Notes
p.31
Retirement as a goal or final redemption is flawed for at least three solid reasons:
a. It is predicated on the assumption that you dislike what you are doing during the most physically capable years of your life. This is a nonstarter – nothing can justify that sacrifice.
b. Most people will never be able to retire and maintain even a hotdogs-for-dinner standard of living. Even one million is chump change in a world where traditional retirement could span 30 years and inflation lowers your purchasing power 2-4% per year. The math doesn’t work. The golden years become lower-middle-class life revisited. That’s a bittersweet ending.
c. If the math does work, it means that you are one ambitious, hardworking machine. If that’s the case, guess what? One week into retirement, you’ll be so damn bored that you’ll want to stick bicycle spokes in your eyes. You’ll probably opt to look for a new job or start another company. Kinda defeats the purpose of waiting, doesn’t it?
p.51
What is the opposite of happiness? Sadness? No. Just as love and hate are two sides of the same coin, so are happiness and sadness. Crying out of happiness is a perfect illustration of this. The opposite of love is indifference, and the opposite of happiness is – here’s the clincher – boredom.
p.85-86
How to Read 200% Faster in 10 Minutes
1. Use a pen or finger to trace under each line as you read as fast as possible.
2. Begin each line focusing on the third word from the first word, and end each line focusing on the third word in from the last word.
3. Once comfortable indenting three or four words from both sides, attempt to take only two snapshots – also known as fixations – per line on the first and last indented words.
4. Practice reading too fast for comprehension but with good technique (the above three techniques) for five pages prior to reading at a comfortable speed.
p.155
Information products are low-cost, fast to manufacture, and time-consuming for competitors to duplicate. Consider that the top-selling non-information infomercial products – whether exercise equipment or supplements – have a useful life span of two to four months before imitators flood the market.
p.156
Information, on the other hand, is too time-consuming for most knockoff artists to both with when there are easier products to replicate. It’s easier to circumvent a patent than to paraphrase an entire course to avoid copyright infringement.
p.159-160
The Expert Builder: How to Become a Top Expert in 4 Weeks
1. Join two or three related trade organizations with official-sounding names…
2. Read the three top-selling books on your topic (search historical New York Times bestseller lists online) and summarize each on one page.
3. Give one free one-to-three-hour seminar at the closest well-known university, using posters to advertise…
4. Optional: Offer to write one or two articles for trade magazines related to our topics, citing what you have accomplished in steps 1 and 3 for credibility…
5. Join ProfNet, which is a service that journalists use to find experts to quote for articles…
p.169-170
Besting the Competition
1. Sherwood and Joanna Google the top terms each would use to try and find their respective products. To come up with related terms and derivative terms, both use search term suggestion tools.
Overture: “search inventory suggestion”
Google: Adwords
Ask.com: “related terms”
Both then visit the three websites that consistently appear in top search and PPC positions. How can Sherwood and Joanna differentiate themselves?
-Use more credibility indicators? (media, academia, associations, and testimonials)
-Create a better guarantee?
-Offer better selection?
-Free or faster shipping?…
2. Sherwood and Joanna now need to create a one-page (300-600 words) testimonial-rich advertisement that emphasizes their differentiators and product benefits sing text and either personal photos or stock photos from stock photo websites…
p.184
Our goal isn’t to create a business that is as large as possible, but rather a business that bothers us as little as possible. The architecture has to place us out of the information flow instead of putting us at the top of it.
p.222
Just because you are embarrassed to admit that you’re still living the consequences of bad decisions made 5, 10, or 20 years ago shouldn’t stop you from making good decisions now. If you let pride stop you, you will hate life 5, 10, and 20 years from now for the same reasons… Now that we’re all on a level playing field: Pride is stupid. Being able to quit things that don’t work is integral to being a winner. Going into a project or job without defining when worthwhile becomes wasteful is like going into a casino without a cap on what you will gamble: dangerous and foolish.
Good Quotes
p.5
Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.
-Oscar Wilde
p.13
An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.
-Niels Bohr
p.38
Many a false step was made by standing still.
-Fortune Cookie
p.43
There’s no difference between a pessimist who says, “Oh, it’s hopeless, so don’t bother doing anything,” and an optimist who says, “Don’t bother doing anything, it’s going to turn out fine anyway.” Either way, nothing happens.
-Yvon Chouinard
p.82
Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.
-Albert Einstein
p.90
Meetings are an addictive, highly self-indulgent activity that corporations and other organizations habitually engage in only because they cannot actually masturbate.
-Dave Barry
p.118
The future is here. It’s just not widely distributed yet.
-William Gibson
p.121
The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.
-Bill Gates
p.182
The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.
-Warren G. Bennis
p.207
By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may eventually get to be a boss and work twelve hours a day.
-Robert Frost
p.225
Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It’s quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure.
-Thomas J. Watson
p.227
Only those who are asleep make no mistakes.
-Ingvar Kamprad
p.248
It is fatal to know too much at the outcome: boredom comes as quickly to the traveler who knows his route as to the novelist who is overcertain of his plot.
-Paul Theroux
p.265
Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another.
-Anatole France
p.287
A hypocrite is a person who – but who isn’t?
-Don Marquis
Online Resources
Writer’s Market (www.writersmarket.com)
Listing of specialty and niche magazines
Thomas’s Register of Manufacturers (www.thomsnet.com)
Database of contract manufacturers
Online Business Resource Links
Google Adwords Tutorial (www.google.com/onlinebusiness)
Yahoo Store (smallbusiness.yahoo.com/ecommerce)
PayPal Cart (www.paypal.com)
Google Checkout (checkout.google.com/sell)
Google Analytics (www.google.com/analytics)
Clicktracks (www.clicktracks.com)
WebTrends (www.webtrends.com)
Virtual Tourist (www.virtualtourist.com)
User generated travel tips from a large database
GridSkipper: The Urban Travel Guide (www.gridskipper.com)
Low-brow content about world travel
Home Exchange International (www.homeexchange.com)
Rentvillas.com (www.rentvillas.com)
Cheap rental experiences in Europe
Transitions Abroad (www.transitionsabroad.com)
Great site for transitioning to a new country
Teach Engrish (www.eslcafe.com)
Job postings for would-be English teachers
Working Overseas (www.workingoverseas.com)
Encyclopedia of international careers
Thanks for your wonderfull site.