Crack Your Own Foundation
Archives: Daily Issues
Issue #2638
- WEALTHY: 4 more ways to select the best tenants for your rental properties (Julie Broad)
- HEALTHY: This element is nothing to meddle with! (Kelley Herring)
- WISE: Bertrand Russell on real life
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
- How to give your marketing a major credibility boost (Howie Jacobson)
- 3 ways to get a deal on a rental car (Bonnie Caton)
- It’s Fun to Know… why a $100 bill goes a long way
- Add “erstwhile” to your vocabulary
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Stopping Tenant Problems Before They Start
By Julie Broad
The best way to solve problems with tenants is to prevent those problems from coming up in the first place. And it starts with the tenant-selection process.
In “How to Find the Best Tenants for Your Rental Property,” I covered some essential points on tenant selection. Here are a few more suggestions:
• Set clear tenant selection criteria that comply with regulations in your area. You want renters who are financially responsible, show respect for your property, and are likely to keep renewing the lease.
• Think about your ideal tenant and write an ad that will appeal to that specific person. Then, to make your unit especially attractive to your ideal tenant, price it slightly under market rates.
• Hold an open house to show the property. An open house saves time, interrupts current residents less, and can increase a sense of demand for the property.
• Run a detailed background check on any applicants that you’re seriously considering. Confirm their identity, call their previous landlords, verify their employment (we like to call the company they work for AND get copies of their recent pay stubs), and check their credit and criminal history.
Using the criteria you’ve established and all the information you’ve collected, you should be able to select a tenant who will not only be trouble-free but will happily stay in the apartment for a good long time.
[Ed. Note: Renting properties is a great way to make extra money in any market. For more strategies for making money with rental property, sign up for Internet Money Club member and real estate investor Julie Broad's free monthly newsletter. Get your free report for making money with real estate here.
"Real life is, to most men, a long second-best, a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the possible."
Bertrand Russell
Crack Your Own Foundation
About 12 years ago, the school where I was teaching built a brand-new building.
Construction on our future home had been delayed for two weeks because of rain. Finally, the rain stopped and the big day arrived. A monster dump-truck-crane-thingy came and the concrete foundation was poured. Students and teachers watched in awe as the grey sludge oozed out of the chute and transformed a big dirty hole into a perfectly flat, perfectly smooth surface.
A few days later, when the concrete was dry, we watched in horror as the workers pushed some giant motorized pizza cutters all over the foundation, cracking it in a dozen different places. "What are you doing?" we demanded. "It was perfect!"
The workers were cracking the foundation because it was going to crack anyway. The concrete might have stayed together for a few months or even years, but at some point the earth below was going to shift. When that happened, woe to the building sitting on top of it.
So they cracked the foundation on purpose, exactly where they wanted to, before they started building. They let it settle into place - imperfect, yes, but much more stable and predictable than a perfect slab that eventually was going to let them down.
Ready for the journey to marketing metaphor-land?
Your Marketing Foundation
Your marketing foundation is all the good stuff you want people to believe about you. You always return phone calls within 18 minutes. All your clients retired to Sonoma County within two years of hiring you to handle their investments. You've never shipped a defective part in your life. One visit to your office and your client's back pain is cured forever.
We spend a lot of time building this foundation. We work hard to provide the best products and services. We learn about our customers' needs and adapt and grow to satisfy them. We maintain high standards and stand by our guarantees. And then, we get to reap the rewards of that excellence by telling the world how great we are.
Our prospects look at our smooth foundation and go, "Yeah, right!"
The Marketing Discount Rate
Every claim you make about your business, your service, and the results your prospects will enjoy gets discounted.
Whatever you say goes through the filter of their past experience. Every marketing claim that was ever overblown, untrue, or irrelevant sticks to you and makes them doubt you.
You say: "This air purifier will trap particles as small as one micron in diameter."
Your prospect hears: "My cat could probably get through that thing."
You say: "This is a stunning 10.0 megapixel digital camera that's all about breathtaking performance and head-turning good looks." (That's straight from a well-known manufacturer's press release. I kid you not.)
Your prospect hears: "This might take some good pictures until it breaks. I'd better pay an extra $120 for the three-year extended warranty. Oh, and the included memory chip will hold about eight pictures. I guess I need to buy a 2 GB high-speed memory card for another $200. And while I'm at it, I should get the $40 rechargeable battery. Of course, the case isn't included either..."
And the minute you say something they truly disbelieve - like "Highest quality at the lowest price" - you're a goner.
The Solution
The answer to this problem is to crack your own foundation. Make a damaging admission about your business up front. Tell the truth about something that puts you in a less than flattering light. Say something your prospect doesn't expect you to say.
For example:
"This air purifier filters down to 1 micron. It will keep your air incredibly pure. The problem is, because the filter is so tight, the fan has to work extra hard. It's a little noisier than some of the cheaper units out there."
"This digital camera will take better pictures than just about any other camera. You see, we spent a lot of time developing software that interprets what the lens captures. Most other manufacturers just slap their regular lenses on digital cameras and don't focus as much on the software. The tradeoff is that professional photographers may not like the fact that our camera does all the work. We've created it to be point-and-shoot. The photographer doesn't get to control as many settings as with other cameras."
"I help my clients build considerable wealth, but my system requires consistent disciplined investment over time. I don't do well with clients who want to give me all the responsibility over their money. Realistically, there's only so much I can do if they're not going to budget and save on a regular basis."
This marketing tactic has two very powerful effects.
1. Cracking your own foundation pre-empts doubt.
Remember the marketing discount rate? If you make an outrageous claim, you kick it to 100 percent. But if you say something negative, problematic, or unflattering about your business, you can lower the marketing discount rate to almost zero.
If you'd tell the truth about that, your prospect reasons, you're probably telling the truth about the good stuff too.
Just like the construction workers at Princeton Friends School, you crack your foundation before forces outside of your control crack it for you.
2. Cracking your own foundation focuses your prospect on the negative you choose to highlight.
Notice that the negatives I gave as examples weren't entirely negative. In fact, prospects are likely to interpret them as positives.
• "The fan is noisier because the air purifier is more effective. That means quieter models must not be as effective."
• "I'm not a professional photographer. I'm tired of taking pictures of people with red eyes and no feet. I don't need to be able to twiddle the settings."
• "I don't want to just give my money to someone and be done with it. Of course I want to keep saving and investing over time."
Think of the damaging admission as a tool that helps your prospects qualify themselves. You're saying, "Because of this problem, my product or service isn't for everyone. You have to be willing to accept this tradeoff in order to be happy with it."
How to Do It
To crack your foundation, start by making a list of all the features of your product or service. Next to each one, write an advantage and a disadvantage of that feature. Which disadvantages make the biggest advantages more believable? Where are the logical tradeoffs you can highlight?
The problem with so much marketing is that it contradicts what we know to be true about the world: Everything is a compromise. Faster means lower quality. More personalized attention means higher cost. Better sound systems take up more room. There's no such thing as a free lunch.
What you're really doing with this marketing technique is explaining the tradeoff in a way that will attract the people who will get the most value from the big benefit of your product.
And in the process, you gain a lot of believability.
[Ed. Note: Howie Jacobson is an expert in using Google AdWords to create monster sales for your online business. You can master AdWords from the inside out with his book AdWords for Dummies. Get his complimentary report "Why Most AdWords Campaigns Fail - and How to Make Yours Succeed" at www.AskHowie.com.
Find out how Howie increased his income by five times - by accident - and how his unintentional good fortune can make YOU rich right here.]
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I hear stories of budding Internet entrepreneurs jumping through hoops to make a buck. And sure, many times building a solid, long term business does take real effort. But you can also quietly pocket some decent dough online for much less work.
In this case, you can copy the exact steps one man used to make $187,296 in one day. No, that’s not a misprint.
What’s stopping you from doing the same? The program is called Instant Internet Income and its guaranteed to work exactly as it says. Take a look and see just how easy making money online can be.
Confessions of a Rental Car Manager
By Bonnie Caton
On the hunt for good deals and insider travel tips, I stopped in at my local rental car agency. Here are three pearls of wisdom the branch manager shared with me:
1. Book ahead.
Whatever price you’re given when you reserve, that’s the price you’re guaranteed. If the location where you’re renting runs out of smaller cars and has to give you a nicer one, you still pay the same rate. But if you show up without a reservation and they’re out of small cars, you might have to pay a higher rate.
2. Reserve the smallest car you’re comfortable driving.
When you get to the rental car location, chances are you’ll be able to upgrade to a nicer car cheaper than you can do it online… and sometimes even for free. Just ask. It depends on what they have sitting on the lot. If there aren’t any upgrades available, or you don’t want to pay for one, you’re still in a car that you’re comfortable driving.
3. Don’t rent at the airport.
State taxes, airport taxes, and airport bus fees drive prices up on airport car rentals. Instead, try booking online or by phone with a location close to where you’re staying. It can be cheaper to book with them, even after you factor in the cost of a taxi or shuttle from the airport to the rental car location.
[Ed. Note: Stay up to date with the latest travel tools, tricks, and tips by signing up for The Right Way to Travel FREE e-letter, brought to you by AWAI's Travel Division. Sign up here.]
The Dose Doesn’t Make the Poison
If I got paid every time someone said “Oh, a little won’t hurt me,” I’d be a very rich woman. Unfortunately the only thing anyone gets from that misguided idea is poor health.
Arsenic, lead, and trans-fats immediately come to mind. And mercury.
In Dr. Mark Hyman’s brilliant new book The UltraMind Solution, he notes that almost all of us have some level of mercury poisoning. If you eat tuna and/or have amalgam (“silver”) fillings in your mouth, that means you.
In mentally reviewing my meals, I recall hundreds of tuna sandwiches and sushi rolls. Do you?
Actor Jeremy Piven certainly does. The star of the HBO show Entourage – with a twice-a-day sushi habit – started to suffer from fatigue, dizziness, neuro-muscular dysfunction, and problems lifting his arms and legs. His doctor found his body’s mercury level “almost six times the upper limit of normal and allowable.”
Mercury is nothing to meddle with. Here’s how you can protect yourself:
1. If you’re still eating tuna… stop. There are plenty of delicious, low-contaminant seafood options like wild salmon and sardines that you can enjoy without risk.
2. If you have amalgam fillings, get them safely removed.
3. Have your mercury levels tested, and work with a healthcare practitioner who uses chelation therapy to rid your body of heavy metals.
[Ed. Note: Extending your life and living out your years in tip-top health is really a matter of making simple lifestyle choices - like choosing low-contaminant seafood instead of tuna. For more easy-to-implement expert advice on how to lose weight, stay healthy, and live a longer, fuller life, sign up for ETR's natural health e-newsletter.
One of the best ways to stay in peak condition is to eat good foods. Nutrition expert Kelley Herring has collected dozens of her healthiest and most delicious recipes in her e-book Guilt Free Desserts. Pick up your copy today. ]
It’s Fun to Know: Why a $100 Bill Goes a Long Way
A new study by researchers from New York University and the University of Maryland has found that people tend to spend less when they have high-denomination bills in their wallets. For example, they are unlikely to break a $20 bill to buy a pack of gum – but if they have 20 $1 bills, they won’t hesitate. And if they have a $100 bill, they want to save it.
However, the researchers noted that once that big bill is broken, it’s all over. People are likely to spend more of that “change” than those using smaller bills. The University of Maryland team referred to this as the “what the hell” effect.
(Source: The Wall Street Journal)
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Word to the Wise: Erstwhile
“Erstwhile” (URST-wile) – from the Middle English – means “former.”
Example (as used by Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah): “It is far easier for the proverbial camel to pass through the needle’s eye, hump and all, than for an erstwhile colonial administration to give sound and honest counsel of a political nature to its liberated territory.”
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Copyright ETR, LLC, 2009
When I clicked on “amalgam fillings” nothing
came up. I am very interested in what Kelly has
to say. Good article, no more tuna for me.
Thanks!
Rich Mulholland
Excellent article! I had the same experience. We paid a considerable amount for fancy colored, patterned concrete patio. It was beautiful. Then the pizza cutter arrived. I was mortified!
What an excellent marketing lesson from everyday life. Thank you. I’ll use that tip on my next sales page.
I read article with interest. If you eat some seaweed which can be bought dried and sprinkle it on salad or in soup etc this is a highly efficient natural way of ridding the body of all sorts of toxins, especially heavy metals.
Cracking your own foundation is a really good metaphor for so many areas of life – I’ve been talking to my team lately about the need for us to smash our need to look like perfect individuals because we’ve got trapped in ‘performance lock-down’ because we want to look perfect to others.
Doing this is the key both to self-improvement and building trust.
Howie,
I loved the ‘Crack Your Own Foundation’ article, and it really does highlight the importance of keeping the “B.S.” factor as low as possible.
Believability has to be one of the key aspects of marketing most businesses and individuals miss.
Thanks ;0)