"The Secret" et al, Bullshit or not?

[Jeremy Singer]

Codger, you have hit the nail on the head.
Asking the right question, wishing for the right thing, comes first.

The ancient story of king Midas is about a man who thought that having the golden touch would make him happy, and how he discovered that it was a vain wish that brought him misery.

[David Randolph]

>Why do immigrants succeed while those born here do not? What are the mental patterns that keep us in financial jail? Is it mental patterns, or are there other factors.

It is absolutely the mental patterns. It is the mental patterns of living below your means, and taking risks with the extra money.

Remember that a number of these immigrants only work as clerks at 7-eleven. A number of them die in holdups. A number of them find that the store they bought is out in the boondocks. They take risks and some risks pay off and some risks actually happen. Not all immigrants succeed.

[JavaMouse]

Quote:Just try to find a "wealthy investors" or "wealthy entrepreneurs" forum.

Actually, you can find several forums where wealthy investors post at the Motley Fool.  For example, there is the Retire Early board.  You can find good investment discussions and plans for early retirement there.  But over the years, the boards have mainly become hugely political, while discussions of investing and finances are few and far between.  It is amazing to me that wealthy people want to spend time bullsh!tting like this, but I guess these boards satisfy the social needs of a certain type of person.

Now, I realize that you must be skeptical of personas that you find on the internet.  I can believe that some of the personas on these boards are fakes, but not all of them.  I do believe that a lot of people on these boards are who they say they are - wealthy people congregating online for the social aspects of it.

[JavaMouse]

Quote:The "poison" for being entrepreneurial seems to be having a middle class background.

This is a good point.  I don't know about you, but I was raised to believe that I should focus on doing what makes me happy, and that wealth was irrelevant (or even bad - one should not save "too much," but should give lots to charity).  It took me a long time, until I was deep into my thirties, to realize that wealth can go a long way towards helping me achieve happiness.  I had heavily pursued a career path that I was not really cut out for, that required huge amounts of time and energy, and that was the opposite of lucrative.

I suspect that many or most middle class people do not consider chasing after wealth to be a worthwhile pursuit. I think that all of my friends have pursued careers that make them happy, as opposed to doing something that maximizes wealth.  I am the only one who abandoned the struggle on my "road to happiness" in order to pursue wealth.

As a counterexample, my brother did not buy my parents' message.  I guess he felt more severely than I the constraints placed on our family by my parents' lack of wealth.  He made his career choice very practically, not considering what would make him happy, but how he could get a good salary, and became a CPA.  He is not entrepreneurial, but has worked at several very good firms.   I don't know the details of his financial situation, but he is clearly fairly well off.  Even so, it took him a long time to learn about wealth creation through investing. I think he inherited a fundamental distrust of that kind of thing from my parents.  So he's probably not as well off as he could be, and that's another weakness that comes from having a middle class background - lack of knowledge about how to grow wealth.

[John Masterson]

Javamouse,

I am confused as to your point.

You say your brother chose wealth over doing something that he enjoys.

Perhaps he really chose something he enjoys a little less in order to gain lots more wealth?

I don't believe it is worth it to slave away at something you hate just for a big salary.  I personally don't think money will supply enough happiness to make up for the miserable 10 hours a day, with commute, doing what you hate.

[DarkHumour]

One of my favorite quotes -

"It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail."

People are suckered by the myriad of "get rich quick" stories. You don't hear about the thousands or millions that failed, only the ones that made it.  The reporting of those stories is skewed...not to mention those authors who flaunt their wealth and money making schemes.  

I figure they make their money from selling books on "how to make money" and not from actually following their lousy, illegal, or inconsistent advice.

It is just like the lottery or sweepstakes. Many will enter. Few will win.  

(Mind you out of several billion people a few can mean millions).

Quasi-rhetorical

Do financially succesful people do better or worse if they abandon traditional ethical boundaries? Or if you have no idea what they are in a different culture? (Or you don't care?)

How many successful entrepreneurs started out with crime as their original source of funding*?  E.G. Would you start a meth lab and "distribution network" to fund your college education or your business start up? Sell pirated software ?  Prostitution ring?  Or the legal but just on the inside line of vice ? (Strip clubs. XXX Bookstores.)

*scrubbed from all official biographies of course...unless it gave them 'street cred'.

Just imagine Steve Jobs or Bill Gates as seedy owners of local gentlemen's clubs. Ugh. Then again. Don't.

DarkHumour

[The Original Dinosaur]

Quote:How many successful entrepreneurs started out with crime as their original source of funding*? ... Sell pirated software ?

I'm not 100% sure, but I believe that Gates, Jobs, and Woz all made a few bucks building and selling blue boxes.

[Richardk]

Quote:One of my favorite quotes -
"It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail."

That's really insightful of how aggressive some people are. Somehow I really like that quote even though it makes you sound like a bully.

[mixxalot]

Are they worth consideration and can one build wealth?

[David Cressey]

Woz surely made blue boxes,  but I don't think it was very lucrative.  That's what Woz was initially famous for. I don't think Jobs was ever in that field.

Gates went straight from Harvard to Microsoft.  He wasn't famous for blue boxes at Harvard.  He was famous for playing poker well in the Harvard dorm.

In the early years of Microsoft,  the computer industry was addicted to vaporware.  That's where the big bucks were.  If you could then fill in enough working code to stay out of court,  you did well.  I figure that someone who learned how to bluff at poker was probably pretty good in the vaporware department.  

[Peter Gibbons]

People that do really well are the ones that are comfortable staying on the borderline of LEGAL and 'legal'.

A few examples:

1. People that created Skype were behind Kazaa and were afraid to even go to the US.
2. Youtube was considered a magnet for legal action. Many people consider the main reason Google bought them was to avoid the situation where Youtube lost a lawsuit and Google had to deal with the legal precedence.
3. Jobs and Woz were definitely in the Blue Box business.
4. Gates and company faced many legal actions on two continents. When young Gates was arrested for speeding he was grinning to the camera for his mug shot.

Speaking about people from the former Soviet block: I knew a guy that was trading currencies on the street there. This was of course illegal so he ended up in jail. After he was released he managed to escape to the West.

Here he started a 'Taxi company'. How did he do that? Just got a car, put a plate on the roof - "TAXI" and stared picking up strippers and late night patrons from the bars and night clubs. Soon not only police officers but even judges knew him. He would pay some fines, fight others in court - it was just the cost of doing business to him.

I believe he did quite well making money for his next business.

While I personally can't do this I actually don't see his actions in a negative light. In most North American cities the Cab business is a racket. Getting license is next to impossible and costs hundred of thousands of dollars. A few owners that monopolized the business make all the money and the drivers make peanuts.

In a real free market everybody should be able to do what this guy did. He was no Rosa Parks but he definitely didn't want to bend over and just take it.

On this forum people seem to worry to much about zoning regulations and what will happen if the IRS reclassified them as an employee instead of really thinking about how to make money.



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New Year - New Signature

[DarkHumour]

Quote:On this forum people seem to worry to much about zoning regulations and what will happen if the IRS reclassified them as an employee instead of really thinking about how to make money.

There are many other industries that are much more lucrative but is money the only thing satisfies the people who contribute to this board?

When you have $ in the bank or assets or a spouse and kids.  

What amount of risk can you take?

When you owe $$$ and you have no real assets and the local bureaucracy is oppressive and punitive for trivial things what kind of risks can you take?  Not little fines but prison.

I wonder if there is a concerted effort to push people to the financial brink because then they tow the corporate line, political line, and so on.

I have always had trouble dealing with salespeople types. I cannot help but think they suffer from a mild form of sociopathy in order to advance their career.  Anyone who makes less money than them is a lesser human being.

Exhibiting "Glengarry Glen Ross" behaviors is the key to financial success?

One of my friends doesn't understand my honesty or ethics.  I obey rules that "most people" would bend or outright lie.  And I don't know if this is particularly unusual for Chicago.  

I have thought about turning off whatever controls my morals but I don't think I would be particularly good at being evil because I have limited experience doing it.      Maybe there is a pamphlet, "So you've decided to become evil."

Just thought of a poster for Darth Vader's Empire - "Join the dark side - We are evil but at least we are hiring."

The borkers fronting that job assure you the Endor Moon Deathstar reconstruction project is 18 months with a likely renewal.

DarkHumour

edit: spelling errors

[David Randolph]

Why do sales people get so much money? Because they take risks.

Technical people are punished for taking risks. We are trained to not take risks. People who take more risks make more money.

In order to succeed, we have to stretch our comfort level and take risks that we were not comfortable taking.

Having said that, I just went through an exercise where I was trying to take risks and ran into many roadblocks. I had an opportunity to do business with an entity in Nigeria. It did not look like a standard Nigerian Fraud. So, I talked to the bank about how to structure things to do this and minimize the risks. Two different banks told me that they didn't want to participate in accepting money from Nigeria. I passed the opportunity on to someone who has done business with Siberia and Pakistan. If I can not figure out how to minimize my risks and manage the exposure, then the risks are too big.

[ITLifer]

I am a member of Audible.com and shame on me - there was too much buzz about it and I bought it. There are great musical effects, a woman narrator with a thick Australian accent speaking in circles.

The "Secret" has worked for all people who are famous and dead. There is mumbo-jumbo about frequencies broadcasting and stations being tuned - which makes no sense to a BSEE like me.

Also - never heard of the coaches of the secret. If they knew it and practiced it, they would all have been Abraham Lincolns by now.

If you respond to emotional cues without logic - it's easy to see why you would buy it.

For some one who has to cut through the crap and debug a serious prod issue in the middle of the night among rivaling self serving theories for a living, the book simply does not pass the logic test.