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Jordan

Reading List: Why Cities Thrive and Companies Die, 10-10-10 Rule, and The Great Beanie Baby Bubble

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Hey Tribe,

I hope you enjoy this week’s GWJ round up. If you like what you read, please share it with your friends. You can find last week’s round up here.

To Read:

Information Cascades - How Many Rational People Can Make Logical Decisions and Yet Still Create a Bubble

It’s hard to prevent yourself from falling into a bubble. We’re hardwired to cooperate so it’s only natural we have a predilection for bubbles.

Use the 10-10-10 Rule to Make Better Decisions

This is a hack I use to rapidly refocus myself to be more effective in work and life.

Why Cities Keep Growing, Corporations and People Always Die, and Life Gets Faster

As companies grow larger, there’s an obsession to prevent risk instead of taking on the risk that is necessary to grow the company and evolve. What can you do to prevent this from happening to your organization?

From The Blog Vault:

Working Out Mental Knots

Book Of The Week:

The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: The Amazing Story of How America Lost Its Mind Over a Plush Toy-and the Eccentric Genius Behind It

Main Take Away:

I came across this book because Tam Pham left it at my house. One night I thought I would read a few pages…well 30 pages later I was hooked. I was fascinated to learn about the people obsessed with the toys, but even more so with the people who created the toys. Let me leave you with a snippet from the book:

When stores placed limits on the number of Beanies each family could buy, Robison [the collector] instructed his kids to pretend they didn’t know him. During the second McDonald’s giveaway, a friend threw up in their car after eating too many Happy meals as the family bought them by the dozen…

Robison spent more than $100,000 on Beanie Babies at a time when he was not working steadily.

Score: 9/10

What I’m tinkering with:

The pocket app. The app allows you to store articles from the web from your desktop, laptop, mobile, or tablet. Pocket can sort your articles based on length so you can pick an article that fits into your reading schedule. After you save enough articles on pocket it will start suggesting articles for you based on your reading history. My favorite feature is the Text-To-Speech feature, now you can listen to your articles while working out or driving.

If you have any articles or apps I should check out, please share them with me.

 

P.S – If you like what you read, please share this post, check out my blog, or subscribe to my newsletter!

A CEO at Berkshire Hathaway shares his productivity tips

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After I college I didn’t know what I wanted to do, so I decided to take real estate classes at night while working as a temporary employee at Google.

My real estate Professor was Gino Blefari. He was the president and founder of Intero Real Estate. Recently his company was acquired by Berkshire Hathaway and he’s the CEO of their HomeServices division. Earlier this year I interviewed him at Google to talk about Real Estate investing and his productivity tips.

During his real estate class he shared with me 45 productivity tips (I incorrectly said 63 in the interview. Give me a break, I’m a senile >.>). Anyone can use these tips to become more effective in their work and personal lives.

During my time as a temporary employee at Google, I would read his list to see which ones I could apply to my role. After applying these tips to my work, I was able to increase my effectiveness which lead to greater projects resulting in a conversion to a full time role at Google.

You can find the tips here.

Let me know how these tips work for you!

Please Note: He does mention prospecting, if you’re not in sales, think of this as Deep work time, time to focus on projects that require great focus or time spent learning new skills.

P.S – If you like what you read, please check out my blog or subscribe to my newsletter!

How to build habits like a programmer

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Programmers use If-Then statements to instruct a computer to do something if certain conditions are met. If “X” happens, do “Y”. Wouldn’t it be great if we could use this technique to build personal development habits?

If-Then statements for personal development

It’s easy to set up our own If-Then statements, all it takes is a small commitment. The best If-Then statements have a clear stimulus and follow up action. The stimulus is a wake up call to your brain to take action, but the stimulus should be easy to understand and happen on a regular basis.

In order for the If-Then statements to take hold you need to start with one, and work on it for 66 days as mentioned in Jay Papasans one thing.

Examples of great If-Then statements

If I wake up early in the morning then I need to work out right away.

If I’m stuck in traffic then I will listen to an educational podcast.

If I’m waiting in line then I will study spanish with duolingo.

If I’m feeling uncertain then I need to track this thought with my journal.

If I’m frustrated then I will take 25 minute break to work on a side project.

If I’m in bed early then I will start reading a book.

If I learned something from the meeting then I will take 30 seconds to write it down in my journal.

You can create If-Then statements for almost anything

The possibilities are endless. Try experimenting with one and let me know how it works out.

Try this experiment and let me know what happens in the comment section.

P.S – If you like what you read, please subscribe and share!

Jay Papasan - Author of the Millionaire Real Estate Investor and The One Thing: The ONE Thing: How To Get Started In Real Estate Investing

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I had the pleasure of interviewing Jay Papasan.

He is the vice president of publishing and executive editor at Keller Williams Realty, Inc. In 2003, with the release of The Millionaire Real Estate Agent, co-authored by Gary Keller and Dave Jenks, Papasan became a best-selling author when the book spent time on BusinessWeek’s best-seller list. In 2005, they co-authored their second bestseller, The Millionaire Real Estate Investor. After working on Rick Villani and Clay Davis’s best-selling FLIP: How to Buy, Fix and Sell Houses for Profit in 2007, he co-authored Your First Home with Gary Keller and Dave Jenks in 2009.

His latest book, The ONE Thing, co-authored with Gary Keller, came out April 1, 2013 and debuted at #6 on the Wall Street Journal bestseller list and reached #1 on May 3, 2013. Since then it has made more than 300 appearances on national bestseller lists and has been translated into 24 languages.

It’s a great talk and I know you’ll learn a lot from it.

Enjoy the talk!

Topics Covered In This Interview

Jay’s presentation will tap into in-depth research with over 120 millionaire real estate investors and draw a straight path based on what they all have in common. That’s The Millionaire Real Estate Investor. And we can organize using the principles of The ONE Thing—itself a 5 year research journey into the common approach found among top performers across both investing, industry, athletics and even the arts.

Presentation Slides

Questions Asked After The Presentation

Several of us have small businesses we are running on the side while working a demanding job. What are the best leveraged activities for those of us with limited time?

My biggest hurdle in getting financing is due to near maxing out my monthly debt to income ratio (due to multiple mortgages). Any thoughts how how to get around this and continue to obtain financing while rates historically low?

As one’s real estate empire grows, overhead becomes an issue. Please give some tips on outsourcing. Do you have opinions on hiring personal assistants as employees/contractors versus outsourcing wholesale to management companies? How do real estate license requirements factor in for hiring PAs?

If you enjoyed this talk, please let me know and share this post with your friends!

How to improve your decision making skills

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All of us have thought patterns that are fighting to control our lives. We accumulate these thought patterns through our life experiences. Positive thought patterns can propel us to success, while negative ones can prevent us from achieving our potential. While some of these thought patterns are based on fiction, your brain can confuse them for reality.

Your brain

Your brain is like a bus that takes you through your journey of life. Driving the bus is your true self. Comprised of your values, beliefs, ethics, and passions. Typically your true self is at the wheel of the bus. Driving along, making decisions that positively impact our life.

The unwanted passengers

Your thoughts are passengers on the bus. Sometimes they call out to your true self with vital information. But then we have a group of thoughts called the “Unwanted Passengers”. These passengers provide you with poor information that causes you to not reach your destination. Even worse, these passengers can convince you to let them control your life.


The following is a small list of Unwanted Passengers:

The Ego - “I’m the best at my job. Who does he think he is to provide me with feedback?”

The Anxiety - “I don’t know what’s going to happen. This is making me feel so insecure.”

The Victim - “Everyone’s out to get me. I can’t possibly win because I always screw up.”

The Anger - “I have the right to be angry because they hurt me.”

The Shame - “Why would anyone ever want to like me? I’m a bad person.”

The Know It All - “ I wish this person would stop talking so I could explain to them how the world
works.”

The Negative Nelly - “I can’t do this. I’m not smart enough.”

The Excuse Maker - “It’s the other guy’s fault.”

The Fixed Mindset - “I can’t learn this new skill.”

Unfortunately when these passengers take the wheel we lose our ability to see what’s truly going on in our lives and we create self destructive stories that limit our growth potential. In order for us to reach our destination, these passengers need to return to their seats or better yet get off the bus.

Taking control of our thoughts

A way to check these passengers is to create a thought journal (You can find it here). The journal allows you to track your thoughts. By tracking your thoughts you can create a feedback loop with reality to determine if your thoughts were correct.

If certain thought patterns are off from reality you’ll know the unwanted passengers had control of you. The next time you’re in one of these situations you’ll be able to recognize the unwanted passengers. When they do appear, take notice of them, and recognize how they are making you feel.

Awareness is the first step towards improvement

By being aware of the unwanted passengers it allows you to create space between you thoughts and actions. With practice this space will grow. This space allows you to decide if you want to act on the unwanted passengers advice. With practice you’ll be able to ignore the unwanted passengers so you can achieve your goals.

Try this experiment for twos week and let me know what happens in the comment section.

P.S - If you like what you read, please subscribe!

Paul English - Founder Of Kayak.com & Tracy Kidder - Pulitzer Prize Winning Author

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I had the pleasure of interviewing Tracy Kidder (Pulitzer Prize Winner) and Paul English (Founder of Kayak.com) about Tracy’s latest book Truck Full Of Money: One Man’s Quest to Recover from Great Success.

Paul is known for being the founder of Kayak.com. The company was sold to Priceline.com for $2.1 Billion. Economically Paul is considered a success, but internally the demons of this success nearly destroyed him.

Learn how Paul overcame these demons and used these lessons to start his next endeavor Summits Education a nonprofit that operates 41 primary schools located in one Haiti’s poorest areas where most farmers earn less than $2 dollars per day.

Enjoy the talk!

 

Topics Covered In This Talk:

Writing The Book

Tracy’s research process for writing this book.

How he came up with the title.

What’s his favorite story from the book?


On Paul

How did your humble beginnings influence your success in tech?

How did working full time and going to school affect your development?

Growing up your job seemed to be to make everyone happy at home. How did that affect your business dealings?

Paul can you explain your swings of creativity and dedication to a project?

Being driven goes a far way towards helping us become successful. How has this drive worked against you?

Can you talk about your mentor Thomas White?


Startups

Can you talk about your late night ideas?

How about the calendar toothbrush package?

Can you explain the situation with your decision to split the equity between Boston light employee?

Can you explain Paul’s 20 “plussers”? How did you all end up working together for so long?

How did you handle going from nothing to $120 million?

Setting up blade you saw a lot of pitches. What is your advice for startups?

Haiti:

Can you talk about your work in Haiti?


And much more!