I was at a seminar yesterday and one of the topics that came up was about making patents and how even if you don’t want to be the person who actually executes the idea, just thinking them up can generate people a lot of wealth.

I was then reading up about an individual named Ronald Katz who owns over 50 different patents with most of them consisting of technology patents that businesses use everyday. As a result, he generates billions of dollars licensing out his patents.

While this is not exactly the same, just by reading this it almost sounds like a person who just sits down while trying to think of the best domain names to register and then hoping that someone will pay top dollars for it. I can only assume that trying to patent an idea requires more financial investment, but it sure puts it in perspective when people say you just have to be the first to think of it.

It definitely made me more curious to learn more about the industry and process though.

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While it’s true that being able to leverage your time is a fundamental component in creating a business or even generating an income for your lifestyle, this week reminded me so much on how it’s one thing to have people aid you for certain things and another to be completely dependent on them.

I guess an example would be if you opened up a restaurant and had absolutely no idea how to cook then you are entirely dependent on that one chef to follow through as oppose to if you were the chef who happens to own the restaurant.

While this may be an extreme generalization, I remember there was one person that I talked to who happened to be a very successful business person who came from China. He was mentioning how he believed that a reason why so many Asian people here were successful in creating a small business was largely due to the fact that many Asians try to make sure that in starting a business they are fully capable of doing everything themselves first. Therefore, hiring say more people is to save time/productivity as oppose to being a necessity in the beginning.

Again, an extreme generalization since that type of thing isn’t tied down to one’s ethic background, but the idea is true in many ways. I had an interesting day this week as I literally went through 30 hours straight without rest as I took it a bit too easy that I could simply just rely on another source to take care of a workload which didn’t turn out as planned.

While I didn’t consider myself better qualified to do the task, fortunately having basic knowledge of the solution helped the situation a lot as well. Always be prepared to jump in yourself.

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I had a fun opportunity to be on a film set recently and a lot of people were participating as either a casual hobby or side engagement to their regular life I guess you can say. Now the people that were there obviously didn’t know anything about each other.

Now what was interesting was that after mingling around with others there was this one group of people that were talking to each other and one person mentioned he needed a photographer. It just happened that one person in the group was a professional photographer. The person then expressed quite loudly in a humorous way on how that’s why you should always be nice to everyone as you never know who you could be talking to.

The funny thing too was that I encountered a similar situation where I was talking to a lady who happened to be a teacher and she was struggling with Internet related matters as she couldn’t figure out what to do. Again, it just so happens that I know a lot about those types of things and she was delighted to go home and put her new found knowledge in action.

It’s kind of too coincidental in some ways too huh? But in general, never pre-judge people and treat others well as that person you are talking to could easily be the help that you are looking for either presently or in the future. Especially from a business perspective, it can’t hurt to have more connections.

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I had to shop for a new backpack the other day as my old one has lasted for almost a decade and a half. I was just browsing around a department store and saw some interesting ones and as always I always debate about the prices as I want to get the best value for the dollar.

Some of them were in the $50 range which I thought was way too much for something that I would simply throw some items in on occasion. A comment was then made on how there was another store that sold backpacks for about $10 which should do the job and another person then automatically disregarded that and mentioned how the quality must be very bad.

The first thing that came to my mind was how price doesn’t necessarily correlate with the quality of a product. From a business point of view, in many cases you are paying for all of the marketing and overhead costs of getting that product in-front of you.

For example, if there was only one apple tree in the area and one guy has to drive twenty miles whereas another person just has to walk one block to do the same business offering the same product then odds are the last guy can sell the same product for less as his overhead is almost nothing.

I did end up just getting the $10 one and it seems fine for my needs.

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Yesterday I bumped into this deal for an all-in-one inkjet printer that was selling for $19.99. I must admit, the impulsiveness due to the very low price was convincing me to take action as I was considering purchasing another inkjet printer. On top of that, there was a free shipping deal going on which made the whole value seem even better.

I actually did start to checkout the item and was prepared to confirm everything until I noticed that the total was over $30 which didn’t seem right even after taxes. Upon looking closer, there was a fee that had the acronym “ADS”.

Upon further reading, it was a program called an “Advanced Disposal Surcharge” that has been implemented to cover costs in disposing electronic products. The levy has been implemented for online orders apparently back in August 1st 2007 yet the funny thing was I bought products from online retailers since then and this was the first time I saw it.

Understandable charge I guess, but looking at how the fee was almost half the price of the actual printer it kind of killed the deal from buying it online. Things like these may make online purchases less attractive.

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