Return On Investment Quotes

Used in combination with genomics, AI could help pharma companies to develop new drugs for rare diseases. The rarer a disease is, the smaller the market is and so the less likely it is to have been addressed. Big pharma is hesitant to take on the high development costs for new drugs if there’s no sign of a return on investment. Biological processes are complex, and that means that they lead to multidimensional data that human beings struggle to wrap their heads around. The good news is that AI is the perfect tool to spot patterns in this kind of data.

To reap a return in ten years, plant trees. To reap a return in 100, cultivate the people.

There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

An investment operation is one which, upon thorough analysis, promises safety of principal and an adequate return. Operations not meeting these requirements are speculative.

Habits are like financial capital – forming one today is an investment that will automatically give out returns for years to come.

Love the quick profit, the annual raise, vacation with pay. Want more of everything ready-made. Be afraid to know your neighbors and to die. And you will have a window in your head. Not even your future will be a mystery any more. Your mind will be punched in a card and shut away in a little drawer. When they want you to buy something they will call you. When they want you to die for profit they will let you know. So, friends, every day do something that won’t compute. Love the Lord. Love the world. Work for nothing. Take all that you have and be poor. Love someone who does not deserve it. Denounce the government and embrace the flag. Hope to live in that free republic for which it stands. Give your approval to all you cannot understand. Praise ignorance, for what man has not encountered he has not destroyed. Ask the questions that have no answers. Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias. Say that your main crop is the forest that you did not plant, that you will not live to harvest. Say that the leaves are harvested when they have rotted into the mold. Call that profit. Prophesy such returns. Put your faith in the two inches of humus that will build under the trees every thousand years. Listen to carrion — put your ear close, and hear the faint chattering of the songs that are to come. Expect the end of the world. Laugh. Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts. So long as women do not go cheap for power, please women more than men. Ask yourself: Will this satisfy a woman satisfied to bear a child? Will this disturb the sleep of a woman near to giving birth? Go with your love to the fields. Lie down in the shade. Rest your head in her lap. Swear allegiance to what is nighest your thoughts. As soon as the generals and the politicos can predict the motions of your mind, lose it. Leave it as a sign to mark the false trail, the way you didn’t go. Be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction. Practice resurrection.

The capitalist and consumerist ethics are two sides of the same coin, a merger of two commandments. The supreme commandment of the rich is ‘Invest!’ The supreme commandment of the rest of us is ‘Buy!’ The capitalist–consumerist ethic is revolutionary in another respect. Most previous ethical systems presented people with a pretty tough deal. They were promised paradise, but only if they cultivated compassion and tolerance, overcame craving and anger, and restrained their selfish interests. This was too tough for most. The history of ethics is a sad tale of wonderful ideals that nobody can live up to. Most Christians did not imitate Christ, most Buddhists failed to follow Buddha, and most Confucians would have caused Confucius a temper tantrum. In contrast, most people today successfully live up to the capitalist–consumerist ideal. The new ethic promises paradise on condition that the rich remain greedy and spend their time making more money and that the masses give free reign to their cravings and passions and buy more and more. This is the first religion in history whose followers actually do what they are asked to do. How though do we know that we'll really get paradise in return? We've seen it on television.

If you'd like to gain a better understanding of Return On Investment, get into gardening.

So this is the goal: To make money by increasing net profit, while simultaneously increasing return on investment, and simultaneously increasing cash flow.

Don't look for the needle in the haystack. Just buy the haystack!

Return on Investment should be holistic.

First, only invest in companies that have the potential to return the value of the entire fund.

We have to practice defensive investing, since many of the outcomes are likely to go against us. It’s more important to ensure survival under negative outcomes than it is to guarantee maximum returns under favorable ones.

For love I have invested my life with no return

The greatest enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan.” Stick to the good plan. Traditional

in the evolution of a society, continued investment in complexity as a problem-solving strategy yields a declining marginal return.

in the future, the defining metric for organizations won’t be ROI (Return on Investment), but ROL (Return on Learning).

education sold as an investment good that has no economic return for most buyers is, quite simply, a fraud.

... don't invest your feelings in things. Don't invest them in people. Don't be good, considerate, honest, generous, and compassionate to others because you are investing in them as people, meaning because you expect something in return. If you do, you will be, and most likely you already have been, brought to deep disappointment. Be good to people because you are investing in goodness, consideration, honesty, generosity, and compassion, because those qualities have never failed to be rewarding.

I don't have the answer to that, other than to observe that friendship has to flow both ways. Both of you have to be willing to invest in the friendship in order to maintain it.

When there are multiple solutions to a problem, choose the simplest one.

The value of a business is a function of how well the financial capital and the intellectual capital are managed by the human capital. You'd better get the human capital part right.

Reading is the best return on investment. You have to live your entire life in order to know one life. But with reading you can know 1000s of people’s lives for almost no cost. What a great return!

The key to investing is not assessing how much an industry is going to affect society, or how much it will grow, but rather determining the competitive advantage of any given company and, above all, the durability of that advantage.4 —Warren Buffett

An investment operation is one which, upon thorough analysis promises safety of principal and an adequate return. Operations not meeting these requirements are speculative.

Doing something for the mere joy of it—for one's self or others—is quite possibly one of the best returns on an investment of time that a person can receive.

The grim irony of investing, then, is that we investors as a group not only don't get what we pay for, we get precisely what we don't pay for. So if we pay for nothing, we get everything.

What’s the return on investment of college? What’s the return on investment of having children, spending time with friends, listening to music, reading a book? The things that are most worth doing are worth doing for their own sake. Anyone who tells you that the sole purpose of education is the acquisition of negotiable skills is attempting to reduce you to a productive employee at work, a gullible consumer in the market, and a docile subject of the state. What’s at stake, when we ask what college is for, is nothing less than our ability to remain fully human.

I try to be a good investment to God. All the good things he’s given me, I aim to multiply and return to him and his purposes a maximum ROI. I’m just a tree in his fruit garden aiming to produce good fruit.

At Mayflower-Plymouth we aim to employ capital and maximize ROI for central banks, sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, corporations, foundations and endowments, and individual investors around the world.

Prudent investing is about ensuring the safety of principal and reasonable returns.

Education is not an expense, but it is the capital ready to be invested. The return depends on the wisdom you gained.

When all things are considered holistically, the best expected return on investment varies from client to client.

Here's something else, something important: Love is not transactional. It is not a bank account, you don't always get what you put in. Sometimes you put in so much and get very little return on your investment, at least that you can see right away.

Yes.” Reese nods. “I mean, they go through everything I go through as a trans woman. Divorce is a transition story. Of course, not all divorced women go through it. I’m talking about the ones who felt their divorce as a fall, or as a total reframing of their lives. The ones who have seen how the narratives given to them since girlhood have failed them, and who know there is nothing to replace it all. But who still have to move forward without investing in new illusions or turning bitter—all with no plan to guide them. That’s as close to a trans woman as you can get. Divorced women are the only people who know anything like what I know. And, since I don’t really have trans elders, divorced women are the only ones I think have anything to teach me, or who I care to teach in return.

Buying funds based purely on their past performance is one of the stupidest things an investor can do.

The problem with having a fairy-tale relationship story was how much other people were invested in keeping the fairy tale alive. It wasn’t just our story—it was everyone’s.

Every person is a project, God's project, I want to be the most profitable one.

The two greatest enemies of the equity fund investor are expenses and emotions.

There have been numerous studies suggesting that one of the most effective ways to reduce poverty is through the education of women and girls. It’s one of the best returns on investment in the developing world, but sixty-six million girls worldwide are not enrolled in school. Educated women spread what they’ve learned to their families and villages and children. Educated girls get pregnant later, have fewer children, and have a far lower infant mortality rate. Educated women and girls have greater power to determine their own fate; earn more; live a rich, fulfilled life; and give back to their communities at a greater level.

Love is not a businessman who wants to see a return on his investments. And imagination needs only a few nails on which to hang its veil. Whether they are of gold, tin, or covered with rust makes no difference to it. Wherever it gets caught, it is caught. Thornbush or rosebush, as soon as the veil of moonlight and mother-of-pearl has fallen on it, either becomes a fairy tale out of A Thousand and One Nights

The first step is to give up the illusion that the primary purpose of modern medical research is to improve Americans’ health most effectively and efficiently. In our opinion, the primary purpose of commercially funded clinical research is to maximize financial return on investment, not health.” —John Abramson, M.D., Harvard Medical School I wrote this book to help Americans

No one wants to pursue anything creative anymore, because that’s too risky. They may not get the kind of return on the financial investment they’ve made in their education that they think they should.

Home is the first point of investment. The first and most important thing to invest in is your home. Make sure your house is in good condition physically and energetically, make sure you’re paid up on the household bills, make sure you’re stocked up on supplies and food, make sure your home is furnished to your style and comfort, make sure you’ve got nice plants to clean the air, nice art, nice crystals and essential oils, nice things that promote your wellbeing…. Make sure your garden is growing nutritious plants. Invest in your household and your family because they have the greatest Return on Investment. And your investment in your home will be a magnet for many other different kinds of investments.

Most people suffer in love because of attachment. We are interested in getting a net return on our investment. –Unplugging the Patriarchy

...I'm not the casual sex type." "Yeah, I gathered that. Why? Bored?" "I wish." Josh gave a short laugh and shook his head. "No, sex with me is complicated.

Putting the principal at risk for the hope of an extravagant return — that’s not wise investing, that’s gambling.

Pay It Forward: A random act of kindness towards another person with no expectation of return on investment. (my own definition)

Vespers In your extended absence, you permit me use of earth, anticipating some return on investment. I must report failure in my assignment, principally regarding the tomato plants. I think I should not be encouraged to grow tomatoes. Or, if I am, you should withhold the heavy rains, the cold nights that come so often here, while other regions get twelve weeks of summer. All this belongs to you: on the other hand, I planted the seeds, I watched the first shoots like wings tearing the soil, and it was my heart broken by the blight, the black spot so quickly multiplying in the rows. I doubt you have a heart, in our understanding of that term. You who do not discriminate between the dead and the living, who are, in consequence, immune to foreshadowing, you may not know how much terror we bear, the spotted leaf, the red leaves of the maple falling even in August, in early darkness: I am responsible for these vines.

Being the highly trained investment mogul that I am, I could certainly find places to put that money where it would earn more. Or would it? Remember, personal finance is personal. I have come to realize that Sharon’s peace of mind bought with the oversized emergency fund is a great return on investment. Guys, this can be a wonderful gift to your wife. An Emergency Fund Can

Ultimately, incentive structures and systems drive ESG investing, which can be disingenuous. Structurally, public market investors continue to focus on the incentives which maximize their financial returns, even while taking certain ESG inputs into account in their portfolio allocations. Only by regulating and incentivizing the actual outcomes might investors alter their investment strategies towards new rewards based on ESG outputs.

That is why success and fruitfulness depend as much upon focusing on the “who” you are as much as the “what” of the work you do. Invest in your character, and it will give you the returns that you are looking for by only investing in the work itself. You can’t do the latter without the former.

Foreign Cash is not the answers to our problems, my friend. Africa needs the hearts and minds of its sons and daughters to nurture it. You were our pride, Mukoma Bryon. When you did not return, a whole village lost its investment. Africa is all that we have. If we do not build it, no one else will.

I know the days ahead of me are fewer than those I have left behind. There is no escaping this most basic fact of accounting. A certain amount of time is allotted to each of us. How much, only God knows. We cannot invest it. We cannot hope for a return of any kind. All we can do is spend it, second by second, decade by decade, until it runs out. Still, even if our days on this Earth are limited, we can always, through toil and industry, hope to extend our influence into the future. And so it is that, having lived my life with an eye set on posterity in the hopes of improving the lives of later generations, I enter these remaining years of mine not with nostalgia for all that is gone but with a sense of excitement for what is yet to come.

It takes time, patience, productivity and persistence to 'pop the oil'; just keep digging. Worthy investments take time to show positive returns.

The investments we make in ourselves will always deliver the most profitable returns.

Owning the stock market over the long term is a winner's game, but attempting to beat the market is a loser's game.

At Mayflower-Plymouth, we focus on Total Returns and a long-term view.

The true investor . . . will do better if he forgets about the stock market and pays attention to his dividend returns and to the operating results of his companies.

Be willing for purpose; it pays huge returns on investment. And along the journey, those who dis your willing sacrifice(s) will ponder their own foolishness.

Investing in friendship and love always brings great returns. — Edie Melson —

Not money, but love, is life’s treasure. Spend it, invest it; the returns will be without measure.

It's good to have a special price to pay for the future and it will pay you in return, in the exact way you would wish to be paid.

Investors need to understand not only the magic of compounding long-term returns, but the tyranny of compounding costs; costs that ultimately overwhelm that magic.

Knowing the right detail gets you a great return. Ignore them and you just crash & burn.

At Mayflower-Plymouth, we prioritize time in the market and not timing the market. We prioritize total return and not quick short term gains.

The art experience and the theater experience, gyms for the soul, generate heat and exercise the imagination, empathy, creative thinking, patience and tolerance. A gym for the soul is a place where personal investment is required and the return is real.

I sometimes find myself wondering why some people remain in your life while others drift away. I don’t have the answer to that, other than to observe that friendship has to flow both ways. Both of you have to be willing to invest in the friendship in order to maintain it. I

The earlier you put your capital to work, the more likely you are to have a larger portfolio value.

Be good to people because you are investing in goodness, consideration, honesty, generosity, and compassion, because those qualities have never failed to be rewarding. Treat people righteously because you are investing in the righteousness of yourself, and, trust me, you will get something in return. You will be happy. You will be content. You will be truly free.

Business people love to hate their current software and love to love the next software they haven't yet bought. Salespeople count on this. But tomorrow's tools will become the current tools.

I understand how not even a priest can resist you when you want him. I can understand how love is something horrible and complex and hurting and something that still happens even if it shouldn't, and can't, and how one can want to be somebody else's world. I get it. And it fucking hurts.

We don't practise generosity in order to secure gratitude, nor do we invest our gifts in the hope of a favourable return. Rather, it is nature that inclines us towards generosity. Just so, we don't seek friendship with an expectation of gain, but regard the feeling of love as its own reward.

Two-thirds of professionally managed funds are regularly outperformed by a broad capitalization-weighted index fund with equivalent risk, and those that do appear to produce excess returns in one period are not likely to do so in the next. The record of professionals does not suggest that sufficient predictability exists in the stock market to produce exploitable arbitrage opportunities.

Some people will each start investing more of their salary on ‘their’ house and spending less of it on ‘their’ car or cars only when they start being able to take ‘their’ house to work, funerals, weddings, etc.

More than 2,000 books are dedicated to how Warren Buffett built his fortune. Many of them are wonderful. But few pay enough attention to the simplest fact: Buffett’s fortune isn’t due to just being a good investor, but being a good investor since he was literally a child. As I write this Warren Buffett’s net worth is $84.5 billion. Of that, $84.2 billion was accumulated after his 50th birthday. $81.5 billion came after he qualified for Social Security, in his mid-60s. Warren Buffett is a phenomenal investor. But you miss a key point if you attach all of his success to investing acumen. The real key to his success is that he’s been a phenomenal investor for three quarters of a century. Had he started investing in his 30s and retired in his 60s, few people would have ever heard of him. Consider a little thought experiment. Buffett began serious investing when he was 10 years old. By the time he was 30 he had a net worth of $1 million, or $9.3 million adjusted for inflation.16 What if he was a more normal person, spending his teens and 20s exploring the world and finding his passion, and by age 30 his net worth was, say, $25,000? And let’s say he still went on to earn the extraordinary annual investment returns he’s been able to generate (22% annually), but quit investing and retired at age 60 to play golf and spend time with his grandkids. What would a rough estimate of his net worth be today? Not $84.5 billion. $11.9 million. 99.9% less than his actual net worth. Effectively all of Warren Buffett’s financial success can be tied to the financial base he built in his pubescent years and the longevity he maintained in his geriatric years. His skill is investing, but his secret is time. That’s how compounding works. Think of this another way. Buffett is the richest investor of all time. But he’s not actually the greatest—at least not when measured by average annual returns.

At Mayflower-Plymouth, we analyze global markets, analyze businesses and employ a range of strategies that emulate natural ecosystems to deliver holistic and industry-consistent investment returns. Our approach emphasizes preservation, steady compounding growth and steady returns for our capital partners and clients.

Basically, CEOs have five essential choices for deploying capital—investing in existing operations, acquiring other businesses, issuing dividends, paying down debt, or repurchasing stock—and three alternatives for raising it—tapping internal cash flow, issuing debt, or raising equity. Think of these options collectively as a tool kit. Over the long term, returns for shareholders will be determined largely by the decisions a CEO makes in choosing which tools to use (and which to avoid) among these various options. Stated simply, two companies with identical operating results and different approaches to allocating capital will derive two very different long-term outcomes for shareholders.

In totalitarian regimes—communism, fascism, religious fundamentalism—popular support is a given. You can start wars, you can prolong them, you can put anyone in uniform for any length of time without ever having to worry about the slightest political backlash. In a democracy, the polar opposite is true. Public support must be husbanded as a finite national resource. It must be spent wisely, sparingly, and with the greatest return on your investment. America is especially sensitive to war weariness, and nothing brings on a backlash like the perception of defeat. I say “perception” because America is a very all-or-nothing society. We like the big win, the touchdown, the knockout in the first round. We like to know, and for everyone else to know, that our victory wasn’t only uncontested, it was positively devastating.

Think long and hard whether you have reached that mature stage of selflessness for this one you think you love so much. The love you enjoy will be the best thing that ever happened to you, but it will cost you your independence.... The responsibility of marriage and family demands time, and when we cheat on that, we rob ourselves of the investment returns.

Your time, energy and resources will get used no matter how well you focus them. By choosing to focus properly, you get the highest return for the efforts you invest in your life. Most people spend too much time on what is urgent and not enough time on what is important. Productivity is not just about getting things done, it’s about getting the right things done.

the great British economist John Maynard Keynes, written 70 years ago: “It is dangerous . . . to apply to the future inductive arguments based on past experience, unless one can distinguish the broad reasons why past experience was what it was.

Risk is the ultimate differentiator. I have always had a deep and complex relationship with it. I am not a reckless person, but taking risks is really the only way to consistently achieve above-average returns—in life as well as in investments. My father proved that when he left Poland. I am probably more comfortable with risk than most people. That’s because I do as much as I can to understand it. To me, risk-taking rests on the ability to see all the variables and then identify the ones that will make or break you.

Slavery is not a horror safely confined to the past; it continues to exist throughout the world, even in developed countries like France and the United States. Across the world slaves work and sweat and build and suffer. Slaves in Pakistan may have made the shoes you are wearing and the carpet you stand on. Slaves in the Caribbean may have put sugar in your kitchen and toys in the hands of your children. In India they may have sewn the shirt on your back and polished the ring on your finger. They are paid nothing. Slaves touch your life indirectly as well. They made the bricks for the factory that made the TV you watch. In Brazil slaves made the charcoal that tempered the steel that made the springs in your car and the blade on your lawnmower. Slaves grew the rice that fed the woman that wove the lovely cloth you've put up as curtains. Your investment portfolio and your mutual fund pension own stock in companies using slave labor in the developing world. Slaves keep your costs low and returns on your investments high.

I wouldn’t let you upset me,” she mumbles. “Good!” I laugh and smile at her. I see the tiniest smile in return. “I’m just trying to say…we’re not so different. And, maybe, because of that, you can understand how I feel. I had my own dreams, too, Rinni. I had a shop. I wanted to help people with my talents when it came to herbs and potions. The whole town depended on me and invested in me so I could do it. That profession—herbalist—was my painting. But the world wanted me to be something different. “So, no, I’m not held hostage in the literal sense. But it can feel that way, especially because the life I planned for myself is out of reach.

The structure of the corporation is a telling case in point—and it is no coincidence that the first major joint-stock corporations in the world were the English and Dutch East India companies, ones that pursued that very same combination of exploration, conquest, and extraction as did the conquistadors. It is a structure designed to eliminate all moral imperatives but profit. The executives who make decisions can argue—and regularly do—that, if it were their own money, of course they would not fire lifelong employees a week before retirement, or dump carcinogenic waste next to schools. Yet they are morally bound to ignore such considerations, because they are mere employees whose only responsibility is to provide the maximum return on investment

The overthrow of the communist regime is clearly its objective, but how far is it willing to go? While the Fraternity asks for donations to help refugees, these funds may possibly be going toward a Movement of armed refugees in Thailand. Rumors are that the Fraternity has invested in certain businesses whose profits it reaps. The most disappointing aspect of the Fraternity is the false hope it peddles to our countrymen that we can one day take our country back through force. We would be better off if we pursued reconciliation peacefully, in the hopes that one day we in exile can return to help rebuild our country.

A humorous treatment of the rigid uniformitarian view came from Mark Twain. Although the shortening of the Mississippi River he referred to was the result of engineering projects eliminating many of the bends in the river, it is a thought-provoking spoof: The Mississippi between Cairo and New Orleans was twelve hundred and fifteen miles long one hundred and seventy-six years ago. . . . Its length is only nine hundred and seventy-three miles at present. Now, if I wanted to be one of those ponderous scientific people, and “let on” to prove what had occurred in the remote past by what had occurred in a given time in the recent past . . . what an opportunity is here! Geology never had such a chance, nor such exact data to argue from! . . . In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oolitic Silurian Period, just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upwards of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod. And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long. . . . There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

In the 1880s Chicago was experiencing explosive growth that propelled land values to levels no one could have imagined, especially within the downtown “Loop,” named for the turn-around loops of streetcar lines. As land values rose, landowners sought ways of improving the return on their investments. The sky beckoned. The most fundamental obstacle to height was man’s capacity to walk stairs, especially after the kinds of meals men ate in the nineteenth century, but this obstacle had been removed by the advent of the elevator

In the various phases of my life...I became friends with some extraordinary people. In each of those phases, I became particularly close to a small circle of individuals, and I simply assumed that I would remain close with them forever. Because we were hanging out then, my thinking went, we'd hang out forever. But friendships, I've learned aren't like that. Things change; people change. Friends mature and move and get married and have children.... Over time, if you're lucky, a few--or maybe just a couple--remain from each of the various phases of your life. ...I sometimes find myself wondering why some people remain in your life while others drift away. I don't have an answer to that, other than to observe that friendship has to flow both ways. Both of you have to be willing to invest in the friends in order to maintain it. [Trevor Benson]

The strangulation of Germany’s economy hastened the final plunge of the mark. On the occupation of the Ruhr in January 1923, it fell to 18,000 to the dollar; by July 1 it had dropped to 160,000; by August 1 to a million. By November, when Hitler thought his hour had struck, it took four billion marks to buy a dollar, and thereafter the figures became trillions. German currency had become utterly worthless. Purchasing power of salaries and wages was reduced to zero. The life savings of the middle classes and the working classes were wiped out. But something even more important was destroyed: the faith of the people in the economic structure of German society. What good were the standards and practices of such a society, which encouraged savings and investment and solemnly promised a safe return from them and then defaulted? Was this not a fraud upon the people?

Bear with me a moment, now. Chicken-sexing. Since hens have a far greater commercial value than males, cocks, roosters, it is apparently vital to determine the sex of a newly hatched chick. In order to know whether to expend capital on raising it or not, you see. A cock is nearly worthless, apparently, on the open market. The sex characteristics of newly hatched chicks, however, are entirely internal, and it is impossible with the naked eye to tell whether a given chick is a hen or a cock. This is what I have been told, at any rate. A professional chicken-sexer, however, can nevertheless tell. The sex. He can go through a brood of freshly hatched chicks, examining each one entirely by eye, and tell the poultry farmer which chicks to keep and which are cocks. The cocks are to be allowed to perish. “Hen, hen, cock, cock, hen,” and so on and so forth. This is apparently in Australia. The profession. And they are nearly always right. Correct. The fowl determined to be hens do in fact grow up to be hens and return the poultry farmer’s investment. What the chicken-sexer cannot do, however, is explain how he knows. The sex. It’s apparently often a patrilineal profession, handed down from father to son. Australia, New Zealand. Have him hold up a new-hatched chick, a young cock shall we say, and ask him how he can tell that it is a cock, and the professional chicken-sexer will apparently shrug his shoulders and say “Looks like a cock to me.” Doubtless adding “mate,” much the way you or I would add “my friend” or “sir.

1. Project What is the project? Why is it unique? Why is the business needed? Why will customers love your product? 2. Partners Who are you? Who are the partners? What are your educational backgrounds? How much experience do you all have? How are you and your partners qualified to make the project a success? 3. Financing What is the total cost of the project? How much debt and how much equity is there? Are partners investing their own money? What is the investor’s return and reward for their risk? What are the tax consequences? Who is your CFO or accounting firm? Who is responsible for investor communications? What is the investor’s exit? 4. Management Who is running your company? What is their experience? What is their track record? Have they ever failed? How does their experience relate to your industry? Do you believe this is the strongest management team you can assemble? Can you pitch them with confidence?

the split-strike conversion strategy. Option traders often referred to it as a “collar” or “bull spread.” Basically, it involved buying a basket of stocks, in Madoff’s case 30 to 35 blue-chip stocks that correlated very closely to the Standard & Poor’s (S&P) 100-stock index, and then protecting the stocks with put options. By bracketing an investment with puts and calls, you limit your potential profit if the market rises sharply; but in return you’ve protected yourself against devastating losses should the market drop. The calls created a ceiling on his gains when the market went up; the puts provided a floor to cut his losses when the market went down.

What is famously called "the midlife crisis" is precisely such an erosion of programs and projections. We expect that by investing sincere energy in a career, a relationship, a set of roles, that they will return the investment in manifold, satisfying ways. We feverishly renew the projections, up the ante, and anxiously repress the insurgence of doubt once more. We do not realize that a projection has occurred, for it is an unconscious mechanism of our energeic unconscious. Only after it has painfully dissolved may we begin to recognize that we placed such a large agenda on such a frangible place, that we asked too much of the beloved, of others, of institutions, and perhaps of life itself.

Second, it is also quite clear that, all things considered, this very high level of public debt served the interests of the lenders and their descendants quite well, at least when compared with what would have happened if the British monarchy had financed its expenditures by making them pay taxes. From the standpoint of people with the means to lend to the government, it is obviously far more advantageous to lend to the state and receive interest on the loan for decades than to pay taxes without compensation. Furthermore, the fact that the government’s deficits increased the overall demand for private wealth inevitably increased the return on that wealth, thereby serving the interests of those whose prosperity depended on the return on their investment in government bonds.

The hell of it is that my son, my only child, has to turn out to be,” he added with a return of his old spirit, black eyes flashing, “the one man in Washington, D.C. who hates my guts!” “You weren’t too fond of him, either, if you recall,” she pointed out. He glared at her. “He’s hot-tempered and arrogant and stubborn!” “Look who he gets it from,” she said with a grin. He unlinked his hands as he considered that. “Those can be desirable traits,” he agreed with a faint smile. “Anyway, it’s nice to know I won’t die childless,” he said after a minute. He lifted his eyes to her face. “Leta can’t know any of this. When and if the time comes, I’ll tell her.” “Who’s going to tell him?” she ventured. “You?” he suggested. “In your dreams,” she said with a sweet smile. He stuffed his hands back into his pockets. “We’ll cross that bridge when the river comes over it. You’ll be careful, do you hear me? I’ve invested a lot of time and energy into hijacking you for my museum. Don’t take the slightest risk. If you think you’ve been discovered, get out and take Leta with you.” “She’s afraid to fly,” she pointed out. “She won’t get in an airplane unless it’s an emergency.” “Then I’ll come out and stuff her into a car and drive her to the airport and put her on a plane,” he said firmly. She pursed her lips. He was very like Tate. “I guess you would, at that.

That animal is not your possession. He doesn't exist for your amusement. He has needs, instincts. Urges." The way he said that word, in that deep, earthy growl, had chills rippling over her skin. She swallowed hard. "Urges?" "Yes. Urges." He sauntered toward her- as much as a man could saunter in knee-deep water. "But what could a lady like you know about those?" "Oh, I understand urges. Right now, I have the powerful urge to do this." She shoved him hard in the chest, hoping to send him flailing backward into the river. He didn't budge. Not a teeter. Not a totter. Not even a blink. Penny would not surrender. She took a step in reverse and then tried again, adding the weight of her body to the effort. This time, he was ready for her. He caught her wrists in his hands, stopping her before she could even make contact. "Now, now, Your Ladyship. This is most unbecoming behavior." "I know that." She clenched her hands into fists. "You are so maddening. You have a way of provoking me, unlike anyone I've ever known. It's as though I become a different person when I'm around you, and I'm not certain I like her." He pulled her to him. "I like her." Penny expected he would shortly ruin that statement. I like her- smoldering pause- potential to increase the return on my property investment. Not this time. Instead, he lowered his head until his mouth brushed hers. Teased her lips apart, until his tongue brushed hers. And then they tumbled together against the riverbank, and his everything brushed hers.

Speculators, meanwhile, have seized control of the global economy and the levers of political power. They have weakened and emasculated governments to serve their lust for profit. They have turned the press into courtiers, corrupted the courts, and hollowed out public institutions, including universities. They peddle spurious ideologies—neoliberal economics and globalization—to justify their rapacious looting and greed. They create grotesque financial mechanisms, from usurious interest rates on loans to legalized accounting fraud, to plunge citizens into crippling forms of debt peonage. And they have been stealing staggering sums of public funds, such as the $65 billion of mortgage-backed securities and bonds, many of them toxic, that have been unloaded each month on the Federal Reserve in return for cash.21 They feed like parasites off of the state and the resources of the planet. Speculators at megabanks and investment firms such as Goldman Sachs are not, in a strict sense, capitalists. They do not make money from the means of production. Rather, they ignore or rewrite the law—ostensibly put in place to protect the weak from the powerful—to steal from everyone, including their own shareholders. They produce nothing. They make nothing. They only manipulate money. They are no different from the detested speculators who were hanged in the seventeenth century, when speculation was a capital offense. The obscenity of their wealth is matched by their utter lack of concern for the growing numbers of the destitute. In early 2014, the world’s 200 richest people made $13.9 billion, in one day, according to Bloomberg’s billionaires index.22 This hoarding of money by the elites, according to the ruling economic model, is supposed to make us all better off, but in fact the opposite happens when wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few individuals and corporations, as economist Thomas Piketty documents in his book Capital in the Twenty-First Century.23 The rest of us have little or no influence over how we are governed, and our wages stagnate or decline. Underemployment and unemployment become chronic. Social services, from welfare to Social Security, are slashed in the name of austerity. Government, in the hands of speculators, is a protection racket for corporations and a small group of oligarchs. And the longer we play by their rules the more impoverished and oppressed we become. Yet, like

Obviously, in those situations, we lose the sale. But we’re not trying to maximize each and every transaction. Instead, we’re trying to build a lifelong relationship with each customer, one phone call at a time. A lot of people may think it’s strange that an Internet company is so focused on the telephone, when only about 5 percent of our sales happen through the telephone. In fact, most of our phone calls don’t even result in sales. But what we’ve found is that on average, every customer contacts us at least once sometime during his or her lifetime, and we just need to make sure that we use that opportunity to create a lasting memory. The majority of phone calls don’t result in an immediate order. Sometimes a customer may be calling because it’s her first time returning an item, and she just wants a little help stepping through the process. Other times, a customer may call because there’s a wedding coming up this weekend and he wants a little fashion advice. And sometimes, we get customers who call simply because they’re a little lonely and want someone to talk to. I’m reminded of a time when I was in Santa Monica, California, a few years ago at a Skechers sales conference. After a long night of bar-hopping, a small group of us headed up to someone’s hotel room to order some food. My friend from Skechers tried to order a pepperoni pizza from the room-service menu, but was disappointed to learn that the hotel we were staying at did not deliver hot food after 11:00 PM. We had missed the deadline by several hours. In our inebriated state, a few of us cajoled her into calling Zappos to try to order a pizza. She took us up on our dare, turned on the speakerphone, and explained to the (very) patient Zappos rep that she was staying in a Santa Monica hotel and really craving a pepperoni pizza, that room service was no longer delivering hot food, and that she wanted to know if there was anything Zappos could do to help. The Zappos rep was initially a bit confused by the request, but she quickly recovered and put us on hold. She returned two minutes later, listing the five closest places in the Santa Monica area that were still open and delivering pizzas at that time. Now, truth be told, I was a little hesitant to include this story because I don’t actually want everyone who reads this book to start calling Zappos and ordering pizza. But I just think it’s a fun story to illustrate the power of not having scripts in your call center and empowering your employees to do what’s right for your brand, no matter how unusual or bizarre the situation. As for my friend from Skechers? After that phone call, she’s now a customer for life. Top 10 Ways to Instill Customer Service into Your Company   1. Make customer service a priority for the whole company, not just a department. A customer service attitude needs to come from the top.   2. Make WOW a verb that is part of your company’s everyday vocabulary.   3. Empower and trust your customer service reps. Trust that they want to provide great service… because they actually do. Escalations to a supervisor should be rare.   4. Realize that it’s okay to fire customers who are insatiable or abuse your employees.   5. Don’t measure call times, don’t force employees to upsell, and don’t use scripts.   6. Don’t hide your 1-800 number. It’s a message not just to your customers, but to your employees as well.   7. View each call as an investment in building a customer service brand, not as an expense you’re seeking to minimize.   8. Have the entire company celebrate great service. Tell stories of WOW experiences to everyone in the company.   9. Find and hire people who are already passionate about customer service. 10. Give great service to everyone: customers, employees, and vendors.