Mark Zuckerberg Gets His Billions Today, Are Ready to Get Yours?

I shouldn’t be shocked at the hype over the Facebook IPO today, but I am.  It’s on every channel.  I think that I even heard that Bert and Ernie were on Sesame Street discussing where they think the shares will open this morning.

It’s an amazing story…the American Dream.  Go to a great school, dream up a great idea, start a great company, take it public, make a billion.  I’m extremely happy for Mark and the countless other Facebook executives, employees and early investors that with become financially independent today.  They deserve it.  I’ve been able build my business and also meet and keep in touch with a number of very special people in my life because of Facebook, and for that I am grateful.

I think some of you that have been asking about how to buy shares in this company are missing the point.  Sure, shares in Facebook may turn out to be a good investment. I wish that I had a crystal ball and could reduce the uncertainty in that for you.  What I am certain about however, is that we are smack dab in the middle of a time period that provides you with an unprecedented opportunity to live the type of life that you want to live…by investing in yourself, and your ideas and your passion…rather than in the shares of someone else’s.

There is no reason that you cannot be the next Mark Zuckerberg.

Think of it this way:

Because of Google, information is largely free.  You can learn how to do almost anything online for free (ALMOST: I don’t think that I want to have surgery from an online educated physician).  In fact, you can take REAL courses from Harvard and MIT online for FREE (video: http://youtu.be/tKZ2SYjALts).  Remember that excuse about not being able to afford school, especially a good school…GONE.

If you want to be a star, and you’d like to be on TV.  You don’t have to wait for anyone to decide you are ready.  You can create your own channel on YouTube.  Remember that excuse that you’re waiting to be “discovered”…GONE…Just ask Justin Bieber (http://youtu.be/eQOFRZ1wNLw)

If you have a great idea and you want to start a business, yes, you need money to do that.  But you no longer have to have a rich uncle or the cell phone number of a wealth venture capitalist. You can put your idea out the the world, and they can decide if they like it.  If so, they’ll help you build it.  Just ask the guys that had a great idea for a smart watch that connects to your iPhone or Android phone and raised 10 MILLION DOLLARS to make their idea a reality. (http://bit.ly/LLtvNW)  Remember that excuse about not having the money to start your dream business…GONE

There are countless other examples but the point is this;

You have no more excuses for not reaching for the life that you deserve.

The internet is the most significant, game changing, playing field leveling invention perhaps in history.  You can do things, largely for free, that would have been unthinkable only a few short years ago.

So if you don’t pick up any Facebook shares today, don’t fret.  The opportunities are still there, waiting for you.

You have the ability and the tools at your fingertips to make your life’s profile page look exactly how you want it to look.

Now go and hit the “Like” button on that.

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What To Do If You Hit the Mega Millions

The Mega Millions jackpot has hit a record $640 million dollars. Here’s what to do if you win.

Fact: One of my clients hit the litter a few years ago, so I have experience working with lottery winners.

Let’s Connect!
FACEBOOK: http://on.fb.me/o0ZylH
TWITTER: http://www.twitter.com/robwilsontv

Men of Excellence

 Pittsburgh Courier 50 Men of Excellence Award

This year, I was fortunate enough to be honored by the Pittsburgh Courier as one of its 2010 50 Men of Excellence!  It was a pretty awesome event, held at the Omni William Penn hotel downtown, and I was great to be recognized with all of the other talented individuals!

I was also recognized as the Entrepreneur of the Year by the Pittsburgh chapter of the National Black MBA Association!  There I had an opportunity to meet at chat with CNN Education contributor Dr. Steve Perry.  Listening to him for a few minutes will make you want to immediately run out and start your own school!

 

 

The Cake Boss meets…the cake boss?

I was also lucky enough to meet famous entrepreneur and star of the hit reality show Cake Boss, Buddy Valastro when he stopped by KDKA to promote his new book, Cake Boss: Stories and Recipes from Mia Famiglia.

Both of these guys are great examples of what’s possible when you are really passionate about something and you pursue it with everything you’ve got….now go get to work!

  

  

 

Guess who’s in BE?

Check out the October issue of Black Enterprise!

I really want to say THANKS to you guys!  Because of your support, lots of cool things have happened this year!

I was featured in the October issue of Black Enterprise Magazine in their annual “All Star Advice” article.  The good folks from BE gathered a group of financial professionals to answer questions on various topics of interest.  It was very cool to be in the magazine, and I hope you all heed the great advice in the article.

The Fortunate 50!

Tiger still on top of the list of highest paid athletes!

You can’t stop them — you can only hope to re-sign them. Extracurricular scandals, contract holdouts and ugly labor negotiations seem to have rocked professional sports more than any other point in recent memory. And yet financially, athletes seem nearly bulletproof.

For the seventh consecutive year, SI.com has compiled a list of the 50 top-earning American athletes by salary, winnings, endorsements and appearance fees. The average earnings of those on the list have reached an all-time high of $26.2 million (up 11 percent from ’09).

In a year in which Tiger Woods’ image has been forever tarnished — costing the perennial No. 1 tens of millions in endorsement dollars — he still stayed ahead of the curve. Tiger’s earnings were down more than $9 million from a year ago, but he still earned nearly $30 million more than the No. 2 athlete, fellow golfer Phil Mickelson.

Read the full article at SI.com

122 Million Reasons to Have A Happy Valentines Day

Jay Z and Beyonce Top List of Highest Earning Couples

My guess is that it was a very Happy Valentine’s Day at the Knowles Carter household seeing as how the couple earned $122 million between June 08 and June 09, putting them at the very top of Forbes’ list of highest earning Hollywood couples.  Of course, I’m a little disappointed in them since they slacked off this year.  Last year they earned $162 million…step your game’s back up guys!

I suppose Forbes doesn’t consider Steadman a celebrity or doesn’t consider he and Oprah as a couple or those two would have been the Queen and King of this list since she earned $275 million all by herself over the same time period.

Homorable Mention:

Harrison Ford/Calista Flockhart $69 million

Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie $55 million

Will Smith/Jada Pinkett $48 million

David & Victoria Beckham $46 million

City honors young local black leaders

Boy, this was a really nice program and a great honor.  The other nine people that we honored are really making things happen, so I was just glad to be up there with them!

To the left is a picture of me receiving my award from Mayor Like Ravenstahl.

[From Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]

About 100 people attended an opening reception Wednesday for the city’s tribute to Black History Month, an exhibit of photographs and biographies honoring 10 local black leaders.

The exhibit, “History in the Making: Honoring our Young African American Leaders of Today,” will be displayed at the City-County Building through Feb. 26.

Among the 10 honorees chosen were Paul Ellis Jr., 40, of the Hill District, a lawyer who helped negotiate a Community Benefits Agreement with the Penguins, and La’Tasha Mayes, 28, of Morningside, a Philadelphia native who founded New Voices Pittsburgh: Women of Color for Reproductive Justice.

Read more here.

The Blueprint ’10

Learn from the last decade, make money in the next.

The champagne has been popped, the ball has dropped and now it’s time to get down to business in a new decade.  It seems like just yesterday that I was sitting next to my generator with a can of pork-and-beans and a flashlight because the world as we knew it was supposed to come to a halt when all the computers crashed during Y2K.  It turns out that Microsoft and Home Depot just decided to play a big joke on us…but what a great way to sell new laptops and plywood!

 Though that joke wasn’t very funny, I think that we can learn a lot from Y2K and many of the events of the past decade.  Here’s your blueprint for getting your paper right in the ‘10s.

 What Goes Up, Must Come Down (then goes back up)

The 2000s were full of ups and downs.  We entered the decade riding a wave on which we thought sites like Pets.com would become the next Wal-Mart and any jackass could put “e” in front of anything and raise $100 million in an IPO (why oh why didn’t I start eSocks when I had the chance!).  Well, that wave turned into weak ripples when we realized how much it cost to ship pet food (besides, can you really afford to wait for kitty litter to arrive in the mail?) and stocks like eToys.com went from a price of $84 per share down to 9 cents! Lots of people lost their shirts when they didn’t sell as soon as it became clear that those high stock prices didn’t make any sense.

Ahh, but we love a good comeback story, and the market came back with a vengeance.  This time instead of the e-geeks, it was the house flippers that led the market to new highs.  Inexplicably, banks started loaning homeless bums $200,000 to buy abandoned townhouses and to go on a Home Depot shopping spree in hopes of selling it to the next idiot for $500,000 in six weeks.  It worked…until it didn’t, and HGTV almost helped usher in the new Great Depression.

But just before the soup kitchens opened back up, the market decided to rebound…again, by going up over 50% from March ’09 until the end of the year.  Way to end on a high note!

The point is, yes, investing can be scary at times, but the market has taken a licking and kept on ticking.  You need to be in the game; just don’t run your portfolio like the Detroit Lions.

Tiger Joins the Billionaire Boys Club

There’s good, there’s great, there’s freakin awesome…then there’s TIGER!

With his $10 million victory over the weekend in the PGA’s version of the playoffs, the FedEx Cup, the folks over at Forbes have calculated that the win put him over the billion dollar mark in career earnings.

Surely he’s popped a bottle or two over the years and spent a few of those duckets, so I’m not sure if this technically makes him a billionaire, but nevertheless, this is an AMAZING feat.  Keep in mind that he only turned pro 13 years ago.

I’m not sure that people who are not golfers or fans of golf really understand the magnitude of what Tiger is doing.  He plays a comparatively small number of tournaments, yet tops the money list every year.  He beat an entire field of the world’s best players on ONE LEG.  The list goes on… I know, he doesn’t get tackled on Sundays or dunk from the free throw line, but for the way he has totally DOMINATED his sport, he gets my vote as greatest athlete ever.  Oh, and he’ll probably play another 10 years!

This is excellence people. Yes, he’s been playing since he was two…that’s committment.  You too can be the best in the world at something!  Now stop reading this and get to work.

Beyond the Bling – Chamillionaire takes you to (business) school

If you look beyond 106th and Park, you can learn something from businessmen who happen to be rappers.  I wonder if this clip will get as many hits as “Ridin Dirty”???

Listen and learn something. There will be an exam!