Wheel of Fortune

My maternal grandfather, a watchmaker, survived the Great Depression by operating a carnival wheel in an amusement park in Newark, New Jersey.

Today, the wheel hangs on a wall in my home, a gaudy artifact symbolizing weird work and small wagers, and the legacy of a man whose real trade was time.

Most of my grandfather's biographical details are lost, but at least one is clear: despite the Depression, he stayed in the game.

Fortunate are the people who—as he did—show up, learn new skills, take risks, think weird.

They don't surrender to the feeling they're hostages or has-beens. They choose instead to be bootstrappers.

Right now, two generations, Millennials and Boomers, are joined at the hip by the prospect of near-poverty.

They're placing bets on the next spin of the wheel.

The bootstrappers are mastering new, adaptive skills. 

The rest are at home, consuming games and gameshows.

Which are you doing?

The Postman Always Rings Twice

I don't often hear from my life insurance carrier. 

The company silently sweeps the premium due every month from my bank account, while we go merrily about our separate ways.

I'm not sure I want to hear from the firm, to be frank.

But this week, I suddenly did.

The letter carrier brought a stately direct mail piece offering me a $400,000 accidental death and dismemberment policy.

It arrived one week to the day after the bombs blew up at the Boston Marathon.

Tchotchke peddlers began to cash in on the tragedy within 24 hours. 

An insurance company simply moves a bit slower.

Club Fed

Like any red-blooded, tax-paying American, I despise April 15.

Don't get me wrong. 

I'm the first guy to acknowledge my appreciation for the handy stuff our government does. National defense. Air traffic control. Clean skies. Student lending. Veterans aid. Crime detection. Disease prevention. Scientific research. Space exploration. Roads. Bridges. Historic preservation. Wildland protection. Etc.

But these things should come free, n'est-ce pas?

Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., famously wrote, "Taxes are what we pay for civilized society."

That's true only if you believe we enjoy a civilized society. (Ever watched an episode of Jersey Shore?)

I'll venture another definition.

Taxes are your membership dues in Club Fed.

What, don't like our club?

Join some other.

The Role of Chance

Business is frightfully competitive. So we tend to believe only the fittest survive.

But success may take more luck than pluck.

Investment strategist Michael Mauboussin thinks so.

He claims we're too quick to discount the role chance plays in business.

“People attempt to extract lessons from what is mostly a random process,” Mauboussin tells readers of Inc.

“Once something has been successful, we start to believe it was the only thing that could have happened.”

By idolizing business winners, Mauboussin says, we forget there were others who followed the same strategies, but failed.

Remembering those failures helps you “keep your mind open to other possibilities,” he says.

Paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould observed the same thing in nature. Gould thought chance was a deciding factor in the evolution of life on earth.

He based his conclusions on fossilized animals discovered in Canada’s Burgess Shale.

The animals in the Burgess Shale were all exquisitely suited to their environment. But none left modern descendants.

From the fact, Gould concluded that fitness is no guarantee of survival.

Survival is really a matter of luck.

The Secrets of Teamwork

Thomas Edison's great grandniece has penned Midnight Lunch, a 300-page book that reveals the inventor's four-faceted approach to teamwork.

• Edison built teams from diverse disciplines. The team that invented the lightbulb included chemists, mathmeticians and glassblowers.
  
  
• The inventorlearned from his mistakes. After state and local governments rejected his electronic vote recorder, Edison decided to focus exclusively on consumer products.
  
  
• Edison's vision kept the teams on track. When team members floundered or disagreed, the boss quickly intervened, deciding the course.
  
  
• Edison changed direction with the market. Other inventors of the day ignored the fact that consumers wanted products powered by electricity—and they failed.

Marketing Lessons from the Three Stooges

For pure marketing genius, contemporary giants like Jeff Bezos, Howard Schultz and Tony Hsieh shrink in comparison to the three ur-marketers.

I'm talking about Moe, Larry and Curly.

Sure, attend all the marketing conferences you want. Follow all the blogs. Study all the books. Consume all the CDs.

You won't learn a tenth of what you'll learn by watching any one of The Stooges' shorts.

To save you time, I've boiled their innumerable brand-building insights down to three key lessons:

Make great products. The boys always innovated and never imitated! Want to make a great cupcake? Add pillow feathers. A great microbrew? Add a whole box of alum. A great soup? Add a live oyster.

Keep a laser-focus on your goals. The boys understood the paramount importance of attention to detail and keeping "on task." Which of their competitors would have spent as much time fixing a leaking pipe? Pitching a tent? Eating an artichoke?

Utilize short, snappy content. As content marketers, The Stooges were ahead of their time. They drew millions of fans by keeping their messages brief and on point. And they built a loyal following by perfecting a consistently edgy—and authentic—tone. While you don't want merely to copy the boys, it will help if you break rocks over your head, mistake a skunk for your hat, and rip out clumps of your own hair.

Entrepreneurial ADD

Bonus tip from P.T. Barnum's 1880 playbook Art of Getting Money.

Management consultants and business writers love to quote young CEOs who insist they're about to disrupt the universe.

But, for every 30 year-old billionaire, there are a million visionaries who chase barmy ideas. Worse, they chase too many.

I think they all suffer from a bad case of entrepreneurial ADD, complicated by an impulse to become the next Mark Zuckerberg.

Without doubt, success derives from a good idea. But much more than that, it demands focus.

P.T. Barnum asked business people to think big, but stick to the knitting. Barnum wrote:

"Let hope predominate, but be not too visionary. Many persons are always kept poor, because they are too visionary. Every project looks to them like certain success, and therefore they keep changing from one business to another, always in hot water, always 'under the harrow.' The plan of 'counting the chickens before they are hatched' is an error of ancient date, but it does not seem to improve by age."

Tip #5 for Getting Money

Use the Best Tools
Part 5 of of a 5-part series on the Golden Rules for Making Money, as set forth in P.T. Barnum's 1880 guidebook Art of Getting Money

The "tools" P.T. Barnum means are the ones who leave each night in the elevator.

"You cannot have too good tools to work with, and there is no tool you should be so particular about as living tools," he writes.

Which employees make the best tools?

The ones who are curious.

The curious employee is the best because "he learns something every day, and you are benefited by the experience he acquires," Barnum says.
"He is worth more to you this year than last, and he is the last man you should part with."

Tip #4 for Getting Money

Don't Get above Your Business
Part 4 of a 5-part series on the Golden Rules for Making Money, as set forth in P.T. Barnum's 1880 guidebook Art of Getting Money

You can strive to be excellent. Or you can strive to make money.

You cannot do both.

"The great ambition should be to excel all others engaged in the same occupation," says P.T. Barnum.

Focusing on a fat bottom line is getting above your business. It guarantees you'll occupy a place below competitors.

Focusing on excellence is sticking to your business. It guarantees you'll attract a lot of customers.

"Americans are too superficial," Barnum writes. "They are striving to get rich quickly, and do not generally do their business as substantially and thoroughly as they should. But whoever excels all others in his own line, if his habits are good and his integrity undoubted, cannot fail to secure abundant patronage, and the wealth that naturally follows. Let your motto then always be 'Excelsior,' for by living up to it there is no such word as fail."

Tip #1 for Getting Money

Advertise Your Business
Part 1 of a 5-part series on the Golden Rules for Making Money

Showman P.T. Barnum published a little book in 1880 titled Art of Money Getting.

In it, he shared his "Golden Rules for Making Money," including this one, "Advertise Your Business."

If you want to get rich, "Be careful to advertise," Barnum says.

"If a man has got goods for sale and he don't advertise them in some way, the chances are that some day the sheriff will do it for him," Barnum warns.

But advertising alone isn't enough.

You have to advertise a lot, Barnum insists. Like knowledge, a little advertising is "a dangerous thing."

"Your object in advertising is to make the public understand what you have got to sell, and if you have not the pluck to keep advertising until you have imparted that information, all the money you have spent is lost."