How to Start a Retail Business
Issue #2197
- WEALTHY: The big problem with interest rates (Andrew Gordon)
- HEALTHY: 10 breaths to beat stress (Dr. Jonny Bowden)
- WISE: Ancient Chinese advice for wannabe retailers
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
- A 5-step plan for getting into one of the hardest businesses around (Michael Masterson)
- If you want to be a better writer, take some piano lessons (John Forde)
- It’s Good to Know… about the new generation of wireless
- Add "wunderkind" to your vocabulary
Announcing Your Complimentary Invitation to ETR’s 2008 Bootcamp
ETR’s Info-Marketing Bootcamp has without question become the premiere event in the industry. Now, you can attend this bootcamp, held in beautiful Delray Beach, Florida without paying the fee!
Come join us in 2008 and you’ll be brought up to date on all the latest and most powerful business-building secrets that are working in the marketplace that minute. It’s also an extraordinary chance to network with dozens of industry leaders, not to mention hundreds of your fellow high-achieving Early to Risers.
Lists of previous years’ speakers read like a who’s who of business-building and Internet marketing geniuses, including Jay Abraham, Joe Vitale, Robert Ringer, Brian Tracy, Jeff Paul, Michael Masterson, Bob Bly, Rich Schefren, Jeff Walker, Alex Mandossian and many, many more.
Martha Celestino of Santa Ana, CA said about our 2007 Bootcamp, “This event was fabulous. This is my second ETR event, and I’m always just blown away by the ideas and the concepts. The people presenting are leaders in their fields.”
Now, when you become a Charter Member of ETR’s new Internet Money Club, you’ll receive complimentary admission to next year’s Early to Rise 2008 Info-Marketing Bootcamp.
This event WILL sell out next fall. But as an Internet Money Club member, you’re automatically guaranteed a complimentary, locked-in seat for next year’s event.
And that’s just the beginning of your benefits as a Charter Member of the Internet Money Club… read on to see everything else you get.
Better Mortgage Rates? Dream on.
If I were rich or foolish, I’d have no need for reduced interest rates. I’m neither, yet I hate that the Fed is lowering its pivotal rate to banks.
If I had 10 times more money, I’d pay for everything in cash. Alas, that day has not yet arrived. If I were too stupid to care about the rates, I’d take out far more than the few credit cards I already have. But I do care.
So what’s so wrong about the Fed dropping rates? Isn’t that better?
Not in this case. These rates are sure to limit my mortgage options. And I hate that.
Fixed-rate mortgages follow 10-year Treasury notes. Because these notes are long-term, they’re sensitive to rising inflation. And that can easily eat into your returns on bonds over a period as long as 10 years. By reducing the basic interest rate, the Fed has opened the door that much wider to inflation. That is sure to make 10-year Treasury notes less popular. As the price of these notes goes down, their interest rate goes up. And so will fixed mortgages.
If you want to refinance or buy a new house with a fixed mortgage, do it soon. Rates are going in the wrong direction for you.
[Ed. Note: ETR’s Investment Director Andrew Gordon is the editor of INCOME a monthly financial advisory service that uncovers income-generating stocks that promise safety (first and foremost), along with much-higher-than-average profit potential.]
"To open a shop is easy, to keep it open is an art."
Chinese proverb
How to Start a Retail Business… Even If You Know Nothing About Retail
Lots of people who want to get into business for themselves come up with the idea of opening a store. They hope it will provide them with income and, presumably, some equity that they can "cash in" or perhaps leave to their children. This is a common entrepreneurial dream. It seems pretty simple. People come in. You help them shop. They buy stuff. You make a profit.
Of course, it’s not that easy.
Kristie Parks knows that, and that’s why she wrote to me recently. She’s a 48-year-old woman who doesn’t have any business background. But her plan is to open a shop where she can sell clothes and other related products.
"Something went wrong when my husband and I purchased a house. I have less funds now. But I was just about to rent a shop and fill it with clothes and start to sell," Kristie wrote. "Then I read something in ETR that made me think I might go wrong again."
My first recommendation for Kristie - and anyone else who wants to make a living with a retail operation - is to buy a copy of my newest book, Ready, Fire, Aim. (It will be published in January.) It explains what I know about launching and growing all kinds of entrepreneurial businesses.
As I point out in the book, most retail businesses fail. The main reason they fail is because they are opened by people who have no experience. They don’t know which products will sell and which won’t. They don’t know how to price their merchandise. They don’t know anything about the management side of the business. But most of all, they don’t know how to get enough customers to walk through their door.
That’s the biggest problem. Not knowing how to bring in prospects and turn them into cash customers. There are many examples in the book that will give you ideas about how to do that. There are also some important rules and principles to follow during the first, critical stage of your business’s growth. But rather than have you wait till the book comes out in two months, here are a few steps you can start taking now:
Step 1. Figure out how many dollars’ worth of products you will need to sell in order to pay all your expenses every month. Not just product costs but overhead as well. Let’s say that number is $10,000.
Step 2. Find out how much the average customer spends on a purchase in similar stores in your local area. You can do this by making friends with shop owners and asking them. Let’s say the average customer spends $25.
Step 3. Divide the total dollars you need by the amount of the average sale. That will tell you how many paying customers you need to bring in every month to survive. $10,000 divided by $25 is 400. So you need to bring in 400 paying customers every month.
Step 4. During the start-up phase of your business, you should be spending most of your time on advertising. So now develop a marketing plan that will attract that many customers. Run this plan by anyone you know who has retail experience to make sure it is sound.
Step 5. Make any needed revisions to your marketing plan, and then get to work implementing it.
There are plenty of other things I talk about in Ready, Fire, Aim that may be helpful to you. Among them:
* Don’t sign a long-term lease or buy a shop during your first year. In fact, try not to get yourself into any sort of debt.
* Choose a strong retail location with good pass-by traffic - traffic that would be interested in the type of products you will be selling.
* While you are still testing your marketing plan, keep your advertising expenses as low as possible. It may take several years to arrive at a strategy that works. Make sure you have enough money in the bank to last until you can figure that out.
* Come up with a USP (unique selling proposition) for your store. What can you offer customers that nobody else in the neighborhood can?
Those are just a few ideas to get you started. You’ll find lots more in the book.
[Ed. Note: Get Michael Masterson’s insights into becoming successful in your business and personal life, achieving financial independence, and accomplishing all your goals on his new website. You’ll find updates on all of Michael’s books, news on upcoming ETR events, Michael’s blog, and room to send in your comments and questions. Check it out today.]
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Can Music Make You a Better Writer?
By John Forde
Can listening to music… or even playing it… make you a better writer? Maybe yes, according to two new studies.
A surprising number of copywriters I know (about 80 percent) play instruments. Turns out, according to Georgetown University researchers, that might not be a coincidence. Their research says that music and language use the same type of memory. Not only that, but we unconsciously learn the "rules" of what sounds good in both music and language in the same way.
So if you have a good ear for melodies, you might also have a good ear for what sounds good in the printed or spoken word.
Research from the New York Academy of Sciences takes this connection even further. Playing music, they say, can make you smarter. It can also beef up your immune system, improve your memory, and keep you sane, for lack of a better way to put it.
How they explain why so many musicians seem to go nuts or die young, I don’t know. But what their research shows is actual increased grey matter in the part of the brain that manages hearing. And it’s more pronounced in people who play music often.
Even listening to music - and not just Mozart - can give you some of the same benefits. But actually playing it seems to be better. It just seems to help your brain’s neural network get "organized" so it can run more efficiently.
Go figure, eh?
[Ed. Note: Master copywriter John Forde is a contributor to ETR’s new business-building program, The Internet Money Club. Not only will this program teach you techniques that copywriting experts use to write sales-boosting copy, it will also show you how to pick a product, set up a website, and pull in targeted, qualified traffic from all over the Web. And that’s just for starters. Click here to learn more about this breakthrough program.
Sign up for John’s free e-zine, The Copywriter’s Roundtable. ]
What’s Stress Got to Do With It?
What do allergies, asthma, hypertension, acne, insomnia, and obesity have in common? They’re just a few of the conditions that can be made worse by stress. Stress can trigger symptoms, increase their severity or frequency, and lengthen the time you suffer with them. Stress can also compromise recovery. No good holistic or "natural" approach to healing would ignore stress as a critical component of illness.
Specific emotional states like depression, for example, have been linked to "hard core" conditions like diabetes and heart disease. Conventional medicine continues to obsess over cholesterol as a "risk factor" for heart disease, meanwhile ignoring the very real - and much more serious - risks from trauma, divorce, anger, loneliness, grief, and abusive relationships.
Natural medicine worthy of the name can never ignore the role of stress - nor of attitude and emotions - in healing the body. Managing stress is as important to healing and health as anything you can take in pill form, from the most potent pharmaceutical drug to the gentlest herb.
Nearly all classic stress-management techniques - from yoga to meditation - center on deep breathing. Try the following technique to get started on your own personal stress-busting routine:
* Sit quietly in a comfortable position, hands resting on knees, palms up.
* Try to quiet your mind. It helps to think of a comforting phrase like "let go."
* Close your eyes and inhale deeply, concentrating on your breath.
* Hold for just a second. Then exhale deeply, saying your chosen phrase quietly in your mind.
* Repeat for 10 deep breaths, concentrating only on your breath and your phrase.
[Ed. Note: Dr. Jonny Bowden is a nationally known expert on weight loss, nutrition, and health. He’s a board certified nutritionist with a master’s degree in psychology, and the author of the best-selling book, The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth. For more information, go to www.jonnybowden.com. To read more of his articles on healthy living in ETR’s free natural health e-letter, click here.]
It’s Good to Know: The New Generation of Wireless
Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are the dominant wireless data-transfer technologies for a variety of gadgets, including laptops and cellphones. However, neither is very efficient at quickly transferring massive data files. So researchers at Georgia Tech are looking at using extremely high radio frequencies to do the job.
At this point, the new technology is only intended to replace the tangle of cords connecting various devices in a home entertainment center. That means files will just have to travel about three feet between such things as portable media players, audio systems, and TVs. And it means you would be able to download a DVD-quality movie from your iPod to your TV in five seconds.
(Source: CNN)
The Internet Money-Making Secret of a Desperate Housewife.
More bills than money. Dave, bless his heart, was trying, but he just couldn’t keep their heads above water.
Vicky and her husband Dave were caught between a rock and a hard place.
Vicky couldn’t stand to see the pain on Dave’s face.
That night fate intervened… Vicky got her hands on something very special.
What she saw changed her life… forever!
- Patrick Coffey
Word to the Wise:Wunderkind
A "wunderkind" (VOON-dur-kint) is someone who achieves great success or acclaim at an early age. The word is German for "wonder child."
Example (as used by Robert Dallek in Flawed Giant: "In the mid-thirties, he [Lyndon Johnson] became the youngest and best state director of FDR’s National Youth Administration, a Texas wunderkind who at age twenty-eight beat several better known opponents for a south-central Texas congressional seat."
[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