A Painful Lesson in Supreme Service

Issue #2417

• WEALTHY: What kind of investment "fish" are you pulling in? (Rick Pendergraft)
• HEALTHY: The only time to use aerobics (Craig Ballantyne)
• WISE: Rick de Marinis on doing good deeds

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:

• The surprise I found in the Frankfurt airport (John Forde)
• Making the world a better place (Michael Masterson)
• It’s Good to Know… about green goddess dressing (Charlie Byrne)
• Add "disjunctive" to your vocabulary

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When You Bottom Fish, You Can Catch Carp, Catfish… or Lobster

By Rick Pendergraft 

When you go bottom fishing, there are a number of things you can catch. Carp are bottom feeders, as are catfish. I don’t know about you, but I have never been a big fan of catfish and I don’t know anyone who eats carp. But some of the other bottom feeders in the marine world are delicacies like lobster, shrimp, and crab.

What does this have to do with investing? Well, when I was a recent guest on a California radio show, one caller got me thinking. He claimed to be a "bottom fisherman" as an investor – meaning he looks for stocks that are extremely beat up and seem ready for a bounce.

A good strategy? Sometimes.

But if you are going to go bottom fishing for stocks, invest in them only if you can find a compelling reason to do so. In most cases, those stocks will be so beaten up that they are not going to have anything much to offer from a technical perspective. You are more likely to find a bullish case in a combination of the fundamentals and the sentiment analysis.

Take Ford, for instance. It’s certainly a beat-up stock right now. However, as I mentioned in my article on Monday, it has some compelling fundamentals – like cash on hand. The sentiment toward Ford is also noteworthy, with a short interest ratio of 7.5 and the analyst ratings showing one "buy," eight "holds," and three "sells." So this bottom feeder could be a lobster of a catch.

Just remember, if you go bottom fishing, be selective. When you drag in stocks off the bottom, you’ll catch the occasional lobster. But you’re going to catch a lot of carp and catfish too.

[Ed. Note: How do you know when you're bottom fishing? How do you know where the "lobster" swim? Investment expert Rick Pendergraft can point you in the right direction... and he can also show you the simple secret he uses to reel in the best investments he can find. Learn more here.]

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"Kings and cabbages go back to compost, but good deeds stay green forever."

Rick de Marinis

A Painful Lesson in Supreme Service

By John Forde

Call it an airport casualty. A ruptured tendon in this poor writer’s left calf, thanks to a nearly missed flight this past week in Frankfurt, Germany.

Seems the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) pulled a surprise inspection in Philly on the first leg (no pun intended) of my Lufthansa flight back to Europe. It took just long enough to eat away at my connection window on the other end, and I was left to sprint O.J. style (pre-crime spree) to my gate.

In case you’ve yet to visit, the Frankfurt airport is an interesting place. Especially when you’re running late. Long corridors, lots of stairs, moving walkways, stupefied crowds trying to make sense of the overly complicated signs and directives.

I jumped, I dodged, I hurtled.

Three hallways, five flights of steps, a tunnel, one passport and security checkpoint each, and two 100-meter moving walkways later… and with a 30-pound backpack over my shoulder… I made the gate, sweating but relieved.

Until I figured out that this wasn’t the right gate anymore. The sign that should have said "Paris" now said "Hamburg."

With less than 60 seconds to spare and no sign anywhere indicating the new gate, I got news from a desk agent that the new departure deck was a hefty 29 gates away… easily 15 minutes on foot.

But I had to try, and try I did.

With a pivot and a leap, I landed back on another moving walkway ready for another full-tilt run… when something went "pop" in my left leg. Like a bullet, like a hammer, like something your leg is not supposed to do… especially when you’ve got a flight to catch. But it went ahead and did it anyway.

I couldn’t move forward another inch.

And that’s where luck stepped in, in the form of Lufthansa’s extremely helpful staff.

At exactly that moment, a yellow electric cart pulled up, carting two older French women who also now happened to be at the wrong gate for their flight. I hopped over to the driver and explained what just happened. She helped me up on the back, jumped off to call and ask them to hold the plane, then whisked us over to the right gate. I never would have made it, even without the injury, any other way.

At the desk, she checked me in and suggested a wheelchair. I couldn’t even hop the length of the boarding tunnel without whimpering like a kicked dog, so I accepted.

She called ahead and arranged another wheelchair for Paris. And on the flight, an attendant just coming off a 22-hour shift… and heading back home to Paris… insisted on getting me ice, checking in on me, and even offering to drop me off at my apartment after getting me through customs.

I told her I’d be fine. But another airport rep on the French side rolled me through the labyrinth of Terminal One at Charles de Gaulle airport, waited while I picked up my bag, and helped me into a taxi.

Three days later, I’m well on the way to better. Two weeks from now, I’ll have forgotten the injury (almost) entirely. But what I’ll remember is the customer care.

I don’t fly Lufthansa often, because I prefer to skip making that connection in Germany. Still, should the need ever come up again, I’ll fly with them gladly. And I know I’ll talk them up to friends looking to book flights on the same route.

As copywriters, marketers, and business owners, we spend so much time getting customers in the door. It’s too easy to forget about them once that’s done.

Yet look what happens when a business that’s already made the sale and banked the money still insists on going the extra mile.

[Ed. Note: Surprised that master copywriter John Forde is writing about customer service? Don't be. Copywriting and customer service are only two of the ingredients you need to build a successful business. Get advice from expert business-builders - including John - about how to start and grow your own Internet powerhouse right here.

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The School House That Ye Built

By Michael Masterson

You have heard so much about it already: the earthquake that stunned China. The municipal buildings survived because they were built to earthquake standards. But the public schools collapsed because they were not.

That is mostly true – with one exception: the schoolhouse that Ye built.
 
When Ye Zhiping became principal of the Sangzao Middle School several years ago, his first job was to inspect the school building. He found many smaller problems that could be corrected easily – exit lights that weren’t working, fire escapes that needed fixing, etc. But the biggest problem – the integrity of the building itself – needed more than a quick fix.

Zhiping went to work immediately, raising funds, drawing up plans, getting approvals, and supervising contractors. Over a two-year period, he raised 400,000 yuan (about $60,000), which he used to reinforce the building’s concrete pillars and rebuild some floors that had been weakened by water damage.

After the earthquake, parents rushed to the school. Teachers lined the children up outside and conducted a head count. When it was complete, said Edward Wong, reporting for The New York Times, the "fate [of the children] was clear: all 2,323 were alive."

Parents, covered in blood and dust, hugged their children. Everyone was crying happily. But no one was happier than Ye Zhiping. For in his heart, he knew he had saved them.

We won’t all have the chance to save schoolchildren from earthquakes, but we will – and do – have opportunities every day to make our world a little better than it is right now.

Look around you. At your desk right now. At your office, home, or community. Surely there is something you can do. Something that could be cleaned or fixed or in some other way improved.

That’s all Ye Zhiping did, if you think about it. He didn’t set out to save two thousand lives. He didn’t plan to be a hero. He simply noticed something that needed to be improved. And he did something about it.

What was special, if anything, about what Ye Zhiping did was his motive for acting. He didn’t fix the building because it was annoying him. He didn’t spend the money on leaky pipes or a bad heating system. The problem with the school building was one that could have easily been ignored. That’s what Zhiping’s predecessors had done – just shrugged their shoulders and hoped everything would be okay.

But instead of ignoring the problem, he went into action. To get the job done, he probably had to spend much of his spare time writing letters and filling out forms and holding fundraisers and cajoling politicians. He ignored his own comfort and risked the censure of school authorities because he believed it was somehow his duty. Not as a school principal, but as a human being.

My mother always said, "Leave the world a better place than you found it." Your mother probably said that to you, too. Take a moment right now to think about what you are currently doing to make your world a better place. But remember – we’re not talking about things that make the world better for you. We’re talking about making it better for others.

That’s the essence of goodness, if goodness has any value at all: taking pains for other people.

So how, exactly, are you doing on that score?
 
[Ed. Note: What are you doing to help make the world a better place? Let us know in the comments section right here.  Maybe your actions can inspire others.

Correction: In the 7/25 issue of ETR, we incorrectly referred to the Chinese currency as "yen" instead of "yuan."]

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A Fast Benefit From Cardio

By Craig Ballantyne

I’m not a huge fan of traditional aerobic cardio workouts for fat loss. They’re inefficient, ineffective, and can cause injury. However, aerobics can have an immediate health benefit for anyone who makes the mistake of indulging in too much food.

For example, sometimes even fitness professionals tend to eat one more burger than they need, as I did on a holiday last week. But I recently read a study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition indicating that performing aerobic exercise after a high-fat meal can help alleviate the damage. So after the BBQ, my dog and I went for a brisk walk.

In the study, 15 subjects were put through several experiments, each time eating a meal containing 100 grams of fat. (By the way, you’d have to eat 11 hot dogs to get that much fat. And, although that sounds like a difficult task, this year’s 4th of July Nathan’s hot-dog-eating contest winner stuffed down 59!) When the subjects performed aerobic exercise after the high-fat meal, the researchers found that their triglyercides were lowered by an average of 32 percent as compared to eating the same meal without post-meal exercise.

I’m not recommending that you do aerobic exercise every time you head to the gym. For long-term fat loss and fitness, you should couple high-intensity interval exercise with bodyweight training. But if you make a dietary mistake, do yourself a favor and get a move on. It will not only burn a few calories, it will also help with cardiovascular damage control.

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It’s Good to Know: Green Goddess Dressing

By Charlie Byrne

In a review about a new steakhouse here in Delray Beach, the writer said she’d ordered a salad with green goddess dressing.

Huh? Never heard of it.

So I looked it up…

Green goddess dressing first appeared on the dining scene in 1920s San Francisco. The chef, according to FoodReference.com, created the dressing in honor of George Arliss, who was appearing in a play called "The Green Goddess." It’s a blend of mayonnaise, chives, tarragon, parsley, scallions, garlic, and – like Caesar salad – anchovies.

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Word to the Wise: Disjunctive

Something that’s "disjunctive" (dis-JUNGK-tiv) – from the Middle English for "placed in opposition" – serves to disjoin, separate, divide, or distinguish.

Example (as used by Todd Hide in The New York Times): "Most disjunctive of all are the huge numbers of stalls selling Provencal-style tablecloths, bedspreads and cushions, many of which are not just not made in Provence but not made in France at all."

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Copyright ETR, LLC, 2008

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