This is my once a year diatribe about working for yourself. Advantages:
1. You get the salary you determine.
2. You get 10 times or more your most recent year’s profit when you sell the business. That’s the “double whammy” of owning your own business. Salary and sale.
3. You make your own mistakes. You learn from them.
4. Growing a business is much faster (and much cheaper) these days because of services like Facebook, Google and Twitter. In the old days we had to use direct mail. That was expensive. Really expensive.
5. When things go awry, you can fix them quickly. You don’t have to wait on some distant boss’s slow approval.
6. You set your own “culture” and make your own rules. Which means you might get people working for you who like working for you or like the Mission. Not because they’re paid some high salary.
7. If you buy a business you can improve it. No business can’t be improved without attention to customers. Better sales and better service actually work. Listening to your customers also works. Most companies don’t.
I get real gloomy when the market is down, as it was last week. I need to remind myself that last week’s Crimea blip was a blip. I feel better this morning after looking at these charts.
Boeing will get hit because of news of hairline cracks in Dreamliner wings and the disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777. If it drops much more, I’m picking up more BA.
Things I learned over the weekend.
+. You need one email address you can dump every six months — after the spammers have discovered it and are inundating you with spam.
+ Windows 7’s Snipping Tool is a really useful piece of software. I use it to clip the charts above from Fidelity.
+ If your Fidelity Active Pro software starts messing up, create a new user. You’ll have to re-design your charts and positions layout, but you won’t have to wait 30 minutes on hold.
+ Some TV channels now allow you to steam them to your laptop. I’ve had success with The Tennis Channel and Bloomberg. CNBC sometimes works, though not this morning. The good news is that you can now watch back sessions of shows like 60 Minutes, Jon Stewart’s Today Show, The Colbert Report, etc.
+ Roku lets you watch thousands of shows from places like HBO, Netflix, Amazon Prime, PBS nd a million others. Roku is the greatest gadget since the machine to slice bread.
+ This sun is not your friend.
+ If you need to anonymously surf the Internet, get this software:
+ Coca-Cola made in Mexico has real sugar, not yuchy corn syrup. You can buy real Coke in California.
+ LG makes superb washing machines and dryers. Michael and Anne researched these things extensively before they settled on LG. I’ve been using LG daily since we arrived in our rental house at the beginning of March. They work like a charm. I actually like washing.
+ We rented a Ford Fusion from National. It’s an amazingly good car. Great brakes, Sirius radio, input for an iPhone and a USB charging port. I like driving it. Susan says she prefers her Mercedes. It “has better vision.” I drive the Fusion around town occasionally. I haven’t hit anything, yet.
+ Don’t ever buy a “scratch resistant” coating for your new glasses. The coating itself scratches, and ruins your glasses. At that point get a replacement lens without the coating.
+ Don’t ski without a helmet. If you ever fall and hit your head, get yourself immediately to a hospital — no matter how you feel. Seriously, people have felt OK, then died several hours later.
+ This is the amazing speed we’re getting from Time Warner in our La Quinta rented house from Time Warner. You should get at least this speed at your home.
+ from reader Kristin Zhivago on the virtues of Apple Macs:
I switched to a MacBook Air from a ThinkPad – after years of being a dedicated ThinkPad user – about two years ago. I’ve never looked back. I had the advantage of using Macs back in the day, for design work. So perhaps I had a leg up on how Macs think.
Contrary to what has been posted here – in Harry’s column and by Barry – I was IMMEDIATELY more productive on the Mac platform than I was on the Windows platform. I spend only a fraction of the time “fussing” with technology; things just work. Yes, the Mac requires a change in your way of thinking, and there are many things that fall into the category of “assumptive intuition” in the OS, where Apple assumes the next step is more obvious than it is. But there is no question I am more productive with the Mac, and I even quickly adjusted to the keyboard (I thought I would really miss the ThinkPad pointing stick; I have not).
In spite of my nerdiness, I can spend literally hours at a stretch trying to fix a problem with a Windows machine (my husband is still holding on to an old ThinkPad due to some specialized software). Every problem I’ve ever had with a Mac gets solved in minutes.
I would never, ever go back to using Windows machines. Hubby is even almost completely off the ThinkPad, and I am looking forward to the day when I can take it outside, and throw it over the railing of our 2nd-story deck to our concrete patio below. I’ve wasted too many hours on that piece of . . . equipment.
Barry, I’m a little surprised about what you say about a new folder while in Word. I’m assuming you want to create the new folder when you’re saving a doc? If so, if you use “save as,” there is a “new folder” button in the lower left corner of the dialog box. No need to go out to Finder.
Favorite tennis picture. John Isner, who’s 6′ 9″, and his girlfriend, who’s not. She’s standing on her toes.
Favorite totally useless information:
Favorite picture of Harry Gramps (that’s me) from weekend: Note: Eleanor, four months now, ThinkPad and grotesque, bulging stomach — a function of the good life in California.
What is Celibacy?
Celibacy can be a choice in life, or a condition imposed by circumstances.
While attending a Marriage Weekend, Frank and his wife Ann listened to the instructor declare, “It is essential that husbands and wives know the things that are important to each other.”
He then addressed the men. “Can you name and describe your wife’s favorite flower?”
Frank leaned over, touched Ann’s arm gently, and whispered, “Gold Medal-All-Purpose, isn’t it?”
And thus began Frank’s life of celibacy.
Harry Newton who loved yesterday’s final between Djokovic and Federer. If you missed it, it’s repeated on The Tennis Channel this evening.
The PC vs. Mac debate runs deep with many people. As they say, “one man’s (or woman’s) meat is another man’s poison. Kristin loves her Mac and it’s been great for her. But after trying the iMac, I was literally thrilled to get back to my PC. By the way Kristin, one doesn’t only create a new folder in MS Word when saving a new file. Sometimes one does it to organize files and then you do have to go to “Finders” to create the file on a Mac.
I would also add that in my opinion Apple mistakenly favors form over function and it is apparent in many areas. For example, they made the new iMacs much thinner – 5mm at the edges. This may look “cool,” but isn’t practical because the user doesn’t look at it from the side s/he looks at it from the front and from the front it looks the same as it always did. But to achieve this new svelte form they had to eliminate the optical drive, glue on the monitor screen making access for repair or upgrade virtually impossible and create a smaller interior space more prone to overheating. It may look “awesome,” as the kids like to say, but I’d much prefer to have the functionality.
I spent a lot of time on a home appliance troubleshooting forum a few months back. A long-time appliance repairman said something that stuck with me. To paraphrase, he said that a good rule of thumb was to stick with companies that have been making appliances for 50+ years: GE, Maytag, Kenmore, Whirlpool, etc. Overall, they will last longer. If they need repair, they are easier to repair, and those companies stand behind the products better since they are not also making cell phones.
We too rent a house every summer with an LG washer/drier, and they are amazing. Still, when it’s time for me to buy for the home again, I may take the appliance repairman’s advice.
By the way, spoke with a tow truck driver this morning. His new car? Nissan Altima. I put great stock into what tow truck drivers own. (To be fair, not a lot of Mercedes/BMW/Audi drivers).