A 5-Star Lifestyle
Issue #2106
- WEALTHY: A bad idea invented by lazy marketers (Michael Masterson)
- HEALTHY: This comfy footwear could be setting you up for serious injury (Jason Holland)
- WISE: Anne Sophie Swetchine on travel
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
- They pay you to do what? (Steenie Harvey)
- Why you might want to avoid Miami roadways (Suzanne Richardson)
- It’s Fun to Know… about "We Are the World"
- Add "nebbish" to your vocabulary
You Already Know Fortunes Are Made from Trading. The Question Is: WHAT Are "They" Trading Most? (And It’s Not Shares or Commodities!)
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The Challenge of Sticking to a Tight Budget
Success, they say, is in the margins. And in most businesses, those margins get very small. Unless you are vigilant about spending - unless you are willing to scrimp and save, nickel and dime, cut and cut again - you will almost certainly overspend your budget.
Think about this: A typical $10 million business struggles to show a million-dollar profit. That means it spends, on one thing or another, $9 million to produce a 10 percent bottom line.
Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that a third of that $9 million is spent on product cost, a third on sales and marketing, and another third on customer service. That’s roughly $3 million on each. If you overspent your product budget by a mere five percent, you’d have $150,000 less in profits at the end of the year. If you did the same with customer service and marketing, your net profit would be $550,000 instead of $1 million. You’d make about half as much overspending each expense category by only five percent.
Never think for a moment that you need to spend more to make more. That is a bad idea invented by lazy marketers. What you have to do is think more and work more and care more.
The truth is, tight budgets promote creativity, and creativity promotes profits. As Jeffrey Fox says in How to Become CEO, "Look upon a tight budget as a challenge. Find new and less-expensive ways of doing things. The corporation will be improved. You will be appreciated."
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"Travel is the frivolous part of serious lives, and the serious part of frivolous ones."
Anne Sophie Swetchine
A 5-Star Lifestyle With the Most Glamorous Job in the World
December 1988: No job, no money, and seemingly no prospects. Maybe you’d rate delving around an organic vegetable plot in western Ireland as a fantastic prospect, but not me. I can tell you that organic gardening is bloody hard work for little reward. Rain… mud… frostbitten toes. Slugs… snails… rabbits. The end result? Lettuces and cabbages that resemble lace curtains.
Today: The most glamorous job in the world, enough money to give me a very comfortable lifestyle, and the prospect (no, the certainty) of expenses-paid trips to China, Estonia, Barcelona, Malaysia, and the Cape Verde Islands.
That’s my upcoming itinerary. Already this year I’ve visited Thailand, Argentina, and the fabulous city of Granada in Spain.
How did I go from the no-star lifestyle to becoming a globetrotter who stays in luxury hotels, dines out on gourmet meals, and knows how to order wine in at least 15 languages?
Easy. I became a travel writer.
How to Crack the Market
You can do it too. I have no qualifications whatsoever. I never went to college. And I’m certainly not a trust-fund baby.
The secret to becoming a travel writer is simple. All you need to do is WRITE. Write with color, pay attention to detail, and, above all, write with enthusiasm. You’ll soon build up a catalog of writing samples ("clips"). And eventually there’ll come a day when you won’t even have to look for assignments. Editors will be asking you to visit the Cape Verdes and other far-flung shores.
Now, I won’t pretend I set out to become a globetrotter. Back in 1988, all I was seeking was a way to earn some money. Writing seemed to offer a solution - and I soon discovered I had a knack for telling a story.
The first piece I ever wrote got published by an English newspaper. It was real estate-related, but you could say it was travel-related too. It was a humorous tale about my search for a bargain cottage in Ireland (where I live). I’d had to travel around three western counties to find it.
Whilst I was building up my clip file, I traveled around Ireland some more. I got more real estate pieces published in English newspapers and with International Living - and they all involved traveling somewhere in Ireland. I wrote about Irish pilgrimages, horse fairs, and oyster festivals. And after my stories were published in England, I sold the same ones to American and Australian publications.
For a local publication, the Irish Press, I wrote about a Buddhist monk in county Cavan, a biodynamic therapist in county Mayo, coal-pit closures in county Leitrim, and an 11-year-old traditional storyteller who’d won major prizes at festivals.
So here’s my first piece of advice…
Start out by writing about your own city or locality. It’s definitely one of the easiest and most cost-effective ways to kick-start your career. What fascinating events or festivals are happening? Has a new restaurant opened? Are there any interesting people you could profile? Whether you live in Nebraska or Hawaii, there’s a whole swathe of regional and local publications that are always hungry for new stories and fresh slants.
And think of it this way. Ireland is my home, but it’s a foreign destination for many of the editors I write for. Even way back when, I guess they regarded me as a travel writer!
Someone who lives in West Virginia may regard New York, Chicago, and San Francisco as fairly exotic destinations. Just because you’re writing about your own hometown doesn’t mean you’re not a travel writer.
How to Turn Your Compost Into Gold
But let’s rewind and go back to the early 1990s. Given my own experiences with worm-infested compost heaps, you’d think I’d have run a mile from anything to do with organic gardening. But no. I traveled down to county Kildare near Dublin to write a story for the Irish Press about WWOOFing (working weekends on organic farms).
Second piece of advice…
Write about what you know. It doesn’t necessarily have to be travel-related - though if you can tie in travel, that’s great. You might be knowledgeable about antiques, fishing - even beer. (Any micro-breweries in your area?)
When you’re starting out, the most important thing is to build up clips - to show editors that you can tell a story.
Write for Web magazines, small publications - anywhere you can place your story. They might not pay a lot, but you have to be realistic. You’re unlikely to get an assignment to investigate the vineyards of New Zealand from a prestigious dollar-a-word travel magazine until an editor has some proof that you can write.
The Importance of Relationships
By this time, I’d had around half a dozen pieces published by the Irish Press. And I’d managed to scrape together enough money for a jaunt to Portugal and Spain. Would they be interested in articles on Lisbon and northern Portugal for their travel section? Indeed they would. For those two articles, I got paid the equivalent of about 350 U.S. dollars
I asked Columbia (a Catholic publication in the U.S.)if they would like a story about the Spanish pilgrimage city of Santiago di Compostela. I was going to be there on the Feast of St. James, the city’s major feast day. (Columbia had already published my story about the annual pilgrimage to Croagh Patrick, Ireland’s holy mountain.) The editor said "Send it in." He offered me $500 with more money for photos.
International Living? Would they be interested in Portuguese real estate? I got another "yes." Another $300 in the bag.
With those four assignments, my trip to Spain and Portugal almost paid for itself. (Back then, those countries were incredibly cheap to visit.) But I just wish I’d known then what I know now. At that time, I didn’t have a clue about the freebies and perks that are readily available to travel writers.
So, third piece of advice…
Build relationships with editors. Once you’ve had one article published, go back to that same editor with an idea for another story… and another… and another. Once they know that you can come up with the goods, they’ll think of you when a juicy assignment comes up.
That’s how I landed my first-ever all-expenses-paid trip. One day, completely out of the blue, the editor of the Daily Telegraph, an English newspaper that had published some of my Irish travel-related stories, asked me if I’d be interested in going on assignment - to the jungles of Borneo. Rather than a staff writer, they wanted a freelancer who had never been to Asia before… someone who would see things "with fresh eyes."
Would you have turned down an offer to meet headhunters and orangutans… to snorkel in the South China Sea… to loll about on a hammock in the Shangri-La hotel, sipping gin slings?
Welcome to the desperately hard life of a travel writer…
[Ed. Note: Steenie Harvey gets paid to visit white-sand Caribbean beaches … wildlife sanctuaries in Borneo… Indian Ocean hideaways… Rome… Paris… and beyond… To find out how you can do the same, join the "Get Paid to Travel" teleconference, and learn real-world strategies you can put to use now to access this lifestyle.]
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Unscrew Your Life: How to Handle Other Drivers’ Road Rage
If you’re in Miami, you might want to stay inside.
Why? Because Miami, according to an AutoVantage survey, is the city with the most road-raging drivers. The survey, which ranked 25 cities based on the number of road-rage-related incidents reported, included New York City, Boston, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C. in its five worst cases.
Nearly 1,500 incidents of angry or aggressive driving kill or injure people each year, according to the American Automobile Association’s (AAA) most recent study. With all this road rage going on, what can you do to keep out of danger?
First and foremost, be a good defensive driver. Pay attention to the people who are sharing the road with you. And if you see someone driving erratically, get out of the way.
Be courteous. According to the AAA, that means staying out of the far-left lane unless you are passing, refraining from following too closely, using your horn sparingly, keeping your headlights on low beams, and using your turn signals before you change lanes.
The AAA also suggests that you avoid decorating your car with bumper stickers that might incite someone - like a confederate flag - and try not to make eye contact with aggressive drivers. And don’t bother to make obscene gestures at other motorists. The possible consequences (getting shot, stabbed, or beaten) aren’t worth it.
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The Dangers of Flip-Flops
By Jason Holland
For many people trying to beat the heat this summer, flip-flops will be de rigueur for the next several months.
Flip-flops may be comfortable… but wear the wrong kind and you might suffer a variety of foot and leg ailments, including joint and heel pain, shin splints, tendonitis, or even more serious injuries, such as torn ligaments and twisted ankles.
In fact, the American College of Foot and Ankle Surgeons reports that it sees an increase in injuries every spring and summer. It’s no coincidence, says the organization, that more people start wearing flip-flops at that time.
The main problem with flip-flops is the lack of arch support in most of them. This interferes with the normal ability of your feet to absorb the shock of your bodyweight as you walk. And because flip-flops have flat bottoms, you stretch your calf muscles and strain your Achilles tendons when you walk in them - which can lead to pain.
The lack of stability and ankle support in flip-flops can also lead to slip-and-fall accidents - the cause of the worst injuries. My flip-flop-clad mother-in-law, for example, seriously injured her ankle when she slipped while trying to navigate a grassy slope.
It’s a good idea to wear your flip-flops only at the beach or poolside. At the very least, don’t wear them all day, every day, and never run, play sports, or engage in any other strenuous activity while wearing them.
I’m not suggesting you throw out all your flip-flops. Just exercise some common sense when deciding what to put on your feet when you head out the door.
It’s Fun to Know: About "We Are the World"
The biggest-selling cause-related song of all time was "We Are the World," headed up by Michael Jackson. Jackson tried to repeat this historic feat after 9/11, when he enlisted Mariah Carey, Ricky Martin, and other stars to record a song he said would raise $50 million for several charities. But the whole deal fell apart when the record label discovered that the executive producer was a porn-filmmaker.
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- Patrick Coffey
Word to the Wise: Nebbish
A "nebbish" (NEB-ish) - a Yiddish word of Slavic origin - is a weak-willed, timid, or ineffectual person.
Example (as used by Evan Hunter in The New York Times): "He is a nebbish who might be played effectively by Woody Allen. He attracts the sympathy of lower-echelon mammals but finds it difficult to relate to dogs and human beings."
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Michael Masterson
Copyright ETR, LLC, 2007