Transcript: Lazy as a Business Model

Rob Long longs for the days when the town's 'suits were smart and a little bit evil'

This is Rob Long with Martini Shot for The Ankler.

A very rich investor once told me the secret to becoming a very rich investor. In my experience, very rich people are more than willing to hold forth on their theories and systems for getting — and keeping — their riches. You don't even have to ask them. Just glance casually in their direction and you'll find yourself cornered, and then treated to a play-by-play account of every smart financial move they ever made.

That's the very rich for you. The very, very rich, on the other hand, tend to keep to themselves.

My merely rich friend, though, had one interesting insight. Always invest, he told me, in a product or service that assumes that people are, deep down, extremely lazy. Never put your money into something that makes people work harder.