One of my favorite hat shops in the world is Baron California Hats which has been providing hats for Television, Motion Pictures, and the guys like us for 75 years.

Most of the John Wayne movies used hats from Barons and the list is impressive, epics such as "How the West Was Won", "The Sting",, "The Man from Snowy River", "1941", "Crocodile Dundee", "Indian Jones and the Temple of Doom", the list goes on for every

I like hats and the secret of Baron's success is that Mark Mejia made not only as routine the best hats in the world, he kept the rights to hats made famous in the movies and then sold those hats to all us. Whenever I am in Los Angeles, it a point to order a new hat from Baron based on Van Helsing or the Great Gatsby.

Every endeavor I get involved with I like to give it the same degree of perfection that's found whenever one goes to Baron. We live in a time, where no one really takes the time to understand what they are selling, only who is being worked for at the time.

Brands are created by customers identifying with the company when they hear of a particlar product or service. Today that's done by Web Sites and getting the products in the hands
of customers.

Thoughts on Raising Funds

I am involved in multiple endeavors and for those of you out there that are thinking of creating a new firm here are a few thoughts.

It's always easy to come up with a raw idea regarding a new firm that you believe can be profitable. The real difficulty is putting the right people into the Board and Management. The team you build in the long run is what makes the firm successful or a failure. Attached is a picture of myself and one of my main partners JC who by the way is a PHD and much smarter than me, he give a degree of sanity in one of our main endeavors.

I have over the last eight years raised over eight million dollars for various endeavors. The concept of taking funds from individuals that become your shareholders is one that over the years I have come to take very seriously, as it invokes an enormous degree of trust and responsibility on behalf of what you owe to those folks putting up their hard earned dollars. My style of talking with high net worth individuals who invest with the expectation of receiving vast returns is a road not to be taken lightly. We link all the firms together in a complex non legal matrix of mechanisms so that they all function at a good level of efficiency toward common goals.

The most important I do is to stay in constant communication with shareholders via a constant stream of little e-mails stating this progress or this setback. Don't be afraid to inject some bad tidings into your Newsletters or e-mails, no endeavor ever lives in a universe of positive happenings all the time. The sun does not shine every day. Document your endeavor with accounting as it is the proof you will always need on monies spent or to be spent.

Switzerland and the Newspaper World

Well today I reviewed the deal on Murdoch's purchase of Dow Jones & Company. It my opinion the newspaper will go the way of the buggy whip. It makes no sense to me to utilize millions of trees everyday for a periodical which winds up as a liner for your cat's litter box.

If you own stock in Newpapers, sell it. The outlook is very bleak for this group.

The issue of Murdoch being a good or bad guy has no issue, he's a business man that has the ability to purchase whatever he wants.

Attached is a picture of me in Mount Pilatus, Switzerland in 2003. One of our companies is based in Switzerland so I go there from time to time. A cool place and the top can be reached with the Pilatus Railway which is the world's steepest cogwheel railway. It also has one of the longest summer toboggan tracks in Europe. Perhaps next year I will go see the track. One of my biggest partners is Swiss and they are a very precise group to do business...it's no joke regarding Swiss Quality.

What I liked about Sicko was that Michael Moore
pointed out the pure greed of Health Insurance firms regarding individuals who have coverage but are denied benefits. In this country it's all about maximizing profits and those firms view their customers as a means to an end. Health coverage firms no more care about their customers welfare that we worry about ants under our feet.

I have never met Mr. Moore but he is far more complex than the simple fat guy he pretends to be sometimes. Us fat guys can always spot each other. This picture was taken in Kuwait at some type of shop that I never did figure out what they were selling.

The thing I learned while in the Middle East was a reminder of just how much money our governent was capable of spending for very little return. Made a lot of friends in that country
over the years, but never did get to like non alcoholic wine. Smiles.

Building Another Company

I started the newest endeavor about 4 months ago in the United Kingdom. It's a Video Streaming Company and attached is a picture of
Moti, one of my partners at the best Chupa joint
in Haifa Israel.

These shots were taken in May of this year. The programmers in Israel are great guys but know very little about marketing and how to do business in a form that we find acceptable. Too much them and us I think. I like working with outconus groups as their prespective is highly energetic and very different from the "big time" everything of the USA. Always amazes me what a tiny country like Israel can come up with ...ingenuity does not require money and it just shows that having computers and gadgets will not make you a great manger or entrepreneur.

This is my first statement on the blog...