Live Truly

Think and Grow Rich

“Think and Grow Rich” by Napolean Hill is an amazing plan-making, goal-setting, entrepreneurial book. It comes from one of Dale Carnegies’s (How to Win Friends & Influence People) industrious students. The book really focuses on how to create plans, see visions, and realize them. At times it gets a bit long, perhaps the author didn’t know that most people don’t remember lists of more than seven things, but the content is fantastic. I had my first business idea after reading the book and following its steps and because of this I learned about patents, product evaluation, goal setting and following through on plans.

I got the recommendation for this book from Kiyosaki’s “Rich Dad, Poor Dad“. After reading that book, I realized that my web development job was going nowhere and just wasting my time. I was eager to start a new business. The plan was to teach SAT’s, however that wasn’t exactly a business rather a self-employment thing. Still not sure about what to do and excited to learn more I followed up with this book. The first thing it said was to set a goal, visualize it, and make a plan for it. My short term goal was to make twenty thousand in assets by the end of February. Since I was planning on studying for the GMAT and teaching SAT’s (the two help each other out quite nicely), why not make a new innovative product. The idea finally came, a special card game for memorizing new facts and words. I wrote down the plan to accomplishing it, and read the commitment to it and the steps every morning and evening.

Among the first steps was to read a book on patents. I accomplished this in the first week, even with work destroying my energy. By the following week I started a website and started thinking about the design. Eventually I did an analysis and realized that manufacturing and distribution of the game would force a fairly high price on everything and perhaps it would be better to get the whole thing going online. After about a week of planning and brainstorming, everything seemed clear. I told my roomate and we sat down to see the closest competition. Then came the big lesson. Someone had already created such a website a few years back. It actually had all the ideas we had and worked really well. It also charged about twice as much. At that point I joined a small start-up and had no time to work on any other projects until I quit my day job. On one hand it was a bit disappointing not being first, on the other hand it was an important lesson about doing one’s research. The lessons learned through this experience and inspired by the “Think and Grow Rich” book were priceless. The book gets kind of strange at times, but nonetheless if one follows its steps, he or she will surely gain a wealth of knowledge.

The Automatic Millionaire

David Bach’s very insightful book. I got the audio version at the library. The Automatic Millionaire introduces the idea of paying yourself first and doing so automatically. It’s absolutely right about several things: to keep something going it must be automatic, it’s absolutely worth paying yourself first (before taxes), and people would be amazed by their latte factor. I actually find that I waste most of my money on fringe buys, but nonetheless, every part of this book, especially about interest is well worth considering. Don’t let money waste away in a bank account. I don’t know if the investment vehicles are the most powerful, this book isn’t like Rich Dad, Poor Dad in its pace, but it makes a powerful point about investing and retiring and offers very very many useful ideas about money.

The Warren Buffett Way

Got Robert G. Hagstrom’s “The Warren Buffett Way” on CD’s at the library. It talks about focus investing and has great references to other books and theories. I found it really inspirational. Most of the chapters cover specific aspects of his strategies through focusing on the companies he bought. There are many insights that are worth keeping in mind and writing down. One of the most interesting facts was that most short term traders earned substantially less than the market itself. Long term and focused is the way to go.

Back from Thailand

Thailand was amazing. I had the time of my life. It’s such a beautiful country. It has a super strong infrastructure and at the same time it’s still developing. the people make very little, but at the same time the cost of living is very affordable.

What’s really cool is that it doesn’t take very much to start investing there–you can get a condo for 5-10k. The yearly return was about twelve percent according to one guy I was talking to, although more research would need to be done. Properties by Bangkok go for a bit more, but still nothing compared to the market in CA. It’d be a really cool idea to get some rentals going there, and use a large chunk of that money to help kids that can’t afford it pay for high school.

Another amazing thing about Thailand was the massage. The traditional massages are just amazing and it seems like almost a quarter of the country knows how to give them. There are shops everywhere. There’s a huge school, in fact the oldest school in there at Wat Pho. The best thing though is the foot massage. Half an hour at the Chiang Mai night market had me in heaven. The people giving them were cracking up at the ecstasy on my face.

There’s a catch though: it’s almost impossible to get citizenship. Thailand did an awesome job keeping colonialists away, and those same laws still make sure people don’t destroy the country. I think this is totally cool, but it does mean anything you do there would have to go through a Thai corporation.