Sh** Happens: Succeeding In Spite of Obstacles

by Early To Rise (04/11/2007)

Issue #2013

  • WEALTHY: How to get deadbeat customers to pay up (Suzanne Richardson)
  • HEALTHY: Correct this exercise mistake, lose more weight (Michael Masterson)
  • WISE: Charles Lummis on being in charge of your life

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:

  • Why you shouldn’t try to "overcome" your handicaps (Robert Ringer)
  • Let the ideas for best-selling products start pouring in! (Bob Bly)
  • It’s Good to Know… about women in government
  • Add "purdah" to your vocabulary

== Highly Recommended ==

Get Business Ideas That No One Else Thinks Of

"I want to start my own business, but I don’t know what to sell."

It’s something we hear all the time here at Early to Rise. Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to find your own market niche…

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You can find at least 100 more powerful methods for developing product ideas in ETR’s Direct Marketing Masters Edition program. If radically increasing your income with a successful home business sounds appealing to you, read more about it here

- Patrick Coffey

Unscrew Your Life: How to Get What’s Owed You

By Suzanne Richardson

Weeks have passed since you billed your client for your consulting services. Your mortgage payment is waiting, your kid needs a new jacket… and you’re still waiting for him to pay up.

You’re screwed, right? Either you eat the cost or you gear up for small claims court.

Not so fast. Larry Fredericks, creator of the Street Smart Business Program, says you first need to find out why the "Slow Payer" isn’t paying.

In most cases, a delayed payment means your client or customer just doesn’t have enough money to pay everyone he owes. "But if there’s another reason," says Larry, "if, for example, he’s not satisfied with the work you did, you may be able to quickly remedy the problem. And once you’ve taken care of his concerns, he’ll usually be happy to write you a check."

If the problem is a lack of money, you’ve got to try to get yourself to the top of your customer’s list of creditors. That doesn’t mean leaving angry messages on his answering machine or making threats.

"If you antagonize a Slow Payer," says Larry, "he’ll have even less interest in paying you." Instead, professionally and politely contact him (regularly) via phone, e-mail, or snail mail, reminding him of the terms he agreed to and the possible adverse consequences of not paying (like a black mark on his credit report, a cancelled account, or repossession of merchandise). Once you’ve made the consequences clear - in a non-threatening manner - there’s a good chance your Slow Payer will move you to the top of his "pay now" list.

If you still don’t get your money, then consider hiring a collection agency. Keep in mind, though, that it’s going to cost you, so it may not be worth the trouble. Collection agencies often take a large chunk of any payment they track down.

[Ed. Note: Now you can outfox, outwit, outmaneuver, outthink, and outsmart all of life's most annoying people and situations, every time. Just pick up your free copy of ETR's Unscrew Yourself e-book and get 223 pages of our most practical insider information.]

"I am bigger than anything that can happen to me. All these things, sorrow, misfortune and suffering, are outside my door. I am in the house and I have the key."

Charles Lummis

Sh** Happens!

By Robert Ringer

At least once or twice a week, I meet someone or see someone on television who really inspires me. A few weeks ago, my inspiration came from a remarkable, upbeat young woman by the name of Cara Fortunado.

I met Cara at a high school where my son was playing in a basketball tournament. After his game, we happened to pass the open door to her office and peeked in. She was watching a game on television, and invited us to join her.

As the game progressed, we struck up a conversation with Cara about her life and career. She told us that she coached the girls’ basketball team for the middle school.

"I sometimes get so mad at the girls when they don’t follow my instructions, it drives me crazy," she said. "So I get out on the floor with them and try to show them how I want them to move. But it gets frustrating because I have to drag this darn thing around with me." She pulled up her right pant leg and slapped a leg that was made of metal.

I asked her how she lost her leg, and she explained that it happened in a freak accident in California about five years ago. She was standing in the wrong place when a huge truck started rolling down a hill. She got caught between that truck and another one behind her, and the next thing she knew she was, as she described it, "rolling end over end downhill."

When she got to the bottom of the hill, she thought she had escaped by the skin of her teeth, because she didn’t feel any pain. But when she checked herself out, she found that her right leg was missing. She later discovered that the leg was still lodged between the two trucks at the top of the hill.

Today, Cara displays an incredibly enthusiastic, high-energy personality, and clearly has a zest for life. As she put it, "Hey, sh** happens in life. When I wake up every morning, the first thing I think of is how lucky I am to be alive."

We all hear and see these kinds of stories every day - which is good, because we need to continually be reminded of how lucky we are. With few exceptions, no matter how heavy your burdens, you can always find people who have much heavier crosses to bear. Socrates summed it up well when he said, "If all our misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own."

Remember, a handicap is anything that makes achievement more difficult. Which means that everyone has handicaps - physical or otherwise. But just because something is difficult doesn’t mean it’s impossible.

Put another way, you don’t necessarily overcome your handicaps. That’s usually not possible. The object is to succeed in spite of your handicaps. And that is possible.

As just one example, a fellow by the name of Pete Grey played Major League Baseball back in the forties, albeit briefly, with one arm. In the minor leagues, he hit .333 one year, had five homeruns, tied a league record by stealing 68 bases, and was named the Southern Association’s most valuable player.

What are your handicaps?

Lower-than-average IQ?

Lack of education?

A poverty-stricken childhood?

Do yourself a favor and make an honest list of your handicaps. Then factor them into your planning… and make a commitment to succeed in spite of them.

[Ed. Note: Take a gigantic step toward achieving all your personal and professional goals - faster than you ever imagined - with Robert Ringer's best-selling personal-development program. And sign up for his Voice of Sanity e-letter here.]

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Find out now if you qualify for this inner circle.

Notes From Michael Masterson’s Blog: Losing Weight Slowly

Dr. Sears was in here the other day for a meeting. He took my body-fat measure. I was worried that I would make a poor showing since I’d only lost about three or four pounds in the weeks that have passed since I agreed to join him in his PACE program fat-loss challenge.]

As it turns out, I did pretty well. My body fat dropped from 29 percent to 22 percent. I accomplished that by watching my eating and working out really hard twice a day.

Dr. Sears did even better. He lost 14 pounds of total body weight (as opposed to my three to four pounds) and eight percentage points of body fat. But what’s astonishing is that he did it without changing his diet and by exercising only a fraction of the time I did.

Naturally, I wanted to know what he had been doing. "Just the PACE program," he said.

"If we’re using the same exercise regimen, then how come I didn’t lose as much?"

"Because you weren’t really doing the PACE program," he told me.

It was embarrassing but true. I had only skimmed his book, thinking I already understood it. As a result, I had given myself a very challenging interval training program.

"There is a big difference between interval training and PACE," he told me. "When you train in intervals, you are really training your heart and lungs for endurance and you are teaching your body to store fat."

That didn’t make sense to me, so he explained further.

"Interval training consists of high- and medium-intensity spurts of exercise. This means your heart never has a chance to come back to a relaxed rate of pumping. Unless you get your heart down to within 20 beats of your resting heart rate, you aren’t really training it to get stronger nor are you training your body to burn carbohydrates for the energy it needs.

"When you do PACE correctly, you will see your heart rate actually increase for a little while after you stop your exertion. This is the sign that your heart has been working beyond its normal capacity. That’s a good thing, because the heart is a muscle - and, like all muscles, it will get stronger only after it’s been challenged to work harder than it is normally capable of."

When I told this to my trainer, he scoffed. "It’s impossible for your heart rate to go up after you stop exercising," he told me, and gave me 10 reasons why it couldn’t. But when we tested it, following Dr. Sears’ recommendations exactly, my heart rate indeed jumped by 10 beats after I stopped sprinting.

So this week, for the first time, I will be incorporating the REAL PACE program into my training. I expect to see a difference by the end of the week. I’ll keep you posted.

[Ed. Note: To read more of Michael's unedited, uncensored (and sometimes unexpected) ruminations, check out his blog here.

And learn how you can be part of an exclusive group of 25 to 50 ambitious businesspeople that Michael will be leading through an elite 5-day program that can help you dramatically increase the profitability of your business here.]

Get Your Customers to Come Up with Product Ideas

By Bob Bly

Keeping your finger on the pulse of your market isn’t always easy. But knowing what your customers want is the best way to come up with profitable products and services.

Always put your name, address, e-mail address, and even your phone number in every information product you produce, and encourage feedback from your readers. Many of them will become advocates and fans, calling, writing, and establishing a dialogue with you.

Welcome this. Not only can you solve their problems and answer their inquiries by recommending other information products of yours that they might want to buy, but their questions can give you ideas for new products.

Most of my back-end reports were written to answer specific questions readers asked me repeatedly. Instead of having the same e-mail or telephone conversations over and over again, I can simply sell them a report that contains the answers they seek. It saves time and generates revenue.

[Ed. Note: Learn how to market your business quickly, cheaply, and easily with ETR's Direct Marketing Masters Edition. And get free tips for doubling your response rates with Bob Bly's Direct Response Letter (bly.com/reports/).]

It’s Good to Know: About Women in Government

35 governments around the world have had a woman as president or prime minister in the 20th and 21st centuries: the Philippines, Argentina, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Bulgaria, Burundi, Canada, Chile, Dominica, Finland, Georgia, Great Britain, Guinea, Guyana, Haiti, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Latvia, Liberia, Lithuania, Malta, Nicaragua, Norway, Pakistan, Panama, Poland, Portugal, Rwanda, San Marino, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, and Turkey.

(Source: About.com)

== Highly Recommended ==

Plug into Your Natural-Born Genius for All the Money-Making Ideas You’ll Ever Need

I don’t care if you think you’re not an "idea person" or if you truly believe you’re just not "creative." Because I’m going to introduce you to a revolutionary new approach to coming up with ideas can turn your brain into a cash machine the spews out a never-ending supply of money-making ideas.

Most people rely on luck, hoping great ideas or solutions will just come to them.

Instead, you can discover a simple, step-by-step technique that will give you a guaranteed source of powerful ideas and solutions to call on any time you need one.

Here’s how to get started today!

- Patrick Coffey

Word to the Wise: Purdah

"Purdah" (PUR-duh) - Persian for "curtain/veil" - is the system of shielding women from the sight of men or strangers in Hindu and Muslim communities. The word is used figuratively for a state of seclusion or concealment.

Example (as used by Sinead Lynch in the London Times): "The big evolution is that when trousers are low cut, shirts and, rather curiously, jackets are tucked into them. The belly button has finally gone into purdah, so it wasn’t all bad news last week."

[Ed. Note: Become a more persuasive writer and speaker ... build your self-confidence and intellect ... increase your attractiveness to others ... just by spending 10 VERY enjoyable minutes a day with ETR's new Words to the Wise CD Library.]

Michael Masterson
Copyright ETR, LLC, 2007

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