What’s the one thing you do that produces almost pure profit and an amazing ROI?
How can McDonald’s make money selling $1 hamburgers? By selling you a $1 iced tea.
Could you make a hamburger for a dollar? McDonald’s makes anywhere from 6 to 20 cents profit off a dollar burger. But the dollar iced tea that’s mostly ice and water is almost pure profit.
Apply that question to your own life, finances, and work. The sooner you know your most profitable use of time, the quicker you develop your ideal “niche’’ in life (and work), the golden goose that will grow your fortune.
Essential questions: What’s your iced tea? What’s your burger?
Anytime someone wants to grow revenue, I ask them, “What’s your iced tea, and what’s your burger?’’ …
When we worship technology and productivity: Whatever we don’t yet have will provide the solution?
There’s a messy corner in our home — yours too? Embarrassing power stips, blinking lights, and miles of dusty tangled cords leading to things time forgot.
Cutting cords is enticing. But you look at this mess of technology and fear unplugging the wrong cord. Everything might fall apart. So you “fix it’’ by ordering a new service. Let “the cable guy” dive into this tangled disarray.
The American Dream: One more purchase will solve your problems, make you more productive — and then? You’ll be happy.
So we “fix’’ one problem by replacing one thing or service (or person) with another. We soon find the “solution’’ creates a new mess. We idolize technology, convinced the “new” tech alone offers the answers. …
Want to ban something? Learn the Streisand Effect, forbidden fruit: We all want what we can’t have
Want to “ban” something? Politicians rarely learn “the last convertible rule,” aka “supply and demand.” Others understand it instinctively — and get rich.
In 1975, General Motors announced the 1975 Chevy Corvette and the 1976 Cadillac Eldorado would become the last American convertibles. Convertible production peaked at 7 percent of U.S. automobiles in the 1960s but cratered to just 1 percent by the mid-1970s. And now it was all over?
Many excuses were given (never-passed federal rollover safety regulations, the popularity of air conditioning). So GM announced “the last American convertible,’’ the end of the road.
Anytime you take something away (or threaten to ban it), demand soars. And prices follow…
“Schoolhouse Rock” helped ’70s kids memorize the Constitution and learn how to create laws
Ask any member of Generation X to “sing” the U.S. Constitution. You’ll gasp as we bounce our heads, breaking into:
“We the People… in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the…”
As we hit the final notes of “United States of America,” (in our childhood view of hipness), one of the cartoon people stamped “Right On!” beneath the Constitution’s signatures to give it that ’70s style.
The average American memorizes hundreds of songs and jingles, hearing them sung repeatedly on the radio or TV, which is why most members of Generation X can still “sing” you the preamble. …
Like living in an orphanage when your true father is the richest, most powerful man in the world
The world demands you choose: “Us or Them.” God has other plans.
“You are God’s idea — and God’s never had a bad idea,” Father Patrick Gonyea told the latest Encounter Conference. “Jesus came into this world to get into us.”
Damian Stayne, of Cor et Lumen Christi, added: “It’s not an accident that you’re here. When He was forming you in the womb, He was forming you for this. God has chosen us for this day.” St. Joan of Arc faced her own battles and declared, “I was made to do this.’’
“What you are is God’s gift to you; what you become is your gift to God.” …
Bryan Monroe (1965–2021): From Myrtle Beach to Michael Jackson, Barack Obama — and the media elite
Journalist Bryan Monroe was “the big guy destined for big things” when he joined us in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. We were both 22 then.
On January 13, Bryan died of a heart attack at age 55. This is the third time in nine months that I’ve written about a former journalism colleague dying so young. But Bryan is the one who “went national.”
“He was a maverick in journalism,” Ernest Owens, president of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists, told the Philadelphia Inquirer. “He never forgot he was Black, and he never forgot about the Black press.”
From the start, Bryan’s path was unique and…
“The Mary Tyler Moore Show” shows the transition from home/job to a life revolving around work
I was 5 when “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” debuted, and I remember tuning in because we felt “we knew her” from “Dick Van Dyke” reruns.
As Mary Richards, her hair was intentionally longer in that first season than it had been on the old show to make it clear this was a different woman (no longer Laura), younger, freer.
Thirty and never married, they told us.
In real life, Mary Tyler Moore was 34 in 1970 (when the median age for a new marriage was 22.5 for men and 20.6 for women), so they considered making her character divorced. …
When life feels like an illusion, think of this classic episode
The latest example of “Star Trek,” predicting today’s addictive relationship with tech-enhanced stories:
Former Enterprise Captain Christopher Pike is disabled by radiation. Technology saves — and traps him, allowing the old hero’s scarred head to do nothing but blink “yes” or “no” from his futuristic wheelchair.
First Officer Spock risks the death penalty to get Pike back to Talos IV, a planet where rulers can return Pike to a dream world: where all fantasies seem real.
“There have been great societies that did not use the wheel but there have been no societies that did not tell stories”- Ursula K. …
Pope Francis: “Let the Holy Spirit enter into you and take you, take you where he wants”
Our Isolation Era is building the Christian call to invite the Holy Spirit. “To be born again,” Pope Francis stresses, “is to let the Spirit enter us.”
“To be a good Christian is to let the Holy Spirit enter into you and take you, take you where he wants,” Pope Francis said at the pandemic’s peak. “Prayer is what opens the door to the Holy Spirit and gives us this freedom; this boldness, this courage of the Holy Spirit.”
His predecessor, Pope Benedict, said Jesus’ entire mission was to get us baptized in the Holy Spirit. St. …
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