Note: While reading a book whenever I come across something interesting, I highlight it on my Kindle. Later I turn those highlights into a blogpost. It is not a complete summary of the book. These are my notes which I intend to go back to later. Let’s start!

While attending a real estate seminar in Washington, D.C., in late 1978, Beal became bored and started contemplating the economics of the seminar business. Let’s see, there are 1,000 people in this room, and each paid $300 to be here: $300,000. They had to pay six speakers and one day’s rental for the auditorium. After subtracting for marketing expenses, it was all profit. He immediately ran ads in newspapers around the country, looking for former government officials who wanted to speak for pay at seminars about getting loans from the federal government. Out of several hundred responses, he found enough qualified speakers, and the National Institute for Continuing Professional Development, and its Government Loans and Loan Guarantee Program, was born. Though he had dropped out of Baylor, a friend in Waco recommended that he seek Baylor’s sponsorship. The university was expanding its professional education, and its nonprofit status could allow the NICPD to obtain a cheaper postage rate, the mass-mailing of the brochures being a significant expense. Between 1979 and 1981, Beal’s company conducted over 100 seminars, visiting just about every city in the United States with a population over 50,000. The travel burdens were so great that he needed to move to Dallas because of its better airports. He made millions in the seminar business, but shut it down after President Reagan announced the centerpiece of his plan for a smaller federal government was cutting the very programs that were the focus of the seminars.