How To Make A Stagnant Profit Center Grow
“To most men, experience is like the stern lights of a ship, which illumine only the track it has passed.” – Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Table Talk, 1835) Test your CEO acumen: What do you do with a good but stagnant profit center? For several years now, sales have been the…
READ MOREMy commute is 5 seconds!
Two weeks ago, I wrote to you about a part-time business I thought you might want to consider: Resume Writing. If you like the prospects of earning a part-time income of $40,000 or $50,000 a year — or of possibly quitting your day job for good some day soon —…
READ MORETurn Any Job Into A Lucrative Career
Dear Early to Rise Reader, MMF has mentioned in the past valuable skills you can master to earn an excellent second income. Copywriting and resume writing come to mind, for example. Today, I’m writing to tell you about something completely different. It’s a way for you to make very good…
READ MOREBody Language: Don’t Be Deaf To Shouting
Body language experts say the two most important clues to the way someone thinks of you are the way he positions his heart and his feet. Someone who likes you will tend to position his heart (i.e., his chest) toward your chest. So if your boss/colleague habitually stands and sits…
READ MOREPeripatetic Managing: Does It Really Work?
Do you walk around the office? Some management experts think doing so is a critically important business skill. Others warn against it. In “Seven Habits of Highly Successful Executives,” Steven Covey makes suggestions for limiting and avoiding casual chats around the office. In Covey’s view, these are unnecessary and often…
READ MOREFear vs. “Comfort” Marketing
“No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.” – Edmund Burke (A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, 1756) Direct-marketing gurus will tell you that people buy information products for one of two reasons:…
READ MOREGet Those Monkeys Off Your Back!
Yesterday, we talked about the problem with “monkeys”: If you are not careful, colleagues and subordinates will try get the monkeys perched on their backs to leap onto yours. Be alert for this kind of “reverse delegation.” The smart manager, William Oncken, author of “Monkey Business,” argues, makes sure he…
READ MOREAre You A Victim of “Monkey Business”?
“Troubles hurt the most when they prove self-inflicted.” – Sophocles (Oedipus the King, c. 430 B.C.) In his book “Monkey Business,” William Oncken describes this all-too-common — but easily fixed — problem that most managers run into: It’s 10 o’clock Monday morning. You are walking down the hall on your…
READ MOREBrainstorming For Copy: Timing Is Critical
“Every action is an idea before it is an action, and perhaps a feeling before it is an idea, and every idea rests upon other ideas that have preceded it in time.” – Wallace Stegner (“A Capsule History of Conversation,” When the Bluebird Sings in the Lemonade Springs, 1991) Here’s…
READ MOREHow Do You Handle The Whiners?
“Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood or appreciated.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson (Journals, 1840) In the early part of my career, I spent countless hours ensnarled in the following kind of situation: A manager would come into my office and start to complain about something. The moment…
READ MOREResume Dedicated
Dear Early to Rise Reader, I’m writing you a quick note this morning to tell you about what could be a very good way for you to make a significant part-time income, beginning almost immediately. It’s a pretty simple business that just about anyone can do … and the nice…
READ MOREHow “The Four P’s” Can Help You Land A Better Job
“It is the bold man who every time does best, at home or abroad.” – Homer (The Odyssey, 9th century B.C.) Today, I’m going to show you how to apply one of the most-important rules of sales copy — something we call “the Four P’s” — to help you…
READ MORE