Issue #2557
- WEALTHY: Is the market really on an upswing? (Andrew Gordon)
- HEALTHY: Plan to get thinner (Craig Ballantyne)
- WISE: B.F. Skinner on positive reinforcement
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
- Trouble getting started? Here’s a simple solution… (Michael Masterson)
- Take away your customer’s choice NOT to buy (Suzanne Richardson)
- It’s Good to Know… why freebie drugs could kill you
- Add “atelier” to your vocabulary
== Highly Recommended ==
6 Steps to Success in 2009
When a toddler is first learning how to walk she starts with a series of small steps.
It’s scary at first. Holding onto tables, chairs and anything else within reach, she hesitantly moves forward.
Occasionally she’ll fall down, but she gets right back up and tries again.
Your path to success is just like that.
Success, like learning how to walk, is something you work towards and it begins with one step followed by another.
Like a toddler, you won’t be left alone as you journey towards success.
Expert guidance and instruction are available to keep you on track to achieve your goals.
Take your first step by clicking here…
Don’t Be the Sucker in These “Sucker Rallies”
I don’t like the Wall Street bromide to “buy when there is blood in the streets.” It encourages inexperienced stock investors to jump into the market at the first sign of panic.
Little do they know what a bunch of Nervous Nellies occupy Wall Street’s trading desks. You can easily get caught up in one of their “the world is ending” tantrums and decide to buy, hoping to catch the next mega-rally on its way up. And the market can indeed go up at that point. But too soon it starts to fall again. Only this time it falls to new lows… and you’re sitting on giant losses.
These little rallies are called “sucker rallies,” and you can see why. Since the market peaked last October, there have been eight of them.
A better way to take advantage of the mini-rallies that occur during a bear market is to sell the stocks or mutual funds you don’t like when their prices get pushed higher. These rallies have been lasting 2-3 weeks. Getting rid of unwanted stocks 10-12 days into a rally is a good way to prune your portfolio while keeping your losses down.
[Ed. Note: You can make money on companies that are ready to crumble. Learn how to spot the "red flag" signals that could predict (with as much as 92 percent certainty) when a company's stock is going to tank.]
“The way positive reinforcement is carried out is more important than the amount.”
B.F. Skinner
Rewarding Yourself
When I was first getting into the business of selling educational programs, a famous zero-down real estate guru asked me, “Do you know the thing people who take my courses want most?”
I had a sneaking suspicion I was about to get it wrong, but I gamely answered: “To be successful real estate investors?”
He laughed. “You’ve got a lot to learn, my friend.”
I took the bait. “So what do your customers want?”
“They want to avoid taking action.”
I told him I wasn’t sure I understood. He was kind enough to clarify. “Most of the people who take my courses and who will be buying your programs want to feel like they are on the road to success. But they don’t want that road to end. They like the journey. They fear the destination.”
“And why would that be?” I asked.
“To tell you the truth,” he said. “I don’t know. But I can tell you this. After our real estate students have gotten the knowledge they need to succeed, few of them get out there and get to work. Most of them just buy more programs. If they don’t buy them from us, they will buy them from someone else. So we sell them extra programs.”
“That’s sort of depressing,” I said.
“If you give one of my customers – someone who has completed his real estate education and is fully prepared to start investing profitably – a choice between actually getting to work and buying another course to learn more, he will buy the course.”
“Are they afraid of failing?”
“Could be that,” he said. “Could be they’re afraid of success. As I said, I don’t know.”
Since then I’ve thought a lot about this failure-to-get-started problem. I’ve read dozens of books and talked to many of my colleagues and posed the question to hundreds of my customers. The theories as to why people don’t take action are many and varied. The three that make most sense to me are:
• Lack of Confidence: People who haven’t yet been successful in life don’t believe they can be, even if they are fully prepared to succeed.
• Fear of Pain: Some people see taking action as work and work as a form of pain. These are usually people who have never experienced the pleasure of working on something they value.
• Laziness: Besides the fear of work, human beings are programmed to be lazy. Being lazy means trying to get what you want with the least amount of effort. Some people don’t take action because they want to find an easier way.
If these are the main reasons why so many people don’t take action when they are ready, what is the solution?
There’s no mystery to that. Behavioral scientists know that the way to change a person’s behavior is by motivating them through positive reinforcement. This is what B.F. Skinner had to say about it in A Brief Survey of Operant Behavior:
“It has long been known that behavior is affected by its consequences. We reward
and punish people, for example, so that they will behave in different ways. … Operant reinforcement not only shapes the topography of behavior, it maintains it in strength long after an operant has been formed. Schedules of reinforcement are important in maintaining behavior. If a response has been reinforced for some time only once every five minutes, for example, the rat soon stops responding immediately after reinforcement but responds more and more rapidly as the time for the next reinforcement approaches. … Reinforcers may be positive or negative. A positive reinforcer reinforces when it is presented; a negative reinforcer reinforces when it is withdrawn. Negative reinforcement is not punishment. Reinforcers always strengthen behavior; that is what ‘reinforced’ means.”
Positive reinforcement is a big part of my life. I reward myself constantly and for almost any sort of accomplishment, big and small. By attaching rewards to my desired behavior, I increase the likelihood that I will repeat that behavior in the future.
When I “master planned” my life for the first time, I had to spend some time thinking about how to reward myself. I gave myself all sorts of incentives for all sorts of objectives. Some of them worked. Some of them didn’t.
Some success coaches suggest big rewards for big accomplishments. You might, for example, reward yourself with a sports car when you make your first million dollars. Big goals like that never worked for me, because they were too far off in the future. What motivates me are short-term goals. And I have a feeling that short-term goals will be better for you, too.
Over the years, I developed a reward system that works very well for me. Here it is:
• I keep a daily list of every task I want to accomplish. When I complete each task, I cross it out (or change its color on my screen) to “signal” that I have accomplished it. This little gesture is like a tiny shot of adrenaline. It picks me up and gives me energy to attack my next objective.
• When I’m working at the office, I set an egg timer for 30 to 60 minutes, depending on my workload for the day. When it goes off, I get up from my chair, walk outside, and spend a minute or two stretching out my back. I’ve found that 30 to 60 minutes flies by – especially when I’m writing – and so these half-hour or hour-long periods seem very short.
• After I sprint in the morning, I reward myself with 10 to 15 minutes of yoga. Doing yoga might seem like more exercise to some, but to me it feels like a reward since it is so much more relaxing than sprinting.
• After completing my first half-hour of writing fiction or poetry in the morning, I reward myself with breakfast.
• After wrestling at noon, I treat myself with a tasty protein shake.
• At 5:30, I take my laptop to the cigar bar down the street, and work on my writing there for another two hours. When I walk in, they have an espresso and water waiting for me. I look forward to this. I’m still doing work, but it’s a reward because I’m doing it in a new place.
• After two hours of writing at the cigar bar, I reward myself by going home, breaking open a good bottle of wine, and having dinner with K.
• If I do any work in the evening, I reward myself afterward by reading a good book or watching a movie.
• I reward myself every evening by climbing into a great bed with silky sheets and a pillow that fits my head perfectly.
These rewards, as you can see, are pretty mundane. But that’s the thing about rewards. They don’t have to be big or even special. They need only be enjoyable.
It would be easy for me to consider these little things – my breakfast, the stretching, the protein shake – as simply an ordinary part of my ordinary day. But by looking at them differently, by seeing them as pleasurable rewards for specific, desired behavior, they motivate me.
I think that is the key – identifying little pleasures you already have in your life and using them as behavior-changing rewards. It’s very easy to do once you recognize that these little pleasures are blessed gifts. Truly speaking, you are lucky to be able to enjoy them. Be happy about that. Use them pragmatically.
[Ed. Note: Giving yourself small rewards can help you make the achievement of big goals easier and more pleasurable. And before you know it, you'll be accomplishing things you always dreamed of. Discover how you can get more specific advice - including success secrets, actionable techniques, and tons of motivation - on how to turn your dreams into reality right here.
As a special thank you to our best customers, Michael has started a new VIP service in which he gives insider business-building advice usually reserved for his private clients - a twice-weekly newsletter called Ready Fire Aim: The Michael Masterson Dispatch. If you have bought an ETR product or attended a conference and are not receiving Ready Fire Aim, please let us know by sending an e-mail to Michael@ETRfeedback.com.]
Why Get Your Hands Dirty When You Don’t Have to?
Where there’s a stampede, there’s an opportunity…
Thousands of wannabe entrepreneurs have jumped on a bandwagon to find, fix-up and flip foreclosures.
They thought they were being smart. They thought they were doing the opposite to the crowd and had the license to print money.
Little do they know… they ARE the crowd!
Now, please don’t misunderstand me. It’s a fact that many properties (sadly) are becoming available at rock bottom prices due to foreclosure. It’s also a fact that a few people are making money by flipping foreclosures…
And they’re earning every penny (when it all works out)!
Flipping foreclosures may sound great in principle, but stop and think about what you have to go through to achieve that…
Not my idea of easy money.
Fat Loss Is All in Your Head
If you want to lose fat and build muscle, you need to plan ahead. I’m not talking about packing your lunches the night before, but planning out the next 12 weeks, meal by meal, grocery trip by grocery trip, workout by workout.
That level of planning leads to exceptional results. And it helps you avoid setbacks caused by making poor last-minute decisions that conflict with your fitness goals.
So take a few hours, right now, to put together your complete diet and exercise plan for the next three months. You might find this incredibly hard, or perhaps incredibly liberating – but each time you do it, you will get better at it.
Do the hard work in your head and the physical fat loss will be easy!
[Ed. Note: If you have a hard time reaching the goals you set for yourself, you're not alone. But ETR is here to help. Success mentor Bob Cox can help you make your dreams come true in 2009 and beyond. He'll give you weekly motivation, easy-to-follow success strategies, and - if you need it - a kick in the pants. Learn the details here.
Get a head start on your 2009 weight-loss goals with fitness expert Craig Ballantyne's Turbulence Training program. Learn how you can get fit in three 45-minute workouts a week right here.]
The Choice Is Yours
“Will you be having our Tropical Sunrise Margarita or a glass of our Strawberry Lemonade?”
The waitress looked at me expectantly. For a second, it felt like those were my only two choices – and I almost said, “Margarita please.”
But then I shook my head and asked for a water.
I’d almost given in to a classic sales strategy. Expert copywriter John Forde calls it the “Foregone Conclusion” technique. And you might want to put it to work in your marketing efforts.
The idea is not to offer your prospective customers a choice between buying or not buying. Instead, you offer them a choice between buying one thing… or another.
“The door to deciding whether or not to buy at all is already closed,” says John.
With this technique, you make the assumption that the customer has already decided to buy something that you’re offering. Then only decision left for him to make is whether to choose option A or option B.
[Ed. Note: You can get weekly insights into the world of copywriting and marketing from John Forde just by signing up for his e-newsletter Copywriter's Roundtable. And you can learn a dozen of the most effective marketing strategies around just by picking up a copy of the Amazon.com best-seller Changing the Channel: 12 Easy Ways to Make Millions for Your Business by Michael Masterson and MaryEllen Tribby.]
It’s Good to Know: Why Freebie Drugs Could Cost You
Who doesn’t like free samples? But it turns out that – in the case of prescription drugs handed out by doctors, at least – free samples can end up costing you in the long run. For one thing, your doctor might not give you the best drug for your particular illness because he has samples of a different drug. Plus, after their samples of a name-brand drug run out, doctors tend to continue to prescribe it. And if you don’t ask if a cheaper generic version is available, you’ll be stuck paying the higher price.
== Highly Recommended ==
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Word to the Wise: Atelier
An “atelier” (at-l-YAY) – from the French for “carpenter’s shop” – is a workshop or studio.
Example (as used by Mordecai Richler in Barney’s Version): “A garage in Montparnasse served as Leo’s atelier, and there he labored on his huge triptychs, mixing his paints in buckets and applying them with a kitchen mop.”
[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, 2009
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I wish our congress and executive office could take a hint from Craig B.s’, “Fat Loss is all in your head,” as in pork and over spending. Likewise couldn’t they learn from Suzanne R. that wise choices are probably not the first thing they hear or think. Also, couldn’t they learn from Michael M. and B.F. Skinner that everything that works or motivates does not have to cost billions of dollars. They believe in ‘freebie’ drugs and are hooked on ‘un-economics’. Good articles,guys and lady.
Fat loss all in the head could apply to the overspending porkers in Washington. Learning to make wise choices,likewise. And from Michael M. and Skinner they could learn everything that works or motivates does not cost billions.
Fat loss