of sucks but it’s still way better than the alternative.
3. Use the pencil tool from the lefthand toolbar to manually draw in your signature wherever it is needed.  It might take a little practice to make a decent looking autograph, but it gets the job done.  Steady hands and the occasional “ctrl-z” will have an authentic signature in no time.
4. If you want to use your real signature, you can sign a white piece of paper, scan that to your system, and then copy it into the pdf document in Inkscape.
5. Once your file is signed, save it as a pdf again.  It will give some warning message about not being able to edit your “drawing” again when you try and close the document but that’s fine.
6. Email your new pdf to whoever needed your signature.

Quick and easy!

-Nick

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I have trouble with these words:

• Guarantee — My new way to remember: “U R going to like the way you look. I guarantee it.”  Thank you Men’s Wearhouse.
• Necessary
• Competition
• Commitment
• Restaurant
• Privilege
• Embarrassing

That is all.  Every other word I spell perfectly every time.

-Nick

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Yes.

There has been a lot of discussion lately on the rising cost of tuition and the piles of student debt that is crushing recent graduates, but the fact remains higher education is an excellent investment.

It will remain so until employers stop valuing college degrees.  And I don’t see that happening anytime soon.  You can watch as many Khan Academy videos as you like, but no employer will treat that education — however excellent it may be — as the equivalent of a 4-year degree (at least yet).

Some facts:

• The average student debt is $24,000.
• Over a lifetime, the average college graduate with a bachelor’s degree will earn nearly $1 million more than their counterparts with only a high school education.
• The unemployment rate among college graduates is 4.5%, which compares very favorably to high school graduates (9.7%) and those with no high school diploma (14.6%).

I guarantee you Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg are the exceptions to the rule.  If you want to work for a living, college is clearly the way to go.

Now is your high-priced liberal arts education worth it?  Probably not.  You can hang out in the Quad discussing gender roles in the 12th century French feudal system until the cows come home, but unless your dream job involves working at Medieval Times, it may not be the best use of your time or tuition dollars.

In the marketplace for workers, employers value education.  But more than that, they value skills.  They’re asking, “How will this candidate help my company?”  For many positions, a college degree is simply part of the screening process.  But it’s only the price of entry; it may get you in the door but after that you’re on your own.

Every now and then you hear stories about people suing their schools because they couldn’t find a job.  Take a little personal responsibility.  It’s not the school’s fault employers don’t see you as a valuable worker.  Imagine how much less valuable you’d be without your education (see numbers above).  And now you’ll forever be known as the person who sued their school, and who’s going to want to hire that baggage?

To be sure, the education system is broken.  The idea of an ivy-walled university as a repository for knowledge is 1000 years old.  The world is a very different place but education is making changes as the market forces it to. (A little too slowly for some.)

Tuition hikes are here to stay, as long as people keep paying.  It’s supply and demand.  Instead of saying education is overpriced today, maybe it was just under-priced before, relative to it’s value in society.  As the price of school draws closer to it’s value and perhaps beyond, that’s when you’ll see sweeping changes in both education and company’s hiring preferences.

-Nick

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The Watchtower is a free magazine distributed by Jehovah’s Witnesses.  It has been published continuously since 1879, and now has circulation of 42 million issues in 188 languages.  (For comparison, Time publishes about 13 million copies a month.)  The cover story of this month’s Watchtower issue is “6 Bible Prophecies You Are Seeing Fulfilled.”  Great stuff.

1. “There will be great earthquakes.” –Luke 21:11

We’ve definitely seen plenty of big earthquakes lately, but the frequency and magnitude of the quakes don’t seem to make our present day stand out much from any point in the past.  Increased population and worldwide communication have resulted in more destruction and awareness though.  I don’t understand geophysics as well as others, but it’s my understanding earthquakes are caused by shifting tectonic plates, not an angry god.  There have always been, and there will always be “great earthquakes.”  To me, Luke’s “prophecy” is no different from saying, “it will rain hard sometimes.”

2. “There will be food shortages.” –Mark 13:8

The chronic famine in some parts of the world are disheartening, especially in light of last week’s news that said we collectively waste over a billion tons of food every year.  So the prophecy of “food shortages” is incorrect; a more accurate prophecy would have been to say that human populations and governments will do a poor job distributing their food surpluses to make sure everyone has enough.

3. “People will … suffer terrible diseases.” –Luke 21:11

Aside from the figures in Genesis who supposedly lived 900 years, life expectancy is higher now than at any point in human history.  Sure, diseases are part of life, but medical science has never been better equipped to treat and eradicate “terrible diseases.”

4. “People will … lack normal affection for their families.” –2 Timothy 3:1-3

One of the examples cited in The Watchtower is that nearly 30% of men in Canada have been battered or otherwise abused by their partners.  Really?  Men?  In Canada?  There are certainly lots of examples of well-publicized domestic abuse cases and crazy people killing their babies, but I’ve got to believe we’re better off today than in biblical times: “If a man is caught in the act of raping a young woman who is not engaged, he must pay fifty pieces of silver to her father.” –Deuteronomy 22:2.  And then the woman is forced to marry her attacker… yeah, that’s the kind of “normal affection” we can do without.

5. “[God will] bring ruin to those ruining the earth.” –Revelation 11:18

I think this is actually pretty true, if you substitute mother nature for God.  We’ve only got one planet, and she takes good care of us when we take good care of her.  Call me a hippie but I like this one as a metaphor.

6. “The good news of the kindgom will be preached in all the inhabited earth.” –Matthew 24:14

The Jehovah’s Witnesses are making sure this one comes true.  According to The Watchtower, Witnesses spent 1.6 billion hours in 2010 spreading the “news” in 236 “lands.”  The interwebs tell me there are 195 countries in the world, so it appears the Witnesses covered every known inch of the globe and then went the extra mile and found an additional 41 “lands.”  This averages out to 30 minutes of preaching every day by Jehovah’s Witness.  Quite a committment.

What do you think, are these prophecies coming true?  Perhaps right on time for Saturday’s End of Days?

-Nick

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These are the must-read books for aspiring young entrepreneurs and the “Retired at 25″ set. Some are classics, some you’ve probably already read, and some I hope are new to you. Each is inspirational in its own way.

1. Rich Dad Poor Dad

I have a special place in my heart for Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad Poor Dad. It was one of the first non-fiction books I read that wasn’t for school. I was 18 or 19 years old at the time, but was in the middle of my first true entrepreneurial experience, running a painting company as a branch manager for College Works Painting. This is a book about financial intelligence, and how the school system and conventional wisdom don’t teach what it takes to get ahead. Employees, Kiyosaki argues, are fighting a losing battle because they only trade time for money. The relationship is linear; to earn more you have to work more. Business owners and investors on the other hand, leverage their time and money to reap exponential returns. Rich Dad Poor Dad is easy to understand and rings so true. I found myself saying “Yes!” and nodding along at nearly every page.

Key Takeaway: How to accumulate assets to achieve the holy grail of financial freedom: multiple streams of passive income.

The Next Level: Everything I’ve read in the Rich Dad series has been worthwhile.

2. The Art of The Start

Every great company starts with an idea, and Guy Kawasaki’s The Art of the Start is written to help you turn that idea into a viable business. Kawasaki cut his teeth in the Macintosh division in the early days of Apples, and now runs his own venture capital company in Silicon Valley. Successful entrepreneurs, he argues, require humility and modesty mixed in with their revolutionary “curve-jumping, paradigm-shifting, patent-pending” ideas. It’s a book about how young entrepreneurs can change the world once they learn a little more about the game they’re playing.

Key Takeaway: To be great, you need to make meaning.

The Next Level: You might like Kawasaki’s Rules for Revolutionaries.

3. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

Author Robert Cialdini packs weeks of sales training into Influence, and it’s all backed up by his research as a professor of psychology. This is probably the most concise and important book on how marketers and salespeople can influence customers. It’s filled with great stories and and is packed with useful and sometimes surprising information. Every entrepreneur can learn something from Dr. Cialdini.

Key Takeaway: How to sell.

The Next Level: Try Why We Buy and Getting to Yes.

4. The 4-Hour Workweek

Something we can all aspire to! Timothy Ferriss’s The 4-Hour Workweek has been a runaway bestseller because of the promises it makes on the cover: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich. The claims are certainly audacious and probably unrealistic for most, but Ferriss shows that with a little effort, a dramatic change in your lifestyle is possible. The writing style is very direct and some of the suggestions won’t work for everyone. But at the very least, you will learn some effective tips to free up a few extra hours every week, including limiting email access, outsourcing, and intentional ignorance, which should definitely improve your quality of life. If nothing else, it will get your brain turning.

Key Takeaway: Time is our most valuable non-renewable resource. Protect yours dearly.

The Next Level: The Other 8 Hours is a good follow-up read on how to better spend your time.

5. The E-Myth Revisited

Do you run your business or does your business run you? That is the key question in Michael Gerber’s The E-Myth Revisited. Many entrepreneurs fall victim to the self-employment trap, where they fool themselves into thinking they’ve got it made just because they’re their own boss. The problem is if you spend all your time working on the day-to-day grind of the business, you’re not an entrepreneur, just a glorified employee. Instead of working in the traditional sense, your job as the boss is to build systems that allow employees to do the work for you. Before hiring my virtual assistant, I was guilty of the same sins as many of the business owners featured in the book. It’s not easy to remove yourself from the system, but the rewards make it very worthwhile.

Key Takeaway: Take control by letting go.

The Next Level: For quick ideas on managing your people and your business, you can’t beat Kenneth Blanchard’s The One Minute Manager and The One Minute Entrepreneur.

6. Capitalism at the Crossroads

On the average, earthlings are better off today than at any point in our history. But on the extremes, more than a billion of us still live in dire poverty. Stuart Hart’s Capitalism at the Crossroads is a book about how businesses can improve the lives of those people and make money at the same time. The basic premise is that charities and non-profits on the whole have done a pretty crappy job at creating lasting change for the world’s poor, and that the often maligned “profit motive” can and must be used to serve the “bottom billion.” It’s an interesting read and a reminder that businesses don’t have to exploit the environment and developing nations to make money. Indeed, those that can solve some of our challenging ecological and humanitarian problems over the next 50 years stand to truly cash in.

Key Takeaway: Between 1 and 4 billion potential customers are being ignored by most of today’s companies.

The Next Level: If you want change the world, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid and The Go-Giver should probably be on your bookshelf.

Don’t have time to read these and all the other great business books out there? Why not give Executive Book Summaries a try. They give you the Cliffs Notes version of all the classics and latest books on productivity, sales, marketing, entrepreneurship, and more.

-Nick

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Last week I found what I thought was a money parking spot at the hospital.  Right near the front, just next to the disabled spots.  When I pulled in though, I noticed the sign, “Reserved for Clergy“:

Since I definitely don’t qualify, I figured it would be best to find another spot.  But it got me thinking.

• Do clergy have designated placards?  Or is this sign purely enforced by Jesus?
• There was only one reserved space.
• Oddly, I saw zero reserved spaces for “Brain Surgeon” or “Chief Cardiologist”.

This is a hospital, not a church.  It’s one of the most pro-science institutions you’ll find, and yet they’re going out of their way to make room for God.  And to the extent that everyone else has to park one spot farther away from the entrance, I can respect that.

When modern medicine fails, people have every right to turn to the divine for peace.  When I worked in North Carolina, I met a cancer victim who had been given six months to live.  Not wanting to spend his last six months under radiation treatment, he turned to his faith, miraculously the cancer went into remission, and he was still going strong five years later.  I don’t know the whole story, but this is just one of many case studies regarding the apparent success of faith-healing.

Science on the subject is inconclusive, which can only be seen as a victory for God.  (Because sending telepathic communications to your imaginary friend in the sky should conclusively have zero impact.)  I’d be the first to think that prayer would do absolutely nothing, but in certain cases when the sick really believe, it does seem to have some positive effect.  Although there are definitely limitations, the power of positive thinking is real, whether it’s called prayer or something else.

Of course I would exhaust every legitimate medical option before pursuing such a risky and unproven strategy, unlike these guys:

The great thing about faith healing is that when it doesn’t work, you always have the ultimate fallback: “It was all part of god’s plan.”  You can’t lose.

-Nick

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The latest manufactured controversy in California is over the assembly’s recent decision to pass a law mandating “gay history” be added to the curriculum in California public schools.

Predictably, some people think this is at best just another example of the nanny state pushing the “homosexual agenda” and at worst a sure sign of the apocalypse.  These people need to turn off their Fox News for one minute and consider the facts:

• School districts will decide on their own the specific material they present, and in what grade level.  That means unless your first grader just got done learning about Malcolm X during Black History Month, you probably don’t have to worry about them learning who Harvey Milk was just yet.
• Teaching a student about gay history will not “turn them gay” any more than teaching them about STDs will give them herpes.  Shocking, I know.
• The history and contributions of several other minority groups are already in the curriculum, including women, African Americans, Mexican Americans, entrepreneurs, Asian Americans, European Americans, American Indians and labor.
• At the root of it all, your religion is the basis of your opposition, and that’s fine.  Public schools are secular for a reason.  You can teach your kids whatever you want about homosexuals at home.
• In a well-rounded education, you don’t get to just pick the parts of history you like and skip the rest.  Human history is filled with ugly events we’d like to forget; learning from those is how we grow.
• This is a history lesson, not a sexuality or psychology lesson.  I imagine one topic could be Walt Whitman’s contribution to 19th Century American literature.  I also imagine a teacher who wanted to remain employed would omit anything about his famous late night gay orgies*.
• The aim of this measure is to promote tolerance and equality, similar to how kids are taught about the Civil Rights movement.  We didn’t learn that blacks are superior or that we should want to become black, only that they were treated unfairly and struggled to overcome centuries of prejudice.

I don’t understand what opponents of this are so afraid of.  That the next generation ends up more open and accepting than their own?

*Yeah, totally made that part up.

-Nick

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Switching up my lunch meal was another big shift for me.  I used to always have a grilled ham and cheese sandwich, an apple, some baby carrots, and some white cheddar Cheez-Its.

On a mission to reduce the amount of processed carbs I consume, I had to make some drastic changes, including getting rid of my beloved Cheez-Its and Safeway 15-Grain Bread.

Nowadays a typical lunch might involve Trader Joe’s Cumin and Chili Chickpeas (spicy and really good, and only $0.99!), cucumber, tomato, celery, almond butter, baby carrots, and hummus.  Since none of these items has as many calories as my delicious sandwich, I normally end up eating 2-3 smaller “lunch-snacks” throughout the afternoon.

Did you know that cheddar cheese was so high in saturated fat?  I had no idea.  And where I gained a ton of cholesterol from my egg at breakfast, I lost it at lunch from ditching the cheese and ham.  My new lunch was able to keep the total carbohydrates the same, but significantly increase the carbs from fiber, while reducing the carbs from sugars and “empty calories” in bread / Cheez-Its.

The percent of daily values figures are based on a 2000 calorie diet.  I’ve always consumed way more than 2000 calories a day so they don’t mean much other than as a proportional guide.  And even then, understand that the recommended daily values were established by a government body easily swayed by food industry lobbies and political pressures (at least according to In Defense of Food).  Do your own research and listen to your body.

Dinner hasn’t changed too much, aside from taking out a lot of rice and pasta, and substituting more veggies, beans, and lentils.  Spaghetti squash has become a new staple.  The first week was pretty tough; I think my body had been trained to need the fruit smoothie, cereal, and sandwich after having them 4-5 days a week for 2-3 years.  But after that it really hasn’t been a problem.  More of a lifestyle change than a fad diet I suppose.

And without any real end-goal in mind, I’m definitely not going to turn down a burger or some fried rice every now and then!

-Nick

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