I got taken to the woodshed early this morning. I lost without honor. I have a litany of excuses. But none make up for the depressing feeling I get when I lose at tennis or my portfolio drops a nickel.
I never had these yo-yo feelings when I ran my own business. I knew we were on the right track. I could adjust things when things went awry.
But I sold the business and now I spend far too much time figuring what to do with the proceeds. It’s what Susan and I live on.
Virtually all the places my meager money is invested in are out of my control. That’s what drives me nuts.
I read the reports. I listen to the conference calls. I speak to the executives. And I scream. “That’s not the way you do it.”
But my rants do me no good because no one listens. They all know better. And some actually do.
I like my dictionary. I’m in control. I like this column because it’s mine. But 100 or 1000 shares of Google? One day it’s up. One day it’s down. Up and down like a whore’s drawers. (Australian expression.)
I’m guessing “sophisticated” investors have learned to live with these gyrations. But it’s hard for ex-CEOs, like me. We were in control. Now we’re not.
Why am I writing this? If you’re thinking of selling your business, think of what’s next. Investing your ill-gotten gains does NOT produce the satisfaction that earning them did.
I thought at one stage that I’d invest some of the gains in startups and work with the entrepreneurs to help grow their business. But no one listens — unless I have 51%. I don’t have that sort of money.
So, it’s back to my OWN business. I have some ideas. I really do like the opportunities in making apps for Apple’s AppStore. I’ll have my dictionary out in six weeks. Amazon will sell millions. I really control Amazon.
I’ll have my “In Search of the Perfect Investment” book out in nine months. But they’re fun things. Legacy things. Not real zillion dollar profits. Meantime, that AppStore seriously appeals.
Why did I buy a $27 modem? Every reader thinks I’m nuts. Sadly, I still do need to send faxes. For several years, I’ve printed them out, put them in my 20-year Panasonic fax machine, and dialed up. It’s tedious and boring.
I saw this darling little $27 fax modem
and I thought, “That’s useful.” My laptop doesn’t have a modem.
A reader called DRM emailed:
Harry,
I need to send a fax about once a month to my financial institution. I travel a lot around the world and don’t have access to phone lines … I used to use Skype … but then they discontinued the fax service
I now use some Windows software called Voxox to send fax from my laptop. Its something similar to Skype but also has the ability to fax . You have to sign up and purchase a minimum credit (I think it was $10) .. and then you are able to send unlimited fax to USA numbers over the internet. It works great for me. I’ve been using it for a couple of years with my original credit purchase. No hardware required! It also has the ability to make phone calls over the internet … but I don’t use that … i use Google voice.
She earned $75 million+ last year. And deserves every penny.
You can watch Taylor Swift’s latest video here. It’s superb.. She appeals to the 18-25 year old crowd, and a handful of the 70-to death crowd (like Frank and I). Taylor is her own director, her own choreographer, her own stage manager… She runs the show with an iron hand. In the old days we would have said she was a Theory X manager.
Today’s totally tasteless “joke”
Knock. Knock. The social worker is at the door. She notices the children, and, to start a conversation, asks their names?
“The boys are called Moses. And the girls are called Latisha.”
“Isn’t that confusing?”
“No, we call each of them after their father.”
Harry Newton who counsels, please put everything in your wallet on your scanner this morning and keep scans of the front and back of everything. Then leave most everything at home. One day you’ll lose your wallet and wonder why you were so stupid to carry so much around with you. I get away with one credit card. I don’t keep originals in my wallet. …While you’re at it, remove your vehicle’s registration from your glove compartment. Too easy for thieves to ransack your house while you’re at the ballgame.
See http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2014/08/18/what-facebook-doesnt-show-you/
Harry — the “APP” you really want to develop is a “Friendly” replacement for Facebook. I’m pretty sure you never go near FB, but the level of unhappiness with the “Profit Motive” of FB is shooting up. As a public company, they are now responsible to the shareholders and the advertisers… the users be damned! Items in the news feed are old, algorithms are tweaked to support ads in ways that would make Google blush with shame, and users notice.
Develop a FB replacement, but don’t plan to take it public. Be happy with hundreds of million$ instead of billion$. Be happy with happy customers. Interestingly, there are APPS (see below) that “tweak” FB and bring it back to what it once was (or was supposed to be). People are that desperate. But in my experience, the Apps work just as long as it takes for FB programmers to find it and squash it.
There you go. There is YOUR $200M idea.
The grass is always greener… don’t forget the misery of techSupport. “Ever since I loaded your app I can’t call my mother’s telephone number. What are you going to do about it?” Ah, the joy. “Touch it and you own it.”
Life can be frustrating after building a great success. Even worse if you’ve done it more than once as I have, one even a HBS study. What next? My older brother says “Work or play. You can’t do both.” Not sure that’s an answer, but retiring is not.
Harry, you laid out the exact “fix” for what ails you now and you did it years ago. Try as I might I cannot find the reference on your site but I am sure it was you who posted comments about William Bernstein’s “The Intelligent Asset Allocator: How to Build Your Portfolio to Maximize Returns and Minimize Risk”. I bought a copy of that book and read it when you posted your review. It is full of statistics and I am miserable at statistics but the arguments all made sense to me at the time because I too was investing on my own and doing okay but running high risks. I followed that up with another book of its type, cannot remember now and ultimately ended up with an investment adviser who follows those rules. He makes me wince when he sells something that has been doing well or buys something that has been doing poorly but he does it on statistical analysis not emotion. Human nature makes us chase after a stock that goes up and to sell one that goes down but in most cases that is exactly the opposite of what you should. Only do it with sectors not individual stocks. You can do this yourself if you have the discipline, I find I do not. In any case the point of this is your reference laid out the right track for me, I have no idea if it is for you.
P.S. Your comment to Chuck was right on, you did say totally tasteless joke.
That Taylor Swift video is so good. But note how this has become is a business where you GIVE AWAY your best stuff and then build on it to twist up sales. It’s mind-boggling marketing to us traditionalists. With the release of the video last weekend she opened her Website to advance sales of the upcoming album. The crush from fans crashed the credit card ordering portion of the Website. That’s a bad problem to have, but it ain’t awful!
I have a few troglodyte friends who say they have never heard of her. Some notes: Taylor Swift won the American Music Award for Artist of the Year when she was 19. Triple Grammys in 2010. She is now 24 and Forbes estimates a net worth of $200M. She is talented and beautiful PLUS she is a great role model for teens and tween. The ONLY thing she has ever done wrong was to date a young member of the Kennedy clan. (Her dates gravitate more toward upper crust types rather than rockers) Did I mention she is beautiful?
You should warn people before posting a tasteless joke like that.
It says “today’s totally tasteless joke.” How much more warning do people need?