Ryan Byrd’s Ramblings

Silly Riddle of the Day:

Think of words ending in -gry. ‘Angry’ and ‘hungry’ are two of them. What is the third word in the English language? You use it every day, and if you were reading carefully, I’ve just told you what it is.

(First one who posts the answer gets a gold star.)

MORE WORD FUN:

• Maybe you know that there are four words with no rhymes: silver, orange, purple and month. BUT silver and orange have HALF RHYMES! Lozenge with orange and salver with silver.
• “Bookkeeper”/”bookkeeping” are the only words with three consecutive repeated letters, unless you include hyphenated words, then you have “sweet-toothed” too.
• After primary, secondary, we have tertiary, quaternary, quinary, senary, septenary, octonary, nonary and denary. Jumping to 12th we have duodenary and let’s not forget 20th, vigenary.
• Though the letter ‘e’ appears more often in words than any other, there are more words beginning with the letter ‘s’.
• I’ve claimed that the longest one-syllable English word is screeched, at nine letters, but there are other 9 letter words with one-syllable as well: scratched, scrounged, scrunched, stretched, straights and strengths.
• Vacuum and continuum are two words that have two u’s in a row.
• “Ough” can be pronounced in at least nine different ways: “A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed.”
• ‘Skepticisms’ is supposed to be the longest word that is typed using alternate hands, try it and see!
• The abbreviation for pound, “lb.,” comes from the astrological sign Libra (symbolized by scales.)

Here are two more of my famous word fun and word trivia posts.

src: my brain, google, http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/aboutwords/contranym?view=uk, http://www.jayp.net/trivia/lang01.htm

The last word fact entry received a positive response, so I was encouraged to post again on the same topic.

• The word perk (as in, “your job has lots of perks”) is actually a shortened version of the word perquisite.
• Berserk, meaning violently or destructively frenzied, comes from Norse warriors who fought with frenzied rage in battle, possibly induced by eating hallucinogenic mushrooms. Such warriors wore hides of bears, which explains the probable origin of berserkr as a compound of *bera, “bear,” and serkr, “shirt, coat.”
• Mesmerize is named after Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815), Austrian physician who developed a theory of animal magnetism and a mysterious body fluid which allows one person to hypnotize another.
• The term counterproductive has nothing to do with rating fast-food employee efficiency
• Irregardless is a word, albeit nonstandard. Nine out of ten smart people will think you’re stupid if you use it however. Impress them instead by using “irrespective”.
• The word carpet has little to do with either cars or pets.
• Tranquility is often considered the most beautiful word in the English language. Runners up include lullaby, gossamer, gracious, mother, sycamore and lovely. The ugliest words? Cacophony, crunch, flatulent, gripe, phlegmatic, plutocrat, treachery, fructify, kumquat, crepuscular, and gargoyle.

Sources: dictionary.com, thefreedictionary.com, google, my brain

Last semester I took a Business Strategy Class at the University of Utah and today I made some of the notes from that class available online, for your edification and enjoyment. Here are outlines for seven fundamental strategy papers. They cover works from Porter, Prahaland and Hamel and Mintzberg.

You’re welcome!

A few days ago I blogged about the 400 richest Americans. Perhaps while reading that entry, you said to yourself, “I wouldn’t mind being rich!” Perhaps you envisioned, if only for a moment, how your life would change if your life was free from financial worries. Maybe you imagined the consequent big houses, or the luxury cars, or the fabulous vacations you might take. It’s not unlikely that in this daydream you saw yourself throwing outrageous parties where you mingled with crowds of the beautiful, the famous, the influential, and the decision makers of the world. And then, if my reader demographics are correct, you realized not only that you’re poor, but that it was time for fifth period physics class. Hello High School Students of Seattle Washington!

For some people (the Walton widow and the four Walton children), wealth came as a result of Daddy passing it along. For the rest of us, careful planning and work is required. It goes almost without saying that it is easier to make a million dollars once you already have a million, still, for us non-millionaires, there is hope. The big secret to financial success: you must make money while you sleep (Rich Dad/Poor Dad); that is, your money must work to make you more money. But how do you do that? How do you put your money to work? Here following are your options. Not all are created equal.

• 1. Savings account
• 2. CDs
• 3. Bonds
• 4. Stocks
• 5. Mutual funds
• 6. Start a business
• 7. Buy/sell real estate
• 8. License creative works (write a book (like “the Entrepreneur Story“), compose/play music, code software)
• 9. Rental properties

You should know that rich people have more opportunities: (because they are Accredited Investors)

• 1. Everything poor people can do PLUS:
• 2. Invest in companies and high return (and risk) ventures

Secrets to staying poor:

• 1. Join an MLM
• 2. Carry a balance on a credit card
• 3. Borrow money to buy something
• 4. Day trade
• 5. Gamble
• 6. Buy things on impulse
• 7. Have a negative savings rate
• 8. Buy new cars
• 9. Bad investments: baseball cards, diamonds, stamps, coins, other collectibles
• 10. Convince yourself that because “money can’t buy happiness”, that you’re better off without it.
• 11. Ask for donations on your website.

Further Reading

• The very rich in America: “The kind of money you cannot comprehend”
• The World’s Billionaires
• Almanac of American Wealth

How are you making money tonight while you sleep?

Christmas ’05, when my parents asked what I’d like for a gift, as always, I told them that a new book or two would be just fine. Instead, they bought me a Medieval sword and a pair of Chinese daggers, stating “you already have lots of books.”

They were right, technically; I do have a fair number of books, but since when do parents buy their children weapons instead of educational tools? Had I then been a minor, a call to the Child Protection Services would not have been unwarranted.

This past Christmas I repeated my desire for book gifts saying, “I would like books for Christmas, but if you end up buying me a suit of armor or a lance, I guess that would be fine, too.”

Against all odds, my parents held off on the Dark Age armaments and bought me a number of Penguin Classic books. Among my plunder was a bound copy of an essay by George Orwell/Eric Arthur Blair of the Animal Farm fame (“Some pigs lead a revolt against people, act like jerks, and play poker.”)

George’s work is entitled “Why I Write”, but before revealing why he writes, he lists four reasons why anyone would ever write:

1. Sheer egotism

2. Aesthetic enthusiasm

3. Historical impulse

4. Political purpose

George’s reason for writing? Number four (politics) and boy does George have an axe to grind. He uses over twenty pages to excoriate the British, writing for example, “England is the most class-ridden country under the sun. It is a land of snobbery and privilege, ruled largely by the old and the silly.” And of the English politicians he says, “What is to be expected of them is not treachery or physical cowardice, but stupidity, unconscious sabotage, an infallible instinct for doing the wrong thing.” Literary blood-lust sated, George launches into the main course of his essay; why we should all embrace socialism.

The time was 1941 and the Germans had, in May, begun to heavily bomb London. The English, just a year removed from the myopic command of Neville Chamberlain, were rather unprepared for the assault and were therefore badly suffering. George strongly believed that it was evil capitalism that was preventing England from succeeding in the conflict. “What this war has demonstrated is that private capitalism– that is, an economic system in which land, factories, mines and transport are owned privately and operated solely for profit– does not work.” He goes so far to declare that unless capitalism were immediately replaced by socialism, England was bound to lose the war.

Well, ol’ George was wrong and a short time later, prodded by the Japanese, the bottom-feeding, capitalist Americans arrived and whooped up on the Germans and the other Axis powers. That didn’t stop George from publishing the essay, however, the year after the war, in 1946.

No doubt, many of you will write and ask for a short primer on socialism. Here ya go!

Socialism: “common ownership of the means of production. … the State … owns everything, and everyone is a State employee. This does not mean that people are stripped of private possessions such as clothes and furniture, but it does mean that all productive good such as land, mines, ships and machinery are the property of the state. … [furthermore there is] approximate equality of incomes…, political democracy and abolition of all hereditary privilege”

Fascism^*: Again, the State “is in control of everything. It controls investment, working hours, wages.” However, “The factory owner stills owns the factory, but he is for practical purposes reduced to the status of a manager.”

* Calling someone a Fascist Pig is a good fall back if you run out of other insults in a heated argument.

A few days ago, in my corporate strategy class at the U, we discussed the social and economic impact of legalized gambling. Utah, you might know, shares the ignominy with Hawaii as the only two states to ban all forms of gambling (or “gaming” as some like to euphemistically refer to it.)

Some have argued that Utah is missing out on millions of dollars in tourism and taxable gambling revenues as its citizens leave the state headed for Wendover, Las Vegas, Idaho Powerball and Evanston horse races. Allow me to sum up the salient elements of each side of the gambling divide:

Points made by the pro-gamblers include:

1. Money goes to good causes like education (I find this strikingly manipulative, by the way) and transportation.

2. People are going to do it anyway, why not capitalize on it?

3. Gambling is merely recreation.

4. Gambling is essentially the same thing as speculation/day-trading on the stock market.

Points made by the anti-gamblers include:

1. “Gambling is a tax for people who are bad at math” and as such, it disproportionally affects the young and less educated

2. Gamblers are also overrepresented among minorities (esp. black) and low income citizens (a.)(b.)(c.)

3. Gambling is addictive

4. Compulsive gambling is detrimental to families.

5. Gambling increases crime, bankruptcy and divorce.

I am in the latter school of thought and am against state-sanctioned gambling. Here’s why: I believe governments have a moral and ethical mandate to legislate for actions that strengthen society and against activities that are deleterious to it. Permitting gambling within Utah’s borders is the legal equivalent of a stamp of approval. There is no doubt that facilitating access to lottery tickets, etc would increase the numbers of gambling participants as well as the overall frequency in which participants gamble. The idea that in a cost-benefit analysis, the benefits outweigh the social costs is a dangerous one; that same “ends justify the means” is used by those supporting embryonic stem cell research and likely too by Nazi scientist Josef Mengele. Hazardous means remain hazardous regardless of the potentially meritorious ends.

Where do you stand?

References:

a. An Exploratory Study of Lottery Playing, Gambling Addiction and Links to Compulsive Consumption. Alvin Burns, Peter Gillett, Marc Rubinstein and James Gentry. Advances in Consumer Research, Vol.17, 1990. “Lottery players also tended to have lower incomes and be less educated than nonplayers.“

b. New Jersey Low Income and Minority Resident Lottery Participation. Allison Jackson Associates. New Jersey Division of State Lottery, July, 1988. “… low income players spend a larger proportion of their household income on the lottery than do other players, and blacks spend more on a weekly basis than do whites or Hispanics.“

c. Adult Survey of Minnesota Gambling Behavior: A Benchmark, 1990. Laundergan, Schaefer, Eckhoff and Pirie. Minnesota Department of Human Services, November, 1990. “Males, non-whites and respondents under the age of 34 were all overrepresented among problem gamblers and potential and probable pathological gamblers based on a modified version of the South Oaks Gambling Screen (SOGS-M).“

d. Harvard Magazine, Trafficking in Chance. Craig Lambert

“Legalized gambling is inherently parasitic on any economy. . . . it always hurts the economy; it always creates large socioeconomic problems. And that intensifies the need for tax dollars to address the new problems that they are creating by legalizing gambling.” — Professor John Kindt of the University of Illinois

Economics tells us that a producer wants to exact the “maximum willingness to pay” from the consumer (or at least something close to the maximum.) But that’s tricky because consumers often fall into “willingness categories” and the producer would like to charge each category their maximum. If, for example, you’ve just paid $4,000 on an international plane ticket to fly into Salt Lake City, you’re not going care whether the lift ticket is 60 or 80 dollars. In comparison to the $4,000, a 20 dollar difference is insignificant. Those high rolling, first-class-flying, foreign vacationers are “insensitive to price” in that low range. On the other hand, whether a ticket is $60 or $80 might very well determine if a local, starving college student goes skiing or not. Obviously, the resort would like to get $60 from the student without lowering the $80 charged to the vacationer. The resort needs to segment their consumer base.

Some types of explicit customer segmentation might be illegal, so business try the implicit routes. Illustration: a ski resort will often not publicize the “locals only discount” targeted towards students and rely, instead, on word of mouth to spread the news. At Brighton, for example, simply showing a freely available X96 key chain gets one in for 1/2 price. Don’t let the Germans know!

This principle of segmentation is why senior citizens get into movies for a discount. They, as a whole, are perceived to be more price sensitive and as having a lower willingness to pay. Theaters still want their money, but don’t want to lower the price for everyone. Instead, they seem to be genuinely concerned about our seniors. See, business isn’t all about making money! Oh, wait…

So, with the blind assumption that all three of my readers are local, starving college students, here is the skinny:

Brighton is a resort at the top of Big Cottonwood canyon (take I-215 E from I-15, take the 3000E/6200S exit, and then follow the signs). Check with them first, but as of this “printing”, a night pass (from 5-9pm) costs only 30 dollars. As mentioned, if you have an X-96 radio station key chain fob (which is free for the taking at the X-96 offices in SLC), you get two for one. Snowboard rentals cost 21 dollars. If you have your own gear, or can beg/borrow it from a friend, you can snowboard for 15 dollars! That’s awesome and that’s what I did on Friday night. Wednesday night lift tickets are $25 or $12.50 with a 2 for 1 coupon from Arctic Circle.

Any Spanish speakers out there? Any word buffs? Let see if we can discover the etymology of a word together. First we’ll do a warm up: “Companion.” It’s Latin based. cum + panis = with + bread (see dictionary.com), or “one with whom you would eat bread.” A companion is someone you share meals with. That’s kind of cool because it makes a lot of sense. Now here’s today’s word: Sincere. Let’s try our hand at this one:

Sincere. That also looks Latin: sine + cera = without + wax. The story goes that the Romans would use wax to hide imperfections and roughness on statues, columns and pottery. A really good Roman craftsman, on the other hand, would advertise that his creations were Sine Cera, or without wax. The Latin was adopted by the Spanish and English stole it from the Spaniards. And you can read all about it in Dan Brown‘s first thriller, Digital Fortress, which I read last night.

What a great lesson! Aren’t words awesome? I feel smarter.

Except… The whole “Sine Cera” thing is completely WRONG. The OED states ‘œThere is no probability in the old explanation from sine cera ‘˜without wax”?. Wikipedia says, ‘”sincere” actually derives from the Latin sincerus meaning “clean, pure, sound.’? According to the American Heritage Dictionary, the Latin word “sincerus” is derived from the Indo-European roots “sem” and “ker,” generating an underlying meaning “of one growth,” hence “pure, clean.”‘ Dictionary.com confirms this.

That’s the problem with the truth. It ain’t nearly as sexy. Sorry to disappoint you. Sorry that Dan Brown is full of manure. That’s just life, amigos.

Some of you will remember my post earlier this month breaking the news of the Hundred Dollar Business experiment. As you must have assumed, Ryan Byrd dot net was the *first* weblog in the WORLD to mention the experiment. That should come as no surprise to you. Here at the Ryan Byrd corporate headquarters, we hold ourselves to rigorous reporting standards and nearly impossible levels of execution, all with the goal of better serving you, the highly intelligent, discerning blog reader.

To that end, Ryan Byrd was selected to participate in a business blog carnival. I know what you’re thinking, “Carnival! isn’t that a raucous, drunken fest held down in South America?” Yes, yes it is, but we’re talking about something different: [kahr-nuh-vuhl] not [kahr-nee-val]. When I think of non-Brazilian carnivals, I think of small, rickety, rusty rides with peeling paint, twirling their frightened patrons about at tremendous speeds, threatening death at every turn. I think of the shifty-eyed, unshaven felons with leery gazes who operate the rides with bored disinterest. I think of the overpriced corn dogs and cotton candy, the small families with their children, the packs of goth kids with their angst and piercings, the incessant carne music, the Siamese twins, the strong man, the bearded woman… Good times. Good food. Good memories. …

So… Carolynn D., over at that Hundred Dollar thingy emailed me the following business blog carnival question: “How is resourcefulness vital to a new business?“

And that got me to thinking about what I’ve really learned during my MBA program at the U. Here it is, in a nutshell (and you can quote me), “No one knows how to make a successful (ethical) business. What we do know are quick ways to sink a business. Is in the avoidance of those bad actions plus lots of hard work plus good luck and serendipity that businesses make money.” Because we don’t have control over happenstance, we can’t reliably produce a fail-safe business every time. Still, we can stick to proven principles, know our goals, avoid the pitfalls and through a lot of work, hope for the best.

That said, I think we can influence our business luck by careful planning, synergistic networking and, once again, continual hard work. I think, as the thirty days comes to an end, Carolynn knows something about hard work.

Part of good business planning should involve a resource assessment; finding answers to the question: What do I have already that I can use: ideas, skills, things, and tools?

Here’s Are some quick thoughts on Resource Assessment for the Budding Entrepreneur:

Ideas: Though basic ideas are important, a perfect idea is not essential. Let’s face it– there are a lot of ideas out there. If you take a mediocre idea and put a lot of work and energy into *doing* it, you’ll make much more money than if you just sit around thinking and pondering. For example, my parents live next door to a multi-millionaire who made his fortune painting gun safes with automobile paint. That idea won’t win him any genius awards, but he went out and sold lots of his pretty, shiny safes for lots of money. Now, for fun, he races Porsches in Germany on the weekends. List ten good ideas you have.

Skills: What can you do well? Do you have an eye for design? Can you pick up new technologies rapidly? Are you a good salesperson? Do you know how to cook? make candles? Are you a natural teacher? All of these skills can be parlayed into viable businesses. If nothing else, there’s always the possibility of writing how-to guides or books describing those skills. Make a list of your talents and skills and abilities.

Things:with the international ubiquity of the Internet, your trash really is someone else’s treasure. Here are two examples: people in Europe are buying boxes of old books at estate auctions and then removing and selling each page of the book (suitable for framing.) My brother David recently bought a few pages of an old medical textbook for 30 or 40 dollars each on ebay. Another example: a friend’s mother visits thrift stores and garage sales and with her internet-ready cellphone checks the value on the items. When she discovers something good, she puts it for sale on her website. I’m told she makes several thousand dollars each month, mainly on out-of-print children’s books. Write down the items you have, or have access to, that can be sold.

Tools: whether it’s a skill saw, a Dremel, a soldering iron or a laser engraver, you’ll likely be able to put those devices to work for you. The goal is to add value be it through repairing, building, creating crafts, etc. Even better, train a friend work *for you* to add the value and then go drum up business. What tools do you have?

That’s all for now. I’ll add some more thoughts soon.