During the past couple of years working with Aridni we have accumulated and checked out our fair share of books. Some of them are good, some of them are bad. And quite frankly, some of them haven’t been read by us yet.

In the Aridni Library, we have…

“Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist” by Roger Lowenstein

“The Power of Nice: How to Conquer the Business World With Kindness” by Linda Kaplan Thaler

“Why Good Girls Don’t Get Ahead… But Gutsy Girls Do: Nine Secrets Every Working Woman Must Know” by Kate White

“The Warren Buffett Way, Second Edition” by Robert G. Hagstrom

“The Wealth of Nations” by Adam Smith

“Beating the Street” by Peter Lynch

“Screw It, Let’s Do It: Lessons In Life” by Richard Branson

“Pour Your Heart into It : How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time” Howard Schultz

“Rules For Revolutionaries: The Capitalist Manifesto for Creating and Marketing New Products and Services” by Guy Kawasaki

“The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money” by John Maynard Keynes

“The Art of the Start: The Time -Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything” by Guy Kawasaki

“The Master-Key to Riches” by Napoleon Hill

“Meatball Sundae” by Seth Godin

“Your Limited Liability Company - An Opeating Manual” by Attoney Anthony Mancuso

“Whoops! I’m in Business - A Crash Course in Business Basics” by Richard Stim, legal editor & Lisa Guerin, senior legal editor

Of course, We both have a collection of books themselves as well. Books, articles, bookmarks, conversations, and loose ideas have all helped shaped our business ideals. While it isn’t easy to categorize everything, doing it with books isn’t so bad. Here are some of the books that Katie and I own.

Todd’s books…

“The Richest Man in Babylon” by George S. Clason

“The Coffeehouse Investor” by Bill Schultheis

“At work with Thomas Edison - 10 Business Lessons from America’s Greatest Innovator” by Blaine McCormick

“Ben Franklin’s 12 Rules of Management - The Founding Father of American Business Solves Your Toughest Problems” by Blaine McCormick

Richard Branson, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin are ready to start life on Mars.  They have just announced their new partnership ‘Virgil - The Adventure of Many Lifetimes‘

The goal of course is to set up a full time colony on Mars.  If you want to apply, you can take their questionnaire to see if you have what it takes.  It might be wise to have sent them an email yesterday.  Fortunately thanks to another new Google application on the Gmail side of things, you can!

I can’t wait to see what some of the other websites and companies come up with today.

I recently finished reading ‘The Art of Deception - Controlling the Human Element of Security’ which is a book written by Kevin Mitnick. In case you haven’t heard of Mitnick before, he is the most famous social engineer ever.

Social Engineering is basically using the social skills of influence and persuasion to get whatever the the persuader wants. It relies heavily on the reliance and exploitation of basic human trust. It’s quite similar to being a conman, only usually it’s done against a company rather than an individual.

Mitnick talks about various workarounds in security systems that can be bypassed by anyone using the correct lexicon who sounds like they know what they are talking about. He explains different methods of attack and ways to get a hold of information using different scenarios.

A good portion of the book is about shielding your company from attacks from social engineers and possible policies that you might want to employ. This portion of the book is done very well and I would recommend checking it out, espicially if you have never heard of social engineering before.

During the first meeting, I learned that I was talking to a sort of affiliate marketer.  I also learned that there was a startup fee, as well as a monthly fee for the program.  Once you are in the system, you can make money in two ways.

First, by selling stuff and collecting an affiliate fee.  Secondly, you can recruit others to sell the junk and collect a referral fee.  And it’s only going to cost you a set up fee of $126 and a monthly fee of $50 to keep your website running.  I don’t know about you, but this has bad idea written all over it.  Especially when I got to the second meeting.

This time there were two people involved in selling me this system.  The same person from the previous meeting, and someone higher up the food chain came to talk to me.

They began talking, and half an hour later they were repeating themselves profusely; however, their circumlocutory speech was not the real issue.  They mentioned that setting up your business, and getting sales would pay for itself in the first month.  “Okay,” I asked, “So how do you get sales on your site?”

The two looked at each other, then at me before saying, “Well, how would YOU get sales?”

I mentioned I would find some relevant keywords and bid on them in Google Adwords to direct people to my targeted pages.

The two looked at each other, then at me.  They had no idea what I was talking about.  So I asked again what they did.

The way they get products sold from their site is to buy it themselves.  Now at 10% to 50% commission that means they are buying somewhere between $100 and $500 on their sites each month.  All this was to gain some sort of PV (or Point Value in their strange little world) witch somehow gets transformed into cash back.

The money with this is made of course once you get enough noobs under you to buy their own products.  Then you will get a small chunk of change from their sales.

I asked to see the backend of one of their sites.  I wanted to take a look at how much control the pupetmasters gave them.  But of course this must lead up to another meeting!  So I’ll let you know what happens if this meeting ever does.

I feel bad for all of the people who drink the koolaid without knowing what they are getting themselves into.  Which sounds like a lot of people are doing with their ‘pie in the sky’ wishful thinking.

Not very long ago, I listened to an audio-lecture on NPR about shopping and investing locally. This was from a man named Michael Shuman, he is the author of the book ‘ The Small-Mart Revolution.’ In this book he talks about the benefits of a locally owned and operated businesses. During his lecture he talked about these issues as well as some of the problems involved in attracting local investors in a fiscally responsible way.

Each community needs to develop its own self reliance and maximize the opportunities presented. This will help them to grow in a sustainable and reliable way.

Michael currently runs the site Smallmart.org and I found this article. About halfway down he has a list of things that will help you appear attractive to local shoppers.   This list includes…

1. Being locally owned - The most needed part of the equation!
2. Develop a local identity - Let people know that you are local and be proud of it.
3. Behave Responsibly - Respect the workforce and the environment if you want anyone to respect you.
4. Give back to the community - Let them know your business cares.
5. Maximize ‘Local value added’ - Do more than locate your headquarters here, put your factory or do your business here as well.
6. Cater to local markets - You can still sell to the rest of the world, but make sure you sell to those around you first.
7. Develop local partners - This could be contacting other businesses for one time events, or perhaps shopping in local stores for any supplies you need.
8. Grow deep - Expand your offerings to the local crowd.
9. Avoid predatory behavior - Just because you offer some of the same goods or services doesn’t mean that the other company is your enemy, just your competition.  Perhaps possibly even a local partner in the future.
10. Exit locally - When you close up shop, who will take over your business?

I really enjoyed the lecture that he gave, but I think I’ll need to pick up the book in order to extract as much of his ideas as possible.

Earlier this month, a fellow personal finance blogger, The Simple Dollar, wrote an excellent piece about how he and his family was defining themselves by stuff up until two years ago.  They were buying five DVDs every week along with the latest gadgets, golf clubs, and other stuff on whims.

He nearly had a financial meltdown, he says… until he got smart about debt, money, and what’s really important.  He started selling off excess junk that he had accumulated, and seriously watched his spending.

Read how The Simple Dollar made life-changing habits to make his debt shrink instead of grow.  Now he and his wife celebrate multiple streams of income and feel financial satisfaction–something completely foreign to them before.

Check out The Simple Dollar for this inspirational story and suggestions for your own transition into control over money.

I just read an article over at ‘Smart Money‘ about how couples often make similar mistakes in regards to their finances. It brings up many good points and issues.

“Most of us don’t know how to talk about money,” says Mary Claire Allvine, a certified financial planner (CFP) and co-author of “The Family CFO: The Couple’s Business Plan for Love and Money.”

“People tend to be emotional and reactive about money, not strategic,” she says.

When emotions run high, people tend to make fiscal mistakes. Allvine’s solution: Approach family finances as if you were running a business. “If you put a business metaphor into the picture, you’d be surprised how much more methodical people are.”

In this article she talks about 6 common pitfalls that could arise if issues are not properly resolved.

1. Merging finances
2. Controlling debt
3. Spending habits
4. Investing Wisely
5. Money Secrets
6. Emergency Planning

Give the article a read, I think that you will find it full of good ideas and perspective for you.

Now that you have seen a couple of games that are great for developing strategy in groups, what about good old ‘one on one’ games? Well there are some great ones out there, just waiting to be discovered and played.

1. Hive - In this two player game you control half of the hive, a collective of insects and spiders buzzing, jumping, and scurrying around. You’re goal is to surround your opponent’s queen bee completely.

   Each insect has a different movement path that it can follow. Grasshoppers can jump over clusters. Ants can march around the perimeter. Beatles can crawl over the top. You can never break the hive into two parts, so everything is connected at all times.

   You will be able to either move one of your pieces, or place a new one on the table. The game is quick, and it jams in quite a bit of thinking into that time. I like to compare it with chess, every piece has specific move it can make, and the goal is to take out one piece.

2. Carcassonne Hunters and Gatherers - While this game can be played with up to 5 people, it really plays well with only two. So I have decided to include it here as well.

   The idea in the game is to control different sections of the land as they are ‘discovered’. Each turn you draw a tile and have to fit that into the game in a way that all the edges match. (Forests on Forests, rivers on rivers, and plains on plains) Then from there you have an option of placing one of your ‘meeples’ (miniature people) onto the board. Once that section is complete, you will score the points of it and get your meeple back.

   The game isn’t huge on strategy, you are at the mercy of which tile you draw. But there is quite a bit of tactics in where you place that tile, and if you do add a meeple to the board. It is defiantly worth a play.

3. Scrabble - Now Scrabble is a game that you have to have heard of before. Because of that, I’m not going to go into much details on it.

   Simply use your rack of letters to play words on the board in a crossword like manner. Placing the letters so that you get to that triple word score is key, but creating good words is also going to make a big difference.

   Like Carcassonne above, this game can be played with more players; however, Scrabble plays the best with only two.

I hope that these will be able to challenge you, and whoever you decide to play against. As in most games, the more you play the better you get, and the more ideas you can try. So give them a shot, and see what you think.

Do you have a favorite two player game that forces you to think?

Quite some time ago I wrote a series of posts about Benjamin Franklin, and his business prowess. The series of posts was following the 12 rules of management from a book written by Blaine McCormick. In one of the posts, ‘A Simple Recipe for Lifelong Learning,’ I briefly mentioned a bit about using board games to gain ideas and try different ideas and strategies. I thought it might be a good idea to show you a couple of board games that you might like to try out.

1) Settlers of Catan - In this game, you are trying to control the island of Catan economically. Each different type of tile has the ability to produce a different resource that you will use to develop roads, build settlements, upgrade to cities, and use for bartering with other players. At the start of every turn, resources are produced for everyone who has a settlement in the right area. Following that you have the opportunity to trade and build.

The great thing about this game is that the board is based on tiles. Each time you play the game there will be a different island, and the resource production rates will also be different for each game.

2) Ticket to Ride - Connect the world! Well, rather connect the United States with your rails. (There is also a German version, a Europe version, and a Switzerland map) In ‘Ticket to Ride’ you are trying to connect cities across America. Doing so will get you points in two different ways. Every time you lay down train tracks and if you can complete your secret route cards.

The route cards are very simple. They have two cities and a point value. If you can connect the two cities on your railway, you get the points. Otherwise they will count against you. The farther apart your cities are, the more it will be worth. The turns move along fairly quickly as it is easy to come up with your next move before your turn happens again.

During your turn you will have three options - take more route cards, lay down track, and collect train cards (which you use to lay down track). What is your backup plan when somebody takes your route? What is the best way to get from point A to point B? It’s not always a strait line in this game.

3) Puerto Rico -In the game Puerto Rico, you are trying to stimulate economic growth on the island and build up San Juan. You have several different ‘roles’ that you can choose during your turn. But when you choose one, everyone can do the action. So you really have to determine when the best times are to trade goods in the market, ship them off to England, build buildings, and harvest crops. Once a role is taken, it can not be used again until the next round.

You will also have the ability to build buildings in San Juan. They will allow you to do things such as getting better prices at the marketplace, being able to store more goods, and of course the ability to process the goods. The only thing that I should caution you about this game is the time. It will take around 90 minutes to play this game, even more time during the first run through.

Hopefully you will get a chance to play these games; however they all require 3 players minimum and go up to 5. (Settlers of Catan only goes up to 4, unless you buy a 5-6 player expansion.) There are also some great 2 player games to rack your brain, I’ll talk about them in an upcoming post.

I’ve started making a list of the posts for Monday. I have determined writing these posts will be no easy task, but of course coming to that conclusion isn’t a big leap.

I am trying to be prepared to write them, but I still have to finish up the new theme that I am working on. So it looks like I am going to have a good part of my evening filled tonight, not to mention the entirety of tomorrow!

Check out this awareness test that I found over at Seth Godin’s Blog.

(Continue reading this article…)

In less than a week, I will be turning 24. Granted this isn’t the most incredible of life’s landmarks, I want to do something different for my golden birthday. With that I am going to do two difficult tasks.

First, I am going to change the look of Aridni. I have had an idea in my head for a new them for a couple of months now. It’s time I finish coding it and get it released. On March 24, Aridni will look quite a bit different. Hopefully it’s for the best.

Secondly, and perhaps quite a bit harder than putting together the theme in one week, I am going to post on the 24th. A LOT. I am going for 24 posts in 24 hours.

To make it fun, I will give away a $24 Amazon gift certificate to a lucky commenter on the this day.

Just in case you haven’t done so already, make sure you are subscribed to the Aridni RSS feed, because you don’t want to miss out on this posting spectacular.

If anybody else wants to join me in the pursuit of a plethora of posts, please let me know and I’ll get a link to your site here.

I need to go stock up on coffee and start stretching my fingers, because the fun is about to begin.

Now that the holidays are over, the number of divorcees looking for a rental house explodes. I thought it was just an interesting fluke last year when we were trying to rent out a larger property. This year, a property manager has confirmed that he finds more newly separated people looking for a new home than any other time of year.

How interesting since it’s also Valentine’s Day time, huh?

Valentine’s Day and personal finances make an interesting combination… a situation we haven’t figured out the best way to handle. Spend a fortune on stuff? Bypass the big spending? Put the money toward something “super sweet” like your hubby’s Roth or a new stock pick?

We’ve always downplayed this holiday at our house–usually because we’ve had a house to rent out! Now I’m contemplating all of the past articles on Aridni and wondering what the best solution is.