The Moneymaking Power of a Truly Good Employee
Issue #2587
- WEALTHY: 5 recession-days tips for business owners (John Forde)
- HEALTHY: The 30-second workout (Jonny Bowden)
- WISE: Jack Welch on having the best players on your team
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
- The moneymaking power of a truly good employee (Michael Masterson)
- Reclaim 1.5 weeks of your life (Suzanne Richardson)
- It’s Good to Know… how to verify e-mail addresses
- Add “repletion” to your vocabulary
== Highly Recommended ==
Should Making Money Online Be This Easy?
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 I guarantee it works exactly as it says. Take a look and see just how easy making money online can be.
Business “Don’ts” for Difficult Times
By John Forde
You can’t open a newspaper, flip on the television, or open an Internet page these days without seeing something about the current economic crisis.
When all the media trumpet the same tune, that’s supposed to indicate a trend reversal in the making. So does that mean we’ve hit bottom and things can only get better? Um… maybe not this time.
2009 probably WILL deliver a lot more rough stuff. Many, especially business owners, are at a loss for what to do to prepare.
BusinessWeek recently had some suggestions. And while I’m usually skeptical of populist media advice, these tips seem pretty sensible.
Here’s the “Cliffs Notes” version:
1. Don’t panic. You can’t sit still, but you also don’t want to swerve like a drunk on ice skates. Cycles happen. Sometimes they happen hard, but we’ll come back around eventually.
2. Cut fat, not muscle. And marketing is muscle. A slowdown is the ideal time to snatch up market share.
3. Don’t water down your sales message to “go wide.” When you’re desperate for customers, it’s easy to try to widen your market appeal. Stick to your focus. Just get better at it.
4. Watch out for “discount training.” If you keep offering “special deals,” eventually the deals are no longer special. And all you’re doing is training your customers to learn to wait for the next deal instead of buying right now.
5. Don’t ignore the facts, just have a plan. You can’t wish away the economic crisis by ignoring it. Mention it to your employees, but do so in the context of showing leadership on how to get past it.
[Ed. Note: You can learn how to make your business grow - in any economy - with the proven strategies used by a master business builder.
To get copywriting expert John Forde's wisdom and insights into copywriting (and much more), sign up for his free e-letter, Copywriter's Roundtable, at copywritersroundtable.com. Or send an e-mail to signup@jackforde.com. Get a free report about 15 deadly copy mistakes and how to avoid them when you sign up today.]
“The team with the best players wins.”
Jack Welch
When It Pays to Pay More
For six years, we struggled with the restaurant, training the staff, upgrading the kitchen, and expanding the menu. During that time, we went through a half-dozen managers, an assortment of well meaning people with limited experience and a variety of personality disorders that were impossible to detect during the interviewing process… but then appeared almost immediately after they were put in charge.
The things we could control – how the restaurant looked, what it served, and how much it spent – got better. But the things we couldn’t control – the quality of the cooking, the efficiency of the service, and the bottom line – didn’t improve.
Finally, we hired a guy with a lot of serious experience. We had to pay him twice what we had paid his predecessors, but less than 60 days after he started, he produced the restaurant’s first complete profit-and-loss statement. And guess what? He had turned a profit.
We had been losing about $100,000 a year on this venture. Since it was an integral part of a larger business, we were able to sustain those losses. Still, we knew we eventually had to get the restaurant to run at least at breakeven. What we hadn’t recognized was how quickly that goal could be achieved simply by hiring a more qualified manager.
I’ve made this point many times in ETR: A really good manager is worth a dozen bad ones. When you are involved in a business with tight margins, getting the right person at the helm is not just advantageous, it’s essential.
Every employee you hire should have the potential to become a “superstar.” But making that goal a reality usually requires two significant costs:
• First you must be prepared to invest a considerable amount of your time and attention to finding qualified candidates and selecting the right one.
• And second, you must be willing to invest more dollars in that person by paying him a higher salary and giving him additional support.
“Elton,” a colleague of mine in the publishing business, lured a copywriter away from us several years ago. When this young man was with us, he was good and getting better. What we didn’t realize at the time, but found out later, was that he was just about to advance from better to really great.
Elton credits this writer with a great deal of the multimillion-dollar success he’s since achieved. And I keep that in mind when I mentor young people today. “Is this person about to acquire a financially valuable skill? Is he/she about to advance to a higher, more productive level?”
When you lose a good person, it hurts. When you replace a mediocre employee with a very good one, you rejoice because your prayers have been answered.
As you push your business forward, never forget the value of surrounding yourself with valuable people. Ordinary workers are fine… but they are ordinary. Extraordinary people will improve everything quickly, painlessly, and profitably.
How do you attract potential superstars? It’s a three-step process.
1. You have to find someone as good as – or better than – you at a skill that’s crucial to the success of your business.
2. You have to make him a very generous deal.
3. You must teach him everything you know.
It’s not easy to find extraordinary people. For one thing, they are few and far between. Don’t let scarcity tempt you to accept second best. You cannot make an ordinary person extraordinary. It will eat up all your time and end in failure.
Start your search now. Go to industry meetings. Place ads. Talk to people. Even if you can’t yet afford another salary, start looking.
When you meet someone who seems great, strike up a friendship. Find out as much as you can about him. Show interest. Follow his career. Offer to help. When the time is right, drop hints. “If you ever want to do such and such… give me a call.” Say it every time you see him. The message will get through.
Do this with anyone who seems great. Keep at it. One day an opportunity will present itself and you will have not just one but several highly qualified candidates for an important job. Select and hire the best.
Work with him closely for several months until you’ve seen what he can do. If he has the potential you’re looking for, it will become apparent. Invite him to share your future.
Start looking for your superstar immediately.
[Ed. Note: Finding a superstar is one of the best ways to jumpstart your business growth. Discover more keys to skyrocketing your business to success in Michael Masterson's bestselling book Ready, Fire, Aim: Zero to $100 Million in No Time Flat.
As a special thank you to our best customers, Michael has started a new VIP service in which he gives insider business-building advice usually reserved for his private clients - a twice-weekly newsletter called Ready Fire Aim: The Michael Masterson Dispatch. If you have bought an ETR product or attended a conference and are not receiving Ready Fire Aim, please let us know by sending an e-mail to Michael@ETRfeedback.com.]
Why It Doesn’t Matter If the Markets Tumble
If you’re one of the millions of people concerned by the latest turbulence in the markets, I’ve got some good news for you.
It doesn’t matter if the markets tumble.
One investor delights when the stock market lurches up and down. His name is Frederick James and you won’t see him on Larry King or in the Wall Street Journal.
That’s because he’s always preferred to remain part of an elite group of investors who extract their profits in the background while the masses of regular investors see their nest eggs vaporize.
But, now Frederick has decided it’s time to share the wealth. He has agreed to reveal his secrets to ETR readers. Get your special report right here.
Harmless Pastime – or Insidious Time Suck?
Video games are big business.
When a Sony Playstation comes out… when the Nintendo Wii was finally released… every time a new version of Halo hits the market…
Video gaming makes national news.
Why? Because a whopping 40 percent of Americans play games on a computer or console. (That’s according to a 2006 poll by AP-AOL Games.)
“What of it?” you might be thinking. “It’s a harmless pastime.”
Claims that video games “improve coordination” and “increase dexterity” aside… they are almost as bad as TV.
They eat up your time, preventing you from working on more valuable pursuits: starting a business, developing a financially valued skill, or educating yourself on your industry.
Even worse, 42 percent of video gamers say they spend at least four hours a week playing.
If you’re a video gamer, it’s time to cut back. If you spend one less hour a week in front of your Wii or computer screen, that’s nearly one and a half weeks’ worth of time you’d be “reclaiming.”
[Ed. Note: Can't get away from your computer? You can make it work FOR YOU and help you earn money by starting an Internet business. Learn how to get step-by-step guidelines to getting your online business up and running right here.]
Improve Your Metabolism in Just 2 Weeks!
It’s hardly news that exercise is good for you. It can help keep weight off, build a bigger brain, improve mood, and lower the risk of cancer and heart disease. Many people are put off by the idea of exercise because of time constraints. But research continues to demonstrate that you don’t have to spend an hour in the gym or on the track to get the significant health benefits.
Case in point: A new study out of Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland found that high-intensity exercise for brief periods of time may help reduce the risk of diabetes.
In the study, published in the journal BMC Endocrine Disorders, researchers had young healthy male volunteers use exercise bikes to perform rigorous 30-second sprints. Over the course of two weeks, the subjects performed 30 of these sprints (about two or three a day) for a grand total of 15 minutes of exercise.
You read that right – 15 minutes. Over the course of two weeks.
And this low-volume, high-intensity training substantially improved both insulin action and blood sugar control.
“Doing a few intense muscle exercises, each lasting only about 30 seconds each, dramatically improves your metabolism in just two weeks,” said James Timmons, a professor at the University and one of the researchers.
I’ve been an advocate of short, high-intensity training for years. Now, in addition to the many studies showing that this kind of exercise improves cardiovascular fitness and is an effective way to burn fat, the Heriot-Watt study shows that it may be an effective weapon in the fight against diabetes.
This finding is important, because it helps make the case that there’s a lot you can do for your health in very little time. If, that is, you train smart. While walking 30 minutes a day is terrific, and weight training and spin classes and all the other ways to exercise still have their place, it’s nice to know that you can still get a lot accomplished even if you have only a few minutes a day to work out.
[Ed. Note: If 15 minutes over the course of two weeks can help improve your health, there's no excuse to avoid exercise. For more advice about staying fit and healthy, check out health expert Jonny Bowden's site, JonnyBowden.com.
Exercise is only half the battle when it comes to staying fit and healthy. For a free source of expert advice about what you should and shouldn't be eating, sign up for ETR's natural health e-newsletter.]
It’s Good to Know: Verify That E-Mail Address
Have a contact list full of old e-mail addresses? Not sure if the e-mail on that business card you saved from a couple of years ago is still valid? Sent an important e-mail and haven’t yet gotten back a reply?
In the old days, you took your chances whenever you sent a message to a “vintage” address. But now you can check first to make sure your e-mail will be received.
Simply go to verify-email.org and enter the address. The system will tell you if it still exists.
== Highly Recommended ==
Building Wealth Online Is Just Like Riding a Bike
Remember the first time you tried to ride a bike? You’d spent your life missing out until then.
But once you got on that bicycle… you felt a special moment when suddenly, the magic happened. You were free! Since then, you’ve never “unlearned” that knowledge. Doing it again is easy… automatic… instinctive.
That’s how it feels once your first Internet income stream is up and running. The magic hits you… the next one is even easier… the rest are almost automatic.
One man I know turned $10 into over $500,000 this way. Let me show you how you could get a similar Internet income stream started for almost nothing.
- Charlie Byrne
ETR Associate Publisher
Word to the Wise: Repletion
“Repletion” (rih-PLEE-shun) – from the Latin for “to refill” – is excessive fullness, as from overeating.
Example (as used by Kenneth Rose in the Daily Telegraph): “With distended belly and bursting waistcoat, his eyes glazed with repletion, he picks listlessly at his teeth with a fork.”
[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 new Words to the Wise CD Library.]
Copyright ETR, LLC, 2009
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