Some Things About Business

Step 1

Believe and trust in your ability to overcome whatever problems come your way. That's the key to getting through any crisis.

Step 2

Seek counsel from someone you trust, preferably someone in an industry like yours who has built his or her business from the ground up. Chances are, he or she will have encountered and overcome the exact problem you face.

Step 3

Evaluate the situation and determine if it will have a negative impact on your cash flow or cash reserves. If you find that you will be short of cash to meet payroll and other financial obligations, look for ways to reduce your everyday expenses. If your cash is seriously affected, consider temporary layoffs of nonessential employees.

Step 4

Keep a positive, upbeat attitude. If you look more worried than usual, your employees might get nervous and start looking for employment elsewhere.

Step 5

Advise vendors of your situation if it is certain you will be late with payments. Before you contact them, however, be prepared to discuss a payment plan. When asked when payment can be expected, your answer shouldn't be "I don't know."

Step 6

Review your current business plan. Change your plan as necessary to help reverse the setback and to prevent the same situation in the future.

Step 7

Relax and unwind. Take a drive, go see a movie or steal away for a short nap. Getting your mind off your worries, if only for an hour, will allow you to come back to the problem and attack it with a clear head.

At the beginning, there was Croslite.

The stuff came out of a factory in Colorado, and was like a miracle: soft, antibacterial, and breathable. But nobody could decide what to do with it, until one day somebody came up with the idea to make a pair of sailing shoes out of it for his buddy’s trip. The buddy ended up loving it, and Crocs, the runaway six-ounce shoe success, was born.

The shoes caught on like wildfire. All of a sudden, molded Croslite with a heel strap and big, breathable holes became a fashion statement. The world hadn’t seen footwear this bizarre, or this popular, since the Jellies sensation in the 1980s.

Jellies didn’t last forever; they were a trend. So are Crocs. The people behind the shoe know that full well, so they’ve engineering a massive expansion campaign, putting their Croslite into everything from stilettos to toilet seats.

So far, the Crocs product has essentially sold itself, and expansion has seemed inevitable for Croslite. Last year’s revenues were in excess of $800 million. This year, they’ve stated 10%-15% growth. Not bad for an ugly shoe. What’s their secret?

They nailed down their supply chain. Crocs purchased the supplier of the resin for the shoes and the factories that make Crocs. They also signed contracts with key retailers.

Instead of focusing on fashion, they focused on their core strength: Croslite. Waterproof and lightweight, Croslite also boasts antimicrobial properties. The founders saw that the material, not the funny-looking shoe, would be sustainable in the marketplace.

They thought huge. After the runaway success of their funny looking shoes, Crocs executives took the local company multinational. They purchased more manufacturing plants in Canada and Mexico, as well as signing on contract manufacturers in Italy, Romania, and China.

Scale allowed them to set up just-in-time manufacturing in response to demand. For example, if a gold shoe model is hot one month, the company makes more in a matter of weeks.

Their huge manufacturing base allows them to produce a diversified product line. They now make kneepads for gardeners, rain boots, dress shoes, protective padding for hockey players, and specialty shoes for medical patients. They intend to expand into toilet seats and the building industry.

In the case of Crocs, it’s not about a trend. It’s about a highly effective, versatile product that can be stretched, twisted, and remade into hundreds other products. They’re a prime example of a company with a strong core competency (their material) leading to innumerable opportunities.

A list of types of occupations that have a lot of millionaires:


1.Actor

2.Singer

3.Doctor

4.Attorney

5.Surgeon

6.Physician

7.Stockbroker

8.CEO

9.Athlete

10.Computer software engineer

11.Architect

12.Realtor

The top 25 business failures


25. Fashion Café

Want some Newports with that iceberg lettuce?

A restaurant that serves gargantuan burgers and fried appetizers founded by a bunch of supermodels and fey fashionistas didn’t work? Hmm, I wonder why. “The $20 Salad Extraordinaire,” created exclusively for Naomi Campbell, reportedly consisted of a glass of champagne, a pack of Newports and two slices of tomato accompanied by an iceberg leaf. Famed restaurateur Tommaso Buti was the “brains” behind the operation. He over-franchised the cafes, was accused of mismanagement, then followed Christy Turlington in selling his stake in the company. Buti, already accused of defrauding investors, was arrested in 2000 and charged with wire fraud, conspiracy, money laundering, and transportation of stolen property.

24. CBGB

A legend turns into a men’s st

In 2006, after 33 years of offering up legends like the Talking Heads, Blondie, Misfits and the stalwart Ramones, CBGB, the most famous underground alt-rock/punk club in the world, closed its doors. It was shuttered to make way for a high-end men’s fashion store. Patti Smith gave the historic club an emotional, if punk, goodbye by tearing the stage and room apart. Ironically, the very same shrine that so many skinny-jean hipsters and adrenaline-fueled punks would come to mourn was originally started by Hilly Kristal as a venue for his favorite music: “Country, Blue Grass and Blues.”

23. The Edsel

Ford’s biggest flop


In 1958, Ford’s newest vehicle, launched on “E-Day,” flailed, flopped, and imploded. Ford kept the Edsel under wraps as a new kind of futuristic, experimental car. One fateful day in 1958, the Edsel was revealed…and immediately faceplanted. This car of the future was blah by anyone’s standards. By November 1959, when Ford finally mercy-killed the Edsel, it had lost an estimated $250 million–nearly $2 billion in today’s dollars. Edsel is now synonymous with a marketing business failure.

22. Flooz.com

The name says it all


Flooz.com blew through up to $50 million dollars trying to convince new Internet users that money online would work like frequent flier miles or gift cards. Part of that money went to a notoriously bad ad campaign featuring Whoopi Goldberg (before she was cool again). And the name? Flooz is derived from the Arabic word for money. In August, 2001 the company folded their chairs and went home. Apparently, people could just use their credit cards. Whoops!

21. The Hit Factory

A New York classic goes condo

Deep in New York, in the heart of Hell’s Kitchen, The Hit Factory was one the world’s most recognized recording Studios. Started by Edward Germano in 1975, it saw everyone from Tony Bennett to U2 record amazing tracks. After Germano’s death in 2003, his wife Janice took over operations. Citing the “digital age,” she closed the doors and sold the building, moving the operations to an existing Hit Factory in Miami. Troy Germano, Edward’s son, later acknowledged publicly that his mother simply closed it out of greed. She wanted to move to Miami and thought she could make good money on the building’s sale. It is now a luxury condominium complex, with prices starting at $1 million.

20. Betamax

BetaWrong


I could give you facts, figures, and dates to support why Betamax failed so miserably, but that would be a blog post unto itself. Suffice it to say: Betamax was bulky, complicated, ugly, expensive, publicly ridiculed, horribly marketed, disdained by the media, and only capable of sixty minutes of recording and playback. The capper? Most Hollywood movies that people rented were just a little bit over one hour. Too bad…and good riddance.

19. SwissAir

The “Flying Bank” ends up buried


The former national airline of Switzerland, Swissair, used to be so financially stable that it was known as the “Flying Bank.” Founded in 1931, Swissair epitomized international transportation until the late 1990s, when the airline’s board decided to follow an aggressive borrowing and acquisition policy called the Hunter strategy. Then, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 put a void in the company’s plans Swissair found itself hamstrung with debt. Unlike some other airlines, however, Swissair couldn’t handle the financial hit. Mismanagement and bad ideas—trundling large sums of cash to purchase fuel at foreign airports, for example—left the airline gasping for oxygen. In 2002, Switzerland was embarrassed to lose its national icon for good.

18. Ponzi’s Security Exchange Company

Bernie Madoff’s famous forebear


It’s quite an achievement to have a breed of financial scam named after yourself. Charles Ponzi, an Italian immigrant, ran a staggering 6-month pyramid scheme in 1920 by gaining investments (over $15 million) from an ever-growing pool of more than 40,000 investors. Ponzi would use “profits” from new investors to pay “interest” to old ones. Using a trade system of international reply coupons for postage stamps and leveraging exchange rates, Ponzi made a lot of people money through the “Securities Exchange Company,” which claimed to leverage exchange rates through an international postage stamp reply coupon trading system (this mouthful of a phrase reminds me of how people described derivatives in 2008). But his scheme ruined lives–including Charles’ own. After jumping a few bails, he did prison time from 1926 through 1934. Years later, he died, penniless, in a Brazil charity hospital, half-blind and partially paralyzed.

17. Woolworth’s

The bad economy bullies Woolies towards its own demise


Brits, who held “Woolies” close to their hearts, were were crushed when this comfort food and houseware retailer closed its last 807 stores after nearly 100 years of service on High Street and beyond. At one time, Woolworths was the leading music retailer in the entire U.K. During the 1950s and 60s, the store was instrumental to the Beatles’ sales success Indeed, Woolies also played a role in breaking Madonna to the rest of the world. Hey, she’s a Brit now. Maybe she’ll pony up the cash to save them? Not likely.

16. Premier Smokeless Cigarette

Taste-wise, charcoal just doesn’t cut it


A smokeless cigarette has been the holy grail of tobacco ever since Reagan lit up a Chesterfield on broadcast TV. In an effort to reduce the harmful effects of inhaling cigarette smoke, RJ Reynolds launched the Premier cigarette, a “smokeless nicotine delivery mechanism that looks and feels like a premium cigarette,” in 1988. The product ended up a miserable flop. Not only did this expensive cig taste like charcoal, it ended up being employed by drug users as a handy “delivery mechanism” for substances other than tobacco. The cost of the project? A cool $1 billion.

15. Bre-X Minerals

Fool’s gold strikes again


If someone tells you they’ve struck gold on the isle of Borneo, grab your money and run the other way. In 1995, Bre-X Minerals was a tiny mining company based in Calgary with stock worth under $1 when they announced they had found extensive deposits of Gold in Busang, Indonesia. As a result, their stock shot to almost $300 CAD a share. A series of strange events, including a man fallen from a helicopter and eaten by tigers, roused enough suspicion to unravel the fraud. By 199, an outside analysis of the sites samples revealed that Bre-X had faked their findings by “salting” samples with gold dust. Within weeks, the NASDAQ and TSX delisted the company, which at one point held a market cap of $4.4 billion. Investors slapped their foreheads, and Bre-X Minerals slunk into history as a major business failure.

14. IndyMac

IndySplat


On July 11, 2008 the FDIC seized the assets of the largest Savings and Loan in Los Angeles and the 7th largest loan originator in the country. The seizure sparked rumors of bank runs. It also gave the public the first real, Main Street glimpse of the Financial Crisis of 2008. IndyMac was founded in 1995 as Countrywide Mortgage Investment. Its purpose was to provide a means of collateralizing loans too high in value for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to service. At the time of its seizure, IndyMac held nearly $30 billion in assets, making it the fourth largest bank failure in history.

13. Edison Records

First isn’t always best


It’s always difficult being first. Thomas Edison founded the first record company and invented the phonograph, the first device made for recording and playback of sound, in 1877. This achievement led to all of the music industry as we now know it. Surprisingly, it was also the first dictaphone in history used by businesses. World War I shortened the supply of materials Edison could use for his highly secret wax recipe, used in manufacturing. The company’s market share fell. As other companies seized the opportunity the make “needle-cut” records (an Edison Labs invention) Edison Records lost customers and credibility. It closed its doors in 1929.

12. Tucker Automobiles

There’s a reason only four of them ever died


The ambitious car company that Preston Tucker started was only in business one year (‘47-‘48). It produced a mere of 51 cars, but its story remains enshrined in museums, car clubs, film and even a video game where everyone drives a Tucker. The fatal flaw? Offering customers the option to buy their accessories before their car was built. This program started a witch-hunt by the SEC. Amid accusations of fraud and the “Big Three’s” influence over government, Tucker Automobiles went belly-up. I will spare you the argument of whether it was the best car ever made, but out of that original 51, 47 Tuckers still exist today. Let that be your clue.

11. Sharper Image

Buy, but do not inhale


Started in 1977 as a catalog selling jogging watches, the Sharper Image eventually grew into a high-end customer electronics store. As iPods and other branded, high-tech items took over the store’s traditional market share, it launched into the infomercial business with the Oreck vacuum and Ionic Breeze. Unfortunately, the Ionic Breeze did not purify the air as it said it did. After losing a lawsuit against Consumer Reports for a negative review, the testing company released findings that the Ionic breeze actually produced trace levels of ozone. In 2008, the store went bankrupt, forcing shoppers to buy their overpriced, Japanese made, brushed steel, throw-away executive gifts elsewhere.

10. Washington Mutual
Bank

See bank run


WaMu was America’s largest Savings and Loan association, the sixth largest bank in the U.S., and (drumroll please…) the largest bank failure in history. Let that sink in for a minute. After a 10-day run on the bank in late September 2008, with total withdrawals in excess of $16 billion USD–almost 10% of the deposits–the FDIC seized WaMu’s assets. JPMorgan Chase bought WaMu subsidiaries the next day for what many suspect at pennies on the dollar. The holding company is currently in Chapter 11.

9. Enron

They made the E crooked for a reason


Enron was an energy sector leader that started to dabble in e-commerce and exotic investment areas, such as weather futures. In 2001, Enron, once valued at $90 billion and the 7th largest company in the United States, went bankrupt. It took jobs, investor savings, retiree futures and even some lives with it. In following years, it emerged that they shredded documents, started partnerships with their own shell companies, and engaged in massive inside trading. Enron is now synonymous with the business outcomes of galloping greed.

8. Polaroid

Go digital or die


Shake it like a Polaroid picture! You know you’re good when your name is the product. (Hello, Kleenex). But while you and I were buying our first digital camera, printing pictures and later taking photos with our phones and PDA’s, the execs at Polaroid were snapping and shaking their pictures into oblivion. So loved was the brand that countless people took daily shots of and created art, diaries and literature using these magical snapshots taped to their walls or to the street. The leader of an amazing niche technology that so enriched anyone born before 1980, Polaroid went bankrupt in 2005. The name may emerge again, but the brand and the impact will always be retro.

7. Atkins Nutritionals

Fadkins takes a bad fall


Apparently, bread won. Remember when all of your friends ordered their lunch without the bun and no potatoes, but with lard-laden beef and cheese? Atkins engineered the “low-carb” craze, a fad diet claiming you could “lose fat by eating fat.” Dr. Robert Atkins released Dr. Atkins’ Diet Revolution in 1972. In 1992, revised version gained popularity; the fad really took off at the beginning of millennium. Questions arose from the medical community about the diet’s long-term effects. Countless others, from the FDA to top chefs, also lined up to take shots at it. In 2003, it was reported to a skeptical public that the good doctor slipped on an icy sidewalk and died. The company went bankrupt within two years amidst the suspicion that his diet killed him. Meanwhile, a fickle public ditched low-card for the next fad. A year later, a leaked medical examinations report revealed that Dr. Atkins, 72, had a history of heart attack and congestive heart failure. He weighed 258 pounds at death.

6. Bethlehem Steel

When service kills steel


Everything you know about historic America has Bethlehem Steel in it. Founded when James Buchanan was our nation’s president, Bethlehem Steel was the backbone of the first blasting furnace, railroads, skyscrapers, coal, nuclear reactors, warships, cargo vessels, large construction projects like arenas, and other major infrastructural accomplishments. However, the company never adjusted to the new service-based economy that gained ground in the 1990s. Cheap imports worsened the situation. Bethlehem Steel, a piece of American history, disappeared forever when it filed for bankruptcy in 2001.

5. Pets.com

Big isn’t better


Pet’s can’t drive, and sock puppets make bad spokespeople, but Pets.com made the dot-com bubble their own in 2000. They overexpanded by opening a nationwide network of warehouses nationwide too quickly (taking a hint from Starbucks). Unfortunately, profits never caught up with media buys for commercials. In marketing, nothing is worse than having everyone know who you are and no one interested in what you sell. Widely recognized as the icon or poster child for dot-com failure, its stock went from over $11 in early 2000 to just $.19 on Election Day that same year, when the company closed its doors.

4. White Star Lines’ “Titanic”

A disaster of titanic proportions


White Star Lines, which built the Titanic, has oddly disappeared from the lore surrounding the fated giant. The fated vessel was conceived of in 1907, when executives Bruce Ismay and Lord Pirrie drastically changed and expanded their shipping transportation business to compete with Cunard’s new luxury oceanliners. The result was a line of gargantuan luxury liners that moved more passengers and freight than anyone else on the market. Three ships came out of the venture: The Olympic, the Titanic, and the Brittanic. You know the rest of the story. Cue the music!

3. Commodore Computers

You can’t kill the C64


Between 1983-1986, Apple, IBM, and Atari computer were quaking in their boots. The reason? The Commodore 64 was selling 2 million units a year and dominated nearly 50% of the total market. As the company tried to innovate by releasing the Commodore plus/4, a faster, smarter version with a color screen, they alienated their original customer base. The new model was incompatible with the cherished C64. Commodore tried to discontinue the old line in the US by 1990 and announced it would stop shipping them in 1995. The tactic didn’t work. Customers all over Europe continued to snap up the C64s until it became impossible for the company to manufacture them at a reasonable price without selling new, more expensive models. As they say, “you can’t kill the C64.” The company went bankrupt in the spring 1994.

2. DeLorean Motor Company

A man, his cocaine, and his car


As is often the case in the automobile industry, it’s hard to separate the man from the vehicle. John DeLorean was a hero amongst the very rich for creating the kind of car the future promised. With a stainless steel-skinned body, sleek lines and doors that opened vertically (gull wings), his DMC-12 hit the streets in 1980. Over the next three years, only 8,900 cars would be made. The car played a feature role in “Back to the Future” and become a potent status symbol. Then, in 1983, a sting revealed John on tape saying “this cocaine is as good as gold,” referring to a suitcase full of drugs valued at $24 million. Later acquitted on entrapment grounds and cleared of defrauding his partners, he would never gain the investor’s trust again.

1. Pan Am

The icon that didn’t pan out


It’s amazing how a country’s identity can be so closely tied to a business. Such was the case with PanAm. Founded in 1927, the airline was a part of American culture for the better part of the 20th century. It lead the industry in international flights and luxury travel. It was also the first airline to make widespread use of jumbo jets, and the first to use an air staff of stewardesses as a PR focal point. Little girls grew up wanting to be PanAm stewardesses, and boys grew up wanting to pilot one of the fleet. Heck, the Beatles arrived on one. Unfortunately, as an American icon, PanAm was also a target for terrorism. A few horrific incidents, coupled with the increased global competition that came with deregulation, caused the airline—and its accompanying era—to collapse in 1991.

Hi everyone i hope you like my new blog. Jayan Keell

Here are some ideas i found that made people rich:

1. www.doggles.com : If there is one thing dogs don’t need, it’s a pair of goggles, but this idea, which got its start online, has made millions of dollars and real stores have opened up all over the world. They took their original idea, of UV protective doggles and continued expanding their product line to include vests, other eye wear and even jewelry. People will spend countless dollars on their pets and this site more than proves it can pay off big time if you have a pet related product or idea.

2. Another one i found was the milliondollarhomepage.com - This is one crazy idea that someone started, one guy made a site and sold one million pixels for a dollar a piece. He was very popular and ended up making over a million dollars. Since then he has gone to other money making projects.

3. www.whateverlife.com This is about a teenage girl who started making templates, layouts and tutorials for Myspace.com and it was a huge success. She now has around 7 million visitors to her website a month. She has also managed to get big advertising deals worth $1.5 million.

4. www.santamail.org Byron Reese got a postal address at the North Pole, pretended he was Santa Claus and charged parents 10 dollars for every letter that they sent to their kids. He sent over 200,000 letters since the start of the business in 2001, which made him a couple million dollars richer.

5. www.fitdeck.com Create a deck of cards featuring exercise routines, and sell it online for $18.95. It doesn't Sound very promising But former army soldier and fitness instructor Phil Black reported last year sales of $4.7 million. It surely beats what the military will pay you.

6. www.myyearbook.com Two teens had a simple idea; why not create an online yearbook for people? The idea turned into a social networking site and they’ve been able to raise more than $4 million

. The company now has 45 employees, 3 million members and some clout advertisers.

7. www.stevepavlina.com This guy uses his blog to write about how to hack into accounts and he makes a ton of money doing it. He covers everything under the sun from personal development to astral projection. He makes at least $300 a day for a few minutes of work.

8.www.pickydomains.com This website has people who are paid to name websites. Naming domain names for others turned out a thriving business, especially, when you make the entire process risk free. PickyDomains currently has a waiting list of people who want to PAY the service to come up with a snappy memorable domain name. PickyDomains is expected to hit six figures this year.

9. www.antennaballs.com You know those little things you see on the top of car’s antennas? Jack Wall turned this into a multi-million dollar industry by selling them online.

10.www.idonowidont.com Joshua Opperman's fiancee retuned her engagement ring to him and he coudn't get the value back so he started a service online for people in the same situation. He now runs a very successful home business.

11.www.hungrypod.com Catherine Keane decided to make a business out of loading music on people’s iPod’s and it has paid off big time. She’s making more than $100,000 a year, after helping out a friend and realizing the kind of market that was out there.

More of these will follow, in the meantime here are some other posts:

America's Top 100 Paying Jobs

1. Financial Associate (Corporate) III

2. Group/Region Manager III (Commercial Loans)

3. Surgeon

4. Financial Associate (Public) III

5. Consumer Loan Area Manager

6. Managing Attorney

7. Divisional Merchandise Manager

8. Underwriting Manager

9. Commercial Real Estate Manager

10. Tax Attorney IV

11. Aviation Manager

12. Group/Region Manager II (Commercial Loans)

13. Group Branch Manager IV

14. Psychiatrist

15. Mergers and Acquisitions Manager

16. Lending Officer III

17. Employment Law Attorney IV

18. Research Fellow

19. Attorney III

20. Patent Attorney IV

21. Fuels Trader, Sr.

22. Physician

23. Tax Attorney III

24. Commercial Loan Team Leader

25. Regional Administrative Manager

26. SB Financial Services Manager

27. Executive Producer – Web

28. SBA Regional Sales Manager

29. Patent Attorney II – Biotech

30. Business Banking Manager II

31. Operations Research Analysis Manager

32. Biostatistician IV

33. Patent Attorney III

34. IT Account Manager

35. Funding Manager II

36. Applications Engineer V

37. E-Commerce Manager II

38. Treasurer Assistant

39. Regional Retail Sales Manager

40. Risk Modeling Manage

41. E-Commerce Strategy Manager

42. Applications Engineering Manager II

43. Professor - Law - Higher Ed.

44. Electric and Gas Operations Manager

45. Web Product Manager III

46. Cross-Platform Security Manager

47. Group/Region Manager I (Commercial Loans)

48. CRM Application Architect

49. Strategic Planning Manager

50. Web Security Manager

51. Group Branch Manager III

52. Nurse Anesthetist

53. Tax Research Manager

54. Managing Editor – Web

55. Program Manager

56. Sales Manager II

57. Operations Research Analyst V

58. Tax Attorney II

59. Env., Health, and Safety Engineering Manager

60. Business Development Manager, Sr.

61. Six Sigma Master Black Belt

62. Business Systems Manager (Banking)

63. Software Engineering Manager

64. ERP Project Manager

65. Dentist

66. Radiation Physicist

67. Community Development Manager II

68. Business Application Delivery Manager

69. Quality Assurance Engineering Manager II

70. Content Engineer III – Web

71. Expatriate Administration Manager

72. Production Engineering Manager

73. Data Warehouse Information Security Manager

74. Data Architect V

75. Interior Aircraft Assembly Manager

76. Plant Manager

77. Actuary V

78. Orthodontist

79. Change Management Specialist

80. Sales Representative IV

81. CRM Targeted Marketing Campaign Manager

82. Facilities Maintenance Manager II

83. Aircraft Maintenance Manager II

84. Test Engineering Manager II

85. Planner/Scheduler V – Construction

86. Attorney II

87. Cost Engineer V – Construction

88. Head of Ancillary Services

89. Product Marketing Analyst V

90. Expatriate Administrator IV

91. Health and Safety Manager

92. Physicist V

93. Configuration Analysis Manager

94. Operations Research Analyst IV

95. Production Scheduler Manager II

96. Spares Coordination Manager

97. Wafer Process Development Manager

98. Professor - Chem. Engineering - Higher Ed.

99. Strategic Planning Analyst V

100. Engineering Manager

With an estimated fortune of $62 billion, Warren Buffett is the richest man in the entire world. In 1962, when he began buying stock in Berkshire Hathaway, a share cost $7.50. Today, Warren Buffett, 78, is Berkshire's chairman and CEO, and one share of the company's class A stock worth close to $119,000. He credits his astonishing success to several key strategies, which he has shared with writer Alice Schroeder. She spend hundreds of hours interviewing the Sage of Omaha for the new authorized biography The Snowball. Here are some of Warren Buffett's money-making secrets -- and how they could work for you.

1. Reinvest Your Profits: When you first make money, you may be tempted to spend it. Don't. Instead, reinvest the profits. Warren Buffett learned this early on. In high school, he and a pal bought a pinball machine to pun in a barbershop. With the money they earned, they bought more machines until they had eight in different shops. When the friends sold the venture, Warren Buffett used the proceeds to buy stocks and to start another small business. By age 26, he'd amassed $174,000 -- or $1.4 million in today's money. Even a small sum can turn into great wealth.

2. Be Willing To Be Different: Don't base your decisions upon what everyone is saying or doing. When Warren Buffett began managing money in 1956 with $100,000 cobbled together from a handful of investors, he was dubbed an oddball. He worked in Omaha, not Wall Street, and he refused to tell his parents where he was putting their money. People predicted that he'd fail, but when he closed his partnership 14 years later, it was worth more than $100 million. Instead of following the crowd, he looked for undervalued investments and ended up vastly beating the market average every single year. To Warren Buffett, the average is just that -- what everybody else is doing. to be above average, you need to measure yourself by what he calls the Inner Scorecard, judging yourself by your own standards and not the world's.

3. Never Suck Your Thumb: Gather in advance any information you need to make a decision, and ask a friend or relative to make sure that you stick to a deadline. Warren Buffett prides himself on swiftly making up his mind and acting on it. He calls any unnecessary sitting and thinking "thumb sucking." When people offer him a business or an investment, he says, "I won't talk unless they bring me a price." He gives them an answer on the spot.

4. Spell Out The Deal Before You Start: Your bargaining leverage is always greatest before you begin a job -- that's when you have something to offer that the other party wants. Warren Buffett learned this lesson the hard way as a kid, when his grandfather Ernest hired him and a friend to dig out the family grocery store after a blizzard. The boys spent five hours shoveling until they could barely straighten their frozen hands. Afterward, his grandfather gave the pair less than 90 cents to split. Warren Buffett was horrified that he performed such backbreaking work only to earn pennies an hour. Always nail down the specifics of a deal in advance -- even with your friends and relatives.

5. Watch Small Expenses: Warren Buffett invests in businesses run by managers who obsess over the tiniest costs. He one acquired a company whose owner counted the sheets in rolls of 500-sheet toilet paper to see if he was being cheated (he was). He also admired a friend who painted only on the side of his office building that faced the road. Exercising vigilance over every expense can make your profits -- and your paycheck -- go much further.

6. Limit What You Borrow: Living on credit cards and loans won't make you rich. Warren Buffett has never borrowed a significant amount -- not to invest, not for a mortgage. He has gotten many heart-rendering letters from people who thought their borrowing was manageable but became overwhelmed by debt. His advice: Negotiate with creditors to pay what you can. Then, when you're debt-free, work on saving some money that you can use to invest.

7. Be Persistent: With tenacity and ingenuity, you can win against a more established competitor. Warren Buffett acquired the Nebraska Furniture Mart in 1983 because he liked the way its founder, Rose Blumkin, did business. A Russian immigrant, she built the mart from a pawnshop into the largest furniture store in North America. Her strategy was to undersell the big shots, and she was a merciless negotiator. To Warren Buffett, Rose embodied the unwavering courage that makes a winner out of an underdog.

8. Know When To Quit: Once, when Warren Buffett was a teen, he went to the racetrack. He bet on a race and lost. To recoup his funds, he bet on another race. He lost again, leaving him with close to nothing. He felt sick -- he had squandered nearly a week's earnings. Warren Buffett never repeated that mistake. Know when to walk away from a loss, and don't let anxiety fool you into trying again.

9. Assess The Risk: In 1995, the employer of Warren Buffett's son, Howie, was accused by the FBI of price-fixing. Warren Buffett advised Howie to imagine the worst-and-bast-case scenarios if he stayed with the company. His son quickly realized that the risks of staying far outweighed any potential gains, and he quit the next day. Asking yourself "and then what?" can help you see all of the possible consequences when you're struggling to make a decision -- and can guide you to the smartest choice.

10. Know What Success Really Means: Despite his wealth, Warren Buffett does not measure success by dollars. In 2006, he pledged to give away almost his entire fortune to charities, primarily the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He's adamant about not funding monuments to himself -- no Warren Buffett buildings or halls. "I know people who have a lot of money," he says, "and they get testimonial dinners and hospital wings named after them. But the truth is that nobody in the world loves them. When you get to my age, you'll measure your success in life by how many of the people you want to have love you actually do love you. That's the ultimate test of how you've lived your life."