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I
Used to Be Ashamed of What My Wife Was Doing for
a Living...
But
everything changed after she started her own "microbusiness".
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-- not a fortune, but a solid, extra cash stream
-- plus, they can be accumulated, one after the
other, so that one day they may be worth more
than everything else you have put together.
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WEALTH
The
Lure of the Land
Fortunes
have been made investing in raw land. While very high on the
risk scale, there are certain factors that can make it appealing.
First, you can sometimes secure owner financing at below-market
rates. Second, there is potential for astronomical appreciation
if you buy in the path of high growth. Third, with certain parcels,
you may be able to subdivide and resell for immediate returns.
Just be sure you can afford to hold onto the property indefinitely
if things don't turn out as planned.
-
Justin Ford, Editor of ETR's
Main Street Millionaire program.
HEALTH
One More Reason to Say "No" to Artificial Sweeteners
Here's
another reason to quit drinking diet drinks. Aside from the
fact that they're made with two of the most harmful ingredients
in our food supply (aspartame and Splenda), they actually cause
people to gain weight!
Researchers
at the University of Texas studied the weight and soda-drinking
habits of 600 normal-weight subjects of various ages. Then they
followed up with them eight years later.
-
Those who drank one diet soda a day were 65% more likely
to be overweight than those who drank none.
-
Those who drank two or more diet drinks a day raised their
odds even higher.
There
are numerous studies that confirm these findings. For one thing,
though diet drinks have no calories, they actually stimulate
your appetite and cause a powerful craving for carbohydrates.
Other research suggests that artificial sweeteners also stimulate
fat storage.
(Reference:
Mercola.com)
-
Jon Herring
WISDOM
Set
the Parameters Before Leaving on a "Working Vacation"
Michael
Masterson is a big proponent of working vacations - working
a few hours, but then enjoying the rest of the day. And I like
doing that too. But there's an important caveat: Make sure your
travel companion agrees to this arrangement before you set out
on your journey.
Here
in Maine on a working vacation, I've been spending quite a few
hours at wireless coffee shops. And almost every day, I see
happy couples come in and sit down together. One of them starts
clicking away at a laptop, while the other one enjoys a latte
and scans the local paper ... at first. But before long, the
"second party" is tapping his or her fingers. And
eventually (usually after half an hour), can't hold it back
any longer …
"Come
on! I thought we were supposed to be on vacation!"
I've
seen this exact scene repeated at least three times in the past
week.
Fortunately,
I've avoided it myself. My wife knows to leave me here and go
browsing in local bookstores, shopping, or on expeditions I'm
not keen on. When she comes back, we're both happy.
-
Charlie Byrne
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TODAY'S
MESSAGE
Automatic
Wealth: Seven Years to Seven Figures, Part 1
by
Michael Masterson
On
a recent Monday night, I flew from Baltimore, where I was meeting
with the execs at Agora Publishing, to Manhattan, where I was
giving a lecture at the Learning Annex about my new book Automatic
Wealth.
It
had been six months since the book was first published, so I
didn't want to simply repeat its main points. I was hoping to
come up with something fresh. On the train ride to the city,
I thought about what I could say that would be of interest to
a group of sophisticated New Yorkers.
Would
they be interested in my six-step strategy for financial independence
- the program articulated in Automatic
Wealth? Perhaps - so long as they hadn't already
read the book. But if they had, what then?
Maybe
it would be better, I thought, to talk about something more
au courant (see Word to the Wise, below) - such as in how the
real estate market is overvalued and what they should do about
it.
But
everybody and his uncle are talking about that. (That morning's
Wall Street Journal had no fewer than three pieces about the
real estate bubble: (1) a long article on how the top 25 vacation
destinations in the U.S. had seen property values increase between
117% to 162% in five years, (2) a short report on New York City
price escalation, and (3) an essay by George Anders noting that
cocktail parties these days are full of stories about fortunes
made by flipping apartments.)
I
thought about the survey results we'd just gotten back from
our ETR readers. In a similar creative stalemate, I'd gone to
them with a list of possible titles for my next business book.
Here were their top three preferences:
1.
"Retire Next Year!": How to quit your job and make
$100,000 a year doing something you love. I explained the
basic mechanics of this process in Automatic
Wealth. Now, in "Retire Next Year!"
I'd show how a dozen of my friends and proteges have done
it.
2.
"Natural Wealth, Natural Health": In this book,
Dr. Sears and I would team up to explain how to achieve wealth
and health by following Mother Nature's oldest and most commonly
ignored rules.
3.
"Natural Marketing Genius": In ETR, I spend a lot
of time talking about success and wealth building - but the
thing I know best of all is how to market. This book would
be a collection of 15 or 20 of my most powerful marketing
secrets - direct-sales techniques that have been instrumental
in making more than a billion dollars' worth of sales.
One of those titles might work for my lecture. But which one?
I
was in a quandary. In just a few hours, I'd have my chance to
do my thing in New York City. ("If you can make it there,
you can make it anywhere!"). Yet I hadn't even settled
on a topic. I thought about what Virginia Avery, my speech coach,
would be saying: "What is the one thing - the single most
important message - you want to leave them with?"
One
thing. That's always my problem. Narrowing down my ambitions
to just one thing. One thing. "Hey," I thought. "I
just wrote something for John Mauldin's new book 'Just
One Thing'." In that essay - a chapter,
really - I argued that the best way to succeed in business is
to be considerate of others. That was a good idea - but maybe
a bit philosophical for an audience that might have paid the
Learning Annex to hear more pragmatic advice.
Getting
off the train at Penn Station, I had no more idea about what
I was going to speak about than I did when I boarded three hours
earlier. I could see Virginia shaking her head at me, disapprovingly.
And
as I climbed the stairs to the room in which 80 people sat patiently
waiting for me, I had only a single new idea in my head - a
thought about how there are four kinds of books about moneymaking
and why the type I wrote was the best:
1.
Most popular are the books about stocks and stock investing.
These appeal primarily to retired (or nearly) people who depend
on their investment income, rather than earnings, for their
livelihoods. Such people equate wealth building with stocks
- and care a great deal about whether they get an 8% or a
12% ROI.
2.
Another popular type of wealth book describes wealthy people
and how they may have gotten their money. ("The
Millionaire Next Door", for example.)
These books are generally written by researchers and academics
who made their money - if they have any - by writing about
wealth building, not by doing it.
3.
Yet another group includes books by financial planners and
economists who make their money by telling others how to get
out of debt and begin to lead responsible lives. Like the
researchers and academics, these people don't generally have
any actual wealth-building experience themselves.
4.
Finally, there are books like Automatic
Wealth - written by people like me who have
become wealthy by actually taking the actions that they recommend.
(And there aren't a whole lot of us.)
As
I reached the top of the stairs, I had another idea. I could
give my speech based on the title the people at Nightingale-Conant
suggested for the audiotape series I may do with them: "Seven
Years to Seven Figures."
If
you were me and had just two hours to conquer the Big Apple,
what would you talk about?
I
couldn't make up my mind, because I didn't know what kind of
people were going to show up. Would they be a bunch of old white
guys, retired businessmen who wanted to know how to boost their
multimillion-dollar retirement funds? Would they be hardworking
minority mothers, hoping to get their spending in check and
put some balance back into their lives? Or would they be people
eager to acquire wealth?
I
didn't know. So I walked into the room, introduced myself, and
asked them what they wanted me to speak about.
The
answers pretty much circled around one question: how to become
financially independent as quickly as possible.
Imagine
that! Eighty sophisticated New Yorkers and that's all they really
wanted to know. Forget about macroeconomics, the efficient-market
hypothesis, or beta values. A pox on fundamental vs. technical
market analysis.
"I've
read your book," one pleasant looking, gray-haired woman
said. "In it, you talk about achieving wealth in seven
to 15 years. I'm 62 years old. So I don't have 15 years to wait.
I'm not sure I've even got seven. What can you do for me?"
The
room burst into spontaneous applause.
I
asked for a show of hands. "How many years are you willing
to invest in getting rich?" I asked.
Not
a single person was willing to wait more than seven years!
So
much for financial planning books that are based on the miracle
of compound interest. (A valid approach, but only if you are
willing to scrimp and save for 40 years. Yes, 40 years! Page
through one of those books. Read the charts. You'll see what
I'm talking about.)
"It
just so happens," I told the audience, "that I am
uniquely qualified to tell you how to get rich in seven years
or less. It took me less than three years to become a millionaire
- and that was back when a million dollars meant something.
And I've mentored at least a dozen people who have achieved
financial independence in less than seven."
And
so that's how I found my speech topic. On Friday, I'll tell
you what I told them.
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TODAY'S
ACTION PLAN
Promise
yourself that you will NOT do what I did. Waiting
until you're actually standing in front of your audience
to decide what you're going to say is a bad idea.
In this case, I got away with it because I've had
so much public-speaking experience and because I'm
so familiar with the general subject I was planning
to cover. But it's always better to be completely
and totally prepared. For some excellent advice on
how to do this, re-read Virginia Avery's article in
Message
#1460.
COPYWRITING
"Corns
Gone in Five Days or Money Back"
Study
successful copywriting - and improve your sales -
by reviewing ads that have been running for a long
time. Marketers know to cut their losers quickly while
letting winners run. For example, the headline above
is for a small mail-order ad that has been running
continuously in the National Enquirer for over 20
years - a surefire indication that it works.
"This is a great headline," writes Dan Kennedy.
"In just eight words, it clearly promises a benefit
- corns gone. It strengthens the promised benefit
with a specific timeframe - in five days. And it further
strengthens the benefit with a guarantee."
-
Charlie Byrne
[Ed.
Note: You'll find more marketing and copywriting strategies
in Dan's latest NO B.S. Marketing Letter: http://www.dk3monthspecial.com/agora]
WORD
TO THE WISE
"Au
courant" (OH koo-RAHN) is French for "in
the current." We use this phrase in reference to being
up to date or informed of the latest developments.
Example
(as I used it in today's main article): "Maybe it would
be better, I thought, to talk about something more au courant
- such as in how the real estate market is overvalued and what
they should do about it."
