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Executive Summary

The House Advantage is a book written by Jeffrey Ma, and published in July 2010.  Jeffrey Ma is a card counter made famous from the book Bringing Down the House and the movie 21.  Both stories are based on Ma’s real life experience with card counting and blackjack.

            The book is about Ma’s idea that you can play the odds to win big in business.  This is a play on the fact that he is a card counter made famous for his ability to play the odds to beat the casinos.  The idea of playing the odds is described in the book as using data to make the best possible decisions for yourself and your business.  In order to make the best decisions, you have to analyze the data and choose the option that gives you the best chance at success, or the best odds of winning.

            Ma uses his own personal experiences in the world of blackjack to relate his philosophies on business success.  He is constantly referencing his playing days in order to illustrate his points.  He also draws on a wealth of past life experience in the world of analytics and business to supplement his stories of blackjack. 

            According to the book, the key ideas for increasing your success in business are based on your decision making processes.  In order to play the right odds, you have to be making the right decisions.  Ma slowly guides the reader through his logics behind his school of thought.  He starts with some simple notions about statistics, and then he works his way through how to apply these statistics to business. 

            He talks about how the past matters.  Every good decision should be based on some past information or data.  We should always know what happened in the past and learn from our mistakes.  He also mentions the need to be like a scientist.  He describes this as the ability to approach a problem and remain objective.  Don’t search for the answer you want, but rather search for the right answer. 

            He also talks about the importance of asking questions.  Not only do we need to ask questions, but we need to ask simple questions that have a purpose.  We shouldn’t waste our time searching for answers that can’t lead to action.  We can use the data from the past to answer our questions in a quantifiable way.

            Once we’ve gotten our numbers, we need to make sure that we know what they mean.  We must use the numbers to tell a full story.  We must know what the data we have is telling us.  We can’t allow ourselves to fall prey to fake statistics and we must not allow ourselves to skew the numbers.

            He talks about the need for planning and strategy with our decisions.   If we are prepared for every scenario and we have a solid strategy, there is no need to fear.  He also defines what making the right decision means.  A decision isn’t made right or wrong by its results.  If we make the best decision we can with the data we have, we are playing the best odds we can. By playing our best odds, we are increasing our chances for success, but not guaranteeing it.  This is why we must always be prepared, even for the worst-case scenario.

            The ultimate purpose of the book is to give the reader guidelines for effective decision making.  In order to be a good decision maker, we must make data driven decisions and prepare for every outcome.  By being a good decision maker, we are effectively playing the best odds we can which will lead to a brighter future for our business and hopefully business success.

The Ten Things Managers Need to Know fromThe House Advantage

1.            Statistics can be applied to any business.  Using Statistics to make an informed decision can be applied to any situation, ranging from what route to take to work, to which multimillion dollar investment to make.

2.            “Every good decision has some data behind it as well as a thorough examination of the specific case at hand.” (Ma 209)  Every decision has some set of data that we evaluate before every decision.

3.            You must have the ability to reevaluate your strategy when things change.  The world is in constant motion, and your business environment will always be changing.   To keep up, your business must always be changing.

4.            Focus on statistic accuracy and integrity.  Don’t fall into the trap of pseudo-statistics.  Don’t let yourself “find” the numbers that confirm your decision.  Let the number “lead” you to the right course of action.  This means using the data to make a decision, not just searching for the first sign of data that confirms your preconceptions.

5.            Every organization has to have uniform goals that every employee can invest in.  Make sure that everyone is working towards the same objective, and that everyone realizes that success for the business means success for everyone,

6.            Pay attention to the past.  The past is the biggest part of making any successful decision.   Study it and learn from it in every aspect of your business.

7.            Ask the simple questions.  Don’t always look for the really complicated problems to focus your efforts on.  Sometimes the simplest questions can lead to the biggest discoveries.

8.            Don’t try too hard to be perfect.  Not every decision has a right answer or a perfect set of information to examine.  Use what you have to make the best decision at the moment, even if this isn’t a perfect decision.

9.            Planning is core to being successful in business.   Every business should have a strategy to succeed and to handle any failures.  “The importance of obsessive planning cannot be underestimated.” (Ma 136)

10.            Presentation is important.  Even the best plans, if not presented correctly, will fail to be accepted.  People are resistant to change, but if you present the change in a way that they can understand, you have a better chance of making the change.

Full Summary of The House Advantage

The Religion of Statistics

This chapter is all about the religion of statistics and gives some personal stories regarding Ma’s beliefs in statistics.  The chapter starts out with Ma telling the story of his “defining moment” regarding statistics.  He tells about how he lost 0,000 in a matter of minutes one night playing blackjack.  He explains how he had to deal with the numbers being wrong.  He said that the statistics behind his moves that night were correct and but there is always a chance at losing.  But he tells how he decided to continue playing and eventually won ,000 net. 

      He then goes on to tell the story of Bob Stoll.  Stoll is a sport betting guru and friend to Ma.  Stoll is a statistician who uses numbers to bet on sports.  He even started a business selling his picks to his subscribers each week. 

      Ma then tells about his forays into the financial market.  He tells about how the markets worked and what his job was.  He explains why he left the industry, because unlike blackjack, there isn’t enough of a standard of analytics.  The system he worked under in blackjack was a “sure thing”, because the numbers said so.  In the financial markets, his company’s decisions were sound, and they made money, but they didn’t make statistical sense.

      Ma then offers up his first two commandments of his religion of statistics.  The first rule is to understand the importance of variance.  Variance is the natural tendency for results to vary from expected.  Just because the numbers say you have an advantage, doesn’t mean you are guaranteed a win.   Ma’s second commandment is the importance of the long term perspective.  Most analytical strategies are only going to give you a small advantage.  And due to variance, you might hit “bad streaks.”  The importance of understanding the causes of these streaks and maintaining your position will eventually lead you to your goals.  You must stand behind the data and trust in the numbers. 

      The last thought he offers up in this chapter is the idea of an ever changing strategy.  Because an analytical strategy is meant for a specific environment, as the environment changes so should your strategy.   Maintain your belief in your strategy, but be able to change it as new variables emerge.

Why the Past Matters

Ma starts this chapter with a lesson in history.  He explains the reason why his blackjack strategy works is because blackjack is affected by the past.  For instance, if all of the aces have been played, the chance for getting a blackjack is impossible.  He compares this to  roulette, where the chances of a ball landing on red is not affected by how many times in the past the ball has already landed on red.

      He tells the story of how card counting came to be and why it works from a mathematical point of view.  He explains how Edward Thorp invented card counting by noticing the trends and patterns that emerge from a sequence of blackjack hands.  The basis of it is that every card that has already been played has some kind of effect on the odds of future hands.  Card counters simply bet more when their odds are increased, and bet less when the odds are not in their favor. 

Ma goes on to give another couple examples about how past data can be used to confidently predict future patterns.  He further explains why Stoll’s methods work.  He also tells a story about how the sales in a retail store have become more accurate thanks to data mining and product mix information.  This is a great example of how statistics saved the store money and improved the business.

The main idea of this chapter is that historical data is such an important tool for crafting an effective strategy.  Ma also says that if you don’t already have data readily available to you, you need to create an infrastructure to start collecting data.    The sooner you have historical data, the sooner you can start making effective decisions.

 Think Like a Scientist

Ma starts off this chapter with a story about how he deals with the other people at the table with him.  He is telling how other people get upset when he seemingly makes “stupid” plays at the blackjack table.  He is referring to times when his card counting method goes against what most blackjack players follow, or basic strategy.  The story involves a person who is upset that Ma is joining the table at a critical point in the deck.  Then the person gets upset when Ma makes “stupid” plays and increases the chances that Ma is ruining the game for everyone and is going to cost them all their hands. 

This story is used to illustrate the point of confirmation bias.  Confirmation bias is the tendency for people to only remember information that proves that they were right.  For instance in this story, The other player at the table would not remember that at the end of the hand, he and Ma both won regardless of his “stupid” plays.  He would only remember the fact that Ma came in and took his ace and cost him a blackjack. 

Ma goes on to tell other stories demonstrating how confirmation bias can come from seemingly good information.  He explains the difference between correlated variable and casual variables.  A causal variable is when one thing causes another.  For instance smoking cigarettes causes cancer.  The two variables are causal because an increase in one will lead to an increase in the other.  Correlated variables are variables that are related but don’t necessary affect each other.  For instance, many people who drink also smoke, but just because a person has a drink doesn’t mean they will want a cigarette.

The main idea of this chapter is to “think like a scientist.”  The idea is to not assume that the data you have is enough to prove you are right.  Theories need to be tested and results questioned.  If you approach a problem like a scientist, you will not fall for confirmation bias or misinterpret a variables correlation.

The Importance of Asking Questions

Ma starts this chapter by pointing out that data is only the first step in the strategic process.   What you do with the data is what really counts.  It is the creative way that you look at numbers that will truly give you insight into what they mean.

Ma says that at the start of the decision making process there is a set of questions asked by someone.  He says that this set of questions is your “decision frame.”   He says that every good decision frame has 3 main components: purpose, scope, and perspective.  Purpose is what you hope to accomplish.  Scope is what you are including or excluding from the decision.  And, perspective is your point of view in approaching the question.

Ma tells about football legend Bill Parcells and his response when asked about his criteria for drafting quarterbacks.  Parcells list off some key attributes.  By narrowing down his candidates to people with these attributes, Parcells is creating a decision frame to make the decision on which quarterback to draft.

Ma then goes on to tell a few other stories involving people asking the important questions.  One man asked the question do polls mean anything.  This questioning led to him creating a model that has accurately predicted several elections.  Another story is about an NFL executive who asked how you measure the talent of an offensive tackle in football. From this question he arrived at several other similar but more specific questions and ultimately he arrived at a quantifiable solution to his answer.

The main idea of this chapter is to ask simple questions.  These simple questions will help focus your mathematical models and ultimately help solve your bigger business problems.  Regardless of the subject matter, by asking simple questions, you can arrive at some complex but useful answers.

 The Impractical Search for Perfection

Ma starts this chapter by discussing the idea of having a “hot hand.”  The idea is that when a player is doing well, they tend to keep doing well, or have a hot streak.  He tells of his interest in the subject and various attempts at proving or disproving this theory. 

He goes into great detail on some of the research done regarding the hot hand.  He also talks about his interactions with people who witness the hot hand in the sports they are associated with.  After much discussion he brings up the point that although this theory is interesting, it has no practical application and shouldn’t be worried about.

He then begins discussing the optimal time in basketball to take a shot at the end of a quarter.  The idea is that there is a point where you have the best possibility to score, allow you opponent to have a possession, and then score again before the end of the quarter.  He says that this is a much more practical application for statistical analysis because it has an actionable result.  You can change your game plan based on your findings.

The main idea of this chapter is to search for practical answers.  Don’t pursue theories and waste research on something that cannot be acted on.  We should also be aware that not all answers are perfect.  The imperfect answers or incomplete statistics can still be helpful in making your decisions.  Also, don’t search for the breakthrough study, but rather, focus on smaller achievable questions that will further your business or create a competitive advantage.

 Using Numbers to Tell a Story

This chapter starts with Ma referencing his card counting career again.  He is telling about how he kept the count while playing blackjack and the importance of the count.  The idea with this story is that numbers should have meaning.  In their system, every number meant something to the game.  Nothing was left to subjectivity or interpretation.

Ma then tells another story of when he worked with the NBA team the Trail Blazers.  Every year his company would rank the emerging draft picks so the team would have some quantitative way to measure their potential picks.  At one point the team was questioning why their numbers for players were different than Ma’s company’s numbers.  They wanted the numbers to match up to confirm their decisions.  Ma points out that you don’t want these numbers to be the same because the analysts are looking at it from a different point of view to offer a new perspective.  He makes the point that we need to keep in mind what numbers mean.

He then starts discussing the BCS system and how it is flawed because it does not offer a true ranking of the teams.  The BCS system offers up a pseudo-statistic because it bases two-thirds of its weight on a human ranking poll.  This flaws the true ranking that would occur by the computer. 

He also relates the television rating system to the BCS because of their use of a pseudo-statistic.  He then tells a couple other stories about how some fake statistics are being used when they really aren’t giving a true view of the story.  Statistics are only as useful as the story they are trying to tell.

The point of this chapter is that a number is only as good as what it represents.  He says that statistics should be based on some objective measure, should be easy to understand, and should not be manipulated to support lies.  The ability of numbers to tell a story is the important part of gaining a competitive advantage.

Never Fear

Ma begins this chapter with another story from his card counting days.  He recalls a close call that he and his team mates had in Shreveport regarding the casino catching them in the act of counting cards.

The importance of this story is showing how judgment and planning led to their success in Shreveport.  By making sure that they didn’t play too long or get too greedy, they were able to escape before the casino could really catch them in the act.  Planning is important too because they had planned out exactly what they were going to do if “the heat,” or casino management showed up.

Ma discusses the team dynamic in their card counting games.  He explains what each person’s role was and how it helped out the team.  Their preparation and their strategy is what led to their success. 

He then goes on to tell the story of the financial giant LTCM.  LTCM had a winning strategy that allowed them to earn tremendous profits.  One day the markets entered into turmoil and LTCM eventually lost 91% of its capital.  Because of this event they had to reveal some of their secrets in trading.  Once their secrets were revealed, their competitors would buy or sell stock before LTCM causing LTCM to lose profits.  The moral of this story is to keep your competitive advantages as close guarded of a secret as you can. 

Another lesson from this story is the lesson of planning for the worst case scenario.  You have to have a plan to deal with the worst of times if you want to be successful.  Just like in blackjack, there will be bad hands that you have to weather through in order to realize an ultimate profit.

This is the key idea in this chapter.  Obsessive planning leaves you no reason to fear.  If you can keep your advantages in your favor, and you plan for everything from the best to the worst case scenarios, then you will be successful and don’t need to fear failure.

 Making the Right Decision

Ma begins by discussing what a right decision is.  Most people believe that if the result is positive then the decision was right.  But this is false.  A good decision is right regardless of the outcome.  The decision and the outcome are separate entities.  The quality of the decision can only be judged by the logic and information you used in arriving at your decision.

Ma then goes on to tell a story about playing at the MGM grand.  He made some seemingly ridiculous decisions during his time at the table.  He ended up winning ,000 on one hand, but his comments are about the decision.  When it came time for him to increase his bet at the table, he didn’t hesitate because he knew based off the number, his decision was right. 

He then goes on to analyze a decision made by New England’s head coach on a fourth and two play.  The outcome of his decision to go for it was that his team lost, but Ma analyzes if this was still the right decision.  After much analysis he deduces that even though the outcome was bad, the decision was correct.

He tells other similar stories from the business world.  He relates all of this to the need to make the right decision regardless of what people will think or what the outcome is.  This is the key concept of this chapter.  Making better business decisions is a matter of looking objectively at a problem, understanding the alternatives, and then choosing the one that gives you the best odds of success.

 When I Won, We All Won

This chapter begins with the explanation of how the blackjack team received funds and how the “investors,” or players, were paid out.  He tells a story about how they would set goals, and once they reached those goals everyone would receive their portion of the profits. 

Ma says that establishing unity was paramount to their success. They all had a unified goal, and achieving this goal was the most important thing they could do.  Ma says that the main problem in the business world is when self interest trumps this team goal. 

He relates this to coaches.  Sometimes coaches will make a decision to make sure that people think they are doing the best job.  Their ultimate goal is to win a championship, but going for it on fourth and 2 late in a game is seen as a bad decision and can hurt a coach’s personal interest. 

The main point of this chapter is to work as a team.  Make sure everyone’s goals are aligned and that everyone is working together towards those goals.  In order for a business to be successful, employees must realize that the company’s success means their success.

 Why People Hate Math and What to Do with Them

This chapter begins with Ma reminiscing about the first time he tried to talk to his dad about card counting.  His dad turned him away because his father didn’t want to believe the numbers. He couldn’t believe that casinos could be beaten.

            Ma then discusses him starting his business and trying to convince sports people to sign on with a statistical company.  He tells how he had to convince the anti-math people that this numbers business was useful and profitable. 

            The key idea of this chapter is that presentation is everything.  By presenting his proposal to them in the right way, Ma was able to convince these people that his system worked.  If he had not presented it with simplicity, humility, and with a sense of collaboration, they would not have accepted his ideas.  He says it is important to think of analytics as a new way to make decisions, not just math or numbers.

 The Brain Cells in Your Stomach

The last chapter begins with the discussion of intuition.  He says that most people don’t like numbers because they rely on their gut, or intuition.  He decides to test out what intuition really is.

He interviews several people throughout this chapter about their thoughts on intuition.  He wants to know what is the process behind these gut calls.  Because of his business of counting cards, where nothing was left to gut decisions, he cannot understand the concept of a gut driven decision.

Through the several interview with varying sports stars and statistics experts, he arrives at the conclusion that intuition is direct perception of truth independent of any documented reasoning process.  Basically he is saying that even with intuition, there is reasoning behind the decision.    Whether it is past experience or hours of film study, every decision has a reason to the decision maker.

The main idea in this chapter is that in every decision, there is data at its core.   We must base every decision we have on the data we have available, even if that data is our past experience or gut feelings.

The Video Lounge

This clip has a guy discussing good decision making.  The author spend much of the book emphasizing good decision making and the process of framing a decision, using data to make the decision, and deciding if the decision was right.  This guy talks about many of the same ideas and methods.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3YMb4w-FvU

Personal Insights

With business conditions today, what the author wrote is true because:

The subject matter in this book is very relevant to the business world today.  His thoughts on using the past and data to make informed decisions are paramount to any business’s success.  In the age of technology that we live in, it is so important to use the data that is available.  It is easier than ever to track past performance and research relevant variables in any business.  Ma’s ideas on how to approach this process in our modern world are systematic and applicable.  His methods on controlling your emotions and using the best data you have to make decisions are so true in today’s business environment.

If I were the author of the book, I would have done these three things differently:

1.            I would have spent more time on the business ideas.  Sometimes the book appears to be more biographical than instructional.   At times, the big ideas get lost in reading about Ma’s personal stories.

2.            I would have also tried to explain the sports references a bit better.  The book is written assuming that the person reading it is familiar with baseball, football, and basketball.

3.            I would have presented the chapter ideas earlier in the chapters.  Sometime the idea of a chapter isn’t fully explained until the very end.  He builds up to the idea a bit slowly at times.

Reading this book made me think differently about the topic in these ways:

1.            Statistics can be applied much more broadly than I realized.  Data can be used to model any situation as long as you put it in the right frame of reference and gather enough information to ensure the accuracy of your mode.

2.            Statistics can lead to finding a competitive advantage you didn’t know you had.  Data and research can show you things that you wouldn’t’ normally have found in day-to-day operations.

3.            Emotions play a bigger role in the decision making process than I originally thought.  If a decision is made with too much emotion or with the wrong intentions, it can lead to bad results.

I’ll apply what I’ve learned in this book in my career by:

1.            I will definitely be more open to data and statistics when they are available. 

2.            I will try to make every decision with the ultimate goal in mind.  I can’t let the short term results tarnish the long term goals for my decision.

3.            I will try to approach every decision as rationally and scientifically as possible.  A rational and emotionless decision will often produce better results than an intuitive one.

Here is a sampling of what others have said about the book and its author:

Brad Feld praises the book in his review for the technology website Technology Review.  He says how he really liked the way Ma used his interesting background in card counting to bring up relevant points in the business world.  One quote from the review which sums up his thoughts on the book is, “As I was reading it, I kept thinking ‘every CEO I work with and every investor I’ve ever met should read this book.’  After I finished, I thought ‘every academic researcher who has ever written a paper should read this.’ None of the statistics concepts are complex, but they are regularly misused, abused, and confused.  Or ignored.”

Publishers Weekly gives Ma rave reviews for his simplified approach to business decision making.  They comment on how the stories from card counting and Ma’s past give the book a boost.

Bibliography

Feld, Brad. (2010, July 31). The House Advantage, Technology Review. Retrieved November 8, 2010 from http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/post.aspx?bid=358&bpid=25553

Ma, Jeffrey. (2010). The House Advantage: Playing the Odds to Win Big in Business. New York, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Publishers Weekly. (2010, August 3). Vol. 257 Issue 18, p40-40

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Contact Info: To contact the author of this “Summary and Review of The House Advantage,” please email Christopher.Raleigh@Selu.edu.

Biography

David C. Wyld (dwyld.kwu@gmail.com) is the Robert Maurin Professor of Management at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, Louisiana. He is a management consultant, researcher/writer, and executive educator. His blog, Wyld About Business, can be viewed at http://wyld-business.blogspot.com/. He also serves as the Director of the Reverse Auction Research Center (http://reverseauctionresearch.blogspot.com/), a hub of research and news in the expanding world of competitive bidding. Dr. Wyld also maintains compilations of works he has helped his students to turn into editorially-reviewed publications at the following sites:

Management Concepts (http://toptenmanagement.blogspot.com/)

Book Reviews (http://wyld-about-books.blogspot.com/) and

Travel and International Foods (http://wyld-about-food.blogspot.com/).                

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http://www.bukisa.com/articles/397790_the-six-minute-book-summary-of-the-house-advantage-playing-the-odds-to-win-big-in-business-by-jeffrey-ma

The world of finance tends to be one of the elite and privileged, in which those with the best pedigrees from the most impressive universities often dominate the landscape and culture. The road to investment banking remains a reasonably consistent, predictable trek: expensive private school to Ivy League to Wall Street. Growing up in Southern California, Andrew Kline knew little about this precedent. Moreover, he endured several hardships that complicated the journey to his long-term goals. Not to be deterred, though, Kline carved his own path to a prestigious position in finance, and he did it with persistence and fortitude.

Born to an insurance company owner and a stay-at-home mother, Andrew grew up comfortably with a well-to-do family in West Los Angeles. However, fortunes eventually turned amidst a recession in the state’s insurance industry. As insurance firms began to go under one by one, the Klines’ company soon suffered a similar fate. With what they had worked so hard to build gone so suddenly, they were faced with the reality of starting over from scratch. The fallout led to friction in the family and uncertainty about the future: “We went from being a wealthy family to having very little. All of a sudden I went, ‘Wow, I don’t have that company to take over anymore, we don’t have money anymore, and what are we going to do?’”

Because of the resulting difficulties at home, Andrew left and spent most of high school living with friends. One day early in his freshman year, he stumbled upon a new interest, telling his mother and brother, “I found football, and I love it. I’m going to get a college scholarship and I’m going to play in the NFL.” Not only did he love it, he was great at it gifted with the rare combination of size, speed, athleticism and motivation that is so rare at such a young age. With all of the problems surrounding his life, Andrew poured all of his energy into football. It became the most important part of his life. Within a few years, scouts and college coaches took notice, contacting Andrew and his coaches about playing at the next level.

Though he had been let down many times during his adolescence, Andrew refused to let himself down. He backed up his confidence by earning a full athletic scholarship to play football at San Diego State University. His play at the guard position was impressive enough to get him drafted in 2000 by the St. Louis Rams, the defending Super Bowl champions.

Andrew continued to ride the high of accomplishing his goals and immediately impressed the Rams’ coaching staff with his ability and determination. The team’s head coach, Mike Martz, told the media that Andrew was the most impressive rookie on the squad. Assistant coaches praised his knowledge of the game and labeled him a future force on the Rams’ offensive line. Sure enough, he earned a starting spot as he inched closer and closer to fulfilling his considerable potential. Just when everything seemed to be working out, another tremendous obstacle emerged.

One day during practice, Andrew suffered a devastating hit that left him with a severe concussion, which gave him fits of seizures and vomiting. Ever the competitor, he did his best to play on in spite of the injury in hopes of holding his starting position. But when he found himself unable to remember even the simplest of plays, he saw the team psychiatrist for tests. The results came in as he was preparing for what would have been one of the biggest games of his life: Monday Night Football against the Oakland Raiders. His brain had endured too much trauma, and the next hit could have been his last: “The doctor said that if I had played in that game and taken another hit, I could have had permanent brain damage or even died, because my brain was in such a fragile state.” Andrew would never play football again.

Everything his life had revolved around for the past ten years was taken away in a heartbeat. The concussion left him a shell of the man he was just months before. He had taken an IQ test before the NFL draft in 2000 and scored in the 90th percentile; after the injury, he was in the 40th percentile and remained there for more than 18 months. It would be over a year before he felt normal again.

Again facing a crossroads in his life, Andrew was forced to consider his next step. Damaged and defeated, Andrew returned to San Diego and spent the next 18 months rehabilitating his traumatic head injuries.  Eventually, he went to work for a real estate developer, earning only 0 a month. Depressed with the monotonous work, frustrated by the recurring side effects of the concussions, and seeking a change, he took a trip to Indonesia hoping to come to some sort of realization.  There, he met a group of professional surfers and spent the next month getting to know them. He wondered to himself, “What if I started a surf school with these guys?” The Australian Surf Academy became an instant success, and Andrew was able to add some money to what he had saved from his time in the NFL.

Having lost over ,000 a year earlier in the stock market when his broker made risky investments with his money, Andrew had become inspired to learn about an alternative real estate investing. With some cash to comfortably invest for the first time in years, he decided to enter the real estate business himself and started buying property in San Diego and Arizona. His timing and ability to find a deal could not have been better. He showed a natural skill for flipping properties—buying houses or tracts of land, fixing them up, and reselling the properties for substantial profit. Timing the market perfectly, Andrew founded a land-investment private equity group that returned over 700% in three years: “I was buying hundreds of acres of useless land for ,500 per acre and selling it back to large developers for ,000 acre. It was such an amazing time.”

Following his success in real estate, a young and confident Andrew Kline joined up with a team of high net worth investors and attempted to buy a professional hockey franchise. As the deal fell apart, Andrew recognized a clear need in the marketplace to effectively value sports franchises and handle the ensuing transactions: “Even the most sophisticated investment banks on Wall Street were unable to properly value a professional sports team or lead the acquisition process for potential owners.” As a result of this experience, Andrew founded Park Lane, a sports investment bank that has worked on transactions with teams from all of the major sports, including the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL and MLS. Park Lane typically concentrates on deals of values between 0 million and billion.

With relevant experience, specialized knowledge, and a propensity for capital raising and deal closing, Park Lane has built an impressive reputation in the narrowly defined market of sports finance. The boutique investment bank provides corporate finance services, mergers and acquisitions advisory, valuations and restructuring to its clients—leagues, franchises, sports businesses and wealthy sports investors. The firm additionally offers financial advisory, research, consulting and business development.

Having settled down in Los Angeles with his wife and young son, Andrew Kline now runs a thriving sports investment bank worth millions. Only 32 years old, he believes he still has much to accomplish. Though the odds were stacked against him for much of his life, Andrew has overcome the obstacles thanks to humility, a relentless work ethic, and a strong business vision. He has made a few mistakes and wrong turns along the way, but he has learned from them and moved on as a more well-rounded individual. Andrew Kline’s underdog success story of courage and perseverance not only explains his inevitable rise to the top, but it also should serve as inspiration for those who have fallen on hard times and see no end to the adversity in sight.

Marketing a small business is one of the most difficult activities any entrepreneur will face. It’s full of challenges and obstacles that demand preparation, dedication and determination to win the game. It’s just like playing football – success will ultimately be determined by your commitment to win and your desire to compete.

Running a business is a lot like playing an intense game of football. Essentially, both are organized chaos with competitors who aim to prevent you from gain ground and scoring points. In business, you win the game by scoring mores sales than your competitors rather making touchdowns or field goals. The one who become the champion of your industry is the company with the best marketing which attracts the most clients or customers.

There are five key similarities between marketing and football that every business must implement if they want to become champions:

1. Preparation and Planning

Any successful football coach will tell you that preparation and planning is the key to winning. It’s not the will to win, but the willingness to prepare to win that is important. Countless hours go into scouting opponents, developing plays and practicing for specific situations before the game is ever played.

As a business owner, you must also invest the time to research and planning. The only way for you to create competitive advantage is to understand your market, know your competitors, and create a plan that will score consistent sales. This begins with committing to working on your marketing every day. By dedicating an hour each day to marketing your business you’ll create momentum that your competitors can’t stop.

2. Aggressiveness

It’s simple – you can’t compete if you don’t play. Marketing your business demands that you get in the game and take on your toughest competitors. To achieve victory you must be aggressive and execute marketing plays which positions your company as the best choice, lowest risk option to fill a need or solve their problem.

Being aggressive is a positive, go-for-it attitude. It’s not about being out of control and acting recklessly with your marketing dollars. Instead, it’s about being focused and taking action before your competitors have a chance to beat you.

I tell my football players, “Be the hammer, not the nail.” This means you deliver the hit and not take it. During a football game the more aggressive team wins, just like in business.

3. Positioning

Football is a game of exploiting gaps in the defense to advance the ball down the field and across the goal line to score. Marketing your business is the same – you must find a gap in the market that is not being filled with a product or service that people are looking for. When you have an offer which none of your competitors can match you position company as the obvious choice.

You’ll score more sales and become a champion quicker by finding a gap in the market that is currently unfilled and not crowded with competitors. Creating plays which have an easy path to a score is the goal of every football coach. Your goal as an entrepreneur is to score a sale every time you execute a marketing play. Understanding the value and strategy of positioning is the best way to achieve it.

4. Play Calling

In football, calling the right offensive play in the right situation against the right defense becomes the highlight which is shown on SportsCenter over and over again. When marketing your business the offer that attracts a huge response and generates massive sales is very similar in stature.

A marketing play is any advertisement, promotion or communication you execute to get a prospect to take action. Calling the right marketing play that meshes with your audience is essential to your success. However, this takes time, testing and persistence. Most marketers give up after their first marketing play fails. Entrepreneurs become champions in their industry because they persistently try new marketing plays until they find the ones that perform and score consistently.

Legendary football coach Vince Lombardi said, “Perfection is not attainable. But if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence.” Marketing champions are the ones who never stop chasing perfection no matter how big the challenge.

5. Consistent Scoring

An old football coach once told me, “It’s hard to win if you don’t score!”

In business in scoring a sale is not only important but the required to survive. Without people buying what you offer, you will soon be out of business. All of your business activities should be in support of creating sales. Accounting, production, engineering, distribution and any other area of your business must help to create the conditions to make more sales.

Unfortunately, most business cut marketing when business slows down. This is a big mistake! No other activity in your business can increase your sales except for marketing. This requires commitment to the marketing process and understanding how to play the game. Like football, reaching a sale is usually a sequence of steps that gets you closer to the goal line and the score – not a one shot “Hail Mary” pass. By focusing all aspects of your business as part of marketing you will no doubt become the champion in your industry.

These five keys are a few of the essential building blocks of creating winning marketing. However, the biggest point of leverage any business owner can have their marketing attitude. Are you marketing offensively or defensively? Are you the aggressor or accepting what the competition dictates? How you approach your marketing is the single biggest determining factor of your success.

Marketing a small business is one of the most difficult activities any entrepreneur will face. It’s full of challenges and obstacles that demand preparation, dedication and determination to win the game. It’s just like playing football – success will ultimately be determined by your commitment to win and your desire to compete.

Running a business is a lot like playing an intense game of football. Essentially, both are organized chaos with competitors who aim to prevent you from gain ground and scoring points. In business, you win the game by scoring mores sales than your competitors rather making touchdowns or field goals. The one who become the champion of your industry is the company with the best marketing which attracts the most clients or customers.

There are five key similarities between marketing and football that every business must implement if they want to become champions:

1. Preparation and Planning

Any successful football coach will tell you that preparation and planning is the key to winning. It’s not the will to win, but the willingness to prepare to win that is important. Countless hours go into scouting opponents, developing plays and practicing for specific situations before the game is ever played.

As a business owner, you must also invest the time to research and planning. The only way for you to create competitive advantage is to understand your market, know your competitors, and create a plan that will score consistent sales. This begins with committing to working on your marketing every day. By dedicating an hour each day to marketing your business you’ll create momentum that your competitors can’t stop.

2. Aggressiveness

It’s simple – you can’t compete if you don’t play. Marketing your business demands that you get in the game and take on your toughest competitors. To achieve victory you must be aggressive and execute marketing plays which positions your company as the best choice, lowest risk option to fill a need or solve their problem.

Being aggressive is a positive, go-for-it attitude. It’s not about being out of control and acting recklessly with your marketing dollars. Instead, it’s about being focused and taking action before your competitors have a chance to beat you.

I tell my football players, “Be the hammer, not the nail.” This means you deliver the hit and not take it. During a football game the more aggressive team wins, just like in business.

3. Positioning

Football is a game of exploiting gaps in the defense to advance the ball down the field and across the goal line to score. Marketing your business is the same – you must find a gap in the market that is not being filled with a product or service that people are looking for. When you have an offer which none of your competitors can match you position company as the obvious choice.

You’ll score more sales and become a champion quicker by finding a gap in the market that is currently unfilled and not crowded with competitors. Creating plays which have an easy path to a score is the goal of every football coach. Your goal as an entrepreneur is to score a sale every time you execute a marketing play. Understanding the value and strategy of positioning is the best way to achieve it.

4. Play Calling

In football, calling the right offensive play in the right situation against the right defense becomes the highlight which is shown on SportsCenter over and over again. When marketing your business the offer that attracts a huge response and generates massive sales is very similar in stature.

A marketing play is any advertisement, promotion or communication you execute to get a prospect to take action. Calling the right marketing play that meshes with your audience is essential to your success. However, this takes time, testing and persistence. Most marketers give up after their first marketing play fails. Entrepreneurs become champions in their industry because they persistently try new marketing plays until they find the ones that perform and score consistently.

Legendary football coach Vince Lombardi said, “Perfection is not attainable. But if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence.” Marketing champions are the ones who never stop chasing perfection no matter how big the challenge.

5. Consistent Scoring

An old football coach once told me, “It’s hard to win if you don’t score!”

In business in scoring a sale is not only important but the required to survive. Without people buying what you offer, you will soon be out of business. All of your business activities should be in support of creating sales. Accounting, production, engineering, distribution and any other area of your business must help to create the conditions to make more sales.

Unfortunately, most business cut marketing when business slows down. This is a big mistake! No other activity in your business can increase your sales except for marketing. This requires commitment to the marketing process and understanding how to play the game. Like football, reaching a sale is usually a sequence of steps that gets you closer to the goal line and the score – not a one shot “Hail Mary” pass. By focusing all aspects of your business as part of marketing you will no doubt become the champion in your industry.

These five keys are a few of the essential building blocks of creating winning marketing. However, the biggest point of leverage any business owner can have their marketing attitude. Are you marketing offensively or defensively? Are you the aggressor or accepting what the competition dictates? How you approach your marketing is the single biggest determining factor of your success.

The world of finance tends to be one of the elite and privileged, in which those with the best pedigrees from the most impressive universities often dominate the landscape and culture. The road to investment banking remains a reasonably consistent, predictable trek: expensive private school to Ivy League to Wall Street. Growing up in Southern California, Andrew Kline knew little about this precedent. Moreover, he endured several hardships that complicated the journey to his long-term goals. Not to be deterred, though, Kline carved his own path to a prestigious position in finance, and he did it with persistence and fortitude.

Born to an insurance company owner and a stay-at-home mother, Andrew grew up comfortably with a well-to-do family in West Los Angeles. However, fortunes eventually turned amidst a recession in the state’s insurance industry. As insurance firms began to go under one by one, the Klines’ company soon suffered a similar fate. With what they had worked so hard to build gone so suddenly, they were faced with the reality of starting over from scratch. The fallout led to friction in the family and uncertainty about the future: “We went from being a wealthy family to having very little. All of a sudden I went, ‘Wow, I don’t have that company to take over anymore, we don’t have money anymore, and what are we going to do?’”

Because of the resulting difficulties at home, Andrew left and spent most of high school living with friends. One day early in his freshman year, he stumbled upon a new interest, telling his mother and brother, “I found football, and I love it. I’m going to get a college scholarship and I’m going to play in the NFL.” Not only did he love it, he was great at it gifted with the rare combination of size, speed, athleticism and motivation that is so rare at such a young age. With all of the problems surrounding his life, Andrew poured all of his energy into football. It became the most important part of his life. Within a few years, scouts and college coaches took notice, contacting Andrew and his coaches about playing at the next level.

Though he had been let down many times during his adolescence, Andrew refused to let himself down. He backed up his confidence by earning a full athletic scholarship to play football at San Diego State University. His play at the guard position was impressive enough to get him drafted in 2000 by the St. Louis Rams, the defending Super Bowl champions.

Andrew continued to ride the high of accomplishing his goals and immediately impressed the Rams’ coaching staff with his ability and determination. The team’s head coach, Mike Martz, told the media that Andrew was the most impressive rookie on the squad. Assistant coaches praised his knowledge of the game and labeled him a future force on the Rams’ offensive line. Sure enough, he earned a starting spot as he inched closer and closer to fulfilling his considerable potential. Just when everything seemed to be working out, another tremendous obstacle emerged.

One day during practice, Andrew suffered a devastating hit that left him with a severe concussion, which gave him fits of seizures and vomiting. Ever the competitor, he did his best to play on in spite of the injury in hopes of holding his starting position. But when he found himself unable to remember even the simplest of plays, he saw the team psychiatrist for tests. The results came in as he was preparing for what would have been one of the biggest games of his life: Monday Night Football against the Oakland Raiders. His brain had endured too much trauma, and the next hit could have been his last: “The doctor said that if I had played in that game and taken another hit, I could have had permanent brain damage or even died, because my brain was in such a fragile state.” Andrew would never play football again.

Everything his life had revolved around for the past ten years was taken away in a heartbeat. The concussion left him a shell of the man he was just months before. He had taken an IQ test before the NFL draft in 2000 and scored in the 90th percentile; after the injury, he was in the 40th percentile and remained there for more than 18 months. It would be over a year before he felt normal again.

Again facing a crossroads in his life, Andrew was forced to consider his next step. Damaged and defeated, Andrew returned to San Diego and spent the next 18 months rehabilitating his traumatic head injuries.  Eventually, he went to work for a real estate developer, earning only $400 a month. Depressed with the monotonous work, frustrated by the recurring side effects of the concussions, and seeking a change, he took a trip to Indonesia hoping to come to some sort of realization.  There, he met a group of professional surfers and spent the next month getting to know them. He wondered to himself, “What if I started a surf school with these guys?” The Australian Surf Academy became an instant success, and Andrew was able to add some money to what he had saved from his time in the NFL.

Having lost over $17,000 a year earlier in the stock market when his broker made risky investments with his money, Andrew had become inspired to learn about an alternative real estate investing. With some cash to comfortably invest for the first time in years, he decided to enter the real estate business himself and started buying property in San Diego and Arizona. His timing and ability to find a deal could not have been better. He showed a natural skill for flipping properties—buying houses or tracts of land, fixing them up, and reselling the properties for substantial profit. Timing the market perfectly, Andrew founded a land-investment private equity group that returned over 700% in three years: “I was buying hundreds of acres of useless land for $2,500 per acre and selling it back to large developers for $25,000 acre. It was such an amazing time.”

Following his success in real estate, a young and confident Andrew Kline joined up with a team of high net worth investors and attempted to buy a professional hockey franchise. As the deal fell apart, Andrew recognized a clear need in the marketplace to effectively value sports franchises and handle the ensuing transactions: “Even the most sophisticated investment banks on Wall Street were unable to properly value a professional sports team or lead the acquisition process for potential owners.” As a result of this experience, Andrew founded Park Lane, a sports investment bank that has worked on transactions with teams from all of the major sports, including the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL and MLS. Park Lane typically concentrates on deals of values between $100 million and $1 billion.

With relevant experience, specialized knowledge, and a propensity for capital raising and deal closing, Park Lane has built an impressive reputation in the narrowly defined market of sports finance. The boutique investment bank provides corporate finance services, mergers and acquisitions advisory, valuations and restructuring to its clients—leagues, franchises, sports businesses and wealthy sports investors. The firm additionally offers financial advisory, research, consulting and business development.

Having settled down in Los Angeles with his wife and young son, Andrew Kline now runs a thriving sports investment bank worth millions. Only 32 years old, he believes he still has much to accomplish. Though the odds were stacked against him for much of his life, Andrew has overcome the obstacles thanks to humility, a relentless work ethic, and a strong business vision. He has made a few mistakes and wrong turns along the way, but he has learned from them and moved on as a more well-rounded individual. Andrew Kline’s underdog success story of courage and perseverance not only explains his inevitable rise to the top, but it also should serve as inspiration for those who have fallen on hard times and see no end to the adversity in sight.

There are people in the world who love to collect car toys. They don’t mind to be told as kids or strange adults. It is because they have already in love with the car models and they want to collect them all. They are proud with their car model collection and they always get excited to make add more and more car models to their collection.

They love any kinds of car models. They are not picky about the models. Sport car is okay for them as well as dump trucks. For truck models, they usually choose Die Cast Model Trucks because they think that the replicas have a kind of uniqueness that makes them more appealing than the other trucks. But, they don’t get stuck in one model of truck. They have broader interest in all kinds of truck from the truck container up to the box truck. As good collectors, they will not get lazy to find the new models and to order the ones that they think they don’t have yet.

To hunt their collection, they will use the internet because it can give them better reference about where to get the latest car models and how to get them.

In the internet, there are so many kinds of information that you would be able to get. There are so many excellent kinds of information about almost all kinds of things that you need. Well, if you needed some information about the insurance service for the car, definitely you would be able to get the information in the internet as well. In the internet, there are so many sites that would be able to provide some excellent kinds of insurance service for your car.

In the Insurancerate.com you would be able to get some excellent information about the insurance service for the car. Actually, what kinds of information that we should know before we chose the car insurance service? First of all, you would need some information about the insurance company for the car insurance service. You should know about the reputation of the car insurance company.

The next important information about the car insurance service is the car insurance rates. You really should need the perfect information about the car insurance rates before you decided to choose one of them. You really should get the affordable insurance rate for your car insurance service, so the installments of the insurance service wouldn’t become such burden for you. InsuranceRate.com is the perfect site to get reliable car insurance rates and other type insurance rates like health insurance rates, apartment insurance rates and so forth.

Even though we have already set the perfect kinds of financial plans, sometimes we couldn’t avoid for some emergency and urgent situations for us. Well, we would never plan some sickness, wouldn’t we? The problem is; what if suddenly someone of the family got sick? Well, the online possible thing to be done is getting some loans. What kinds of loan would it be? In the internet, there are so many kinds of easy to get loans for you.

One of the best loans that you would be able to get in the internet is the payday loan. This is definitely the perfect kind of loans that you would be able to get in the internet. For some people, this is definitely the perfect kind of loans that we may use to fulfill some urgent needs. In the internet, you would be able to get the payday loan now.

If you are interested, you should try to click the Easyonlinepaydayloan.com. In this site, you would be able to get some excellent information about the easy to get loans. You would be able to learn more about the loan, and you would be able to apply for the loan as soon as possible.

You do know that you need money immediately. But why do you keep wandering around and doing noting? Oh, so you do not know what do you need to do and where to get the money? Well, maybe this little information can help you.

There is a lender on the internet that are willing to give you the money that you need. It is easy to get them in contact with you. You can either visit the website or call their toll free number. Okay, here is the address, Personalcashadvance.com, and here is the number, 800-689-9684. You can choose any of it, don’t worry all are available. Then you will need to fill out simple form on their webpage and it is so easy that you can make it quick. The process is done 100% online with high security to keep your data confidential. After the approval, they will deposit the money by the night and you get the cash by the next day. Wait, you can get up to $ 1,500 for these payday loans, but you cannot get careless. Borrow in the amount that you really need because you will still need to pay back when your payday comes.

Now stop wandering around and visit the website or call it. Just get the money quickly and finish your business.

What should we do when we need some cash? Withdraw the savings; sell some stuff, and getting some loans are the excellent solutions for the current condition. So, if you don’t have any savings at all, and you don’t have any kinds of stuff to be sold, the best solution is; try to get some loans. There are so many kinds of loans are available in the internet. All that you need to do is just pick the perfect one for you.

What kind of loans that you need? First of all, you need to determine how much money that you need. If you need some big money, you might need to grant some assets to the banks as the collateral. But if you only need some small amount of money to fulfill the urgent needs, you may try to apply for the unsecured loans. In the Perfectcashadvance.com, you would be able to apply the cash advance. This is one kind of the unsecured loans.

There are still many kinds of unsecured loans that have been provided by the online banking services. You may also try to click the Paydayloanaffiliate.com to get the cash loans. These loans are also the kinds of unsecured loans. If you need some urgent money, try to click those sites above and get the loans that you need.