What I didn’t know at the time was that I was out of my depth.  I was (technically) smart enough but not nearly worldly enough for the role I was doing. I hadn’t yet developed the bullshit detector that nowadays I rely on so heavily. Basically, I mostly believed what people told me and made decisions based on an optimistic view of the circumstances presented. That all changed one day in late 1989.

It changed because of a large syndicated loan to build an office complex in downtown Melbourne. More than $250m of funding was required and our bank was proposing to provide $20m of it. To me the deal was a no-brainer – a good developer; strong leasing pre-commitments with the completion underwritten by a reputable finance company. I presented the deal to our credit committee expecting a rubber stamp approval. Instead I got shot down in flames.

One of the committee members was an experienced property guy (and ex-COO of one of the big 4 Australian banks) and he grilled me relentlessly about the credentials of the builder/developer, the state of the Melbourne office market and a myriad of other transaction risks that I had only paid cursory attention to. He kept asking me why I thought it was such a great deal – I’d reply as best as I could and then he’d explain to me what I had missed and why it was a actually a bad deal. In the end we didn’t lend the money and he was proved right when the deal tanked two years later.

After the meeting he pulled me aside and we had a long chat. He told me that if I wanted to succeed I had to prepare better; dig deeper to uncover the real risks; anticipate questions and objections in advance; and generally research more and speculate less. At one point he smiled and said – “Son, I’ve had a very long and successful career because I always aimed to be the best prepared guy in the room.”

This advice struck me like a thunderbolt and I never forgot it. Since that day 21 years ago it has been a bedrock principle for how I have operate. In times of uncertainty it has provided me with some protection from calamities occurring. It has reduced the number of “surprises” I encounter to a minimal level. Ultimately, it has stopped me speculating and providing opinions unless they are well-thought through. Needless to say I don’t use the words “I reckon” much anymore.

Being the best prepared guy in the room can provide you with a distinct competitive advantage that is difficult to beat. I thank my lucky stars that a grizzled old banker with decades of experience chose to share this advice with a young upstart like me. Thanks Stan – it worked better than I ever imagined! It is without doubt the single best piece of business advice I have ever received.

Article By the BULL: 

Swimming 40 laps in cold water just to feel alive is often avoided by most because it seems slightly masochistic.

Jumping out of planes at 5,000 metres to enjoy a 60 second thrill is only done by a few because for most it is categorized as insanity.

As outsiders looking in many activities may seem strange, obscure and to be avoided.

Some say it makes sense to pursue these activities because it feels great when you stop and others say it is about the long term benefits.

Why Twitter is Misunderstood

Twitter is an activity that for some that does not make sense. Why be limited to 140 characters when on Facebook or your blog you can write 500 words. Why only use text on Twitter when on Facebook you can embed a video or post an image to share with your friends.

So why tweet when you can Facebook? Why would you want to tweet about useless twaddle to a world that isn’t listening and doesn’t care about your favourite breakfast cereal.

At most dinner parties when discussions turn to social media , Facebook is understood and appreciated but Twitter ends up in the “Why?” category as the misunderstood poor second cousin.

A Global Reason To Use Twitter

We now reside and engage on a planet where 2 billion people have connections to the web and over 5 billion have mobile phones. On this web we share and socialize with friends and family. We also socialize online with complete strangers in foreign lands.

Why do we socialize and share with complete strangers online?

Have you ever joined a group because you you loved cars, photography or painting?  When you turned up for the first time did you feel that you belonged and said “This is my tribe!”

Twitter can connect you to a global tribe of people with similar interests and passions. It can provide a world wide community where the creativity and ideas flow in real time and inspire you to be the best and to learn at a level that your local school could never do.

When you communicate you can do it privately in a direct message (DM) or you can share it publicly your thoughts, findings and links via an open tweet.

Twitter connects you to a global world of hyper specialization that many do not even know exists. This is a world where niches become micro niches that you will not find in your local town.

How do you Find your Hyper Specialized Twitter Tribe?

There are many ways to discover your global tribe.

Here are 4 steps to find your tribe that I have found useful.

1. Perform a Google search for bloggers in your area of speciality and find the top ranked bloggers
2. Search for the bloggers Twitter name
3. Enter that name into the online tool Tweepi.com and find the bloggers Twitter followers
4. Follow their Twitter followers using Tweepi

The law of reciprocation will do the rest as some of those you followed will follow you back. It is similar to “Friending” people on Facebook.

You can then sit on the sidelines and watch the public stream of people in your new tribe as conversations and links pass by in real time and as it happens.

Over time as you make connections and share your own thoughts and findings this virtual world will produce real face to face meeting that will open doors and  provide global opportunities.

This wasn’t possible 5 years ago!

How do you find and build your global Twitter tribe? Look forward to hearing your story.

Jeff Bullas Blog:

These people are usually not entrepreneurs. Or they have only recently embarked down the road of entrepreneurial endeavour.

There are a few highly successful empire builders who would also disagree. But only a rare few of the empire builders that I have met would I consider entrepreneurs or entrepreneurial.

So, what am I getting at?

Well, if you speak to almost any successful serial business builder and ask them to tell you about their latest venture, he or she will start talking you about almost every aspect of the business… except the money. (And this is not because they don’t want to sound obnoxious or rude.)

Art versus Entrepreneurship

Not so long ago, a dear friend of mine scoffed when I mentioned that I’d had a meeting with Victoria University’s ‘Entrepreneur In Residence’.

“Entrepreneur in residence!” was his violent reaction. “Who do they think they are? The Faculty of Arts?”

My BA-wielding friend’s horror was seemingly provoked because Victoria University had unintentionally forced him to associate the ‘money-grubbing’ field of entrepreneurship with the noble Arts.

Outrageous, yes!

I was quietly (and strangely) upset. Yet, it took me weeks to understand why.

My friend’s reaction not only highlighted for me how poorly many otherwise rationale people still view entrepreneurs — at their core — even if they are not ready to acknowledge what is unarguably real prejudice. It also highlighted a huge misunderstanding about the drivers of entrepreneurship.

To my otherwise erudite, thoughtful, wonderful friend, entrepreneurship has always been and will always be solely driven by the desire to accumulate wealth (at all cost).

My first ‘artistic’ endeavour

In 2003, I set about creating my first work of art.

A dissatisfaction with the status quo had created a desire from deep within to comment and share this dissatisfaction through art.

Despite having never picked up a paint brush (my former artistic achievements had peaked with finger painting), I set about creating my first public showing.

Of course, I had doodled behind closed doors over the years. But this no longer was providing the satisfaction I craved.

So, in the traditions of Warhol and Takashi Murakami, I created a workshop.

In the beginning, I worked alone. After a while, I brought on apprentices and involved like-minded artisan.

Within a matter of months, my first artwork was ready.

I found an agent willing to push my art out into the world and I organised a launch party, with free chardonnay and canapes for friends and prospective buyers of my art.

Like many struggling artists, my work was not met with critical acclaim. It didn’t create a buzz. In fact, it barely raised a hum. But that didn’t matter. I was living the dream. I was enjoying the Bohemian lifestyle (i.e. poverty) because I was gaining fulfillment through my art. I was experiencing a sense of purpose like I’d never felt before.

And, with that purpose, came strength.

My second showing was better than the first, fueled by this strength. The critics began to take notice and a few daring early benefactors began to make purchases. And, with each purchase, my artistic endeavour was nudged closer and closer to commercial sustainability.

By my fourth showing, the market was talking, the art-lovers were buying and the art prizes soon followed, presented by veteran artists, who too understood the feeling of exhilaration, passion and meaning that only their art could provide.

They also knew that many artists never achieve commercial success (usually due to lack of appropriate education) and that, when an artist is able to break free from the shackles of wage-slavery to pursue their art as a profession, this achievement is worthy of celebration.

This artist had made good!

Of course, I’m talking about Anthill Magazine.

My dissatisfaction was with the mainstream media (the ‘old guard’). My projects and showings were magazine editions. My ‘doodlings’ were business plans and other endeavours that never made it past the drawing board. (My maths abilities peaked in Year 7.)  My ‘like-minded artesan’ were writers, designers and any help I could find. My ‘daring early benefactors’ were advertisers and angels. My agents were retail distributors.

The chardonnay and canapes were… Chardonnay and canapes.

So, what IS entrepreneurship about?

If entrepreneurship is not about wealth creation, then, what’s it actually about?

What drives entrepreneurs to do what they do?

Having spent thousands of hours, over eight years, interviewing and writing about hundreds of entrepreneurs (aspiring, successful, infectious and otherwise), I can say with certainty that the most successful entrepreneurs — successful in life, love, health and wealth — are not driven by wealth creation.

Put simply, they are driven by the process of creation itself.

Anthill Magazine: Link to original story...

That shift in focus can be a good thing… unless in the process your business starts to drift away from what made it successful in the first place.

Here are eight easy ways to tell your business may be losing its edge — and jeopardizing its long-term future:

1.  The parking lot is empty at 5.30 p.m. Once there weren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done; now there aren’t enough hours in the day to maintain a “proper” work-life balance. Growing a small business requires tremendous effort, effort that doesn’t always stop at 5 p.m. If you or your employees aren’t staying late at least occasionally, that’s a sign you’ve lost the drive and excitement that once propelled your business. Employees want to stay late when their work is meaningful. Start projects or initiatives everyone can rally around. Find an “enemy.” Build a sense of mission; that’s your job.
2. Meetings are an end in themselves. When you started out you didn’t have “meetings.” You pulled people together to share news, you asked for ideas, you solved problems… but you didn’t schedule meetings. Spending time in meetings was a luxury you couldn’t afford. Now you meet regularly simply because that’s what successful companies do; sometimes you meet just to decide if you need to have additional meetings. Any meeting that does not result in decisions, action items, and accountability isn’t a meeting — it’s a social occasion. Get back to holding as few meetings as possible, take hardcore steps to make sure any meetings you do hold are effective, and otherwise stick to getting things done.
3. Interpersonal skills are more important than results. Remember the programmer who seemed a little odd but built your first database? Remember the salesperson who was a little too demanding in-house but landed all your big customers? Remember the warehouse worker who seemed to have no friends on the staff but was amazingly organized and kept product flowing? Once upon a time you overlooked a few minor social faults; now you worry more about how individuals “get along” than about how they perform. (I can trace the turning point of a company I worked for to the day upper management decided how we as supervisors interacted with each other was more important than how each of us worked with our respective teams.)  Some behaviors should not be tolerated; otherwise, manage through any interpersonal squabbles and find ways to build an effective team when that team includes a superstar. Talent deserves some — not a lot, but some — latitude.
4. The lights are on… but no one is home. Early on you worried about every dollar; it was easy since you had few dollars to keep track of. You turned out lights, turned down the heat, re-used packaging and paper… you worried about every expense. Now your focus has shifted over a few zeros and you only worry about hundreds of dollars — but if a dollar was worth saving when you had very few, isn’t it still worth saving when you have a lot? Lights left on are always a waste. Heat left turned up is always a waste. Just because you have it doesn’t mean you should spend it. When you lose focus on spending, so will your employees — to an even greater degree than you.
5. You say, “What we need is…” instead of, “What we should do is…” Early on you solved problems and overcame obstacles through ingenuity, creativity, and effort. Now you throw money at problems. “Easier” is not always better or more productive. I visited a company that spent $265,000 on new computers with faster processors, but since most employees only access spreadsheets and simple databases processor speed was a non-issue. They chose to buy new because new must be better and old meant employees “didn’t have every tool they need to do their jobs.” In a start-up every expense is justified on a cost-benefit basis. Should that ever change?
6. New ideas seem too hard to even try. When the day-to-day feels overwhelming it can seem impossible to add new items to an already crowded plate… but a business that stays what it is today will not be in business next year. If you don’t have time to try something new you’re doing something wrong. Prune a few dead projects and plant new ones. Make “idea” a verb, not a noun. (If nothing else you’ll have more fun.)
7. You think in terms of customers, not individuals. When I first started writing for BNET in February I was lucky to get 50 page views a day, so it was easy for me to picture a person reading a post. (After all, there were so few.) I now average 350,000-400,000 page views a month, so it’s easy to think of readers as a collective mass — but the fact remains that behind every page view is a person. My job is to engage, inform, and occasionally (hopefully) entertain that person. Your job is the same: You may make thousands of sales each month but behind every sale is a person. When you first started out you were excited to land a new customer; you still should be, even if you add dozens of new customers every week.  Never think of your customers as a collective mass; no matter how large your customer base, it is still made up of individuals. And speaking of customers…
8. You think most of your customers are irritating and even stupid. Let me guess. Sometimes you say, “Jeez, that guy just doesn’t get it.” Maybe he doesn’t because you haven’t described your services well enough or explained how you provide real value. Or sometimes you say, “If I have to answer that question one more time…” Maybe you do because you haven’t made sure the customer understands. Or sometimes you say, “I can’t believe they are asking us to do that.” Why shouldn’t they? If they don’t ask they can’t receive. “Stupid” customers are the lifeblood of your business — if they can do it themselves they don’t need you. You’ve definitely lost your edge when you see customers as a necessary evil. Instead, find meaning in what you sell. Customers are the best friends your business has — customers write the checks.

By Jeff Haden | Link to original story....

Results of the “Social Shopping Study”, conducted by PowerReviews in association with the e-tailing group, indicate that consumers who shop online are on a mission to get thorough information about products and find the best prices before they buy.

About half of the survey respondents spent 75 percent of their overall online shopping time researching products, compared to about one in five just a year ago. That’s a considerable increase.

When it comes to purchases such as computers and televisions, 71 percent of respondents say they spend a few days or more doing online research. Some respondents claim to spend “a few weeks” (18 percent) on research. Almost half of these online shoppers (44 percent) start with a search engine and look for top search results for the products that interest them. That’s a lot of time and effort to save a few dollars…

Amazon gets high scores from consumers as a place for product information, reviews, and price comparisons.

•     Fifty-eight percent of survey respondents say they use reviews and ratings at Amazon as part of their research “all the time” or “very often.”
•     In comparison, just 29 percent say they use Google Shopping to read product reviews, but that’s a good showing for Google’s relatively new service.
•     Sixty-three percent think the reviews and recommendations found at Amazon are “extremely or very credible.”
•     Of those who use their mobile phones for shopping, 36 percent look for competitive pricing on Amazon while they are in a physical store.

One of the more interesting findings is what consumers say about social media.

Facebook and Twitter are not highly regarded when it comes to shopping research.

•     In fact, half (49 percent) of respondents says they “never” use social media to research products they want to purchase online.
•     Only 13 percent say a company Facebook page has a significant impact on their buying behavior, while 59 percent of respondents say it is customer reviews of products that influence them, and 42 percent indicate it is customers asking and answering products about questions that influence them.

The survey respondents were pretty evenly split between male and female, with the predominant age group being 35 – 44 (31 percent), followed by 45 – 54 (26 percent) and 25 – 34 (24 percent). Forty-two percent of the respondents said they shopped online several times a month in the past year.

So what does this mean for your online sales channel approach?

1. Online shoppers have discovered how to do research prior to purchase, they take it seriously and invest a lot of time and effort into it. If you don’t have sufficient information available for your products and services, you’re probably going to miss out on a lot of sales.
2. Online retail shoppers seem to rely on Amazon for product reviews and to check prices. Which is important to know if you’re selling a product that is or could be sold on Amazon…
3. I have been saying this all along… Facebook and Twitter are not a factor in (most) online purchasing decisions. It doesn’t mean it won’t change in the future, just that it’s not your lowest hanging fruit if you’re focused on sales. Sales is a four-step process. Knowing when to engage social media is beyond a free blog post. It’s what I share and teach my clients – sorry!

Published by Dr Marc Dussault

There are many things that may seem urgent and important, but these can distract you from doing those things that are not urgent but are important that can be lost in the noise and activity of the day to day “busy-ness”.

So how do you set priorities and determine what is important for your focus and time?
What is Important?

The US President Eisenhower’s quote sums it up well. “What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important”.  Stephen Covey the author of “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” developed and popularized this with a matrix that provides busy people with a framework and tool to prioritize their time.

Stephen Coveys time management matrix

Twitter can be both a distraction and an interruption but is also an important tool for planning, marketing and networking for business.

So How Can You Use Twitter for Business?

In a previous post “How to Create Credibility and Trust on Twitter“, I highlighted the importance of combining the use of Twitter with blogging to create a social media content marketing “Synergy” with substance.

These Twitter tips and tactics for business should be read in that context. It also important to keep in mind that creating a “Strategy for Twitter” is also valuable and essential.

Networking

This is never urgent but it is important as people like doing business with people. Networking with the right people will bring you medium to long term strategic business.

1.     Find bloggers and authorities in your industry and follow them on Twitter and see what they tweet about and what content they link to
2.     From this content look at what content you can create to tweet and blog about for your own  blog
3.     Retweet their content regularly not just once whether it is a tweet or from their blog
4.     If they are local, ask to catch up for a coffee
5.     Request an interview via Twitter and record the interview on video or if that is not possible use a list of questions that you can turn into a written blog post Q & A interview format.
6.     Publish that interview on your blog and then promote it on Twitter. I can almost guarantee you that they will then promote it to their networks
7.     Promote them on Twitter with referrals recommending them
8.     Use Twitter’s private “Direct Message” channel (DM) to connect with influential bloggers and influencers as you may find they respond to that better than an email.

Remember it is not about asking them for a favour, it is about how you can help them with no expectation of anything in return

Research

Research keeps you ahead of the curve and is never urgent but often ignored or forgotten.

1.     Put search items into Twitter using key words that are imporatant in your industry or niche. You will find out what is happening globally!
2.     Search on Twitter to see what is being said about and by your competitors
3.     Put your brand name into Twitter to find out what is being said about you in real time
4.     Use # Tags to search on Twitter that will keep you updated on key terms that are vital in your industry. A great tool to do this quickly is hashtags.org
5.     Use “Advanced Twitter Search” (this provides the capability of doing local searches with a certain mile radius) to keep an eye on news and events locally in your city or region.
6.     Discover trends using Twitter with tools such as Monitter.com which even allows you the capability to narrow the search to a particular geographic location.
7.     Tweet links to your surveys on Facebook, blogs or website

Twitter will deliver real time updates and research on your industry that will surprise you

Marketing

Twitter is capable of delivering information, content and marketing messages globally and locally to your particular niche. Twitter should be integrated and embedded on as many of your online properties as possible.

1.     Increasing your Twitter followers is the foundation to your Twitter marketing efforts. This should be done in a focused manner by following people in your category using the Twitter “Yellow Pages” tool Twellow.com. Another app that I have found useful to follow the followers of top bloggers in your industry is Tweepi.com
2.     Run special deals and promotions on Twitter that you can use to drive traffic or move slow moving stock (exanple Dell)
3.     Announce an event on Twitter
4.     Include retweet buttons on your content areas of your website and blog that makes it easy for people to share your content
5.     Integrate Twitter into Facebook
6.     Load the Twitter app on LinkedIn
7.     Seek sponsors for an event or contest
8.     Promote your blog posts on Twitter
9.     Use # tags at your events to crowd source online mobile marketing
10.     Include Twitter ID on all your offline and online marketing material
11.     Automate relevant tweets that span 24 hours so your global customers can receive it in their time zone. SocialOomph.com professional edition can do this both as a once off and as recurring tweets.
12.     Tweet special Twitter only coupons so you can track the success of your Twitter marketing efforts

Share on twitter constantly and make it easy and frictionless for people to retweet your brand. Marketing is about being everywhere. Allow and enable the social network power of “World of Mouth” !!

Personal Branding

Position yourself as an expert within your company and industry. Personal branding synergizes your corporate brand. A personal Twitter account and blog can enhance both you and your company.

1.     Help solve other people’s problems by answering questions on Twitter
2.     Tweet  links to your blog posts that answer problems and provides tip, tactics and ideas
3.     Tweet links to your Powerpoint presentations on Slideshare
4.     Tweet links to presentations recorded on Video and posted to YouTube
5.     If you are speaking at an event, tweet about it prior to the conference
6.     Include a link to your personal blog on your personal Twitter account
7.     Share photos on Twitter that validate your speaking at events and conferences, this will aid and enhance your credibility visually. Twitpic makes this easy and convenient to do on Twitter

Customer Service

Customer service is the the “ultimate” marketing tool as great customer service delivers those all important referrals that take you from compete to collaborate.

1.     Improve customer service (A good case study on this is “ Zappos” an online shoe retailer)  by picking up conversations about your company that you might not be aware
2.     Respond quickly to any problem tweets on your Twitter account to shut down any impending service or potentially damaging PR disasters.
3.     Check your Twitter account regularly and respond to questions and comments in a timely fashion

What is worth also keeping in mind is that Twitter is now embedded in the Apple’s iPhone native menu along with text messages with the announcement of the new Apple  iPhone 4s with its new mobile iOS5 operating system.

So Twitter is about to be a native app in all of Apples new mobile products and will lead to Twitter becoming more viral and embedded in an increasingly social web.

How do you use Twitter for your business? Look forward to hearing your stories!

Jeff Bullas Blog

But take heart: Sometimes all you need are a few tweaks here and there.

"A little attention to this area is better than none," notes the Guru Hub blog, which offers advice like this for creating SEO-friendly content:

Arrange your post's content in logical order. Think back to the essay format you learned in grade school: an introductory paragraph followed by supporting evidence and a conclusion. It improves readability for human visitors, and will earn a search engine's approval.

Pay attention to word count. According to Guru Hub, an article should contain at least 200 words. (For eyeballing purposes, most Get to the Po!nt newsletters are between 250 and 300 words.) They recommend writing to a target length in the 400-to-500-word range.

Be sure to use local keywords. If your company offers products or services to a specific region, incorporate terms that local customers will likely use when searching for companies in your area.

Choose an image that complements your text. This provides visual interest for the reader, and you gain SEO points with a keyword in the photo description tag.

Don't duplicate and resubmit content. As with keyword stuffing, this raises major red flags for search engines—and they'll likely treat you like a spammer. "That could be the kiss of death for your site," Guru Hub notes, "so be very careful."

The Po!nt: Tweak it one more time. If your blog delivers valuable content, you're already winning most of your SEO battles—but why stop short of a total victory?

Source: Guru Hub.

Read more:

I was talking to a couple I had just met, and the topic turned to the beauty of the neighborhood. “Wow, I didn’t even realize this area was here”, the guy said, “It’s beautiful and old and the trees are giant and all of families hang out together outside as if it were still 1950!”. “Yeah”, said his wife, “We should really move here!”.

Then the discussion turned to the comparatively affordable housing, and the other benefits of living in my particular town.  By the end of it, these people were verbally working out the details of a potential move within just a few months.

Except their plan was absurd.

Because these two full-time professional workers currently happen to live and work in “Broomfield”, a city that is about 19 miles and 40 minutes of mixed high-traffic driving away from here. They brushed off the potential commute, saying “Oh, 40 minutes, that’s not too bad.”

Yes, actually it IS too bad! … But this misconception about what is a reasonable commute is probably the biggest thing that is keeping most people in the US and Canada poor.

Let’s take a typical day’s drive for this self-destructive couple. Adding 38 miles of round-trip driving at the IRS’s estimate of total driving cost of $0.51 per mile, there’s $19 per day of direct driving and car ownership costs. It is possible to drive for less, but these people happen to have fairly new cars, bought on credit, so they are wasting the full amount.

Next is the actual human time wasted. At 80 minutes per day, the self-imposed driving would be adding the equivalent of almost an entire work day to each work week – so they would now effectively be working 6 workdays per week.

After 10 years, multiplied across two cars since they have different work schedules, this decision would cost them about $125,000 in wealth (if they had for example chosen to put the $19/day into extra payments on their mortgage), and 1.3 working years worth of time, EACH, spent risking their lives daily behind the wheel*.

That’s EVERY ten years. And that’s with a commute that most Americans claim is “not too bad”.

You’ll note that most 30-year-old couples today, about 10 years into adulthood, don’t even have $125,000 in net worth. And they probably drive around quite a bit in expensive financed cars, mostly as part of a self-imposed commute. These facts are directly related!

The alternative I would have recommended to this couple, if they had asked my opinion, would be to make sure their house is within biking distance of both jobs, immediately sell both borrowed cars and replace them with a single ten-year-old manual transmission hatchback, and finally, let the good times roll. Setting aside $10k to keep the new car on the road, they will certainly enjoy their $115,000 of extra cash after ten short years, and if they combine this trick with a few of the other MMM classics, they’ll be able to move to historic old-town Longmont as EARLY RETIREES within ten years, instead of being broke wage slaves still commuting out of here each morning when the year 2021 rolls around.

Now, I will admit that it is of course possible to bring your cost per mile down somewhat. That’s one of my own specialties, which is why I still keep a car of my own around for affordable family roadtrips. If you buy the right car for $5,000, you might be able to squeeze 100,000 miles out of it with no major repairs. In this case the car depreciation is 5 cents per mile.

Gas, at $3.50 per 35 miles (assuming 35MPG), is 10 cents/mile
Tires, at $300 per 50,000 miles are 0.6 cents
Oil, at $25 per 5,000 miles is 0.5 cents
Miscellaneous things like wipers and occasional maintenance visits: $200 per 20,000 miles = 1 cent

So the ultimate cheap driving in a paid-off economy car still costs at least 17 cents per mile. Most people cannot drive this cheaply. And this is ignoring the cost of insurance since I’ll assume you’d have a car even if you didn’t commute to work. Most people aren’t willing to go completely car-free (although if you are, good for you!).

Besides the option of picking a home close to wherever your work happens to be, there may also be the option of living in the town of your dreams without signing up for a commute – get a new job! (There are apparently plenty of them here in my own city, many being worked by people who commute in from other places, even while an equal number of people commute OUT of my town to work somewhere else).

But despite the availability of both of these options, the idea of living close to work still seems to be completely alien to most people I’ve met. While I would personally consider it far more important than even the salary or the work performed, most people put commute distance below house price, perceived school quality, and neighborhood preference. With such a low threshold placed on commuting, most people don’t even put a reasonable effort into creating a nice local lifestyle for themselves. As you saw with the couple in my example above. They were willing to go from their existing negligible commute, to an Insane Asylum 80 minute round trip, just because they liked the scenic and neighborly vibe of my neighborhood.

“Schools” are often used as an excuse as well, but until you’ve reviewed every close-to-work school personally and interviewed the principal, you might be making quite a bad trade-off for your kids. What’s better – higher standardized test scores and more rich kids, or real-world diversity and an extra two hours to spend with Mom and Dad every day reading books? And how about an extra $300 grand or so towards the college fund, that you didn’t burn up in cars and gas during her school career?

To put things back on par, let’s whip up a couple of quick commuting equations. Let’s assume the average person’s marginal driving cost is halfway between the Ultra-Mustachian driver figure of 17 cents per mile, and Uncle Sam’s generous 51 cent allowance. So, 34 cents. Let’s also assume the value of a person’s time is $25 per hour, since this is close to a median wage for a suburban commuter. (If you don’t think you’d use your newfound leisure time that productively, you need to think more like an Early Retiree. I used mine for plenty of learning and domestic insourcing).

For each mile you drive across two times on your round trip to work daily, it multiplies to 500 miles per year, or a $170 annual fee
For each of these miles, you waste about 6 minutes in the round trip, adding to 25 hours per year ($625 of your time).

So each mile you live from work steals $795 per year from you in commuting costs.

$795 per year will pay the interest on $15,900 of house borrowed at a 5% interest rate.

In other words, a logical person should be willing to pay about $15,900 more for a house that is one mile closer to work, and $477,000 more for a house that is 30 miles closer to work. For a double-commuting couple, these numbers are $31,800 and $954,000.

Adapting the numbers for a $7.50 minimum wage earner, each mile of car commuting cuts $1.43 from your workday. If you drive 10 miles to go work a 5-hour shift at the Outback Steakhouse, your effective hourly wage is more like $5 per hour after subtracting car costs and adding drive time.

And these are all numbers for the United States, where cars and gasoline are much, much cheaper than they are in almost any other country. In Canada, you can add 30% to the gas prices and 50% to the car prices. In the UK, still more.

If these numbers sound ridiculous, it’s because they are. It is ridiculous to commute by car to work if you realize how expensive it is to drive, and if you value your time at anything close to what you get paid. I did these calculations long before getting my first job, and because of them I have never been willing to live anywhere that required me to drive myself to work**. It’s just too expensive, and there is always another option when choosing a job and a house if you make it a priority.

And making that easy choice is probably the biggest single boost that will get the average person from poverty to financial independence over a reasonable period of time. I would say that biking more and driving less was the trigger in my own life that started a chain reaction of savings and happy lifestyle changes that led my wife and I to retirement in our early 30s.

Now, all this doesn’t mean you have to set up a tent on your employer’s front lawn to avoid going broke. Public transit, although an afterthought in most of the US, is great if it’s available to you, because you get your brain and your hands back for the purpose of getting some of your day’s work done while enroute.

But if you can walk or bike to work, it will cost you virtually nothing. And it also doesn’t count as using up your personal time because it is adding something that nobody except Olympic athletes is doing enough of anyway – exercise. You can take your time spent riding your bike ride directly out of time you would have otherwise spent in the gym, or waiting in the doctor’s office for prescription medication.

So there’s my answer for this potential new set of neighbors. I’ll see you in ten years!

And now that the truth has at last been revealed about the foolishness of commuting, I’m looking forward to reading about the empty interstates and bicycle-filled streets tomorrow morning.

* Note that I wrote this whole rant without bringing up that whole pesky “destroying the entire Earth” issue, since that part is controversial in the United States.. so I figured it’s best just to focus on making you rich :-)

** For the Record, I grew up in the Great Lakes area, on the Canadian side just a 30 minute drive North of Buffalo, NY. Then I spent a few years in an area much colder – Ottawa, Canada, with a climate slightly worse than Minneapolis, MN. Biking year-round in these conditions was completely feasible (and even fun), and I’ll do a post on how to enjoy winter bike commuting later this fall!

*** Also for the record, my wife and I still bike year-round here in Colorado, including for grocery shopping and dropping our Kindergartener off at school – thanks to the magic of a bike trailers. Do a search on your local Craigslist and change your biking life.

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Most people who went to grad school did it to prolong adolescent needs for grade-based approval. (Note: This analysis comes from writers at the Chronicle for Higher Education.) This is because the grad school model is generally outdated for today’s workforce, and high performers see this before they enroll. But people who are scared of trying to hold their own in the workforce see grad school as a way around the inevitable difficulties of finding a job one enjoys.

Here are three reasons why it’s a decent bet to stay away from candidates with graduate degrees when you need to hire at your startup:

1. Humanities are for people who are afraid of adult life.

My experience with graduate school was for English. I tried it when I couldn’t figure out what job I was qualified to do.

The answer, in fact, was that I was not qualified to do any job before grad school — but I was not qualified to do any job after grad school either. So I left early, without the degree, when I realized graduate school is stupid.

It’s not just the field of English that is a dead end. One would have had a better chance surviving the Titanic than getting a job as any type of humanities professor. Humanities PhD programs suck up time and energy with little return.

Most people who go to grad school for humanities defend their decision by saying they love their topic. But look, if you love your topic, you can do it after work. Just open a book and read it on your own.

2. Business school is for people who lack ideas and initiative.

The big question you should ask when business school graduates tell you they want to work for your startup is: Why did these people just dump $100,000 into a business degree instead of dumping it into their own company?

If they really wanted to work at a startup, why didn’t they launch one? Clearly, money was not the barrier, because they had $100,000 to burn. So it’s something else.

I think they don’t start companies because they do not have any ideas. Or, in the case where a person actually does have ideas, he doesn’t believe in himself enough to give his own ideas a shot.

So why should you believe in this person?

Take a look at how many smart people write about how business school is not a good path to entrepreneurship. The only reason we are even talking about business school in relation to entrepreneurship is that so many people want to be entrepreneurs that business schools had to launch entrepreneurship programs to attract those people.

During my days as a journalist, I interviewed Saras Sarasvathy, from Dartmouth’s business school. She explained to me the research about the traits of a successful entrepreneur. And believe me, none of those traits requires a degree from business school.

3. Law school is for people who lack creativity and will likely fail in the workplace.

Yes, this is a generalization. But there is pretty good evidence to back up this generalization.

For starters, most lawyers hate being lawyers. There are five, big myths about being a lawyer, but the main problem boils down to this: To get in to law school, you have to be great at school (reading and regurgitating back to the professors what they want to hear) and you have to be great at test-taking (the LSAT still rules admissions).

So law school selects for people who are rule followers and like to be told what to do.

But to be a successful lawyer, you have to be great at marketing and client relations. Otherwise you won’t make any money because you won’t bring in any business.

People applying to law school ignore this problem. (And so do law schools, but that’s another story.) The reason law students ignore it is because they are so desperate to have a clear path to money based on the skills they have exhibited in school. The desperate need for a safe route makes people ignore the fact that law school is very, very high risk for an unhappy life.

4. People with multiple degrees will be a pain in the ass.

Why would anyone get two degrees? It’s like being a triple major. Anyone who is a triple major as an undergrad is likely to be awful to work with. A triple major is myopic in her knowledge, insecure with her own identity, and desperate to impress. There is no good reason to have a triple major in a world where it’s clear that an undergraduate education does not really teach you anything about your major anyway.

The same can be said about people with multiple graduate degrees. It’s just that as an undergrad, the triple major is trying to find an excuse not to have to socialize. A graduate student is trying to find an excuse not to have to embark on adult life. And that’s not the kind of person who’s going to add a lot of value to your company.

Which leads me to the best hire you can make: Someone who faces the difficulties of adult life head on and takes personal responsibility for building his own skills. Someone who makes time to develop social skills, test his own ideas, and take risks that are scary but necessary for growth.

Those people often look messy. Adult life is messy. But it’s better to hire someone who has waded through the mess of growing up than someone who has avoided it at all cost.

By Penelope Trunk: BNET - link to original story.....