*
Highly Recommended *
You
Deserve Answers...And Now You're Going to Get Them
If
you haven't gained the wealth you crave, you need to do something
differently.
Why?
Because all change, all progress begins with a single decision,
a single action.
Are
you ready to seize the final piece of the puzzle? The missing
ingredient to coast you all the way to financial freedom? You
deserve answers and now you're going to get them.
In
just 30 days from today your life could be in an entirely different
place. Don't
delay.
-
Charlie Byrne
ETR
Insider Report: Getting Creative With Real Estate Investing
By
Kam Weiler
Maybe
you've heard about Kyle MacDonald. On July 12, 2005, he decided
he would attempt to trade one red paperclip for a HOUSE. He
began his quest with a simple posting on his blog site - a
picture of his red paperclip and a request to trade it for "something
bigger or better."
One
year and 14 trades later, Kyle MacDonald is the proud owner
of a house.
Kyle's
story reminded me of my quest for my first home. Like him,
I did not have enough cash for a 20 percent down payment. I
didn't know if I could even afford the monthly payments, which
would be significantly higher than what I was paying in rent.
My
financial situation forced me to get a little "creative." I
ended up reading a ton of materials about real estate, and
learned that I might be able to buy a house with no money down.
I also learned that if I bought a duplex, the money I could
make from renting out one side of it would cover a large portion
of my monthly costs. Not only that, but if I held onto the
duplex for a while, I could actually start making money with
it.
Needless
to say, I was very excited. I went right out and bought an
ugly duplex on the edge of an up-and-coming neighborhood.
Just
two years later, my duplex is worth about $100,000 more than
what I paid for it, and it provides me with extra monthly income.
And,
thanks to my confidence in my newly acquired "creative" approach
to acquiring real estate (though not nearly as crazy as trading
one red paperclip for a house), I went on to purchase several
more rental properties. (Once, I even sold a property that
I didn't yet own for a $20,000 profit!)
My
point is, don't let lack of finances hold you back. There are
many creative ways to overcome the financial hurdles of owning
real estate. A program like Main
Street Millionaire will show you how easy
it can be.
[Ed.
Note: Kam Weiler is a contributing editor for Main
Street Millionaire, ETR's real estate
investment success program.]
"Procrastination
is the fear of success. People procrastinate because they
are afraid of the success that they know will result if
they move ahead now. Because success is heavy, carries
a responsibility with it, it is much easier to procrastinate
and live on the 'someday I'll' philosophy."
-
Denis Waitley
Beating
the Lazy, Happy, Manana Malady
By
Michael Masterson
I
recently received the following e-mail from Jeannie M.:
"Dear
Michael,
"I
love your e-zine and like the new Sunday weekly summary,
as I sometimes cannot find the time to keep up on a daily
basis.
"Several
years ago, I wrote a 50-word jingle (for want of a better
word) about the benefits of investing in gold. I wrote
it for a contest, but did not win. (I was surprised to
learn that an outside agency that did not know anything
about investing determined the winner.)
"I
found it the other day, and thought I might try to sell
it to a company that sells gold or gold investments. A
particular talk show program came to mind. They run a commercial
for such a company.
"My
question is this: How can I market this to them? Should
I contact them - assuming I can get through to the decision
maker - and ask for a contract that would become effective
in the event they decide to use it? Any ideas about what
price I might ask?
"I
will appreciate your help with this. I do hope to attend
one of your Marketing Bootcamps at some point."
Jeannie's
question tells me more than she probably wants to hear. But
if she will keep an open mind to what I'm about to say, it
will make her a much more effective businessperson. (It might
work for you, too.)
Be
prepared, because I am going to be blunt.
I
believe Jeannie is the victim of a pernicious type of thinking
that's spreading quickly, like a plague.
Let's
call this disease the Lazy, Happy, Manana Malady (LHMM for
short). And I'm sure Jeannie isn't the only ETR reader who
has it.
To
beat this disease, you need to recognize its symptoms.
LHMM
affects three things that are critical for success:
1.
Attitude - the way you think about yourself as
a worker and the work you do.
2.
Knowledge - the amount of knowledge you have about
the business you are in and your desire to learn more.
3.
Skill - the level of skill you need to succeed
in your chosen career and your desire to become more skillful
as time passes.
If
you have LHMM - unless you do something about it quickly -
your chances of success will die before you achieve any of
your major goals.
But
don't despair. You can easily cure yourself of LHMM by taking
three specific actions, all of which you can begin today.
1. Change
your attitude by adjusting your expectations.
To
be successful in life, it sometimes helps to be optimistic,
but not overly so. The best mental attitude combines the self-confidence
you get from improving your skills and using them successfully
with the humility that you also get from improving your skills,
yet occasionally seeing them fall short.
Let's
look at Jeannie's "problem": She wrote a jingle for
a contest, and it didn't win.
Based
on statistical probability, it is highly unlikely that Jeannie's
jingle would be picked out of thousands of other jingles, many
written by talented and experienced jingle writers. Especially
since, even if the contest prohibited them, hundreds of professionals
would have competed anyway, using a pseudonym or the name of
a friend or spouse.
And,
as far as I can tell from her e-mail, Jeannie is not a professional
- or experienced - jingle writer.
It
bothers Jeannie that the judges for the jingle contest "did
not know anything about investing." Well, why should they?
Presumably, they were from a marketing and/or public relations
firm, a business that was hired by the investment company to
pick the winner ... because the contest, itself, almost certainly
had something to do with the company's marketing strategy.
And
that point brings me to a second suggestion that will make
a tremendous difference in anyone's business life: Whatever
it is that you decide to do, you need to learn something about
sales and marketing.
2.
Become a marketing student.
Jeannie
is wondering how to sell her jingle to a particular company
she has in mind. Easy: Get in touch with the company's top
marketing guy and say something that will pique his interest
and make him want to hear more.
To
answer her question about price: What would a single jingle
from an inexperienced, unknown jingle writer be worth to a
big, successful, investment company? Maybe $500. Tops.
If
you find that surprisingly low, it's because you don't know
much about the world of marketing. Yet marketing is what makes
most of the world go round.
Marketing
is an extremely varied, deep, and fascinating subject. Of course,
most academic books on marketing are stupid, dry, and misguided.
Still, there are all sorts of good books out there that you
can read, as well as some good e-zines. ETR is certainly the
best (in terms of giving you the heady stuff). But I would
also recommend John Forde's Copywriter's
Roundtable and Bob Bly's Direct
Response Letter.
You
can learn a lot just by reading. But to get yourself started
in a serious way, you should invest more seriously in your
marketing education. Jeannie said that she plans to go to one
of ETR's marketing Bootcamps "some day." This is
something I hear from readers all the time. And I always wonder, "Why
some day? Why not this year?"
For
example, at this year's Information
Marketing Bootcamp: "Making a Fast Fortune on the Internet
Revolution," Jeannie could learn how
to take advantage of the trillion-dollar information industry.
If she came this year (not "some day"), she could
walk in with nothing more than an idea for a start-up business
... and leave with a rock-solid blueprint for transforming
that idea into a lasting stream of income.
3. Become
masterful at a financially valued skill.
It
doesn't matter what skill you choose to develop, so long as
it's one that will make it easy for you to eventually charge
$100 an hour for your time.
The
best way to get rich is to own your own business and invest
in real estate. (I make that case in my upcoming book, Seven
Years to Seven Figures, which will be published by John
Wiley & Sons within the next few months.) But the best
way to avoid penury - now and, more importantly, when you reach "retirement" age
- is to be very good at doing something that people will pay
good money for.
A
hundred dollars an hour is a good, minimum number to shoot
for. If you worked 50 hours a week at that rate, you'd be making
$250,000 a year. Yes, you can make a lot more money than a
quarter million bucks a year if you have your own successful
business, but in terms of having a reliably high income (one
you can earn regardless of how old you are or where you choose
to live), having a financially valued skill is the way to go.
With
a financially valued skill, you can retire and work on a very-part-time
basis ... and still have a good income to live on. Working
20 hours a week gives you plenty of time for other activities.
And you'd be earning $50,000 a year. Not bad - especially if
you have additional money from real estate investments coming
in.
To
start you thinking about this subject, I strongly recommend
that you reread my first two wealth-building books: Automatic
Wealth and Automatic
Wealth for Grads…and Anyone Else Just Starting Out.
Not
only will you be doing yourself a financial favor, you will
radically change the way you think about yourself. Through
trying and sometimes failing to become masterful at the skill
of your choice, you will develop the intellectual attributes
you need most for success: confidence, courage, persistence,
and humility. And you'll cure yourself of the Lazy, Happy,
Manana Malady once and for all!
* Highly
Recommended *
Turn
Your Mind into a Cash-Generating Idea Machine
Imagine
sitting in a meeting...a seemingly unsolvable problem is before
the group.
Everyone
is silent and stuck for ideas. But you come up with the thought
that saves the day!
Everyone
wonders why they didn't think of it. But only you know the
answer to that question. It's because they didn't know HOW
to look at the problem.
Ideas,
not money, are the true currency of business and personal success.
Now
you can discover a simple, step-by-step technique that
will give you a guaranteed source of powerful ideas and
solutions to call on any time you need one.
-
Charlie Byrne
The
Cholesterol-Lowering Power of Pistachios
By
Jon Herring
Due
to their high fat content, nuts received a bad rap during the
low-fat/no-fat madness of the last few decades. But the negative
press was entirely undeserved, because nuts are full of fats
that promote good health. In Message
#1760, I wrote about the heart-healthy benefits
of peanuts, walnuts, almonds, and pecans. But a new study has
shown that pistachios might top them all.
Researchers
in Turkey closely monitored nearly 50 men and women who made
pistachio nuts 20 percent of their diet for three weeks. They
found that the subjects' total cholesterol levels improved
and their triglycerides dropped. But what was most impressive
(besides the fact that these people ate so many pistachios)
is that their levels of HDL cholesterol (the so-called "good" cholesterol)
increased by 26 percent.
In
addition to being good for your heart, nuts are slow to digest,
so they satisfy your appetite longer than most foods. If you
enjoy them, grab a couple of bags next time you're at the store,
and snack on a few handfuls every day.
It's
Good to Know: A One-Stop Movie Review Shop
By
Suzanne Richardson
Before
you shell out $20 for a movie ticket and a sack of popcorn,
you want some assurance that you're not going to be spending
two hours squirming in your seat. And movie reviews in the
newspaper aren't always a big help. I remember reading a very
positive review of the movie Sylvia, a film I found
sadly disappointing.
Instead,
take a look at the RottenTomatoes website, which collects reviews
from professional film critics all over the country. This site
offers over 600,000 searchable reviews of nearly 130,000 films.
Search for a particular title, and you'll find the Tomatometer
- a quick visual summary of the critics' reactions to it. A
ripe red tomato indicates that over half the reviews are positive;
a green splat denotes a rotten movie with primarily negative
reviews. (Sylvia got a dismal score of 38 percent
on the Tomatometer, by the way, which is closer to what I think
it deserves.)
You'll
also find movie previews, recommendations, links to movie trailers,
industry news, and access to The Fresh/Rotten Report,
RottenTomatoes' weekly newsletter. And to satisfy your movie
mania, there's an online store, stocked with DVDs, movie posters,
and video soundtracks.
Of
course, you wouldn't want to discount a movie just because
an unknown critic panned it. And it might even be fun to try
some of the "rottenest" movies on the site, to see
for yourself what all the negative hype is about.
(Source: Information
Outlook)
* Advertisement *
Grow
Your Wealth With the Combination of High Yields and Market
Beating Gains.
Dividend
paying stocks clobbering the competition. Standard & Poor's
reports an all most 8% difference. Read
the full report now...
Word
to the Wise: Penury
"Penury" (PEN-yuh-ree)
is extreme poverty. The word is derived from the Latin for "lack" or "want."
Example
(as I used it today): "The best way to avoid penury -
now and, more importantly, when you reach 'retirement' age
- is to be very good at doing something that people will pay
good money for."
