Investing

Money Magazines

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Around six months ago, I signed up for a couple magazines through a bizrate offer: Kiplinger’s, Entrepreneur, and PC Mag. Each cost me three bucks for the year or half year. I’ve also found a treasure in our office: Revenue.

Of all these magazines, Kiplinger’s is simply amazing. There’s just so much interesting information. Even for someone who doesn’t know a thing about investing, this magazine has so much interesting information. A couple issues ago they had an article about the best stock analytics firms, how they work, who uses them, etc. They also have lots of neat little tables (which you could fine on Yahoo or Google Finance, or in Morningstar (which I joined thanks to the magazine)). I hav almost no time to read these days, but at home, this is my favorite bathroom read.

Next comes Entrepreneur. This is an interesting magazine, and it has lots of short quick articles, but my favorite is the Kiyosaki column in the back. This magazine focuses more on building your own business rather than investing, something that I’m still a little farther away from as I do my best to help my company grow. It’s interesting, but given a choice, I like Kiplinger’s a little more.

Next is PC Mag. This is a completely different field, and the magazine is super cheap (even without the discount) and comes the most often (Entrepreneur comes the least often). I flip through and every once in a while find some cool articles, but mostly this magazine has reviews of gadgets and software, which is cool, but not as deep as Kiplinger’s. The new look is nice, but aside from some of the technology news, it’s more a browsing kind of mag rather than deep learning and reading.

Finally, I recently discovered Revenue. It’s a magazine on search engine marketing. The thing I love about this guy is that its ads are almost as good as its articles. So much interesting information. It blows my mind. Definitely up there with Kiplinger’s, if not higher.

I should put good links to subscribing to these, but I’m dead tired. I’ll edit the post once I find a good deal. I can’t find the BizRate offer I got these from, and don’t know who offers the Revenue one. In any case though, next time you’re at Barn’s or Borders check them out. Also if you have recommendations let me know.

Good Business

Lazy Man’s Way to Riches by Richard Gilly Nixon

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Update: Looks like someone found the workbook! Contact walrusbooks(AT)yahoo(DOT)com [-b 4/14/2007]

Warning: The additional workbook is nowhere to be found. [-b 1/26/2007]

The Lazy Man's Way to RichesThe Lazy Man’s Way to Riches – a neat little audio book. It has a lot of the ideas that Think And Grow Rich and Rich Dad, Poor Dad have in them. What really makes this guy stand out is that he explains that procrastination means more work. Not doing something that needs to get done drains as much energy as actually doing it, except it drains it for longer without results. Another cool idea was the type of people you’re surrounded with and how to build your company (not just in the business sense) to be beneficial. This is a lot like Napoleon Hill’s mastermind idea.

The thing that really stands out is the last part of the book about online products: e-books and such. While the ad campaign section isn’t exactly new news, one should considers that for its time, and even now, it’s a fantastic and thorough explanation. He covers e-zines and e-books and mailing lists and gives lots of fantastic ideas.

While I’d still recommend Rich Dad, Poor Dad as the wake-up book, the latter online business part of Richard Gilly Nixon’s The Lazy Man’s Way to Riches is worth listening to. I wonder what Joe Karbo’s original was like.

[Edit:] Warning: The site at the end of the book is either too hard to find or no longer valid… The book is worth listening too, but it’s a bummer the promised section isn’t readily available. – Thanks Gigi!
If anyone knows how to get there, please pass on how. Thanks. -b


Good Business

Beans

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Beans: Four Principles for Running a Business in Good Times or Bad Beans, a very cute and to the point story about an already successful business owner trying to figure out what’s missing. The interesting thing about this story is that the guy asking for help already has everything in place. It’s pretty cool to hear about how a stewardess couple gets its business going and truly lives doing something they’re passionate about (the wife retired, but still helps out). In the end, the consultant brings out the framework of the four P’s: passion, people, personal and product, and tells Jack how they apply to his business. What’s neat about this book is that it’s told as a story rather than in concepts. It’s not super deep or super long, but it has some nice simple insights. The parts with the consultant feedback were alright, but I found the parts about Jack the most interesting and educational–and I think that’s what the authors intended.

I made the decision and officially started yesterday. Can you guess what I chose?