Issue #2289
- WEALTHY: 3 sectors that beat the market… even during a recession (Andrew Gordon)
- HEALTHY: How to be as fit as a Tiger (Craig Ballantyne)
- WISE: Arthur Miller on specializing
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
- 11 questions that will help you find a specialty (Bob Bly)
- Applying the Ready, Fire, Aim principle to service businesses (Michael Masterson)
- It’s Good to Know… how to navigate endless phone menus
- Add "caterwaul" to your vocabulary
Rapidly "Absorb" Any Language in 10 Days… Using the Revolutionary Method Employed by the FBI and CIA
7:45 PM. Dinner in Germany with a business partner to discuss a just-launched joint-venture. Then a quick hop across the border in Brussels to check an investment in the works… Manufacturing in China, outsourcing in India, real estate on the Panama coast…
It’s easy to create an international portfolio of companies if you speak the language.
What you may not know is that you can rapidly absorb any foreign language in just 10 days with the method employed by the FBI and CIA.
The secret to this revolutionary method is that the audio you hear is scientifically sequenced to lock language into your brain… instantly. You only have to listen once!
IMPORTANT NOTICE: ETR subscribers can now grab a very limited quantity of FREE TRIAL copies of Pimsleur’s elite "Gold" course available to readers who act now. All copies ship to ETR subscribers completely free of charge. This offer is subject to immediate expiration once supplies run out.
The Classics Aren’t What They Used to Be
The S&P 500 has lost an average of 21 percent during past recessions. If that makes you nervous, it should. Good thing I have a solution for you.
And it’s not investing in the classic recession-fighting sectors. The classics – utilities, health care companies, and consumer staples – earned their reputations by doing better than the markets during a recession.
So, what’s better than losing 21 percent? How about losing 15 percent (the typical performance of utilities in a recession)? Or losing 7.3 percent (like health care companies)? Or losing "only" 2.4 percent (like consumer staples, the classic of classics)?
The one thing all these traditional recession-beating investments have in common is that they lose money during a recession.
On the other hand, alcoholic beverage companies will make you 6 percent – going by their past record during recessions. And household product manufacturers will make you 1.8 percent. But the companies with the best track records during recessions belong to the tobacco sector. They’ve gone up an average of 9.6 percent.
So drop the classics. And invest in the three sectors that not only beat the market but can also make you money when times are tough.
[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.]
"You specialize in something until one day you find it is specializing in you."
Arthur Miller
What’s Your "Signature Dish"?
By Bob Bly
In his reality TV show Kitchen Nightmares , celebrity chef Gordon Ramsey rescues a different failing restaurant each week from the incompetence of its owner and staff. One of his techniques is to help the restaurant create a "signature dish."
Of course, he does lots of other things too – from revamping the menu and teaching the chef how to cook better to training inept managers and cleaning up filthy kitchens. But the signature dish – a dish the place becomes known for – is one of his favorite ploys for reviving a floundering restaurant.
The signature dish, more often than not, is something simple. For one restaurant, it was a salad. For another, a burger. For a third, meatballs. In each case, the restaurant not only got back on its feet, but became known in the neighborhood for the dish.
So what does this have to do with your business?
In most industries, there is more competition now than ever – more companies competing with each other for business. And in an age of choice, it’s difficult to compete by being all things to all people.
A much better strategy is to specialize – in an industry, a product, a service, a method, a system, a task. In other words, to have a "signature dish."
My colleague MS is a good example.
A very successful copywriter, MS can – and does – write many different kinds of copy for his clients. But his specialty… his signature dish… is writing white papers.
Early on, he saw an opportunity created by the huge volume of white papers being published. He cleverly moved in to position himself as the preeminent white paper guru. He did this by creating a separate website on white papers. He also published and gave away a free white paper on how to write white papers.
These days, MS has almost more business than he can handle – writing white papers and other marketing materials for his clients.
Now many other copywriters… including yours truly… can write good white papers. But all else being equal, wouldn’t you rather go to the copywriter who is known as "the white paper guy"?
Of course.
Your prospects, too, want to deal with experts – people who are perceived as knowing what they are doing. Since you can’t know everything… nor is it realistic to claim you do… the only way to be a credible expert is to specialize.
If you are a lawyer, you can specialize in forming offshore corporations. If you are a dentist, you can specialize in pediatric dentistry. If you are a contractor, you can specialize in building decks and sun porches.
How do you choose your specialty? Here are some of the deciding factors:
- What’s in demand? What does the market need? What will they pay a premium price for?
- What market niches are underserved? In what specialties is there a crying need for more vendors?
- What education and knowledge do you possess or can you acquire in a short time with reasonable cost and effort?
- What niches do you already have experience in?
- What do you enjoy doing? What do you have an aptitude for? What skills do you possess? What are you best at?
One word of warning: Don’t pick a specialty you loathe or have no talent for simply because it looks lucrative or has little competition. Remember the words of Aristotle, who said: "Where your talents and the needs of the marketplace intersect, therein lies your vocation."
[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.
Sign up for Bob's free monthly e-zine, The Direct Response Letter, and get more than $100 in free bonuses.]
15 Minutes A Day To Personal Freedom in 2008…
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…
- Charlie Byrne
Dear ETR: "Does your Ready, Fire, Aim theory work with a company that sells service?"
" I’ve read your book, Ready, Fire, Aim, and I thought it was GREAT. My question is, does it work for a business that sells service? I understand the sell-first concept, but in my business of offering nursing services, I need my workers first so I can service my clients.
"It’s hard to get nursing assistants hired before I have the patients. But if I get my patients first, I need the assistants right away to service them.
"How would you suggest I handle this? Usually people looking for home health care need it right away."
- Sheila Douglas
Fenton, MO
Dear Sheila,
Yes, Ready, Fire, Aim applies to service businesses. In fact, I used one of its primary principles – the sell-first rule – to help my sister-in-law.
She was starting a therapy business that specialized in women’s pelvic problems – and, as a Stage One business owner, she understood that her first responsibility was to make sales. My recommendation was for her to plan on a 50-hour work week for the first year, and to devote almost every hour when she wasn’t actually treating someone to selling her services. If she had, for example, 10 hours of therapy scheduled one week, she would spend 40 hours sending out brochures, placing ads, and stopping by doctors’ offices to establish her selling network.
Within eight months, she was fully booked. She was making six figures, and had no time left for further marketing.
At that point, she had a choice: Stop marketing and have a self-employment business. Or give some of her work to other therapists (for a percentage of their fees), and spend more time building her business.
That’s what you should do. First, start selling your own services. If you are not a nurse, sell the services of just one nurse. In the beginning, you want to devote most of your resources to marketing, not salaries and office space. So work from home and on the road, promoting your business until you have more work than one person can handle.
When that happens, get another person. You can hire that person as an employee, or make a deal to get a percentage of his/her fee. Both approaches work, but the second one is simpler and requires less capital investment.
Once you have figured out how to bring in new clients cost effectively, you will be ready for Stage Two of your business’s growth, which means producing more product (nursing services) and doing more advertising (possibly by hiring a marketer). Then you will see your company take off fast!
When your business hits $10 million in bookings, you will be ready to implement my strategies for a Stage Three company. When you get there, let me know!
- Michael Masterson
[Ed. Note: You'll find dozens of strategies that can help propel your business forward in Michael Masterson's New York Times business best-seller, Ready, Fire, Aim: Zero to $100 Million in No Time Flat . Pick up your copy by clicking here.
Send your questions to AskETR@ETRFeedback.com. Include your full name, your hometown and state, and the ETR team may answer you in an upcoming issue.]
Praise for Ready, Fire, Aim : "I feel a rare gem deserves a glowing review."
"Michael’s book did for me what no consultant could. It showed me how to get beyond a plateau my business had reached.
"I tried hiring consultants. But it’s difficult to find people who have grown more than one business to the $100 million+ level and can tell you HOW they did it. In one chapter, Michael explained clearly and simply what I needed to do. He has the uncanny ability to take what can be very complex and make it simple.
"What’s more, I believe I’ve purchased every book on Amazon about growing a business. None of them had anything remotely resembling the clarity of Ready, Fire, Aim.
"Give me a moment of freakin’ clarity! That’s all I ask for. Buy Michael’s book and you’ll have it.
"Oh, I don’t know Michael personally and I don’t work for him. But as someone who has read many, many books about business and marketing, I feel a rare gem deserves a glowing review.
"I’ve created and written numerous marketing products, and have spoken around the world on the topic. So I’m not uninformed. Buy this book. Read it. Mark it up. Enjoy it. Live it. And you will go to the next level… or at least know how to."
- Marlon Sanders
(posted on Michael Masterson’s blog)
What We Can Learn About Staying in Shape From Tiger Woods
Tiger Woods is not on steroids. Anyone who thinks he is knows nothing about the ability of a young man to adapt to a good exercise routine. In fact, even non-golfers can learn a lot from Tiger’s incredible physical transformation over the years.
Here are the three biggest lessons he can teach us…
- Use a variety of bodyweight and free-weight exercises. By doing so, Tiger has been able to maintain his mobility and flexibility while adding strength and muscle.
- Work with a good coach. Golfers are notorious for having swing coaches and mental coaches to help improve their game. And now they are turning to fitness coaches as well. As with any aspect of life, working with an expert will help you get ahead much faster.
- Eat right for fat loss and mental energy. I believe this is one of the most underrated aspects of Tiger’s game. If you watch him play, you’ll see him snacking. And he isn’t eating junk. Good nutrition allows him to recover between rounds and after workouts.
[Ed. Note: Fitness expert Craig Ballantyne is the creator of the Turbulence Training for Fat Loss system. For a free online source of information, motivation, and social support to help you improve your health, lose weight, and get fit, sign up for ETR's free natural health e-letter.]
It’s Good to Know: How to Navigate Endless Phone Menus
The next time you call your credit card company, bank, or cable provider, don’t bother going through all those voice-activated menus to get to the department you need. Just start swearing – but not out of frustration. It turns out that many of these Interactive Voice Response systems are programmed to recognize "bad" words and connect you immediately to a human operator.
(Source: Lifehacker)
The Only Three Ways to Grow a Business
Did you know that there are only three ways to grow a business?
- Increase the number of customers.
- Increase the average transaction value.
- Increase the frequency of repurchase.
Find a way to maximize each one, and your business will experience an astonishing rate of growth.
In his "9 Pillars of Business Growth" program, acclaimed consultant Jay Abraham outlines hundreds of proven, frequently unrecognized, and almost totally underutilized ways to grow these three key areas of your business. If you own a business (or would like to), be sure to take a look at Jay’s program.
- Patrick Coffey
Word to the Wise: Caterwaul
A "caterwaul" (KAT-ur-wawl) is a shrill, discordant sound. The word is derived from the Middle English for "to cry like a cat."
Example (as used by Peter Matthiessen in African Silences): "The forest silence is impermeable, entirely undisturbed by the soft bell notes of hidden birds, the tick of descending leaves and twigs or soft thump of falling fruit, or even the far caterwaul of monkeys."
[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.]
Copyright ETR, LLC, 2008
Similar Articles:
- What’s Your “Signature Dish”? – In his reality TV show Kitchen Nightmares , celebrity chef Gordon Ramsey rescues a different failing…
- DON’T LET PERFECT RUIN GOOD – “The longer I live the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains I hav…
- Reader Feedback:I have tried to incorporate Ready, Fire, Aim into everything I do – “I have a tendency to spend far too much time getting ready to get ready. After reading Michael’s ‘R…
- Janus Words – Its an understatement to say that the English language is complicated. And in an e-mail to ETRs usag…
- The Ready, Fire, Aim Business Proposal – When someone comes to me for advice about a business idea that will require a considerable expenditu…
- The Simplest Way to Make Your Writing More Readable – You can make your writing twice as readable – and, therefore, twice as powerful – by taking advantag…
- 10 Dumb Ways to Start a Business (and Waste a Ton of Money at the Same Time) – Entrepreneurship is based on selling. You test the market with a product you think will sell well. I…