Saturday, March 22, 2014

How much to be in top 1%

More Millionaires 

The ranks of America’s rich and super rich have rebounded in the last few years, and there are more households worth $1 million than ever before. To make the top 1% requires household worth of at least $5 million.

Carl DeTorres
Source: Spectrem (click)

"A Million Dollars Isn't What It Used To Be." (click)
In 2007, an investor with $1 million could earn $60,000 annually 
on a certificate of deposit. Today, that same CD would earn $12,000.

Thursday, March 20, 2014

What’s your story?





Want help to get started?

We share startup stories and

help each other find and do Good Work.


Good Work pays well, really helps your customers, and is a way to learn and grow as you earn money from it.



Our new, free Z-NOS Groups use spiritual principles combined with the one-day-at-a-time methods from Just Start, a recent book based on solid research, published by Harvard Business Review Press. We recover, start, grow, and flourish with a new career, project or campaign, or new business. No dues or fees.


 To find a free meeting near you contact:

Small Business Chamber of Commerce, Inc.
“Real help, real people, real recovery, really start now.”
SmallBizChamber.org or  http://Facebook.com/Small.Business.Chamber
Twitter @IDEACafé or Call 24/7 (303)861-1447 + AMDG

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

MBA a blessing or a curse?

(Do you agree or disagree? Your comment below is very welcome. John)

In a recent survey, 32% of CEO's interviewed had a positive impression of hiring MBAs, 23% were neutral, and a solid 44% had outright negative views.
Executives said that many business schools “better structured for the Industrial Revolution rather than the Information Age.” 
From today's Wall Street Journal

Getting an MBA (DU'80) certainly helped me get a great job, I was hired as Assistant-to-the-President of an American Stock Exchange company when the Chancellor introduced me to the school trustee who eventually hired me, but what we'd studied didn't really help me do the job once I was at my desk, in many ways it was clear to me the MBA hurt me on that job, even more so when I started working with startup businesses. For years I've called my self a recovering MBA, much of what I'd been taught in graduate business school had to be overcome to actually help someone who is trying to turn their idea into a business.

The Wall Street Journal article above seems to advocate for updating the curriculum at business schools, but is that really the problem?

nGram analysis (% word or term of all words indexed by Google) would indicate there has been a dramatic grow of interest in MBAs since the degree was first awarded at Harvard in 1912:


Monday, March 17, 2014

From 2004: New Conference to Strengthen Neighborhood Meetings...

This is my very first post here on www.JohnWren.com, back in January, 2004. When did you start blogging? What was your first post?

New Conference to Strengthen Neighborhood Meetings
Click JohnWren.com Start!: New Conference to Strengthen Neighborhood Meetings...: Click to see more.

The new Colorado Neighborhood Caucus Conference will be held Monday, January 26th...

George S. May International Company History

Working for the George S. May International Company was a very great learning experience for me, fantastic sales training program.

Until not long before I was hired, I didn't know much about the company.

That changed when I gave a talk about marketing in California for a national trade association, a man came up after my talk and offered to buy me dinner.

WANT TO LEARN MORE, FASTER, CHEAPER AND HAVE FUN LEARNING IT?

+++Pope Francis Teaches A Business Lesson.+++

WANT TO LEARN MORE, FASTER, CHEAPER AND HAVE FUN LEARNING IT? 

Then start learning like Pope Francis, and like they teach nurses to learn.

You don't have to be Catholic or just Christian to benefit from the learning method Pope Francis is talking about here (click below): 

1) Pope Francis receives; he reads, prays, studies. 2) Then he just does it. 3) Finally he shares what he's done, he teaches, and that's when the real learning takes place.


Sunday, March 16, 2014

70th Wedding Aniversary Today.

Amarillo First Baptist now from their
Facebook Page (click here to see)
John E. Wren, Pres.
Western Merchants.
(click here for more)
Happy aniversary 
mom and pop!

Some of my Facebook friends may not know about my parents' startup story. They should make a movie about their lift togetherr, one with a single mother, the other with a mother who would have in some ways been much better off single, together they achieved the true American Dream.

Amarillo High School "The Sandies" is where Jane Wren my mom and and my dad John E. Wren (who cancer took in 1979, just after he'd gotten them into the condo where mom lives now) met in 1941. They eventually married March 16, 1944 after dad was discharged from the Navy. They were married in a small ceremony in the parsonage of First Baptist Church (photo of it today) by the
Mom with twin greatgrandson,
Christmas 2009.
pastor who'd been there since 1941, Dr. A. D. Foreman. Mom and dad's best friends were the only witnesses, Sandies C. E. Nance, Milda Fey and Betty Mashburn (who later married Bob Ely, he eventually became pastor of Trinity Methodist Church here in Denver and he preached at my dad's funeral in November, 1979 at Wilshire Presbyterian Church.)

I just talked with mom on the phone, she's doing ok, but not feeling like doing anything today to celebrate. She said she'd just been sitting and thinking, I'll bet, she has a lot of memories. How many trips did she and pop take together?

To go from that day 70 years ago when two kids from financially poor families found the courage to marry (thank God they didn't go to the pitiful pre-marital counciling that is given today) to what they were able to accomplish together is the very best example I know of the chance to work hard and get ahead in life, the possibilities America once held and I think the possiblity that can be ours once again if enough people read Edmund Phelps book Mass Flourishing, insist candidates in the upcoming elections read it, and each and everyone of us start doing all we can to restore the vitalism and dynamism that we once had. I know pop would have loved it, it's the sort of thing men like George Vineyard used to talk about, I'm sure, when they taught senior high boys in Sunday school.

One thing that could be easily changed immediately, our leaders should start setting the example by taking seriously themselves and encourage everyone who hears their talks to go to church on Sunday, or to temple on Saturday, or to practice whatever they find helpful , to practice their own religion, to pray for them and to ask our higher power, what most of us call God, including those who print and coin our US Money, ato pray for all the leaders of the world and all common people, that we all be filled with hope and encouraged to get back to work, trusting the little we can do, that each and everyone of us can do, will with God's help, be enough.

God bless mom and dad and all those like them in the greatest generation who set a good example for us in so many different ways, and may God bless us all and allow us to each respond to what we are being called on now to pick up the fallen flag and carry on.

God bless you, God bless America and the world, and don't forget to go to (in what ever way you understand it) church. +++