I had an interesting discussion recently with a few people as we were talking about stereotypes in a work or business life and how some people either embrace it to help get themselves ahead or detest it as they feel it is a little offensive.

An example of a stereotype that stands out in my mind personally was back when I was working with a large group of people at a store and I happened to be one of the more knowledgeable people when it came to software issues. Now a person came into the store and despite being offered help by some other people he bypassed them and immediately went to me.

I proceeded to help him and he was very happy at the end while complimenting my level of knowledge. He then threw in a comment on how he knew I was the right person to talk to as oppose to the other people as you have to talk to Asian people to get correct answers about these types of things. I didn’t really know what to say and he just re-emphasized his view and how he found that to be true and since he was Caucasian himself it wasn’t a racist remark or anything.

Whether we like it or not, we are always being judged based on stereotypes. Like most things though, you can either be negative about it or turn it into a positive. One person told me that it used to bother him on the fact that he wore glasses and how people would automatically label him as a more technical/numbers oriented individual when in reality he was more of an artist that focused more on the creative side of things and wanted to be known mainly for that.

Since he was being stereotyped though, he used that to his advantage when it came to getting business. He began to market himself a little more as not only a person who could do creative work but as well as someone who understood the business side of an industry as well such as a person who focuses on the bottom line. He mentioned that it actually worked well for him.

I guess in some ways you can consider stereotypes as an additional trait to help yourself stand out from a crowd too as oppose to just looking at it from a negative point of view on how it can only hinder your image. Just have to change your way of thinking I suppose.

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I saw a clip from the Larry King show that had a panel of money gurus on it and were addressing the fears of a recession in the US. Now apparently there is some kind of plan down there to give families say an extra $600 a year that is going to take place in hopes that people will spend it to reinvigorate the economy.

For the most part, they were cynical on how it is only $600 which won’t do much and that in terms of a recession they viewed this time as a great event if you’re an investor as it should be time to buy with prices being low. They then dived into how people have to change their way of thinking when it comes to money as generally if you are stuck with that workers mentality when it comes to money then not surprisingly times like these will be bad for you.

The general message is very true I thought as it does have a lot to do about mindset when it comes to money. The only thing I was a little bit iffy about was the notion that $600 can’t do much. Maybe I am just one of those Internet age people, but you can definitely do a lot with $600 if you really want to. Heck, with the Internet there are so many things you can do even with no money to try and generate an income.

Even thinking of it from a more traditional view, I even see things such as people say holding their own simple speed dating events which costs them very little to do while being able to generate a profit fairly quickly. Good old fashion entrepreneurial spirit mixed with passion and ambition I guess you can say.

I guess like with the $600, even with that it comes down to mindset as you shouldn’t limit yourself to only one type of thing that you can do. Example, if I was only thinking more traditional investments such as stocks and real estate then of course that figure sounds like nothing. Expand your way of thinking. This might sound strange, but another example would be to take that $600 and invest it in yourself to become more knowledgeable as a person. Your newly acquired knowledge can end up generating great returns for you.

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This was the final chapter in the book and of course it was titled “Think big and kick ass in business in life”. For the most part it was mostly a re-affirmation of what has been said with different stories.

One thing that I thought was odd was that there were a lot of pages near the beginning of this chapter where Trump talks about how many women he has been with as well as diving into topics such as what attracts women and so fourth. It felt completely off topic especially with lines such as “So guys, be cocky, confident, smart, and humorous and you will be able to get all the women you want”. Felt more like reading a book of “How to be a player 101”.

Although, I believe the intent in writing those parts was to demonstrate how in life attitude plays a large role on how others perceive you. He then talks about how if you are thinking big in life that you should say also own expensive and high end clothing to project to the world that you value quality.

I can easily see people interpreting that in a surface level way though which usually causes people to kill themselves financially. Speaking for myself, everyone who I have personally met who does that usually aren’t too well off financially with the ones who can speak for themselves are usually the ones who are better off financially.

The rest of it talks about having the right will, courage and determination to see things through to the end. At the same time, he emphasizes the importance of how if you want to succeed then you need to surround yourself and make friends with like-minded people as oppose to say people who are always negative and complaining to others about problems. He even says that you should discontinue contact with negative people as they will only drain you.

He then wraps it up by re-emphasizing that in the world there will always be obstacles forced upon you in your journey to success such as greedy professionals who will want to take all of your money or people who are willing to lie, cheat and steal from you. You just have to be prepared to find ways to keep going.

That does it for this book. I’ll be writing my final thoughts on it overall.

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2008 is here and what a crazy year 2007 has been for myself. If I had to summarize it in a few words, it was definitely the “year of revelation” as I encountered a lot of situations where I got to see a lot of people’s true colors both in good and bad ways. Actually, it was so big that it will lead up to 2008 and will be a key focus in the beginning of 2008 for me. As silly as it sounds, a lot of the stuff that happened seemed like some sort of story book setup as I can’t explain the strange coincidental occurrence of events. It’s almost like those situations where you instantly turn something negative into a positive. I think I can even write a book after this.

On top of that, the experiences that I will be able to share and expose once everything is done with kind of excites me in some strange way as I think it will help a lot of people. It’s definitely business and finance related too. I might even get to interview some people for 2008 on this blog who went through some very unique business and personal financial situations as well that you could write a movie script for.

Speaking about the blog, 2007 was an interesting year. In 2006 the monthly average pageview was 23322 with visits sitting at about 16401. In 2007 the monthly average jumped to 44212 pageviews and about 31629 visits. Here is the breakdown for those who are interested in this type of stuff:

Most active post ironically was one that was written in 2006 about that Internet Marketing Conference with 189 comments as of writing this. Special thanks to all of my regular readers as well for contributing in general which definitely provided additional insights on various topics. Maybe this whole Forbes thing in 2008 will open up some new opportunities to explore for this blog.

Happy new year.

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This is kind of an old but interesting question that was passed on to me before that usually gets a lot of different answers. I’ve seen it pop up recently and so I’ll post it here for anyone who has never seen it before. Look at this list and see if you can identity what is wrong with it. Most people can’t find an error:

AAA
BBB
CCC
DDD
EEE
FFF
GGG
HHH
III
JJJ
KKK
LLL
MMM
NNN
OOO
PPP
QQQ
RRR
SSS
TTT
UUU
VVV
WWW
XXX
YYY
ZZZ

This is actually a good question I think for people who wish to try and change their way of thinking to a certain extent.

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