PassiveIncomeHome.com

Politician boycot by Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz

Twan — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 19:44:00 +0000

I decided to write this post after reading this article on zerohedge. A site I would by the way strongly recommend reading as it is one of the leading sources of real/true news as it is not mainstream news. This kind of news is also suppressed by the mainstream news because it’s anti-establishment and the media is owned by the establishment. Rupert Murdoch (whose name is almost synonym to the establishment) alone owns second-largest media conglomerate called News Corporation. This is the list of assets the corporation owns, almost everything you see or read in mainstream media. Alot of politicians have ties with this corporation so the mainstream news just publishes what the government wants it to publish. Like the 9/11 scandal, but that’s another story (watch the documentary below by architects and engineers for 9/11 truth and decide for yourself)…

So what has happened is quite revolutionary. The CEO of Starbucks has emailed to other business leaders the following: “I am asking that all of us forego political contributions until the Congress and the President return to Washington and deliver a fiscally disciplined long-term debt and deficit plan to the American people.”

What Schultz wants to see, he said in an interview, is for Americans to go on strike against their politicians.
For more details read the original article on ZeroHedge.com.

You need to see it, in order to achieve it

Twan — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 13:11:37 +0000

The fox listens to the tiny sounds of it’s prey moving below the surface of the snow. Just see for yourself in the video below how this fox is able to catch it’s prey. We can apply this on business mindset in real life. You need huge focus to achieve your goals. In particular achieving something quite extraordinary results. For a fox catching a prey like this is a quite extraordinary outcome isn’t it? Share your thoughts on this one in the comment section and share this beautiful video. I love it By the way, the fox in the image is from the movie “Fantastic Mr. Fox” voiced over by George Clooney. Great movie, you should totally check it out The movie is based on a book written by Roald Dahl. I would also recommend the movie’s making of.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Gamification: Empire Avenue VS Real Life investing

Twan — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 14:43:29 +0000

So what’s the deal about Empire Avenue (in short: eAV, also used as twitter hashtag #eAV)? Why do I think Empire Avenue is a great platform for learning to invest in general? Well I think in general you learn things the best when game mechanics are added to something you are learning, doesn’t matter what age you are. In empire avenue you learn to invest in people (eventually also relationships) by share price in which you learn the mechanics of supply and demand of a real life stock market. Also concepts like pump and dump, dividend investing for fixed income, etc.

My experpiences in general with gaming mechanics:
When I was in the first grade and I learned mathematics (the tables) we could just learn from a big paper with all the sums on it… the boring way… or we could create 50 different small sepperate papers with the sums on it and the solution on the flipside.
You could then challenge your classmates to get the sums on the papers right and to work with highscores in class. The top 5 scores of the classroom got a smurf or smiley stamp.

I couldn’t find an image of a smurf stamp so I just added a random smiley just for the illustration If I found my set of smurf stamps at home I would’ve certainly taken a picture from it and added it but unfortunately…

It’s just the same as people raving about earning mayorships and badges while checking in using this service called Foursquare. And when becoming the mayor even earning a drink on the house or other free stuff. I’ve seen some insane mayor competitions going on in places that rewarded the mayor

If you find a sticker like that on the door of one of your local places make sure you check in to earn something cool

Well with those gaming mechanics I also learned business at a very young age. By accident I got a CD-ROM from my neighbour one day that he got as an extra in a pc magazine. It was the install of a game galled “gazillionare deluxe”. I really recommend the developers of this game (can be found on http://www.lavamind.com/gaz.html). I was at that time age 10 and I learned so much from this game it wasn’t even funny. There was some kind of internal stock market where you could buy and sell shares of all the planets in the universe, you had to control stock, fuel your jet and trade goods while traveling all the planets in your space ship. You had to make decisions once in a while that were very important in the progress of the game. Sometimes very difficult dilemmas. A lot of ethics versus profits questions.

It all was in English and my mother tongue is Dutch so I learned a lot of English at that age playing that game. The game also got also raving reviews. One of them: “Gazillionaire is an oddball financial sim that’s economically sound (working off time-tested principles of supply and demand).” - PC Games
I myself strongly recommend the game.

Surprisingly later on when I was 14 years old I started studying economics in school and a year later we had to play THAT EXACT SAME GAME in economics class. I was STUNNED.

That was one of my first “AHA-moments” that school sucked for me. Most of the time I was way beyond on what we were seeing in class & on some courses I underperformed like hell because I HATED it. Why not excel in a few courses and really focus on your talents?? Mine were economics of course, I discovered that one quite early.

The lack of interest/semi-failure in some courses probably also had to do with the fact that I had some heavy party years between my 17^th and 18^th birthday and that was probably the result of lack of challenging content at school. I was always bored like hell and was constantly in search for other kicks. On the other hand I’m also glad I had those party years because it also made me to what I am today. In that period I made a ton of friends and really learned a lot about social dynamics, friendship, girls and lovemaking

As you can read in my ABOUT ME section that all changed when I turned 18 years old.
If I think about my high school carreer “studying” economics there were not a lot of things I learned. My REAL economic education came only after reading a lot of books myself & the more REALER economic education I got only started when I started getting into Austrian Economics, synonym to sound economics instead of failing Keynesian economics.

But I have to be honest & tell you that there WERE a few good things we learned. In our senior year we played a simulation game running a business. Running a hotdog stand and distributing a new car. We had to form teams and give everyone in the team a “C-function”.

CTO, CMO, CFO and CEO. I of course became the CEO of the hotdog stand and coordinated everything (I guess, because it’s quite a long time ago when we played the game )

That year we did an optional simulation game I enrolled for called Ecoman http://www.ecoman.be/ (Dutch source) which was also in teams and very educational. I’m really glad to have picked up some valuable lessons in a (seen trough my eyes) VERY flawed educational system.

What also contributed to my education with game mechanics is the games Sim City 3000 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SimCity and Capitalism 2 http://www.enlight.com/capitalism2/

I would certainly recommend Capitalism 2, although a little bit outdated by now I think the game is still very relevant for educational purposes. As you can see when you visit the link of Capitalism 2 the game is also being used for teaching business courses in various universities like Harvard, Duke & Stanford. I was playing that game at age 12 in a for me then foreign language… How did I discover these top notch games at that age? No idea. Coincidence? Could be but after all I’ve been trought I start to think nothing is REALLY a coincidence.

Like that time I went traveling in North America for a few weeks & ended up staying at the house of the producer of one of my all time favourite movies… But that’s another story.

So what is that game capitalism about, you can guess I think.
You had to built plants and built R&D centres to develop new products to produce in those plants. All those games were in English so I learned English very well at a young age just by playing all those games.

JUST BY DOING IT, like in real life you know, no textbooks alowed. Failing, trying again, failing again, have some success, fail again, try again, set an insane HIGH SCORE, YES.

… always wanted to end a post with the word “yes” Also ends up being my first real big post, typed right out of my head.

Maslow’s Hierarchy Of Needs

Twan — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 01:40:56 +0000

What does it all matter?

Is a question that is often asked by people who get confronted by carreer doubts or other problems. “I want to do something useful” is often something that is said. But what does this mean?

When I was young I was always told to get a decent job with benefits, work there for 40 years and retire.
For people like me that have a bug called entrepreneurship running trough their veins this is a DISASTER. It’s very difficult for them to perform as an employee and reach the ultimatum of self-actualisation (The highest level on Maslow’s pyramid of needs). In my opinion starting your own business is the only TRUE way to self-actualize yourself 100%. Even for people that are happy being an employee or think they are happy being an employee. Having multiple passive streams of income trough various businesses is the ONLY TRUE WAY in my opinion to be self-actualized because you eliminate the factor MONEY out of life. In my journey becoming financially free I was working real hard. Whole nights sitting in front of my computer studying financial markets, waiting for the asian markets to open… After a couple hours of sleep whole days staring at my computer screens trading the markets. 100% FOCUS. Once in a while there was a girl that I started dating a few times and that were most of the time periods that I lost some focus. So one advice I can give you if you want it done REALLY FAST (in 3 years or so, no “get rich quick” schemes). Like I did in my opinion, commit yourself 100% to the cause of becoming financially free. Work 3 years like no one else, and live 40 years like no one else because money doesn’t matter after those 3 years of unhumanly hard work. 3 years of unhumanly hard work yields most of the time better results than 10 years of just hard work. Just 1 word: FOCUS.

Pursue A Dream

A road that isn’t compatible with your dreams is a dead end street. Think about the time when you were asked by your teacher or parents: “What do you want to become when you grow old?” What does this REALLY mean? It’s a question to get to know your dreams. I always wanted to become a rockstar. I envied all those wild guys with crazy guitars, sex, drugs & rock ‘n roll. What is your dream? And the real question: is there any chance you will once become that dream? Chances are this will never be the case, because a mediocre life prescribed by society (employee, family,…) are demanding to give in some other dreams you might have had.

I asked a friend this question once who was working as a sales rep. He didn’t answer me with: “I want to be sales rep @ Electronics Store X.” No, he answered: “I always wanted to be a F1-pilot.” So why is he selling phones, printers etc. today? Is there any chance that he will ever make his dreams come true? Impossible. The dream is dead and the road to the dream is blocked, forever. What is his gut feeling though? He thinks, there has to be more to life than just waiting on his paycheck every month hoping it will go up every 5 years or so hoping he will not get his ass fired by the time we have another recession (which is basically every 2 years or so in this defect economic system we are living in, I would even argue we live in permanent recession times because of all the accumulated debt over the years).

But is there something wrong with this job? Certainly not, we really need these people in our economy. But don’t make a job like that your ultimate destination. It should be a means to an end… because the end will probably never come in a job like this. The problem is: When your dream is dead, you’re passion is too. No passion in life leads to mediocrity and the phenomenon of “not being happy”. No passion = no wealth. No financial wealth and no wealth in quality of life. Point final.

Share your thoughts in the comment section on my writings