What Business Owners Can Learn From Baseball Managers
Issue #2223
- WEALTHY: Why the Internet makes life - and wealth - much easier (Bob Bly)
- HEALTHY: Pop goes the knee joint! (Dr. Bill Stillwell)
- WISE: Babe Ruth on anticipating success
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
- Give gifts that mean something (Michael Masterson)
- How to squeeze holiday activities into your schedule (Bob Cox)
- It’s Good to Know… about holiday shopping online
- Add "sciolism" to your vocabulary
The Billionaire Way
I would recommend "The Billionaire Way" program to anyone who is contemplating a new enterprise or business start-up, or is already in business for themselves. It enabled me to look at my life, attributes, and habits in a refreshing new way. I was delighted to discover that I too have a number of the traits and qualities that many who are successful in business possess, which I hadn’t realized. I am very excited to apply the principles that were presented in the program to my new business ventures.
A tremendous benefit was to be able to talk with the author of the program, Bob Cox, about my own business strategies and ideas. Bob spent an hour on the phone with me after I finished the program, and his personal insights and suggestions were very helpful and inspiring.
I know that I will often refer back to the information provided in "The Billionaire Way" to enhance my chances for success!
- Catherine McNeil, Monte Vista, Colorado
"Every strike brings me closer to the next home run."
Babe Ruth
What Business Owners Can Learn From Baseball Managers
By Bob Bly
Imagine this scenario…
Your favorite baseball team has the opportunity to hire GR. Now a free agent, GR is one of the league’s best hitters. He hits more home runs than 90 percent of all other players… and has an impressive .300 batting average.
The team manager and GR meet. The manager tells GR: "Step up to the plate, and our best pitcher will throw to you. Hit a home run and you’re part of the team. Strike out or pop out and you’re history."
Does that make sense? No. I mean, with a .300 average, GR fails to get a hit seven out of every 10 times he steps up to the plate.
But that doesn’t stop otherwise savvy business owners from thinking like this manager every day.
They hire an employee and start to put him to work. If he doesn’t generate home-run results the first time at bat, they fire him or move him to a marginal business operation.
The TV commercial doesn’t win a Clio? Start looking for a new agency. Sales letter didn’t beat the control? The copywriter is history. Website not getting a million hits a day? The designer and webmaster are fired.
So what’s the problem?
Unreasonable expectations… and an unwillingness to experiment and test things until you find what works.
Thomas Edison failed to invent the light bulb with a thousand experimental models that didn’t work. In experiment #1,001, he finally tested a tungsten filament that burned brightly without burning out.
What makes a small business profitable and competitive over the long haul is a lot of small, sensible tests… trials and errors… and meticulously planned roll-outs. Unfortunately, you don’t hear much about them.
If you want to produce marketing campaigns in 2008 that make you money, you have to keep two things in mind.
First, most marketing tests don’t make money.
Second, even one winner out of every 10 tests can make you rich.
Of course, I hope you do better than that. But as long as you keep your tests small and modest, and watch every penny, you can afford to be wrong a lot - as long as you are occasionally right.
This is one area where the Internet can give you an edge that we didn’t have in the old days.
At the 2007 AWAI Bootcamp, entrepreneur Gary Scott noted that "the Internet is very forgiving of mistakes." You no longer have to risk $10,000 to $50,000 on printing and postage for a mailing… or buying ad space in the newspaper… to test a new marketing idea. On the Internet, you can buy a domain name for $10… host the site for a month for $20… put up a website featuring your new product for $200… and drive traffic to your website with a limited Google AdWords test for $1,000.
Another advantage of Internet marketing is that you know in just a few days whether your campaign is going to fly. But with offline marketing, it takes weeks (for ads) or even months (for mail) before you know whether your test is a hit or a flop.
One other piece of advice…
Lots of people are obsessed with finding the next million-dollar idea. For instance, they want to make a million dollars a year on the Internet. So they work like the devil on some big mega-project which… they hope… will be that million-dollar business.
I’m not discouraging their efforts or disparaging such ambition. In fact, I wish I had it myself.
But I’m lazy. And for the average lazy person who wants to make a million dollars online, I find it’s much easier to have 100 working websites making you $10,000 a year each… than to try to build one site to $1 million a year.
Others may feel differently, but that’s the approach I’m using to build toward that million dollars a year. And, so far, it is working for me.
A million-dollar site requires constant innovation, attention, fresh content, and a lot of administration and management. My little "micro sites" need minimal time and attention. Once they’re up, you pretty much don’t have to touch them, as long as you know how to drive traffic to them.
That way, you can earn a full-time income on the Internet "working" part-time - as little as a few hours a week - as if you were retired.
[Ed. Note: Bob Bly is a freelance copywriter, the author of more than 70 books, and co-creator of ETR’s Direct Marketing Masters Edition program.
For more information on Bob’s "Internet marketing retirement plan," click here now.]
What Would You Do with a $3,000,000 Payday on a $5,000 Investment?
“You should hear about the ones I missed,” Dr. McDougal said as he pointed to a page on the statement. “I bought this company for less than $1 a share… sold it later for around a 200% gain.
“’I thought I did pretty well, too. But in the years after I sold, the stock ran up to $300 a share AFTER a 2 for 1 split. If you want to lie awake at night… Just play with the numbers on a 60,000% winner.”
He’s right. Wondering what to do with a $3,000,000 payday on a $5,000 investment could certainly keep anyone up at night!
And now he’s ready to lead a group of investors to gains like 3,851%, 2,912%, even 2,445%… returns he has already enjoyed over the past five years.
Read his special report here and find out how you can pick up multi-thousand percent gains while you relax.
Give Gifts That Mean Something
Charity often pleases the giver and weakens the recipient, but gifts are another matter. They can sometimes have a lasting positive effect.
Such was the result of a gift my godmother gave me many years ago. It was my 15th birthday, I think. She sent me a share of her latest Broadway play. It eventually provided me with an income of more than $500, a fortune in 1965. Some of that money went to pay shop owners for awnings I had torn up in a fit of juvenile hooliganism. The rest went to Nat, the proprietor of the Rockville Center pool hall.
The money was wasted, but the gift was not. It got me thinking about what money can do. It was my first introduction to equity and my first chance to save (and then dissipate) a small fortune. It aroused in me a little flame for more money. Not a bad thing, I think. And it made me wonder about how money works. Finally, it made me understand that such a thing as writing stage plays - a literary endeavor - can become a business and have positive financial repercussions on all sorts of people.
My godmother was a well-known author and playwright. One of her books, Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, became a movie and then a sitcom on television. In addition to the gift I mentioned above, she gave me a brand-new bike one year when my old one was badly hobbling, and a scholarship to a Saturday-morning painting class, a gift that led to a lifelong love affair with art.
Two of those three gifts had a profound impact on my life. That’s a pretty good record.
I’m thinking about the gifts I’ve been giving - and not giving - to my nieces and nephews. I think I could do a better job if I keep in mind the job my godmother did.
A goal: Give someone you care about a very special gift for Christmas this year - something that will make them more (smarter, wiser, healthier, etc.) than they are today. And if you like that experience - and I promise you will - make it a habit. (And not just for Christmas.)
Holiday Stress De-Activator: Revamp Your Daily Planner
By Bob Cox
The holidays can be so much fun. You get to shop for presents, decorate your house, put up a Christmas tree, indulge in cookies and candy, and attend parties. But all that extra excitement can put a strain on a schedule that is already packed with deadlines. Here’s one way to keep your stress under control, and still stay on track toward achieving your goals: Schedule in time for holiday activities.
Just because you have a lot on your plate right now, that doesn’t mean you should stop working toward your goals. If you’re close to losing that last five pounds, you don’t want to throw all your hard work out the window. If you are in the process of building a side business, you don’t want to stop taking the daily actions you need to take to achieve success.
To make sure your holiday responsibilities don’t take away from your regular duties, make room in your daily planner for time with family and friends, for the inevitable holiday parties you’ll be invited to, and for the shopping that needs to be done.
Here’s something else you should add to your schedule: a family "conference" to find out what everyone has to do between now and New Year’s Day. Then make a master plan by dividing up the extra tasks. Maybe Aunt Edith will be responsible for picking up Grandmother at the airport… your son will be responsible for taking his little sister Christmas shopping… your spouse will do the grocery shopping for your annual holiday buffet… and you’ll take care of the cooking. Knowing ahead of time who will be doing what will make the next few weeks that much more relaxing and easy to handle.
[Ed. Note: Bob Cox is the creator of The Billionaire Way. He’s also the voice of ETR’s Total Success Achievement Program, which aims to help you get out of debt… lose 10 pounds… start a profitable business… and blast through any obstacle along the way. We’re putting the finishing touches on our 2008 Total Success Achievement Program right now. So keep reading ETR for more details about how to make 2008 the year you accomplish all your dreams.]
Noisy Knees, Part 1: "Popping"
Whether you’re a professional athlete, a weekend warrior, or an aging boomer like me, a painful popping sensation within your knee is a liability. It can not only lead to a fall, but also damage the joint surfaces and eventually cause arthritis.
The pop results when something inside the knee is momentarily caught between the moving bones and is then suddenly released. (Think of plucking a guitar string.) There are three common culprits:
1. The most common cause is a synovial flap or plica. Folds of the normally thin and pliant lining of the knee, when inflamed, can grow larger, thicker, and stiffer. The inflamed membrane can then get caught and stretched between the moving parts of the joint.
2. The tough, crescent-shaped meniscal cartilages that cushion and guide the knee are often torn by soccer, football, and basketball players doing sudden cutting or twisting maneuvers. But tears can also occur by degeneration, just from getting older. The meniscus tear, like the synovial flap, can displace and get caught between the moving femur and tibia, and then pop when suddenly released.
3. Loose bodies are little pieces of cartilage and/or bone. They are most often knocked out of a joint surface by trauma, fall out, or grow, like pearls, within the synovial membrane. Like the flaps and tears, these fragments can get caught between the bones.
Regardless of the cause, popping within the knee is always abnormal and needs to be addressed.
If you notice recurrent popping in your knee, especially if it’s painful, first STOP doing whatever causes the sensation. Rest the knee out straight and apply moist heat for 15 to 20 minutes three to four times a day. Take an over-the-counter anti-inflammatory like Advil or Aleve (provided you have no history of stomach problems). If you don’t get relief within a few days to a week, the popping is probably not from inflammation. Time to see an orthopaedist for diagnosis and treatment.
[Ed. Note: Dr. Bill is William Thomas Stillwell, MD, Associate Professor of Clinical Orthopaedic Surgery at SUNY, Stony Brook. He is CEO of Dr. Bill’s Clinic Inc.,and author of How to Eliminiate Knee Pain - Once & for All!]
It’s Good to Know: Holiday Shopping Online
According to a recent survey by Forrester Research, online retail sales in the United States during the holiday shopping season are expected to hit $33 billion. That’s a 21 percent jump over last year. Leading retailers, online and offline, expect to generate about 25 percent of their annual sales revenue from Christmas shoppers.
(Source: Forrester Research and Yahoo Finance)
Put Thousands of Extra Dollars Into Your Bank Account Every Month
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- Patrick Coffey
Word to the Wise: Sciolism
"Sciolism" (SY-uh-liz-um) is superficial knowledge. The word is derived from the Latin for "to know."
Example (as used by Charles Waddell Chesnutt in Conjure Tales and Stories of the Color Line): "Religion was mostly superstition, science for the most part sciolism, popular education merely a means of forcing the stupid and repressing the bright."
[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