Join Jason Hartman and co-founder and director of Neuro Leadership Institute, Dr. David Rock, as they explore conceptual issues of the brain as it pertains to work, such as focus, managing distractions, why our brains feel taxed, and how to maximize mental resources.

Dr. Rock explains how being able to get a mental picture makes it easier to process and hold information, but when you can’t come up with a mental picture, you’re more likely to lose your train of thought or have more difficulty retaining connections, causing the brain more stress.  Dr. Rock also discusses optimal times for scheduling work, meetings, and undisturbed workspace.  He stresses that creative work needs a lot of space in the brain, as well as a lot of quiet. “Creative work first, urgent/important second, and everything else after,” says Dr. Rock.

Dr. Rock also shares the many types of quirks of the brain, such as a blue room with high ceilings increases creativity, or changing rooms actually makes it difficult to access memories formed in the previous room. His suggestion is that people need to create their own workspace.  Additionally, he talks about the unconscious and conscious brain and how breakthrough moments tend to happen when trying to solve a difficult problem.  The quiet brain is most important for solving problems. Dr. Rock delves into the five domains that the brain is always tracking. It is very important that we don’t get a “threat” response in any of these domains because they activate the brain’s pain network, leading to defensiveness.

Many demographic changes are taking place, with the Baby Boomers, a large generation, retiring, and Generation Y, a larger generation than the Baby Boomers, consuming at record levels.  Join Jason Hartman and demographer, Ken Gronbach, as they discuss this upcoming “storm.” 

Ken describes Generation Y as an exciting generation, where the United States is the only country with this large of a group at the present time, and that it is very important that businesses recognize and anticipate their markets as Generation Y grows up. Generation X is more of a mystery generation because of its smaller size, which makes it less of a valuable market.  Ken believes that the United States’ best days are ahead as people bail out of the European Union. He also believes that China’s economic future is bleak due to artificial tampering with the population, with demographic numbers showing China in trouble economically within ten years, struggling to feed themselves within 15 years.

Ken shows how the housing market is being held hostage by big bank foreclosures and why this log jam will soon correct and precipitate a restoration of the United States economy. Ken also talks about how manufacturing will return to the United States with a vengeance because the United States is the only industrialized nation with a huge young highly skilled workforce.

Join Jason Hartman as he opens with some thoughts on buying far below construction or replacement costs sharing an email from Allstate Insurance, then a discussion of an Orange County Register article citing Marcus & Millichap's 2012 National Apartment Report. You'll hear Michael LeBeouf, author of the NY Times best-selling book, "The Greatest Management Principle in the World", where he discusses human behavior and how "What Gets Rewarded, Gets Repeated." In the news: Underwater borrowers eligible for settlement write-downs.

A calculation by a Brookings Institution economist narrowed down a pool of underwater homeowners to 500,000 who could qualify for principal reduction from the $25 billion mortgage settlement. Using the parameters of the settlement, Ted Gayer found just 5% of the nation's 11.1 million underwater borrowers could get the principal reduced on their mortgage, first reported by The Washington Post.

About $10 billion of the settlement, in the form of credits, will go toward principal write-downs made by the five banks. Only homeowners delinquent on their mortgages are eligible. Gayer eliminated others according to underlying requirements, including Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac loans and homes not owner-occupied. It's a rough calculation, Gayer warned, and he made some assumptions in the process. He eliminated any loans not held on the banks' balance sheets, as well as any with a second loan. Mortgage bondholders may not take kindly to principal write-downs, he said.

Whether you’re trying to get a raise at your job, solve a relationship problem, or deal with a stubborn child, negotiating is a daily part of our lives, and every human interaction is affected by emotion and logic or rationalization. Jason Hartman interviews Stuart Diamond, the author of "Getting More: How to Negotiate to Achieve Your Goals in the Real World" on improving negotiating skills and interactions with others in order to “get more.” Stuart stresses the importance of making the human connection and finding the pictures in people’s heads, knowing them better in order to better meet their needs, which gives a person a more competitive edge and adds tremendous wealth to any deal.  

Emotions play a huge part in all interactions. “Emotions destroy negotiations because they distract people from their goals,” says Stuart. When people get emotional, they stop listening, and it becomes a priority to find out a person’s emotional temperature before proceeding on any deal. Stuart talks about key points in how people should treat one another, stating how people today have a lack of trust in one another and have a tendency to demonize one another rather than using simple solutions to solve conflicts. “Fighting is the last choice; not the first choice,” explains Stuart.

Stuart Diamond has taught and advised on negotiation and cultural diversity to corporate and government leaders in more than 40 countries, including in Eastern Europe, former Soviet Republics, China, Latin America, the Middle East, Canada, South Africa and the United States. He holds an M.B.A. with honors from Wharton Business School, ranked #1 globally by The Financial Times where he is currently a professor from practice. For more than 90% of the semesters over the past 15 years his negotiation course has been the most popular in the school based on the course auction, and he has won multiple teaching awards. He has taught negotiation at Harvard Law School, from which he holds a law degree and is a former Associate Director of the Harvard Negotiation Project. He has directed a negotiation consulting firm in Cambridge, MA.

Broadcasting from Washington DC, Jason Hartman interviews financial planner, Randy Luebke on an amazing client case study of how Jason and Randy helped a client turn one property into a sizable, diversified, high cash-flow income property portfolio that will create a lasting legacy for generations to come. You'll learn more about the 1031 tax-deferred exchange strategy and much more.

Prior to the case study, Jason addresses various current events including; the gold house price ratio, why you should not be investing in foreign markets like Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Belize, Panama, etc., median priced housing at the highest affordability since 1971, the year Richard Nixon took us off the gold standard completely creating fiat money devaluation and massive price inflation and several other issues.