Your Special Gift
Issue #2097
- WEALTHY: 3 ways to improve your credit score (Michael Masterson)
- HEALTHY: Keep your eyes healthy by adding 2 ingredients to your diet (Dr. Al Sears)
- WISE: Ben Franklin on taking advantage of your abilities
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
- Protect yourself from the "tsunami" of trivia and B.S. that is cutting into your profits (Robert Ringer)
- Turn every ad into a goldmine (Katie Yeakle)
- It’s Good to Know… about spear phishing
- Add "coffer" to your vocabulary
He’d Have Called Them Crazy - Or Worse!
With the Internet, it’s now possible to spend no more than a few dollars, write a couple of very basic ads, and have instant access to millions of potential customers all in a matter of minutes.
If anyone had told Jim Sheridan he could bank thousands in just 24 hours… without any product of his own… without spending a penny on getting it or promoting it, he’d have justifiably said they were nuts.
But Jim made a decision that he would overcome his skeptical nature and give it a go. Boy, is he glad he did! That one deal alone banked him $187,296 in one day.
Take a look at how Jim brought in over $187,000 in a single day!
- Patrick Coffey
How to Improve Your Credit Score
I never paid any attention to my credit score - except once. I was applying for a mortgage, and was forced to document - over and over again - why I didn’t pay for the pet travel cage I bought that broke open in the belly of a plane and almost killed my dog. I vowed that I would never again be in that humiliating position - and I haven’t. I got rich. And since then, I haven’t ever had to be beholden to irrational bank bureaucrats.
That’s my recommendation to you: Get rich and finance your own loans. Until you can do that, you will be a victim of your credit score every time you need a loan for a car or a mortgage.
For now, it’s a good idea to know what your credit score is. You can find out by ordering reports from each of the three credit bureaus: TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian. You can get all three reports in one shot for less than $20 by going to AnnualCreditReport.com. The higher your credit score, the more likely it is that a lender will consider you to be a "good risk."
If you discover that your credit score needs help, here’s some advice on how to improve it from Sandra Block, writing for USA Today:
- Pay off your credit card balance. Your credit score is based heavily on the ratio of debt you carry versus available credit. If your total debt is $50,000 and your total credit card limits are $100,000, you have a "credit utilization" rate of 50 percent. The lower your credit utilization rate, the better. So pay off as much debt as you can.
- Don’t close unused accounts. "If you are seeking to avoid temptation, cut up your credit cards, but don’t close the accounts," Block says. "Closing accounts will reduce the amount of credit cards you have available, thus increasing your credit utilization."
- Don’t open new accounts. Even though it would increase your credit limit and thus improve your credit utilization rate, credit agencies view recent account openings as a sign of financial weakness, and downgrade your overall credit score accordingly.
If, after reviewing your credit report, you see a mistake, dispute it. Block points out: "Credit bureaus are required by law to investigate disputed items, usually within 30 days, according to the Federal Trade Commission."
"Hide not your talents. They for use were made. What’s a sundial in the shade?"
Benjamin Franklin
Your Special Gift
Do you get tired of being interrupted by phone calls? By the ding-dong of your e-mail program? By "crises" that need your immediate attention?
Do you become irritated by people who don’t get back to you when they say they will? Or who don’t do what they say they’re going to do? Or who act as though your time is a public charity?
Do you get frustrated by accounting issues? Or travel scheduling problems? Or computer breakdowns?
In summation, do you get tired of being distracted by a tsunami of trivia and B.S. that crashes through your office walls, the Internet, and your telephone each and every day in a seemingly relentless effort to prevent you from focusing - with total and intense concentration - on the projects that have the potential to put real, live cash into your coffers?
I thought about all this when a business acquaintance recently sent me a great quote, which I’d like to share with you here. However, I first want to make certain to credit Bill Wallace, who is purported to be the source of the quote. The only problem is that not only do I not know who Bill Wallace is (24.7 million listings on Google make it pretty obvious that there are a lot of Bill Wallaces), neither does the person who sent me the quote!
Sorry about that, Bill. Anyway, wherever you may be, please accept my thanks for the great insight.
Here’s my slightly edited version of Wallace’s words: The biggest challenge you have in business is getting out from under the never-ending wave of trivia and B.S. long enough to do something profitable - even if it’s only one thing a day.
Legendary management consultant Peter Drucker put "profitable projects" under the umbrella of innovation and marketing. "Innovation and marketing"? My preference would be "product-development and marketing." Either way, the longer I live, the more my firsthand experience convinces me that financial success is directly proportional to the amount of time you spend on projects that bring money through the front door.
How, then, do you rid yourself of the trivia and B.S. in your life so you can focus on moneymaking projects?
Realistically, you can never totally eliminate it. But you can reduce it, bit by bit - daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly. And to do that, you have to have the self-discipline to make a conscious effort to pull away from it.
How? Through delegation - which means becoming adept at outsourcing and hiring good people. However, delegation works only to the extent that your vendors and employees understand that you don’t want to be involved in the details, but that you do expect results - and that you expect those results to be exactly what you asked for.
Once you start making money, the wisest investment you can make is to hire great people. It takes people - good people - to advance to a serious income level.
And when you do take people on board, you should train them to understand that their number one job is to protect you from trivial matters and B.S. Any employee who can’t provide that protection needs to be replaced as quickly as possible.
Again, what I’m talking about here is understanding that your financial success is directly proportional to the amount of time you spend on projects that produce income. And in most cases, they are projects that utilize your "special gift." By special gift, I am referring to that one thing you do better than anything else - perhaps better than anyone else.
Each of us has a special gift, but all too often we overlook it. And the reason we overlook it is because we tend to take for granted that which comes easy to us.
Learn to appreciate yourself and focus on that one thing that you do extraordinarily well. This requires you to stop worrying about what everyone around you is doing. They have their gifts, you have yours. Don’t be greedy and try to horn in on their territory.
Nurture and make use of your gift until it becomes a cash cow for you. Then keep right on going by nurturing and employing it ever more efficiently.
Tomorrow, when you walk into your office, consciously focus on your special gift to the exclusion of everything else - even seemingly important matters. Make a commitment not to work on problems until the end of the day. Your freshest hours should be reserved for applying your special gift to opportunities that are all around you, because that’s where the money is.
Trust me on this. It works.
[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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The Secret of the Gold Nuggets
By Katie Yeakle
There’s a powerhouse marketing secret that’s so versatile you can use it to sell any product. This secret works like gangbusters on the Web, in sales letters, and in space ads.
In the copywriting program Michael Masterson helped develop for American Writers & Artists Inc. (AWAI), he calls it "the Secret of the Gold Nuggets."
Gold nuggets are bits of real, useful information you give away in your ad to hook potential customers and keep them reading the ad from start to finish - which makes them more likely to respond to your offer.
For instance…
- Let’s say you’re selling sweaters. Instead of just talking about the sweater’s soft wool, pleasing cut or color, go one step further. Maybe each sweater contains alpaca wool from the mountains of Peru. Then you can reveal how alpacas are gentle animals about the size of a pony. They’re so treasured they are shorn only once a year, and each one can produce just enough wool for eight sweaters.
- If you’re selling stock or an investment service, there’s a wealth of useful "nuggets" out there. For instance, less than 20 years ago you could have bought one share of each stock in the Dow Jones Industrial Average for about the price of an ounce of gold. Today, it costs 20 times that!
- Or maybe you’re selling bottled spring water. Instead of only talking about the water’s purity, you could mention that over a billion people don’t have enough clean drinking water. That, in fact, more people die of dehydration every year than from cancer and AIDS!
Getting the picture? Best of all, finding gold nuggets couldn’t be easier…
Simply act like a miner and dig. You’re looking for useful, interesting facts that not everybody knows. And since you understand your product and field better than anyone, it won’t take long to find dozens of "gold nuggets" for use in all of your marketing efforts.
[Ed. Note: Katie Yeakle is Executive Director of American Writers & Artists Inc. (AWAI). Learning how to use "gold nuggets" to hook potential customers is one of more than five dozen sales secrets you'll find in Michael Masterson’s Accelerated Program for Six-Figure Copywriting.]
Prevent Vision Loss With 2 Simple Nutrients
By Al Sears, MD
Modern science doesn’t yet know exactly what causes age-related macular degeneration (AMD) - but a new study implicates two dietary deficiencies.
Working with a group of people between the ages of 60 and 80, the study - sponsored by the National Institutes of Health National Eye Institute and published in Archives of Ophthalmology - found that those who ate more than two medium servings of fish per week (and, consequently, more omega-3 fatty acids) were least likely to have the disease.
The researchers then split the study subjects into five groups, based on the level of vitamin D in their blood - and found that those in the group with the highest vitamin D levels had a 40 percent lower risk of early AMD than those in the group with the lowest vitamin D levels.
The best way to get both omega-3s and vitamin D is with cod liver oil. You also get both in eggs. I mix raw eggs and a tablespoon of cod liver oil into a protein shake just about every day.
[Ed. Note: Dr. Sears is a practicing physician and an expert on heart health. Learn how to apply his winning heart-healthy strategies in The Doctor's Heart Cure.]
It’s Good to Know: Spear Phishing
Hi, this is Fred in the IT department. We’ve noticed some problems with your user account. Please send me your username and password.
If you got an e-mail like this from someone in your company whose name you recognize, you would probably assume it was legit. But that is what cyber-criminals using a tactic called "spear phishing" are counting on. Spear phishers try to gain access to an organization’s entire computer network by sending authentic-looking e-mails to trick recipients into revealing access information. Typical targets include employees of small financial institutions and small businesses - people who may be familiar with other online scams but aren’t expecting this line of attack.
(Source: PC World)
15 Minutes A Day To Personal Freedom…
Just think, reaching your goals this year could make the difference…
Between retiring with just enough to get by… or with a millionaire’s portfolio…
Between having a job you dread going to every day…. or the job you’ve always dreamed about…
But now it’s July and the year is half over? Is there still time?
- Charlie Byrne
Word to the Wise: Coffer
A "coffer" (KAW-fur) - from the Latin for "basket" - is a box or chest, especially one for valuables. The word has come to mean funds or financial resources in general. Example (as used by Robert Ringer today): "Do you get tired of being distracted by a tsunami of trivia and B.S. that crashes through your office walls, the Internet, and your telephone each and every day in a seemingly relentless effort to prevent you from focusing - with total and intense concentration - on the projects that have the potential to put real, live cash into your coffers?"
[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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