Here, you will find a cornucopia of places where products in the category you are searching are being sold. The same stores that you have just visited will likely have links on the Internet. So, why bother to go out to the stores in the first place? Because you want to actually see the similar products that are on store shelves. And, you want to gather the information that you can get from the product labels. If you should find a product that is offered for the same purpose as your idea, you can inspect it closely to see if your idea is an improvement on that product. Also, retailers do not usually have every product that is in their stores on their websites, so it is important to make sure that you do not overlook something by failing to make that trip to the store.

Individuals often make and sell products on the Internet that are offered nowhere else. If you neglect to do a good Internet search, you will miss this prior art. What is prior art?

If an active patent covers a product, you cannot legally make and sell it.

If that patent has expired, that product is said to be in the public domain and is now available to anyone to make and sell.

A product that has never been patented but has been offered for sale to the public is also said to be in the public domain and can never be patented.

All of the above examples are prior art; products that have already been presented to the public and cannot now be patent protected. One of the first things the examiners at the patent office will do when they begin with your application is to initiate a thorough search for prior art. If you failed to find these products but they were found in subsequent searches related to your patenting efforts, your patent would be rejected and you would have spent your money and your time in vain. It pays to be meticulous in your Internet  searching.

Investors need to know their limits. In some ways, investing is like driving. Risks must be balanced with rewards. All drivers know that the faster you go, the sooner you get there, unless you run off the road or get ticketed or die in a car wreck. Speed must be balanced with safety. After years of driving, several tickets, and a few wrecks and near misses, most drivers know their limits. Some drivers are comfortable in the fast lane, yet slow down to the posted speed limit on exit ramps. Other drivers like the slow lane, but leave the motor running when filling up the tank. The raging driver is only happy on the road honking and flipping people off while the ultracautious never drive at night or on freeways. Ultimately, arriving faster is a secondary goal for most drivers.

Investments are touted for their high returns. Investors must balance return with anxiety and other emotions. High return often entails high anxiety, and low return usually means low anxiety. However, investing is complex. Some investments have high returns with complexity and low anxiety. Investors who can handle complexity will be happy. Other investors will be miserable. Some investments offer high returns with extensive effort. Some low-return investments entail an emotional roller coaster. Extreme speculation sometimes leads to gambling addiction. Some investors can handle a multitude of investments, and other investors are only comfortable with one asset class.

Before we get much farther in this book, I want to tattoo this concept on your brain. Not that I want you to spend every dime you have for the rest of your life saving for retirement, but you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do. Period.

I’m not going to show you step-by-step how to calculate the exact amount you should save each year, but I do want to give you a rule of thumb and show you how painful procrastination is.

My rule of thumb, based on a decade as a retirement planner, is that you’ll need to have 20 times your “unmet income need” for your first year of retirement in the bank on the day you retire. In other words, if you think you’ll need $50,000 per year for the rest of your life, and Social Security is going to give you $20,000, you’ll need $600,000 in the bank ($50,000 minus $20,000, multiplied by 20). This amount would provide you with a large enough nest egg to live off just the interest of your investments.

Not using up the investments themselves is crucial because none of us know how long we’re going to live.

As a financial planner who spent the first part of my career helping people save and invest money, this opportunity cost is the single scariest. It is not just a missed opportunity that you’ll someday kick yourself for, snap your fingers, and say “Aw Shucks!” Rather, it’s an opportunity cost that will determine the day-to-day existence of possibly one third of your entire life. I’m talking about retirement.

Now, a good percentage of you reading this book will say something along the lines of “retirement is so far away that I’m not worried about it” or “I’ll worry about retirement when I get out of debt.” But, the key thing I want to pound into your head is that retirement planning is monumentally less painful the earlier you do it. In fact, if you wait until 15 to 20 years before retirement to start planning, you may not be able to pull it off.

Why is it such a big deal? Well, the biggest problem is that people are living longer and longer, and our employers and Social Security system are giving us less and less. In fact, it is very possible that you might retire at age 65 and live to be close to 100 years old. That means that 35 years, or one third of your life, will be spent without income from a job. If you are hoping Social Security is going to cover even the majority of that, think again.

I don’t mean to scare you, but rather hope to give you some major motivation for moving forward. Just like my wife kept her eyes on that little sailor outfit during delivery, you need to keep your eyes on retirement as you try and decide what to do with each and every penny of your income and expenses.

If you buy a fully leased commercial property at a fair market price, you are going to have to wait for inflation to increase the value of your rentals and thus the capital value. Alternatively, if you buy a property that has some vacant space, with some rents that are below market, rooftops that are underutilized, storage space that is not leased, and a host of other features that you can do something with, then you can exchange your ideas, thoughts, energy, and enthusiasm for huge chunks of capital value very quickly. In other words, you are an extremely important factor in the real estate you acquire.

Another way of expressing this is to say that when I buy a property, it is a different property from when you buy it. Physically it is the exact same property, but since the ideas that I bring to the table are likely to be different from the ideas that you bring to the table, the property itself ends up being different.

Whether you like it or not, you end up being part of the equation. That is why the more ideas you have in your head, the more value you add. That is how I came up with another signature statement:

The most valuable piece of real estate is the six inches, give or take an inch or two, between your right ear and your left ear. What you create in that space determines your ultimate wealth and happiness.