“wealth”

Esto me vino a la mente esta tarde, en el cruce de Periferico y Tutelar cuando un limpiaparabrisas se me echo encima a pesar de mi clara y categorica renuencia. Cuando termino no le di nada, lo ignore de la misma estudiada forma en la que el me ignoro cuando le gesticulaba que no, que no queria que limpiara mi parabrisas, pero despues me senti algo mas mal que de costumbre al darme cuenta que habia hecho un trabajo inusualmente bueno y mi parabrisas eran unos ojos recien llorados. Me molesto que algo que podia ser un servicio agradable decayera en algo a rehuir y al buscar una forma de evitar ese empobrecimiento se me ocurrio esta excentricidad mercadotecnica. Quien sabe, se antoja raro pero interesante. No seria memorable que por una vez en vez de solo robar tu atencion hicieran algo por ti?

William W. Lewis’s The Power of Productivity (PDF and HTML versions available), a summary of his same-titled book^AM, has only grown on me since I read it a month ago. It’s main thesis, that wealth hinges on productivity, has come to resonate inside me like few things have of late.

It was, for instance, what lead me to finally accept the possibilities of technology and, shortly thereafter, to naively proclaim I’d one day have a massively profitable company with less people than my then-age. The whimsical limit, I believe, will force such a company to be always awake, always flexible, always smart, always doing technological judo. It would force it to value people in a way we’ve barely explored at all.

I will one day build a Fortune Global 500^WP company made out of less people than my then age. The headcount limit should keep it interesting.

A 2005 Inc. feature, I found it fascinating, even when uneven. Particularly recommended is Richard Branson’s writeup—rarely does one read so inspiring a portrait, an instant eemadge.

Here’s a compact index of each of the 26 entrepreneurs.

1. Martha Stewart: because she took one for the team
   
2. Richard Branson: because he’s game for anything. In fact, everything.
   
3. Michael Dell: for being brilliantly straightforward
   
4. Jim Sinegal (Costco): because who knew a big-box chain could have a generous soul?
   
5. Diane von Furstenberg: for staging an elegant comeback
   
6. Julie Azuma: for offering hope and help to the parents of autistic children
   
7. Fritz Maytag: for setting limits
   
8. Ray Kurzweil: because he is Edison’s rightful heir
   
9. Craig Newmark (Craigslist): for putting the free in free markets
   
10. Jack Mitchell: because his family business makes an art of customer service
    
11. Frank Robinson: for whipping an entire industry into shape
    
12. Mark Melton: for giving immigrants their shot at the American Dream
    
13. Michelle Cardinal & Tim O’Leary: for rewriting the rules for husband-and-wife teams
    
14. Mike Lazaridis: because someone had to stand up for all those frustrated engineers
    
15. Trip Hawkins: for still scrapping
    
16. Warren Brown: because only in America will someone quit a secure job as a lawyer to start a bakery
    
17. Muriel Siebert: for being a notable first with a worthy second act
    
18. Chuck Porter: for verging on reckless
    
19. Katrina Markoff: for setting a completely unreasonable goal for her business
    
20. Barry Steinberg & Craig Sumerel: for showing the power of the peer group
    
21. Victoria Parham: for serving as a mentor to military spouses
    
22. Tom LaTour: for staying at fleabag hotels so that we don’t have to
    
23. Mitchell Gold & Bob Williams: for creating a true comfort zone
    
24. Izzy & Coco Tihanyi: for kicking sand in the face of conventional wisdom
    
25. Tony Lee: for saving 16 jobs, including his own
    
26. Rueben Martinez: for simultaneously building a business and nurturing Latino culture
    

This is one of the many things I ended up pasting on my wall last week. Since it’s something of an important breakthrough for me, let me try to explain what I mean with it.

I have always marveled at rich people, particularly at how one could get rich, and it always seemed impossible to the verge of immoral how a single person could earn on the order of tens of thousands of dollars per month. There were very few things I could think of for me to do in an hour that would be worth the hundreds of dollars I would need.

That is completely the wrong way to go about it. There really are few such one-hour isolated things that will get you a couple hundred dollars and most of them involve decades of poorly paid specialization. There is a better, more productive way to think of the problem, and that’s what the equation above serves as a reminder of: If you get one thousand people to give you fifty dollars per month, you’ll make fifty thousand dollars per month.

Yes, I know it’s mind-numbingly stupid, but it’s true. And fifty dollars aren’t really that much money, and a month is quite a big chunk of time, and a thousand people doesn’t seem as much to me now as it used to—that’s about the daily traffic of Imagery a couple of weeks ago (and yes, I know the comparison is worth squat, but it still was a landmark in my life to realize how easily I could interest and benefit and touch thousands of people).

Of course that getting-people-to-give-you-money part is not at all about mind-washing or extortion, it’s about creating more than fifty dollars of wealth in a month for over a thousand people. And doesn’t it seem exciting and achievable put this way? At any rate, it has my mind reeling, because a couple of days ago I finally crystallized an idea of a website that could do just that and much more (codename: maki). And it promises to be a lot of work, and to be the greatest challenge I’ve yet undertaken, and it will take me out to the real world every day, and I’d meet thousands of people, and it’d get me walking, and… well, time’ll tell, won’t it?

A couple of months ago a prim little supermarket called Merkabastos opened 2 minutes away from my house. The store has been deservedly a hit around the neighborhood and now it battles with the oh-so-common problem of finding parking space for its customers.

Enter a pretty much vacant lot right across the street. Thru the years I’d seen it remain unused until some years ago it began to store construction machinery, and some years later they put a billboard on it (whose first customer, I might add, was the table dance on the other side of the beltway).

Anyway, what was bound to happen, happened: the Merkabastos management are renting the place as a parking lot for their customers and I find it amusing to think that the owner of the lot didn’t need to lift a finger to start earning a rent for her barren property.

Platicaba antier con Adolfo en el Starbucks cerca del TEC y como enseguida tenia el una conferencia sobre la pobreza, decidi acompañarlo. Me dio mucho gusto ver que la conferencia la organizaba y conducia Lalo, uno de los mejores maestros de mi prepa, pero la conferencia en si fue perfectamente olvidable: los mismos lugares comunes de siempre, el mismo rollo, el mismo izquierdismo self-righteous, los mismos rezagos ancestrales, las mismas discusiones bizantinas (Cuantos tipos de pobreza hay? Son mejores los programas universalistas que los focalizados? Como definimos indigena? Cuantos angeles caben en la cabeza de un alfiler?).

En medio del choro mareador de uno de los ponentes oi la gastadisima frase “inequidad en la distribucion de la riqueza” y alguna minuscula sinapsis debio unir a dos neuronas olvidadas, pues vi de repente la concepcion (en mi opinion erronea) de la riqueza que esa oracion implicaba. Ya en mi casa repase los ensayos de Paul Graham y, efectivamente, es un ensayo suyo, Mind The Gap, el que maravillosamente desenmascara y desacredita esta concepcion (que el llama el Modelo Papi de la Riqueza):

En fin, se lo comente a Adolfo (rayandole su cuaderno) y el me contesto con su ya famoso “Ashh…”©, pero aun asi me motivo a hacerles el comentario a los ponentes (darle valor a otra gente es la cosa mas facil del mundo). Cuando (dei gratia) acabo la conferencia y llego la hora de las preguntas, dije lo siguiente (o algo muy parecido, el original quedo escrito en la libreta de Adolfo):

Silencio. Mi corazon golpeteaba y yo solo agradecia no haber tartamudeado severamente. Creo que oi un “Uhhhhhh” de “Tomen eso!” de alguien del auditorio. Adolfo dice que oyo un aplauso aislado. Mas silencio. Lalo interviene, levantando por fin su mirada de mi y llevandola al punto de fuga, “Alguien mas tiene otra pregunta?”.