When Your Portfolio Cries For Help
Unless you make a point of staying on top of the latest business and investment trends, it’s a good idea to have a professional look over your portfolio every once in a while. (Kind of like bringing in your car for its annual check-up to get it purring again.) Your…
To Discover Cutting-Edge Trends, Look for Signs of Unusual Activity
When you are taking a look at your competitors this year — and you should be doing this at least once a year — keep an eye out for signs of unusual activity. New marketing and product trends begin with little eruptions here and there. They are seldom widespread —…
What Donald Trump Can Teach You About Direct Marketing
I never thought of Donald Trump as a direct marketer. In fact, from what little I had seen, he seemed largely ignorant of the principles of DM. For instance, on the first season of “The Apprentice,” the two teams had to come up with an ad campaign for a company…
Don’t Make Excuses . . . Just Apologize
Your customers are usually smarter than you think. Some of them are even smarter than you are. I used to work for a business that thought differently. When we created products, we thought, “Why kind of idiotic stuff will they fall for next?” When we wrote advertising copy, we always…
Recruiting Salespeople to Grow Your Microbusiness
It’s very exciting! You’ve just come up with a great idea for starting your own business. You’ve done the legwork, you’ve followed the advice in ETR’s Microbusiness Program to perfect your plans, and now you’re looking forward to having financial freedom in your not-too-distant future. But there’s just one hitch.…
The Massive Leverage of Relationships
Over the past three weeks, I’ve explained that marketing, strategy, and business plans are three of the key leverage-producing “drivers” of business growth. Today, let’s look at one more: your relationships. What are the various leverage relationships you have? The business relationships you have, the professional relationships you have, the…
Don’t Put It Off Any Longer – Retire Next Year!
Let’s talk about retirement. Everyone will have his or her own idea of the perfect retirement, but there are some elements we can probably all agree on. An ideal retirement would have you waking up each morning feeling good about yourself . . . looking forward to every minute of…
Three Virtues of the Successful Inventor
Have you ever been on a diet? Can you remember being tempted to eat a certain something? Resisting the impulse and then allowing yourself to take just “one bite”? What happened? If you’re like me (and most people), that one bite simply stimulated your appetite and led to other bites…
The Easiest and Fastest Way to Transform Your Business
You can increase your profitability and competitive superiority dramatically by focusing on the highest-leverage-producing “drivers” of business growth. Last Wednesday, in Message #1261, I talked about one of these key drivers: your marketing. Today, let’s look at another one: your strategy. Because the easiest and fastest way to instantly transform…
How ‘Social Proof’ Can Increase Sales
Social proof increases sales by helping potential customers identify with others who have purchased your product or service, eliminating the risk.
The Greatest Upside Leverage Imaginable
Imagine if you could get any activity, any investment, any opportunity, and any effort of people or creative intellectual capital to produce for you — and your business — at a much higher, bigger, better, more profitable yield or result than it otherwise would. You will be able to do…
The 75th Anniversary of the Great Crash
Last month marked the 75th Anniversary of the Great Crash of 1929, which kicked off the Great Depression. Looking back, there are many lessons to learn from it. In today’s market, those lessons may be applied as: buy bonds, real estate, and gold coins. And sell stocks . . .…