Before I decided to launch the Money Mensch blog, and before that the recently defunct Middle Class Guy blog, I had pondered (for nearly a year) if I should do one by some variant of the name "Avid Reader" instead.
I have read the average of at least one book, maybe a little more than one, per week for the past fifteen or so years. Sometimes I read two in a week if they are easy reading, like Jonathan Kellerman books, or if I can't put them down, like the spy novels that I favor.
I intend to write extensively on my reading, and had pondered selling favorable reviews for books (for a fee) after reading an article entitled "The Best Book Reviews That Money Can Buy" in the NY
I admit here that I have a book problem, but people see it differently. I view my problem as not having enough space, while others see me as a hoarder of books, piling them in any and all available spaces. I will post about that soon.
[caption id="attachment_73" align="alignnone" width="254"]
If I had a home library like this, I would not seem like a book hoarder, but a man with a lot of books.[/caption][caption id="attachment_74" align="alignnone" width="296"]
My house is not this cluttered with books (yet), but I'm getting close.[/caption]
Anyway, in a dual effort to alleviate my book piles as well as share what I like about various books, in list form, I have selected The One Minute Millionaire: The Enlightened Way to Wealth by Mark Victor Hansen and Robert G. Allen (2002) to comment on. It is nowhere near my favorite book, or even one of my favorite books in the self-help/making money/change your way of thinking genre that I have read dozens of books on since May alone.
My favorite books are all works of fiction by a wide variety of authors, none of whom would benefit by my endorsement, but I will write more about that at a later time.
Now, for the fourteen (14) key takeaways that made me stop and think for a minute in The One Minute Millionaire, along with my own comments, which is the format that I will typically use since it is my blog. Here goes:
1.Money is Neutral. It is neither good nor bad. It is like a tool and can be used to build or destroy. Our lives, relationships and happiness improve when we have enough money. As a lifelong middle class person it is easy to vouch for this without a lengthy explanation. I was told many times that I could not have or do something because it is too expensive. When my parents, and as a parent, when we could do something special like take a family vacation or go out for a nice dinner together, things seemed better. As the authors write, "...understanding money - how to ethically make it, keep it, and share it - adds a positive dimension to wealth."
2. Live Life Above the Line. My daughter's school preaches this philosophy, which means do not blame someone else for what went wrong. My previous place of employment, like many of yours, was always in crisis mode. Where I work now is becoming the same. At my previous job, the bosses spent at least as much time trying to lay blame on someone else for what went wrong, as things always do, than considering a good remedy. At my current job, my boss usually covers for me and the others in our department, which I realize is rare in a boss, and sometimes even when we did screw up. Just a few years ago, I realized that many of my fellow high school and college graduates were executives at major corporations, or had founded their own companies, or had jobs of much higher stature (and pay) than my boss or even my boss' boss. That's when it clicked one day that I had to explain a messy situation to some VIPs on my own and I told my boss, "Don't worry, [boss], I'm a big boy and I made the decision and I'm willing to take the heat for it." Years later, I cannot even remember what it was, but ever since then, I am trying hard to Live Above the Line and not blame anybody else for my shortcomings.
3. Givers Get. I have read this in at least ten of the books similar to this one, so I am beginning to believe it to be true. "Give your time, your approval, your smile, your advice, your wisdom, your compliments, your sense of humor, your talent, your attention, your encouragement, your love. All these things will flow back to you in abundance." There is something spiritual about this advice, and I intend to take it. If I give a needy person on the street a five dollar bill, I do not expect it to automatically come back to me ten-fold, but I believe that if you give the above list, good things will come back to you.
4. Internal Assets and Liabilities. You are undoubtedly familiar with these accounting terms and have, at some point, had to put them on paper. Us middle class people have to live with mortgages, a process by which your net value is put down on paper in black and white for the many so-called professionals who make their living via the issuance of mortgages can review your creditworthiness.
[caption id="attachment_75" align="alignnone" width="300"]
We all have internal assets and liabilities.[/caption]
However, we all have assets and liabilities that go beyond dollar signs on loan documents. Internal assets may include things like what I am doing now, my ability to crank out words at a computer on a Sunday evening, your imagination, persistence, integrity, courage, generosity, speaking skills, mathematical skills, time management. Internal liabilities, and I have all of these to one degree or another, may include small-mindedness, fear, anxiety, laziness, poor organization, perfectionism, pettiness and the like. You get the picture.
5. Tap Into Your Genius. We all hear about the geniuses in our midst, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking, Bill James, Michael Jordan and on and on...
Us average, middle class, middle aged guys cannot be mistaken for geniuses, but we do all have unique genius-like qualities. I just think that mine is writing about other people's writing, and commenting on products that I like (or don't), saving and investing money, work-related issues, education issues and more. "The One Minute Millionaire" authors identify the characteristics of Passion, Talent, Values and Destiny as common among geniuses. What is your passion, talent, values and destiny?
6. Goals Are Critical to Your Success. The authors of this book suggest that you use a special notebook for your goals. They divide goals into categories relating to Body, Brain, Being, Time, People and Money. These are the goals and aspirations that we all have, but I had not seen it so nicely listed and explained.
I spend a lot of time thinking about financial goals, and I suppose that my financial goal for The Middle Class Guy is to make at least as much money by the end of this year on it (a few hundred bucks) that I spent purchasing the domain name via BlueHost. I would eventually like to make many times that much every month, but that is a long way off.
Time is a very important aspect of goals and I think that it merits its own blog entry, or several of them. Actually, all six categories do and that will be an upcoming entry.
7. The Longer the Lever, the Greater the Impact. Leverage is an important aspect of making big money, and one that I and many tens of millions of Middle Classers either do not understand, do not practice, or both.
My brother is a successful attorney, and he also believes in leveraging money, as well as looking at the way he goes about his business in a totally different way than I do. Perhaps it is because I am older and spent more time with our Depression-era grandfathers that I have a "must save" money mentality, a mentality of scarcity, and a morbid fear of debt. One of our grandfathers told me repeatedly that he never paid one cent of interest in his life. This from a man who purchased a house in a nice suburb of Chicago, purchased new cars every few years, traveled extensively and gave generous gifts including tens of thousands of dollars.
The notion of leverage comes from doing something once, and then selling it to thousands or millions of people. Some day, someone may click on an advertisement on this blog entry long after I have forgotten writing it, and a buck or two will go into my account. Likewise, if I wanted to buy something for a million dollars, say a 6-unit apartment building with rents in the $2,000 range, the notion of leverage deals with O.P.M. (other people's money) rather than spending the next fifteen years saving up enough for a $250,000 down payment, or the entire million bucks, is using the notion of leverage to its fullest. I have considered doing this many times, but I never have, mostly due to my middle class-induced fears of risk and failure.
The One Minute Millionaires write that one should leverage other people's money (OPM), other people's experience (OPE), other people's ideas (OPI), other people's time (OPT) and other people's work (OPW). For a more detailed explanation of these, buy the book. I found a free PDF of it, although I do not condone this as an aspiring author, and I found it from a whopping penny (you pay the shipping) on Amazon just now:
Hardcover 414 Used from $0.01123 New from $1.7235 Collectible from $1.98
8. Mentors. The authors claim that every successful person has mentors. I would challenge that, but agree that most successful people have enjoyed the benefit of mentors. I have come across many who raised themselves from their bootstraps without anybody there to help show them the way.
If you are able to find a willing mentor, drawing from his or her experiences and knowledge is the quickest, safest and surest route to achieving your goals. Remember that people you meet along your journey can "accidentally" teach you something to help you out in reaching your goals.
9. Four Types of Work and Workers. The authors pose an interesting typology of four types of workers. Personally, I must be schizophrenic because I think that I have, at one time or another, fallen into each of these categories:
Hares think randomly, come up with ideas, think creatively, get bored and sometimes lack follow-through. Owls are wise and think methodically and create action plans. Turtles are slow and steady, suspicious of new ideas, believe in tradition and not taking risks. Squirrels are great at step-by-step work, think and act methodically, keep things organized and running smoothly.
In my typical work week, I embody all four of those types and, mathematically, embody one at least twice per week if I go to work all five days except for some Mondays, when my body is present but my mind is not, so I do not work any of those ways.
10. Making Money While You Sleep. I am not a great sleeper, but the ultimate is to be selling goods or ads online or via your business while you are not even awake.
The authors go into great detail on this important way of increasing your wealth, and the happiest I have ever heard anybody brag is that they sold over $1,000 worth of items on their website while they were sleeping over the weekend.
The major points that they go into involve the importance of having multiple streams of income (which I just realized is another of my goals - see item # 6) and the power of residual income. Relatives and friends of mine have both, and they tend to the 'upper middle class' range. They list out income streams, and my goal is for this blog to become one.
11. Systems. The authors claim that most failure is caused by the system, not the people. They list out items related to this which I will not go into great detail, but it reminds me that I need to come up with a system for this blog. I think that I have one, but I need to flush it out. Things change so rapidly in technology, including how income is derived online. I even read a lot of articles claiming that blogging is too played out and dead, but I believe that compelling writing on interesting topics will always have a place, and what MiddleClassGuy.com needs is a good system.
12. Infopreneur. When I heard this term for the first time, I realized that it is for me. I do not make tchotchkes or cutesy items to sell via a slick website. I am not a re-seller of any tangible items that you can buy and then use.
What I am is an information entrepreneur. What I intend to share via Middle Class Guy is knowledge, entertainment, inspiration, special interests, work habits, observations, successes and failures, my spirit, soul, enthusiasm, humor, sadness, bitterness, determination, ways to make money and live a better life and, ultimately, make some dough doing it.
After all, if I am a hoarder of information, why not share it with anybody willing to read it?
"Infopreneur is a person whose primary business is gathering and selling electronic information. This term is a neologism portmanteau derived from the words "information" and "entrepreneur". An infopreneur is generally considered an entrepreneur who makes money selling information on the Internet."
13. Identify Your Perfect Customer. It is highly cathartic for me to write this. After all, I will be ready to donate The One Minute Millionaire after posting this, getting one more book out of my collection (which my wife will appreciate). As I write, I sometimes wonder who, if anybody, will read these words. You are my customer.
I stop and think about my perfect customer, in this case my reader. Even though any blog or website is open to all, I must think about what my perfect customer looks like, what makes him/you tick (this is aimed towards men), what do you expect of me, what values do we share and what I will need to do to improve this blog. I already realize due to the length of this post, that I should make my entries shorter and snappier.
14. Shield Your Money. I sometimes worry about this even though I have yet to make my first penny on this blog. I did apply to Google for an Ad Words account today, so advertisements should popping up on this blog in the next few weeks. All I had to do was sign away my search history past, present and future, and disavow everything. I clicked "Agree" without reading through it, like millions before me.
Shielding your money is important, but one generally needs to have some business-related income stream above and beyond your bi-weekly paycheck. Ways to shield your money include LLCs, trusts, corporations, limited partnerships and other legal entities. Once I hit my first $100 in Ad Words revenues, I will have to send info about where to send the dough. I'll worry about it at that time, but it won't be a trust or LLC for some time to come. If I had the choice right now, I would have it sent right into my checking account, it would become part of next month's ComEd payment, and I would pay the fifteen or so bucks in income tax next spring. New goal: make enough money blogging to need to shield some money.
I have read this advice in many of these improve your life/finances/change your way of thinking books. I will review them in future blog posts, but the three best ones that come to mind are from Suze Orman, Robert Kiyosaki and Thomas Stanley.
Thank you for reading this all the way through. I promise to be more brief in my next blog post about a book that I like.
I have read the average of at least one book, maybe a little more than one, per week for the past fifteen or so years. Sometimes I read two in a week if they are easy reading, like Jonathan Kellerman books, or if I can't put them down, like the spy novels that I favor.
I intend to write extensively on my reading, and had pondered selling favorable reviews for books (for a fee) after reading an article entitled "The Best Book Reviews That Money Can Buy" in the NY
I admit here that I have a book problem, but people see it differently. I view my problem as not having enough space, while others see me as a hoarder of books, piling them in any and all available spaces. I will post about that soon.
[caption id="attachment_73" align="alignnone" width="254"]
If I had a home library like this, I would not seem like a book hoarder, but a man with a lot of books.[/caption][caption id="attachment_74" align="alignnone" width="296"] My house is not this cluttered with books (yet), but I'm getting close.[/caption]Anyway, in a dual effort to alleviate my book piles as well as share what I like about various books, in list form, I have selected The One Minute Millionaire: The Enlightened Way to Wealth by Mark Victor Hansen and Robert G. Allen (2002) to comment on. It is nowhere near my favorite book, or even one of my favorite books in the self-help/making money/change your way of thinking genre that I have read dozens of books on since May alone.
My favorite books are all works of fiction by a wide variety of authors, none of whom would benefit by my endorsement, but I will write more about that at a later time.
Now, for the fourteen (14) key takeaways that made me stop and think for a minute in The One Minute Millionaire, along with my own comments, which is the format that I will typically use since it is my blog. Here goes:
1.Money is Neutral. It is neither good nor bad. It is like a tool and can be used to build or destroy. Our lives, relationships and happiness improve when we have enough money. As a lifelong middle class person it is easy to vouch for this without a lengthy explanation. I was told many times that I could not have or do something because it is too expensive. When my parents, and as a parent, when we could do something special like take a family vacation or go out for a nice dinner together, things seemed better. As the authors write, "...understanding money - how to ethically make it, keep it, and share it - adds a positive dimension to wealth."
2. Live Life Above the Line. My daughter's school preaches this philosophy, which means do not blame someone else for what went wrong. My previous place of employment, like many of yours, was always in crisis mode. Where I work now is becoming the same. At my previous job, the bosses spent at least as much time trying to lay blame on someone else for what went wrong, as things always do, than considering a good remedy. At my current job, my boss usually covers for me and the others in our department, which I realize is rare in a boss, and sometimes even when we did screw up. Just a few years ago, I realized that many of my fellow high school and college graduates were executives at major corporations, or had founded their own companies, or had jobs of much higher stature (and pay) than my boss or even my boss' boss. That's when it clicked one day that I had to explain a messy situation to some VIPs on my own and I told my boss, "Don't worry, [boss], I'm a big boy and I made the decision and I'm willing to take the heat for it." Years later, I cannot even remember what it was, but ever since then, I am trying hard to Live Above the Line and not blame anybody else for my shortcomings.
3. Givers Get. I have read this in at least ten of the books similar to this one, so I am beginning to believe it to be true. "Give your time, your approval, your smile, your advice, your wisdom, your compliments, your sense of humor, your talent, your attention, your encouragement, your love. All these things will flow back to you in abundance." There is something spiritual about this advice, and I intend to take it. If I give a needy person on the street a five dollar bill, I do not expect it to automatically come back to me ten-fold, but I believe that if you give the above list, good things will come back to you.
4. Internal Assets and Liabilities. You are undoubtedly familiar with these accounting terms and have, at some point, had to put them on paper. Us middle class people have to live with mortgages, a process by which your net value is put down on paper in black and white for the many so-called professionals who make their living via the issuance of mortgages can review your creditworthiness.
[caption id="attachment_75" align="alignnone" width="300"]
We all have internal assets and liabilities.[/caption]However, we all have assets and liabilities that go beyond dollar signs on loan documents. Internal assets may include things like what I am doing now, my ability to crank out words at a computer on a Sunday evening, your imagination, persistence, integrity, courage, generosity, speaking skills, mathematical skills, time management. Internal liabilities, and I have all of these to one degree or another, may include small-mindedness, fear, anxiety, laziness, poor organization, perfectionism, pettiness and the like. You get the picture.
5. Tap Into Your Genius. We all hear about the geniuses in our midst, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking, Bill James, Michael Jordan and on and on...
Us average, middle class, middle aged guys cannot be mistaken for geniuses, but we do all have unique genius-like qualities. I just think that mine is writing about other people's writing, and commenting on products that I like (or don't), saving and investing money, work-related issues, education issues and more. "The One Minute Millionaire" authors identify the characteristics of Passion, Talent, Values and Destiny as common among geniuses. What is your passion, talent, values and destiny?
6. Goals Are Critical to Your Success. The authors of this book suggest that you use a special notebook for your goals. They divide goals into categories relating to Body, Brain, Being, Time, People and Money. These are the goals and aspirations that we all have, but I had not seen it so nicely listed and explained.
I spend a lot of time thinking about financial goals, and I suppose that my financial goal for The Middle Class Guy is to make at least as much money by the end of this year on it (a few hundred bucks) that I spent purchasing the domain name via BlueHost. I would eventually like to make many times that much every month, but that is a long way off.
Time is a very important aspect of goals and I think that it merits its own blog entry, or several of them. Actually, all six categories do and that will be an upcoming entry.
7. The Longer the Lever, the Greater the Impact. Leverage is an important aspect of making big money, and one that I and many tens of millions of Middle Classers either do not understand, do not practice, or both.
My brother is a successful attorney, and he also believes in leveraging money, as well as looking at the way he goes about his business in a totally different way than I do. Perhaps it is because I am older and spent more time with our Depression-era grandfathers that I have a "must save" money mentality, a mentality of scarcity, and a morbid fear of debt. One of our grandfathers told me repeatedly that he never paid one cent of interest in his life. This from a man who purchased a house in a nice suburb of Chicago, purchased new cars every few years, traveled extensively and gave generous gifts including tens of thousands of dollars.
The notion of leverage comes from doing something once, and then selling it to thousands or millions of people. Some day, someone may click on an advertisement on this blog entry long after I have forgotten writing it, and a buck or two will go into my account. Likewise, if I wanted to buy something for a million dollars, say a 6-unit apartment building with rents in the $2,000 range, the notion of leverage deals with O.P.M. (other people's money) rather than spending the next fifteen years saving up enough for a $250,000 down payment, or the entire million bucks, is using the notion of leverage to its fullest. I have considered doing this many times, but I never have, mostly due to my middle class-induced fears of risk and failure.
The One Minute Millionaires write that one should leverage other people's money (OPM), other people's experience (OPE), other people's ideas (OPI), other people's time (OPT) and other people's work (OPW). For a more detailed explanation of these, buy the book. I found a free PDF of it, although I do not condone this as an aspiring author, and I found it from a whopping penny (you pay the shipping) on Amazon just now:
Hardcover 414 Used from $0.01123 New from $1.7235 Collectible from $1.98
8. Mentors. The authors claim that every successful person has mentors. I would challenge that, but agree that most successful people have enjoyed the benefit of mentors. I have come across many who raised themselves from their bootstraps without anybody there to help show them the way.
If you are able to find a willing mentor, drawing from his or her experiences and knowledge is the quickest, safest and surest route to achieving your goals. Remember that people you meet along your journey can "accidentally" teach you something to help you out in reaching your goals.
9. Four Types of Work and Workers. The authors pose an interesting typology of four types of workers. Personally, I must be schizophrenic because I think that I have, at one time or another, fallen into each of these categories:
Hares think randomly, come up with ideas, think creatively, get bored and sometimes lack follow-through. Owls are wise and think methodically and create action plans. Turtles are slow and steady, suspicious of new ideas, believe in tradition and not taking risks. Squirrels are great at step-by-step work, think and act methodically, keep things organized and running smoothly.
In my typical work week, I embody all four of those types and, mathematically, embody one at least twice per week if I go to work all five days except for some Mondays, when my body is present but my mind is not, so I do not work any of those ways.
10. Making Money While You Sleep. I am not a great sleeper, but the ultimate is to be selling goods or ads online or via your business while you are not even awake.
The authors go into great detail on this important way of increasing your wealth, and the happiest I have ever heard anybody brag is that they sold over $1,000 worth of items on their website while they were sleeping over the weekend.
The major points that they go into involve the importance of having multiple streams of income (which I just realized is another of my goals - see item # 6) and the power of residual income. Relatives and friends of mine have both, and they tend to the 'upper middle class' range. They list out income streams, and my goal is for this blog to become one.
11. Systems. The authors claim that most failure is caused by the system, not the people. They list out items related to this which I will not go into great detail, but it reminds me that I need to come up with a system for this blog. I think that I have one, but I need to flush it out. Things change so rapidly in technology, including how income is derived online. I even read a lot of articles claiming that blogging is too played out and dead, but I believe that compelling writing on interesting topics will always have a place, and what MiddleClassGuy.com needs is a good system.
12. Infopreneur. When I heard this term for the first time, I realized that it is for me. I do not make tchotchkes or cutesy items to sell via a slick website. I am not a re-seller of any tangible items that you can buy and then use.
What I am is an information entrepreneur. What I intend to share via Middle Class Guy is knowledge, entertainment, inspiration, special interests, work habits, observations, successes and failures, my spirit, soul, enthusiasm, humor, sadness, bitterness, determination, ways to make money and live a better life and, ultimately, make some dough doing it.
After all, if I am a hoarder of information, why not share it with anybody willing to read it?
"Infopreneur is a person whose primary business is gathering and selling electronic information. This term is a neologism portmanteau derived from the words "information" and "entrepreneur". An infopreneur is generally considered an entrepreneur who makes money selling information on the Internet."
13. Identify Your Perfect Customer. It is highly cathartic for me to write this. After all, I will be ready to donate The One Minute Millionaire after posting this, getting one more book out of my collection (which my wife will appreciate). As I write, I sometimes wonder who, if anybody, will read these words. You are my customer.
I stop and think about my perfect customer, in this case my reader. Even though any blog or website is open to all, I must think about what my perfect customer looks like, what makes him/you tick (this is aimed towards men), what do you expect of me, what values do we share and what I will need to do to improve this blog. I already realize due to the length of this post, that I should make my entries shorter and snappier.
14. Shield Your Money. I sometimes worry about this even though I have yet to make my first penny on this blog. I did apply to Google for an Ad Words account today, so advertisements should popping up on this blog in the next few weeks. All I had to do was sign away my search history past, present and future, and disavow everything. I clicked "Agree" without reading through it, like millions before me.
Shielding your money is important, but one generally needs to have some business-related income stream above and beyond your bi-weekly paycheck. Ways to shield your money include LLCs, trusts, corporations, limited partnerships and other legal entities. Once I hit my first $100 in Ad Words revenues, I will have to send info about where to send the dough. I'll worry about it at that time, but it won't be a trust or LLC for some time to come. If I had the choice right now, I would have it sent right into my checking account, it would become part of next month's ComEd payment, and I would pay the fifteen or so bucks in income tax next spring. New goal: make enough money blogging to need to shield some money.
I have read this advice in many of these improve your life/finances/change your way of thinking books. I will review them in future blog posts, but the three best ones that come to mind are from Suze Orman, Robert Kiyosaki and Thomas Stanley.
Thank you for reading this all the way through. I promise to be more brief in my next blog post about a book that I like.
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