The feeling of drowning is not news to anyone who’s been running an internet based business.

We hire cheaper people overseas, teach how them how to do the things we need in our business, and (hopefully) make some kind of profit on their efforts. A

For being a community that prides themselves on efficiency, I’ve always found it interesting how averse so many entrepreneurs are to hiring their own assistants. Our business runs like a swiss watch, but we forget to file our taxes on time year after year or send thoughtful gifts to our parents (even though we love and appreciate them). If you think about it briefly, this phenomenon makes sense. There are only so many hours in day, right?

If you’re hyper focused on making a company work, dealing with customers, putting out fires, and then of course building the actual product/service… you barely have time to breath, let alone organize your own life.

At least that’s certainly how I felt. Barely staying afloat until the weekend, and then using that precious time with no meetings/calls to catch up on as much administrative paperwork as possible.

“Why don’t you just hire someone to do that for you?”

Ugh. Fuck you.

This is what an average bystander, or mediocre business coach will say nonchalantly whenever an entrepreneur is in the thick of it and really hurting for time and sanity. And it’s the easiest thing in the world to say (which is why it’s so frustrating). It’s the equivalent of telling a drowning person “well if you just tread water more efficiently, you’ll be fine!”.

It’s true, but it’s not always the most useful advice in the real world. But bad coaches and our friends don’t live in the real world of entrepreneurship. They live in the world of idealism, a far easier (and more profitable in the short run) place to be.

So we know we’re drowning, but we don’t have time to build our life raft (or yes, hire someone to build it for us).

The reason for this is that hiring a legit assistant is hard. Training them on how to manage your life (while you can barely keep it together) is even harder. Here are the giant time-consuming, soul sucking tasks one must do in order to start actually seeing results from an assistant.

• You have to draft a job post that is interesting and enticing to an assistant

• You have to post it somewhere, and plow through a mountain of resumes of people that didn’t even read said job description.

• You have to ‘interview’ several people and see if they’re a good fit.

• You have to figure out if the good fit lied about all of their skills/experience on their resume.

• You have to negotiate an offer, get them onboard, and train them on your life.

• You have to evaluate their progress, and course-correct as they make mistakes and learn.

• Replace them if they leave (without spending another massive chunk of hours repeating this process)

And of course, if your candidate fails in any one of the steps, you pretty much are starting over from scratch with someone new. Now does it make sense why “just hire someone” is absolute nonsense?

But imagine being able to have someone come start working for you today. They’d be able to look through all your emails, calendar, and figure out how you want things to work and what would be ideal for you.

They’d catch onto the fact that every 6 weeks you go get your hair cut, and that you had bookmarked a bunch of flights and airbnbs for that friends trip to Mexico.. but had forgotten to respond to the group email thread and get it pushed through. Then they sat on the phone with your internet company to troubleshoot some annoying billing issues and get you a partial refund credited to your account.

What if you had someone that just drove all of the little things in your life that pile up home towards completion? And then wrapped them up with a nice bow in a weekly summary email. Checked that off, that too, and don’t forget your Mother’s in town so I booked a table at a new restaurant for you both. The info is in your calendar already.

Fortunately for you, you’ve stumbled onto the blog of a meticulous psychopath that finds it enjoyable to build, write and organize insanely detailed instructions on how to do various things… like finding, hiring, and training an executive assistant.

I spent just under a year obsessed with the idea of efficiently finding, hiring, training, and managing an assistant that would run my life without me constantly needing to teach them stuff.

And it wasn’t just about finding that “perfect” assistant, it was about writing instructions so clear, that even if the first person I hired left I’d be able to slot in another and pick up right where they left off. Turnover is killer for a business, and even moreso in a business of 1 (you).

The Components of Executive Assistant Perfection

There are three big pieces to nail when it comes to your EA. Finding them, telling them what to do, and then making sure they do it. Sounds pretty simple, right?

A note on Executive Assitants Vs. Virtual Assistants

This is kind of a funny distinction, but it’s worth addressing here. The main different between an EA and VA (aside from one sounding cooler and more professional) is the autonomy and responsibility to oversee other people. VAs job is to follow the script, over and over again. an EA can be tasks with a broader challenged like “Plan my vacation”.

Like most things, it’s simple but not easy to do in the real world when you’ve got endless meetings and interruptions, and weekends to plan with spouse, family vacation coming up and then the dog gets sick. Life is too messy to start new projects right now (and spoiler alert: it always will be).

So I’ve fast-tracked all three of these big pieces for you in the most plug-n-play way possible. Here’s how it’ll work.

Finding and Hiring Your Executive Assistant

First we need to find the person that’ll take over your life and your daily tasks. This is where things go completely off the rails for most people. They dont’ know where to look, what questions to ask, how to recruit.

There are ton of good remote work job boards these days. To list a few:

• Upwork (old school, but i still find so many of my best people here)

• DynamiteJobs -

• Remoteok job board

• Infinite more on google

Posting

Then we need to craft a job post that will attract the ‘right’ kind of person. I’ve got a template for this, that you customize based on your personality and own values.

Filtering

Then it’s time to filter out all of the templated or ChatGPT written cover letters from the spam candidates (this is 95% of them). After that, we can actually review and assess the legitimate candidates.

The Challenge

Now that we’ve gotten a few solid looking prospects, it’s time to send them a challenge to do for the next step. Do not bother getting them on the phone at this point, just send the custom challenge (I have the template for this as well) and see who completes it well.

This does a few things, it tests for competency, their level of english (important), and most importantly their level of ‘give a shit’. Are they hungry and competent? We’ll see based on their challenge response.

The Interview

Here’s something a lot of people don’t understand when hiring. By the time you get on the phone with the person, you should already be 90% certain they have the skills you need. The phone interview is for assessing their vibe, and how sharp they are ‘in person’.

Personality fit is hugely important, especially with someone you plan to share a lot of details of your life (and ultimately trust with a lot of personal knowledge about you).

This one is a bit more of a ‘gut feeling’ type of analysis, but you should use the interview questions script I wrote as a starting point, then customize it to your specific needs. Maybe even throw a few technical questions to flesh out the phonies.

The ‘VA Finder Business Models’

I’m not sold on these yet. The pitch is very compelling (they find, train, and vette assistants for you so you’re just ready to rock). The only problem wit hthis, is that they do it at a markup to make money… and that extra pricing could destroy the whole advantage of having your assistant anyways.

Depending on how muc you make at your busines or job, a $25/hour fancy EA might be completely out of the question. If it’s not, then maybe htese services are worth a shot, but i think with a little leg work up-front you can save thousands a year.

Instructions - Telling Your EA What to Do

Now that you’ve spent 2 weeks and hired the perfect seeming assistant. It’s time to put them to work and get them helping you.

If you’ve never hired anyone before, you’re in for a bit of a rude awakening. Even for good employees, you tend to spend the first few weeks (longer on more complex jobs) spending more time teaching them how to do the thing than it would have taken to just keep doing your self.

This is the ‘dip’ in hiring people, where productivity actually decreases (because you stop doing it yourself, and start teaching someone new). This period totally sucks, and can be a real morale crusher, especially if 3 weeks in you find out your new employee is actually terrible.

So the name of the game is to reduce this period as much as humanly possible. We want your new assistant to hit the ground running, and start saving you time from day one. Not day 90.

In my Executive Assistant Operating System, I give you a mountain of ready-built instruction manuals on the highest value tasks for most people (managing your inbox, your calendar, booking your travel etc.) that your EA can start using right away to save you time.

Obviously, I cant pre-write instructions for every task in your life (so many different entrepreneurs need different things), but I can and have given you the framework and templates for building your own stuff quickly. Any afternoon inside Notion with a Loom Video Recorder account is all you’ll need to build up a rich library of explanations of how you do stuff.

Managing - Make Sure Your EA Is Actually Doing the Job

Most people are naturally terrible managers. Even most professional ‘managers’ are terrible at it (as you probably have seen if you’ve ever had a job in any industry).

But you’re not going to be one of them.

Management is hard to set up, but easy to maintain once things are rolling. You do the planning upfront, and then look like a hero later on when the results come in.

There are two big components to this. The first is making sure that your EA is working on the things you want them to (are they spending the time on the priorities etc.). The second is measuring how effective they are at doing things (are the results coming in?).

The temptation is to either go way too casual with both of these things, or way too intense. Too casual and you’re getting a shitty email every weeks about ‘how things are going’, and too intense your poor EA is spending 25% of their time just trying to make your reports about how they’re spending their time.

I’ve experimented with both sides of the spectrum, and I think I’ve found the perfect balance for most small-scale entrepreneurs or solo operators. Included, are my daily and weekly reporting templates (with instructions for your EA on how to fill them out and where to store them), as well as examples of how to set measurable ‘goals and metrics’ for your EA to be measured against.

This is how we know that they’re doing a good job. Your free time is increasing, your website traffic is going up, etc. These metrics will be super specific to your business and life… but usually they fall into the same broad categories.

Let’s Get On With It - Where to Start

Now you should be familiar with the biggest components of managing an EA and getting them rocking for your team from day 1. Where to from here?

You could try to build out all of the pieces we discussed yourself. It took me almost a year of testing and refining (and hiring the wrong people), but maybe you’d be better at it.

Or you could just download the massive and detailed Operating System from me and import directly into Notion. Save yourself months, with a few bucks and 30 seconds of time.

What’s Included in the Executive Assistant Operating System?

The Hiring:

• Job description templates (attract the right kind of people, not just the most qualified on paper)

• My list of the most effective and least spammy Remote Job Boards

• Framework for how to filter out the junk resumes and template cover letters to find the golden candidates.

• Interview Challenge Template - squeeze out the exaggerators and the talkers, and end up with a list of candidates that actually know what the heck they’re doing.

• Phone call script and interview questions (find the right fit for you, not just someone that can do the job).

• Negotation Mini-Master Class. We aren’t negotiating hostages with terrorists here, but you need some skills and info on how what to offer, and how to negotate with your new hires.

The Instructions

• EA Instructions Galore, including primary life ones like managing Emails, Calendar, Booking your travel etc.

• Clear and concise templates for you to easily build instructions for common tasks in your own life.

• A time logging ‘Assessment’ template you can use to have your EA produce detailed analysis of the time you’re spending on every part of your life.

• Reporting and Goal Rubrics, for your EA to fill out daily and weekly and keep them on track.

• Prioritization And Goal Setting Tables for you ( plus my personal examples)

• Social Media Management and Growth Reporting templates (have your EA take over your personal social media posting, and business posting while tracking growth meticulously).

The Managing

• Your personal productivity/goals tracker (simple to follow, use, and update unlike most over-the-top goal setting systems)

• Reporting for your EA and progress tracking.

That’s a lot of stuff - how much does it cost?

$8 bucks, seriously.

Why so cheap? Why give away a year of my life’s experience and frankly a shit ton of hours cranking away on the laptop after too much coffee? A few reasons:

Because this isn’t my main gig. I make my cash through my business, i just like this writing stuff and even more so I like sharing it and helping people out.

Also, I want to over-deliver so you’ll leave me a killer review or testimonial video. Maybe with enough raving fans, I’ll be able to sell some more useful stuff down the line.

Try it Risk Free

Look, this things only 8 dollars. If you’re hiring an EA for likely between 10-20 per hour, i’d hope that this price point isn’t exactly an issue.

But if you really think my Operating System is a pile of rubbish soaked in diesel and sweltering in the summer heat, just email me and I’ll send you the money back, no biggie.

Grab It Today

If you’re as swamped daily as I was, thank you for taking the time to read and check out what I believe is a complete gamechanger of a system.

Since you’re already here, go and download the templates now. If you wait, it’ll probably slip through the cracks and get forgotten like all the other pile of todos in your inbox. Make it happen today and get cranking on winning back some more of your free time!

The higher education bubble is real friends, if you’re in high school right now you definitely need to be aware of it and prepare yourself for the world in a few years.

Why a bubble?

The short of it is this,  when things are easy to borrow money to buy the price of those things goes up and up.  See the housing various housing bubbles in our history. When credit is ‘cheap’ (interest rates are low)  then more people can ‘afford’ more expensive homes. This chases up home prices because that couple can afford the extra loan with a low interest rate.  Eventually the prices get so high and people borrow so much money that even the tiniest setback in prices can cause people to get hurt on their loans (owing more to the bank than they could sell for).

Tuition loans are even worse than the loans that caused the housing bubble of the 2000s because virtually any 18 year old can qualify for government backed loans.  Imagine if you didn’t need a down payment or a credit score to buy a home, well that’s essentially what the student loan market is.

College is often not a great investment

Houses are not an investment even though most people consider them to be.  That’s a post for another time, but my point is that in a lot of cases a college education isn’t a great investment.  There are plenty of careers in which college helps (or is necesary) such as doctors or accountants. These people are still in demand and can be pretty certain of obtaining a good enough paying job to make their inflated tuition costs worthwhile.  For many however, school is a negative return proposition. You shouldn’t be borrowing 200k for a degree that will net you a 40k salary out of school with limited growth prospects. “But I love what I do!” you may say. Awesome, that doesn’t make it a good investment and that’s my point.

But you still need the degree:

Maybe.  Plenty of people are forging their own way now and recommending the same thing.   See http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2010/02/dont-send-kids-college/  his site is great.  For those that insist, I say good for you.  I sucked it up and got the degree, and have held jobs that ‘required’ it (as well as several that didn’t ever ask).  All I ask is that you don’t borrow over 20k to get the degree you want.

Tips for paying for college:

If you came here wondering how to possible afford college here are a few tips I can give you.

Don’t.  

Skipping a traditional university to learn a trade, or do your own thing is not really that outrageous of a proposition anymore.  But don’t expect to just fuck off to thailand for four years and earn 60k when you come back home. If making money is your desire, you’ll need to bust your ass at something and earn those skills worthy of an income. There are plenty of industries so starved for talent that they’ll throw the ‘HR’ requirements out the window for someone good. Actually, just find companies that don’t have HR people and you’ll be fine. The trades (plumbing, electrician etc.) all yield good wages.  Mechanic certifications are also reasonably priced and can net you stable jobs. If the idea of working with dirt appalls you and your white collared family, fair enough. Software development and other technically related fields all can get you paid without college. You likely won’t be able to work for a giant like Microsoft (though Google doesn’t look for degrees anymore), but tons of mid sized firms will hire you if you have the talent.  For example in Chicago, the electronic trading industry has huge demand for good engineers and would likely never pass you up just because of college. The skills road is a painful one, most people go their entire careers without building any.

Go somewhere you can actually afford:

Here’s a crazy thought, if you have no money from parents and nothing saved go somewhere cheaper for school. Go to a community college to take all your undesirable classes for pennies on the dollar and transfer to the University that won your heart.

Here’s another secret, you can be enrolled at University and a community college simultaneously.  Take part time classes on campus, and take online community college courses to save an obscene amount of money.  I caught on this a little too late, but was able to save a few grand by transferring some community college classes over.  (I did a few while still in high school too that transferred). Find a community college that has classes that transfer directly over to your University, and take as many as you possibly can.  If you have even a part time job you could pay your tuition in cash for a few semesters.

Go to a college where you can be a full time employee.

If you have a skillset (and even if you don’t) there’s a possibility you can get a full time job at your college. The benefit of this?  Salary plus many schools will comp their employee’s free classes. My last two years at DePaul I worked as a computer systems engineer (linux sysadmin)  and received a good salary plus completely free tuition. Was I a prodigy? No not at all. But I was able to get my last two years paid for while making a salary (and benefits).  Pretty sweet deal if you ask me, so I’d encourage you to look at your school’s job posting for full time gigs. Not a tech person? DePaul hired full time front desk people too, lower salary but same tuition benefits.

Scholarships and Grants:

This is an obvious one, but go to schools that offer you fat academic scholarships. Also, there are an insane amount of grants/scholarships available to anyone. Check out cappex.com  (my first internship in tech was there) for an amazing catalog of free money you can apply for. If you really hustle it, you can very easily scrounge up 15k a year in money.

I guess the reason I wrote this article is to put more content out there that might get a high school student to realize there are alternatives to just borrowing a bunch of money for the school they want to go to. If you have any other questions just drop me a line. ethandrower@gmail.com

I read through Ben Franklin’s autobiography recently, and had to take a few weeks to digest all the lessons that could be learned from him.  Instead of a review on the autobiography (which has very unique perspectives on historical events by the way), it will be more interesting to write a short essay on the main motifs that transcended through his personal accounts and smacked me in the face intellectually.  

Let’s get into it!

Apprenticeship

Most people know that Ben Franklin was a printer by trade.  Let’s take a moment and wistfully reflect on the days when people had trades and learned skills (and obtained them through work instead of student loans and paperwork!).  Anyways, the way he really learned was by negotiating a junior position and working incredibly hard under a ‘master’ to learn the in’s and out’s of the business.

Ultimately he would be able to obtain funding to run his own shop (more to the story than that) and had the skills to do so.  This is a huge point for me, and looking back was definitely something I did in my very early professional days. The primary goal of your first jobs should be to learn worthwhile skills from someone who has mastered them already.  Getting paid to learn is even better! Especially in the software/server world, the money will certainly come later on to those that develop their skillsets.

As a small side note, the “internship” job market we have developed in the United States has steadily moved further and further away from the apprenticeship structure.  I’ll write a separate essay about that!

Frugality

Ben Franklin gave a short account of the time he spent working as a printer in London (he actually went back and forth between London and the US once or twice).  He wrote about how his purpose there was to build up enough capital to return to America. The culture of London was quite distracting he accounted, as shows/plays etc. cost money and thus pulled him away from his economic goals.

Franklin ultimately made the decision to live cheaply, he lived in a budget boarding house,  ate primarily bread and stopped buying beer routinely with his co workers (drinking just water was uncommon according to him) to save his money.   The lesson here is twofold. First actually have a goal (be it monetary or not); second make the appropriate sacrifices to achieve that goal. Even if it means living off of less than your peers.

Reading is Sexy

The hero of our story read voraciously.  What was striking about his discussion of books/literature was the sacrifices that he made to be such an avid reader.  I can buy books on amazon for $4 and have them sent to my home. Back in Franklin’s day, books cost actually MONEY and you had save, borrow to get your hands on one.  And then there was the matter of physically finding books!

Franklin’s dedication to reading helped grow his intelligence and ability to reflect on the world.  It also sparked a passion in writing, which served him for his entire life. All of the men he accounted positively in his autobiography were readers, and back then it was seen as a very profound subject of conversation.

Reading today is becoming a lost art.  I see (way) more people scrolling through instagram than I do reading books on the train each morning.  It’s a trend I never understood personally. The lesson here from Ben Franklin (and pretty much every other incredible figure in history or present day) is that reading makes you smarter and therefore you should read as much as possible.  Pretty straightforward.

The Mastermind Group

Having a “master mind” group is a concept mentioned in a lot of success and self improvement literature.  The concept could probably be traced back to Napoleon Hill’s “Think and Grow Rich”, but don’t quote me on that.  

The principle behind a mastermind group is to surround yourself with like minded people so you can all grow and develop together.  “You are the summation of the 5 people you spend the most time with “ applies to this idea.

Ben Franklin once back in Pennsylvania, formed a mastermind group with several of the men he respected.  The preliminary meetings were to discuss books, eventually it became a routine (weekly ) meeting in which individuals would volunteer to prepare and read essays and writings to the entire group.  Subjects were chosen a week in advance and discussed by all.

The lesson is surround yourself with people that will expand your mind and lift you up.  You don’t have to join a book/writing club, but try and find the people you most admire and spend time with them.  

The Invention of Blogging

Another subject Ben Franklin spent a lot time on was his own writing and publishing. Access to his own printing presses gave him the unique ability to print and distribute his own works.  This was NOT something everyone could do in that time and Franklin certainly took advantage of it.

He would have a strong opinion or thought on a subject, spend a week or two writing an essay, and then would print copies of the essay and PHYSICALLY HAND THEM OUT TO PEOPLE ON THE STREET.  I get great joy visualizing printing 1000 copies of this essay out and handing it out to people in Chicago on their way to work.

So Ben Franklin invented blogging, you heard it here first.  The lesson here though is the importance of distributing your ideas.  Now it is easier than ever to publish and have your work read by the masses.  Franklin would be in love with wordpress/social media and would cherish the power of the internet.  We should exploit this advantage in the same way he exploited his printing presses.

Virtues

My absolute favorite section of the book was Franklin’s description of his virtues and how he set out to improve and master them.

Think of a virtue today as a quality that you want to possess in a future successful vision of yourself.  Franklin had virtues like “Frugality” “Sincerity” etc. You can view them all here:

http://www.pbs.org/benfranklin/pop_virtues_list.html

The specific virtues you put on your list are irrelevant (though Franklin’s are a damn good place to start!).  What struck me most about his virtues were how Franklin pursued developing them. He made a personal chart with each virtue in it, and routinely reviewed every single category and ranked himself.  

This accomplishes a lot!  First it forces you to define the type of person you want to become.  Then it keeps you accountable by having a written document to stare you in the face every day.  Finally it allows you to track your improvement, a hugely cited tool for motivation and habit building in today’s world.  And this guy figured it 200 years before Tony Robbins was even born!

Because of his writing, I’ve set up my own spreadsheet that outlines all of the habits/virtues I’d like to ultimately master.  At the end of each week, I give each item a ranking of 1-7 (point per day) and reflect on the week. Doing this in excel will allow me to chart progress on a total (sum of all virtue scores) as well as individual progress. Thank you Ben Franklin!

As the sun sets on my lengthy college career, I was reflecting on how much I’ve learned since I started playing with computers in middle school.  I thought back to why I even chose computer science as a field, and laughed at all the silly assumptions and fears I had before attending DePaul. I remembered a very specific post I read that convinced me to pull the trigger and commit to programming in college. This one.

The following essay is my contribution to this kind of writing.  An attempt to ease the worried mind of an over-analytical potential CS major and hopefully earn the world one more great problem solver.  Here are a few big things I learned.

What language should I learn?

Ah yes, there’s still no good answer to this.  There will always be the ‘shiny ‘ objects of programming that you see the most blog posts about.  Pay them no attention. The major thing you should focus on, is simply learning how to program. By that I mean it technically doesn’t matter what language you pick  (Java, C++, Python, Ruby etc.). You will find that all languages have the same things, they just have different ways of expressing them.

Python is highly accessible and easy to setup.  It will teach you a LOT and get you on your way.  Check out this amazingly long set of tutorials and challenges. If you complete it you’ll be able to learn any language you please.

http://learnpythonthehardway.org/

Which University has the best program for computer science?

Beats me, I went to DePaul. Hah!  All joking aside this is something I spent many an hour fretting about in high school.  I scoured rankings websites, read the propaganda on each University’s department site you name it.  I ended up settling on DePaul because the program had some respect in Chicago, but mainly for other reasons we’ll talk about later.

My advice for this one is not to weight this as high as your high school counselors probably are.  Try your best to get a feel for CS student life when you do your college visits, and if possible see if you can find projects kids are working on at school hackathons or other public software events.  A lot of the world is open source theses days, meaning people share their code online for free. See what college kids are doing that and if their projects make you go ‘ooooohhhhh’ put that school on your list!  Don’t kill yourself over going to a top 5 school though.

What if I fail all my classes?

Chances are you (academically) deserve to go to the college you got accepted to. This means that nothing should really be insanely far over your head. The direct answer to this question is you won’t flunk if you really don’t want to flunk. There are always options in college, get a tutor, talk to the professor during office hours every week etc. etc. It usually boils down to a combination of not spending the time each week on homework assignments and not being used to legitimate academic challenge with assignments. Attack your problems, and try to enjoy them! Remember your friends will continue on to business school and their ‘soft’ subjective assignments, take pride in solving difficult problems!

Aren’t all the jobs still getting outsourced to India?

Looking back I remember having this concern.  In fact I was probably googling around about outsourcing and stumbled upon Peter’s 10 years post.  He put it plainly, the jobs are not going to India so if you want to be a programmer go be one.

5 Years later I can reinforce this statement with a little logic and personal experience, 17 year old me would’ve definitely appreciated it.

The market, demand for programmers (in the United States mind you) is growing rapidly.  The amount of available programmers graduating college is NOT growing rapidly. Keep in mind we are talking just numbers, so you’d probably even be able to work as a BAD programmer.  If you take the time to get good your options (and salary) are that much more improved.

After working in the freelancing industry for some time, I can tell you that the use of overseas contractors often will benefit you as a domestic developer.  Naive project managers often salivate over the cheap prices of foreigners, but the buyers remorse is almost immediate when they find language barriers and dishonesty are frequent occurrences.  Now there are plenty of great foreign contractors, and they deserve the contracts they get. It’s a global economy and you need to be ready to compete anyways.

Back to my initial point, I found myself using my location in Chicago and natively speaking English as  HUGE selling point to clients. Many of them simply were fed up with timezones and accents and thus were willing to pay a little more to hire me.  You don’t want the cheap clients anyways, but that’s a lesson for another time. Bottom line is stop worrying about your job getting outsourced.

But are there any girls?

The following more so applies to young men since the field is still predominately male. If you’re a heterosexual woman considering the field read on and join the fun, but this paragraph won’t be directly applicable to you.

This is something that no one I’ve seen address online.  Maybe it’s still taboo that 18 year old men weight the potential for having sex into their college decisions?  Well I remember giving serious thought this question in High School, and I’m sure plenty out there still do.

Computer Science is a nerdy field. By that I mean it attracts very smart and detail oriented people, many of whom are men without social skills. I get that, but I’m a social guy and worried that I wouldn’t be able to easily make friends with pretty girls if I spent my days/nights toiling away in predominately male computer labs.  Looking back on this anxiety, it makes me laugh but let me put your mind at ease.

First off, colleges are huge with tons of kids, you can be friends with anyone you want. Just go up and talk to them, chances are very high if they’re alone and a freshman they will be ecstatic for some human contact (yes including girls!).

Second, you have GOBS of free time while you’re in school especially if you aren’t working during your first semester or two.  I suggest you spend that free time outside computer labs, and at parties or school events. Bam that’s hours and hours a week you can meet whomever you please in any degree path.

If you’re still nervous, remember that you can do other activities.  Join a club, play a club/intramural sport, join a fraternity if you so desire.  The point is everything that’s not a NCAA sport in college is essentially half whatever actual activity (student government, a band, intramurals etc.) and half a social event.  Everyone else wants to make friends and get drunk too ya know.

Classes

I’ll keep this one short and sweet. About half of your classes will not be related to computers, and will probably be fairly useless to you. Take those classes at a community college for 1/10th the cost! Most kids dread this because they picture living at home for their first year of college and surprise no one wants to do that (see above section about girls).  

Go to your University as a freshman, and double enroll in a community college that transfers credits easily.  Take online classes at the community college, most good ones have offerings for it, or take it over the summer.  Just try to take as many as possible to save yourself thousands.

Online classes

A degree program that offers online classes is a huge win, especially if you want to work a job during college (which you should).  I’m not saying spend all your time online watching lectures, if you want to go to the live lecture you can and should. I’m saying give yourself the OPTION to skip class and still get your work done.  By sophomore year I was putting in 40 hours a week at my internship while still taking a full course load. Online lecture recordings make it all possible and I highly recommend going somewhere that offer them to you.

City Living

Everyone has different goals and desires for what they want their college experience to be like.  I get that, but fact is there just aren’t many jobs available in whatever country town your school could potentially be in.  “I can still work internships in the summer!” Yes you can, but so can everyone else which means more competition. If you are available year-round, that’s a huge plus for a company looking for a intern. Think about who you’d rather hire, the kid that has to leave in 3 months or the one you can keep potentially for years? City colleges aren’t for everyone, but I loved mine and took advantage of my location in Chicago for all of my internships (and later full time engineer jobs!).

Read lots of code

From Peter Norvig’s article:

“Talk with other programmers; read other programs. This is more important than any book or training course.”

Get yourself on github.com and start reading! Learning how to use git isn’t a bad use of your time either, but that may be getting ahead of yourself. Once you start learning structure of programs github will become a great resource in just reading well written (and some not well written ) code. Github is a huge collection of free and open software projects. People share their hard work with the world because they believe software should be just that. There are amazing pieces of software on github (including many you use today!) so spend some time exploring. Most of the projects on there will be way too advanced (for me too). Read them anyway.

Get a second monitor

And one more thing!  Get a monitor you can hook your laptop up to.  It will increase your productivity and ability to learn exponentially when you can write code and read examples/instructions simultaneously.  Trust me on this.

I hope this will be helpful to an anxious High School aged soul.  I wrote it for those that have the same questions and fears I once had.  Maybe it will encourage you to stick it out and play this wonderful game we call software with me.

-Ethan

Intro

One thing that really bugs me is the prevailing hiring culture that one must navigate in search of a better (or first) job.  The following is an examination of how the hiring process works (generally) and the problems we face if we’re to attempt to change it. We will focus on the hiring of software/technical people to make our scope a little bit more digestible and eliminate the need to discuss countless permutations of concepts.

Let’s break down the hiring process into it’s most fundamental levels.

What is the point of hiring a new employee? What are you trying to accomplish?

The point of hiring hiring a new employee, is to find an individual who can do whatever it is you need done (as an employer) for the money you can afford to pay them.

Great! Now is that it? What else do we want?

In a perfect world (especially on a small team) we want to like the person.  It’s crucial to hire an individual that you can get along with, and preferably someone that you can connect with on a personal level as well. For small software teams (or distributed teams of any kind really) this is weighted quite heavily and should be.

Now that we have our broad (yet somehow lofty) goals set it’s time to hire.  The current process is as follows (no recruiters)

Posting goes up

Tons of unqualified people apply without cover letters (or worse with really long ones you never read entirely)

You spend precious man hours sifting through the applicants in a rash attempt to narrow down to ‘qualified’ candidates.

But wait!  There is conveniently an entire large (and growing) industry of people who are extremely qualified to deal with this process and make your life easier!  For just a small fee, hiring an external recruiter will completely change the hiring process. Let’s rewrite it with the help of a recruiter.

Recruiter posts job description that you write for him/her

Tons of unqualified people apply

Recruiter sends tons of unqualified people to your inbox in hopes that you’ll interview them

You spend precious man hours sifting through candidates

You pay the recruiter a fee for candidates you interview, and then again when you hire one.

On top of all that, you as a hiring manager must deal with the candidates that *cough* over exaggerate their skills and experience and completely bomb any scrutinizing questions during your interview process.

Your new employee search is not sounding great so far? Let’s move on to something more constructive with less satirical whining.  

With our problems clearly outlined, I see two main ways we can improve.

Get a higher quality (and smaller) candidate pool to choose from off the bat

Vastly improve the ‘sifting’ and only interview candidates that actually possess the skills you seek.

Alternative -  what if you could seek out the candidates you were interested in, on your own time.  

Know that they are interested in a job like what you’re offering

Evaluate the person and their experience

We want to eliminate what we call ‘Recruiters’  not the people per say, but their methods we want to render obsolete.

Recruiters should be focusing on find the best people!  It sadly has become a numbers game. Lots of volume in, shotgun approach to finding someone that sticks so that they can get paid.

What if we could empower small teams (like mine) to find and screen someone that’s worth of their job online?  How much time would be saved, how much money to ineffective recruiters.

Now this is a few things

There needs to be a tool online for people showcase their talents

People need to actually have talents, and be able to express them in some form that is easily consumable by a hiring team/manager

We need a paradigm shift on several levels.  Away from the linkedin recruiter spam era, and away from the resume era. Towards skills and people

What is the purpose of a resume when it really comes down to it?  It is supposed to be the smallest subset of YOU. A quick way for a hiring manager to get a feel for your skills and determine if you’re worthy of making it out of the first stack and onto a phone screening.

Problems with this:

Since they have to use bullet points, people focus on names and lie about skills.  Thus nullifying the effectiveness in the first place.

Names have a small probability of yielding a quality employee, but is that really the best we can do?

It also completely ignores the individual.  You really can grasp nothing about the human being you’re considering spending time to interview.  Is there really no way to get a feel for a person, their passions and goals and demeanor; other than meeting them face to face?

On Recruiters

What’s the problem with recruiters?  They have no skin the game. External recruiters get paid when you go to in-person interviews, and they get paid if you get hired.  They don’t lose money if you perform horribly and release a software bug that bankrupts the company. It’s kind of like asking a realtor if a home is really the best investment for you. Their incentives DO NOT align with yours, ever.

Because of this incentive structure, we’ve created a world where ‘recruiters’  play a numbers game by trying to amass as many candidates as possible for positions.

Now let it be said, there are truly talented recruiters that hire great people and get paid well to do it! Sadly this is more the exception than the norm in today’s hiring environment.

We’ve established a two part issue that inhibits effective hiring now.  The concern of resumes themselves (by design), and their unfortunate application in the process now (recruiter spam and flooding of applicants).

The ‘drill down’ approach.

Maybe the typical resume is good enough to skim and find potential talent.  The problem is that it’s hollow. Meaning the only things you really can’t lie on are the dates and companies you’ve worked at.  Everything else can be fudged to get you into that interview.

It would be awesome if a hiring manager (if they were interested) could dive deeper into the bullet points you listed for verification.  For example if you listed ‘worked on Java desktop applications) on your developer resume. If the recruiter was interested in your java skills they should be able to link to a list of projects you’ve completed, see the open source java contributions you’ve made, maybe your stack overflow questions answered tagged with ‘Java’ etc.  The idea here is that the recruiter can skim over all the bullet points they aren’t interested in, but have the OPTION to go deep into areas of interest. This also allows you the applicant, to be extremely brief (submit a one page resume) while simultaneously being able to back up your bullet pointed claims with proof, projects etc.

Salary Negotiation

This is a tricky one and causes of a lot of wasted time during the hiring process.  The hiring manager wants to pay you as little as possible (naturally) and the candidate wants to negotiate for as large of an offer as possible. The real time wasted is when the gap between these two party’s desires is too large to even bother moving forward. Then there is also the ultimate game of “who says their number first”. What if there was a third party in the middle keeping both sides anonymous and just returning whether or not they’re “close enough” to continue the process.

In this case both parties would ideally submit an “ideal” value and an absolute minimum/maximum in order to check for an intersection.

Perhaps even the hiring manager can elect to ignore this calculation and continue on with the process (if the applicant pool is small for example).

To resolve this, an objective third party is needed. The applicant whispers their ideal, and absolute minimum salary requirements in the virtual ear, the hiring manager does likewise. Then our third party can determine if the two manager and applicant are close enough to continue the process. We can achieve this level of trust and anonymity through an online platform that is guaranteed to be neutral.  

Where do we go from here?

Clearly, this is not an instruction manual to fixing all employment problems.  However I hope my analysis has been thought provoking enough to stir up some ideas on how to best go about attacking this problem that no one seems to be solving very effectively.  If you’ve made it this far, and have any thoughts email me. ethandrower@gmail.com

Graduated

I finally finished all of my Bachelors of Computer Science requirements at DePaul.  They were significantly delayed due to my full time work schedule (DePaul restricted my course load to part time because of my job) but what matters is that it’s complete.  Overall I enjoyed my time studying at DePaul and do feel I was able to build some solid CS fundamentals there. That being said I grew old of the academic world and rejoiced in being able to focus all of my efforts on building real and useful software in the world.

Work

I left my roles as a developer in trading and as a systems engineer at DePaul for a new development job in March.  I’ve been there for about 9 months now have gotten to work on some pretty cool things. The company is a great one that’s made the consciousness shift towards remote work really elegantly.  I’ve enjoyed working with my team and will continue on there in 2017.

Fully Remote

This year also marks the first time all of my work has been remote.  Previously I had mixed some office time in with at home work, but now I’m fully on my own.  This really suits my personality type as I enjoy long uninterrupted blocks to work, vs. the meeting/office centric world most are subjected to.  

Kneadit

A big goal of mine was to finish the build of our massage booking app, Kneadit.  After losing our developers (ok actually I fired them due to incompetence), in an effort to cut costs I took on finishing the project myself.  This has been the largest iOS project I’ve built and it’s completion forced me to do a lot of learning about payment processing, iOS design, and of course the system administration to build a redundant backend/API.  It wasn’t always pretty but I’m proud to say that as of today we are in live production-ready testing and have several Massage Therapists lined up to begin serving customers. In 2017 we’ll look to grow the user base and determine if the Chicago market is worth pursuing further.

Food Truck King -  ftkchicago.com

This is a project I started with a friend, and is around 50% complete.  The premise of the service is to allow people (mostly office bound workers) the ability to save time and order takeout from Food Trucks that are nearby to their office.  It’s a service I wish I had access to in my days of office dwelling, and we are hoping to bring it to the streets of Chicago in Spring of this year. If you’re interested in updates check us out at ftkchicago.com  and get on the mailing list.

Speechbytes and RoboChef

The Speechbytes project has been a lot of fun for me.  I’ve kept my hands off of most of the code (handling only backend server work now)  and drove the development of two apps over the finish line. The first is RoboChef, and accessible iOS game build for children who need to practice their speech.  Children play this cute and entertaining game and are prompted to speak certain words throughout their gameplay.

Their sound clips are then recorded (by the game)  and shipped over to the Speechbytes Dashboard, a web based service built for Therapists.  The Dashboard allows a speech therapist to view all of their clients, play their sound clips and assign ‘homework’ sounds to practice even further.  

The dashboard is just about done, but not live yet.  Jump on the mailing list at https://speechbytes.com if you want more info.

The game itself can be downloaded for free and played at https://itunes.apple.com/dm/app/robochef/id1168242044?mt=8

Travel

I didn’t do a crazy amount of traveling this year.  Dominican Republic, San Francisco, St. Augustine Florida were all about week long trips. Right at the end of the year I flew to Miami, and will be here working until February of 2017.

Sailing

Continued sailing my Vanguard 15 on Lake Michigan for the summer and learned quite a lot.  Even took some lessons on a larger boat throughout the summer. In the fall, I was able to simultaneously sell my smaller Vanguard and purchase a 1984 Seafarer 22’ at an end of summer discount.  Really looking forward to putting her back in the water next spring and getting some good experience on a larger boat.

Sold truck

The days of my ridiculously large and hilarious pickup truck are unfortunately over.  I bought a small trailer for my motorcycle and thus no longer needed the beast to haul my bike to the track.  A sad day indeed but glad to be rid of such a mechanical liability.

Track Days and Competition License

I was able to pull my bike together in time to get licensed to race competitively this spring.  I spent the summer going to track days (not sanctioned races but open tracks) and doing significant work on the motorcycle.  The summer ended with a blown up engine (totally my fault) and a wild weekend swapping the bad engine/transmission out for one I bought on ebay.  The bike’s running now and will be ready to race again in spring.

Real estate

The investment property went more or less smoothly all year.  I had to perform a myriad of minor repairs over the first half of the year and then was able to secure an awesome manager in the Fall.  Not having to manage the day to day issues with the building has freed up a good amount of my time to focus back onto work and acquiring other buildings.  Unfortunately the Chicago market has been disenchanting (more on that in another post) so I’ve started researching deals out in the Denver area in hopes of finding good cash flow.   I still believe prices have a long way to fall in the next few years so I don’t anticipate finding a great deal any time soon.

Fitness

I spent almost the entire year in competitive volleyball leagues either indoor or at the beach.  As for my lifting, I was able to set personal bests in all three compound lifts (Bench/Deadlift/Squat) and am looking forward to returning home so I can keep up my progress.  I’ve grown to really love the mental challenge of lifting heavy weight, and find it at better motivator than the desire to look better etc. Either way it’s a habit I plan to continue on into this year.

Trading

I reopened my futures trading account to gain some more experience trading currency futures.  Though I’ve been only marginally profitable, actively trading is a great mental exercises and I do feel my discipline and instincts continuing to improve.  In 2017 I plan to take larger more long term positions and finish the year net profitable by at least 5%.

As for my not so active trading, I’ve gotten almost entirely out of US equities as the market has roared to all time highs.  It’s essentially a Daoist/Austrian technique to ensure I have the maximum amount of liquid capital available for when the markets inevitable take a dive.  I’ve also began a plan of purchasing deep out of the money options to protect against such a market correction. In 2017 I’m going to automate this options strategy and try and sell it to other traders to use.

Next Year Plans

I have plans to continue to build on most of those categories in 2017:

Work - Up my skills on a few different technologies and keep improving

Apps-   Get Kneadit, Speechbytes and FTK launched and profitable on a monthly basis.

Fitness - Build on my habits and push my lifting numbers up at least 25% by end of year.

Sailing - Have an awesome time learning on my boat in Lake Michigan.

Real Estate- Continue exploring new markets (Denver/CO)  in preparation for the day prices come back to earth.

Trading - Continue my patience in the equities market while writing an automated trading strategy to hedge tail (large drops in market prices) risk.

Travel - As of now only have plans for Miami (now) and Boulder in Feb/March.  Hoping to do another extended trip in Fall/Winter to either Chile or Hawaii.

The first few chapters of this book are absolute gold.  Author Leigh Gallagher covers the story of each Airbnb found and beautifully documents how they all crossed paths in the early days of Airbnb.  The first chapter is titled “The Hustle” and that’s exactly what it captures.  Startups are full of uncertainty and in the case of Airbnb sometimes despair.  Reading the story of how the three founders soldiered on to build such an incredible platform with such limited resources is worth the price of the book.

In later chapters the author covers how the company has matured, the struggles it faces and each founder’s role in Airbnb today.  This company is unique that way; each founder is still involved in running the company.  She discusses the real estate legal troubles that plague Airbnb, as well as culture challenges they’ve faced internally.

For a deep look into one of the valley’s brightest stars, this is definitely worth a read.

A Man for All Markets - Edward O. Thorp

Edward Thorp ranks up there in my list of people I admire.  A few facts about him,  he invented the most successful method of card counting and subsequently published a book to give it away to people.  He forever changed the casino business with his methods (and his massive following that came from the book). He also pioneered the methods used  what we now know as quantitative hedge funds.  Thorp’s fund made money year in and year out for all of his investors thanks to his innovative use of computers and mathematics in valuing securities and derivatives.

Can you use Thorp’s methods to make a killing in financial markets?  Absolutely not, his edge came from the fact that he was one of the first people EVER to use these formulas.  Now everyone does and they do it much better than the average trader could ever dream of.  Thorp’s story is more for entertainment and inspiration.  If he could do it, maybe you can think outside the box and be first in the next wave of innovation. Financial or otherwise.

It’s rare to find books written by people that have accomplished as much as Edward Thorp has. If you have any interest in gambling or the financial markets then Thorp’s book is a must read.

The book “Remote” discusses the benefits for both the employee (lifestyle freedom) as well as the employer (lower costs, more productive/happier employees) and on and on.  The authors are founders of a company called 37 Signals, who built a massively profitable software company with just a few guys in different corners of the globe.  If anyone is qualified to discuss the benefits and challenges of distributed teams it’s these guys.

We all have fantasized about traveling the world and being able to make an income from just your laptop.  Images of sitting on a beach with wifi, simultaneously taking in a sunset while checking in on your digital empire are powerfully attractive to many.

While I’m not sure how well you can focus and type in a beach chair, making your living from a laptop, doing WHATEVER/WHEREVER are completely plausible for the majority of careers these days. 

For me, the draw of being able to design my lifestyle was what started me on the path to fully remote work.  The difficulty with a physical 9-5 job is that it’s very nature shackles you to one city, one commute and one schedule.  There’s very rarely flexibility in the hours you work during the day, even if you’re more productive earlier or later.  Not to mention most people spend at least 30-60 minutes a day commuting.  Even more if you count getting ready in the morning and unwinding at night from the travel.

“Remote”  argues these points and more (including challenges) with ease.  It’s written with short chapters and lots of goofy artwork.  If you have virtually (hah!) any interest in remote working, this book is for you.  You can get on amazon. 

A little background on Nassim.  He made his fortune betting against the crash of 2008 in the stock and housing markets.  He did it by investing in instruments (options contracts) that actually grow in value when markets are uncertain and volatile.  Hence they are an antifragile investment, they like when things get wild and crazy and make significantly more money.

The book goes really in depth discussing the philosophy of antifragility and how fragile our current financial system is.  For non-finance people it’s a very accessible read still and doesn’t get too deep in the weeds on financial instruments etc.  Conceptually recommend the book to anyone, and it’s on my top 10 books of all time list most definitely.  “Fooled By Randomness” is another one of my all time favorites by Taleb, if you’re a trader or a poker player it will be fascinating to you no doubt.

At the end of the day, Taleb’s point is to understand risk.  Most importantly understand the small highly unlikely risks that can really hurt you should they actually occur.  In investing there are ways to protect against them if you’re savvy (and actually read his and Mark Spitznagel’s books).  In life and your career, there are also ways to ‘tail-hedge’.  Those methods are better described in Reid Hoffman’s  ‘The Startup of You’.   

His book “Ask Gary Vee” is a compiliation of the best quiestions from a daily Q/A session he runs on Twitter.  The book reads like a frequently asked questions page, with long form answers from Gary packed full of industry specific knowledge and motivational-ish sound bytes.

Overall, if you’re into business building and marketing Gary Vaynercuk is someone worth following and worth reading.  So far he’s been ahead of the curve and shows no signs of taking his foot off of the pedal.

Usually “how to get rich!” titles that are published are written by charlatans who use such a promising title to boost sales.  When that author actually did manage to get rich beyond all means (through business not through selling books) then the title takes on a whole new meaning.  The kind of direct approach taken in this book by Felix Dennis is only reserved for the real risk takers who earned the right to speak on the subject of amassing wealth.

Felix Dennis is the founder of Maxim magazine most notably, but he owned probably a hundred businesses in his time, many in the publishing industry but plenty in unrelated fields.  You’d expect him to write like the eccentric billionaire he was, in a disjointed with a “what I say is right because I made it” style that plenty of rich people who write books employ.  It turns out however that Dennis is in his personal life a poet and lover of written word.  His book reads incredibly well and I was delighted to witness such a high level of self awareness and humility in his accounts of his own spectacular life.   

A few very interesting sections were ones where Dennis reflected on if dedicating one’s life to amassing money is really worth it.  For many he says it’s certainly not and he goes to great lengths to warn and advise readers who are deciding for themselves.   He writes about his career like a man who at one point had many regrets, but who has accepted himself (flaws and all) and operates from a higher level of consciousness.

Key Takeaways

Be an owner

Dennis beats this into you by the end of the book.  Ownership is everything.  By this he is referring to maining majority stakes in all of your companies and be wary of accepting investor capital at the cost of precious shares.  Dennis attributes a lot of his wealth to this concept.  Without total control of your company not only can you not operate the way you want (answer to partners and boards etc.) but if your company get’s sold you won’t be the primary beneficiary.   Dennis has definitely made a career out of relying on these massive windfalls come sale time.

Execution is everything (work hard!)

I wrote an essay on execution here.  Clearly Dennis agrees (and probably largely influenced me in the first place) on the importance of making your ideas come to life.

The Journey

Don’t ever take yourself or your quest for wealth too seriously.  Money isn’t real, Dennis understands this but says that shouldn’t stop you in your desire to obtain it (if that is what you truly desire).   He wrote the book to help you achieve great monetary wealth, but goes to great lengths making sure that is indeed what you actually want for your life.  There is no happiness or fulfillment found in bags of cash; however there may be in the person you become to obtain such things.  Enjoy the journey, treat money as a game (which it is) are prominent themes in the book.

Overall this was a great read.  A compelling blend of practical advice and philosophical thought makes this one worth reading for any entrepreneur.

The real thesis of the book is that no matter what industry or what business you choose to build, construct it to suit the kind of life you want to live.  This is often incredibly hard for most entrepreneurs to do because when they start off they’re simply trying to make it.  Singular focus in the beginning can cause you to lose site of the overall direction of the company, and that seems to be where most of these case studies ran into problems.  

Ultimately most if not all in the book were able to re-evaluate their priorities and learn to be content disappointing those that pressured them for endless growth.

A huge key for many of these entrepreneurs was maintaining ownership.  The more investors you bring on, the more your company gets away from you. Not just in terms of voting rights but also in terms of goals.  Investors come onboard (usually) solely to earn a return on their monetary investment.  If that return comes at the expense of your lifestyle and personal life it is not really their concern.  Only by keeping complete control of your company can you guarantee yourself the right to dictate the reason your business is even in existence.  

Overall I enjoyed the book, but it’s message sunk in within the first 50 pages and I didn’t glean a ton of value in the rest.  Worth skimming but not a re-read.

This quote is in one sentence the main character of Babbitt.  I don’t read fiction very often these days but found Upton Sinclair’s novel to be a fantastic look at the social narrative of society and how it can repress us so easily.   The book follows the story of a fairly prominent member of stereotypical 1900s suburbia where status and ‘what is proper’ are the laws of the land.  The satirical dialogues between characters drip of Sinclair’s disdain for  mainstream consciousness and the common narrative (American Dreamesque)

The character Babbitt himself won’t resonate with every reader due to his very very specific situation (a family man in the suburbs who feels like he’s missing something).  However Sinclair does this incredible job of capturing the subtle unrest that we humans can feel bubble up to our conscious mind from time to time.  A creeping wave of anxiety or fear about our lives and our true purpose in the universe.    In my opinion that’s why this story is so powerful, it uses a seemingly common/insignificant person to illustrate the darkest parts of the human psyche.  Well worth the read and some person reflection.

Rich Dad Poor Dad - Robert Kiyosaki

This is not a ‘how to’ real estate book like all the others, but it was the one that got me interested in owning cash flow producing assets (aka rentals).  Kiyosaki really focuses on developing a mindset that values true assets (things that put money in your pocket) and how to accumulate wealth no matter what your business is.  Required reading in my opinion and was truly influential when I discovered it in college.

Get it on Amazon

The Millionaire Real Estate Investor - Gary Keller

Disregard the hokey get rich quick name, this book contains extremely valuable information for the new investor.  Gary starts off with the truth, investing is damn hard and most people will never be able to accumulate significant wealth without a committment to it.  He then gets into budgeting, the value of compounding cash flows and more.  I’d read this one second after Rich Dad Poor Dad as it builds on the same philosophy but with large amounts of specific real estate investing information.

Hold, How to Find Buy and Rent Houses For Wealth - Steve Chader

This book follows the previous book and is among a series of three (including a book on flipping houses).  It covers everything from finding a property, evaluating a good deal, and renting to market tenants.  While it isn’t a complete guide it’s a great overview of what I wanted to do and I learned a lot from the authors.

Investing in Duplexes, Triplexes and Quads - Larry B. Loftis

A very specific book written to the market I wanted to get into, multi-family buildings.  Loftis outlines several strategies for being successful in the multi-family market, an often overlooked part of the real estate spectrum by larger investors.  He gets into cash flow analysis in detail, and has a great chapter on management.  

How to Make Money with Real Estate Options - Thomas J. Lucier

Although I have not personally used a real estate option contract, I still include this book because it opened my eyes to a different way to make money from property.  Reading this book will show you just how fluid buying/selling property can be.  By this I mean most people (including myself at that point) have this idea of buying a house as a very structured dance.  The truth is there really are only guidelines and the way your deal turns out is largely a result of your creativity and ability to negotiate favorable terms.  Options are great and can probably be turned into a full time business.  Worth the read.

The Book on Estimating Rehab Costs - J Scott

Rehab costs often baffle new investors, and this book is a thorough walk through of each major system in a home and how to properly value repairs.  An invaluable resource when dealing with contractors for the first time.  

Streetwise Investing in Rental Housing - Roger Neal

I just read this book the other day, and even though it's dated it outlines the exact plan that I came up with on my own.  Neal made a career out of buying properties focused on income, ease of management etc. and ran his business like a true professional.  In this book you'll find a lot of great tips on finding good deals, determining what is a good deal (although the numbers are too old to be realistic) and how to manage multi-units effectively.   Plus there's a section about how if you want to succeed you'll need to get a dedicated landline and a top notch fax machine.  Hilarity.

Investing in Real Estate - Gary W. Eldred PHD

The final book I recommend, and the most thorough of all mentioned in this article.  It almost reads like a textbook, but if you’re ready for the information you will assuredly devour it as I did.  Eldred’s book covers everything from identifying your real estate market (and opportunities), creative financing, taxes, strategies and more.  By far the most detailed and comprehensive book on strategy I’ve come across.  Consider it your capstone  book.

If you have any questions about these, or investing in general drop me a line.  Enjoy!

A truly fantastic essay by Malcom Gladwell was written that contrasts Niederhoffer’s style with that of Nassim Taleb, another favorite author and trader of mine. While it paints Niederhoffer in a reckless/negative light, he’s still a phenomenal trader to learn from, as is Taleb. If you like the essay, then both Taleb’s and Niederhoffer’s books will be of value.

Victor's Book

http://gladwell.com/blowing-up/

“Blink” is a book about human ability to make instant a snap judgement about various things in everyday life.  Gladwell addresses our cultural love for making ‘informed’ decisions with piles of data and contrasts it with the often times more accurate technique of allowing one’s subconscious to pop a decision into his head.

In his typical style the book is filled with examples and counterexamples that prod at this issue of snap-decisions from all angles.  When should we trust the gut feeling and when should we ignore it in favor of more data points is the crux of “Blink”.  While no definitive answers are given (sorry to the passive answer seekers!) you can certainly use this text as a means to reflect on your own judgements.  Just bringing awareness back to how my mind operates is infinitely helpful in social situations (judgements and first impressions), as well as trading in the financial markets (where you never have ‘enough’ information to trade).

Overall I enjoyed “Blink” and will likely search for other readings for specifics on the subconscious mind.  Recommended.

Regardless of your political views, the chances are extremely high you have no idea how central banking works.  Henry Ford was quoted saying something along the lines of “If the American public actually understood how the banking system worked, there would be a revolution tomorrow”.  So for that reason alone, I recommend reading this book and deciding for yourself what you think of central banking.

In an old post about bitcoin, I alluded to some of the potentially hazardous conditions being created  by American monetary policy (over the past 30 years).  The oversimplification is that we print a lot of money to pay our debts (print meaning create out of thin air), and historically every currency that has fallen into that pattern has collapsed to near worthlessness.  Now there are several ‘this time is different’ type dynamics at play here, the main one being the US dollar is tied into the vast majority of transactions across the globe which enhances it’s strength and resistance to a complete devaluation.  That’s all I’ll say here, read the book.  At the very least you will be a more educated voter!

Another good read about the Fed, is “The Creature from Jekyll Island” if you are looking for more information.

Jesse Itzler is an interesting character with a most colorful entrepreneurial resume.  He was a white rapper in the 90s, and ultimately went on to build and sell a private jet company for an undisclosed (read freaking massive) sum of money.   Itzler is also a huge distance runner, and general fitness nut.  Somewhere over the last few years he felt that he had hit a comfortable routine in business, fitness and life in general.  This is where SEAL comes in.

SEAL is just that, and ex Navy SEAL/psychopath that Itzler met during a relay endurance race.  The  relay races are usually done with groups of 5-6, and you take turns running a race for 24 hours, 48 hours etc.   SEAL was on a team of one.   Yeah you get the idea.

Itzler then goes on to describe his 30 completely insane days spent training and living with SEAL (he hired him and had him move in with his wife and family).  Intermixed with dialogues between the two are well written anecdotes about Itzler’s business endeavors that give you even further insight into how the man operates.

The significance about this story is in the huge mindshift change that Jesse underwent while being pushed beyond his physical limits day in and day out.  He does a great job of describing what it feels like to go to that ‘next level’ of competition and motivation in your life.  I think anyone interested in improving their productivity or ‘grit’ for the difficult times in life would benefit from reading this short book.

Mamis is a technical trader, and his methods are to use basic price/volume indicators in order to identify accumulation of stocks (before the big move up).  You can certainly read his book for the explicit ‘strategy’  of buying, however the real value is in the subtle bits of market knowledge and psychology he imparts on his readers.  

Mamis has a way of walking through his case studies of individual stocks that make the price action seem like an unfolding story.  If you listen carefully, you can pick up the bits of mass crowd psychology and behavioral trends of ‘insiders’.  This is the good stuff that just doesn’t get touched on in modern literature on the market.

He approaches the market as a game, which it certainly is.  Mamis believes in playing to win (within the constraints of risk of course) and really wants to see his readers trade from that frame.

Buy all three, and read this one last as selling stocks and risk are much more applicable to this current overbought bull market.  May them all bring you as much market success as you deserve.

For me, Poundstone’s book gave a time series and a story that tied together a lot of the formulas and names I have come across in my studies of financial markets.   I had always known of the Kelly betting system, but not until now do I have a vivid picture of the man who created it and the success it had in the gambling world.   

The book also goes through the early days of option pricing (called warrants back in the day) and told the story from conception up through the origins of the Black Scholes pricing model  (the most popular options pricing model used today).   I have studied the math extensively, but never the history of the men who created it nor the environment in which it was ‘born’.  Fascinating stuff!

I thought our author did a terrific job of capturing the raging debate that sprung up in the academic community over what’s known as the ‘Efficient Market Hypothesis’.  For those of you that don’t know, it states that all financial markets are always trading at the right values and therefore it is impossible to make long term returns above ‘the average’.   This of course by induction means that anyone who claims to be a trader or money manager is a fraud and any success they’ve had has been sheer luck.  As you can imagine this notion is troubling to the men and women that work in our managed financial sectors.   Poundstone covered the extensive arguments posed by efficient theorists and economists as well as the back-stories of the fund managers who DID manage to return well above the market average year after year during those academic debates.

The Kelly system is a betting system designed to eliminate a gamblers risk of ruin (the chances of going completely broke).  It does this by recommending the bettor always bet a proportionate amount of his bankroll.  What proportion you ask?  Basically the amount of ‘edge’ you have divided by your total amount of money you have available to gamble.  Now the interesting part here, is that you don’t just place one bet, but multiple of varying sizes and probabilities.  For example at a horse race, the Kelly bettor does not just bet on the most favorable horse she bets on ALL the horses in degrees varied by the horse’s chance to win.  Now there are plenty of drawbacks to this system and even more counter arguments.  THey are described at length in the book so do read it if you’re interested.  Further reading about Kelly can be found here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_criterion

Verdict: Read it.  Rarely do you find such a good combination of writing, history and academic research (with real life application).