Here he is, the man of the moment, Michael Pollack. This young man “took a chance”  and is now a rising star on the internet and shortly will be a rising star in the music industry.  I just can’t stop smiling after watching this performance of his. I’m inspired most of all by his chutzpah.

Did you hear the audience gasp when he asked Joel if he could accompany him? Why did they gasp? They gasped because people just don’t do this. They just don’t ASK for what they want! Somewhere along the line, we’ve all been shamed to not  play as BIG as we are here to play.  I’d bet my bottom dollar that somewhere else in that audience was a young lady who wanted to sing with Mr. Billy Joel. And there also was another piano player in that audience who thought to themselves  “If only I could play for Joel, just once!”  But then they listened instead to their inner critic, “Oh Joel will say no and everyone will laugh at you for even asking. Besides who do you think you are?!” And that voice stopped them dead in their tracks.  Then along comes Michael, a kid who instead heard within himself, “What do I have to lose?! I’m going to take a chance!”

Now I have to tell you this little story of how I  ”took a chance” and wound up having my own moment with Mr. Joel.  My mom had already entered a nursing home due to poor health and was failing fast.  She had always been a big fan of Billy Joel and Elton John. It was October of 2002, and they had just announced a joint concert at Nassau Coliseum. I had tried valiantly to get her tickets to this show but it was sold out in minutes.

A week or two earlier there had been a New Yorker cover story about the “ubiquitous Harvey Weinstein.”  It was all about how Mr. Weinstein was at all the “hot” events; from musical concerts to art show previews or movie debuts.  It said he was so well connected that he was ubiquitous at every and all popular social events.  After fruitlessly hanging up the phone after my umpteenth attempt to buy my mom these tickets, I frustratingly thought to myself, “The only person that’s  getting to see that concert is Harvey Weinstein!” But then I had a second thought; which was, “I wonder if Harvey Weinstein would/could help me get these tickets!”  Was it a long shot? Yes, but what did I have to lose? He’d either help me or he wouldn’t. All I knew was that I wanted my mom to get to this show, as it probably would be the last concert she would ever see.

So I wrote his office a letter. I told them how hard I had tried to buy the tickets and how quickly they sold out. I told them how my mom was ill, and in a nursing home, and not in the best of shape. I told them how much she loved Billy Joel & Elton John. And I asked straight up if there was any way they might  help me buy these hard to get tickets?

I’ll never forget what happened next. I got a call from Brian (whose last name I still remember!) in Harvey’s office! Brian verified that what I had written in my letter was really true, then shortly afterward I received a call from Billy Joel’s office telling me that my mother and I were going to his show compliments of Billy himself and we would have front row seats!

The night of the show my mother and I headed toward the coliseum, after having her nurse show me in great detail how to load the extra oxygen tank just in case her first tank failed.  Because of that we got there late, so we were escorted in via back stage. It just so happened that we came out of the elevator just as Joel was walking out of his dressing room. There we were were face to face with Billy Joel himself. He took one look at my mom in her wheelchair and began to chat her up. He actually took the wheel chair from me and started to push her toward the entrance, making her laugh along the way. At some point his people prodded him on and said, “Billy, you’ve got to get out there NOW.”  Off he went ahead of us saying with a grin, to my mom as he walked away; “I gotta go do this show! I’ll see you out there Mary.”  And so he did. And yes that was the last concert my mother ever did see. She died three months later.

Now wouldn’t you say taking that chance at asking Mr. Weinstein’s to help me get tickets was worth it? I’m sure you will agree that it was.

Now it’s your turn. What is it that you want to ask for but hesitate that it’s too big, too much, crazy? What questions are you afraid to ask for fear of how you might look to others? What request/s are you holding in because you’re afraid that people will laugh at you for wanting it? I urge you to say the hell with all that.  Go and take your chance.

~

Thank you Josh Brown for posting this video clip. 

“Take a chance.” -Billy Joel is a post from: The Wall Street Coach

It’s about a 15 min walk from the L train in Williamsburg to my place in Greenpoint. It’s a nice walk that goes right past McCarren Park but with this bone chilling weather I took a cab the other night as I could not bear it for one more minute as I made my way home.

I was particularly tired so I politely asked my cabbie if he would please shut off the interior cab light, which for some reason was blindingly bright.  He responded dead seriously, “Well okay, but as much as I’m ashamed to admit this, I am afraid of the dark.”  So instead he dimmed it lower but didn’t shut it off completely.  He continued, “I don’t know why I’m telling you this, but I get the sense that you are an open-minded person.”  I responded, “Are you really?! Wow. That must be very challenging to be afraid of the dark. And to work the night shift no less. Yet I have to say, I’m very impressed by the courage you have in being able to admit to that out loud! I think we’re all afraid of something, but most of us are not willing to admit it to others, never mind to ourselves. You might be afraid of the dark, but you are one brave man.”

This was man in his late 30′s, soft spoken, kind and well read. Yet he is afraid of the dark.  This isn’t the first time that I’ve had a stranger admit to me something unusual. You’d be amazed at the things people share with me, even when they don’t know what I do for a living. Strangers on planes or on buses and other transient places will often open up to me and tell me their fears, saying when they do they don’t know why they are telling me so. How come they do? Perhaps it’s because I’m able to receive even the most unusual truths without judgement.  I try very much to live in that field that Rumi speaks about,

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” 

Perhaps it’s because I too have my fears. And through my own coaching I’ve learned how to be with them even when they refuse to leave.  The reason I am writing this post not to mention why I am a coach, is that I want everyone to know that it’s okay to be afraid. There is nothing wrong with you because you feel fear, or dare I say it, down right terror at times! This world can be very scary. The volatility of the economy, random shootings, unemployment, being lonely, not being heard, not being loved, not knowing as much as the other guy, enduring the inhumanity of some, and yes even being in the dark.  All good reasons to be afraid.  But real danger comes when we deny our fears what ever they may be, and refuse to face them.  Learning how to look them straight in the eye might be scary but not as scary as what happens to them and us when we keep them locked in the basement of our soul.

That cab driver now has a better shot at working his way out of being afraid of the dark because he was brave enough to admit to it aloud.  My not laughing or judging him created space for him to do the same for himself.  When we create a new relationship to our own fears and our humanity we get closer to slaying those internal dragons.

This encounter for me was a powerful reminder of how people everywhere are, as Plato said, “…fighting a hard battle.”

So let us all be more kind to others and especially to ourselves and in turn we will have more energy to face the fears that keep us from living the life we are here to live.

Afraid of the Dark is a post from: The Wall Street Coach

I just had an amazing opportunity! I heard through the grape vine that the one and only Jim Rogers was in town to promote his new book Street Smarts: Adventures on the Road and In the Markets. I was lucky enough to interview him quite a while back via Skype for my book Wall Street 50, but meeting someone over Skype and meeting them in person is of course quite different!

So I thought, wow, I wonder if he’d agree to meet with me while in town, so I emailed him and he said yes! But I had to move fast as he said he had a talk tonight and would be leaving tomorrow. So I moved all my appointments for today around quickly and hightailed it over to him in midtown!

He was in the middle of doing a lot of interviews which he allowed me to listen in on and we had some time in between to talk. I can’t even tell you how amazing it was for me to meet this man in person! He is an absolute delight. Wise, funny and of course charming!  His book, Investment Biker was the first book I ever read on the topic of finance and he certainly is the reason I found myself drawn to Wall Street in the first place! So getting to spend time with him was really quite an event for me, I’m still beaming from the opportunity.

There were so many jewels of wisdom that I heard him say during these interviews (keep in mind that I only heard his side of the interview as they were radio interviews via phone) but he did give me permission to share some what I heard him say with you:

Here’s Jim:

“What’s happening now is unique in the history of the world, when we have Japan saying they are going to print unlimited amounts of money and then the US Fed / Bernanke responding by also printing vasts amounts of money, that makes me worried.”

“So why do I own the dollar, well because people run to the dollar when they are nervous. How long will I own it for? I don’t know yet.”

“I’m short bonds.”

“What I think people should buy is agriculture.”

“US Debt has increased in the last five years more than it has in the last 200 years.”

“I’d like to take an ax, no make that a chainsaw, to the US budget.”

“I’m shorting Apple.”

 ”Invest in what you know, as you will be paying closer attention to it and how it’s doing better than any broker will.”  

It’s this last piece of wisdom that to me is the golden goose. It is what again and again seems to stand out and what clearly Rogers has always done. And on one level it seems like it should be common sense.  Even when I read Jack Schwager’s book Market Wizards, I remember noticing that that is the common denominator among all the masters in that book including Rogers.  Invest in what you know! But common sense is just not that common. Or perhaps its better to call what this is “Street Smarts” – the title of Jim Roger’s new book – and boy oh boy Jim Rogers sure has that, and even better his new book teaches us how to have it too.

Meeting Street Smart Jim Rogers is a post from: The Wall Street Coach

The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live. -AYN RAND

This past February 2nd would have been Ayn Rand’s108th birthday.  (Ayn rhymes with “nine.”) I found this out at my first Junto meeting this past Thursday night. A meeting I highly recommend if you like Rand’s work even a little bit.  This picture is of the cake they had there for Ayn’s birthday. At the end folks get up and speak about how they first discovered Rand and the impact she and her work has had on them. I spoke about how much Atlas Shrugged meant to me and how it was my anchor over 18 years ago during one of the hardest periods in my life. I told the audience how I paid the library for a new copy as I couldn’t bear to part with theirs after reading it. I still have that mass market paperback and sometimes I will hold it in my hands to embolden me when facing a challenge.

I can’t say enough about how much Rand’s work influences me.  Was she perfect? Of course not. Are there areas of her philosophy that I disagree with, yes.  I am not an Ayn Rand fundamentalist by any stretch, however the essence of her teachings:  honoring the individual, seeing oneself and living as a heroic being, striving for one’s own happiness, seeing achievement as a noble act, and honoring reason are pretty powerful truths to be influenced by and to build a life and a business upon.

In fact her philosophy is a large part of why I am writing my book Wall Street 50. I got tired of the media making it sound like capitalism was evil. Or that anyone who had money or was motivated by making money was a monster.

I also found my self scratching my head on many occasions when I read the  disparaging things about her due to her earlier influence on Alan Greenspan. People have pointed to his failings as though his alliance with her philosophy is what caused the mess we face. Yet after all I’ve read about him and his actions, I can’t imagine Rand would ever have been an advocate of the way he behaved. She surely would never have gone for the bailing out of failing banks, nor would she have been an advocate of unprecedented low interest rates over and again, nor have anything but distaste over the incestuousness between government agencies and the revolving door some leaders travel in before and after Washington with the very companies they were sworn-in to hold accountable.

Ayn Rand first arrived in my life in high school when I read Anthem because it was the shortest book choice at the time but it didn’t take long before her vivid storytelling swept me up beyond the school’s assignment. Even though the underlining philosophy went over my head at the time, the seed was planted via the empathy I felt for her hero who we learn does not know or comprehend the word “I.”

It took a number of years before I read the rest of her work and I did so after watching The Fountainhead, the movie version of Rand’s book by the same name.  I will never forget the awe I felt when I heard the main character Howard Roark, an architect, say in response to Ellsworth Toohey, the manipulating art critic who had maneuvered the loss of his contract what Roark thought of him. Roark’s response: ”I don’t think of you.”  I can still remember having my breath taken away at that response.

To live one’s life with that much confidence and disregard for those who would keep you down is the ultimate of knowing who one is, and something I have strived for ever since.

I think we are here to live our life. And if we are living our life for someone other than ourselves, I don’t think one can ever really be happy.  This doesn’t mean that you won’t do for others, but in whatever we may do building it up upon what it is that gives us  joy is what I believe we have been given life for.

Having grown up in a home where the word “I” was discouraged and the royal “we” was advocated, I feel particularly indebted to the philosophy of Ayn Rand. Rand’s stories gave me the courage to step out of the totalitarian family system I grew up in.

So I wish a very Happy Birthday to you dear Ayn.  Thank you for your artistry, courage and vision. Thank you for providing me with the ladder that helped me climb up and out of my own personal hell. You changed my life and I’m beyond grateful.

Happy Birthday Ayn Rand is a post from: The Wall Street Coach

Maybe you’ve already seen this PBS Series as it is from 2003.   It’s based on Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw’s book by the same name.  It’s a six hour, 3 disc set that Wired said this about: “Commanding Heights does for capitalism what Ken Burns’ films did for jazz and the civil war.” And boy oh boy does it ever.

It’s subtitle is The Battle for the World Economy, but instead I wish it were something like, “We are One Economy Now.”  

It is simply mesmerizing. I learned so much. I better understand what “globalization” really means and certainly have a new appreciation for Milton Freidman and Friedrich von Hayek and the Free Market System.  I’m also shocked that John Maynard Keynes philosophy continues to be seen as an option.

It’s extraordinarily well done, the interviews, the history, the explanation of big heady topics all put forth in a very straight forward style.  And it doesn’t feel like political propaganda either.  It made me take a second look at  President Ronald Reagan (whom I have not been much of a fan of) and appreciate PM Margaret Thatcher’s stamina even more so. It also made me realize that there are a lot of factors that we can’t always see behind the scenes that world leaders face. Having never formally studied economics, after watching this series, I seriously regret it. If only I had known it could be this fascinating.

It’s an all star cast; President Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney, former USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev, former Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin, former PM Margaret Thatcher and many more.  My favorite  of all of those interviewed is a man who should be a household name by now for all the good he has done for our world: Professor Jeffrey Sachs. I definitely now have an intellectual crush on this man! Pure genius and humility. How often do you see those two qualities in someone?  I’ve already emailed him to see if he will let me interview him for my book, but alas no response thus far! (Can anyone help me get Prof Sachs to say yes to my interview request?)

And we meet the protesters along the way. In spite of the empathy and understanding that I have for the protesting groups that we meet in the film and their valid concerns the bottom line is that globalization is like an ocean tide that is coming on shore and there is no way to hold it back. We are all interconnected now economically, so we best begin to work within that paradigm and design what we want it to look like, not just for some of us but for everyone.

President Clinton says this regarding the protesters  “They care about legitimate problems, but they have the wrong diagnosis. Their diagnosis is that the global economy has produced all the misery that they’re protesting against. On the other hand, you cannot have a global economy without a global social response, without a global environmental response, without a global security response. It’s just… it’s unrealistic to think you can. And that’s basically the next big challenge, is making this interdependent world of ours, on balance, far more positive than negative. And the extent to which we succeed in doing that will determine whether the 21st century is either marred in its first 50 years by terrorism of all kinds across national borders, and more racial and religious and ethnic strife, and tribal strife in Africa, or whether it becomes the most peaceful and prosperous and interesting time the world’s ever known.” (Emphasis mine.)

And this from Jeffrey Sachs, “The world is more unequal than at any time in world history. There’s a basic reason for that, which is that 200 years ago everybody was poor. A relatively small part of the world achieved what the economists call a modern economic growth. Those countries represent only about one-sixth of humanity, and five-sixths of humanity is what we call the developing world. It’s the vast majority of the world. The gap can be 100-1, maybe a gap of $30,000 per person and $300 per person. And that’s absolutely astounding to be on the same planet and to have that extreme variation in material well being.”

It is simply astounding, and yet it is what’s so. So if we want to change this gap then first things first. Let’s do our best at understanding what inter-connectivity really does looks like  and dive deep into understanding what has worked and what hasn’t and why. I think this film does this better than anything I’ve come across so far.

To purchase it on Amazon click here: Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy

The transcripts and overview is here: PBS Link. 

Hat tip to Graham Lawlor of Ultralight Startups for introducing me to this film.

Commanding Heights is a post from: The Wall Street Coach