Here’s a cynical look at how one can become a billionaire rather quickly in some parts of the world. The piece outlines four strategies.
It’s worth the read.
Brinkmanship: the art or practice of pushing a dangerous situation or confrontation to the limit of safety especially to force a desired outcome.
One of the stories that best exemplifies how tycoons can think differently is about Fred Smith realizing that FedEx had run out of cash and would have to stop flying. Co-founder, Roger Frock, tells the story this way in his history of the company Changing How The World Does Business. On page 101, Frock writes:
Marcus Walks Away Again
Well, this was another episode where our hero Marcus couldn’t get past the People component of his three-step fix-her-up methodology to work on Products and Process. However, it still offers up a valuable business and life lesson which I will get to shortly. But first I want to say that the episode brought back some memories for me. Back in the 1980s, right after completing my degree I moved into a third-floor apartment in an old four-story mansion that had been built in the Roaring 20s for railroad executives. The mansion was situated in the most exclusive neighborhood in the city so that in addition to being a fabulous place to live, it also offered tenants a prestige address.
Finally some good news on the economic front.
U.S. Poised to Become the Low-Cost Manufacturer of the Developed World
Our analysis suggests that the U.S. is steadily becoming one of the lowest-cost countries for manufacturing in the developed world. We estimate that by 2015, average manufacturing costs in the five major advanced export economies that we studied—Germany, Japan, France, Italy, and the U.K.—will be 8 to 18 percent higher than in the U.S. Among the biggest drivers of this advantage will be the costs of labor (adjusted for productivity), natural gas, and electricity. As a result, we estimate that the U.S. could capture up to 5 percent of total exports from these developed countries by the end of the decade. The shift will be supported by a significant U.S. advantage in shipping costs in important trade routes compared with other major manufacturing economies.
These shifting cost dynamics are likely to have a significant impact on world trade. China and the major developed economies account for around 75 percent of global exports. And the U.S. export surge will be felt across a wide range of U.S. industries.
Jerry Seinfeld’s Chains Productivity Secret
Everyone has been talking about the chain method for building commitment and focus of late. It’s been attributed to Jerry Seinfeld but I have a recollection of reading about it somewhere long ago.
In a nut shell, it works like this:
Jerry
He [Seinfeld] said the way to be a better comic was to create better jokes and the way to create better jokes was to write every day. But his advice was better than that. He had a gem of a leverage technique he used on himself and you can use it to motivate yourself—even when you don’t feel like it.
He revealed a unique calendar system he uses to pressure himself to write. Here’s how it works.
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