Introduction
I tell most of my SMEE (Small and Medium Sized Enterprise) clients (and my students) that real estate investing is usually a good idea. Homeownership and owning your own business premises makes sense to me in most cases. Why is that?
Well, here are a few of my reasons:
1. Forced savings— most people are really bad at saving* so, if at a minimum they own their own home or condo ...
Posted by Bruce Firestone
on May 17, 2011
Real estate has some attributes that are unique to this asset class. Here are ten of them:
1. You can rent real estate to third parties. (Try that with gold or stocks assuming you are not using exotic financial instruments.)
2. By renting to a third party you are benefiting from a ‘Wealth Effect’; every year a renter is paying off part of your mortgage for you—when you sell that ...
Posted by Bruce Firestone
on May 17, 2011
“Those mundane and tedious little things that, when done exactly right, with the right kind of attention and intention, form in their aggregate a distinctive essence, an evanescent quality that distinguishes every great business you’ve ever done business with from its more mediocre counterparts whose owners are satisfied to simply get through the day,” Michael E. Gerber, The E Myth ...
Posted by Bruce Firestone
on May 16, 2011
A Primer on Twitter for Beginners Putting a Value on Your Twitter Account
I am a big believer in Twitter, despite its unfortunate name, for professionals. I like it better than Facebook for those purposes because Twitter is an outward-facing service while Facebook is a gated universe. Anyone can follow me on Twitter (unless I block them) while on Facebook I have to become friends with them.
For ...
Posted by Bruce Firestone
on December 25, 2010
Set Goals, Internalize Them and Then Make it Happen
We all know what went wrong during the ‘Year that Was’. People tend to remember the bad stuff. When I first started teaching again in the 1990s, I used to read each individual review of my performance by my students.
What I found was that if I had 60 students, 50 of them loved the work I did, 6, 7 or 8 of them couldn’t care less ...
Posted by Bruce Firestone
on December 25, 2010
Canadian Business Magazine recently published the list of Canada’s 100 Wealthiest People (2010/11). I analyzed the list to see which sectors are producing wealth for these people.
Many of them obviously have holdings in more than one sector so I used some judgment to come up with my breakdown by sector but the over all trend is clear: three sectors (real estate, tech and food/retail) produced ...
Posted by Bruce Firestone
on December 25, 2010