Good Will Report

An NLP Breakthrough!

July 26 was a very special day for those of us who were taking the Master Practitioner program at the NLP Institute in White Rock, BC. Since about April time, we have been carrying around this wooden board to classes, and making drawings on it.

The idea is that throughout the months, we create a picture of what we want on the top side, and a picture of what we want to let go of on the bottom. The boards absorb all this energy through the months, and on July 26, we each went in front of the class and broke the board!

Because of all the energies that were on the board, it was "stacked" -- such that it's not simply strength that breaks the board -- and it takes determination to break through all we want to let go and all that we want to have.

I'm proud to say that I broke my board in one try! It was a great symbolism for breaking through all the obstacles to get what I want -- I even got a good bruise on my arm to remind me of it for a week! If you like, you can take a look at the front and back of the board.

Cakes! Cakes! Cakes!

I LOVE to cook! Cooking is something I very much enjoy, and my favorite is when I cook for people and they do the dishes! My mom is a very good cook and when I moved out to live by myself for university I had to learn to do it myself, and I suppose the years of her modeling made it easy for me to pick up cooking.

One thing is that relatively new to me is cakes -- I learned to bake cookies in second year university when I was working as an intern in Toronto and picked up a chocolate cookbook in the bargain bin ($1), and the new challenge this year is baking delicious cheesecakes!

What I learned very quickly is that there are different types of cheesecakes; in fact, Wikipedia provides a very extensive listing of different types of them. While I think most of the cheesecake we are exposed to at restaurants here in North America is of the New-York variety, the cookbook I purchased (for $2) was written in Japan and contains very many different types of the dessert.

For my birthday, since I had the company of both of my parents and Julie, I decided to bake a blueberry cheesecake. I soon realized it was not baked, but "gelled" together with gelatine, which would likely be due to the ingenuity of the British people.

Even thought I was making a blueberry cheesecake for the first time, the cookbook provided many pictures with detailed instructions on each step needed. Following the instructions precisely, very soon my kitchen was filled with the sweet smell of blueberry syrup and the sound of whipping together cream and sugar. After mixing the ingredients together, the cake mold went into the refridgerator for a few hours to set.

As you can see from the picture, the cake turned out very well! Doesn't it make your mouth water?

Extreme Wealth: Phil Town

When I attended the Extreme Wealth seminar in June, one of the most talked about speaker was Phil Town. He told a great story about how he went from being a rafting guide, meeting his mentor, and became a stock trader starting from zero. He was a tanned, older gentlemen, although he was always energetic and glowing, and spoke with a great voice.

While what he was focussing on stocks, I believe this topic also extended to career and life in general.

Specifically, he was talking about picking a company to invest in; and, for me, I also thought about companies I would work for, or industries I would build a company in.

First, there are four Ms to look for:

• Meaning of the business.
• A durable Moat -- or a niche, if you will. It is some kind of monopolistic quality of the business.
• Management -- do you love and admire the people running the company? Are they honest? Are they passionate about the business? Are they owner-oriented? These people attract the best people to work for them -- consider Apple's Steve Jobs.
• Margin of safety -- is there room for some risks?

The piece that really struck me was when he talked about finding the three things that really bring out the best of us. This is a really great exercise, and I recommend doing this as an exercise.

Draw three intersecting circles, and label each one, Passion, Money, and Talent. List, in each circle, as many things as you can about yourself. What are you passionate about? Where do you make or spend the most money? In what are you NUMBER ONE in the world?

Once the list is created, find the intersections. Whatever shows up as being in all three circles, is great for you for making money, be it a career, business, or investing.

Phil Town is an investor and author of New York Times best seller, Rule #1: The Simple Strategy for Successful Investing in Only 15 Minutes a Week!. His new book, Payback Time: Eight Steps to Outsmarting the System That Failed You and Getting Your Investments Back on Track is now avaiable in bookstores and at Amazon.com.

In Closing...

Continuing on with topics on investing, here is another quote from the famous Warrn Buffett to close out this August issue of Good Will Report. Happy Labour Day!

"It's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price." -- Warren Buffett