 |
|
Dear Early to Riser, As a member of Early to Rise you've already gotten a full week of powerful, actionable advice that will change the way you work, run your business, set and achieve goals, and more. And now Michael Masterson wants to give you something special on Saturdays. It's totally free and part of your subscription to Early to Rise. The Michael Masterson Journal comes direct from Michael, and only Michael. In his off-the-cuff, informal style you'll get even more strategies, tips, and techniques for jumpstarting your wealth, health, and success. You get his no holds barred guidance, plus first crack at his latest breakthrough business ideas and marketing strategies. He gives you both specific recommendations in the world of wealth-building and investing and in-depth explorations of economic issues. If a myth needs busting, Michael is there… if the Wall Street Journal got it wrong, he'll expose it… if the Fed needs to be knocked down a peg, he'll be ready… and if there is something you should be doing right now to accelerate your success, Michael will tell you about it. The Michael Masterson Journal will arrive in your inbox each Saturday. Don't miss it! Enjoy! Cheers, Publisher and CEO, Early to Rise A colleague of mine had lunch with RSJ, who recently retired after 20 years as CEO of Agora's biggest competitor. Under his leadership, the company grew into a $300 million powerhouse. My colleague asked: "Looking back on your career, is there anything you regret?" "That's easy," RSJ replied. "I think about it all the time." "What was it?" "I would have spent less time trying to save mediocre products and more time selling the company's great products and launching new ones." Truer words were never spoken. My rule about product launches -- which I explained in my book Ready, Fire, Aim -- is that if your initial promotion doesn't do well, you kill the product immediately. Most entrepreneurs don't do that. Certain that their idea was good, they keep trying to fix it by tweaking the product or testing new advertising. That is usually a big mistake. Not just because it is so difficult, but because it steals time and money from what they should be doing: creating and promoting really good products. If you are sure your initial enthusiasm about the product was warranted, kill it anyway. Then put your people back to work on improving your good products or developing new ones. In your spare time, you can think about how to reinvent the one that failed. It's tempting to try to save products that seem to be going nowhere. Perhaps it is some misguided parental instinct. But, like RSJ, I have learned from many years of doing it the wrong way that the best thing to do with a weak product is drop it and start over. This raises the question: How do you know when a new product is mediocre? The truth is, you can't tell if it's great or good or mediocre before you launch it. You may have one opinion. Your partner another. But what matters is the opinion of your customer base. And there is only one way to measure that: through sales. So establish benchmarks before you launch the product. Set a gross revenue, return on investment, or lifetime value goal and let everyone know about it. If results come in below your target, kill the product. We all have emotional attachments to our creative ideas. They are, after all, our "babies." But unlike real babies, we don't have a responsibility to keep them alive. Our responsibility is to serve our market, not our egos. So when marketing results are mediocre, euthanize the "baby" before it kills the entire family. Having written thousands of essays over the last 10 years, I've found that those I like best adhere to the same structure. They begin with ...
Nutritional and natural health supplements have been a hot and growing industry. Even now, during the Great Recession, the market is expanding. Paul Lawrence, ETR's own expert on micro-business start-ups, recently launched his own health information supplement business and says it's been "growing like mad." He's taken what he's learned and turned it into a teaching program for beginners. "If you would like to get into this business but don't feel like you have enough experience," he says, "my program is meant for you. "And don't worry if you don't have a product ... or any expertise in natural health. My program is easy -- literally as easy as one two three." There's never been a better time to get into this $172 billion industry than now. Hieu, my wife's Lexus salesman, is the perkiest person I know. I wondered how he stays so energized. "You must eat well and get loads of sleep," I said. "Actually," he said. "I sleep only four hours a night." I looked at him skeptically. His eyes were beaming. His skin was clear. He was brimming with life. "You're not serious," I said. "I am," he said -- and then went into a hyper-energized sales pitch. Getting enough sleep is one of the two most important things you can do to stay healthy and lead a productive life. (The other is eating well.) And most of us need seven to eight hours. Countless studies have confirmed that if we don't get that much, we suffer, mentally and physically. But there are exceptions -- people, like Hieu, who perform at a peak level with as little as four hours a night. Wouldn't it be great if you could operate on four hours of sleep? You'd have an extra three to four hours a day to achieve your goals. Scientists have been trying to figure out how people like Hieu do it. And the studies are increasingly pointing in one direction: They are genetic "freaks." Four years ago, geneticist Ying-Hui Fu discovered a mutation -- the DEC2 gene -- which controls circadian rhythm. (That's the internal clock that regulates the sleep-wake cycle.) Lab tests done on mice and fruit flies since then have supported the hypothesis that DEC2 accounts for Hieu's capacity to operate on just four hours of sleep. "We've long believed that there was a genetic basis for this," Paul Shaw, a neurobiologist at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, told Total Health Breakthroughs. "But it was only in the last few years that scientists have been able to ferret out which genes are responsible." A reader writes in for advice on promoting his website. He's built a site, put in meta-tags, and has filled it with keywords. But nothing has happened. He's considered starting a pay-per-click (PPC) ad campaign, but finds the process "confusing and un-assuring." He asks if we have any suggestions on how to get the word out about his website to potential customers. We get letters like this from Early to Rise readers almost every day. It's obvious that this guy is new to Internet marketing and new to ETR. If he had been reading us for some time he wouldn't be asking such a basic question. We have published thousands of pages of specific advice and information about Internet marketing in the past few years. And we offer numerous services for people who have a serious interest in this subject. You are not going to learn how to market your Internet business by asking one, big, oversimplified question. There are hundreds of ways to jumpstart your website and get your business in front of customers: search engine marketing, social media, e-mail marketing, teleseminars, viral campaigns, insert ads, joint ventures, co-registration, banner ads ... the list goes on. The point is, you have to invest money and time into educating yourself. Here are some of the programs ETR is offering right now:
You don't need a fancy website or any technical knowledge to learn to broker the Internet deals you'll learn about in Instant Internet Income. One of ETR's most popular programs, it's only $77. When you begin to learn martial arts you think it is all about dominating your opponent with force and speed. So you practice force and speed. Sometimes you become very good at those skills and win tournaments and prestige. But if you keep practicing you realize that what you are doing is enslaving yourself to an external, ego-driven notion. As you become advanced -- if you ever do -- you recognize that the real trick to mastery is internal. Most martial artists never learn the internal skills, but those who do usually don't start practicing them until after they have achieved black-belt status. The same is true in business. Starting a business is almost always an ego-driven process. It exists in a competitive environment. It is fueled by the desire for egocentric rewards: power, prestige, and money. But after you have achieved those objectives they suddenly seem insignificant. This is the crisis every "successful" person faces if he is even minimally aware. It sometimes leads to self-destructive behavior. I can tell you stories about businesspeople I know who have wrecked their lives by taking drugs or philandering or neglecting their businesses -- all because they were disappointed by success. This is a common pattern. But it's one you don't have to follow. You can, and probably should, enjoy the egocentric rewards while they still entice you. But prepare your mind from the beginning to recognize that they are external. Focus on the softer, internal skills of business. Look for them in the advice of people who have hit the top. You'll recognize them when you hear them. Pay attention. Learning a foreign language? So am I. And so is my friend Steve Leveen, co-founder and CEO of Levenger. Steve and I plied our Spanish speaking skills a few months ago in Nicaragua. Since then, his skills have improved much faster than mine. Turns out he has been making progress by using social networking sites, an MP3 player, and other e-gizmos as self-teaching tools. You can read more about his experience here. A word about our Total Success Achievement program from Early to Riser Dave S.: "I want to thank you for providing the ETR Goals Program. "This year, with everything that I received by entering into the program -- the workbook and DVD, the weekly planner, the weekly power surge messages, the twice a month teleconferences, the website forum, and Bob and Karin Cox's personal phone mentoring -- I have been able to:
"This program has made a huge difference to me in the outcome of this year, and I look forward to Bob and Karin's mentoring as I successfully launch my home business ... despite the doom and gloom we hear on the news! "Obviously, I recommend this program to anyone who wants to get focused and get things done." Next Thursday, I'll be listening to a teleseminar that MaryEllen will be hosting. She'll be interviewing Rich Schefren, one of the world's top Internet experts, about an exciting marketing secret that he calls "the missing link." (I had a brief conversation with him about it at the cigar bar the other night.) Rich has a good mind for business. He has a talent for figuring out what holds people back and then coming up with solutions. MaryEllen will be grilling him about this secret and others. The point of the teleseminar is to give ETR readers a sampling of the kind of advice and help they'll get at our annual Bootcamp in November. If you haven't yet registered for Bootcamp, please do so right away. If you are undecided, check out MaryEllen's interview with Rich. (We should be selling it -- but it's free, so take advantage.) [Ed. Note: Michael Masterson welcomes your questions and comments. Send him a message at AskMichael@ETRFeedback.com.] |
© 2009 Early to Rise, LLC. |
NOTE: If URLs do not appear as live links in your e-mail program, please cut and paste the full URL into the location or address field of your browser. Disclaimer: Early to Rise only recommends products that we've either personally checked out ourselves, or that come from people we know and trust. For doing so, we receive a commission. We will never recommend any product that does not have a 100% money-back satisfaction guarantee. Nothing in this e-mail should be considered personalized Financial Advice. Although our employees may answer your general customer service questions, they are not licensed under securities laws to address your particular investment situation. No communication by our employees to you should be deemed as personalized Financial Advice. We expressly forbid our writers from having a financial interest in any security recommended to our readers. All of our employees and agents must wait 24 hours after on-line publication or 72 hours after the mailing of printed-only publication prior to following an initial recommendation. Any investments recommended in this letter should be made only after consulting with your investment advisor and only after reviewing the prospectus or financial statements of the company. To unsubscribe from Early to Rise and any associated external offers, Click here. To contact us, please visit... http://www.supportatetr.com/helpdesk To cancel or for any other subscription issues, write us at: Order Processing Center Attn: Customer Service PO Box 7835 Delray Beach, Florida 33482 |
Saturday, September 5, 2009
ETR: What Do You Regret?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment