Here’s today’s list of 5 Things I Wished I’d Known Years Ago:
- Albert Einstein once said the most powerful force he had ever discovered was compound interest. I wish I’d put $50 a month into the stock market from the age of 15 onward. I’d have $2 million at retirement age. As it is, to reach the same goal with my meager savings at age 34, I need to contribute ten times that much, or else rustle up a $50,000 investment to get back on track.
- Google would multiply the value of its stock 1500% in the first few years after its initial public offering.
- Undergraduate college is a waste for most people. It gives them a piece of paper which basically says “this person isn’t a complete moron”. While that may be valuable in jobs where complete morons are in the habit of applying for them, if you really want to be successful, teach yourself how to do what you want to do or get a mentor in the field. A lot of careers require degrees — for that “complete moron” reason, above — so if you need a degree to do the job you want, don’t stress out about your undergraduate years. Have as much fun as is humanly possible in your last few years without obligations before reality gets a hold on you. (Specialized graduate programs are often another matter.)
- People who make friends with you in order to sell you something aren’t your friends. In rare cases, they may become your friends, but in most cases, you are just a piece of meat with a credit card to them. Watch for this with calls from people you barely know, relatives you aren’t close with, and neighbors who could just walk over to talk rather than calling you.
- Door-to-door salesmen and telemarketers are abusing your expectation of friendship and/or the arrival of good things with a door knock or phone call. They are exploiting you, and you do not owe them any courtesy. That said, they are people with one of the worst, creepiest, most soul-sucking jobs on the planet; be nice to them, but turn them down in the strongest manner you think is appropriate.
- Limited-time offers… aren’t. There will always be another sale. There will always be another discount. If someone ever tells you that you must decide now or else the offer is rescinded, substitute whatever they are saying to you with “I am trying to cloud your judgment in order to make a sale and saddle you with something you probably don’t want at a price you cannot afford.”
- I don’t predict stuff well, nor do I track well without an external means of tracking such as a notebook or computer program. Avoid predictions of expected time or how long a list is supposed to be, because I’ll probably be wrong.
Begets the actual story
Matt,
Assuming your #4 and #5 above are the result of a personal experience, and I would love to read about the story, if you don’t mind sharing.
Good blog idea!
Good idea for a blog. I’ll see what I can dredge up for tomorrow.
—
Matthew P. Barnson
#4 and #5
#4 comes from an experience in Newdale, ID. A church member who we barely knew invited us to his house for a presentation. He buddied up to us a lot in the weeks prior to the presentation. It was for Usana. We bought in, he stayed friends, we were too poor to afford it and dropped out a couple months later, and he showed no further interest in us.
This experience was the start of my deep, abiding hatred for the concept of MLMs, too. There were a few more experiences along the way which cemented the concept in my mind: if someone wants to get you to sell something for them or buy into their scheme, they see you as a mark, not a friend. Now they may make fine business associates or co-workers, but that’s no reason to trust them any further than you have to, or to think that there is any other foundation for your relationship other than mutual exploitation.
#5 is personal experience. I served two years on a mission in LA. No matter how you choose to dress it up and give it glowing praise after-the-fact for building moral fiber, it’s still a miserable experience, and totally a door-to-door sales position for a church. I could recount tales of relentless pressure to perform and bring in more numbers, mind-numbing days of tedium knocking on doors, occasional flashes of beauty amidst the grinding poverty of inner-city living, and other experiences which deserve to be blogged about on their own.
The book that opened my eyes was Robert Cialdini’s “Influence: Science and Practice”. It’s a step-by-step explanation of how people get you to say yes when you want to say no, and in that sense could be a how-to guide for successful salesmanship. It also brought to light the fact that the “inspired principles” I had rehearsed every morning on my mission were, in fact, plain-old sales and influence principles dressed up in euphemisms to make them more palatable in a religious context.
Cialdini’s book was the final step, for me, in learning how to say “no” and stop people from guilting me into doing something I don’t want to do. I can’t recommend it enough if you have ever found yourself agreeing to something you really don’t want to do or buy.
—
Matthew P. Barnson
? ?
Interesting, There are many lessons that I have learned over the years.
Is there a particular reason why there are 5 things you wished you’d known and 7 listed? Not busting your chops, just curious if I missed the punchline…
See #7
See the description of number 7 to get the point…
No, what actually happened is that I made my list of 5, and it was actually 6. Over the past few years, I’ve come to realize this kind of thing is a constant with me. I think I’ll be 5 minutes, and I take an hour. I think I can deliver a project in 5 days, and it takes a month. I make a list of the Ten Commandments, and I only include 9. That kind of thing.
It seems to be a pattern… thus #7. I could have avoided a lot of broken promises if I’d refused to commit to a specific date and instead said “when it’s done”.
—
Matthew P. Barnson
Wished I’d known
1) Comics would never be worth a mint. The repackaging of old issues unto reprints and then big books available for almost nothing, combined with EBAY, dropped the bottom out of the collecting market. I would have saved money for comics I wanted instead of buying multiple versions with hologram cards, and #1s of every comic that came out.
2) NEVER follow your high school girlfriend to college. And NEVER attack her new boyfriend. and NEVER make a horror movie about it. After that, they tend to want you to go somewhere else.
3) I wish Id gone and become an RN out of the gate. I’d probably be finished with it now, had more money, and be making movies.
4) I wish I’d listened when they told me to buy a townhouse in Montgomery county in 2000. We could have afforded it but we were renters at the time. Even with the housing slump, we’s be living in twice the house we have today, and all out school loans would be paid off.
5) I’ve eaten a lot of crow for making fun of BUFFY when it was on the air. I’m the shows biggest fan now.
6) Never buy an American car… especially used.
7) Yeah, Google stock.
Visit the Official Justin Timpane Website Music, Acting, and More! http://www.timpane.com
heh
Now that sounds like a story.
1) Follow your dreams, but be realistic about them. I don’t regret moving to NYC and pursuing a professional opera career – I just wish it had taken me less than 6 years to figure out that it wasn’t going to happen. Had I entered law school at 26 instead of 29, I’d be done by now, and able to move on with my life.
2) Volunteering to take on extra responsibility doesn’t make people like you more. It just means they give you more sh*t to do.
3) Never take Tax Law. Or Corporate Finance. You don’t need them and you won’t understand them anyway.
4) Other people are lazy. Never rely on them for anything.
5) Google stock, yeah.
— Ben
The story..
You may have heard some of it, peripherally. I think your friend Karie (last name omitted) was friends with the girl in question.
Short version.. sometimes going absolutely bonkers makes you a better artist. Ask Brian Wilson. Things ended badly, I moved off campus, spent 2 months living with a girl I barely knew, wrote a wondefully dark horror script, and tried to make a brilliant film..
With a VHS camcorder.
It is terrible to the point of Hilarity, and is still fun to watch because it is so so bad. Really, really.
Fun stuff.
Visit the Official Justin Timpane Website Music, Acting, and More! http://www.timpane.com
cool
Sounds like fun. Although I don’t think I have a friend named Karie.
— Ben
Sent..
In your private messages. Anyhoo.. yeah, tons of fun.. like dental work kinda fun!
But hey.. there’s like an album and a half of songs I got out of it, and the girl and I are actually friends now, so its all good.
Visit the Official Justin Timpane Website Music, Acting, and More! http://www.timpane.com