Category Archives for "Entrepreneurship"

The smaller the house you build, the more creative you need to be. One of my daughters is moving into her own home that is just 192 sq ft. She’ll live right next door to a small workshop (about 350 sq ft) where she will design and produce high fashion custom clothing for glamorous women […]

At the beginning of this pandemic, folks asked me what I thought would happen to real estate values. I believed office and shopping mall valuations would fall out of bed while industrial and residential would hold their own. The latter because people always need a place to live; the former because I thought nations (including […]

I can’t believe that other landowners/property owners haven’t figured out how to repurpose their retail space to live-work-play-make spaces, all at grade. There is demand for these types of spaces from gigpreneurs who, for example, want to work in a street-facing studio and live behind their store, all on one level (ie, the ground floor). […]

Over the Christmas holidays, I was rereading The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne. I read it when I was a kid and enjoyed it, so I thought I’d see what I think of it now. It’s about five Union soldiers who escape Confederate captivity during the US Civil War in a balloon that is swept […]

Main Street Makeovers He must have received his law degree in the snail-mail. The guy didn’t know the difference between foreclosure and power-of-sale. Why is this even important? Foreclosure versus Power of Sale Because I advise a number of funds (REITs, MICs, Private Equity Funds, Mortgage Trusts, Mutual Fund Trusts, individual private lenders such as […]

[Excerpt from Gadgets and Gizmos—how to tell if you own a real business or just an expensive hobby  available from, https://brucemfirestone.com/product/gadgets-and-gizmos/] I realize this is a somewhat self-serving headline since I am a real estate investment and business coach and my spouse is a California-based CTI[1]-trained life coach, but don’t take my word for it—listen […]

[Here’s a book review I wrote in 2010 that is still relevant today (circa September 2020), so I’ve now added it to my blog, Prof Bruce] For the first three quarters of my advance copy of the book Delivering Happiness (Hachette Books, June 2010) by Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh (pronounced ‘Shay’), I felt like this […]

Kind of a nice problem to have, n’est-ce pas? Well, this is the challenge that Apple is currently facing seeing as it is sitting on a mountain of cash that most of us can only dream about. CNBC reported in Q1 2020 that: Apple now has $207.06 billion cash on hand, according to the company’s […]

I’m sure there are many people who work from home and enjoy that experience. I am not one of them unless forced to by, say, for example, Covid-19 or because of economic constraints. I had a home office for 14-months in the mid-2000s and came to really dislike it for a number of reasons, the […]

Book review of Pitch Anything, an innovative method for presenting, persuading and winning the deal by Oren Klaff, https://youtu.be/0ihMwKc2Sow With insights from Bruce M Firestone, PhD Plus, how a yoga teacher went from earning just over $30k a year to more than $100k Plus, how Prof Bruce successfully pitched the NHL for an expansion franchise […]

[This is an excerpt from Don’t Back Down, the real story of the founding of the NHL’s Ottawa Senators and why big leagues count written by Sens founder Bruce M Firestone, PhD, available from, https://brucemfirestone.com/product/dont-back-down/] You have to laugh at the expectations of leadership in the US where they expect their leaders to have a […]

A client of mine asks, “Hi Bruce, what are your thoughts on real estate and the economy over the next 12-24 months?” Here’s what I answered: No one really knows what will happen, but in my view, there will be many opportunities for people with cash. I suspect several trillion dollars of real estate in […]