In economics, it's well known that a perfect market is one in which everybody has access to information instantly, accurately, and uniformly. The closest market in the United States to this is our stock market, where the information flows freely; investors know exactly how securities are priced within moments of the most recent trades. Perfect markets are difficult to beat, and the people who identify and take little pinches of profits call it arbitrage.

More on Can an Imperfect Market Produce Perfect Results?

Share This

A few days ago, I shared my view on how entrepreneurs are being squeezed out in this economy - even more so than our bigger company counter-parts who have also been struggling. A lot of people agreed — and a few disagreed – but this topic created a lot of discussion. Now I want to put forth a strategy for entrepreneurs to embrace. One which could help all of us overcome this mess.

More on Can Lone Wolves Cooperate?

Share This

The world has gotten sufficiently complicated, where many of the rules that have been written in the past need to be broken or disregarded so that we can move forward and break through the log jam.

More on Real Estate Syndication: Does A New World Need a New Way?

Share This

From time to time, I like to deviate from my typical business rants and tackle some technologies and gadgets that I stumble upon which help entrepreneurs to be incredibly more efficient and more productive. I've been known to say that entrepreneurs produce at 20 times the rate of their corporate counterparts. The reason that this is so is partly because they have to — and it's partly because of their swift use and early adoption of cool technologies.

More on Can An Electronic Tool Change Everything?

Share This

More on The Mathematics of Your Credit Score

Share This

I normally don't get terribly philosophical, but today is one of those days that I'm thinking about my life and my business in a new way. I consider today to be the first day of my new life and of a series of new opportunities. I want to consider things in a new way and try things that I hadn't tried before. In a certain way, it's like January 1st, only this time it's not about resolutions — it's really about being open-minded and taking a new direction for my life.

It doesn't hurt that it's also my birthday. But, today helps me to think about all the new things that I can do to make my life exactly the way that I want it. This economy has caused all of us at Growth-Logic to think in a new way. It's caused everyone on my team to regroup and be more focused on things that are relevant to us. We're more focused on the specific kinds of seminars that are relevant to our audience. We're more focused on doing asset based transactions, and getting involved in the deal business. I am going back to the roots of my training. 

More on What About Celebrating My Re-Birthday?

Share This

In the heat of baseball season, I cannot help but to derive a few metaphors from my favorite sport.

It is said that in baseball pitching is 75 to 90 percent of the game. Pitching is defensive, but you cannot win a baseball game with 90 percent excellence in pitching. You also have to have good offense because offense is what puts runs on the board and dollars in the bank. And consequently, it is the focus on the offense that Growth-Logic uses to drive its strategies. This is not to diminish the importance of a defense or operational administrative posture, but it is our orientation to focus on the business, and not just on its operation and efficiency. 

More on Is Pitching Enough To Help You Win the Game?

Share This

At the end of the day, how much money you make is always about how much value you deliver to the person who has engaged your services. It may not be a perfect formula, but more or less it works out this way every time. The more value you deliver, the more money you make. If you don't make too much, you must not be contributing much value to the organization or people that you are servicing.

In the extreme, think about a movie star like Tom Cruise. He makes tens of millions of dollars per film and obviously he delivers that much value to the public around the world. He delivers it in $10 increments, which is two hours of enjoyment for millions of people. Contrast that with Wall Street investment bankers who deliver tens and millions of dollars in value in a single transaction, because they take a small slice of the value of the deals that they transact.

Take a hard look at the way you deliver value. Take a hard look at how much value you deliver. Take a hard look at how many people you're delivering that value to. The trick is to deliver more value to more people, because more people and more value equals more money to you. 

More on Isn't It All About Value?

Share This

Earlier today, some crazy guy flew by me on a Los Angeles freeway. First, he was in the far left lane. He cut in between everybody, moving himself to the far right lane. He zigzagged again to the left so that he could try to gain some time and pass all the other cars. I couldn't figure out if the guy was really in a hurry or if he just liked playing games and driving dangerously.

The ironic part of the story is that when I got to the off-ramp where I needed to get off the freeway, guess who was in front of me? It was the same crazy guy that zigzagged and nearly drove 20 people off the road.

There is a life lesson in this and a business lesson as well. There just aren't any short cuts. This guy risked his own life, not to mention the lives of countless other drivers on the Los Angeles freeways and at the end of the day, he didn't save one second. He had to get off at the same traffic signal as I did, and had to wait for the signal to change before either one of us could move. So what did the guy gain? Did he feel better as a result of his actions? Did he gain any time? Did he make any friends? In what ways is this driver better off? 

More on Is It Ever Worth Taking A Short Cut?

Share This

The trial is over, the verdict has been rendered, and I've been released from jury service.

As I wrote last week (http://tinyurl.com/byxveb), I was selected as a juror in a criminal trial in my county in California. At first, like everyone else, I tried to get out of it. But the judge told us that he wouldn't let us out, in part because the founding fathers of our country sacrificed their lives so that defendants could have a jury by their peers. And he added that it wouldn't be a jury by his peers if all the jurors were retired people. So I acquiesced and went along with it.

More on Don't Your Business Meetings Deserve Your "A Game"?

Share This