In 11th grade, my physics teacher told me something I'd never forget and it had to do with gumballs.
This kind
He went "Small kids LOVE picking up gum balls. If you're babysitting them, tell your neighbors you'll pick up all the gumballs in their yard for $10. Then have the kids do it, and give them each a dollar. They'll be happy, you'll be happy, the neighbors will be happy AND you'll be getting paid to be getting paid."
Some context to this story: my town has a lot of trees which produce gumballs and in the fall its absolutely horrible.
When he said that I was hit by just how smart it was. My teacher was 6'5'', built like a grizzly bear and fucking crazy. He almost lost his job because he decided to run around on the roof of the school with a water gun and squirt students down below. Somebody saw the gun, though it was real, and called the police. When they arrived, he squirted them too. His reasoning? "I thought it would be fun."
Anyway, his ability to see opportunities amazed and fascinated me. Unfortunately, I was his last class before he quit teaching and moved to Colorado to take over a steel company. The gumball story has always been in the back of my mind.
If you've read my previous 2 blogs, you'll see how my quest to buy a PS3 has somehow turned into self-improvement month. They're located here and here.
I thought it wold be appropriate to share what I've learned and continue asking for advice. I'm taking a page out of JWD's awesome blogs to make this one more organized:
1. Good Books to Read about Money The Rich Dad Poor Dad books OneTwo and Three. I read the first one on recommendation from a fellow TL member and its effect on how I view money was astounding. I highly recommend this series with a couple warnings:
It might piss you off! Understand before you read it that this guy is writing off a value judgement that having money is really important. He kind of looks down on those who don't. But this doesn't diminish the brilliant lessons he explains about how the rich actually work.
Ramit Sethi's I Will Teach You to be Rich I haven't gotten into this book yet, but check out this website. This guy is brilliant.
A bookkeeper from another forum recommended this book to me. No comments other than how frickin' smart and awesome this guy is (gta-maloy] if you played D2). 2. Organization and Time Management My focus has turned to my organization and time management along with personal finance. I went out, bought a personal planner and organized all my financial files, online accounts, etc (this was like 15+ hours in the past 2 days). I set to-do lists and tasks for each day all with the ultimate result of being done at ~5-6 and making extra $$ on the side. Weekends off. Basically I make my own 10-5 job when I'm not working. I've learned that if I give myself set amounts of time to do things (like write an important paper in 24 hrs ^^'' I'll just somehow know exactly what I need to do and not dawdle around. If I give myself extra time, I'll actually get less done. Weird, but I've come to realize its how I am. 3. Ways to Make Extra $$ as a Full-Time College Student I have a new question. As a full-time college student, what are some ways I can make money on the side? I've got some answers I'd like to share but please let me know if you think of anything else or have other related advice
1. get a job (duh) 2. sell things online (ebay, craigslist, etc) 3. Freebie Trading (time-consuming & chump change but a dollar is a dollar) 4. Affiliate marketing (haven't explored this yet) 5. Start a website (in the pipeline, I'll get around to this when I have time) 6. Odd jobs 4. Ways to Make Extra $$ (Summer Edition) And more specifically, what are some ways I can do it with my remaining 1.5 months of summer? My plan right now is to put up flyers at local grocery stores advertising me to mow lawns, and another one involving house-sitting flyers (I've got references and I'm an eagle scout so its a matter of getting them to call me and scheduling it) 5. Life Skills -- Negotiating I'd also like to get better at negotiating, networking and figuring out opportunities. Even with just a little bit of research and practice, I have kind of a filter through which I view situations now & act/react accordingly. It's different than just social aptitude, its like a subconscious thing but I'm very aware of it. Ramit Sethi's website is a great place for that, but its in a distinctly business setting (for example). If you've gone through a similar process, how do you recommend I do this? Any other good resources on this? I don't need no edumacation Oh, one other thing. My thirst for knowledge somehow turned back on. The reason why is still beyond me, maybe its just because I'm starting to connect everything I've ever learned, but I've been missing it since...4th grade. I remember the first day I genuinely didn't want to go to school. But now I'm looking around for free classes and seminars to attend, new opportunities to learn things...theres SO much I want to know. I go through such massive amounts of information each day but I can't remember all of it. I need a system. This isn't school anymore and I'm so friggin excited.
^ Absolute must read for any aspiring entrepreneur.
^ Many of us were conditioned to learn incorrectly by our parents/teachers. This book is the cure. (Day[9] cites this one in a cast; how can you go wrong?)
Most important that you try. Execution is 99%. Your young, in college. You can always learn from failures.
I hated richdad poor dad. I thought there was too much fluff in there. The entire premise of the book is that profits are better than wages and that you should purchase assets instead of liabilities. Well, duh. The book doesn't really elaborate on how you can actually go about doing this. "Buy a business" isn't good enough. There are other books out there that get down to the nitty gritty, that teach you how to actually create a business plan.
The three things you gotta do in order to become wealthy are 1) Develop the right mindset/character 2) Find your purpose in life 3) Start a business that expresses that purpose. To discover a little more of who you are the only book I'll actually recommend is, "Be Yourself, Everyone Else is Already Taken: Transform Your Life with the Power of Authenticity".
I'll also name a few self improvement gurus that you probably know of. Just always try to be reading SOMETHING from these guys or other people. Even if it's only one book a month.
On July 04 2010 05:15 YoonHo wrote: Oh my goodness, post more of these books/sites/vids please. I'm really interested in learning these things. Thanks for this blog and the posters!
same here, from your blogs/posts around TL (Kurtis) I think you and I are alike, I'm def gonna check out the books and videos posted. looks like it's a trip to Chapters for me tonight
On July 04 2010 05:15 YoonHo wrote: Oh my goodness, post more of these books/sites/vids please. I'm really interested in learning these things. Thanks for this blog and the posters!
On July 04 2010 05:15 YoonHo wrote: Oh my goodness, post more of these books/sites/vids please. I'm really interested in learning these things. Thanks for this blog and the posters!
Not really something on self improvement but kind of goes into the money making category. Fooled by randomness, very good read that might open a new perspective of looking at things
On July 04 2010 10:04 KurtistheTurtle wrote: Fluff it may be but it got me thinking about things I've never thought about before and pointed me in a direction
The same happened to me, Rich Dad Poor Dad started making me think about how to use my money to make more money.
However, if I were to go back in time and recommend a book to myself, I would just use Ramit instead... which wouldn't make sense because Ramit didn't come out yet, but whatever.
John T. Reed also has pages devoted to dissecting the bullshit in the book itselfl. And he also has a "guru watch list" of his own. That said, I still think Rich Dad Poor Dad is valuable for complete noobs. The most useful piece of info in the book is its distinction between assets and liabilities. I mean this is shit you should learn in freshmen highschool, but you simply don't.
Also, Ramit's book should be renamed to, "I will Teach you to Save Money." This ones a lot more practical and useful than RDPD, but it deals with very basic financial literacy. Every college kid should read it.
This is my favourite criticism of the book by far! + Show Spoiler +
Kiyosaki Book: An intelligent person hires people who are more intelligent than they are.
The Whole Truth: As a general rule, people who are smarter than you will not apply to work for you until you have reached a rather high level of success. On 8/21/00, the comic strip “Dilbert” made fun of this old platitude by having it uttered by the pointy-haired boss. His subordinates then gleefully pointed out that each boss in the company must therefore be dumber than his subordinates and that the CEO must be the dumbest person in the corporation.
Here is an email I got from a reader of this page: “I have a friend that is following the Kiyosaki mentality. He wants to hire/partner with me cause I have more skills and talents than he does. He wants me to come up with the business idea, come up with the business plan, the capital, the investors, the operations, and etc... I asked him, so what is your contribution to the business then. He tells me that he is going find people smarter than him to make this business work. This logic is so nonsensical. If I'm smarter than the entrepreneur than why should he even be an entrepreneur? I could keep all the profits to myself.
“I told my friend that it takes many hours of sweat and late night candle burning to run a business. I know because I've started one before. Unfortunately, he refuses to understand my message, instead he continues on with this Kiyosaki talk about starting a corporation!? Without a business idea, business plan, he requested me to incorporate first. This is exactly the crap that Kiyosaki is preaching in his books.
“Then we had a huge argument about who should write up the business plan once he comes up with an idea. He comes up with some ideas, then he wants me to write the business plan. I ask him a few details about the target customers, SWOT, and financial forecast. He's response was classic, ‘You figure it out.’ Gotta love the Kiyosaki mentality.”
EPT![[image loading]](http://www.cowart.info/blog/uploaded_images/Gumball-766941.jpg)
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