Adventure Capitalist - Jim Rogers

Hi,

I'm back with another audiobook review. Just finished listening to the audiobook today. It's a short review, so just bear with me on this. The title talk about Jim Rogers who recently advocating commodities as a very viable investment to have. He and Paige start on a journey that took 3 years to complete beginning on 1999. That in return create a Guinness World Record for traveling around the world. He explains why he select Mercedes Benz as a vehicle of choice around the world. He explained that in the poorest/corrupted of nations, you'll definitely found a Mercedes dealer around. With that, he can easily fix the vehicle in the harshest conditions in the world.

He started his journey in Iceland and started to travelled to Europe and to Central Asia and crossing to Russia before embarking to Africa. From there he ventured to Middle East then to India and South East Asia. Then he goes to Australia/New Zealand before heading to Southern America and finally back to his hometown.

The book is a very good introduction about the various country around the world. Since this book was written before The World is Flat, it's a very good read then to understand about how each country work

Some interesting fact
1. Country in Ethiopia that heavily relied on aid from other nations simply because the grain and clothing had gotten there easily and people tends relied on it. This in return cause systematic failure to the farmer and tailor of the country. There's no way for the farmer or the tailor to sell their goods cheaper than those that they get for FREE ! Be very aware of the aid that you've donated for it may ruined a country !
2. When country from former colonist print their money easily without any monetary control (i.e. peg obligations with their previous colonist), this will set their country into a condition where money will become invaluable and inflation will be high
3. There's 2 country in Africa that was called Congo which the author was tricked upon when processed his visa. One being Republic of the Congo and the other one Democratic Republic of the Congo (commonly called Zaire)
4. In Mongolia, country can become very high tech when they can leapfrog the technology for Telecommunications for example (From copper telephone line to fibre optics) without the burden of previous technology

Jim do advocate the potential commodity boom in this book when he compared the last 100 years history. He highlighted that in going to stock market, the return in certain period during 1966-1976 for example is very dismal. One have to pick the right company (He cited the railroad, radio and car industry as an example) when lots of company had gone under.

He also commented about the previous US Governor - Alan Greenspan on his act for Long Term Capital Management and reducing interest rate during the 2001 - 02 that may cause housing bubble. True enough, in America the headlines of subprime mortgage had come up frequently over the past few months.

All in all, the title is easy to understand and fun to listen. I would give a 7.5 out of 10. The title is a little bit dated (Published in 2004). It would be very relevant if it was read by 2004/5 to understand about globalization.

Buffetology - Mary Buffett & David Clark

Another Warren Buffett book ? You must be wondering, what's so interesting about this book. The book was written by Warren's daughter in-law which was divorced after 12 years of marriage. She was able to watch and learn from the world's most famous investor. Sort of like insider view of how Warren works !

Secret of Warren's success
1. Invest in companies whose future earnings he can reasonably predict
2. That kind of company generally has excellent business economics in his favor. This allows the business to make lots of money that it is free to spend either by buying new businesses or by improving the profitability of the great business that generated all the cash to begin with
3. High Return of shareholders equity, strong earnings, presence of consumer monopoly and management that functions with shareholder economic in mind
4. The price you pay will determine the return you can expect on your investment
5. Choose the kind of business he would like to be in and then lets the price of the security and expected rate of return
6. Investing at the right price in certain businesses with exceptional economics will produce over long term an annual compounding rate of return of 15% or better
7. Acquire other people's money to manage so that he could profit from his investing expertise

Warren's winning way !
1. What to buy - know what you want
2. At what price - wait for it to be real cheap

9 Questions to help determine if a business is an excellent one
1. Does the business have an identifiable consumer monopoly ?
2. Are the earnings of the company strong and having upward trend ?
3. Is the company conservatively financed ?
4. Does the business consistently earn a high rate of return on equity ?
5. Does the business get to retain its earnings ?
6. How much does the business have to spend on maintaining current operations (capex) ?
7. Is company free to reinvest retained earnings in new business opportunities, expansion of operations, share purchases ? How good a job does the management do this ?
8. Is company free to adjust prices to inflation ?
9. Will the value added by retained earnings increase the market value of the company ?

Where to look for excellent businesses ?
1. Business that make products that wear out fast or used up quickly, that have brand name appeal, merchants have to carry or use to stay in business
2. Communications businesses that provide a repetitive service manufacturers must use to persuade the public to buy their products
3. Business that provide repetitive consumer services that people and business are consistently in need of

Other interesting topic
1. The magic of compounding
2. Margin of safety - Value of the business having 25% or better projected return from Net Asset.
3. Mediocre business - identify commodity vs excellent business similar to Blue Ocean Strategy
4. Ways to find company to invest in
5. When a downtown in a company can be investment oppurtunity
6. Myth of diversifications versus the concentrated portfolio
7. When should you sell your investments

Mathematical tests
1. Test for predictability of earning
2. Initial rate of return
3. Earning Per Share growth (EPSG) rate

Famous quote on portfolio
1. On concentrated portfolio approach - A person would make fewer bad investment decisions if he were limited to making just ten in his lifetime. Just ten ! You would put a little work into making those ten decisions, don't you think ?

In conclusion, there's no rocket science to Warren's way of investing. One have to be patient to wait and look for oppurtunity available in the market. With the current bearish market condition, the time is ripe to enter the market gradually and find the right equity. It's a good title to start with for investing. Come to think of it, now everything is making sense now that most company in Bursa Malaysia that have high ROE i.e. Public Bank, BAT etc commanding a high price.

The title gets a 7.5 out of 10 for investing type of book. The title explains a lot of basics fundamental on the way of investing the Buffett way.

iWoz - Steve Wozniak

Hi,

This is a review of the other Steve who co-founded the Apple computer company. This book should appeal to those Technology buff, Electronics engineer etc. He wrote this book to clear out the doubt on the issue if he's actually leaving Apple (He's actually not left Apple) and whether he start the CL9 (Cloud 9 was a universal remote control company) because of his dissatisfaction towards Apple (He's not). He's not actually kicked out from Uni (He quit himself).

In addition, we hear the life story of Stevefrom childhood till now. His passions on electronics were really unsurpassed by anyone I've read so far. I can see his interest pick it up from his father who work in a Top Secret Government project. He learn from his father the value of honesty from early on. He thought that the reason for his electronic prowess was due to his foundation that he learnt from his father and electronics magazine/datasheet. Ocassionally, he share his joy of pulling prank, creating dial a joke etc show his lighter side of him. He even try to call the Pope during the 70's and pretend as Henry Kissinger ! His initial work with HP on calculator division is worth mentioning. During the 70's, HP was a company that value engineer more than the marketing folks. Something the other company are not doing at that time. That makes Steve.

Interesting trivia
1. He created the automatic blue box (tone generator to make free call) and meet Captain Crunch along the way. He did sold some of those in the Uni days.
2. He single handedly designed the Personal Computer (Apple I and II) contrary to popular belief that he did this together with Steve Jobs.
3. He started up Apple with Steve Jobs (45%) and Mike Markulla (10%)
4. He had lost USD12 million twice while organizing concert of Progressive Country music in the 80's
5. Steve Jobs is actually few years younger than Steve and not classmates.
6. He suffered mild amnesia while crashing down from the plane.
7. He designed a lot of computer on some paper sketch instead of building it

Lessons learn from the book
1. One can learn good value from your parents - Honesty and other good value
2. Building a strong foundation on things is very important as your pursue your passion (For this case, Steve can achieve that level of breakthrough when he was young and building stuff for electronics fair)
3. Pursue your passion - Don't waver, do factual study just like a scientist. Don't jump to conclusion just yet. Sometimes only time will prove if you're right/wrong on the things that you pursue.
4. Do what you do no matter what it takes for your dream ! - Drive overcomes it all ! You have to trust your intuition on something that you think might want pursuing !

In conclusion, not much people in this world had achieve so much in his early life and yet can let go during his peak of his career in Technology and instead pursuing teaching for the 5th Grade and philanthropy. Not sure if that's cause by plane crash during his 80's though but he's truly one of the main character besides Steve Jobs and Bill Gates in the story of Personal Computer revolution...

P/S : As there's 2 Steve's appearing in this review, I've used Steve to refer to as Steve Wozniak instead of Steve Jobs.

Giving - How each of us can change the world - Bill Clinton

Hi,

Just finished listening to this audiobook this afternoon. The book was narrated by the author Bill himself. I would say that makes the book much more convincing. Philanthropy has since picking up a lot of hype since we saw Warren Buffet and Bill Gates had committed large sum of their fortune to the betterment of the world. This title sums it all on the various initiative and foundation mainly in the States in providing all sorts of helps from AIDS and cancer movement to eradicating poverty etc. There's a lot mention about the Bill Clinton foundation which initiate various cause around the country. The book hope to give awareness on how/what/when/why/who/where can one give give contributions.

There's ample story of outstanding individual of various organization having adversity/challenge and in return giving much more in helping the society as a whole.

There's various topic on the giving from monetary, material to the intangible (time, service etc) There's special mention of social entrepeneurship (Grameen bank/telephone, microcredit etc) and how environmental conservation and initiative can be turn to a viable business. As we are aware, oil price increase had changed a lot of variables in the world that makes us to change the way we think about resource utilization and consumption.

One interesting note on this book is the various religion highlights and view of giving. There's view from Jewish, Muslim, Christian and even Buddhist. I like that a lot since it create understanding on how various religion view on giving and creating awareness for everyone to know.

All in all, I can only give this book a 5 out of 10. Initial chapters on various foundation and organization may sound alien to you since it's more familiar in the States. In addition it sorts of like a directory of information of various charitable foundation/organization to me. Not much mention of the activities in Asia except on the Tsunami that happen during 2005. This book may only be appealing to certain crowd or an interesting read to those who are working in the charitable, voluntarily organization as a motivational material/read. From there, you can emulate some of the strategies mentioned in the book and in return make yourself a better person.

Finding Work That Matters - Mark Albion

Hi,

It's time for another review. What can I say. This is THE audiobook for anyone out there who wants to make a career move ! Coincidentally, I use part of this book material in presenting my 9th speech of the CC series.

The book interests me because of the extensive use of stories, surveys and supporting info in presenting his idea across. One of the convincing story is about himself where he actually make his own career move in pursuing the work that matters him the most. His step by step explanation on how to steer from your current situation to achieve your dream work is realistic and achievable. He really able to convince me that I can achieve my passion without feeling lost on translation. As I have my own interest in financial planning, I hope I can slowly work towards that...

Step by step in finding work that matters
1. Who you are, where are you now - Accessing the current scenario
2. What you want to leave your legacy behind
3. Find out more by listening to it....

Some memorable tips
1. Don't become too good at things that you don't like to do
2. Don't teach the pig how to sing - it waste your time and you annoyed the pig
3. Paul/Peter principle - Paul - Continue to provide what we need to succeed. Peter - You'll be promoted to the level where you'll be incompetent.
4. Communicate with your love one when switching your career
5. Inject more of your interest related skill to your current work environment

Some memorable quotes
1. Pursuing passion later after you've enough money is like saving sex for the old age - Warren Buffet

All in all, this audiobook deserve 7.5 out of 10. It's one of my highly recommended title for those who want to change their career and pursuing your passion !

P/S : For those who missed my earlier post, CC = competent communicator

Freakanomics - Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

Hi All,

During my early university days, I took Economics course in 1998. The course was boring... boooh.... All those supply/demand curve, GDP and GNP etc didn't make me wanna learn economics any further. That was until I found this audiobook ! Freakanomics. I was wondering why it's not called Economics instead. This is by far the most interesting Economics book I've ever read. This had spur me interest to find out more about macro/micro economics. I have seen listen to few economics title i.e. The Undercover Economist (Someday I may do a review on that), Alan Greenspan - The Age of Turbulence. If only the book was introduced 10 years earlier, I could have put change my idea to become an economist but not an IT analyst :) Anyway, past is past, if I'm really interested, I could have been motivated anyway irregardless of this book anyway.

My point of view on what I learn from the book
1. Economics of Incentives - The whole book revolves around this idea. One had to properly weight in the perks/benefits especially some could cause more harm than good. People are willing to do something that give them the most incentives even it's illegal/cheating etc. This idea is very important, it's imperative that you get this right. You may heard this quote before, "if you pay peanut, you get monkey". Not forgetting

2. Bizarre facts and trivia - Especially the decreasing crime rate in US caused by the abortion law introduced in the 70's, cheating by school teacher in Chicago Public School and sumo wrestler, drug dealer staying with their parents, list of person first names that are considered intellectual and wealthy etc. Good way to impress someone in the party. In addition, the reference of crime rate is in contradiction of the idea in "The Tipping Point - Malcolm Gladwell" that mention the New York crime rate was due to broken window theory but not due to abortion law.

3. People will take initiative to do something if they get incentive to be better. Examples cited certain people change their name to a more favorable one then they have at the moment have statically shown to have better living standards. This is a comparison of people names in the States but not here in Malaysia. So, if you want to know if you name is favorable, successful etc. Someone need to do a survey/research on this.

If you want to explore further, there's Freakanomics official website and Blog to find out further on the current scenario

Plus point (+)
1. Economics trivia and bizarre fact about economics that may be useful to impress your boss/colleagues etc
2. Excellent use of story to explain the key idea in the book


Minus point (-)
1. The book could have outline some solution/steps in how to leverage on those situation

All in all, this book is a very good title to listened too. I give it a 8.5 out of 10.

P.S. : In case anyone wondering why I can churned out new title review everyday and think that I'm not working but instead listened to audiobook everyday. You'll be surprised. Sorry to disappoint you but some of the title here was based on the review that I've written after finished listening to the audiobook. For this one, I finished this title on July 2006.

Good to Great - Jim Collins

Hi,

It's another audiobook review again. This time this book is one of my all time favourite audiobook/book that I've read for the past 5 years surpassing The world is Flat by Thomas Friedman (I'll share with you my review of this book in the future). Not too say that other books was no good but it completely changed my perspective about business. Jim Collins was able to share his idea across based on a research done on company listed in stock exchange. Business as we all know have few phases i.e. boom, plateau, bust same as business cycle. One thing interesting is why certain company succeed while other company failed ? I wondered if there's a way that we can increase those success rate ? I suggest those who like to find out read this book. This book is a sequel of Build to Last although this book should be the prequel of that.

Here it goes
The book outlines around 11 companies that have a period of mediocre performance in the 10 years period and period of consistent growth for 15 years (Outperforming the market and peers by at least a factor of 3) based on a research done by the author and his research teams. You'll be surprised that company like Coca-cola, Disney, GE, Intel and Microsoft alike were not in the list. Companies that make it to the list are Abbot Laboratories, Kimberly-Clark, Philip Morris, Pitney Bowes, Philip Morris, Fannie Mae, Wells Fargo, Walgreens, Kroger, Nucor, Gillette and Circuit City.

The author discuss on how company that are boring, not having charismatic leader manage and yet amidst all the challenge ahead. What interest me on what being mentioned by the author was few concepts that I'll mention below

1. Level 5 leaders - CEO who combined with personal humility and professional will rather than outgoing

2. Great bus driver story on how to assemble the right team
i. Getting the right person on the bus
ii. Getting the wrong person off the bus
iii. Rearrange the right person to sit on the right place
iv. Only then you start to plan where you should go

3. Stockdale Paradox - Based on the story of the POW in Vietnam. The concept of confronting the brutal facts of your current reality on the oncoming challenges, never give up even though it's gonna take a long time to succeed and finally retain faith that you will prevail in the end regardless of the difficulties !

4. Hedgehog concept - The parable of hedgehog and fox is a good story to being. Understanding of what you can be the best at. Sometimes pursuing many ends at the same time without one overall concept or unifying vision may cause you to be out of focus. Think about Freud, Darwin, Einstein and Alam Smith. Do you see the commonality ? 3 intersecting circles of Hedgehog concept (See attached graphics)
i. What you can be the best in the world at (and, equally important, what you cannot be the best in the world at). This discerning standard goes far beyond core competence. Just because you possess a core competence doesn't necessarily mean you can be the best in the world at it. Conversely, what you can be the best at might not even be something in which you are currently engaged.
ii. What drives your economic engine. All the good-to-great companies attained piercing insight into how to most effectively generate sustained and robust cash flow and profitability. In particular, they discovered the single denominator—profit per x—that had the greatest impact on their economics. (It would be cash flow per x in the social sector.)
iii. What you are deeply passionate about. The good-to-great companies focused on those activities that ignited their passion. The idea here is not to stimulate passion but to discover what makes you passionate.

5. Flywheel concept - Change to greatness requires momentum build upon your previous effort of moving the flywheel (habit/skill/vision/goals) little by little.

Many more.....


Other important info
- A successful well ran company can excel even on a declining industry
- Concept of using stop doing list. Company will tend to be suffocate due to indigestion on the all things that you to put your hands on rather than be hungry on focusing just the few areas

If you would like to find out more, go to GoodtoGreat website. There's ample of resource from podcast, tools, article etc that able to lead your company from Good to Great !

Overall, I give a 9.5 out of 10 for this book

The Last Lecture - Randy Pausch

Hi,

Intro
Today, I would like share to with you all another very interesting audiobook. A real life inspiring story about a Professor who is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer (A very lethal cancer that caused 95% fatality among sufferers). Dr Randy was given the oppurtunity to present his last lecture in front of a packed lecture hall last September 2007. The lecture is a customary to Carnegie-Mellon U for those who'll be retiring. Instead his last, was actually bought forward due to his illness. You can download the video available courtesy of youtube

How I came across this ?
I came across this while searching thru Amazon top 100 best selling books. The title of the book is called The Last Lecture The title intrigue me as why it's called this and it's not an academic book.

Review

He outlines the following
1. My childhood dreams
2. Enabling the dreams of others
3. Lessons learned : how you can achieve your dreams or enable the dreams of others

He talks about brick walls
1. Let us show our dedication
2. Let us know how badly we want things. That does reminds me of my university days dream when I couldn't be a Computer Science student. I did graduate as a Master of Computer Science in UPM after a lecturer challenge me that I should pursue this if you complete my degree. Now I'm still working on IT and enjoying it :)

Important character traits that you should have
1. How to get people to help you - Karma works in wonderful way
2. Be earnest,
3. Tell the truth,
4. Apologise - i) What I did was wrong ii) I feel badly that I hurt you iii) How do I make this better
5. Focus on others not yourself

His Important Advice
1. Be good at something; it makes you valuable
2. Work hard
3. Find the best in everybody; no matter how you have to wait for them to show it.
4. Luck = preparation meet oppurtunity

His other advise
1. Get the feedback loop and listen to it
2. Show Gratitude
3. Don't complain just work harder
4. Sports teach us to have teamwork, preserverence, sportsmanship, value of hard work, dealing with adversity
5. For succession it is finding someone better than you to handover


People that you can learn from
The roles of parents, mentors, friends, colleague and students
Bosses - respecting them and question it
People that care for you will do the following - If they see you doing things badly and nobody is bothering to tell you that is a bad place to be. Critic still telling you because they care.

Time management advice
1. delegate
2. take a time out
3. speed up telephone conversation - i.e. call people at 11.55am, stand up while in conversation


In Essence
1. Have FUN !!! It's like telling the fish the importance of water and be a Tigger
2. Never lose the child like wonder
3. Never give up......

Important tips for parents
Let your children do their own painting at the wall. Don't stop them of their childhood dream of doing something great and wonderful.

Memorable quotes
"Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you want"
"We can't change the card we're dealt, just how we play in our hand"
"The truth will set you free"
"Loyalty is a 2 way street"

That was it ! Stay tune for more good audiobook review in the time to come

My new day - The Day That Turns Your Life Around review

Hi,

I decided to start back my blog again. Wow ! Time do fly and I've open by blog since last December. I'm back !. Back with a vengeance. This time it's really for the passion and sense (investing on dollar and cents). OK. Let's start with my last Saturday activity. I've attended a preview of the Profit Blogging workshop. I picked up few tips and tricks.

Some elements of good blogs
1. Regular update ( 2- 6 times a week)
2. Relevant content especially about your passion (Don't try to talk about any possible news out there, we all know oil price had become RM2.70/litre)
3. Around 150 - 300 words (This is subjective, but still K.I.S.S)

Now back to business. My passion in listening audiobook had never abated. After finishing this audiobook, I'm compelled to share this with all my family, friends and colleague. In short, I found my reason !

Review
Therefore, I would like to recommend you a audiobook that I've just finished listened. It's by one of the famous speaker, Jim Rohn. You can get this in bittorrent, Nightangle Conant, Amazon etc. The title is called The Day That Turns Your Life Around

Jim Rohn story is quite touching. At the age of 25, he met his mentor Earl Schoaff and work under a network marketing business. At the age of 31, he become a millionaire

In this audio programme, it's a compilation of his famous speeches and interviews on topics that are interesting to anyone. Some of the topics include
1. Goal setting
2. Time management
3. How to life a worthwhile life
4. Four emotional states that can change your life etc
5. Importantance of mentor

You can pick up a lot of quick tips and insight to success and achievement. I still able to pick up a lot of new things despite my numerous listening of his vastly available title.

What I like about the programme (+)
1. Programme is structured
2. It makes you motivated and becoming action oriented
3. Some of his best speeches in 1 programme. Good for those who don't have the time to listen to all his programme

What the programme could done better (-)
1. Narrative example of success stories to reinforce the idea mentioned
2. Material recording is quite dated, should include relevant topics i.e. globalization, emergence China and India

This is it ! My 1st posting on audiobook review to everyone in the Internet. Surely it won't be the last ! Do leave some comments if you have anything that you would like to share and if you have other stuff for me to read/listened. Contact me as well in case you need to borrow this from me.

P/S : In case anyone wondering what's K.I.S.S, it's meant Keep It Simple Stupid !