Economic Principals

Economic Principal #1:
The smaller a government is, the more dynamic the economy will be and the larger the government is, the more stagnant the economy will become.

Why Wal-Mart Is Such a Great Company

Watch this.  The Supreme Court just ruled in favor of Wal-Mart, arguing that they did not violate unfair labor laws or discriminated against women. 

The History of the "What Do You Want To Do With Your Life?" Life Plan

“What do you want to do with your life?”

“What do I want to do with my life?” It is the most important question to answer in any person’s life. It is “The Question.” Yet the way it is commonly asked today—“What should I do with my life?” — is disempowering, it is the wrong way to ask it. The right way is to place responsibility for the answer with yourself: “What do I want to do with my life?” with emphasis on the “I want.”  The word “should” smuggles in guilt; it implies there is some higher order that we must live up to other than our own happiness. It suggests that we have an obligation to something or someone other than ourselves. Don’t we all have
something we “should” do with our life? The answer is “No!” There is nothing you should do with your life and there is nothing you must do with your life. Your life is just that—your life. You are free to decide what you want to do with it. You do not have to live up to any “other or higher order.” Your life here is everything you have and you are free to pursue your own happiness.  Realizing that your life is YOUR life is the most important step in your life plan. In fact, if you get only one thing from this book, let it be the message that your life is YOURS. That is why I have included the message here, right in the beginning.

How You Arrived Here
Before we really begin, let’s look at how you arrived where you are today.  Think back to when you were a child, trying to make sense of the world. You were naturally curious about everything, from the immediate people around you to the world as a whole. The world is configured in such a way as to help children
understand the world. Children ask questions and the grown-ups answer. You even spend your childhood days in formal schooling so you can better understand the world when you’re an adult.  It’s fascinating to see how children look at the world. They look at things objectively, without judgment or presumptions. They simply look at what is in front of them and gradually build their understanding of the world from what they see with little concept of self. You were once that little child.  As you grew older, your understanding of the world increased. You learned about countries in far off places, people living in circumstances that are very different from yours. You learned about the physical world we inhabit and about the language we use. You also became more aware about other people and about yourself.  You noticed how people treated you and how they treated each other. As a teen, you became very aware about yourself in relation to the opposite sex.  As you continued to mature, you became aware of your own future, your career, and your life as a whole.

I Challenge You
I challenge you.  Here is a simple web business with less-than-$20.00 start-up costs that you can start today.  I challenge you.  This business model allows you to create a product that you can sell a thousand times without additional work.  The $20 is the cost to host a website.  Use Hostgator. 

DVDs, CDs, Books and eBooks, digital file downloads (songs, templates, clip-art), etc. allows you to create a product that you can sell thousands of.  But to sell these, you either need to create them yourself, or license resell rights from others.

Sell Time By The Project
A standard business model is to sell your services by the project, like a house-painter or auto-mechanic or other skilled laborer.  "Sell time by the project" business model means that you only get paid once for each job you take on.  With this business model there is no real way to leverage your efforts or your time.  Understandably, in a slow economy you can't always be picky about how you earn money, so sometimes you may need to sell your skills by the project.  Consider a business that allows you to get paid beyond the project itself.  Here's an example of such a business.

DemoGirls
The two sisters behind 'Demo Girls' created a web business where they offer to create a two-minute screen cast about any product or website for just $99.

Customers can go to the DemoGirl website, view a short video, and then click the $99 special link to order a custom made screen cast about their product.  The 2-minute video on their front page explains what they do.  As you can see, it is a pretty simple business model.

Here is how it works:
The client provides a little information about the product, sends photos, and pays $99 and the Demo Girls create a screen cast for the client.

While you probably won't get rich selling screen casts for $99, doing just a few per week can add up.

Here's my challenge to you: Create your own 'Demo Girl' kind of business.

Creating your own business like this is extremely simple.  All you really need is a six page web site, an order form, and a web form to accept payment, like PayPal.

Once you have the web site set up, you can start promoting your video creation services to potential clients.

Production and Marketing
If I were going to create something along the lines of a Demo Girl business, I'd want to target local businesses in my area, and create videos using Animoto or Muvee Reveal.

With Animoto you can quickly create professional looking videos in minutes.

Using tools like Muvee Reveal and Animoto allows you to quickly turn out quality short video productions, ideal for YouTube and the web.  When you are charging just $99 per video, being able to turn these out quickly is important.  Of course, if the client just wants a screencast of a web site or software product, the tool of choice would be Camtasia.

How Do I Find Clients Who Want Videos for Their Business?
To find clients, start with the local Yellow Pages.  Next, purchase postcard mailers.  Copy the addresses for each of those businesses onto a postcard mailers.  Once you've created a list of clients with addresses and phone numbers who could use your services, write up a short but convincing advertisement using this format: 1) Get the reader's attention; 2) Show the benefits of your product or service; 3) Prove that benefit; 4) Convince your audience of the advantage; 5) and Ask for action.  Send postcards to local businesses, offering to create a 1 minute YouTube video for their business for just $99.

Most small and medium-sized businesses would love to have a video they could refer customers to on YouTube and/or their own web site.  Once you started doing work for these businesses, chances are they might contract with you for more videos, or for longer videos--all of which would increase the income these projects would create.

As your business expands, consider hiring local talent to create the videos for you--high-schoolers with digital cameras and computers can do the work, and often will be happy for the job experience.  This could be built up into a nice income stream, without requiring much of an investment in time or equipment.

Learn HTML, the Language of the Internet

HTML.

Gary North writes:

The legendary car salesman, Joe Girard, walked into a car dealership and asked for a job. He had only one rule: he would not take his turn dealing with walk-ins. His fellow salesmen appreciated that. Girard developed a system of paying for referrals. He did cold calling on the phone. He sent Christmas cards and birthday cards to buyers. But anyone walking in the door to ask to see him was his. The others agreed. He got rich. He outsold all of them combined.

Why? He did not deal with tire-kickers. He dealt only with people ready to buy a car. With them, he took test drives.

Joe Girard is worth knowing about.  Read his story here and then answer these questions:
1. Where was Joe Girard born, and what famous boxer did he grow up near?
2.  Many social welfare workers, teachers, and parent groups deplore and condemn abusive treatment of children.  But after reading about Joe Girard, what, if any, horrible effects did his father's abusive tongue have on him?
3. According to Joe Girard, what were the best places to generate business and why?  Where did he look for work at age 9?
4.  At age 11, Joe got into the soda pop business, selling soda for much less than other competitors in the neighborhood.  How did Joe get into the soda pop business?
5.  Which 2 principles did Joe learn at that young age that he learned would produce wonders?
6.  Joe understood that if he planned his work and worked his plan that he would succeed.  What does that mean to "plan your work and then work your plan?"
7.  How many hours a day and how many days per week did it take Joe to earn $75 a week?
8.  Why did Joe leave the military prematurely, and what did he do to earn an honorable discharge?
9.  What qualities did Mr. Saperstein possess?
10.What two generous actions did Mr. Saperstein do for Joe?
11. What were the circumstances of Joe's lowest point in his life?
12. How many cars did Joe sell on his first day of selling cars?  How many did he sell in his second month?  How did the manager reward him, and why?
13. According to Joe, what one decision did he make that made a "big difference" in his car-selling business?
14. 

Final Exam: Career Awareness, Periods 5, 7, & 8

1.  Read the article "Time is Money" here by Gary North.

2.  Next, answer the following questions at your blog.  Below the agenda here you see several questions.  Answer those questions with complete sentences at your blog. 

3.  Write a four-paragraph review of the article, using the four-paragraph review that is posted on this site.  Get this done.  Ask yourself this question: Do I want a passing grade?  Do I want my time in this class from February to June to mean anything?

Questions

1.  What does the author mean when he says, "money can buy you time, which is why we pay physicians and pharmaceutical companies after we have heart attacks"?

2.  Reread the paragraph that starts "But 25% more pay is not the heart of the matter."  The author then says, "People who start businesses are more likely to get rich than anyone else."  According to the author, why is this true?

3.  Explain in your owns words what the heading "The High Cost of Leisure" means given what has been covered so far in the article.  

4.  In what year in human history did productivity begin its "steady upward rise . . . of 2.5% per annum"?

5.  What was Thomas Edison's contribution to "overcoming nature"?  How did his invention overcome nature?

6.  According to the author, how do most of us overcome nature?

7.  According to the author, why do most people don't like to work?

8.  According to Dr. North, how many hours does it take for a person to become competent with something?  Divide that number by 365 and you will get the number of years it takes to be competent.  How many years does it take for someone to be competent at computer engineering or selling real estate?  How many years does it take for someone to be a master of a skill?

9.  Gary North's article promotes and privileges creators over consumers.  He says, "What most people do not recognize early enough is that they should find employment in a field in which the compounding process produces a sense of personal achievement that lures them back into an ever-greater investment of their time. The compounding process is what produces success, but the front-end costs, especially psychological costs, keep out most people. They willingly serve as salary earners rather than creators."  What does he mean by the "compounding process"?

10.  In his section on "The Problem With Schools," Gary North says that great teachers are not allowed to multiply themselves.  What does he mean by multiplying one's self?

11.  According to Dr. North, who in the free-market is king and the person to whom we should serve?

12.  What lesson can you learn from the following story.  "There is a man in my church who owns and operates motels. Back in the 1980s, he was in college, earning a degree in physical education. He was also making $60,000 a year in the motel business. His coach told him to quit school. "You're making more money than I am. Why do you want to teach junior high school boys, whose parents will be on your back to give their kid more playing time?" He wisely dropped out of college."
End of Questions

Today's Agenda

1.  Read this article on "What the Turks Can Teach Us about Recycling."
2.  Then answer the following questions at your blog.
3.  Here are your questions:
a.  Who is Scott Walker?
b.  An editorial in The Journal Times.com was outraged by a decision that Walker was considering.  What did Walker want to do?
c.  Why did Governor Walker surrender his plan, and what were the arguments his opponents raised?
d.  According to the article, what is the estimated number of waste-pickers worldwide?
e.  Individual homeowners and employees at schools and other institutions believe that it is really important to separate recyclable items like paper, glass, and plastic.  According to the article, how would individual waste-pickers benefit from just throwing everything away into a single bin?
f.  What is an eskicis?
g.  Open up another tab and google "currency converter."  Find out how much 17,000 lira are in terms of US dollars.
h.  Read that paragraph next to the picture with the "For Sale" real estate sign.  According to that paragraph, what is one of the benefits of allowing individuals roaming neighborhoods to collect trash?
i.  Who is the author of the article you just read?  Where does
j.  In the paragraph where the "Today's Zaman" is linked, what reason does Emir Altıngöller, a junk dealer, give for being content?
End of Questions

Today's Agenda

Good morning,
We have an hour and 20 minutes to get this morning's assignment done and SENT to me.  Don't waste time.  I will entering final grades today and tomorrow, so if you have any hopes of passing this class you will need to complete this assignment.  Here it is:
1.  Open up this link.
2.  Select the biography on any one person who interests you.  If you cannot find any one who interests you, pick someone.  You cannot, no, you will not sit idle this morning, letting another 80 minutes tick off of your life without having produced something.  Remember, that the purpose of this class was to work toward mastery in writing summaries.  Are you there: are you a master summarizer?  Skills, marketable skills raise individuals out of poverty, not good looks or the right friends.
3.  Watch the biography of your choice.  Watch it for 40 minutes.  You won't finish it today; okay, fine, but you need to watch it and give attention to the individual's story.
4.  Next, you will need to write a 4-paragraph summary on what you learned on that person.  You must follow the 4-paragraph format that I have posted at the top of the blog for this class: http://callingacareer.blogspot.com.  That format is here:

4-Paragraph Review Format

Paragraph 1: Accurately summarize the important points about the person's life covered in the documentary.
Paragraph 2: Explain why these points are important.
Paragraph 3: Compare the biography to another one you've seen that is better.
Paragraph 4: Evaluate the documentary.  Explain this: How did it help to advance your understanding of the importance of the person?  If the documentary did not help, explain why it did not.

5.  Understand that you are going to write your four-paragraph review at your blog.  You do have your email address AND password, don't you.

IF YOUR VIDEO DOESN'T RUN, HERE IS AN ALTERNATIVE ASSIGNMENT:
1.  Go to Google and enter the name of a person you'd like to know more about.
2.  Read the Wikipedia entry on that person.  In fact, to guarantee that you get a Wikipedia entry from Google, type in the Google browser window, "Wikipedia and [your person's name]."
3.  Read the article.
4.  Summarize the article using the 4-paragraph format.  Then send me a copy of your blog with your completed summary. 
 

HERE'S WHAT ARE WE DOING TODAY

Today's Agenda:
1.  Watch a 2:44 minute Youtube video of a young man who earned a Bachelor's degree in Art by the time he was 17 years old.  Remember the CLEP exam I had you review 2 weeks ago?  He took a few of them, which means that he tested out of expensive college courses and didn't have to spend the time or the money to take those classes and therefore delay his employment or business goals.  Some people don't mind wasting time.  Regrettably, some aspects of school encourage wasting time.  You don't let individuals waste your time, do you?  Why give institutions that privilege?  Your time, your energy, your money, and ultimately your wealth are what are important for you, important to you.  Please consider taking a CLEP exam in a subject in which you feel well-versed.  Get more information here, here, and here.  Check with Ms. Livingston in the College & Career Center or with Mr. Frankel in the Library to see if they have CLEP study guides and CLEP practice tests.  Do this today before you leave school at 3:05.  Find out when the test dates are.  Fit one of the tests into your schedule, pay for it, show up, and take it.  Challenge yourself.  Get going with your energetic self today.  Why wait?  Start building a name for yourself, to yourself today.  Why wait?

2.  Create a Gallery Slideshow
A.  You'll need the software.  Download a free trial of Wondershare onto your computer.  Do that now.  Have it uploaded onto your computer in less than 10 minutes.  Don't take longer than that. 
B.  To create a gallery show of someone else, you'll need a SIM card reader.  Don't have one?  Check the prices here: sim card reader.  They're cheap.  Get one.
C.   3.  You'll need a free sound editor.  Use Audacity.
4.  Start taking photos of someone you want to feature in your slideshow documentary.
5.  Download Adobe's Photoshop Element.  It's free, except for the fact that you've got to provide your information.

Modern Day Debtor's Prisons Come With a University Degree. Count the Cost of a College Degree.

Tuesday, June 7 Assignment:
1.  Read this article on college debt.  Its headline is terrific.
2.  After you finish reading the article, explain in one paragraph what you learned from the article.  You know where to write that paragraph, don't you.
3. 

Part I of Final Exam

The following assignment will be Part I of three parts for your final exam.  You are to create a biographical documentary on someone's life, anyone, your friend, your brother, sister, mom, dad, aunt, cousins, grandpa.  For an example of what I expect, please watch this.  Note how the person being interviewed does all of the speaking.  The interviewers ask specific and open-ended questions that allow the subject to speak freely about their life or about their work.  As the person speaks freely, you with your trusty tape-recorder captures clearly each word.  Please read the captioned summaries at the end of the video or at the beginning of the video.  The summaries will help you understand what kinds of questions to ask, what information is relevant to honoring another human being. 

Follow these steps:
1.  Write a short list of people you want to create a storied documentary on, like the one(s) presented in the video.  The intention and the result of the video will be honoring.  So pick someone you'd like to honor. 
2.  Understand that the New York Times story videos are quite good.  Unless you use the same equipment that they have at their disposal, you may not create a video of equal quality.  Don't be discouraged.  You can still create a very good video.  Here are some questions you will want to ask:
a.  What do you do for a living?
b.  How long have you been doing this?
c.  Can you share briefly with me what your work involves?
d.  What do you love about your work?
e.  What are the challenges of your work?
f.  When did you start this work?
g.  Why did you get into it?  Who influenced you?
h.  Is there anything in particular that you'd like the world to know about your work or about how you came to do this work?
i.  What role does your family play in your work, in your business?

Be Aware
Practice asking those questions.  Pay attention to your tone.  Does your tone sound like your audience owes you something?  Are you asking "What do you love about your work?" with genuine interest in your tone or as though you are satisfying an assignment that is taking you away from Facebook?

Microphone
Since you are taking STILL photographs and not videos, you will need a tape-recorder.

Allow your subject to speak as freely as possible.  It would be really cool if you could get the person to talk about their job at their job.  The best people for this would be business owners, people who own their own business.

Pictures
Take still photos.  Take moving pictures.  You don't need both.  But you can use both.  Note the New York Times examples: they are all still photographs strung together with smooth transitions that gives the impression of being a slow moving picture. 

Once you've got your pictures, use Camtasia to produce the documentary.  Download, if you haven't already, its one-month, free trial.  It's free . . . for 30 days.  Once you upload the pictures and video, then you can edit it.

Voice-over
Make sure that your subject's voice is heard as the narration over the video of their pictures and video. 

Any questions?  If you have questions, please come to me and ask me.  Otherwise, I cannot address your concerns or worries and you cannot get answers to problems that arise in this project.  Thank you. 

CREATE A VIDEO DOCUMENTARY WITH CAMTASIA

HEY, PERIOD 1!  HOW MANY OF  YOU ACTUALLY COMPLETED WEDNESDAY'S ASSIGNMENT, WHERE YOU HAD TO FIND 3 LOGOS OF COMPANIES OR ORGANIZATIONS YOU'VE BEEN AFFILIATED WITH?   I ASK BECAUSE I DIDN'T RECEIVE THE ASSIGNMENT FROM ANYONE.  THE ORIGINAL ASSIGNMENT FOR TODAY WAS FOR EACH STUDENT TO COMPOSE A RESUME.  BECAUSE I DID NOT RECEIVE ANY LOGOS FROM ANYONE, I WILL POSTPONE THAT ASSIGNMENT TO MONDAY.

TODAY'S ASSIGNMENT: FRIDAY, JUNE 3, 2011

1.  Select a company that you would like to work for or an entrepreneur you admire.  You will produce a documentary on either one.  You may comb through this list of Fortune 500 companies to locate a company to do a documentary on.  If you do not find a company you like from the list, then you'll need to do your own search at Google.  You may search for an entrepreneur from these lists of entrepreneurs here, here, here, and here.  Pick somebody you admire or who impresses you.   
2.  Next, open this link to download Camtasia studio 7.1 free trial.
3.  Download the free trial.  You, nor I, nor the school will be charged for the download or for using the software.  It is a free 30-day trial.  Try it.  And by "try it" I mean to try building a documentary.  Because this is new, you might become frustrated, particularly working with the computers in your hand.  With Camtasia anything that you have on the screen it will record.  So whether you have a picture, a video, a song, an article, Camtasia will record whatever is on your screen.  But you don't want just anything on your screen.  You want selective pictures or videos and background music to create a video documentary.

Periods 1 & 3 on Thursday, June 2, 2011

Read the article below and summarize it, using the following format.

Paragraph 1:  Summarize the article.
Paragraph 2:  According to the article, what makes for the "right topic" on a successful blog?  Then explain the other requirements for a successful blog.  At the end of this paragraph, identify a particular product that is fairly expensive that you would be willing to write and research on.
Paragraph 3: The author then lists what you should do to create a successful blog.  What does he recommend?  Comment on each requirement.  If you have questions, then ask them in that paragraph.
Paragraph 4:  Make this article actionable.  Here is what I mean.  Create a plan for yourself using the recommendations in this article.  Today is June 2nd.  Under "Notes" the author provides you with 5 things your should do.  Do them.  Even if you don't like computers, technology, or blogging, follow his steps.  See how far the instruction will take you.  You have little to lose.  The cost is minimal.  The cost in time is a little greater.  You've got time.  You've got a whole summer to work the steps the author posts.  Create a plan today with dates, goals, and steps.  Get started in class today.  Right now.  Don't let $100 bills flow in the streets right past your feet.  It's time to start picking up those bills.
.
Here is the article:

Profits from Blogs: What you can learn from two of the most profitable blogs in the world

Want to generate a lot of revenue from a blog? Use either of these two blogs as your 'model of success', and you'll have a better chance of success. Read this article and you'll understand why.

In the world of blogs, a lot of bloggers dream of making money, but only a very small handful actually do.

Most blogs never make a penny, and are eventually abandoned by their owners.

Still, some blogs do make money. In some cases, a lot of money.

For example, there are two blogs which are estimated be generating over a million a year in revenue.
According to ComScore, these two blogs are the worlds most popular blogs, and are read by more than 10 million people each day.

Both of these blogs follow the same model of success, have almost identical page layouts, cover the same topic, and generate revenue the same way.

Knowing what they do, and how they do it, can be a pretty good 'model of success' for your own blog.

The two most popular blogs
According to ComScore, the two most popular blogs in the world are:

1. www.engadget.com
2. www.gizmodo.com

Both of these blogs are highly successful, attract millions of unique visitors each day, and generate hundreds of thousands in revenue each month.
So, how do they do it?

The Model of Success
Both of these highly successful blogs follow the same model of success, which is:

• Start with the right topic - Both of the top blogs write about new (and usually expensive) products which appeal to people with money and who are most likely to buy those kinds of products.
  
  By appealing to people who want to spend money on the products written about in the blog, they have a built-in home-run for potential advertisers.
  
• Make it easy and fun to read - both of the above blogs keep it fun and interesting to read by following a simple layout, including an interesting photo for each blog post, and keeping it post short (usually 3 paragraphs or less). Their mantra appears to be, "Keep it short, interesting, and entertaining"
  
• Build a Community - each of the above blogs has built a community of dedicated readers by giving them what they want and by allowing readers to participate by posting comments below each blog post
  
• Update the blog often - to keep the blogs interesting, and to keep visitors coming back, both of the above blogs are updated several times a day.
  
• Generate Revenue through ads - by choosing to blog on a topic which attracts people eager to spend money on the items being blogged about, each site has no problem attracting high paying advertisers
  

It's a fairly simple formula. But one that has proven to work in many different publishing formats.

Basically you create a web site which targets people with money to spend, and write about cool things to spend money on (to attract the visitors and keep them coming back).

Then get advertisers to pay you, so they can reach the audience you have attracted.

Notes:
To be successful with this business model and blogs, you will want to:

• Host the blog yourself - avoid the free blog hosting sites as they will restrict your freedom, your search engine optimization, and your ability to run ads. If you host the blog yourself, you control your own destiny. Expect hosting costs to run under $20 a month.
  
• Use proven blog software - look for blog software that has been tested over time, has built in search engine optimization, and has plenty of free themes and plug-ins (ie http://wordpress.org/download/)
  
• Optimize the blog software for success - install the 'must have' plug-ins to help the blog grow faster (ie http://ithemes.com/seven/)
  
• Use social bookmarking to get the blog 'found' - create blog posts which are designed to attract a crowd, and use social bookmarking to get those posts noticed by the world
  
• Update the blog often - at least once a day

Costs:
Starting your own blog, on your own hosted site, can cost under $30 to start - which can include registering the domain name, setting up the hosting account, acquiring and installing the blog software, and installing themes and plug-ins.

Once installed, your blog can have an ongoing monthly cost of under $15 a month.

Success Potential
There are well over 10 million blogs on the internet, but less than 1% (probably 5,000) that are able turn a profit.

Most of these blogs use the same tools, use similar page layouts, and have similar features, so why do most not make a profit?

My opinion is most of these blogs either aren't trying to make a profit (probably the vast majority), or aren't following the business model shown above.

If you want to create a blog with high revenue potential, start by targeting an audience which advertisers are willing to pay you to reach. Then build the blog that the target audience wants to read.

To read more about the two blogs mentioned above, see http://www.wired.com/entertainment/theweb/magazine/16-04/mf_gadgetblogs?currentPage=1

Assignment for Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Assignment #1
Go online and find 3 logos.  Each logo should be a symbol for the organizations that you've spent time with, Bernstein High School should be one of them.  You may select a logo of a company that you've worked with or an industry that you've worked within.  Then select a logo of a university or a school, outside of Bernstein, that you've been a part of or one that you'd like to attend.  Next, post these logos at your blog and include a brief caption or summary of each logo.  You will use these logos on a resume to make the first impression of you "pop" on the page.

Assignment #2
Listen to the following interview.

Assignment #3
Read the following article and write up a review, using my 4-paragraph format.

A student asked this morning if a bank would be the best place to put a lot of money.  I answered no, because the banks will only pay you 1 to 2%.  Inflation right now across several different sectors ranges between 3 to 5 to 7%.  If you put your money in a bank at 1% or 2%, you are losing money.  One of the more stable currencies to convert your money to is gold and/or silver.  These metals retain the value of your money, meaning that as inflation quietly and insidiously robs you of your money your money retains its value, its purchasing power over time.