How I Will Be Rich

Archive for the ‘Miscellaneous’ Category

I just wanted to apologize for not making any posts in two days. Both Joe and I have been having internet connection issues preventing us from posting any new posts. Hopefully we’ve got everything resolved now and we’ll be back on schedule. I’ve made a few little changes to the site design (very minor changes). The colors are a little different and the top logo has changed. Leave some feedback and let us know what you think.

Joe and I both have some drafts written up. We’re going over them right now and we’ll have more posts up very soon.

Here’s a little scoop on a concept that dates back over 100 years from an economist named Vilfredo Pareto. How does an idea in any way pertain to us in 2007? Let me explain if you do not know already…

This idea is called the 80/20 rule. Pareto’s rule can be summed as being that 80% of any kind of output comes from only 20% of an input. To make it a bit more clear, I’ll give a couple examples:

• 80% of business sales come from 20% of the client base.
• 80% of your results come from 20% of your effort and time.
• We spend 80% of our time with the 20% of our good friends.

This rule has been known to fluctuate in titles, such as the 90/10, 95/5, 99/1, and so on.
Since this rule goes hand in hand with any matter in life, you can look around now and see how this rule is something that we use daily but never actually take the time to notice. Look at the personal relationships you hold and of those around you and see how much time is spent with those individuals. Also, check out where a majority of your time and effort is spent at work, and then analyze to see if it is actually time worth spent.

I can’t give you a surefire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time.

-Herbert Bayard Swope, first recipient of the Pulitzer Prize

The largest goal of this rule is to understand what the 20% of the equation is. Of that, weed out what 20% makes you the least productive towards achieving your goals. See what makes you unhappy in life and in the workplace of that 20% and see how you can eliminate that to make the whole process much smoother.

Look at where you’re working right now and see how this 80/20 rule would pertain to the business. At our work this rule definitely applies. We have a few very large accounts that will send orders to us daily, and then out of the blue, we’ll receive an order from a company that we haven’t done business with for two or more years. We are able to easily track these orders to figure out which accounts are bringing more business to us, and in turn we are able to accommodate them in a way so they continue that business and feel more comfortable dealing with us. Creating a lasting bond with the 80% group in business will prove to make a company more profitable and much more efficient.

-The differences between the 80% and 20% groups is vast. Once the effort has been put towards establishing and tying the bond between you and the 80% group, it’s all downhill for you in the effort department. There will be a lot less calls coming in from them, and the whole experience will roll much more smoothly. On the contrary, the 20% group will almost drive you up the wall with the amount of work they’ll make you do for them. I experience this everyday while taking calls at work and explaining the same thing over and over. With this group there is a lot more effort being spent on persuading them into buying your product by going over all of the perks of your’s compared to the competition. The follow-up calls on order statuses will be enough to make you scream, “UNCLE!!!” Since these companies have not learned to actually trust anyone else, they will constantly call to double, sometimes triple-check that you are properly doing your job and that everything will be completed in a timely order. Trust issues, maybe? These are the companies that you would rather not deal with and not want to waste your time dabbling over. You’re better off focusing your time on the 80% that have full confidence in you and allow things to run in a much more automated fashion. Hey, isn’t that the point of business, and life in general?!

Leaving off from where I finished on the last post is right where I will pick up today. Framing goals is definitely the equivalent to lying a foundation to a skyscraper; Starting right in the middle and trying to build up will surely lead to a collapse. By writing in this blog and soon receiving comments by other readers, we hope to build a relationship between people that will benefit us all. We are anything but experts on the topic of how to begin running a business, but we like to think that we have a pretty decent background knowledge to get a successful one rolling soon. During the hours of reading the endless amounts of literature on the topic and others related, we believe that the foundation is being built within us, but now we need something to show for it. Enter, blog.

With the creation of this blog, Matt and I entered a new world of teaching while learning. We now will have the ability to show what we have learned from the reading and share it with you all. If you don’t have the time to sit down and dedicate yourself to a book for hours on end, why don’t you read our brilliant (suuuuure) knowledge when you can. While having this kind of connection, it will allow Matt and I expand our learning through teaching, and hopefully pass that same method to everyone else. This blog is just a small step to getting our feet wet with this passion. And hey, luckily this small step wasn’t much of an investment, only $34. Matt doesn’t know this yet, but I will be paying back my half in ways of burritos at the taco shop down the street from work. Mexican food is definitely a brain food!

It’s creeping around time I need to scoot out to work, but all in all, this blog will be awesome. This connection with people to discuss business ideas, personal ideas, financial tips, and receiving feedback will help fuel the fire burning within us all. The more help the better!

Hey everyone!… actually, it’s probably just Matt and I reading these posts, but hopefully soon we’ll have some dedicated readers.

I’m Joe, and like Matt said, I’m 22 and attending Cal State San Marcos for Marketing. While I’m not slamming the books into my head, hoping that something will sink in, I’m working part time for a couple of companies. My “day job”, throughout the week, is working alongside Matt at the shutter manufacturing plant. I’ll let you get a grasp of how ravishing that industry is by reading Matt’s last post. On the weekends I spend my hours at the local Whole Foods Markets working for my wonderful girlfriend’s natural food promotion company. While hocking organically goodness, I’ve met various successful people that have started their own businesses and try to lead their own path through life. Working in both of these positions have allowed me to use my time, not only to complete my job, but to absorb many of the inner-workings of a business. Prior to these two jobs, I did not know much of how a business was run or what was needed to get one rolling; The only thing I knew was that my head needed to get in the game.

Spending the time at work with Matt has been one of the most beneficial things I could have done for expanding my needed knowledge in business. I can, almost fully, dedicate that fire in me to get things rolling to Matt. Digging up any free second we can at work, we’ll spend quickly throwing out some business ideas for the near future that we so madly long to begin. This blog comes from a direct result of our dire need to get something going and in the works.

As Matt stated in his previous post, this blog is more or less going to show our path during our journey to our goal.

“And what goal would that be ‘ol Joe?”… Well that goal I will tell!

It is definitely not to make all the money in the world, but rather to be happy and comfortable. We, and hopefully along with everyone else, believe that you shouldn’t have to wait until 50+ years of age to start the “Golden Years”; START NOW!! There’s no point to dibble dabble in the 9-5 positions that float around on Monster.com for 30 years and hope that you’ll end up with some nice retirement savings when it’s all said and done. Our goal is simply to kick that predisposition of getting a comfortable job out of the window and dragging those Golden Years, that seem light years away, and bring them into our lifetime, NOW! We want to live that life that has always seemed so far out of reach. Let me list a few things I wouldn’t mind doing in the upcoming couple years…

Travel to Europe and cycle around Italy, check. Buy a car that doesn’t make a pinging noise when accelerate going up hills, check. Purchase a house in San Diego and be able to call it my own, check. Complete an intense 200km, six-day run throughout Costa Rica, check. Wrestle bears and finally capture Bigfoot in some far off land… we’ll just say in the middle of Russia, check check check cheek chekc chkee.

Ok, well I got a little carried away there, but now you can see how excited and anxious this can make you! We all have the fire like this in us, you just need to find a way to free yourself and be financially comfortable enough to go out there and conquer the world!

Here’s a little quote from a book I just finished that I completely agree with:

“If you’re not pushing yourself beyond the comfort zone, if you’re not constantly demanding more from yourself–expanding and learning as you go–you’re choosing a numb existence. You’re denying yourself an extraordinary trip.”
-Dean Karnazes, Ultra Marathon Man

That quote and this post pretty much sums up how I like to live my life. Crazy? I like to think not, but I wouldn’t put it against you if you called me that.

Now on to blogging madness!!

This is my first (real) entry in to our Web log and since no one will probably read this for a while until I actually start posting something interesting, I will just post a little about myself and why I wanted to create this blog. My name is Matthew and I am 24 years old. I work full time running the family business. We are in the exciting industry of window coverings. More specifically, we make wood shutters. I know that this sounds like an amazing and fulfilling industry to be involved in and everyone out there wants to know how they can get in to this gold mine but I’m actually looking for bigger and better things. I am an investor that mainly dabbles in the stock market and I am trying desperately to set up some sort of online business. My ultimate goal is to make my fortune in real estate but that still seems a little far off for me. I read constantly. I go through about a book a week and sometimes even two. Every single book is either about business, investing, finance, entrepreneurship and so on and so on. They say the best way to learn anything is teach and I feel as if a blog is a good method to regurgitate all that I have learned and all that I have studied. If people actually read and get something from this, then I guess that is just an added bonus.

I frequent many blogs and will probably repost some of the great advice or give opinions on the less than stellar advice that I’ve read. My current favorite blog is the “I Will Teach You to Be Rich” Blog. I check in on it daily. Ramit is a great writer and has a lot to offer (Maybe that’s why he has got a book deal in the works). I am a fan of Robert Kiyosaki (Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Cashflow Quadrant, Retire Rich, Retire Young) mainly because the way he writes gives me hope for the short term. I’ve read The Millionaire Next Door and I think it’s a great book, I highly recommend it. I will go in to a little more detail in a later book review. My problem with it is that it conveys a message of, “be frugal, save, invest and maybe someday you’ll be rich.” Although I think that’s great advice and you can’t just go out blow all your money, it is so much less that satisfying. I’m young now and I want to have fun. I like books and authors that write about how to make money young and meet your life goals before the typical retirement age. I believe it’s important to invest and to spend modestly but at the same time, I want to get in to real estate and I want to travel and I want to do it before I’m 50.

A friend of mine, Joe Fier, who will also contribute to this blog, has a very similar mindset. We have basically decided that when our two minds work together, we can basically accomplish anything. Expect great posts and information from him as well.

I’ll end on this…
We will be rich. I am 100% confident of this and we completely plan to document our path to get there. We want to teach people how we are doing it along the way and inform people of the books that have changed our lives. Feel free to comment if you agree, disagree or want to call us names but I will get there.

-M