Disqus - Latest Comments for ethan

Re: Why We Scrapped 3.5 Months Of Development

ethan — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:27:37 -0000

Hi Joel,

Thank you for your feedback, it really means a lot. I would love to bring back the landing page tool "new and better" once we have the resources to allocate to it.

Ping me via. email ethan (at) flowtown (dot) com and I'll be sure to keep you personally updated re: progress.

Cheers.

Ethan

Re: Why We Scrapped 3.5 Months Of Development

ethan — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:25:16 -0000

Hi Andy,

Amazing feedback!! thank you :)

We're going to be doing some really exciting things around the follow-up marketing space from within Flowtown, so stay tuned.

P.S. Would love to chat via. phone and get your feedback re: new features and roadmap. Feel free to send me an email and we'll connect - ethan (at) flowtown (dot) com

Cheers.

Ethan

Re: Why We Scrapped 3.5 Months Of Development

ethan — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 16:38:06 -0000

Thank you for the support Chris!

Cheers.

Ethan

Re: Part II: We Just Undid Three Months of Dev work. Here's What We Learned.

ethan — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:27:30 -0000

Thank you for sharing. We're also about to roll back 3+ months of dev work :) #3 and 4 totally resonate. Before we started building our upcoming iteration I went out and showed it to 20+ potential customers. They all gave us tremendous feedback and the confidence to actually start building.

I love your thoughts around #3. I explain it as prioritizing the roadmap based on optimizing for revenue. When you start thinking like this all decision making become a lot easier.

I believe it was the founder and/or CEO of Southwest who once said, I have the easiest job in the world, whenever a decisions comes across my desk I just ask myself one question 'Is this going to help make us the lowest cost carrier?'

Re: Get Satisfaction on your iPhone App | Broadersheet iPhone Edition

ethan — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 16:28:09 -0000

Bravo! In full agreement across the board. It always bothered me that Get Satifaction requires you to register in order give feedback. I guess they figure if you care enough you'll register. Which via. web is doable via. iPhone, "forget about it"

Re: Your Secret Weapon: Follow-Up

ethan — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 16:36:48 -0000

It's awesome! Definitely share your thoughts when you're finished.

Re: Benefit-Driven Metrics: Measure the lives you save, not the life preservers you sell

ethan — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 17:07:43 -0000

Thanks for fleshing this out. You are dead-on. However I do think a focus on both, the business of value extraction & value creation, is important. There are lots of ways to add/create value which may never translate into a profitable businesses. Finding that right mix (i.e. Walmart "everyday low prices, our margins are 3.5% but we move close to half a billion in product each year, so we're making bank") is crucial to the long term viability of any business. Thoughts?

Re: It’s All About The Conversions

ethan — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 18:05:20 -0000

Thanks Vanessa. You're totally on-point. And once you have a system that works you just turn up the traffic dial... monitoring quality and conversation rates of course :)

Cheers,

Ethan

Re: It’s All About The Conversions

ethan — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 18:02:49 -0000

Hi Elaine,

To start, the best approach is to see what is working for other people is similar businesses. Once you mimic their best practices it's all about tweaking and testing.

We'll be sure to queue up some future blog posts elaborating on this.

Cheers,

Ethan

Re: Big Hairy Audacious Goals for Startups

ethan — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 16:12:05 -0000

Awesome post. Great way to flesh out this concept i.e. what startups should be focusing on, a la their true north.

Cheers,

Ethan

Re: Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS): What Are They? - Episode #39

ethan — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 02:14:59 -0000

Hi Andrew,

In regards to college finance I would take a look at my friends http://www.hackcollege.com/ they don't solely focus on finance, but they do discuss it.

In addition it's an all around great blog for college students.

Feel free to send me any direct questions at ethan (at) thewaytobuildwealth.org

Cheers,

Ethan

Re: Rock On: 2008 Recap. 2009 Preview. - Episode #35

ethan — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 02:05:41 -0000

Thanks Adrian!

Unfortunately TWTBW is on permanent hiatus :(

However, feel free to send me any questions re: past episodes at ethan (at) thewaytobuildwealth.org

Cheers,

Ethan

Re: Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS): What Are They? - Episode #39

ethan — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 01:44:01 -0000

Hi Pavel,

A big thanks to you for your support. Please see the comment above.

Cheers,

Ethan

Re: Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS): What Are They? - Episode #39

ethan — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 01:43:17 -0000

Hi Thai,

That really means a lot. Super humbling. Thanks so much for your support!

Unfortunately TWTBW is on permanent hiatus. I hope to find the time to being it back soon. Or at least do some additional episodes that I've been wanting to produce.

I'm grateful to have been able to, at the very least, share some fundamental insights that most people can prosper from.

Until next time :)

Cheers,

Ethan

Re: Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS): What Are They? - Episode #39

ethan — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 05:14:34 -0000

Hi sfkid,

Glad you've been enjoying the videos. We will eventually discuss buying individual stocks. However it may not be for a little while.

I've recently had some pressing personal issues (nothing bad... actually quite good). I will be release a video soon to update everyone.

Thanks for your patience and understanding!

Cheers.

Ethan

Re: Mutual Funds Suck - Episode #12

ethan — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 05:09:15 -0000

Hi David,

Thanks for the great comment. You definitely bring up a valid point.

If all investable dollars in the world were Indexed you are right, it would cause quite a problem. However an everybody indexing scenario is highly improbable because investors will surely take advantage off created arbitrageur opportunities created by the mass herding into Indexed assets and this would most likely bring back some form of market equilibrium (this is total speculation on what would actually happen, just my take as I play it out in my head).

Furthermore it really isn't worth worrying about the world indexing. The total amount of invested dollars that are Indexed pales in comparison to total invested dollars. You also have to remember that even the total amount of invested dollars in Index funds, is in a wide variety of assets and asset classes. Not everyone who Indexes buys a Total Stock Market Index Funds or a S&P 500 Index Fund.

I find it hard to believe that traders keep the market efficient. I would love to see some research on this assumption.

I'm going to leave it there for tonight. Thanks for the great comment!

Cheers.

Ethan

Re: Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS): What Are They? - Episode #39

ethan — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 07:17:12 -0000

Hey J-man,

LOL, gnarly skin disease was a perfect description :) Vimeo's been acting weird lately, maybe it has something to do with all the updates they've been pushing live to the site.

Thanks for the heads-up though! We are re-compressing the video and updating the Vimeo upload.

Cheers.

Ethan

Re: The 4-Fund + 1 Portfolio - Episode #38

ethan — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 05:20:17 -0000

Hi Thai!

I think that looks great. Quite a simple portfolio. I should note there are both Tax Deferred retirement accounts (Traditional IRA) and Tax Free Retirement Accounts (Roth IRA).

See the rest of my notes below:

(3) If you had to, you could loose the Treasury Bond Fund, in the tax-deferred account. Not really necessary since you'll have Treasury debt exposure through VMMXX. Maybe replace with TIPS fund, new episode covering them in detail coming out Wednesday.
(4) It's not tax deferred money market fund, just Tax-Free :)

An answer to your final question is difficult due to the word reasonable. All of the small cap stocks are included in a TSM fund, the thing is they account for a small percentage allocation of the portfolio because they have such small market caps. The S&P 500 accounts for about 80% of all stock market value in the United States, which means the other 4500 companies account for just 20%. So even though you will have direct exposure to Small Cap stocks in a TSM fund, the exposure will be small when compared to S&P 500 exposure.

I will be covering Small Cap funds soon, but don't let this change your direction; you are on the right path as is. Plus, if the mood strikes you can always add a Small Cap Value fund down the road.

** IMPORTANT UPDATE **

There will be no episode released on Tuesday, January 20th. I had a last minute seminar pop-up and didn't have time to prepare an episode for Tuesday. We will be back on Wednesday, January 21st.

Thanks for your understanding.

Ethan Bloch
Host, The Way to Build Wealth

Re: Rock On: 2008 Recap. 2009 Preview. - Episode #35

ethan — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 17:31:08 -0000

Hi Nick!

Don't hate us, but we stopped all the of themed days.

When we went back and looked at past episodes we noticed that the themes were taking up a too much time, sometimes 3-4 minutes. That just doesn't make sense when we're trying to keep the entire episode in the 5-6 minute range.

I definitely miss them, but it's for the best.

Cheers.

Ethan

R.I.P. Themed days :(

Re: The 4-Fund Portfolio: Allocation Guidelines - Episode #37

ethan — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 16:07:41 -0000

Hi Axels, that is totally understandable, the majority of people are allergic to volatility; we humans are extremely emotional when it comes to our money.

However, I would like to point out that you don't actually lose money during a market downturn unless you actually sell your investments during the downturn. Having said that, it is important you are not buying broad based index funds at market heights either, and you can avoid that through a Dollar Cost Averaging program ( see here http://www.thewaytobuildwealth.org/2008/12/doll...).

Spending a lot of time and energy worrying about 'paper losses' on broad based index funds is a waste. Furthermore downturns usually create real opportunity to buy additional slices of corporations at discount prices.

I would like to share two solutions to your allergies toward 'volatility' .

(1) Put your psychology in check and adjust your temperament to handle turbulence. Understand that by owning a broad based Index Fund you own everything, so unless you've given up on capitalism there is no reason to sell. Furthermore downturns create opportunity, carpe diem!

or

(2) Invest the majority of your money in investment grade corporate and municipal debt and government bonds. Which you can also do through bond index funds (see here http://www.thewaytobuildwealth.org/ultimate-ind...)

Thanks for the great question and GOOD LUCK!

Cheers.

Ethan

Re: The 4-Fund Portfolio: Allocation Guidelines - Episode #37

ethan — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 15:55:20 -0000

Thanks J-Man.

I think the 120 age ruled (for those who don't know, it's where you subtract your age from 120 and that is the percentage of stocks you should hold in your portfolio), is easy and is a relatively good guidance stick. However I think money held in a money market fund should not be included in this estimation. You should always have a well funded money market fund even at age 25. Furthermore this guideline starts to get a bit risky the older you get i.e. above age 60.

I think a more important question in your case, is how many funds are you holding in that 401k?

Cheers.

Ethan

Re: The 4-Fund Portfolio: Allocation Guidelines - Episode #37

ethan — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 15:38:46 -0000

Anytime Thai!

Cheers.

Ethan

Re: The 4-Fund Portfolio - Episode #36

ethan — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 01:21:02 -0000

Hi Thai!

You were correct in your assessment of me being pressed for time. I used the term bandwidth in regards to my personal time and attention, not as literal bandwidth limitations from my video providers, sorry for the confusion.

There are no good excuses, but I want to make maintain high quality content and right now for that to happen I have to scale back a little bit.

As I always say, THANKS a TON for your support!

Cheers.

Ethan

Re: Rock On: 2008 Recap. 2009 Preview. - Episode #35

ethan — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 01:14:39 -0000

Hi Pavel, I'm not sure I totally understand your question. Can you be more a little clear? Furthermore I'm that versed in regards to the volatility and movement of markets and or what cause Index Funds have on market volatility.

If you can be a little clearer I'd be happy to find you an answer.

Cheers.

Ethan

Re: The ‘Human Ticker’ at Stocktwits

ethan — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 14:56:45 -0000

Great analysis of 'business television', I couldn't have said it better myself.