There is one thing I provide here at PAER that no one else gives.
Simplicity. My goal here is to take complicated information and break it down, so that we could write it out with a crayon. It’s something I’ve always done. I never understood why people try to complicate things when they teach them. They try to overwhelm the learner.
When I bring a PA student into the OR, invariably someone wants to explain the entire history of surgery and then the entire surgical procedure we are about to do in all of its intricacies. I see the look in the PA student’s eyes and realize that they can’t tell the uterus from the gall bladder.
I start with, “These are scissors. Every time I ask for a suture you reach for the scissors. Got it?”
And then from there, we build over the entire day or week or whatever. We don’t start with a three-hour lecture on hemostasis. That doesn’t help anyone.
I remember feeling like I found a kindred spirit when I came across Dilbert’s rules for financial success. The back story is that Scott Adams wanted to publish it as a one-page book but couldn’t find a publisher who would do it. He’s quoted as saying, “If God materialized on earth and wrote the secret of the universe on one page, he wouldn’t be able to find a publisher.”
Here’s his one-page book:
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Everything else you may want to do with your money is a bad idea compared to what’s on my one-page summary. You want an annuity? It’s worse. You want a whole life insurance policy? It’s worse. You want to invest in individual stocks? It’s worse. You want a managed mutual fund instead of an index fund? It’s worse. I could go on, but you get the point.
• Make a will.
• Pay off your credit cards.
• Get term life insurance if you have a family to support.
• Fund your 401k to the maximum.
• Fund your IRA to the maximum.
• Buy a house if you want to live in a house and can afford it.
• Put six months’ worth of expenses in a money-market account.
• Take whatever money is left over and invest 70% in a stock index fund and 30% in a bond fund through any discount broker and never touch it until retirement.
• If any of this confuses you, or you have something special going on (retirement, college planning, tax issues), hire a fee-based financial planner, not one who charges a percentage of your portfolio.
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We tend to over complicate for the “thud” factor. It makes a book seem more reputable if when you drop it on the table it make makes a loud noise. Why volume and truth are equated in our minds I can’t say.
I like to strip volume away. When I release Wallace’s Notes in 2022, you better believe you will be underwhelmed by the thud factor, but that’s the whole point. You could just study from Cecil’s if you want more. In this case, we’re going for less. Much much less.
That’s exactly the philosophy I used to create The Final Step.
2,000 questions. Just the stuff you need.
From today until midnight on 12/15, you’ll get two copies shipped to you when you buy one. That way you can give one away to someone special.
Click here:
Brian Wallace