The Inspiration, Motivation and Success Blog

I run this blog on WordPress.org Blogging software. Inc. magazine has a great article about WordPress’ founder, Matt Mullenweg.

“I like to read first thing in the morning. I’m addicted to the Kindle. I read a lot of business books, because I feel like I should figure out how to be a real businessman before someone figures out that I’m not one. I really enjoy reading classics as well, which I try to work in once every two months. Reading is my break. Otherwise, I go to sleep and wake up thinking about WordPress.”

“I do my best stuff midmorning and superlate at night, from 1 to 5 in the morning. Some people don’t need sleep. I actually do need sleep. I just sleep all the time. I’ll catch naps in the afternoon, or I’ll take a 20-minute snooze in the office — just all the time. Our business is 24 hours. Our guys in Europe come online at midnight. Sometimes, I will go out at night, come home from the bar at 2 or 3 a.m., and then go to work.”

Read the article.

Derek Sivers, Founder of CDBaby.com

Derek Sivers, Founder of CDBaby.com, website where independent music artists can promote their music has a a free e-book with his best advice for fellow musicians about how to be more successful promoting their music. I read it. I think it is the best piece of advice for anybody starting out in music industry.

Bob Parsons, GoDaddy.com

Inc.com recently published an article about Bob Parsons, CEO and Founder of GoDaddy.com, web domain registration and hosting company.

Excerpts:

“At my office, I’m almost never behind my desk. I have this cafeteria-style conference table, which I bought for $90 years ago, and a dozen or so chairs. That’s where I am most of the day, meeting with my staff. A few folks complained that the chairs were cheap and ugly, and they’re right. But they convey the right attitude: functional and cheap. You don’t spend your money on office furniture — you spend it where it’s going to impact your customers.

I manage everything from the 57-inch monitor that hangs from the ceiling in my office, which I can access with a wireless keyboard and mouse. I have it set to Go Daddy’s home page, and there’s a program we created that tracks our current market share and how many domain names we register each day. We register about one every second. The names show up on that screen in real time, like a ticker tape. It’s always on, so I can refer to it throughout the day. I can tell at a glance what’s going right or wrong.” READ MORE

Y Combinator, venture firm specializing in funding early stage startups, has a reddit-like website where folks interested in software/web development post links to interesting articles and websites. They call it Hacker News. Very interesting place. Check it out.

You must have heard about Zappos.com – one of the biggest online shoe retailers. I recently came across to this post written by one of the Fast Company founders – Bill Taylor. It is a great article that describes the great tools used at Zappos; they pay their trainees to quit. Great read. Definitely, check it out. Zappos brings home the idea how and why you should hire people who is right for the job.

After reading the article, I analyzed former jobs I have worked at. There were definitely some jobs where I’d quite after first week of training even if they have not paid me to quit.

June 2008 issue of Fast Company magazine published an interview with Texas Oil Tycoon T. Boone Pickens. For those who don’t know him, T. Boone Pickens is a corporate raider of 1980s, an American Billionaire, and founder of Mesa Petroleum.

Article mostly talked about his new $10 Billion Wind Farm venture. It is interesting to hear from a person who made his money from traditional energy sources such as oil and gas talk about alternative energy. He was honest to say that his purpose is to make money; environment is secondary. He is predicting demand for oil will keep going up and prices will follow. To the question why Mr. Pickens is turning his back on oil, he answered “Foreign oil is costing us $500 billion a year. In 10 years, $5 trillion goes out of the country. It’s the greatest transfer of wealth from one area to another in the history of the world”. Mr. Warren Buffett says about $2 billion is leaving the US everyday, so it will be $730 billion a year. If we attribute $500 billion of $730 to oil, I guess the rest is non-oil goods.

Regarding ethanol, he says ethanol is a political issue. Senators representing corn states want to keep their farmer buddies rich and happy, therefore they will always support ethanol (irrespective it is smart or dumb idea). Reminder: Mr. Charlie Munger said “turning food into gasoline is the dumbest idea ever”.

I have pre-ordered a copy of T. Boone Pickens’ new book “The First Billion Is the Hardest: How Believing It’s Still Early in the Game Can Lead to Life’s Greatest Comebacks.” from Amazon. Scheduled to come out September 2, 2008.

On Saturday, May 3, 2008 I attended Berkshire Hathaway 2008 Annual Shareholders Meeting at Qwest Center in Omaha, Nebraska along with approx. 31,000 other shareholders including international shareholders from 40 foreign countries.

CNBC’s Warren Buffett Watch has done an awesome job live blogging morning and afternoon Q&A sessions with Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, so I don’t need to post my notes here. They also have other good postings about the meeting. So check it out.

I took some photos. Please see them below.

Warren Buffett before the meeting at the Exhibit Hall greeting shareholders and talking to media:

Here I am inside one of the jets that belongs to BRK sub – NetJets (fractional jet ownership business) pretending to be a businessman who is reading something important:

Outside the jet:

Warren Buffett with soap opera star Susan Lucci touring books section of the exhibit hall:

Oh, Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger met with International Shareholders after Q&A and signed autographs. They signed my dollar bill. I will post this image later when I scan it.

Chander who was also present at this year’s meeting posted a nice article:

55 Learnings from Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger

After seeing tiny yellow and blue check cashing shops popping up all over Florida street crossing corners, I wondered who was behind this phenomenal company and its astonishing growth. According to Currents Magazine, Ian MacKechnie, 62-year old Scotland-born American from Tampa, FL started the company in 1989. Today Amscot Financial is $85 million financial services (check cashing, money orders, tax, cash advances, etc) company that shows no signs of slowing down.

Ian MacKechnie is a serial entrepreneur who started and sold 2 multi-million dollar successful businesses MacKechnie Foods, a wholesale manufacturing baking company and Oliver’s, chain of coffee shops in Scotland/UK.

After reading about Tampa as one of the fastest growing cities in John Naisbitt’s Megatrends, he decided to move there and bought a baking business. However, surprisingly, business flopped. Luckily, he noticed his employees were cashing their paychecks not at banks, but at bars and liquor stores. The reason was convenience. Light bulb went off!

Amscot (derived from America and Scotland) with catchy slogan (”You’re OK with us”) is a very technologically advanced and keeps its stores clean. They give back to the community and knows as the “majority minority employer”.

Read full article.

Warren Buffett today announced that he played a role ($6.5 billion) in Mars Inc.’s $23 billion purchase of Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co. He spoke on CNBC’s Squawk Box this morning. Watch the video and read full transcripts here.

In addition to buying $4.4 billion of Mars’s subordinated debt, Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire will pay $2.1 billion for an interest in Wrigley at an unspecified discount to the price being paid to shareholders, according to a statement today by Chicago-based Wrigley. Wrigley will become a private, stand-alone company owned by Mars.

Those of who follow Buffett’s Q&A with college students know that Warren Buffett uses Wrigley as an example many times over. For example, when he says he sticks to what he knows best and business that are simple – “chewing gum is as far as I have gone”. About Wrigley’s “moat” – “You give me a billion dollars and tell me to go into the chewing gum business and try to make a real dent in Wrigley’s. I can’t do it.”

During the interview to the question “when is it a good time buy a good business?” – He says “Well, I think a good time to buy a really great business is when you can do it. Many, many years ago, as I remember, Herman Lay offered the Frito-Lay company to Coca-Cola. And he offered them the company first, as I understand it, and they decided for one reason or another they didn’t want to do it then. And of course Pepsico bought it and it’s the best thing they ever did. So if you get a chance to buy a wonderful business, then my advice is, grab it. As Yogi Berra would say, ‘When you come to a fork in the road, take it.’”

What’s nice about investing is you don’t have to swing at every pitch.

The first rule is not to lose. The second rule is not to forget the first rule.

Price is what you pay and value is what you get.

In the short term, the market is a voting machine. In the long term, it is a weighing machine. (Explanation: The father of value investing, Benjamin Graham, explained this concept by saying that in the short run, the market is like a voting machine–tallying up which firms are popular and unpopular. But in the long run, the market is like a weighing machine–assessing the substance of a company. The message is clear: What matters in the long run is a company’s actual underlying business performance and not the investing public’s fickle opinion about its prospects in the short run.)

Stick with businesses you understand.

Never look back. There is so much to look forward to.

Don’t focus on macro economics stuff, predictions, etc. It is all irrelevant.

There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.

We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.

It’s only when the tide goes out that you learn who’s been swimming naked

The market, like the Lord, helps those who help themselves. But unlike the Lord, the market does not forgive those who know not what they do.

Wall Street makes its money in activity, you make your money on inactivity.

Never count on making a good sale. Have the purchase price be so attractive that even a mediocre sale gives good results.

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and 5 minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.

I’d rather have a $10 million business making 15% than a $100 million business making 5%, I have other places I can put the money

Time is the friend of the wonderful business; it is the enemy of the lousy business. If you are in a lousy business for a long time, you will get a lousy result even if you buy it cheap. If you are in a wonderful business for a long time, even if you pay a little bit too much going in you will get a wonderful result if you stay in a long time.

It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.

Never ask a barber if you need a haircut.

I don’t try to jump over 7-foot hurdles: I look for 1-foot hurdles that I can step over.

We don’t get paid for activity, just for being right. As to how long we will wait, we’ll wait indefinitely.

When a management team with a reputation for brilliance joins a business with poor fundamental economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.

I am a better investor because I am a businessman and a better businessman because I am an investor.

I will tell you how to become rich. Close the doors. Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful.

A public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought.

Great investment opportunities come around when excellent companies are surrounded by unusual circumstances that cause the stock to be misappraised.

I always knew I was going to be rich. I don’t think I ever doubted it for a minute.

I never attempt to make money on the stock market. I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for five years.

Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.

Our favorite holding period is forever.

If a business does well, the stock eventually follows.

If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians.

It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.

Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.

Look at market fluctuations as your friend rather than your enemy; profit from folly rather than participate in it.

Of the billionaires I have known, money just brings out the basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money, they are simply jerks with a billion dollars.

Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.

Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.

Wide diversification is only required when investors do not understand what they are doing.

The business schools reward difficult complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective.

The investor of today does not profit from yesterday’s growth.

The only time to buy these junk bonds is on a day with no “y” in it. (NEVER!)

The smarter the journalists are, the better off society is. For to a degree, people read the press to inform themselves-and the better the teacher, the better the student body.

We enjoy the process far more than the proceeds.

Why not invest your assets in the companies you really like? As Mae West said, “Too much of a good thing can be wonderful”.

You do things when the opportunities come along. I’ve had periods in my life when I’ve had a bundle of ideas come along, and I’ve had long dry spells. If I get an idea next week, I’ll do something. If not, I won’t do a damn thing.

You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.