How to Double Your Income Starting With Just $20
Archives: Daily Issues
- Issue# 2712
- WEALTHY: The cheapskate’s guide to business success (Paul Lawrence)
- HEALTHY: How attitude can affect your stress levels (Dr. Tim Reynolds)
- WISE: Thoreau on what things cost
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
- How the restaurant biz can stay hot in the recession (Michael Masterson)
- Punctuate properly, please (Don Hauptman)
- It’s Fun to Know… about texting teens
- Add “draconian” to your vocabulary
* Advertisement *
These are gains in the forex market I’d always dreamed were possible… the results are hard to believe, 775 PIPs in one day!
Finally, a currency trading plan that REALLY WORKS! Find out how you can grab an easy $550-$2,200 each week – as a part-time Forex profit raider!
“All good things are cheap: all bad are very dear.”
- Henry David Thoreau
How to Double Your Income Starting With Just $20
Ever heard the expression “It takes money to make money?” Well, guess what? That’s not always the case. And if you don’t have much capital to start a business, you have no choice. Being a “cheapskate” is a necessity.
Years ago, I worked as a bill collector for a major chain of jewelry stores. I was barely making enough money to live on, and the job offered no opportunity for me to make more. Yet, without quitting my day job, I was able to launch a new career that – within just a few months – doubled my income. And it took just $20 to get it started.
How did I do it?
You see, I happen to love ballroom dancing. So, while still working at my day job, I took a free training program at night that enabled me to pass the instructor’s qualifying test.
I began working at a dance studio, but soon realized I’d make a lot more by working on my own. So I invested $20 a week in little classified ads offering private lessons. And before long… I had my own dance instruction business.
My wife Blanca used the same cheapskate approach to escape from the “prison” of her first job as a nanny. Her idea was to start a home cleaning service. So she spent $10 to print up 500 flyers, and then hand-delivered them in upscale residential neighborhoods. When calls started coming in, she scheduled the work on her days off. Once she was confident that she could build up her service to a full-time business, she said goodbye to the nanny job she hated.
If you want to take the cheapskate approach to starting a business, here are three of the important steps:
1. Identify a business that won’t require much start-up capital.
Most low-capital businesses are in the service field. If you have a marketable skill – like teaching piano, doing bookkeeping, or writing sales copy – starting a business in your area of expertise should be your first choice. If you don’t have a specialized skill – or you’d rather do something else – consider a service like housekeeping, childcare, or running errands.
2. Figure out when you’ll be able to service your clients.
If you’re starting your own business while working at a regular job, you’ll have to schedule your clients around your work schedule. And it’s easier than you might think. There’s no need to tell them that you have another job. Just tell them when you have openings, and they’ll assume the rest of your time is booked with other clients.
When I was launching my dance instruction business, for example, I would check my voice mail while on break or at lunch, and return the calls. Most of those calls were from prospects with questions about my training, the kind of dances I specialized in, my fees, and so on.
After answering their questions, I’d suggest making an appointment for their first lesson – and I’d give them a few options: “Would you like to schedule on Wednesday at 8:00 p.m.? Or would Thursday be better?”
If they asked about getting lessons during the day, I’d say, “Unfortunately, I won’t have any daytime slots available for at least the next couple of weeks. Why don’t you start with an evening appointment? Then, when a daytime slot becomes available, I’ll let you know.”
They usually agreed to try it. And in almost every case, they continued rescheduling at the same time every week or two.
3. Create and implement your marketing plan.
By using a little “out of the box” thinking, you’ll be able to find many ways to promote your business without spending much money.
Remember, all it cost me to get my ballroom dance business started was $20 worth of classified ads. And Blanca got her cleaning service started with $10 worth of flyers.
So give it a little thought right now. What kind of side business do you think you’d like to start? And what ideas can you come up with to market that business on a “cheapskate” budget?
If you’d like some help with that, I’ve put together a free report you might want to take a look at. In it, you’ll learn one powerful secret for getting other businesses to help you attract new clients… without spending a penny. You’ll also get the skinny on 11 more cheapskate marketing tactics that can help you bring in new clients for less than $100.
Read this report – for free – right here.
[Ed Note: Paul Lawrence is a successful entrepreneur who's started more than a dozen profitable enterprises. If you're interested in starting a new business with less than $100 in capital, check out Paul's "Micrbiz" program right here. It can have you adding thousands to your bank account in as little as 30 days.]
* Highly Recommended *
Billionaires Are NOT Born – They’re Made
You might be thinking, “It takes money to make money.”
And that the only way to become filthy rich is to be born into it.
But you’d be dead wrong.
Four men climbed their way up the billionaire ladder. One was a factory worker… another began as a file clerk… and two others toiled as a grocer and a shop assistant.
They never based making their fortune on “luck” or connections.
Nor did they have “daddy’s money” to bank roll them.
And yet, they all went from zeros to heroes.
Now, you can crack the very same “wealth code” that put them on the path to massive wealth.
Dear ETR: “How Do I Ramp Up Sales Without Raising Marketing Expenses?”
“We sell fresh scallops, shrimp, and crabmeat to 4- and 5-star chefs. We have seen a reduction of 20 to 30 percent in our sales over the past 16 months. Can you recommend anything to help us ‘ramp up’ sales without necessarily ramping up marketing expenses?”
T.L.
Apple Valley, MN
Dear T.L.,
In situations like this, you have to see through to the source of the problem. And the source is not your customers, the chefs, it’s their customers – folks who are spending less at restaurants countrywide.
So the answer to your question is to help the chefs figure out how to recapture their lost profits so they can be streamed back to you, the vendor.
I have several friends in the restaurant business, and I’ve been in it myself. One thing I’ve learned is that when times are tight, people respond to discounts and special offers – even in good restaurants.
So here are a few suggestions you can pass on…
Many owners of fancy restaurants are afraid to lower their prices. But one way to do it – without lowering their prestige – is to offer “happy hour” specials. These are really early bird specials upgraded for the baby boomer market. What you do is serve the wine and even the booze at half-price from, say, 5:30 to 7:30, along with a “specially priced” seafood menu. People come in for a few drinks, and they end up staying for dinner and spending more than they’d planned.
Another idea would be to have the chef create nightly specials based on inexpensive (but high-quality) seafood that you can supply him with… possibly matched to a half-priced bottle of wine.
What I’m saying is that, as a businessperson, you have to understand what you can change and what you can’t. You can’t change the economy. You can’t change the fact that people are eating out less frequently and, even then, spending more carefully.
But you can change the way your customers – the chefs – think about you. Rather than being just another vendor asking for money, become an ally in their fight by giving them good ideas on how to succeed. They will appreciate it, and will reward you with as much business as they can.
- Michael Masterson
[Ed. Note: This reader question was originally published in The Liberty Street Letter, ETR's monthly publication dedicated to insider and under-the-radar business opportunities, investments, and more. Find out if you're eligible to receive these special profit alerts right here.]
An Unexpected – and Instant – Strategy to Decrease Stress
The economy is in the toilet, the boss is breathing down your neck, and you have a stack of bills to pay. You’re worried about healthcare reform, tax reform – and God knows what else. Sometimes life is like that. We feel overworked and underpaid, and the stress takes a toll on our health and happiness.
What can we do to alleviate the stress? The answer is to live with an attitude of gratitude.
When you arise in the morning, be grateful to be alive, be grateful for your health, for your children and grandchildren. Be grateful for the country you live in, for the friends you have, and the family you enjoy. Literally count your blessings every day.
Three amazing things will happen. The first is that you will actually become more grateful. You will start to realize that, despite the trials of everyday life, you are, in fact, blessed. The irony is that the more things you realize you have to be grateful for, the more grateful you become for other things. It is like a snowball rolling down a hill. The gratitude becomes overwhelming.
The second thing that will happen is that more good fortune and opportunities will begin to come your way. I don’t pretend to understand why this happens, I just know it does. Those who are grateful just seem to attract more and more good things.
And the third thing that will happen is that you will feel great – healthier and more energetic than you have in years!
The stressors in our life are not likely to go away. What we need to do is learn to control our response to them by living with an attitude of gratitude. As motivational speaker Jim Rohn has often said, “The same wind blows on us all; it is the set of our sail that makes us who we are.”
[Ed. Note: Tim Reynolds, MD, is a board-certified emergency medicine physician. He is a managing partner of Healthcare Express and the chief medical officer of Urgent Care America. Dr. Reynolds is also a health and lifestyle expert and sought-after speaker. For more information, click here.]
The Language Perfectionist: Punctuation Pointers, Part 2
By Don Hauptman
In last week’s roundup on punctuation, we covered the comma, semicolon, and colon. Here are a few more punctuation marks that are frequently misunderstood and misused:
- The apostrophe is often fumbled. It indicates possession: John’s briefcase. And contraction: She’s being promoted. Errors often occur with possessive plurals. Write The Johnsons’ garage, not The Johnson’s garage. Another common confusion arises between its and it’s. These examples are correct: The cat is eating its dinner. It’s a grand night for singing.
- Parentheses usually indicate an aside that could be omitted from the sentence: We’re traveling to the Berkshires (we were there last summer), so we won’t be able to attend your party. Don’t abuse parentheses. Their excessive use can irritate readers. Here’s my draconian rule: If parentheses can go, they should go. Commas or dashes can often be substituted.
- Square brackets are sometimes wrongly used where parentheses are correct, and vice versa. Brackets are properly used in a quotation to indicate an interpolated word or words that weren’t present in the original: “All that glisters [glitters] is not gold.” They’re also used within a parenthetical remark in place of a second set of parentheses. But this is rarely necessary.
- One common use of the hyphen is for compound modifiers: zero-sum game or direct-mail campaign. Omitting the hyphen in such phrases can create confusion. For example, the meaning of nuclear-free world is evident, but nuclear free world is ambiguous. Exception: For compounds where the adverb ends in -ly, the hyphen is never used: highly qualified candidate or thinly disguised insult. Why? I have no idea, but it’s a convention of the language!
- The ellipsis has two purposes. First, it’s a way to communicate a dramatic pause. The street was eerily desolate… and the house was dark. In quoted material, it indicates a deletion: “It was the best of times….” Within a quoted sentence, three dots mean that something was cut. At the end of a sentence, as in this example, the fourth dot is the period.
In these two “Punctuation Pointers” columns, I haven’t discussed every use and abuse of punctuation, but I’ve noted many frequent problems and the solutions. I’ve intentionally ignored punctuation that isn’t especially prone to error, such as the period and question mark.
As suggested last week, for a more comprehensive guide, get a copy of Comma Sense, by Richard Lederer and John Shore. It’s a useful and accurate resource that I consult whenever I have a question.
[Ed Note: For more than three decades, Don Hauptman was an award-winning independent direct-response copywriter and creative consultant. He is author of The Versatile Freelancer, an e-book recently published by AWAI that shows writers and other creative professionals how to diversify their careers into speaking, consulting, training, and critiquing.]
It’s Fun to Know: Texting Teens
The days of passing notes are over. A new survey finds that despite widespread bans of cellphones in schools, at least one-fourth of teens’ text messages are sent during class. Students surveyed also reported that cheating by cellphone is a common practice, with answers either texted mid-test or stored in the phone’s memory.
(Source: USA Today)
* Highly Recommended *
20 Minutes + 3 Steps = $3,000+ Chunks in Your Bank Account Each Month
$3,120 in your bank account each month. Just for applying a simple but powerful secret to your everyday life.
Simply flick through a step-by-step set of simple 1-2-3 instructions written in plain language. (This should take around 20 minutes.)
Then it’s just a question of going about your usual business. Every time you find yourself in a conversation simply apply this powerful “forgotten” secret.
The next thing that will likely happen is a wire transfer appears in your bank account (NOT from the people you talk to!). You take the money out from your nearest cash machine.
Sound impossible? It’s not. Learn more here.
Word to the Wise: Draconian
Draconian (dray-KOH-nee-un) – referring to the code of laws laid down by the Athenian statesman Draco – means rigorous; unusually severe or cruel.
Example (as used by Don Hauptman today): “Here’s my draconian rule: If parentheses can go, they should go. Commas or dashes can often be substituted.”
[Ed. Note: Become a more persuasive writer and speaker... build your self-confidence and intellect... increase your attractiveness to others... just by spending 10 VERY enjoyable minutes a day with ETR's Words to the Wise CD Library.]
Comments