Sometimes You Can’t Make It on Your Own

by Early To Rise (06/21/2008)

Issue #2388

  • WEALTHY: Why not frogs and crocodiles? (Andrew Gordon)
  • HEALTHY: A performance booster that runners forget about (Craig Ballantyne)
  • WISE: Pavarotti on time management

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:

  • Should you be outsourcing your cooking? (David Cross)
  • Don’t confuse these similar word pairs (Don Hauptman)
  • It’s Fun to Know… about the largest eyes in the world
  • Add "sub rosa" to your vocabulary

== Highly Recommended ==

How To Legally Profit With The Insiders…

There’s no question the “insiders” have the advantage when it comes to making money.  And "they" have perfectly legal and ethical ways to consistently keep income streams flowing their way…

But what if you could reap the same consistent profits the “insiders” do week after week?  Actually, you can. I was one of them. Had access to all the secrets they use to make enormous amounts of money. And I’m willing to share that information with you for two reasons. To discover those reasons and how I know for a fact you can easily make great money following a few fairly simple steps, click here…

The Book on Bears and Bulls

By Andrew M. Gordon

"The average man doesn’t wish to be told that it is a bull or a bear market. What he desires is to be told specifically which particular stock to buy or sell. He wants to get something for nothing. He does not wish to work. He doesn’t even wish to have to think." - Jesse Livermore

ETR reader Judith wrote in wanting to know why the word "bull" is used for a rising market and the word "bear" is used for a falling market.

First of all, let me point out that these two terms have become part of everyday language. You can be "bullish" (or optimistic, thinking something will get better) not just on the market but on the Red Sox, for example. And you can be bearish (or pessimistic, thinking something will get worse) about Detroit or Pittsburgh or about their baseball teams.

My colleague and office mate Jon Herring tells me "bull" comes from bulls tossing things up in the air with their horns. And that "bear" comes from bears swiping down with their claws.

That makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? But it didn’t prevent me from doing some research.

I found out that an old meaning of the word "bull" (as a verb) was "to inflate, swell." That makes sense, too, in describing a market going higher or getting bigger. It was first used in a stock market sense in 1714.

And just five years later, the phrase "sell the bearskin before one has caught the bear" - referring to anything with falling prices - became popular among investors. A bear was described as "one who sells stock for future delivery, expecting that meanwhile prices will fall."

Just think: Almost 300 years ago, people were celebrating "bull" and bemoaning "bear" markets… when today, we know you can make money in both.

[Ed. Note: Bull market, bear market - Andrew Gordon can help you find the safest stocks with the highest profit potential. Get the details here.

Want to know the meaning of or background behind an investing term you keep hearing? Send your questions to Andrew at AskETR@ETRFeedback.com. Include your name and hometown, and he may answer your question in Early to Rise.]

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"One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating."

-Luciano Pavarotti and William Wright, Pavarotti, My Own Story 

Sometimes You Can’t Make It on Your Own

By David Cross

Time and multitasking. Potentially a ball and chain to every entrepreneur. Just how many plates can you spin on sticks before they start to topple or you start to perform at less than your peak mental and physical level? Yet many entrepreneurs find delegating or outsourcing tasks difficult. We think nobody can do it as well as we can ourselves. And so more plates get balanced onto more sticks.

I normally work 10- or 12-hour days, starting at 5.30 a.m. Last year, I flew the fewest miles I’ve flown in the past 15 years… only 59,112. My wife is a busy veterinarian with a successful practice. And we have four - soon to be five - children, and a small farm begun with the dream of self-sufficiency. Life is never dull or boring.

With such a schedule, staying healthy is vital - and a big part of that is eating properly. But I realized last year that I was letting my healthy diet slip. One reason was that I had less time to cook (which I love doing). Instead, I was eating out more frequently. Not only is eating out more expensive, it’s nowhere near as good or as good for you as home-cooked food.

A friend mentioned that he’d hired a personal chef - at a rate of $75 an hour. He gets about five meals for $250 plus ingredients. I was intrigued by the idea. But before trying it myself, I wanted to make sure it made sense for our family.

So I sat down one Saturday afternoon and did some calculations. For me to prepare our family’s healthy meals, I figured it takes…

Shopping time: 20 minutes / day
Drive time: 15 minutes / day
Prep and cook: 60 minutes / day
Cleanup: 15 minutes / day

It all added up to over 12 hours a week. Even if my billing time was worth just $50 an hour, I was, in effect, spending $620 to prepare our meals! That’s 12 hours a week that I could be working… or spending time with my kids and wife. And more than $600 a week that I could be putting toward other things.

I was convinced that hiring a personal chef would be a smart decision - in terms of my time and money and my family’s health.

Privacy is important to us, so I knew I did not want to have a chef come into our home to do the cooking. I also knew the kind of food I wanted. Of all the places I’ve been and in all the diverse cultures where I’ve enjoyed food, from elaborate feasts to simple fare, Indian vegetarian is the cuisine that stands out for me. I not only love it, it makes me feel healthy when I eat it.

I had in mind exactly the person I was looking for. A maestro who knew this cuisine inside-out. Someone at least as enthusiastic about food and cooking as I am. Someone nearby who would do the cooking in his own space and be flexible about working with me to devise the menus.

I crafted a short ad.

Taking advantage of some of what I’ve learned over the years from friends who are copywriting greats - people like Michael Masterson, John Forde, Bob Bly, and Charlie Byrne - I made sure my ad was Urgent, Useful, Unique, and Ultra-specific (the "four U’s" of effective ad copy). I was quite pleased with it. But when my wife read it, she shook her head. "We’ll never find anyone like that," she said. "It’s way too specific." And with that compliment, I posted my ad on CraigsList.

Two weeks later, the first response came in. I gave it a 5 out of 10, sent a thank you to the applicant, and kept looking.

It took a full month before the 11-out-of-10 arrived. This man had worked for some years as an Indian vegetarian chef - including a stint at an ashram in India. His impressive resume noted a few well-known celebrity names, and his menus had me practically drooling.

I had him cook a sample meal that I picked up from his home. And the food was divine. Within minutes after we finished it, I called him to see if we could agree on an arrangement that would work for us both.

Here’s what we came up with: About every two weeks, we’d pick up a selection of food that we would label and freeze. And because we wanted him to be completely happy, I didn’t even try to negotiate his hourly rate. We agreed to pay what he asked, plus pay for provisions.

Since then, we’ve been spending a fraction of what we used to spend on food. We now eat out as a treat rather than a necessity, and our "personal chef’s" meals work out to less than $5 a meal… about a tenth of what my friend pays his personal chef.

If you want to outsource some aspect of your business or personal responsibilities, you can put the same principles to work. Here’s what I learned:

First and most important, remember that your time is valuable.

Trying to do everything yourself is the "curse of the entrepreneur"! Knowing when you need to delegate or outsource so you can do what you are truly best at is important if you’re going to grow your business… and grow yourself. Bob Bly has often said he never goes to the post office. If it takes him half an hour, that’s $100 out the door for him. Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Workweek, is another big proponent of getting rid of any task you can. Hire an assistant to do it for $10 while you make far more.

Call the shots.

You can negotiate a better deal when you are the one calling the shots - when people are, in essence, bidding for your business. By creating a job and posting an ad stating what I required, I was in a stronger position than if I had answered an ad from someone who provided the service I needed.

This applies to every job you need done in your business and your personal life. Gardener, masseuse, printer, Web developer, search engine specialist, copywriter, handyperson, painter, children’s entertainer, and so on.

Be specific about what you’re looking for.

If I’d advertised for a "cook," I’d have had to sift through a myriad of wannabes. I would have probably had to eat my way through pounds of bland or inedible mush to find one chef I actually liked.

So take the time to determine exactly what you need, and be specific in your ad. In fact, be ULTRA-specific.

Create a win-win situation.

MaryEllen Tribby and Michael Masterson have both said it before - any deal you make should be a great deal for all parties.

What our chef wanted meshed well with our needs. Still, we wanted him to be as happy working for us as we expected to be with his services. So we made sure we had an arrangement that benefited both sides. It was a collaborative effort from the beginning, rather than "top down" instruction - and, as a result of that, we’ve never had any problems.

Run a test.

As I know from the many software projects I’ve been in charge of, a test can help prevent costly mistakes and keep you from winding up with software that doesn’t fit the bill. So before we agreed on a regular schedule, I asked our chef to prepare his "best" menu for us as a test. And I left the decision of what to make entirely up to him. I figured if he couldn’t deliver top-notch food when he was completely in charge of it, there was little chance he could do so when I was the one calling the shots.

[Ed. Note: Outsourcing your cooking, your website design, your product fulfillment, or anything else that isn't worth your time is a great way to be more productive. Internet marketing expert David Cross will be sharing more of these practical tips and suggestions at ETR's 5 Days in July conference. Learn how to start - and enjoy the fruits of - your own Internet business right here.]

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== Highly Recommended ==

You Can Keep Your Current Job While You Quickly Transition Into Your New Business

How in the world do these money-making programs expect you to work tons of hours building up a new business while holding down your current job?  Many just aren’t practical, but I’ve found a new program that is loaded with methods to get you into a new business while you are working at another job.

You can put in as little as 2-3 hours a week in your new business – and it still bring in nice profits fairly quickly – often in just a week or two.   And once your business is bringing in enough income, you can quit your current job and focus full-time on your new business.  You get to choose what business to get into (there’s 20 to choose from), there’s no limit on what you can make, and it is easier than ever to get started. 

There is, however, a limit on how many people I am sharing this with.  You’ll learn why when checking out all the exciting details here.

Runners Need Strength Training

By Craig Ballantyne  

Runners are notorious for trying anything to improve performance, from eating "power gel" to buying space-aged shoes. But most runners are missing one key performance booster: strength training.

In a study published in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, researchers had eight subjects (four men and four women) perform heavy barbell squats three times per week for eight weeks in addition to their regular endurance training. A control group did only the endurance workouts.

Not surprisingly, the strength-training group got stronger (by an average of 33.2 percent in the squat). However, it was a surprise that these men and women also increased their endurance by an average of 21.3 percent. In comparison, the control group did not get stronger or increase their endurance.

This study proves that strength training will make you stronger and improve your endurance - and that will make you a better runner. All it takes is three strength workouts per week for eight weeks, focusing on an exercise such as squats or split-squats.

[Ed. Note: Long, slow cardio is NOT going to help you get healthy. But strength training and short-burst interval training can. Learn more here.
 
If you're looking for more healthy ideas that can help improve your diet and increase your fitness level, ETR has a FREE resource that can help.]

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The Language Perfectionist: More Confusables

By Don Hauptman

Here’s another roundup of look-alike and sound-alike words I frequently see confused:

  • A bomb is defused; something that’s spread around is diffused.
  • A flare is an illuminated signal; something done with style displays flair.
  • If you read something carefully, you’re poring over it, not pouring (which you do only with a beverage or other liquid).
  • If you’re reluctant to do something, you’re loath to do it; you loathe something if you hate it.
  • An interesting discovery will pique your interest, not peak it.

Finally, this verse may help you avoid another common misuse:

An apiary’s home to bees;
An aviary’s for the birds.
Which proves that we should watch our words,
And learn to mind our P’s and V’s.

[Ed Note: For more than three decades, Don Hauptman was a direct-response copywriter. He is author of the wordplay books Cruel and Unusual Puns and Acronymania, and is now writing a book that also blends language and humor.]

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It’s Fun to Know: The Largest Eyes in the World

New Zealand scientists have discovered what are believed to be the largest eyes found on any animal in the world. The peepers in question measure nearly 11 inches in diameter and belong to a colossal squid, a species first discovered in 2003.

Fishermen hooked the squid in the Antarctic in 2007, froze it, and brought it to a lab for study. Based on larger, though incomplete, carcasses of the same species, the researchers believe they’ll find even bigger colossal squid eyes in the future.

(Source: CNN)

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== Highly Recommended ==

Is This All There Is To Life?

You can keep going through the motions, trying to keep up with the Joneses, and wondering if there is more to this life…or you can open the door to a whole new level of success, financial independence and achievement.

It’s the difference between having  a job you dread, or the job you dream about…between retiring with just enough to get by, or with a seven-figure nest egg…between living the life you live today, or living the life of those you envy…

Here’s your opportunity for a once-in-a-lifetime insider’s look into the practical ideas, systems and methods for an abundant life for you and your family.

Word to the Wise: Sub Rosa

"Sub rosa" (sub ROH-zuh) - Latin for "under the rose" - means secret or private. The phrase comes from an ancient legend associating roses with confidentiality.

Example (as used by Stephen Metcalf in the New York Observer): "The atmosphere of gloom and dislocation only thickened, though, and Marty found himself in over his head in a world of shadowy fixers, sub-rosa deputies of the CIA and the mob."

[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

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