The best advice I ever got on selling was this:

Have an awesome enough product that it will sell itself.

I read an article once that the least trusted person in American was the used car salesman. Its so easy to see why, you have an old product that you are selling for at a cheap price. Its age translates to unreliability while the cheap price equates to a low profit margin.

Having a hard time looking for a job? Try asking intercession to God from St. Cayetano (Cajetan) because he is known as the patron saint of job seekers and the unemployed.

St. Cayetano was of noble lineage and was born on October, 1480 at Vicenza. His parents were Gaspar, Count of Thiene, and Maria Porto. Maria Porto was known to be very pious and was responsible for his studios upbringing. St. Cayetano eventually became a diplomat at Rome in 1506 and was largely attributed to the reconciliation of the Republic of Venice with Rome. By 1516 he had advanced already to the priesthood.

An interesting article in Wired magazine points out that longer life can be achieved by lower caloric intake as we age. I first heard of this theory when I read Bill Clinton’s biography wherein he mentioned that one of his college professors had been working on a study like this.

Half the monkeys were fed a low-calorie diet, and the other half a standard diet. All were closely monitored, with researchers regularly measuring their body composition, blood chemistry and endocrine function, as well as heart and brain function. When monkeys died, they were necropsied and the causes of death established.

All the surviving monkeys are now at least 27 years old, the rhesus equivalent of old age. Those fed a calorically restricted diet have dramatically lower levels of cancer, diabetes, heart disease, brain atrophy and lean-muscle loss. Just five of the 38 restricted monkeys have died from age-related causes, compared to 14 of 38 in the control group.

The Philippine President signed Republic Act 9648 into law, which permanently removes the documentary stamp tax on the secondary trading of shares in the Philippine Stock Exchange. The documentary stamp tax is a P 0.75 tax imposed on every P200 par value on the secondary trading of shares of stocks. This was done to encourage investors to invest their money in the local stock market.

When trading in the Philippine Stock Market, investors will have to pay a plethora of charges, duties and taxes, so the removal of the documentary tax was a welcome respite.

Here’s an interesting story I got from an acquaintance who ran a successful business that positioned him as a market leader in his niche. One day somebody contacted him and asked if he was willing to sell his business or open it up for partnership. He mentioned his selling price and that somebody agreed to it.

Because of which they went through the motions of selling the business. There was the due diligence review and the tour of the business process flow. After acquiring all this data the guy then said he needed time to digest it, so they parted ways.