Discoverers
Normally I write about things related to my company LandlordMax Property Management Software, be it how to run a business, about real estate, about what’s happening behind the scenes within the company itself, etc. However today I’m going to make an exception and suggest an excellent book that I’ve just finished reading. It’s not the first book I’ve recommended here, it’s just that it’s the first one that’s a little off-topic.In any case, the book is called “The Discoverers” and it was written by Daniel J. Boorstin about 20 years ago. It’s a great book in that I don’t think I’ve ever learned so many new things about the world at large from any one single book before! In essence it’s a history book, but it’s “a history of man’s search to know his world and himself”. It’s not a history book that’s all about memorizing the dates of events, it’s about how past events in our history affect our world today. It explains a lot of why a lot of things are the way they are.
Before you go out and buy this book, I’ll tell you it’s not the lightest read I’ve ever had, far from it. This particular book is four books in one, for all of 768 pages. Not a small read by any means. It’s divided into four books: “Time”, “The Earth and the Seas”, “Nature”, and finally “Society”. All four books are excellent, and each has some very interesting material. That being said, no book that size can be a continual page turner, and you will find some sections are a little longer than you may want. However if you push through these few longer sections, you’ll find it’s really worth it. For example for me I personally found the beginning of the fourth book pretty long, and I almost stopped. However I’m very glad I pushed on, it got to be very good. I eventually personally found the fourth book to be the most interesting.
As well, you’ll find that Daniel’s writing style is not the simplest. He does not write like John Grisham or Stephen King, so be prepared to take a bit longer reading the book. And don’t think that because he’s more verbose and wordy that his writing style is not exciting, it is. Its just that it might take you a while to work through the book.
Now that I’ve said my negatives about the book, seeing as I’m taking to write about it and strongly recommend it, it should say something about how much I appreciate and value it! This book is well worth the read, and I’m definitely looking forward to reading another one of Daniel’s books. I can’t say how enough how much I learned from this one book, how many things in the world I didn’t fully understand that I now do. Almost everything we do as a society is for a reason, and often we don’t really know why or how, we just accept it. After reading Daniel’s book The Discoverers, you understand a lot more about why and how the world works, and that’s extremely powerful!
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SEO Resources
Just a quick post as this week is incredibly busy for me, several people at the seminar of which I’m one of three keynote speakers asked me where to get additional SEO and Adsense related resources. I’m going to recommend here one ebook that I really enjoyed and got a lot of value from, probably the best resource, and several links/blogs for SEO (Search Engine Optimization). As for Adsense, unfortunately all I can reference is additional websites and blogs, I don’t know of any one book or ebook that does a good job of explaining it that worth its price.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
eBooks
SEO Book: By far the best book I’ve read on the topic. This book is written by Aaron Wall, who’s one of the first 100 “Google qualified professionals” in the world. Even though I’ve been very active in the SEO world for quite some time, this book still contained many great pieces of information for me when I read it. In terms of an introduction and encapsulating a lot of the knowledge, this is probably the one best resource to get. You can find the SEO Book here.
SEO links
Beginner’s Guide to SEO (Search Engine Optimization): The best and most comprehensive free introduction and how-to to Search Engine Optimzation (SEO) I’ve seen online!
Matt Cutts: This is the blog you want to follow if you want to keep up with SEO.
SEO Chat: Lots of articles being continually updated on SEO
SEO Black Hat: Lots of interesting leading edge information on SEO
Adsense
Adsense Links
Problogger.net: He’s mainly about making money through blogging. The good news is that he covers many related topics, from Adsense to other monetization methods. He even talks about other related topics such as SEO, how to generate traffic, etc. Very excellent overall resource.
Performancing.com: Again, very related to monetizing blogs, but very applicable to monetizing any website.
I mentioned it in the course but not here yet, getting information about SEO and website monetization, such as using Adsense, is generally not easily available in one “put together nicely” package. This is why the seminar was created. These are just some of the more common resources I personally use, there are many more. These should at least give you a big head start!
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Top 10 Stock Investing Books Of All-Time
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The Intelligent Investor: The Definitive Book On Value Investing, Revised Edition: Hands down the first book you should ever read if you’re planning to invest in stocks! |
| 2. |  |
Security Analysis: The Classic 1940 Edition: The most detailed book that I’ve ever read that explains how to invest in stocks. It goes over the financials, how to read SEC filings, how to analyze a company. Everything is in detail, therefore this is not a light reading, but what you get out of it is worth it’s weight (it’s a heavy book). |
| 3. |  |
The Essays of Warren Buffett : Lessons for Corporate America: There’s nothing like reading directly from the richest person ever who made his fortune by investing in stocks! This is a collection of many of his best pieces, grouped together into topics. |
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The Warren Buffett Way, Second Edition: A very good introduction on what to look for in stocks. Almost like a follow-up to The Intelligent Investor mentioned above as the #1 stock investing book. |
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How to Lie With Statistics: If you’re going to invest in stocks, you need to be able to read graphs, there’s no doubt about it. The key however is that you need to understand how to properly read graphs because it’s very easy to manipulate their meaning by simple modifications (with the exact same data)! |
| 6. |  |
A Random Walk Down Wall Street: Anyone who’s educated themselves in stocks knows there are many investing philosphies and styles. This book goes through many of the more common ones and tries to determine which is better. In case you’re curious, the author believes that throwing a dart to pick your stocks gives you just as good of odds over the long term as any investment strategy. I don’t believe this, but he makes a very compelling case. |
| 7. |  |
Take On the Street: What Wall Street and Corporate America Don’t Want You to Know: I recommend this book not for its overall content, but for the great take aways on how the mutual fund market works. I was never fond of the mutual fund market, and now I know for sure that I’ll never invest in mutual funds. |
| 8. |  |
Reminiscences of a Stock Operator: This is the disguised story of the stock speculator Jesse Livermore from long ago who used shady practices to make and lose a lot of money. What’s good about this book is that it’s got an interesting perspective on when to buy, sell, or hold a position in any investment vehicle. |
| 9. |  |
Buffett : The Making of an American Capitalist: The best way to be successful at anything it to learn from the best, and Warren Buffett has consistently shown himself to be the most profitable stock investor in the world. Therefore no list would be complete without his biography, and this is the best one I’ve read about him. |
| 10. |  |
When Genius Failed : The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management: This is the real story of a group of individuals that over leveraged themselves on their investments and almost collapsed the market. I recommend this book not because of it’s entirety, but because there are some great nuggets of wisdom spread throughout. |
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Interview with John Lusk (The Mouse Driver Chronicles)
Several weeks ago I posted an entry about the book “The Mouse Driver Chronicles” which I’d read and really enjoyed. Since then I’ve been in contact with the authors of the book, in particular John Lusk. In one of our last email exchanges I asked him if he would be interested in an email interview and he accepted my offer. But before I get to the interview, let me give you a brief introduction about John, especially for those of you who aren’t yet familiar with the book.
The book “The Mouse Driver Chronicles” is the story of John Lusk and Kyle Harrison, both graduates from the Wharton school of business, who decided to start their own bootstrap company at the very height of the dot com mania. At the time, to their fellow graduates, this seemed very odd (remember this was at the height of the dot com era). They skipped out on some very lucrative offers to start their company Mouse Driver, a company whose sole product was a computer mouse in the shape of a golf club driver. The book is their story of coming up with the idea, creating the product, manufacturing it, marketing and selling it, and all the possible road bumps they encountered on the way of which there were many! This story even became reading material for some college business classes. I personally enjoyed their story very much and I’d recommend it to everyone.
Now that you have an idea of who John is, although trust me when I say that a paragraph doesn’t do justice to reading the book, here are interview questions I sent him and his replies to them:
Hi John. I’ve been thinking about which questions to ask you and of course the most obvious is what’s happened since the book was published? How is company growing? Is there a Mouse Driver 2 product in the works? What’s happened to the two of you?
We sold the company to a large gift distributor on the East Coast in late 2003. Our exit strategy was always to sell the assets of the company and that’s what we did. Before we sold, we put together a few MD II prototypes that were a bit more ergonomic, utilized USB vs. PS2 and had a more sleeker design. At the time of sale, we turned over these prototypes to the acquiring company.
How has the book “The Mouse Driver Chronicles” impacted your lives and your company?
The book as been a very positive impact on our lives. Not only can we say that we’ve written a book, but our story continues to inspire, motivate and educate people all over the world. It’s been published in Korea, Taiwan, China and the UK and is required reading in over 100 universities/MBA programs in the US. We receive emails weekly from people who have been impacted by the book and just knowing that we’re helping others b/c of our story is just phenomenal.
Having read the book and the Insider Newsletters I found there was a lot of great information about succeeding and starting a business. If you had to give one piece of advice for someone going through it, what’s the one piece of advice you would give them?
You’ve got to believe in yourself and your company. As soon as you start having doubts, it’s time to get out.
Seeing you had a lot of difficulty early on in getting a mentor, what advice can you now give people in this regard?
Get a mentor or an advisor!! Do whatever it takes to find at least one person who can help you through some of the decision making. We never brought an official mentor on board and we paid for it.
From your book I gathered that you highly valued social networking. It seems to have been a substantial factor in your success. What advice can you give entrepreneurs in this respect?
I think that networking in general is always a good thing…but you’ve got to have a purpose in terms of why you’re networking and who you’re networking with. My biggest advice is to make sure that you make in networking ‘meeting’ beneficial for both parties. Put yourself in a position where you can also help the person that you’re networking with.
You mentioned to me in a prior email that you were planning on starting up the Insider Newsletter again, is this for certain? I know I enjoyed reading them, as I’m sure many of my readers here too did, which leads me to ask you when do you think the next one will sent out?
I’m still planning on it, but it needs to be the right time and moment. Right now, at Microsoft, what I’m doing from a work perspective wouldn’t make for very exciting reading (smile).
I noticed in the book you were fans of Guy Kawasaki (which I am too). Other than his online blog, what other online resources would you suggest your fellow entrepreneurs look to for getting information and advice (other than the Insider Newsletter of course) on running their businesses, marketing, sales, etc.?
We utilized Inc.com for a bunch of our stuff and marketingprofs.com to help marketing creativity
What do you believe the future hold in store for you? Do you still see MouseDriver as just a stepping stone or has it grown to more than that?
MouseDriver as a company is pretty much done. The book continues to do well but overall, the entire experience was just a stepping stone. Both Kyle and I are taking reprieves and work at Google and Microsoft respectively. We’re both that the skillsets and experiences that we’re gaining will help with whatever career move we make next.
I’d like to say that I thoroughly enjoyed reading your book “The Mouse Driver Chronicles“. Is there any chance that we’ll see a second “The Mouse Driver Chronicles 2” book?
🙂 I plan on writing another book….just need to figure out what it’s going to be about!
Thank you John for taking the time to answer all of my questions, it’s very appreciated. I wish you and Kyle the best success in the future and many other successful endeavours. And please let me know when you publish another book, I’ll be very interested in reading it!
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Common Real Estate Ad Terms and Their Relationship to Selling Price
Those of us who have dealt with the real estate market, we are all too familiar with the many terms used to describe a real estate property. Terms like “spacious”, “state of the art”, “charming”, etc., they all bring up different mindsets. To the untrained real estate investor, these terms can be confusing. However over time you start to get an understanding of what they really mean. For example, a “great neighborhood” often means that the houses in the neighborhood are nicer than the one being sold. No one will go out and say they’re selling you the ugliest house on the block, rather they’ll put a positive spin, such as you have a great neighborhood.
In any case, in the book Freakonomics, they did a detailed study of the many words used to describe real estate properties and they found strong correlations between the words used in the ads and the selling price of the properties. Now before I go on, please note that correlation means that the two items are related but it doesn’t mean that one causes the other. So for example, there is a correlation that cars painted yellow get in fewer acccidents. Does this mean that if you paint your car yellow you’re less likely to get into a car accident? Not at all. One does not explain the other. You have to look at other factors. In this particular example, the reason that yellow painted cars get into fewer accidents is because of the type of person who buys and drives a yellow car rather than just the color of the car.
Getting back to words that describe real estate properties, it’s been found that the 10 most common used in real estate ads do have strong correlations to the selling price.
Top Five Terms With Higher Selling Prices
Granite
State of the art
Corian
Maple
Gourmet
Top Five Terms With Lower Selling Prices
Fantastic
Spacious
!
Charming
Great Neighborhood
Very interesting! Why do these specific terms have strong correlations with higher or lower selling prices? The book goes on to debate this, and I’m sure some of them are obvious once you start to think about it. However for today what’s interesting to note is that the words in your real estate ad will ultimately affect your selling price.
Again, I strongly recommend the book Freakonomics. There’s lots of great information on many a topic, not just real estate. If you’re interested, you can buy a copy here through this Amazon.com link.
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Interesting Statistics About Real Estate Agents
I’ve been reading another interesting book called Freakonomics over the last week which is filled with lots of facts and great explanations behind them. In my next article I’ll even write about another real estate related metric I found in the book. But for now, heres today’s tidbit:
Real estate agents keep their own properties on the market an average of 10 days longer and sell them for an extra 3+%. To quote the book, on a house of $300,000, that means they sell it for an extra $10,000.
Freakonomics goes into more details as to the cause, and it’s nothing negative against the real estate agent. It’s simply all about incentives, and it makes perfect sense once you understand the facts. So let’s take a quick look.
Looking at that same $300,000 property again, after breaking up the commission, etc., the real estate agent’s average take is $4,500, or about 1.5% of the total purchase price. Now if we take a $310,000 property (adding the $10,000 difference), the real estate agent’s additional 1.5% revenue on $10,000 comes to a total of $150. Therefore the question is, is it worth it for the real estate agent to work an 10 additional days (have more showings, consume a lot of time, take away time from selling other properties, etc.) for $150? I agree with the author, probably not, the incentive just isn’t there. Would you work an additional 10 days for $150? (yes I understand that it’s not 8 hours a day for 10 days, but it still does eat up a lot of time over those 10 days). Now if you change that $150 difference to $10,000, then again I agree with the author, there is substantially more incentive there.
So although the statistics clearly show that the incentives are higher for a real estate agent to sell their own properties, can you blame them? I can’t. Is there a better way to align both your incentives? Probably but I’m not sure how. If you think you do, feel free to comment.
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Mouse Driver Chronicles
If you want to read a really good book on the entrepreneurial experience of a startup, I strongly recommend reading The Mouse Driver Chronicles. I recently picked up a copy at a local bookstore and I have to say I was impressed by what I read. A lot of the lessons and experiences they went through might seem like common sense, but as the authors put it, at the time it might not always seem so.
This book is the story of two guys who started a company to sell a product called MouseDriver, which is a computer mouse in the shape of a golf club head.
I strongly recommend picking up a copy and reading it when you can. Here’s the Amazon link to the book.
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