Why This Is One of My Favourite Books Ever

In 1960, two men made a bet.

It was only $50 but thank heavens they did because hundreds of millions of children would be uplifted and entertained as a result.

The first man, Bennett Cerf, was the founder of publishing firm, Random House. The second man was Theo Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss.

Cerf made a bet with Dr. Seuss that he couldn’t write an entertaining children’s book using 50 different words or less. But it couldn’t just be any book, it had to be something that would make their minds dance with wonderment and excitement. Something they couldn’t put down.

With equal excitement, Dr. Seuss took on the challenge and won, handsomely.

The result was a little book called ‘Green Eggs and Ham’, and since its publication, it has sold more than 200 million copies, making it one of the best- selling children’s books in history.

And here’s the reason why I love this book…

The Power of Constraints
Green Eggs and Ham tipped convention on its head.

Dr. Seuss achieved this by mastering the Power of Constraints. [1] He demonstrated that setting limits for yourself (or having them imposed!) sometimes delivers better results than having endless options, or an open cheque book. That resourcefulness is more valuable than resources.

The great paradox of constraints is they can be very liberating. They have the power to transform and transcend what we once thought was possible.

Mothers especially know this – more tasks, less time.

Zero Capital Gain
Just after we moved office earlier this year, a fellow came to see me to discuss our ‘Milk and Muscle Theory’ in greater detail.

In a sentence, I explained that the Milk and Muscle strategy relies on zero capital gain. i.e. it doesn’t rely on markets going up or asset prices appreciating in value to make an investor wealthy or to fund a retiree’s retirement.

Understandably, this made the poor blokes head spin a bit and so he probed further and asked why I would do that?

Simple answer is this. For the past ten years the stock market has tracked sideways, it hasn’t recovered to its previous GFC highs. Therefore, if you were an investor, especially a superannuant, relying on stock prices to appreciate to fund your retirement, you would have been extremely frustrated. Constrained.

Milk and Muscle (M&M) shows a client how to retire with much greater certainty (income) without relying on markets going up. In fact, by following the M&M strategy, a client can still double the size of their asset base every ten years even if the market falls^.

Homemade Green Eggs and Ham
If the stock market had of recovered since the GFC like the Sydney property market has recently, life would have been so much easier for Suncow.

However, we would’ve been much worse off as well. If we were never constrained by a market going nowhere, we would’ve been starved of our own Green Eggs and Ham.

But thankfully we were because the markets Green Eggs and Ham became our Milk and Muscle.

The Size of Your Canvas
Dr. Seuss was given 50 words. That was the size of his canvas. His job was to see what kind of picture he could paint with those words. [2]

There are a lot of authors who would’ve complained about writing a book with only 50 words, but here was one author who took the tools he had available and made a work of art instead.

We all have constraints in our lives. The limitations just determine the size of the canvas we have to work with. What you paint on it is up to you.

Have a great weekend!

Adam

^ Assumes money is invested inside super at an average yield of 5.5%, which is not too hard to do at the moment.

Source [1,2] jamesclear.com