Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire
“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself” – Peter F. Drucker In my last ETR article, I told about the two worst mistakes you can make as a marketer when offering “bait pieces” as a…
READ MOREGetting to the Bottom of Japanese Selling Strategies
“Prestige is the shadow of money and power. Where these are, there it is.” – C. Wright Mills America is usually given credit for being the ultimate consumer society, but compared to the Japanese we are miserable plodders. If you don’t believe me, ride the escalator into the basement of…
READ MORESticking with it
“Choices suck. They are inherently limiting.” – Craig Armstrong “Just throw it against the wall.” Most cooks prefer to taste-test a single strand of spaghetti to check its doneness, but not this one. She’d scoop out a strand of spaghetti from the boiling water and, with a deft flick of…
READ MOREMore on Recasting
“The only place opportunity cannot be found is in a closed-minded person.” – Bo Bennett I rarely write about the same subject twice in a row. Today, however, I’m going to make an exception. I just read an article in Time that was too good to pass up, because it…
READ MOREThe 7 Secret Qualities of Successful Information Products
“The world moves, and ideas that were once good are not always good.” – Dwight David Eisenhower Expenditures on information and information products account for over half of this country’s economy. That’s roughly $5 trillion! Why so much? Americans have an unquenchable thirst for information. We crave information to make…
READ MOREA Vinter’s Secret Weapon
“Bring me a beaker of wine, so I may wet my mind and say something clever” – Aristophanes I’ve got wine on my mind. Not literally, mind you. As I write this, it’s not even 10:00 a.m., for God’s sake. No. I’m thinking about wine thanks to two articles I’ve…
READ MOREGrow Your Business Like China, Part 3
“Growth is an erratic forward movement: two steps forward, one step back. Remember that and be very gentle with yourself.” – Julia Cameron Last week – on Tuesday and Friday – I talked about how a Confucian saying got me to look at business-building in a new way. On Friday,…
READ MOREGrow Your Business Like China, Part 2
“Life leaps like a geyser for those who drill through the rock of inertia.” – Alexis Carrel Since our job at ETR is to find little secrets in our quotidian world that illuminate wealth and power and personal success, I’ve been dutifully mulling over that saying by Confucius since I…
READ MOREAre You the World’s Worst Salesman?
“The best of merchandise will go back to the shelf unless handled by a conscientious, tactful salesman.” – James Cash Penney Many years ago, Steve Martin made a short little film – a film clip, really – called “The World’s Worst Waiter.” One sight gag I remember was Martin as…
READ MOREGrow Your Business Like China, Part 1
“All growth depends upon activity. There is no development physically or intellectually without effort, and effort means work.” – Calvin Coolidge On the flight to Beijing, I read a book K had bought for me, Iron & Silk by Mark Salzman. It is an account of the author’s time as…
READ MOREErfahrung for Real Estate Investors, Part 2
“Fear is a real killer. I try to trudge through the jungle with as little fear as possible.” – William Shockley Last Thursday, I discussed the recent media frenzy about real estate market corrections – the bubble-and-bust phenomenon. I showed examples of headlines claiming that any correction would be mild…
READ MOREErfahrung for Real Estate Investors, Part 1
“Be fearful when others are greedy … and greedy when others are fearful.” – Warren Buffett In the last few years, you’d come across dozens of articles about the real estate boom. Today, they’re about bubble and bust. Here’s a smattering from the last week: “The Boom Is Over, but…
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