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For the first time in almost 20 years, I am actively running a business. Last week, I stepped in to act as temporary CEO of one of my clients' businesses. Why I took the job, I don't know. I don't need the money. I don't need the stress. I don't want to give up the time. I'd like to think it was because I felt I had no choice -- that unless I jumped in, the business would fail. I hope I'm not doing it because two of my partners laughed at me when I suggested the idea. "Face it, Michael," one of them said. "You don't have it in you to run a business anymore. You're too rich. Your life's too easy. There's no fire in your belly." Well, here I am in the saddle again. And it fits pretty well. I had some initial anxiety about the technical side -- the intricacies of SEO and PPC marketing, for example. But the deeper I dig into the business, the more confident I am that I can make a difference. Information publishing has changed since I was actively involved 20 years ago -- but the differences are not that important. The fundamentals are exactly the same. Like every other business, information publishing involves three important activities: 1. Locating a ready market. Developing salable products is not a problem either. Just identify bestselling products and ask, "Which of these can I produce better, quicker, or cheaper?" Selling the products. That's the challenge. In every industry there are dozens, if not hundreds, of businesses that are competing with similar, if not identical, products. But only a handful of them can be profitable for any length of time. What defines those top performers? They are better at selling. That's why knowing how to sell is the most important business skill you can acquire. Learn it and you will have a profitable business. Master it and you will be able to earn a great living for the rest of your life -- maybe even build a multimillion-dollar fortune. Many business skills -- product engineering, data and systems management, accounting, lawyering, managing employees, etc. -- are important. But they are much less important than knowing how to sell. As I said in Automatic Wealth for Grads... and Anyone Else Just Starting Out, "Every successful business is based on understanding the correct answers to two very simple questions: 1. What is the most cost-effective way of attracting customers? 2. What is the best way to keep those customers buying?" In fact, I've been waking up early every day, excited and teeming with ideas. The Food and Drug Administration requires manufacturers to list the amount of trans fats in food products. Sounds good. Until, that is, you find out that the FDA still lets them have up to half a gram of trans fats per serving and still claim zero grams on the label. What a crock! Half a gram per serving is (a) a dangerous amount and (b) enough to preserve a food product for centuries. But you can be sure manufacturers are using that "loophole" to include as much trans fat as they can. That's exactly what Unilever, maker of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter, was doing until a few weeks ago. But under pressure from competitors who have totally eliminated trans fats (and called out Unilever in their advertising), they have announced plans to do the same. Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition at New York University, called this "the death knell for trans fats." What does all this mean? You have a large corporation giving its customers unhealthy trans fats for decades, despite evidence of its danger -- and you have a government solution (the FDA listing requirement) that is nothing but a hoax. The only real change comes from a combination of private lobbying and pressure from private companies that developed a better solution. Private solutions work better, but aren't toggle switches. The most efficient way to learn any worthwhile skill is by imitation. Aristotle, perhaps the greatest of all thinkers, called this process mimesis. Here is what he said about it in Poetics: "Imitation is natural to man from childhood, one of his advantages over the lower animals being this, that he is the most imitative creature in the world, and learns at first by imitation. And it is also natural for all to delight in works of imitation." A colleague of mine began his essay-writing career by reading lots of H.L. Mencken, arguably the most important prose stylist of the 20th century. His early attempts to imitate Mencken were a bit obvious and awkward. But the more he did it the better he got. Eventually, he developed his own version of the craft and became a bestselling, prize-winning author. And he did it in less than three years. You can do the same. A good first step in mimesis is verbatim copycatting. That's how people were taught to write for centuries. Did you ever wonder how your grandmother -- with just a high school education -- was able to write such beautiful, thoughtful letters? It's because copying the great writers of her day, by hand, was part of her regular schoolwork. We no longer employ mimesis in teaching writing. It went out of style in the late 1960s. That's when the idea of letting children "express themselves" swept through the American education system. As a result, my generation became both semi-literate and ignorant of many great works of literature. This is a tragedy that has worsened over time. But it can be changed, by you, simply by bringing mimesis into your life. When we created AWAI in 1997, one of the core principles we used to teach non-writers how to become master copywriters was to have them read and copy the works of the great copywriters of the day. In AWAI's Accelerated Program for Six-Figure Copywriting, I said: "Rote exercises are more than just memorization. They teach you on a deeper level. You create motor pathways in your brain. Through the exercises you'll be doing in this program, your ear will develop a sense of what good copy sounds like. Your mind will instinctively know when copy is powerful and when it's weak. You'll be able to carry these senses over to your own work." This method has proved to be very effective. Almost every month, AWAI hears from a former student who has achieved master copywriting status. The list of master copywriters who used mimesis to further their careers includes Clayton Makepeace ... John Forde ... John Carlton ... Bob Bly ... Paul Hollingshead ... and Don Mahoney. In fact, I imagine there are very few top copywriters who have not relied heavily on imitation to learn their craft. None of the people I listed above were "born writers," never mind born copywriters. They learned how to write winning, profitable sales copy -- as just about anyone can. Even if you don't think you can write, all you need are the right mentors to guide you. You'll find them in the best course available today: AWAI's Accelerated Program for Six-Figure Copywriting. The Great Recession won't be solved by the government. The government is a leech and a whore. It doesn't mean to be, but it is. The solution will come from wealth creators – people who work hard, save and produce assets with real value. Wealth creators are not bankers, lawyers and brokers. Nor are they the big corporations that are tied in with government. True wealth creators are small-business owners, entrepreneurs, and the people who work for them. These are the people who create and sell the new ideas that grow our economy. They are the employers who hire and train the unemployed. They are the conveyors of the Benjamin Franklin work ethic: Get to bed early, wake up early, work hard for profits ... and save them for a rainy day. During the period of the Three Great Hoaxes (the tech bubble, the financial bubble, and the housing bubble) many people were lured into thinking they could make easy money by gambling on a never-ending boom. Whether it was tech stocks, derivatives, or real estate, they jumped on the bandwagon of greed, hoping to make a fortune. They traded their wealth-creating values for wealth-destroying dreams. And now they are broke. But some of them are wiser now. And many haven't given up. According to a MetLife survey, one-third of Americans polled said they are spending less and intend to keep spending less, even if they earn more. In other words, they are simplifying their lives. Nearly half of those polled said they already have whatever they need. This is up from 34 percent in 2006. That's a good sign. And that's how our economy is going to recover. The Obama administration is hoping it can "invest" our way out of the Great Recession by spending money (tax dollars) it doesn't have. But that is exactly how we got ourselves into this situation in the first place. If we survive -- and prosper -- it will be because a new generation of Americans (actually, two generations) changes the way they deal with money. And that is what I'm predicting they will do. They will:
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Saturday, August 15, 2009
ETR: The Most Important Business Skill
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