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Over the past few months I’ve been increasingly intrigued by Donald Trump. Sure, I disagree with some of the guy’s philosophies (like when he says “When somebody screws you, you screw them back”), and some of his businesses (casinos, in particular), but his books contain insight about the world of business which can only be attained and properly communicated by someone who’s been in it for a while and succeeded. Guy Kawasaki has posted a quick 10 (+1) question interview with “The Donald” which is pretty entertaining, and definitely worth a read.

My favorite answers came to questions #4, #8, and #11: “…it’s a productive way to spend my chill time…”, “…I was destined to succeed, and I kept focused on that…”, “…don’t give up…” Check out the interview to understand these disembodied quotes.

(Thanks to fellow 9Rule member Edward Mills (Evolving Times) for the tip.)

Now, dear reader, here’s one for you: If you could ask Donald Trump anything, what would it be?

Dealing with sales-people can often be an intimidating experience, especially if you haven’t dealt with one for a while. The following article chronicles my experiences with quite possibly the worst sales-person I have ever come across. In it I offer advice from the point of view of someone who has worked in sales in some capacity for the past few years.

Read the rest of this entry »

Intro: A good thinker is someone who others can recognize is a good thinker. A great thinker is someone who can get others to think. Matt Murchison is part of the later, no doubt. While I’m not a big fan of MySpace blogs (they’re usually trash heaps — my own MySpace blog included), if you’re into reading them, make sure to check out Matt’s blog.

Matt, an old friend of mine, has an ability to pick out social issues and put forth points so convincingly that there is little middle ground left to be in. You either agree with him or you don’t. More often than not, I get trapped into posting incredibly long replies to his posts — often longer than the posts themselves — and with his last post, it was no different. Basically, the post argues that we should de-emphasize government funded space exploration and instead take on more planetary issues, like child hunger. What follows is my response to his post. (I figure that if I spent a good chunk of time posting it there I might as well post it here, too.) If you’re interested in this issue, drop me a line here, or better yet, drop by Matt’s blog and share your thoughts.

This is a particularly interesting issue for me because of recent developments within the business community regarding space exploration.

On one hand, I am of the opinion that both space exploration and colonization are moral imperatives. These are missions which we as a people have a moral obligation to pursue and complete. With our level of advancement, it would be not only illogical but also deeply immoral to future generations for us not to continue on this pursuit. Contrary to your statement, space stations on the Moon and manned missions to Mars are not only reasonable, practical, and achievable, they are a mandate upon our generation from future generations.

Like you, however, I find that the weaponization of space, while understandable, is neither desirable nor logical at this time. Nevertheless, it seems as if human history is littered with examples of advancement through weaponization, and this may be no different.

That said, I also find that the current status of space exploration is deplorable at best. We are currently talking about going back to the moon like it is a much more monumental task than it was in 1969, when computers at NASA were much less powerful than the PC I’m currently using to type this message. There has been almost no advancement in the human space exploration program within the past 40 years, save for the pressure now being laid upon us by the Indians and the Chinese. The Russians are doing the right thing by transforming themselves into the first commercial space agency, and it is time that we do the same. The example of Burt Rutan and Richard Branson, where they’re basically laying in the groundwork for commercial space exploration should be followed. Whereas we’re currently spending billions for one flight at taxpayer costs, Americans can get 10 times the value for the dollar by letting the private sector do this. A profit motive will always bring out the genius of men to a greater good, if their profiting depends on the greater good. Nevertheless, NASA won’t see it this way, since it is usually hard to get people to understand a matter if their paycheck depends upon their not understanding it.

Regarding feeding starving children: this is a sticky subject for me. While I could understand that doing this would be a good thing, generally speaking, foreign aid of any sort weakens a population’s political will, thereby separating them from their government, thereby creating a status quo in which the government does not respond to their populace, since the populace doesn’t demand change. It was this demand for change that created the governments of today, transforming Europes monarchies into modern day democracies (starting with the US, then continuing on in France and South America). Yet, by taking that opportunity away from a people, we condemn them to a corrupt and lazy government. Unfortunately, countries which find themselves to be oil rich also tend to follow this pattern, where the government holds on to its power simply because of the level of money being poured into it. As harsh and evil as this may seem, the question is what’s in it for the American tax payer? After all, if he’s footing the bill for feeding a starving kid somewhere in Africa, where’s the return on investment?

Personally, I don’t believe there needs to be a return on investment, that life itself is to sacred to even look at such a thing. But while the person may believe that, the populace as a whole may not, since they may not agree as to which causes are worthy our tax money. So again I ask, where’s the ROI? After all, helping starving kids in the middle east hasn’t helped us much (except in Iran, oddly enough, where the younger generation would welcome relations with the US in a second, as would the younger generation here welcome relations with Iran in a second, if the elder generation wouldn’t keep getting in the way) and in both Asia and Africa, it has created a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions. Why should a government of one nation take care of the people of another? This should be left to individuals.

As a government, I support the investment of economic infrastructure in order to empower people (and not their governments), since this will lead to the rise in the power and clout of the individual, and it will also lead to better relation with that government — more trade means more economic opportunity, which leads to more unity among the countries’ populaces. As for humanitarian aid, I’m firm in the belief that private organizations should engage in this, and that governments should not worry about taking care but for their own people. (Even then, the help offered to people should be limited, based on their ability to build a future: an elderly man would need much more help than a 30-year old homeless man, since the younger of the two can still do something with his life, but I digress…)

In the end, Matt, while I do agree with both of your issues, the correlation between the two is a weak one. A stronger case can be made that we should be creating more economic opportunity in the space arena and allow federal agencies to benefit from private industry’s developments. That would not only make the government smaller (and more dependant on its people, instead of the other way around), it would also make the new technologies much more accessible to developing nations, thereby strengthening their own economic infrastructures and allowing them to take care of themselves (with maybe a little nudge in the right direction from investment and humanitarian programs.)

A few weeks back, my mom and I were discussing issues regarding business ownership and how my dad has almost always run his own businesses. At one point I told her — having made this realization at that very moment — that I had very few memories of my father outside the pizzeria he when we lived in Puerto Rico.

She replied, “You know, that’s the thing your father regrets the most: that he wasn’t able to spend more time with you when you were kids.”

My father used to own a pizzeria when we lived in Puerto Rico. Unfortunately, it was a one shot deal: he didn’t franchise it. As such, like all other small businesses, where the owner is employee number one, he spent a good chunk of time there, from open to close and back again. Between us getting to school at 7am and him getting home after midnight, it’s no wonder we never really saw at home. Unlike a job, however, since he owned the business, we would go visit him on a regular basis. (Try that at your office.) In fact, I spent more time in a pizzeria when I was a kid than most families do during their entire lifetimes.

This weekend I was at a business workshop listening to a speaker when he said which reminded me of this. Most of what parents do with their kids is the bare minimum when it comes to relationship. They sometimes are so focused on the job and career, and side things that, really, they don’t get to spend much time with their kids. While it’s true, often time there’s just no other choice, way too many times there are, and the parents are simply more concerned with themselves and the trappings of success — in name of their family, of course — than they are with actually spending a large quantity of time with their kids.

“Oh, but we spend quality time with out kids,” some say. Problem is most parents don’t realize that quantity time begets quality time. Again, while there are times when parental absence is necessary — such as when building a company or a part-time business which will allow you more time with them in the future — most people do it all through their kids’ childhoods — worrying about jobs, promotions, and investments — and never really notice they’re doing it until their kids have already grown up.

“If it’s all about us,” the speaker said, “then our kids will make it all about them.”

If you have kids — or are planning to have kids — think about this: Are you willing to have your kids’ memories of you take place only on weekends?

Think about it:

• Days in a childhood (ages 0 - 12): approx. 4380.
• Days in a childhood consisting only of weekends: approx. 1248.

Ask yourself — and be brutally honest — why do you give up that time with them? Will it get better in the future? If not, why not? Is it worth it? Hillary Clinton once said that “it takes a village to raise a child.” She’s right. Problem is our villages have very few adults at home these days for a large part of the day.

Here’s a story I found interesting:

A man and his wife were one day celebrating the birth of their new child. A few months later, the wife had to go back to work, so they found a local childcare center and left their kid there. A month after that, the man got a brand new luxury car. Over the weeks, he made sure to take care of this thing like his baby.

Or did he?

The man garaged his car, waxed it, gave it premium fuel — the best treatment. One day, a neighbor friend he knew well asked “hey, nice car. Mind if I take it for a spin around the block to see how it drives.” The man indignantly replied, “What, are you crazy? No!”

Now, let’s think about this: this man would give his kid — so precious to him and his wife, and the future of his family — every day to someone who can’t possibly love his child as much as he and his wife do, yet he wouldn’t let someone he knew drive his car — something he’ll likely replace in a few years anyway — around the neighborhood.

My question for you is how is this any different than what you do?

You may be wondering why am I talking about this. Frankly, because it struck me. Because I realize that I have a much stronger bond with my mom than I do with my dad, in very large part because my mom was a stay-at-home mom, while my dad — while I appreciate everything he ever did for us kids — wasn’t. Mind you this didn’t lead to a bad childhood. In fact, I had a pretty great childhood, and having my mom at home made a huge difference in my life, playing a huge part in who I became. Still, it would have made an ever bigger difference if my dad had been there, too. This is one of the reasons my wife and I have already decided that when we have kids, she’s staying home, and that somehow, soonthereafter, I’ll join her.

So, dear reader, ask yourself, if you’re not in a position to do this today — men, to take your wife out of work to raise your kids — what can you change to make that reality happen? Better yet, how could you come home to be with your kids, too?

Think about this for a little while. I’d love to read some of your honest responses.

From AlterNet:

Financial insecurity is one of the staples of American life, and fuel for our nation’s politics as well as cable TV shows. Once the elderly worried endlessly about money matters, athough now people over 65 count as the wealthiest group of Americans. Rather, today the biggest worriers about what’s euphemistically called our “financial future” are the young, and especially people under 25 years old … A day of reckoning is not out of the question; the debt bomb may yet explode, taking American prosperity with it. Housing values are falling, most everywhere now, and that’s perilous for American consumers who, as “In Debt We Trust” shows, have used home-equity borrowing as a piggybank for years. On a national level, the bubble can burst too. The size of the federal debt, and the growing dependence on China to cover this debt through purchases of Treasury Bills, could lead to a collapse in the value of the dollar and a sharp, steep rise in interest rates, choking off the very lending that fuels economic activity and bringing about severe economic contraction, along with job losses and wage declines.”

There are so many issues at play here, I don’t even know where to begin. Luckily, I wasn’t one of those who got into major bad debt during my early twenties. The Wife on the other hand… school loans. Lots of ‘em. C’est la vie. The trick now is learning how to capitalize off of debt, and turning bad debt into good debt, which is akin to pulling a rabbit out of your hat: it’s not magic if you know what you’re doing.