Emailing and other forms of telecommunications have become consistently more simple and easier to utilize over the technological generation; however, the traditional forms of mailing have remained the same, and at times, can be more complicated. There are many necessary components to consider when using postal services, but of most importance in sending information via postal correspondence are the address labels.

When delivering a letter, it is essential that the given address is written correctly. This enables the deliverer of the mailed item(s) to locate the given address and ensure that the mail is handled successfully. The address labels are essential, in that they determine where the letter is supposed to reach by listing the name of the receiver, their street number, street, city, postal or zip code and country. This information allows the delivery postal service employees to separate, organize and ship the necessary documents to the addresses given.

Postal correspondence is still a highly utilized and appreciated method of communication. While significant growth in more convenient methods of delivery have surfaced, it can be understood that postal delivery is an important method of the transfer of information.

Slim has a substantial influence over the telecommunications industry in Mexico and much of Latin America. He controls Teléfonos de México (Telmex), Telcel and América Móvil companies. Though he maintains an active involvement in his companies, his three sons—Carlos, Marco Antonio and Patrick Slim Domit—head them on a day-to-day basis.

Then, Slim has been vice-president of the Mexican Stock Exchange and president of the Mexican Association of Brokerage Houses. He was the first president of the Latin-American Committee of the New York Stock Exchange Administration Council, and was in office from 1996 through 1998.

He was on the Board of Directors of the Altria Group (previously Philip Morris; he resigned in April 2006) and Alcatel. Slim currently sits on the Board of Directors for Philip Morris International. He was on the Board of Directors of SBC Communications until July 2004 to devote more time to the World Education & Development Fund, which focused on infrastructure, health and education projects. He built the large Mexican financial-industrial conglomerate Grupo Carso which controls, among other companies, Sanborns (a prestigious food chain in Mexico), Mixup (music retail), Sears Mexico, Cigatam, Condumex and Grupo Hotelero Hostam and had indirect control over the CompUSA electronics retail chain.

On December 8, 2007, Grupo Carso announced that the remaining 103 CompUSA stores would be either liquidated or sold, bringing an end to the struggling company. After 28 years he became the Honorary Lifetime Chairman of the business. He is also Chairman of Teléfonos de Mexico, América Móvil, and Grupo Financiero Inbursa.

Beside,  Slim would overtake the owner of Force India, Vijay Mallya, to become the richest team owner in a sport famous for being a playground for the super wealthy.

It has taken Carlos Slim Helú 44 years of his life to build Grupo Carso, of which he is now Honorary Life Chairman, a position he also holds at Telmex, América Móvil and Grupo Financiero Inbursa. Although he continues to conduct business activities today, his primary focus is on the foundations he leads, thus his three sons, Carlos, Marco Antonio and Patrick Slim Domit, have taken over the reins of the businesses.

They were founded in 1965 with the acquisition of the bottling company Jarritos del Sur and the establishment of several other companies such as Casa de Bolsa Inversora Bursátil, Inmobiliaria Carso, Constructora Carso, Promotora del Hogar, S.S.G. Inmobiliaria, Mina de Agregados Pétreos el Volcán, Bienes Raíces Mexicanos and Pedregales del Sur, as well as a buy-sell-lease company for construction equipment. At the end of the 1960s, several pieces of property were bought in the southern part of Mexico City, totaling approximately 2 million square meters, and were expropriated in 1989.

In June 1976 Galas de México was acquired. In 1980 the corporation that is today Grupo Carso was officially incorporated in order to obtain the majority stake in Cigatam, in which Philip Morris was a 29% partner.

In 1985 Grupo Carso acquired control of Artes Gráficas Unidas, Fábricas de Papel Loreto y Peña Pobre, and the majority of Sanborns and its affiliate Dennys.

At the end of 1990, Grupo Carso, together with Southwestern Bell, France Telecom and several Mexican investors, won the bid to privatize Teléfonos de México. When Grupo Carso bought 5.8% of Telmex at its privatization, it already had 25 years of successful business experience; Southwestern Bell acquired 5% and an option for an additional 5%, France Telecom 5% and a group of Mexican investors an additional 4.6%. Including Cigatam, the Grupo Carso companies have been publicly traded since 1981 and their history can be reconstructed through public information.

Grupo Carso has partially or fully sold several companies, such as tissue paper producers, tire companies, several hotels, printing and packaging businesses, part of Cigatam, El Globo, Química Fluor and Porcelanite, among others. The Group’s companies directly employ more than 218,000 people.

Carso’s growth has been possible due to the ongoing reinvestment of profits in its companies for the continued production of goods and services, which at the same time generates jobs for Mexicans. Grupo Carso focuses its growth and investments on the most dynamic sectors in the medium and long term, maintaining its flexibility and rapid decision-making.

Grupo Carso, S.A. de C.V. is a Mexican holding company that has proven its capacity to manage companies operating in highly competitive markets, both domestically and internationally.

T e l m e x

In 1990, Grupo Carso and other Mexican investors acquired 10.4% of the company’s stock, in partnership with SBC – 5% with an option for an additional 5% – and France Telecom 5%. Since 1990, Telmex has embraced a work culture where training, modernization, quality and customer service is a priority

In 1991 Telmex was using electromechanical, analog and other obsolete equipment and technology in its operations, transportation, physical plant and maintenance, and had manual records and a 360-kilometer fiber optic network. Telmex has modernized and today has more than 103,000 kilometers of fiber optic installed throughout the country.

Telmex operates with the firm conviction to access the entire population to telecommunications, even though not having profit margins or subsidies; the Enterprise has the largest network of the country in this sector.

Public telephony has been a very important part in facilitating access for the population at large, with the number of public telephones rising from 69,025 in December 1990, to 726,693 in September of 2009.

Since its privatization, Telmex  aims to anticipate and meet all the telecommunication needs of its customers, offering the most advanced products and services with the highest quality  standards and at the best prices. Telmex is the leader company in telecommunications in Mexico.

Telmex is a corporation constituted by Telefonos de Mexico, S.A.B.C.V, its subsidiary enterprises and partners that provide telecommunications services in Mexico. Its services coverage includes, among other things, the operation of the most extensive network of local and long distance services. It also provides services such as connectivity, internet access, collocations, lodging and interconnection services with other telecommunication operators.

The advantage of Telmex  is that it is only telecommunications company in Mexico that has invested to meet the needs of communication of all the socioeconomic segments, paying special attention to rural telephony and internet connection in villages of difficult access throughout the  country.

In the fixed line business in Mexico, Telmex competes with operators primarily focused on the high-income A and B segments. In those competitive segments, Telmex has an approximate 66% market share, and 49% in the A segment alone. However, Telmex’s commitment to provide they telecommunications services has led to its being the country’s only fixed telephony operator with presence in the C-, D, E and prepaid socioeconomic segments, with 100% share of the market.

Since its privatization, Telmex has invested more than 30,000 million dollars only in Mexico, since its total investments between 1999 and 2007 in the telecommunications sector were about 45,818 million dollars; in other words, Telmex investments represented more than 65%.

Lastly, Telmex had provided the 82% of the investments in fixed telephony in the whole Mexico area.

Woods has won 14 professional major golf championships, the second highest of any male player, and 71 PGA Tour events, third all time. He has more career major wins and career PGA Tour wins than any other active golfer. He is the youngest player to achieve the career Grand Slam, and the youngest and fastest to win 50 tournaments on tour. Additionally, Woods is the second golfer to have achieved a career grand slam three times along with Jack Nicklaus. Woods has won 16 World Golf Championships and has won at least one event each of the 11 years they have been in existence.

However a lot of people asking, how did a golfer ever get so rich? According to Forbes, Tiger Woods has become the first person to make a billion dollars out of a career in sport. The magazine has calculated Woods’s earnings since he turned professional in 1996, and worked out that, after he earned $10m for winning the FedEx Cup, the combined tally of prize money, appearance fees, endorsements, and earnings from his flourishing golf design business has now surpassed the billion dollar barrier.

Woods, who is still only 33 and could conceivably keep playing at the top level for the next 15 years, has won 14 Major titles, and is able to charge up to $3m for playing tournaments in the Middle East. Sharply-dressed, well-behaved and, if a little private, a marketing man’s dream, he’s signed numerous lucrative endorsement deals.

Since his record-breaking win at the 1997 Masters Tournament, golf’s increased popularity is attributed to Woods’ presence. He is credited for dramatically increasing prize money in golf, generating interest in new audiences as the first non-white person to win the Masters, and for drawing the largest TV audiences in golf history. He has been named “Athlete of the Decade” by the Associated Press in December 2009.
In the “I’m Tiger Woods” advertising campaign, his profile has allowed Nike, which was starting from scratch, to turn into a major name in the golf equipment and clothing industry.

Woods has a drink named after him – ‘Gatorade Tiger’, and helped to design a special watch for Tag Heuer, which is able to resist the sort of shock you get from a golf swing gone wrong. He also has deals with the management consultants Accenture, Electronic Arts video games and, along with Roger Federer and Thierry Henry, Gillette razors.

Also, by linking up with property deals, he can charge an awful lot for the courses that his company – Tiger Woods Design – is making in Dubai, North Carolina and Mexico.

O’ Shaughnessy’s best-selling book is titled “What Works On Wall Street: A Guide to the Best Performing Investment Strategies of All Time”. O’ Shaughnessy distinguishes between two basic types of decision-making:

1. The clinical or intuitive method. This method relies on knowledge, experience, and common sense.
2. The quantitative or actuarial method. This method re­lies solely on proven relationships based on large sam­ples of data.

O’ Shaughnessy found that most investors prefer the intu­itive method of investment decision-making. In most in­stances, the investor who used the intuitive method was wrong or beaten by the nearly mechanical method. He quotes David Faust, author of The Limits of Scientific Reasoning, who writes, “Human judgment is far more limited than we think.”

O’ Shaughnessy also writes, ‘All (speaking of money man­agers) of them think they have superior insights, intelligence, and ability to pick winning stocks, yet 80% are routinely out performed by the S&P 500 index.” In other words, a purely mechanical method of picking stocks out performs 80% of the professional stock pickers. That means, even if you knew nothing about stock picking, you could beat most of the so- called well-trained and educated professionals if you followed a purely mechanical, non-intuitive method of investing. It is exactly as rich dad said: “It’s automatic.” Or, the less you think, the more money you make with less risk and with a lot less worry.

Other interesting ideas that O’ Shaughnessy’s book points out are:

• Most investors prefer personal experience to simple basic facts or base rates. Again, they prefer intuition to reality.

• Most investors prefer complex rather than simple for­mulas. There seems to be this idea that if the formula is not complex and difficult, it can’t be a good formula.

• Keeping it simple is the best rule for investing. He states that instead of keeping things simple, “We make things complex, follow the crowd, fall in love with the story of a stock, let our emotions dictate decisions, buy and sell on tips and hunches, and approach each investment on a case-by-case basis, with no underlying consistency or strategy.

• He also states that professional institutional investors tend to make the same mistakes that average investors make. O’ Shaughnessy writes, “Institutional investors say they make decisions objectively and unemotion­ally, but they don’t.” Here’s a quotation from the book Fortune and Folly. “While institutional investors’ desks are cluttered with in-depth analytical reports, the majority of pension executives select outside man­agers based on gut feelings and keep managers with consistently poor performance simply because they have good personal relationships with them.”

• The path to achieving investment success is to study long-term results and find a strategy or group of strate­gies that make sense. Then stay on the path.” He also states, “We must look at how well strategies, not stocks, perform.”

• History does repeat itself. Yet people want to believe that this time, things will he different. He writes, “People want to believe that the present is different from the past. Markets are now computerized, block traders dominate, individual investors are gone, and in their place sit money managers controlling huge mutual funds to which they have given their money. Some people think these masters of money make de­cisions differently, and believe that a strategy perfected in the 1950s and 1960s offers little insight into how it will perform in the future.”But not much has changed since Sir Isaac Newton, a brilliant man indeed, lost a fortune in the South Sea Trading Company bubble of 1720. Newton lamented that he could “calculate the motions of heavenly bod­ies but not the madness of men.”
• O’ Shaughnessy was not necessarily saying to invest in the S&P 500. He simply used that example as a com­parison between intuitive human investors and a me­chanical formula. He went on to say that investing in the S&P 500 was not necessarily the best performing formula, although it was a good one. He explained that in the last five to ten years, large cap stocks have done the best. Yet over the past 46 years of data, it was actually small cap stocks, companies of less than $25 million in capitalization, that have made the investor the most money.The lesson was, the longer period of time for which you had data, the better your judgment. He looked for the formula that performed the best over the longest amount of time.That is why his formula was to build businesses and have his businesses buy his real estate as well as his paper assets. That formula has been a winning formula for wealth for at least 200 years. Rich dad said, “The formula I use, and the for­mula I am teaching you, is the formula that has created the richest individuals over a long period of time.”Many people think the Indians who sold Manhattan Island, a.k.a. New York City, to Peter Minuit of the Dutch West India Company for $24 in beads and trin­kets got a bad deal. Yet if the Indians had invested that money for an 8 percent annual return, that $24 would be worth over $27 trillion today. They could buy Manhattan back and has plenty of money left over. The problem was not the amount of money but the lack of a plan for their money.
• There is a chasm of difference between what we think might work and what really works.

1. “To provide you with excessive cash flow” In the book How to Be Rich, J^. Paul Getty states that his first rule is that you must be in business for yourself. He goes on to imply that you will never get rich working for some­one else. One of the primary reasons people started so many businesses were that they had excessive cash flow from the other businesses. Normally, they also had the time because his businesses required minimal effort on the part. This al­lowed them to have the free time and extra money to keep in­vesting in more and more assets tax-free.
   
2. “To sell it.” The prob­lem with having a job is that you cannot sell the job, re­gardless of how hard you work. The problem with building a business in the small business is that there is usually a limited market that would want to buy it. For example, if a dentist builds a practice, generally the only other person who may want to buy it is another dentist. To rich dad, that was too narrow of a market. He said, “For something that valuable, there must be many more people than you who want it. The problem with a small business is that you are often the only person who wants it.An asset is something that puts money in your pocket, or it can be sold to someone else for more than you have paid for or invested in it. If you can build a successful business, you will always have a lot of money. If you learn to build a successful busi_­ness, you will have developed a profession that few people ever achieve.

   For example, you are sales person that was learning to sell Xerox machines; you came across a young man who owned four quick-copy print shops in Honolulu. The reason he was in the business of making copies was interesting. While in school, he had run the university’s copy shop and learned the business side of the operation. When he came out of school, there were no jobs, so he opened up a copy shop in downtown Honolulu doing what he knew best. Soon, he had four of these copy centers in four of the bigger downtown office buildings, all on long-term leases. A major copy shop chain came to town and made him an offer he could not refuse. He took their $750,000, a giant sum in those days, bought a boat, gave $500,000 to a professional money man­ager, and sailed around the world. When he returned a year and half later, the manager had grown his invest­ment to nearly $900,000, so the young man just sailed off again, back to the islands of the South Pacific.

   You were the guy who sold him the copy machines, and all you got was your small commission. He was the guy who built a business, sold it, and sailed away. Then, you never saw him again after 1978, but you have heard that he pulls back into town every so often, checks his portfolio, and sails off again. This story tells you that, as a business owner, you don’t have to be right 51% of the time. You need to be right only once.” He also said, “Building a business is the riskiest road for most people. But if you can survive and keep improving your skills, your potential for wealth is unlimited. If you avoid risk and play it safe on the E and S side, you may be safer, but you’ll also limit what you can truly earn.

3. “To build a business and take it public.” Normally investor that called as ultimate in­vestor can come out with this idea. It was building a business and taking it public that made Bill Gates, Henry Ford, Warren Buffet, Ted Turner, and Anita Roddick very, very wealthy. They were the selling shareholders, while we were all the buying shareholders. They were insiders, while we were outsiders trying to look in.

Many other so-called investors want to prove they know more than other people. . . so they invest, hoping to prove that they can outsmart the market. But while many people think this is investing, it is not what investing actually mean. Investment actually is a plan, often a dull, boring, and almost mechanical process of getting rich.

Investing is simply a plan, made up of formulas and strategies, a system for getting rich. . . almost guaranteed. Unless, of course, you want it to be that way or you think that is the way investing has to be, so there will be risky for it. But in the really world, investing is as simple and boring as following a recipe to bake bread.

Because following a simple plan to become rich is boring, human beings are quickly bored and want to find something more exciting and amusing. That is why only three out of a hundred people become rich. They start following a plan, and so they are bored. So they stop following the plan and then they look for a magic way to get rich quick. They repeat the process of boredom, amusement, and boredom again for the rest of their lives. That is why they do not get rich. They cannot stand the boredom of following a simple, uncomplicated plan to get rich.

Most people think there is some magic to getting rich through investing. Or they think that if it is not complicated, it cannot he a good plan. Trust me; when it comes to investing, simple is better than complex.

Find a Formula That Works and Follow It

Find a formula that will make you rich and follow it. I am often disturbed when people come up to me and start telling me about the stock they bought for $5 and how it went up to $30 and they sold it.

I find myself disturbed because those kinds of stories distract from their plan, their success such stories of hot tips and quick cash. Many investors are like a family taking a drive in the country. Suddenly, on the road ahead of them appear several large deer with massive horns. The driver, usually the male of the household, shouts, ‘Look at the big bucks.’

The bucks instinctively bolt from the road and onto the farmland alongside the road. The driver veers the car off the road and begins chasing the big bucks across the farm and into the trees. The ride is rough and bumpy. The family is screaming for the driver to stop. Suddenly, the car goes over a stream embankment and crashes into the water below. The moral of the story is that this is what happens when you stop following your simple plan and begin chasing the big bucks.”

1. Take your time. Think quietly about your life up to this point. Take days to think quietly. Take weeks if you need to.
2. Ask yourself in these moments of quiet, “What do I want from this gift called my life?”
3. Don’t talk to anyone else for a while; at least until you are certain you know what you think you want. All too often, people either innocently or aggressively want to impose what they want for you instead of what you want for yourself.The biggest killers of deep inner dreams are your friends and family members who say, “Oh don’t be silly,” or “You can’t do that,” or “What about me? Remember Bill Gates was in his 20s when he started with $50,000 and became the richest man in the world with $90 billion. It’s a good thing he did not ask too many people for their ideas on what they thought was possible for his life.
4. Call a financial adviser. All investment plans begin with a financial plan. If you do not like what the financial adviser says, find another one. You would ask for a sec­ond opinion for a medical problem, so why not ask for many opinions for financial challenges? Financial advisers come in many forms; a reference list is provided later in this chapter. Choose an adviser equipped to as­sist you in developing a written financial plan.

Many financial advisers sell different types of products. One such product is insurance. Insurance is a very im­portant product and needs to be considered as part of your financial plan, especially when you are first start­ing out. For example, if you have no money but have three children, insurance is important in case you die, are injured, or for whatever reason are unable to com­plete your investment plan. Insurance is a safety net, or a hedge against financial liabilities and weak spots. Also, as you become rich, the role of insurance and type of insurance in your financial plan may change as your financial position and needs change. So keep that part of your plan up to date.

Two years ago, a tenant in one of my apartment build­ings left his Christmas tree lights on and went out for the day. A fire broke out. Immediately, the fire crews were there to put out the fire. I was never so grateful to a bunch of men and women. The next people on the scene were my insurance agent and his assistant. They were the second most important group of peo­ple I was grateful to see that day. Rich dad always said, “Insurance is a very important product in anyone’s life plan. The trouble with insur­ance is that you can never buy it when you need it. So you have to anticipate what you need and buy it hop­ing you’ll never need it. Insurance is simply peace of mind.”

IMPOR’IANT NOTE: Some financial advisers specialize in helping people at different financial levels. In other words, some advisors work only with rich people. Regardless of whether or not you have money, find an advisor you like and who is willing to work with you. If your advisor has done a good job, you may find your­self outgrowing your advisor. My wife Kim and I have often changed our professional advisors, which in­clude doctors, attorneys, accountants, etc. If the per­son is professional, he or she will understand. But even if you change advisors, be sure you stick to your plan.

And we all know what that price is.  Some people say this like both men and women marry for money, but can you imagine spending your life with someone you don’t love? That is a very high price.” It also one very effective way to get rich.

2. You can become rich by being a crook, a cheat, or an outlaw. People say, “It is so easy to become rich legally. Why would people want to break the law and risk going to jail unless they really enjoyed the thrill of it all? To risk going to jail is much too high a price for me. I want to be rich for my free­dom, so why risk going to jail? I would lose my self- respect. I could not face my family and friends if I were doing something illegal. Besides, I am a bad liar. I have a poor memory, and I could not keep track of all my lies, so it is best to just tell the truth.

3. You can become rich through inheri­tance. For example, if you farther is rich, then he pass his properties to you. Do feels like you did not earn his keep? If you could have be­come rich on your own, you will become more mature and have a total understanding on how market yourself to the world and at the same time create your own wealth. It is important for you to feel earned it. Not everyone fortunate enough to inherit money feels that way”

4. You can become rich by winning the lot­tery.
This way is OK, but to buy a ticket now and then, but to bet your financial life on winning the lottery is a fool’s plan on becoming rich.

Unfortunately, winning the lottery is how many Americans say they plan on becoming rich. Living your life with odds of one in a hundred million is a very high price to pay.

And if you do not have a plan on how to handle the problem of too much money, you will go back to being poor. Recently, there was a story in the paper of a man who won the lottery. He had a great time but was soon so deeply in debt that he considered filing bankruptcy. He was doing fine financially before he won the lot­tery. So to solve his problem, he went out and played the lottery again—and won. This time, he has financial advisers helping him with his money. So the moral of the story is: If you win the lottery once has a plan for the money. Not too many people win it twice.

5. You can become rich by being a movie star, a rock star, a sports star, or someone outstanding in one field or another. However if you are not smart, talented, good look­ing, or entertaining, then becoming rich by being out­standing is not realistic at all.

Hollywood is filled with actors who are broke. Clubs are filled with rock hands dreaming of cutting a gold record. The golf courses are filled with golfers dream­ing of becoming a pro like Tiger Woods. However, if you look closely at Tiger Woods, you will notice that he paid a high price to get to where he is today. Tiger started playing golf at the age of 3 and did not turn pro until he was 20. His price was 17 years of practice.

6. You can become rich by being greedy. This world is filled with people like this. Their favorite say­ing is: “I got mine and I am going to keep it.” Greedy with their money and assets usually means they are also tight with other things. When asked to help other people, or to teach other people, they often do not have the time.

The price for being greedy is that you have to work even harder to keep what you want. Newton’s Law states, “For every action there is a reaction.” If you’re greedy, people will respond to you in kind.

When I meet people who are having a tough time with money, I ask them to start giving money away on a regular basis—to their church or favorite charity. Following the laws of economics and physics, give what you want. If you want a smile, first give a smile. If you want a punch, first throw a punch. If you want money, first give some money. For greedy people, opening up their fist or wallet can he very hard to do.

7. You can become rich by being cheap. The problem with becoming rich by being cheap is that you are still cheap. The world hates rich people who are cheap. That is why people hated the charac­ter Scrooge in Charles Dickens’ famous story, ‘A Christmas Carol.’” It is people who become rich like Scrooge that give the rich a bad name. To live poor and die poor is a tragedy. But to live poor and die rich is insanity.

After all, some people say, “I think money is meant to he enjoyed, so I work hard, my money works hard, and I enjoy the fruits of our labor.”

The investor is the asset or liability not the investment or security. I often hear that people say, ‘Investing is risky‘ it’s the investor who is risky. It is ultimately the investor who is the asset or the liability. I have seen many so-called in­vestors lose money when everyone else is making money. I have sold businesses to many so-called business people and watch the businesses soon go bust. I have seen people take a perfectly good piece of real estate, real estate that is making a lot of money, and in a few years, that same piece of real estate is running at a loss and falling apart. And then I hear people say, investing is risky. It’s the investor who is risky, not the in­vestment. In fact, a good investor loves to follow behind a risky investor because that is where the real investment bargains are found.

Listen to investors who are cry­ing the blues about their investment losses so that you will find out what they did wrong and see if you can find a bargain.

No One Is an Expert at Everything

Investing means different things to different people. There is no one person who can possibly be an expert at the entire subject. There are many different investment products and many different investment procedures.

Everyone Has a Bias

A person who is good at stocks will say, “Stocks are your best investment.” A person who loves real estate will say, “Real estate is the basis of all wealth.” Someone who hates gold will say, “Gold is an obsolete commodity.”

Then you add procedure bias and you really become confused. Some people say ‘Diversify. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket,” and still others such as Warren Buffet, America’s greatest investor, says, “Don’t diversify. Put all your eggs in one basket and watch that basket closely.”

All of this personal bias from so-called experts adds to the confusion that shrouds the subject of investing.

Same Market, Different Directions

Adding to the confusion is that everyone has a different opinion on the direction of the market and the future of the world. If you watch the financial news stations, they will have one so-called expert who says, “The market is overheated. It will crash in the next six weeks,” Ten minutes later, another expert will come on and say, “The market is set to go up even further. There will be no crash.”

Late to the Party

A friend of mine recently asked, “Every time I hear of a hot stock, by the time I buy it, the stock is heading down. So I buy at the top because it’s the hot popular stock and then a day later it starts heading down. Why am I always late to the party?”

Another complaint I often hear is: “The stock drops in price so I sell it, and the next day it goes up. Why does that happen?”

I call this the “late to the party” phenomenon or the “you sold too early” phenomenon. The problem with investing in something because it’s popular or rated as the No.1 fund for the past two years is that real investors have already made their money in that investment. They were in it early and got out at the top. For me, nothing is more frustrating than to hear someone say, “I bought it at $2 a share and it’s now at 1635 a share.” Such stories or hot tips do me no good and only frustrate me. That is why today, when I hear such tales of instant wealth and fast money in the market, I just walk away and choose not to listen . . . because such stories are not really stories about investing.

This Is Why Investing Is Confusing

Investing is confusing because it is a very large subject. If you look around you, you’ll see that people have invested in many different things. Look at your appliances. Those are all products from companies that people invested in. You receive your electricity from a utility company that people invest in. Once you understand that, then look at your car, the gas, the tires, seat belts, windshield wipers, spark plugs, the roads, the stripes on the road, your soft drinks, the furniture in your house, the shopping center your favorite store is in, the office buildings, the bank, the hotels , the airplane overhead, the carpet in the airport, etc. All of these things are there because someone invested in the business or building that delivers you the things that make life civilized. That is what investing really is all about.

Investing is such a confusing subject for most people because what most people call investing is not really investing.

He received primary and secondary education in the public schools of the New York City Department of Education, and was a valedictorian at Thomas Jefferson High School in 1971. Then, he attended Harvard University and earned his B.A in 1975, graduating with fellow Winthrop House student and future Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke.

In 1978, Blankfein received a J.D. from Harvard Law School. After that, Blankfein worked as a corporate tax lawyer for the law firm Donovan, Leisure, Newton & Irvine. In 1981, he joined Goldman’s commodities trading arm, J. Aron, as a precious metals salesman in their London office.

He is the Gala Chairman of the Rockefeller family’s Asia Society in New York. He serves on the board of the Robin Hood Foundation, a charitable organization seeking to alleviate poverty in New York, as well as on the Board of Overseers at Weill Cornell Medical College.

In 1996, Blankfein earned a total of $53.4 million, and  making him one of the highest paid executives on Wall Street. His bonus allegedly reflected the performance of Goldman Sachs, which reported record net earnings of $9.5 billion. The compensation included a cash bonus of $27.3 million, with the rest paid in stock and options. While CEO of Goldman Sachs Group in 2007, Lloyd C. Blankfein earned a total compensation of $53,965,418, which included a base salary of $600,000, a cash bonus of $26,985,474, stocks granted of $15,542,756 and options granted of $10,453,031. He now resides in New York with his wife and children.

Blankfein has been named as the most outrageous CEO for the year 2009 by Forbes. Wall Street firms are taking multibillion-dollar write-offs. Titans of finance are losing their jobs before Lloyd Blankfein took over. Then, CEO Lloyd Blankfein, who took over last spring, gets credit for helping steer Goldman away from the most damaging investments.

Well at a moment of upset, we become one of these char­acters. The characters that are brought to center stage when upsets from mistakes occur: that is most important. Real investors must be prepared to profit as well as learn when things do not go as they want them to in the market. The best thing a market can teach you is how to learn from your mistakes. Learning to control my temper has been a lifelong process.  These characters that we might become;

The Liar. The liar will say such things as: “I didn’t do that.” Or “No, no, no. It wasn’t me.” Or “I don’t know how that happened.” Or “Prove it.”

The Blamer. The blamer will say such things as: “It’s your fault, not mine.” Or “If my wife didn’t spend so much money, I would be better off financially” Or “I would he rich if I didn’t have you kids.” Or “The cus­tomers just don’t care about my products.” Or “Employees just aren’t loyal anymore.” Or “You weren’t clear in your instructions.” Or “It’s my boss’s fault.”

The Justifies. The justifies says things such as: “Well, I don’t have a good education so that is why I don’t get ahead.” Or “I would have made it if I had had more time.” Or “Oh, I really didn’t want to be rich any­way.” Or “Well, everyone else was doing it.”

The Quitter. The quitter says things such as: “I told you that it would never work.” Or “This is too hard and it’s not worth it. I’m going to do something else eas­ier.” Or “Why am I doing this? I don’t need this hassle.”

The Denier. Rich dad often called this person “the cat in the litter box,” which means this person tends to bury his or her mistakes. The person who denies that he or she has made a mistake often says things such as: “No, there is nothing wrong. Things are fine.” Or “Mistake? What mistake?” Or “Don’t worry Things will work out.”

When people are upset due to a mistake or accident, one or more of these characters will take over their mind and body. If you want to learn and gain wisdom from this priceless mistake, you have to let The Responsible You eventually take control of your thinking. The Responsible You will eventually say, “What priceless lesson can I learn from this mistake?”

If a person says, ‘What I learned is that I’ll never do this again,’ he or she probably has not learned much. Too many people live in a diminishing world because they continue to say, ‘I’ll never do that again’ instead of saying, ‘I’m glad that happened because I learned this or that from the experience.’ Besides people who avoid mistakes or waste mistakes never see the other side of the coin.

It is time for explanation that go beyond the simple under­standing of assets and liabilities—an understanding that most people never achieve.  But this point all securities are not necessarily assets, as many people think they are.

Many average investors cannot distinguish between a security and an asset. Many people, in­cluding many professionals, do not know the difference. Many people call any security an asset.

A security is something you hope will keep your money secure. And generally, these securities are bound up tight by government regulations. And that is why the organization that watches over much of the world of investing is called the Securities and Exchange Commission, a.k.a. the SEC. You may notice that its title is not the Assets and Exchange Commission neither is it called the Securities and Guarantees Commission. The government knows that all it can do is maintain a tight set of rules and do its best to maintain order by enforcing those rules. It does not guarantee that everyone who acquires a security will make money. That is why securities are not called assets.

The basic definition, an asset is to puts money in your pocket, or the income column; a liability takes money from your pocket, and that shows up in your expense column. It’s simply a matter of basic financial literacy.

So it is up to the investor to know which secu­rities are assets and which securities are liabilities. The confusion begins for most investors when someone tells them that securities are assets. Average investors are ner­vous about investing because they know that just because they buy a security; it does not mean they will make money. The problem with buying a security is that the investor can also lose money.

So, if the security makes money, it puts money into the income column of the financial state­ment, and it is an asset. But if it loses money and that event is recorded in the expense column of the financial statement, then that security is a liability. In fact, the same security can change from being an asset into a liability. For example, I bought a hundred shares of stock in ABC Company in December for which I paid $20 per share. In January, I sold ten shares for $30 per share. Those ten shares of stock were assets because they generated income for me. But in March, I sold ten more shares for only $10, so that same stock had be­come a liability because it generated a loss (expense).

It is up to the investor to determine if each security is an asset or liability. Actually, risks come from the investor who not knowing the difference between an asset and liabil­ity.

Risks are always part of investing, as it is with life. People that are too negative and avoid risking themselves out will be losing most opportunities be­cause of their negativity and fear of risk.

Buffett was born to Leila and Howard Buffett and was the second of three children, he being the only boy. Buffett’s father, Howard was a stockbroker and also became a member of congress. He showed early signs of being entrepreneurial through being involved in various business dealings as a child, including purchasing bottles of cola cheaply and selling them for a profit. and made his first investment in the stock market when he was just 11 years old.

In his eduction life, Buffett began studying at the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania, but transferred to the University of Nebraska where he graduated. He then went on to the Columbia University to do a Masters in economics. This was where he met the influential value investor Benjamin Graham, the person that change his career.

After Graham’s retirement, Buffett returned to Omaha and began a limited investing fund partnership with a group of friends, family and associates. The “Buffett Partnerships Ltd” fund racked up amazing returns for its investors over a ten year period, with returns 10 times higher than the Dow Jones Industrial average for the same time. Buffett liquidated the fund and took control of the textile company Berkshire Hathaway.

It was a difficult time for the textile industry and Buffett eventually wound up Berkshire Hathaway’s textile activities, but kept the name for Buffett’s portfolio of companies and investments. The insurance industry was the first major area of success that Berkshire Hathaway had, with the funds used to acquire carefully selected investments each year. Major undervalued companies that Buffett took advantage of included “American Express”, “Coca-Cola” “The Washington Post” and “Gillette”. Berkshire Hathaway owns large holdings of each of the above major brand companies (more than 5% each. Berkshire has performed more than twice as well as the S&P 500. Amazing that Buffett has made millions from something as toxic as Enron bonds. And of course it is somehow unsurprising that he managed to help broker a deal between A-Rod and the New York Yankees.

In the meantime, he has transformed the Berkshire into the main event. Over the past three years, Berkshire has spent $27.3 billion to buy seven companies in industries as disparate as aviation, fast food, and home furnishings. The $22 billion purchase of re insurer General Re Corp., which closed late last year, was Buffett’s largest ever.

Warren Buffett preferred owning businesses to passive minority investment. Until recently, Berkshire’s acquisitions have been few and far between because Buffett insisted on buying top-quality businesses at discount prices. What has changed is that he is now willing to pay a premium for one of a kind businesses.

When he acquired the company, Bershire Hathaway was a shirt-manufacturing company that was slowly going out of business. Warren Buffet thought his team could turn the company around. Well as most of us know, textile manufacturing was dying in America and moving to other countries. It was a trend that even Warren Buffet could not go against, and the company eventually failed aws a manufacturing company, even with Warren Buffet behind it. Yet, inside of this company failure, Warren Buffet found the gems that ultimately made him extremely rich.

In the history of Gates, he  was born and grew up in Seattle, Washington USA. His father, William H. Gates II was a Seattle attorney and his mother, Mary Maxwell Gates was a school teacher and chairperson of the United Way charity. Gates and his two sisters had a comfortable upbringing, with Gates being able to attend the exclusive secondary “Lakeside School”.

In education, Bill Gates started he study at Harvard University in 1973. He and Paul Allen worked on a version of the programming language BASIC, that was the basis for the MITS Altair (the first microcomputer available). He did not go on to graduate from Harvard University as he left in his junior.

Then, he invented the software industry, masterminded the rise of the PC, and has hung in there as a force on the Internet. Still intent upon transforming how people work and communicate, now Gates is pushing software to handle all aspects of office communications, from your phone to e-mail to instant messaging. Developments in internet teleconferencing have made the communications market very competitive. His software powers smartphones and will show up soon in television set-top boxes. And he has hooked up with upstarts like Facebook to channel the energy and advertising potential of social networks.

Within ten years, Microsoft that started by Bill Gates was creating its own opportunities by becoming the $50 billion, 80,000 employee, multinational, dominant force that it is today in computing. The big opportunity came in 1981, when IBM turned to Microsoft to produce the operating systems for its new personal computers. To meet the IBM deadline, Microsoft bought the rights to an existing system for $50,000 and adapted it into the PC-DOS. Each IBM PC sold included the Microsoft system yet Microsoft retained the rights to sell to other customers. As clones of the IBM PC began to flood the market, they too were mostly using the Microsoft disk operating system (MS-DOS). As the money poured in, Microsoft stepped up its R&D so that it soon began to lead, rather than follow, market developments. So, Bill moved from being something in between an enthusiastic hobbyist, and a classical opportunity spotting entrepreneur, into a thoroughly modern entrepreneur who savors the creating of new opportunities. Bill now clearly enjoys being a winner.

Since 2000, he’s had a new kind of power through the charitable activities of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Gates is expected to retire from Microsoft next year and devote most of his time to the foundation, which has an endowment of $33 billion – and the promise of tens of billions more from his close friend and occasional bridge partner Warren Buffett No. 5.  The foundation has global aspirations to improve health care and reduce poverty. His other goal: reinventing philanthropy itself, much as he did information technology.

The more mistakes a person made, the more the person learned. Some people actually said, “There is bit of magic hidden in every mistake. So the more mistakes made, actually is time to learn from.

However, keep in mind the frustration when you went through as you struggled during the process of learn from mistakes. That is the magic found in mistakes. Bar in mind, when people have less mistakes such as a people that excellent student in school. He rarely made mistakes, which was why he had such high grades.  The problem was that at age 50, he seemed to have made one of the biggest mistakes in his life and he could no recover from it.

When this A grade student at age 50, he is hitting the streets… and the streets are a very tough teacher. In school, you’re given the lesson first. On the street, you’re given the mistake first then it’ up to you to find the lesson, if you ever find it. Since most people have not been taught how to make mistakes and learn from them, they either avoid mistakes altogether, which is a bigger mistake or they make a mistake but fail to find the lesson from the mistake.

That is why you see many people making the same mistake over and over again because they have never been taught how to learn from their mistakes. In school, you are considered smart if you don’t make mistakes. On the street, you’re smart only if you make mistakes and learn from them.

Basic Rule Number One.

The rule number one is to always know what kind of income you are working for. In market, there have three different kinds of income, Earned Income, Portfolio Income and Passive Income.

Earned Income generally derived from a job or some form of labor. On its most common form, it is income from a paycheck. It is also the highest taxed income, so it is the hardest income with which to build wealth. When you say to child, “Get a good job”, you are actually advising your child to work for earned income.

Portfolio Income actually is a from paper assets such as stocks, bonds, mutual fund, etc. Portfolio income is by far the most popular form of investment income, simply because paper assets are so much easier to manage and maintain than others.

Passive  Income generally derived from real estate. It can also be income derived from royalties from patents or license agreements. Yet approximately 80% of the time, passive income is from real estate. There are many tax advantages available for real estate.

M mean meet People (preparation, prospecting, positioning)

A mean ask Questions (probing/interviewing/ needs analysis/investigating)

S mean sell Benefits (presentation and persuasion)

T mean tackle Objections (objection handling and negotiation)

E mean encourage to Buy (closing)

R mean relationship Building (follow-up and service)

There are two things to MASTER in selling benefits – design and delivery. Design is the structure of the presentation. Delivery is the skill to persuade the buyer to buy.

Here’s the design structure of a presentation:

Opening mean how to start the presentation.

Agenda is actually what you want to present.

Client Needs Check the alignment between seller and buyer.

Body of Presentation the content you want delivered.

Summary the simplifying your entire presentation.

Q&A able to handling questions buyers may have.

Closing by asking for commitment.

Here are the delivery skills of a presentation:

Power: how to influence the buyers.

Rapport: connecting with different people.

Questioning: getting feedback or answering buyers.

Listening/observing:  understanding what is going on.

Positioning: differentiating your ideas, products and services.

Checking: getting understanding throughout the presentation.

Objections: eliminating resistance or concerns.

Because it takes 3 days to cover all the above, I’ll give you examples on how to open your presentation so you don’t sound like your competitors. By the way, with little differentiation in your products and services, the ‘big’ differentiation needs to come from the seller’s value in the selling process. And it’s the little things that will make a big difference – like the opener.

I’m going to share 5 secrets from my sales. Rather than begin your sales presentation with the typical company profile, you can begin by:

A) Role-playing

You can create a scenario where the buyer is facing a certain problem. You can either role-play it yourself or get a partner. For example, let’s say you sell phone systems that record messages, you do something like “can I speak to John please?”, the call is transferred, you then make the waiting tone “toot toot X 5 times”, then the receptionist picks up the call again, and you repeat the process. So you act out the problem buyers’ face rather than just tell it to them. See how it spices up your presentation?

B) Word-plays

Words can be used to get attention. It can be done through words that rhyme or quotes from famous people. For me it will be: “Mind-blowing, Practical, Very unconventional! These are what participants say in the recent sales ninja training.” If you sell some kind of operation systems improvement software, you can quote “Organizations fail not because of people, but because of systems – said by the father of quality management Edwards Deming.”

C) Questions

Starting with a question engages your buyer to listen to you. You can start with… What if…? If you could… Imagine… Have you ever…? Do you want…? For example… “What if… you and your engineers could rely on equipment that would last minimum 3 years without any breakdowns? What if… you could easily maintain this equipment without worrying it will cost you a bomb? What if… you could install it in less than four hours?”

D) Props

Most people love props because they are tangible and visual. Make sure the props have significant meaning to your presentation and not merely for entertainment. Remember the old days of unbreakable glass? The seller hits his glass with a hammer then passes the hammer to the buyer and say… you try. That’s great use of props.

E) Stories

Once a upon a time… Everyone loves stories. It puts the audience in a world of sensory impressions and lowers the resistance of the logical mind because stories speak to the emotion mind. Great leaders, politicians, religious gurus and sales people are great story tellers. You can use generic stories or specially designed stories. You must master storytelling skills.

MASTER S overall stand for selling Benefits and you will hypnotize your buyers to buy from you.

Just as travelers rely upon the star rating system to choose a hotel or a local guide to choose a restaurant, buyers of any variety of products and services want to spend their money with winners — and they do.

In fact, a research study by Hendricks & Singhal of the University of Western Ontario and Georgia Institute of Technology, revealed more than 600 quality corporate award winners had 37% more sales growth and 44% higher stock price return than their peers.

Here are a few more benefits to justify your investment of time and effort in award competitions:
A) Get to “YES” faster.
Help unknown, unproven, or emerging companies better compete for and win new business. Award wins make choosing a company less risky for buyers and potential employees.

B) Demonstrate ethics through credible endorsements.
If a prospect is evenly divided between quality companies, the company with the most stellar ethics as demonstrated by a Better Business Bureau award may have an advantage. As reports of corporate ethics violations become more common place, consumers are seeking out companies with track records of integrity. An award recognizing a business‘ demonstrated ability to navigate the market without compromising integrity can help separate it from competitors.

C) Support marketing claims.
Winning gives advertising copywriters more to talk about so cash registers can ring. It is an external endorsement that rings more truth than your claims alone.

D) Pack a powerful punch through publicity.
Favorable local, trade, or national publicity and word-of-mouth referrals often result from contest wins, filling the lead generation pipeline.

E) Tip new business to your favor.
Just like Avis — the rental car company with a reputation for trying harder to beat Hertz out of the number one position award winners may be perceived as working with greater diligence to demonstrate their value.

If you are convinced that award wins can pay off for your business and your brand, follow these tips when putting pen to paper:
A) Prioritize
Choose legitimate and prestigious contests that reinforce your company’s core values, strategic initiatives, and marketing claims.

B) Do The Application Justice
Assign the task of creating award worthy entries to someone who has the passion, storytelling ability, and time to do the job right. Last minute efforts rarely deliver a winning result.

C) Prove Your Points
Call out winning ways in easy-to-read bullets. Share anecdotes, customer and employee testimonials, and press coverage to prove why your company is award-worthy. Steer clear of hyperbole and “blah, blah, blah” commentary that will take up space and bore the judges.

D) Meet And Address All Award Criteria
Only then will you have a fighting chance to earn a place in the winner’s circle. And be sure to submit entries on deadline.

E) Presentation Count
When given the choice to make a hard copy presentation or send a fax, go with the hard copy every time. A fuzzy fax won’t catapult your story to the top of the stack when compared with other applications with better overall presentation quality.

F) Go Into WIN
If you can’t weigh in with a stellar effort, sit out the competition and save your time and money until you can.