How Do You Want to Make Your Millions?

I’ve said many times that to become wealthy you need to learn and practice a financially valuable skill — and most such skills have something to do with helping a business make money. There is virtually no limit to the amount of money you can make if you become skillful at one of these trades:…

Read More

How I Became a “Chicken” Entrepreneur

Fahri Diner and Xiang-Dong Cao were sitting around after work having a few beers (I’m making up the details) and complaining about their employer, Siemens Information and Communication Networks in Boca Raton, Florida. Cao was saying that they were not properly appreciated, when Diner said, “Hell, we should start our own business.” “You’re damn right,”…

Read More

Get Paid to Do What You Want To Do

Dear ETR Reader, I am not particularly bright or gifted. So just about everyone who knows me is surprised by where I am today. About the only things I’m any good at are writing, speaking, and marketing. And I’m not great just decent. I don’t have an MBA or a Ph.D., or professional licensing of…

Read More

The Martha Stewart Recipe for Failure

Martha Stewart is an American legend. Born Martha Kostyra to a working-class Polish family in New Jersey, her sensational career was launched when she quit her job as a stockbroker in the mid 1970s to start a catering business in Connecticut. Over the next 10 years, with the help of her then-husband’s publishing connections, she…

Read More

What Happened to Bruce: A Lesson I’d Like My Son To Learn

I’ve known Bruce since high school. His family and mine, both extra-large Irish-American clans, lived less than a mile apart. Although we ran with a gang of kids who seemed destined for questionable futures, Bruce and I always had the sense that we wanted more. We both went to college. We both studied hard. We…

Read More

Make Sure You’re Asking The Right Questions

Recently, Jane, a faithful ETR reader, wrote to me, asking for some advice to help her help a start-up company become profitable — and, at the same time, prove that she is worth the considerable salary that they are willing to pay her. Let’s begin at the beginning of her story . . . “I…

Read More

Saving “Useless” Teddy

Everyone agreed. Teddy had to go. In the six months that he had worked for us, he hadn’t accomplished a single one of his half-dozen primary goals. Not only had he failed at his objectives, he was disruptive at meetings and rude in corporate correspondence. I volunteered to be the hatchet man and I was…

Read More

How — and When — to Walk Away from Money

About two years ago, a friend of mine asked me to help him start his own business. “Hey, Michael,” he said, “you’ve helped practically everyone we know in some way. Why not help me too?” Of course, I agreed to do it. I made some phone calls and put together a small support group of…

Read More

How One ETR Reader Uses ETR to Have a Better Life

Patrick recently forwarded a note to me from Arnie G., a regular ETR reader. “Other ETR readers might be interested in what this guy has to say,” Patrick advised — and I agreed. So, here it is, expressed in seven “how-to-benefit-from-ETR” morsels: 1. Read ETR — even if you don’t think you have the time.…

Read More