*
Highly Recommended *
Make
An Investment In Yourself...
Today,
I'd like to tell you about the easiest
way to immediately advance your career --
no matter what field you work in.
In
fact, you could add anywhere from $25,000 to $50,000 to even
$100,000 a year to your salary right now - and it wouldn't
involve changing careers, starting a business or going back
to school.
At
the same time, you'd also be joining the ranks of a prestigious
organization of professionals that earn executive-level salaries
every year without ever asking for a raise, without ever having
to count on that elusive 'big promotion' to boost their incomes.
Sound
crazy? I might have thought so too... except I
have a friend that did exactly that.
-
Patrick Coffey
Telecom's
Back
By
Charles Delvalle
Telecom
stocks are back in style. And they're rewarding smart investors
with triple-digit returns.
Back
in the 90s, telecom companies spent boatloads of cash upgrading
their infrastructures - and because of all that spending, they
acquired massive debt. During the 2001 recession, that debt
finally took its toll, and the telecom sector sank.
Though
it took a few years, the huge buildup of mobile infrastructure
that the telecom companies invested in back then is finally
bearing fruit. As a result, the sector has become one of the
best-performing ones of the past two years. With companies
such as BellSouth, AT&T, and Motorola, the AMEX telecommunications
index XTC has nearly doubled since 2003. And as the debt from
these companies continues to get wiped off their balance sheets,
their margins and earnings per share should continue rising
well into the future.
Take
advantage of this long-term bullish sector by jumping into
IYZ, an Ishares ETF. This ETF tracks telecom companies such
as Verizon, BellSouth, Nextel, and others. Your portfolio will
thank you for it.
[Ed.
Note: Charles Delvalle is the Managing Editor of ETR's Money
Insight newsletter.]
"Innovation
is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship. The act
that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth."
-
Peter F. Drucker
Notes
From Nicaragua: How an Hour Slave Can Have a Very Good
Income
By
Michael Masterson
I
fell asleep during the plane ride to Nicaragua, and woke up
with a stiff neck that just wouldn't go away. Yesterday, CO
mentioned that he knew a good massage therapist at a local
surf camp. Today, he showed up with Flavia at his side. "She
was free now," he said, "so I figured I'd grab her."
Flavia
is a pretty young woman with an easy smile and an unfamiliar
accent. As she began adroitly mobilizing the muscles around
my neck and back, she told me something about her life and
work.
She
grew up in Madrid, and then fell in love with a surfer from
Argentina. They moved to the Basque country "so he could
be near his beloved ocean," and now spend half their time
there and the other half at the surf camp here in Nicaragua.
The actual schedule of their lives was determined not by their
children's schooling, as it was for K and me, but by Neptune's
whim. "So long as the swells are good, we stay," she
said. "When there are no more good waves, we go."
They
have two children, a three-year old and an infant of seven
months. "I have been thinking about how to educate them," she
told me. "They are young now, but in a few years I will
have to make a decision. A friend of mine is home-schooling
her children, and she's doing a good job of it. But that's
not what I want for my kids."
So
Flavia is talking to people and searching the Internet for
answers, while she supplements her husband's modest salary
as a surf guide by charging between $35 and $55 an hour for
her very good handiwork.
Flavia
is one of dozens of surf spouses I've met since our Rancho
Santana community became a Mecca for international surfers.
They have all impressed me with their willingness to mix marriage,
children, and the nomadic life they have committed themselves
to.
While
Flavia continued to work on my aching muscles, I looked out
the window. It was another spectacular day, all right. The
color of the sky. The shape of the mountains. The pulsing,
pounding of the ocean. Who can say she hasn't chosen the best
possible life for herself? She spends her time in two very
beautiful places. She has two healthy children and (I am told)
a very nice, easygoing husband.
As
her family ages and expands, she will face some problems, though
- and many of them will be connected to their lifestyle. She
is already thinking about one of them: her children's schooling.
But there will be others. Where, for example, will the money
come from to buy a car that doesn't stall each time it attempts
a hill ... to pay for doctors, dentists, and medicine ... and
for a house (or two) that they can call their own?
What
can Flavia do now to prepare for her future? A lot - starting
with making full use of her existing resources.
As
a massage therapist, she has a financially valuable skill that
she has mastered. It won't earn her $100 an hour in Nicaragua,
but if she learns something about business and marketing, she
could certainly do better than the $45 an hour she's currently
averaging.
Another
resource that Flavia has is her attitude. She is naturally
energetic, optimistic, and enthusiastic. These are qualities
that make people happy to do business with her. If she could
learn to sell her services as well as she sells herself in
person, she could take a big, financial leap forward.
Finally,
there's that very nice, easygoing husband. Nice, easygoing
people aren't always the best money makers, but they are very
compatible companions to those who are. If Flavia turns her
part-time gig into a profitable business some day, her husband
- if he is willing to stay home and take care of the kids -
will make her responsibilities that much easier to manage.
Those
are three very useful resources. To take full advantage of
them and secure a financially comfortable life for her family,
Flavia needs to establish and follow a specific plan of action.
Here's
my suggestion - and this plan should work for lots of people
with paid-by-the-hour skills:
First,
she needs to understand the basic economics of her situation.
As
a professional who charges by the hour, Flavia's wealth potential
is limited by her time. To boost her income, she can do two
things:
1. She
can charge more per hour.
2. She
can work more hours.
Her
average hourly rate of about $45 an hour is pretty respectable
here in Nicaragua, a country where the cost of living is so
low. But if Flavia works only 10 or 12 hours a week - which
is what she is doing now - she can make only about $25,000
a year.
That's
enough to feed and clothe her family, but it won't pay for
private schools, better cars, and the travel expenses involved
in catching the next big wave.
My
recommendation is for her to try to get her average hourly
income up to $60 an hour. Also, to double the hours she is
working and, depending on how things go in the future, double
them again.
Flavia
can increase her hourly income by developing more private clients
in Rancho Santana and other nearby upscale communities. She
won't be able to make more than $35 an hour at the surf camp
where she and her husband are based - but that's okay, since
she doesn't do enough business there to worry about.
To
maximize her productivity, she should advertise her services
at the surf camp, but limit her hours. Surfers generally aren't
interested in massage treatments until after sunset and sometimes
in the middle of the day. She can figure out which hours are
best, and then post them. That way, she can keep the surf camp
management happy without curtailing her outside work with more
affluent customers.
She
can easily boost her rate on the outside by leaving the $55
an hour as a one-time rate and charging $60 an hour thereafter.
Once clients see how good and knowledgeable she is, they won't
quibble about the extra $5.
She
should also sell products to them. People who travel overseas
often forget to bring their favorite skin and hair products
with them. Having been relaxed into submission for an hour,
Flavia wouldn't have to sell very hard to boost her hourly
income to, say, $70 on a net (after cost of product) basis.
If
she continued to work 10 hours a week at the surf camp and
added a solid 10 additional hours outside the camp, she would
be earning just over $1,000 a week (10 hours times $35 and
10 hours times $70). That amounts to over $50,000 a year.
If
Flavia could eventually book 40 hours a week outside the surf
camp (at $60 an hour), she could afford to quit the camp and
locate her family elsewhere. Or, better yet, she could make
a deal with the surf camp management to supply them with therapists
at, say, $30 an hour. She would train and supervise them, and
make for herself a third to a half of what they bring in.
If
she did all that, she could be making $120,000 a year plus
another $15,000 or $20,000 a year from the surf camp.
Massaging
people for 40 hours a week isn't easy. Unless you develop techniques
to prevent it, the stress on your own joints will eventually
break you down. (Thai massage specialists, I've been told,
employ such techniques and often work 40-plus hours a week
with no problem.) So that's something Flavia can do right away
in anticipation of full-time work: Change some of her techniques
(less hand manipulation and more use of elbows, forearms, and
feet) so she can work more hours.
If
and when Flavia got tired of spending 40 hours a week working
with her hands (and arms and feet), she could expand the little
business she would already have going with the surf camp. By
taking advantage of the low wage scale in Nicaragua (as she
should, because it's good for the economy), she could get all
the help she wants to work for her for $4 an hour. (That's
four times the rate a gardener makes here.) By charging her
clients - local spas, hotels, and communities - a fixed fee
of, say, $20 an hour for the therapists, the management, and
the accounting, she could have herself a high profit margin.
The
key to making all this happen, of course, is marketing. Flavia
must add that second financially valuable skill to the one
she already knows.
[Ed.
Note: What's your financially valued skill? You can turn just
about any skill - or interest - into a profitable business
online. We'll show you exactly how to do it at this year's Info
Marketing Bootcamp: "Making a Fast Fortune on the Information
Revolution."]
* Highly
Recommended *
Give
Yourself a Nice Pay Raise - And A Three Day Weekend, Every
Weekend
By
the end of this week, you can give yourself a pay raise. How
does an extra $20/hr sound... and schedule a few days vacation
while you're at it!
After
a month or two, how about another raise... to $2,000 a week.
It's
happening everywhere. Ordinary people --- including folks who
never finished school --- starting their own businesses...
and making side incomes in the neighborhood of $40,000... $60,000...
even $100,000 or more a year.
They're
living the American Dream. Now it's time for you to start living
it too. Read
on...
-
Charlie Byrne
Common
Herbs Pack a Powerful Antioxidant Punch
By
Jon Herring
If
you picture bland, tasteless, colorless meals when you think "health
food," you're making a mistake. Researchers from the
U.S. Department of Agriculture in Beltsville, Maryland found
that many common herbs used in cooking are full of antioxidants
- natural chemicals that protect cells from harmful molecules
produced during metabolism. Often referred to as "free
radicals," these destructive forces have been linked to
the development of chronic and age-related disease.
High
on their list of healthy herbs were oregano, rose geranium,
sweet bay, purple amaranth, dill, winter savory, and Vietnamese
coriander. For maximum benefit, buy fresh herbs. Better yet,
grow them yourself - and toss in a few whenever you're preparing
a salad, vegetables, fish, chicken, or meat.
(Resource: Journal
of Agricultural and Food Chemistry)
Lesson
From Bootcamp: 2 Secrets of Catalog Success From Herschell
Gordon Lewis
Eighty
percent of Americans do at least some of their shopping from
home ... and the catalogs that entice them to buy pull in somewhere
around $150 billion a year. (That number doesn't even include
online catalogs.)
Catalogs
are not only hugely profitable for the companies that mail
them, they also represent a great opportunity for copywriters.
After all, somebody's got to write all that copy - everything
from the catalog introductions to the product descriptions.
As
we've said many times in ETR, the AWAI copywriting
program will give you a strong foundation
in writing for any market - including catalogs. But during
his presentation at last year's Bootcamp, master copywriter
Herschell Gordon Lewis got much more specific. Here are just
two of the secrets he revealed that can help you create a great
online or print catalog:
Secret
#1. Catalog Copy Is Not Much Different From Regular Direct-Mail
Copy, But ...
Unlike
most direct-mail copy, catalog copy must be very brief. With
such a small amount of space to get your message across,
you can't engage your readers with lengthy stories or extensive
proofs. Instead, says Herschell, use the catalog illustrations
or photos to help get your point across. And, of course,
make sure the writing is strong and very tight.
Secret
#2. The Clarity Commandment
Given
the space constraint, Herschell calls this the most important
rule in catalog copywriting - and it works for any type of
sales-oriented communication, be it direct mail, e-mail,
or online sales. "When you choose words and phrases,
clarity is paramount," he says. "Don't let any
other component of your communication interfere with it."
The "Clarity
Commandment" means you avoid words and phrases that
are too fancy. For example, you wouldn't say, "Eschew
obfuscation." Instead, you'd say, "Write in plain
English and use words that are easy to understand."
But
it goes beyond that. It means using words and approaches
suitable for your market - even industry jargon, when appropriate.
For example, in selling computer components to professionals,
failure to describe features in the kind of technical language
they're used to violates the Clarity Commandment.
[Ed.
Note: To get more expert marketing advice from Herschell Gordon
Lewis at this year's Bootcamp: "Making
a Fast Fortune on the Information Revolution," reserve
your spot now.]
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Word
to the Wise: Cozen
To "cozen" (KUZun)
is to deceive - to mislead by means of a petty trick or fraud.
Example
(as used by Robert Louis Stevenson in The
Master of Ballantrae): "You would
naturally not think so flat a rogue could cozen you. But have
a care! These half idiots have a sort of cunning, as the skunk
has its stench."
