This year I kept track of the economic output of my garage sale as compared to other opportunities available and the results were sobering.
Here are the financial results of this year’s big multi-family garage sale:

Total: $174.00 / 30 hours labor = $5.80 per hour.
I sell books online through eBay, Amazon and various other bookselling sites […]

The New York Times offers this tool for determining your social class. When I looked under “Occupation” for Entrepreneur or Business Owner or Investor or Self-Employed, it wasn’t there. Please correct me if I am wrong. I dug for several minutes.
As the traditional media withers and dies, they still don’t value […]

After asking, “What am I doing that’s exceptional?”… I  took a walk through a nature preserve and contemplated the question. I didn’t find an answer, but another question popped into my head that led me closer to the answer…
What am I contributing?
That question is at the root of all success, isn’t it?
People say […]

Seth Godin posted today about markets. And he specifically references the blog market – “Being exceptional matters most. Stand out, don’t fit in. Shun the non-believers.”
It got me thinking about this blog… What am I doing that is exceptional, stands out, doesn’t fit in? Am I shunning the non-believers?
What are you doing that is […]

Seth Godin sent me a complimentary copy of his latest book – the dip.
It’s a book that begs you to examine yourself closely, where you’ve been, where you are, and where you plan to go.
If you want to know the basics, read this post about the dip at the personal MBA.
Let me share some observations […]

Harry C. Sweere - the founder of the company I work for, told me this story before he died (paraphrased from memory):
In 1988, five years after we started, I was broke; I had no viable products in the market, little cash flow, and no workable plans for a new product. My house was over mortgaged, […]

Sergey Mischenko runs an auto supplies business in the Ukraine. He wants to expand his business and hire two more employees, which will provide income to two more families.
In the spirit of competition and entrepreneurship, eMom and I fought it out in the MyBlogLog Community Building Challenge, and we were able to raise $100.00 for […]

That’s right…We tied. At 10 PM last night both Wendy and I had 90 community members.
So here is the deal.
I will donate $25.00 to kiva.org + $5.00 for each blogger that asked their readers to join Wendy’s community. So that is $45.00.
Kammie at Passion Meets Purpose won the choice of either a $25.00 Amazon gift […]

If you are new to this blog – my wife Christine sells books online, plans to open a ‘brick and mortar’ bookstore, and had her dreams dashed only to find out last week that her plan has legs and may even run. So the bookstore dream is back on and I am going to tell […]

I’ve never been good at negotiation – I mean negotiating a price – and neither has Christine. But I put the negotiating puzzle together this week. This story could save you thousands of dollars. These two simple tips I stumbled upon this week saved my family $50,000 to $100,000 dollars. And that was by accident. […]