Posted by:
Clayton Makepeace
September 17, 2007
Issue #232
Dear Business Builder,
When you read this, The Redhead and I will be recovering from what I hope will be a wild weekend in Key West.
Last Thursday, we joined some 40,000 bikers who descended on The Conch Republic for a four-day blow-out called The Key West Poker Run.
After three days doing “The Duval Crawl” – drifting through Sloppy Joes, Captain Tony’s, The Hog’s Breath, The Green Parrot and countless other watering holes with my fellow biker scum (and a bunch of proctologists, lawyers and accountants in brand-new leathers pretending to be biker scum) – we’re probably moving pretty slow.
This morning, we’re packing up our Harleys for the 139-mile ride up to Miami, then jumping on a plane for a quick flight to Atlanta (watching the other passengers as we settle into First Class in our ratty old scuffed up biker gear is always fun), then a three-hour drive to our home in the mountains of Western North Carolina.
Since I’m writing this the day before we left (last Wednesday) – and since this is the first thing that has even remotely resembled a vacation for me in oh, I don’t know … FOREVER …
… I’m not quite as focused as I like to be when I sit down to write to you.
Nevertheless, here I am, doing my dead-level best to give you a thought or an idea or an inspiration or something that will make the few minutes you spend reading this the best investment of your week.
So what do you want to talk about?
What’s that you say? You want to talk about money?
What a coinkie-dinkie – thats what’s been on my mind, too…
(more…)
Posted by:
John Newtson
September 15, 2007
Issue #231
Dear Business Builder,
In a previous life at a company I used to work for, there was a consultant who lived so far off the beaten path FedEx wouldn’t guarantee next-day delivery to his house.
He used to be a highly successful executive at our company, then one day he just up and quit.
Why? In his words, “I always told myself I’d never stay at a job I hated for more than a week straight. And I’ve already broken that rule because, as of today, I’ve hated working here for two weeks straight.”
And with that, he packed up and moved to his vacation home in the Rocky Mountains.
He started a consultancy and never looked back.
I was thinking about him the other day and remembered this one-question quiz. It’s a fairly easy way to see if you’re really living life on your own terms:
If today were the last day of your life, would you really want to be doing what you’re doing today?
And if you answer no to that question too many days in a row – you’ve got some thinking to do. It’s certainly something I think about.
Do what you love to do
Back in 2005, Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer, gave students graduating from Stanford some of the best advice I’ve read anywhere:
“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work.
“And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.
“As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.”
Copywriting and direct marketing give you the ability to work in almost any market you want. Whether it’s writing for those markets or building your own business in a field you love – you’ve got the tools.
Maybe you’re not sure what you love to do yet. That’s okay, but set aside some time to figure it out. Simply chasing income will only get you so far and won’t guarantee you happiness.
There are plenty of rich, miserable people. Fortunately, with your skills you can find a way to be a rich person who’s doing what you love to do.
And, besides doing what you love to do, why not …
Choose to live your dream lifestyle?
Several years ago, before becoming a copywriter, I was hanging out with a buddy on a beach in the Pelion region of Greece where I have a lot of family.
He was asking me about where I lived in the U.S. How much I paid for my apartment. And how much money I made. This was back before the Euro was adopted and the Drachma was still coin of the realm in Greece.
When I told him, he converted the dollars into Drachma and his jaw dropped. I tried to explain to him that it wasn’t a one to one comparison because the cost of living was so high in the U.S. relative to Greece.
He didn’t buy it and you could see the envy in his eyes. Then something dawned on his face and he smiled, pointed to the beach and said, “Yes, but in Greece, we have good food, beautiful women and the sea. What more do you need?”
(more…)
Posted by:
Julie McManus
September 14, 2007
Issue #230
Dear Business Builder,
It’s Friday morning and I’m thinking of days long gone by. Days before I started in the direct marketing biz. I don’t usually talk about life before DM in my issues … but this week I have cause to bring them up.
It’s seems the jobs we take early in our career shape us. When I was in high school in the mid 80’s, lots of kids had part-time jobs. Whether they were taking orders at the local fast food joint, bagging groceries in the supermarket or mowing their neighbor’s lawns. Even the kids in well-off families had jobs … often they were just a bit more professional like summer internships at their parent’s law or accounting firms. And in many cases, these high-school jobs ultimately lead my school mates to the professions they ended up pursuing …whether by choice or just happenstance.
Me? I was a mall rat. I got my first job when I was fifteen. I worked after school at Limited Express. And all during high school and college, I worked for many other well-known retail stores you’ll find in most suburban malls. Over the course of the eight years I spent in the mall, I worked my way up through the ranks from a sales associate to assistant manager to manager and then ultimately district manager of the last retail store I ever worked for. That store was The Body Shop.
In the late 80s and early 90s, The Body Shop was a phenomenon like no other. With its natural products and activist ways, it came to U.S. from the U.K. like a house on fire and its founder Anita Roddick was a marketer’s dream come true.
Long before the Internet Anita Roddick and The Body Shop were weaving her stories and desire to make a difference in the world into every product for sale in their bright green stores.
A Business Born From Necessity
If you don’t know the story of Anita Roddick and The Body Shop, let me bring you up to speed …
Anita Roddick was born to Jewish-Italian immigrants in 1942 in Littlehampton, West Sussex, England. She started her career as a teacher of English and History, but decided to quit and travel the world during the freewheeling days of the 1960s. After stints in Paris, Geneva and Polynesia, she returned to Littlehampton and met her soon-to-be husband Gordon Roddick. After marrying in Reno in 1970, they hit the hippie trail again before coming back to Littlehamption and opening a bed and breakfast and then later a restaurant.
In 1976, she found herself alone with two children to feed after her husband Gordon left to pursue a life-long dream to travel on horseback from Buenos Aires to New York (no kidding). A trip that would have left most marriages in shambles but one that “hippy minded” Anita supported wholeheartedly.
Before leaving, Gordon secured a 4000₤ loan so that his wife could start a business to support the family while he was gone. Anita started the first Body Shop with 25 natural skin and hair care products she mixed on her kitchen table. The trademark Body Shop bottles were chosen because they were the least expensive she could find and could be reused by customers (so she didn’t have to buy more). The signature green was chosen because it was the only color that would cover the mold on the walls of her first shop in Brighton, England.
By the time Gordon returned from his trip two years later, Anita had opened a second store. On a lark, she had sold half her business to an acquaintance to raise the money.
Upon his return, Gordon put together a franchising plan that would ultimately swell the company size to 2100 stores in 55 different countries and make Anita Roddick the 4th richest woman in the U.K. And as for that lucky acquaintance – he ended up right there with her.
She became a media darling, was voted Business Woman of the Year, bestowed the title of Dame (female equivalent of knight) by the Queen of England and dubbed the “Queen of Green.”
As I was logging online Tuesday morning, I happened to catch a glimpse of her picture. I hadn’t seen it in nearly 15 years. It was an obituary; she had died at the young age of 64.
(more…)
Posted by:
Michael Masterson
September 13, 2007
Issue #229
“Wealth is not without its advantages
and the case to the contrary,
although it has often been made,
has never proved widely persuasive.”
– John Kenneth Galbraith
If you aren’t yet a millionaire, this message is for you.
My fourth book with John Wiley & Sons is currently on the bookshelves. The title: Seven Years to Seven Figures: The Fast Track Plan to Becoming a Millionaire.
The title makes an audacious promise. I’m sure more than one critic will write it off as irresponsible. “The ordinary person can’t become a millionaire in seven years,” they’ll say. “It’s wrong to give people false hope.”
When the title was first suggested, I had the same thought. “Yes, this idea could get people motivated. But is it realistic?”
I thought about that question for some time, and concluded that I wouldn’t make any promises in the book that I couldn’t keep. My big promise - a seven-figure net worth in seven years or less - seemed a likely candidate for the chopping block. But when I mentioned my concern to my writing assistant, she asked, “How long did it take for you to make your first million?”
I thought about it and realized that it took me about two years to become a millionaire after I’d made up my mind to do it. What’s more, I realized that most of the people I’d mentored had also done it in less than seven years. For example:
(more…)
Posted by:
Daniel Levis
September 12, 2007
Issue #228
In this issue:
- The two-headed man beast …
- Five reasons why the spoken word outsells the written word …
- Six quick tips for crafting and delivering effective multi-media
sales presentations …
- And more!
Dear Business Builder,
It never ceases to amaze me to see how much weight people give to second hand knowledge. If some expert says something, it must be written in stone, immutable truth. Have we become so clever at learning from others that we’ve forgotten to think for ourselves?
Let me give you one such example …
Some copywriting gurus say that copywriters should write like people speak. Have you heard this before? I don’t know about you, but when I hear this I simply translate it to mean — write simply and clearly.
But the truth is, very few people speak simply and clearly. Sure they may use a few big words, but their communication is, more often than not, anything but concise or persuasive. It rambles all over the place. It’s full of fluff and ambiguity, and would never pass as productive copy in a millions years … The difference between writing the way people speak and putting persuasive words in their mouths is night and day.
A more accurate and useful axiom is this: Write copy that would sound natural if it were spoken.
Why is this so important? Let me tell you the reason.
Why conversational copy sells …
Copy (text) on a web page is a strange two-headed man beast. Technically it is a visual medium. But its power is sound, not light. I kid you not … the photons radiating from your computer screen right now are literally whispering my words in your ear. Can you hear them? Of course you can.
And sound is the medium of emotion. That’s why what you write should sound natural when spoken. Only then does it have the power to move people …
Still, did you know that the spoken word is 10 times as persuasive as the written word? How do I know? Not because some guru told me, I can assure you. I have seen it with my own eyes …
A well-crafted teleseminar will typically sell 20% to 30% of the people on the call, where a kick ass text-based web page will typically sell 2% to 3% of the people who see it.
The reasons?
Five reasons why the spoken word
outsells the written word …
You already know that emotion is the secret sauce that moves people to action. Yes, words on a page have the power to evoke emotion. The human voice however, has the power to infuse those words with an emotional charge that is far greater than the words themselves.
Just as there is no music other than mood music, there is no utterance that is not emotive … therefore listeners are much more easily moved than readers.
(more…)
