Creating the Life You Want With a Business You Love
Issue #2036
- WEALTHY: Can you have success and a balanced life? (Justin Ford)
- HEALTHY: 4 proven ways to lower your risk of cancer (Jon Herring)
- WISE: Tom Seeley on wealth
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
- 3 ways to take your customers with you when you travel (Michael Masterson)
- Turn your local library into an impromptu office (Bob Bly)
- It’s Fun to Know… about DVD-detecting dogs
- Add "ad infinitum" to your vocabulary
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…
Let’s say, for example, you’re interested in selling nutritional supplements, but you’ve done the research and found a ton of competition out there. What to do?
Make your product unique. Come up with a formulation that has a combination of ingredients not found in the other supplements. Now you’ve got something no one is offering.
"EnerMaxx is the only supplement featuring both niaflavin and ribosome, so you’ll have more energy AND longer endurance."
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
"Wealth acquired through an insecure lifestyle that is marred by uncertainty, instability, and excessive efforts is no wealth at all."
Tom Seeley
Creating the Life You Want With a Business You Love
By Justin Ford
We started our day with a eulogy. Actually, it was more like 100 eulogies.
I’m at Steve Cook’s Flipping Homes Bootcamp in Baltimore. Yesterday, Steve opened this five-day training event by asking attendees to write their own eulogies: "What would you like people to say about you when you’ve shuffled off this mortal coil? Is that how you’re living your life now? If not, you need to make a change."
Steve Cook made a change in his professional life nearly 10 years ago. That’s when he put a failed restaurant business behind him and began to wholesale houses. He chose wholesaling because he had no money and his credit was shot. And with wholesaling, you can get properties under contract with virtually no money out of pocket - and sell them before you even have to close.
Steve started out as a "birddog" - finding deals for other, established investors. He did 80 deals in his first two years and acquired more experience in that time than most investors acquire in a lifetime. But, for all that activity, he didn’t make a great deal of money. He averaged just a couple of thousand dollars per deal. Not bad… but these days he works less and makes a great deal more.
Steve now averages a couple of deals a month, but at the rate of $20,000 to $50,000 for each property he "flips." And he has built up his own network of birddogs and ready buyers, so he gets those results by putting in just 20 to 25 hours of work a week.
Weekends are for his family and church. He works Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays from 9:00 or 10:00 a.m. to 3:00. Wednesdays, he reserves for his wife. And every weekday, he makes sure he’s home by the time his daughter gets back from school.
Overall, Steve has bought and sold more than 350 houses in the last nine years. At the Bootcamp this week, he is trying to help attendees avoid the mistakes he made in his early years and achieve success with a balanced life that includes time for family and personal pursuits.
Steve insists that the key to achieving this golden combination - work you love and a lifestyle that’s not all work - is to begin with the right planning.
Steve took attendees through a goal-setting program specifically designed for real estate investors. But first he explained that making progress with any goal-setting program usually requires you to give up some bad habits - and he pointed out that it’s much easier to replace a bad habit with another habit than to just "give it up."
When you aim to give up a time-wasting (and perhaps personally destructive) habit your best chance for succeeding is to substitute a habit that will improve your life in some way. So, Steve said, instead of watching TV, make it a habit to read the books you wanted to read, do the exercises you wanted to do, take the home-study courses you wanted to take, walk the dogs like you promised you would. Instead of indulging in too much junk food or drinking in your off hours, get high on planning and building your new business, volunteering for organizations you always thought were worthwhile, spending more time with family and friends.
It’s a simple idea, but a good way to make sure you don’t create a void when you give up a habit that will only be filled by another counter-productive habit.
Another important idea that Steve introduced attendees to is that a good way to make your goal planning truly productive is to have someone who will keep you accountable. Once you set out your goals and your plan of action to attain those goals, you need someone who understands and respects what you are trying to accomplish - whether a fellow investor or a friend - to hold your feet to the fire.
You may say, "This week I’m going to place X number of advertisements, attend such and such network meetings, present a business plan to at least two lenders, and make at least five offers." All fine and good.
But if you have someone who knows your plan… and asks you about it at the end of each and every week… chances are much greater that you’re actually going to check off the important items on your agenda. Chances are better that you’ll actually be working your plan and regularly making progress toward your goals (and not just planning ad infinitum).
Finally, Steve took the group through an effective business plan that will set them apart from the competition when they make contact with lenders and other investors.
First, he made the distinction that your business is not you! It needs to have its own goals - goals that don’t conflict with yours. The idea is to master your business through planning… because if you don’t master your business, it can master you.
An effective business plan identifies your priorities and allows you to define - and refine on an ongoing basis - the actions that will speed you toward your goals. It includes the following elements:
- Company information
- Marketing strategy
- Implementation plan
- Profit and loss projections
- Financial plan
- Management survey
Usually, the shorter the plan is, the better it will be. A half-page for each of the above elements, plus a cover letter, should suffice.
At the end of Day One of Steve Cook’s Flipping Homes Bootcamp, attendees had defined clear goals and plans of action, personally and for their real estate businesses. They had begun to assemble business plans. And they were focused and ready to begin mastering the specific techniques of flipping homes for profit.
Today, Steve will get into those specifics by revealing why his real estate business really began to take off only after he began acting as a "full-service wholesaler." Tomorrow, I’ll tell you what that means.
[Ed. Note: To learn more about the art of flipping homes, check out Steve Cook's Special Report.]
Double-Digit Profits in the Hottest Sectors of the Market
You have a choice. You can sit back and take what the markets give you year in and year out. Or, you can take a small portion of your capital and take what you need from the markets month after month.
With an intelligent ETF trading strategy, you can profit from virtually any sector of the market as these sectors rise and fall. Now, let me show you how to leverage those small moves into double, and sometimes, triple digit profits.
Notes From Michael Masterson’s Blog: Phoning In Updates to Your Customers
As cellphones and other mobile devices get more sophisticated, new communication channels are becoming more mobile too.
Take a vacation to Africa, snap some photos of your safari, and then send them out as instant updates to family members who are keeping tabs on you by computer. Or go to an important business seminar and update your colleagues with minute-by-minute notes on what your competition is up to.
"The social networking phenomenon is leaving the confines of the personal computer," The New York Times opined recently. "Powerful new mobile devices are allowing people to send round-the-clock updates about their vacations, moods, or their latest haircut."
New gadgets, such as Twitter, Radar, and Jaiku, are being produced to appeal to young people who want instant connection with their friends. In the long run, I’ll bet, all these features will be part of every cellular phone.
There is nothing fundamentally revolutionary about this particular technology. It is a natural progression of what has been going on since the world went online. But with every new application that is added to our personal communication menus, business opportunities open up to those who are paying attention.
I haven’t thought much about the possibilities yet, but I can already imagine a few applications that might apply to the ETR community:
- When we sponsor live business-building seminars, we can update non-attending ETR readers with photos, audio, and video, along with text.
- Our investment researchers can take their readers with them when they travel to tour companies they are thinking of recommending.
- When Dr. Sears travels to Latin America, India, or Africa to investigate some new herbal remedy, he can make his readers feel like they are coming with him by posting video snippets of his encounters online.
- Michael Masterson
[Ed. Note: To read more of Michael's unedited, uncensored (and sometimes unexpected) ruminations, check out his blog here.]
Reader Feedback: "The urge to start another business is upon me."
"Thank you for Michael Masterson’s article on killing your business before it kills you.
"I started a small business three years ago, and through sheer grit, determination, and stubbornness managed to keep it afloat (barely). I finally buried my dearly departed last week. Then, in keeping with Mr. Masterson’s masterful strategy, I had an Irish wake for it! That was fun.
"Anyway, I’ve printed out this important information because the urge to start another business is upon me, and this time I’m going to pay more attention to the warning signs."
"Thank you again and again."
- Angelina Huard
Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada
[Ed. Note: How has reading ETR helped you - maybe even changed your life? Send your comments to ReaderFeedback@gmail.com. Include your name and hometown... and we may print your e-mail in a future issue.]
Conventional Cancer Treatment May Fuel the Spread of Cancer
By Jon Herring
If you have ever watched someone undergo conventional cancer treatment, particularly radiation and chemotherapy, you know how excruciating and debilitating it can be. It is truly a matter of "Let’s see if we can kill this cancer before we kill the patient."
And now another problem with these "therapies" has arisen. Researchers have long recognized that the repopulation and progression of tumors following radiotherapy, chemotherapy, and surgery is a known risk. A new study sheds some light on one reason why this may happen. Tests in mice that were infected with human breast cancer show that certain chemotherapy drugs and radiation raised levels of tumor cells in the blood and also raised levels of a signaling protein called "transforming growth factor-beta" (TGF-beta). In the experiment, this substance helped the breast cancer cells metastasize (spread) to the lungs.
In future health briefs, I will discuss the utter failure of the "war on cancer" and the ineffectiveness and risks associated with chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery. But for now, let’s focus on some of the steps that have been proven to reduce the risk of cancer in the first place:
- Exercise consistently.
- Avoid toxins and artificial ingredients, and eat a diet of whole, natural, organic foods.
- Eat a low-glycemic diet by avoiding sweets and refined carbohydrates.
- Maintain optimal vitamin D levels by enjoying time in the sun as often as possible. If you can’t do that, supplement with cod liver oil or a vitamin D3 supplement.
Instant Stress Reducer: Take Some Time Alone
By Bob Bly
Working in a bustling, chaotic office can be fun and exciting - but it can also be stressful and reduce your productivity. In the typical corporate environment, your open office door is an invitation for everyone to interrupt you, at any time, regardless of how busy you are.
When those interruptions overwhelm you, leave the office and take a few hours to work at your local library or in your dining room at home. You could even consider getting a second "secret" office.
That’s what my Uncle Max, a college professor, did. He has his regular office and a smaller office tucked away in the basement of another department’s building. Max goes there to unwind… to get away from the pressures of students, faculty meetings, and research… and to work when he needs the peace and quiet to concentrate.
[Ed. Note: Bob Bly is a popular Early to Rise columnist, self-made multi-millionaire, and the author of more than 70 books. He is also the editor of ETR's Direct Marketing Masters Edition.- a program to help you start your own successful direct-mail business.]
It’s Fun to Know: DVD-Detecting Dogs
Everyone’s heard of drug- and bomb-sniffing dogs. But dogs can sniff out software, too.
In Malaysia, two DVD-sniffing black labs have so far helped police take nearly $3.5 million worth of pirated DVDs off the streets. In a recent bust, Lucky and Flo sniffed out 150,000 discs stashed in a shop in Kuala Lumpur. Local media report that movie pirates have put a price on the dogs’ heads, leading to increased police protection.
(Source: Reuters)
Enjoy the Ultimate “Rocky Mountain High” With Early to Rise This Summer
Join us in Denver for five days this July 10th to 14th, and together we’ll start your own Internet business!
What you will learn flat-out works. None of it is hype. You will build everything you need to develop a professional, popular, and profitable REAL Internet business. When you walk out the door, you’ll be super-prepared for success in a way that very few entrepreneurs ever are, online or off.
ETR’s “Five Days in July” Internet Business-Building Conference is going to deliver success. Actually, it will OVER deliver. And your success, of course, is the bottom line. Sound good?
Okay, then let’s get going… let’s build something that WORKS… your own, REAL Internet business.
There’s absolutely no obligation, but if you are even thinking of attending of this event, I recommend in the strongest terms that you register on the Hotlist right now.
This is a hands-on event so the attendance has to be very limited. We already have over 500 names on the Hotlist and yet we expect to accept only 50 to 75 attendees. When you register on the Hotlist, you’ll immediately receive an email with more details - and you’ll also be able to ask us any questions via a brief survey form.
Register your name on the Hotlist right now.
Word to the Wise: Ad Infinitum
"Ad infinitum" (ad in-fuh-NYE-tum) is Latin for "to infinity" - in other words, having no end.
Example (as used by Justin Ford today): "If you have someone who knows your plan… and asks you about it at the end of each and every week… chances are much greater that… you’ll actually be working your plan and regularly making progress toward your goals (and not just planning ad infinitum)."
[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