The Success Secrets of GOOFY....

Have I lost my marbles? Well, maybe.... I hope not, but let's see.... :)

You may have heard of that best-selling book, "The Leadership Secrets of Atilla the Hun." Well, I thought I should write MY version based on one of MY heroes -- Goofy!

(Yes, I do mean THAT Goofy.... :)

What do Goofy and ALL successful people have in common?

They have ALL made mistakes!

When I start some endeavour, usually the first thing I do is read as widely as possible as I can in the topic. I love to read biographies (and autobiographies are even better). I've done this in my readings in physics, stock-market investing, and now with business.... Now I have a wide range of knowledge of successful people's experiences to draw upon....

To show how EVERYBODY makes mistakes.... let me talk about physics -- then stock market investing -- then business. (If you're not interested in one section, just go to the next....)

Mistakes in Physics

Einstein -- a genius? Yes, he was.... A mistake maker? Yes, he made mistakes too!

Einstein is best known for his theories of "special relativity" and "general relativity." General relativity is still the best theory of gravity we have -- 82 years after Einstein proposed it.

You may know about the expansion of the universe (and how it is still expanding).... But did you know that this was *predicted* by Einstein's original theory of General Relativity? But Einstein didn't like this result -- so he changed his theory and introduced a "cosmological constant" into his equations, to stop his equations from predicting the expansion of the universe.

A few years later, the expansion of the universe was discovered. Einstein later called his cosmological constant "my greatest mistake"!

However, many physicists would say that Einstein made an even greater mistake -- but this wasn't clear until a few decades after Einstein died....

Einstein didn't like the theory of quantum mechanics. It predicted some very strange behavior.... In particular, it predicted what Einstein called "spooky action at a distance." That is, if you have two particles (like two photons -- the "particles" of light), even if the particles were a long distance away from each other, the behavior of one particle could "instantaneously" affect the behavior of the other particle. He thought this was absurd -- and many people agreed with him.

However, in 1964 another physicist named John Bell showed how to formulate this idea into an experimental test that could be done. He figured out how you could test "spooky action at a distance." His idea is known as "Bell's Theorem."

Then, an experiment was finally done in 1982 by Alain Aspect and coworkers, to test "Bell's Theorem." Guess what? They found that Einstein was wrong -- Quantum mechanics, and "spooky action at a distance" was right!

Many more experimental tests have been done since then, all showing the same thing, that "spooky action at a distance" does occur".

Einstein was a genius -- no doubt about it. But even he made mistakes.

(If you'd like to read more about "Bell's Theorem" and other faster-than-light issues, "Faster Than Light : Superluminal Loopholes in Physics" by Nick Herbert is a fun read by a someone who knows what he's talking about.... Nick Herbert's book "Quantum Reality: Beyond the New Physics" is also excellent....)

Mistakes in Stock Market Investing

I believe the ULTIMATE stock market investor is Warren Buffett (with perhaps Peter Lynch running a close second).... :)

Warren Buffett has perhaps the best long-term investing record ever reported....

But did he make any mistakes?

YOU BET!

True, he never lost his shirt.... He did lose money though, and to Buffett that is kind of like a "disaster" given his usual record....

I'm speaking in particular of his purchase of stocks in USAir.... Here's what Warren Buffett himself had to say about it....

"Top honors go to a mistake I made five years ago that fully ripened in 1994: Our $358 million purchase of USAir preferred stock, on which the dividend was suspended in September. In the 1990 Annual Report I correctly described this deal as an "unforced error," meaning that I was neither pushed into the investment nor misled by anyone when making it. Rather, this was a case of sloppy analysis, a lapse that may have been caused by the fact that we were buying a senior security or by hubris. Whatever the reason, the mistake was large."

(From Warren Buffett's 1994 Letter to Shareholders, quoted under "fair use")....

By 1994, Warren Buffett had lost 75% of what he had invested in USAir....

When the British entrepreneur Richard Branson was asked how to become a millionaire, he said:
"There's really nothing to it. Start as a billionaire and then buy an airline."


Now, make no mistake -- Warren Buffett is without doubt one of history's greatest investors. Yet even the greatest can make mistakes....

(Some say that Warren Buffett made a mistake by missing out on the Internet stock "bubble".... I don't believe so, and you can read what Buffett himself said indirectly about this in the following article.... www.fortune.com/fortune/1999/11/22/buf.html .... also read the comment by Jeff Bezos....)

Warren Buffett's letters to share-holders can be found at www.berkshirehathaway.com ....

Mistakes in Business

Here, I have a lot of examples to choose from.... But I'll just talk about one (don't want to make this too long!)....

Richard Branson is possibly the UK's best-known entrepreneur. He started Virgin Records (though he doesn't own it any more), and runs Virgin Airlines (in its many regional forms).... along with around 200 other companies.

You can read his story in his autobiography, Losing My Virginity: How I've Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way....

But it took him around 10 years before he really started to become a BIG success. For those 10 years, he just kept breaking even....

But since this is about MISTAKES, I'll talk about something else....

You may have heard of George Orwell's book "1984". Well, Richard Branson was the financier behind the British movie version of "1984" (made in 1984).

I haven't seen the film, but I know some people love it. However, financially it was a flop. A MISTAKE. From a financial point of view.

There are MANY mistakes to choose from in business experiences.... If you want to read about mistakes, I HIGHLY recommend Joe Sugarman's book, "Success Forces." (It's out of print, but you can find it by looking through www.abe.com and www.bibliofind.com .)

The first half of the book is Joe Sugarman's autobiography (up until around 1980). In it, he gives the details of failure after failure after failure.... before he hit his BIG successes.

Read it (along with Richard Branson's book) to read the REAL stories behind some of the big success stories today.... You'll see that their SUCCESS only came after hard work and a string of FAILURES.... But they didn't give up!

Back to Goofy....

Oh.... back to the success secrets of Goofy.

I said that what Goofy and other successful people have in common is that they all MAKE MISTAKES. Making mistakes is PART of the road to success! It's how we learn.

And that's where successful people are DIFFERENT from Goofy. They LEARN from their mistakes, whereas Goofy seems to make them over and over and over (and I wouldn't have it any other way!).

There's nothing wrong with MAKING mistakes, but be sure to LEARN from them!

Best wishes,

Dien