When you think of the people you most admire, you think of successful and happy people. Ever wonder how they became so successful? How did they become so happy in the process of their lives? Bit by bit, I find myself taking these heroes apart–what attributes do these people have that bring them this fulfillment?

I’ve found five traits that all of my role models carry. Five traits we can all work to possess:

1. Listen More. You’ve probably heard this idea a million times. But did you “listen”? It’s easy to start talking about ourselves. The most annoying people I can think of never stop talking about themselves. You can learn more about the world and about people by listening to them.

2. Ask Questions More. The smartest people know how to keep others talking and teaching. By asking questions, people feel appreciated. You’re listening to their ideas. How many times do you start talking at the same time as someone else? In these situations, I’m trying to stop talking. People are more interested in telling you their little stories than hearing yours.

3. Smile More. Think of old men–the one kissing a girl’s hand, winking, and smiling draws your attention more than the grumpy guy with a frown and bad attitude. Ever wonder if each person is destined to mold into one of those two guys, depending upon the choices we make? Question the perspective you have. Sure it’s snowing outside my window right now and the roads will be icy and crowded. But isn’t spring on its way? I’ll get to listen to more of my audiobook on a long car drive. More snow means a longer ski season… see what I’m getting at?

4. Hold the Door More. My boss has a thing about always being the first through the doorway. He won’t stop to let anyone including a woman or his wife go before him. He probably doesn’t notice this trait in himself, though everyone else does. Watch how you act for a moment. Do you cut others off so that you can go first for everything? Will you pick up someone’s pen if he drops it? Going the extra bit adds charm. And even if no one notices this added charm, it’s better than people noting your lack-there-of.

5. Believe in You More. The trend with people online is that we often don’t show great self-esteem to others. We know we’re good at things. Yet we’re so humble. When you tell people what you do, what your $$ strategy is, and what you want to accomplish, you have to be proud. Don’t mumble about being the secretary for a horrible boss. Think of how you can spice your description up more. I think of it as an interview. To get the best job, you have to express the positive experiences you have had in the past. So why not practice that passion right now?

After talking with Katie earlier this week, we thought it would be a good idea to do a weekly segment where we highlight some of the great posts that we find out there in the wide world. With that, here are a couple of great articles that I have run across.

Ten things I wish my parents taught me about money
Don’t take financial advice from broke people – I fell for the myth that you need to build your credit score, because people told me to do it, and what did I know? So I went out and picked up a credit card and found my self with $500 in credit card debt without even realizing where it went just a few months after having a credit card! I’m lucky that I realized that credit cards only make the bank rich and enable you to spend money that you don’t have!

It looks like some of Matthew’s advice had to be learned the hard way!

5 Skills That Will Help Your Startup
In a Small Business Administration study, five characteristics were identified as the most important predictors of an entrepreneur’s success.
1. Drive is the most important attribute.
2. Thinking ability encompasses creativity, critical thinking, analytical abilities and originality.
3. People skills are the ability to motivate employees, sell customers, negotiate with suppliers and convince lenders.

While this article really doesn’t contain much about actually helping with your business, it has a couple points to research further. It’s really more psychology of entroprenours.

5 Simple Ways to Make the Most of Your Intelligence
Your brain needs exercise just like a muscle. If you use it often and in the right ways, you will become a more skilled thinker and increase your ability to focus. But if you never use your brain, or abuse it with harmful chemicals, your ability to think and learn will deteriorate.

Here are 5 simple ways anyone can squeeze a bit more productivity out of the old gray matter.

This article has some great ideas to whip your brain into shape. Some of them of course are going to be a little harder to adapt to than the others, but some might help you more than others.

Thanks to eFIPO for making ‘How to buy your first house‘ the featured article of the Under 30 Carnival this past week, and congrats to Katie for crafting a superb article!

Next Sunday Katie will bring you some of the articles and posts that she finds.

The environment and culture set up by Thomas Edison in his labs and Google’s founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin might be strikingly similar in many ways.

So how does “The Wizard of Menlo Park” (New Jersey) compare to a couple guys who’s company’s Menlo Park location was clear across the country and a hundred years later? (For a short time in ’98-’99 Google’s office was located in Menlo Park California) We can take a look at the objectives, practices, and general attitudes of both of these companies to find the answers.

Edison and the others at his lab created inventions and then set up companies to profit off of them. If you take a look at Google Labs, they are doing something similar with their own twist. Google has their Adwords and Adsense that they are able to leverage into many of their products, giving a revenue stream to that product. At Google, all employees are given an amount of time where it is required to work on their own projects. Every now and then we can see the larger and more developed of these projects and ideas appear at Google Labs.

The culture that was found with Thomas Edison’s workers ‘the boys’ allowed a lot of flexibility to move around from project to project. If one project was getting nowhere, you could simply open up a different notebook and jump into a whole new problem and pick up from where someone else was stumped. I can’t quite say for sure how much freedom Google gives to employees in moving around like this, but within the company sharing ideas, collaborating and otherwise transferring knowledge is highly encouraged.

Both Edison and Google place a high value on constant experimentation, testing, and improving everything; however there is a bit of cultural variance in how it was to be approached. If you wanted to go into Thomas Edison’s lab and experiment, you were welcome to. The only thing that was really required of you was to pay for the materials that you used and to clean up after yourself. Getting to know the other inventors and getting their input was an added perk.

When it comes to Google, in order to play around in their labs, you simply need to click on a link. All around the you can run tests and investigate all kinds of things online for free. If you want to go even further, you can put together programs and applications fairly easily that interact with their online software. If you don’t know how to program, with a quick search, they could help you out with that too.

Now it doesn’t really seam that the General Electric company that we know today still follows these ideas, but at one time back when it was called Edison General Electric, it was much closer to how Google operates a century later. It’s certainly not a coincidence that both GE and Google are so strong now when they both had such great beginnings. I think it’s fair to say that with Google being only a little more than a decade old, they haven’t quite written all of their beginnings yet.

Seems like a lot of people are making money through becoming landlords. Thinking of taking the plunge yourself? Landlords have to put up with a lot of crap… yet I’m finding that the crap may very well be worth the effort if you’re smart and know how to work the numbers. I’ve also written several pieces about how to buy your first house and what to do when considering real estate investments that may be useful to you.

What to look for in a good deal

The best piece of real estate that you can buy follows the rule of tens:

Don’t put down more than 10% on the property

Don’t pay more than 10% interest

Buy at least 10% below the market price

1. Don’t put down more than 10% on the property
The coolest thing about being a landlord is that tenants pay off your property. The entire mortgage is tax deductible. If you don’t have a lot of cash sitting around, use leverage’let the bank’s money make you money. The less money you invest in the house, the more banks carry and tenants pay off.

2. Don’t pay more than 10% interest
Investment properties hold higher interest rates with banks because they’re a bigger risk. Investments don’t hold much sentimental value. If you’re in a pinch, banks know that you’d rather pay off something that matters to you personally’like your own home.

3. Buy at least 10% below the market price.
Rental homes don’t need to be the nicest on the block. And the misfortune of leasing your property is that it’ll probably be in worse shape than when you started. As I said in the point before, you take better care of things that you are emotionally attached to. Since tenants don’t own your property, they’re less likely to be as meticulous about the home’s care. Plus buying undervalue property means that when you sell at value, a few extra dollars will come your way.

When you’re ready to make an offer

The person with the highest offer isn’t necessarily the person who the owners want to sell to. Sellers are interested in the extras. A few of those brownie points that I have found helpful are:

Keep your offer simple

Offer a quick closing

Buy “as is”

1. Keep your offer simple
You can line up a lot of contingencies on a property purchase: home inspection, mold inspection, lead-based paint inspection, bank financing… The list goes on and on. Owners get nervous when you start checking off that list of contingencies. They just want to sell the property! Keep the number of check points smaller; it equals a quicker sale in the minds of an owner

2. Offer a quick closing
Sometimes, a closing can drag on forever. It can take months. Owners have already detached themselves from the home, and they’re ready to move on. They want the money. You know that phrase: a hen in the hand is worth two in the bush? Why’d that line come about? Because we’d rather have less now than wait for more later. People are impatient, which is great for you. Offer less, but offer it now.

3. Buy “as is”
Owners want to sell. But what if the house is filled with problems? The electrical needs some work, the carpet is stained, the windows in the back bedroom are cracked from baseball games. Say you’ll take the house as is! (With a lower price, of course) Be sure to have a home inspector evaluate the severity of the home’s faults if you’re not well experienced. The last thing a seller wants to think about is making all those minor repairs.