Forbes® Best Business Mistakes: How Today's Top Business Leaders Turned Missteps into Success

Chapter 28. HERB GREENBERG

Columnist at Fortune, the Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch, TheStreet.com

Commentator on CNBC's Mad Money, panelist on Fox News Channel's TheStreet.com

Co-founder of GreenbergMeritz Research & Analytics

I'll never write a book," Herb Greenberg tells me. In fact, he has told me that maybe 50 times. "Everybody writes a book. They put their heart and soul into it and then it sells five thousand copies. It's not worth the trouble."

As a first-time author, I'm sure hoping he's wrong. But even more than that, I hope he changes his mind and writes a book, because a lot of people could make—or save—some serious money because of what he knows.

If you have watched any business television over the past 15 years, or read any business publications for about 30 years, chances are that you've seen Herb's face or read his words somewhere. I met him in the late 1990s when he was a frequent guest on CNBC. (I'm happy to still call him a friend. My wife and I—before our kids—once enjoyed a Christmas-day dinner at his house with his family. How many people can say they had Christmas dinner at the Greenbergs'?)

During a period of time in which virtually everybody was ecstatic over this newfangled thing called the Internet, a never-ending stream of stock analysts would come on to tout the latest dot-com idea where you could get rich by taking an investment plunge with this or that new company. Herb refused to join the party. He never drank from the spiked punch bowl.

In fact, he was ...