Mike with aspenIbiz's Blog

The Place Strategy that Supports Premium Prices

2012-01-31T15:48:00.002-07:00

This is a DRAFT version of this post ... please return in a few days to read the FINAL version of this post.

America divides into niches and subcultures.

Each individual belongs to at least one of each but most belong to several of each.

Understanding how that niche or subculture membership and affinity stretches the price elasticity of just about all goods and services can put a great deal of lost money into your bank account.

Add several examples from the pricing book. Xx xx

The deeper the commitment to niche or subculture, the less price matters for the precisely matched product. More price elasticity exists when moving a generic product to the niche.

Several key links about product / place / pricing must be cut. One that must be cut is the value, in your mind, of the ingredients that comprise the product. Another link that must be cut is that some product comprised of the exact same ingredients may be readily available at a substantially different price, at a different place, is essential.

Place in this context is not necessarily a geographic place but a niche or subculture.

Again, price pressure goes up, if you can move a product from generic or mainstream, to niche or subculture. They is why we add value to a generic product; it makes it customized or match a specific niche or subculture or client or customer.

Here are several key lessons to follow in order keep from being stupid with your Place Strategy. You must learn to make your sales in a competitive vacuum or get comfortable with selling at dirt-cheap, forced-down prices with nominal or commodity like profits.

Lesson 1 – Avoid loading the wagon and then wonder who might buy what you have to offer.

Lesson 2 – Avoid one product, one size fits all approach. Modify, reposition, repackage what you have for different markets or different segments.

Lesson 3 – Avoid treating all places (such as media) the same. While there is undoubtedly some cross-over between The Robb Report, New Yorker, and Town & Country, do not put the same generic add in all 3 magazines and expect stellar results; it will not happen.

Lesson 4 – Do not miss out on “unique” place opportunities. Nationally, or locally; offline or online, there are lots of unique place and media opportunities. Find / decide on these first, and then work backwards to modify or engineer a version of your product or service for that place.

Lesson 5 – xx xx

Lesson 6 – xx xx

Lesson 7 – x xx

If you follow these 7 lessons, you are able to get price out of the mind of a buyer of the products and services of your business. If you do not follow them, you will always be in a position where price is always an issue in the mind of the buyer and you will likely be challenged and always be suppressed by competition and commoditization.

I Hope You Enjoyed the Article and I Trust You Found It Insightful! Let me Know What You Think.

A Lesson from Santa about the Future of Humanity

2011-12-24T17:49:00.003-07:00

Many people feel badly this holiday season about what they can’t do for, or provide to, their families.

The big question is do they feel badly enough, that on December 26th before sunrise, they will be determinedly at work learning a new trade, developing a more valuable and marketable skill, seeking a better job, starting a business on the side, or otherwise striving to be sure that the next time the Santa season rolls around, they are better able to enjoy it and give their family a top experience?

It is clear this past year was a year of recession, high unemployment, and low confidence. We are at a turning point, most likely a breaking point, and the future is looking far more entrepreneurial than corporate. Kiss goodbye any expectations of a fat corporate job coming your way.

So let’s use this post to provide a secret from Santa which is a lesson in economics and learn how we can use it for the Future of All Humanity.

Here is the lesson.

We either live or we die. To live we must consume. To consume we must produce. When we produce a surplus, we can exchange the surplus. We create a market to sell our surplus and buy what we need or desire.

One common enemy is scarcity. Our mission is survival. Our goal is abundance.

We want the best system of enterprise and minimal interference to produce the most wealth, distributed to the most people.

Since we are all in this together, we must all be in balance.

Our economic system consists of individuals (we the people), enterprise (which are businesses) and government. The job of enterprise is to create wealth for the individuals of the enterprise. Government’s job is to create a climate for creating wealth but in doing so, it is a net consumer of wealth as the only way government obtains money is by taxing the wealth, the income, or both, of businesses and individuals.

Wealth is anything that has value that people are willing to work for and pay for. Wealth is basic economics – creation, production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services.

It is important to understand and control the balance between enterprise and government.

Over time, government may grow faster than enterprise through “creep”; it happens slowly but surely. With higher wealth consumption, and lower wealth production, we are less rich because an expanding government becomes a net consumer of wealth with less enterprise to produce wealth.

As Santa says, when you learn the lessons of basic economics, you know a lot. Combined with the concepts of freedom, you can do a lot. Now, how can we use this lesson for the Future of All Humanity?

Well, entrepreneurs are the ones out there making an impact. They are starting up businesses, building things, creating jobs, and raising the standard of living throughout the world. In reality, they are the ones that have been creating all the jobs in the past 30 years. So entrepreneurs are the future of the world.

In addition, have you noticed that the world is changing faster than our current education system can handle? While there are many dedicated and amazing teachers and professors in our current system, they are just fighting a losing battle. It is clear that large chunks of our education system are moving online and this change is being lead by information marketers.

By being an entrepreneur, by being an information marketer, or having a business helping entrepreneurs and information marketers start and grow their businesses, you are about the Future of All Humanity … you are creating jobs and providing education.

Inspired by this lesson from Santa, make a New Year’s resolution to spend your time in the upcoming year (circa 2012) to obtain education and learn to be an entrepreneur. Work, mentor, teach, and inspire others to be entrepreneurs. The time you spend gaining the knowledge and applying the principles of entrepreneurialism will be for gain, good, and success; not loss, evil, or failure.

Be ready to create, and execute in unexpected ways, and of course be ready to provide for the Future of All Humanity.

I trust this post, with a lesson from Santa, has provided some background about economics, our freedom to choose, entrepreneurialism, information marketing, and inspiration to impact the Future of All Humanity.

In closing, be sure to Read More of my Posts on my Internet Marketing blog at aspenIbiz BlackBox; Obtain Some Tips About Being No 1 on Google at aspenIbiz My Go-To-Market Partners, my Affiliate website; Learn How to be Savvy with Your Money Like the Insiders at aspenIbiz The Conspiracy For Your Money blog, and How to Live Longer at aspenIbiz My Life’s Advantage Today site.

Finally, I would like to provide Best Wishes for a Happy Holiday Season and a Prosperous New Year!

You can join me and ennoble your efforts to build a better future! Check-out this Success Roadmap

Please be sure to share this post with anyone that you think would benefit from this message… thanks!

Positioning Yourself and Your Business for Maximum Success

2011-11-29T17:45:00.003-07:00

Positioning is admittedly an advertising buzzword but it is legitimately one of the most important marketing concepts you will ever consider in your business career.

One of the definitions of positioning is the controlling how your customers and prospective customers think and feel about your business in comparison to other, similar businesses competing for their attention.

Here are several positioning strategies that may seem obvious but many people overlook the obvious and cost themselves a lot of money as a result.

Positioning Strategy 1 – How to Describe What You Do to Attract the Customers You Want.

Let’s start with the name of your business. The best business names telegraph what the business does. For example, Dunkin Donuts is better than Starbucks. At the start, Apple and Amazon were mystery names however obviously they are now hugely successful brand name companies. The question you have to ask is whether or not you want to invest an enormous amount of money and patience in creating awareness and understanding of what your name represents or to start with a name that clearly represents what your business is and does.

Positioning Strategy 2 – How to Price.

You don’t ever want to be in a business that obtained its customers with the lure of “lowest prices.” You cannot build long-term customer retention via the cheapest price. The way you get a customer has great impact on how you will sell to that customer again. There will always be someone willing to offer a cheaper price. If the only thing binding your customers to your company is the lowest price, your business will be as fragile in its tenth year as in its tenth week.

Be sure to sell quality, value, service, and unique benefits; do not sell price.

One of the most interesting things about price is not its impact on profit and income but its impact on positioning. Often, under-pricing sends the wrong message. The business owner thinks he is optimizing sales by offering the lowest price possible but he actually creating skepticism and causing discerning customers to look elsewhere.

In the New Economy, the successful businesses, based on factors other than low or aggressively competitive pricing, outnumber successful businesses that feature low or lowest price promises by at least 500 to 1. Be sure to play the odds.

Positioning Strategy 3 – How to Make Your Image Work for You.

To be perceived as successful and trustworthy in your business, you must match the image of a successful business in your field.

Places of business, product packaging, literature, and advertising, all are subject to the same image concerns as are individual appearances.

We are taught that you can’t judge a book by its cover but we can’t help but judge a book by its cover. You will be judged that way, too!

Most businesses are better served by thinking about their marketing tools as “salesmanship in media” rather than as “advertising.” In simple terms, copy is king. Message matters most. Yes, the wrong presentation for a given market can sabotage event the best message. But the more common error is a beautiful presentation of – nothing.

Ultimately, there must be appropriate marriage of substance and style to make your image work for you. Customer’s expectations must be met and exceeded, anxiety avoided, reassurance given by the image presented by you, your staff, your physical location, and your marketing material.

Positioning Strategy 4 – Self-Appointment.

When we are kids, our parents “appoint us” old enough to stay home alone or old enough to babysit our younger brothers or sisters.

At work, employers or supervisors “promote us” as qualified to do a certain thing or handle a certain responsibility.

This conditioning is not particularly useful when you step into the world of owning your own business.

Please understand that you do not need anybody’s permission to be successful. If you wait for someone to grant you the permission to be successful, you will wait a long, long time.

Business success just is not conferred upon you.

Power and influence is not granted – it is taken.

Expert positioning is all about self-appointment, self-promotion, and self-aggrandizement. Make this note: you become a promotable expert by decision, acquisition, and organization of information, pronouncement, and promotion. Not by anointment by some authority on high.

How do you do this? Write books, give teleseminars, build lists of customers interested in your product or service.

Your positioning decision is the difference between a six-figure income and a seven-figure income based on investor partnering potential, with many clients, as this is the income-multiplying power of positioning.

In positioning yourself and your business for success, you have to clearly determine who you are, then drive that message home to your marketplace. It is also important to make the right decision as the marketplace will usually accept the positioning you chose for yourself, and present to others, as you really are in control of the positioning.

Many high profile business leaders, including the Oracle of Omaha, suggest that if you don’t focus on positioning yourself as an online entrepreneur, being self-employed, or being a small business owner, it will be a very tough road in the months and years ahead; actually they say, it will be an uphill battle.

This suggestion is attracting current and former doctors, CEOs, and other members of the corporate workforce that are seeking a way to leave their established and lucrative careers. They are in pursuit of new opportunities in the world of Social Media and Internet Marketing so they can generate income, prestige, independence, and financial rewards that exceed the levels obtained by most in their previous careers.

You can find out more about Internet Marketing and home-based businesses by reading updates that will be posted at my blog over the next few weeks.

A great book to read is "No B.S. Business Success in the New Economy" by Dan S Kennedy as it was the source of some of the material contained in this post.

In closing, be sure to meet me at my website, WhoIsMikeFarrell, learn some tips about being No 1 on Google at aspenIbiz My Go-To-Market Partners, and learn how to be savvy with your money like the insiders at aspenIbiz The Conspiracy For Your Money Blog.

Finally, I would like to provide Best Wishes for a Happy Holiday Season and a Prosperous New Year!

Be sure to share this post with anyone that you think would benefit from this message… thanks!

The Key Tools of Marketing and the Weapons of Influence

2011-10-31T21:18:00.004-06:00

Before you can have your ultimate, fine-tuned business, you must turbo-charge every aspect. Use the 7 Key Tools of Marketing and the 6 Weapons of Influence to get peak performance out of your business.

This post will identify and briefly explain each of the 7 Key Tools of Marketing. It is important to understand that once the mechanics of setting up and operating these 7 Key Tools is performed, it is the message that will influence the reader to take the action you want them to take. There are 6 Key Weapons of Influence and this post will briefly introduce them. It is the combination of the mechanics of marketing, or the 7 Key Tools of Marketing, and the message principles, or the Weapons of Influence, that enable your business to be successful!

Here are the 7 Key Tools of Marketing.

Tool 1. Advertising. If you have the budget for it, advertising has the broadest reach and creates the most top-of-mind awareness. Here is what you must do to create high response-generating advertising. Be distinctive. Capture attention with a screaming headline. After your headline hooks them, the copy or the message in the body of your ad has to keep them reading. Be sure to include a Call to Action.

Tool 2. Direct Mail. A successful direct mail campaign depends on how regular and consistent your mailings are. First, use color as much as you can. Second, put messages on the envelopes. Third, think about the way you sort your own mail to increase the chances of the envelope being opened. In conclusion, use direct mail as a weapon for attacking your dream prospects.

Tool 3. Corporate Literature. Consider corporate literature to be like your direct mail pieces. Your brochures must draw from your education-based marketing efforts and should be a miniature version of your pitch or core story. It must have riveting data however remember that facts tell but stories sell. Use the same graphics that you use in your presentations, advertisements, and direct mail pieces to enhance cohesion of your marketing efforts.

Tool 4. Public Relations. If you throw splashy events such as trade show parties and benefits for your clients, you are doing PR work. PR also includes press releases, building relationships with the press to get articles written about you, and affiliating with strong forces that can help you such as trade associations and community groups. Most companies do not have a cohesive, highly effective public relations effort, yet it can work miracles for building your fame, even if you are a small company, especially with the reach and pervasiveness of the Internet.

Tool 5. Personal Contact. Personal contact is the most potent form of marketing so do it often and have quality conversations with your prospects.

Tool 6. Trade Shows and Market Education. Trade shows are a great way to provide product and market related information to your prospects. When done properly, it can take you from obscurity to the top of the market in a single event. If not done properly, it can be a big waste of money. Follow these three rules to have a great trade show. 1. Get noticed. 2. Drive traffic. 3. Capture leads.

Tool 7. Internet. The Internet can create an awesome opportunity for your business or it can become your worst nightmare overnight if some competitor learns how to utilize it better than you. As an example, Amazon struggled in its early years but it still took $1B in market share from other booksellers. Because Amazon grew with the Internet, it reached the $1B in sales in four years. Prior to the Internet, other bookstore chains took 50 years to reach $1B in sales. Here are the five key activities to perform on the Internet. 1. Capture leads. 2. Build a relationship. 3. Interact as much as possible. 4. Offer a webinar. 5. Convert traffic to sales.

It is important for all these key tools of marketing to work together. Your content and your message should be, of course, consistent and all the duplicated, or syndicated, content be cross-referenced in some manner.

Here are some important questions to ask as a way to ensure the key tools of marketing are effective. Are all your articles on your website? Are they available as downloads? Are they available to site visitors so they can be shared and or mailed to others by your site visitors? Does your content generate leads for your business? Do you offer free education as a way of building your leads list?

As mentioned at the beginning of this post, it is important that the weapons of influence (contained in your content, your pitch, your storyboard) are used to get your prospects to take the action you want them to take.

To help you understand the power of the weapons of influence, do you feel as if you are an easy mark for the pitches of peddlers or fund-raisers? Do you find yourself in possession of unwanted magazine subscriptions or tickets to various charity events? Why is it that a request stated in a certain way, is rejected while a request asking for the same favor in a slightly different way will be successful? The key is the psychology of persuasion, sometimes referred to as the weapons of influence.

Here are the 6 Weapons of Influence that need to be considered when preparing your message.

Weapon 1. Reciprocity. This rule is the old give and take and says that we should try to repay in kind what another person has provided us.

Weapon 2. Commitment and Consistency. Like other weapons of influence, this rule is quite simply our desire to be, and to appear to be, consistent with what we have already done. As an example, if we buy a small item, we are frequently asked if we would like to supersize it, or buy another item for 50% (as an example) more; all presented to us at the same time. This is part of the up-sell process.

Weapon 3. Social Proof. This rule states that we determine what is correct when we find out what other people think is correct. Said another way, we think we will make fewer mistakes by acting in accord with social evidence than contrary to it. This is why testimonials are so popular for a product; they make us think that if all the people in the testimonials like or are using the product, how could we be wrong for also using it.

Weapon 4. Liking. This rule is based on the fact the most of us would prefer to say yes to the requests of someone we know and like. As trivial as it may seem, prospects are more likely to purchase from a sales person if the sales person were similar to the prospect in terms of age, sex, religion, politics, and several other factors such as recreation, and even career, activities.

Weapon 5. Authority. We are trained from birth that obedience to proper authority is right and that disobedience is wrong. This message is carried forward in the legal, medical, military, and political systems we encounter as adults. Advertisers frequently harness the respect and influence accorded to doctors in our culture by hiring actors to play the role of a doctor and speak in a positive way about a product. The message from the doctor, an authority figure, can sway or influence prospects to purchase the product.

Weapon 6. Scarcity. The appeal for something of interest increases when we learn that it will soon become unavailable. This is based on the rule of scarcity. There is a secondary source of power, or influence, with the scarcity principle. As opportunities become less available, we lose freedoms and we hate to lose freedoms we already have. Whenever free choice is limited, due to the scarcity of something, the need to retain our freedom makes us desire them significantly more than we did previously.

By understanding and using these weapons, you have the ability to produce a distinct kind of automatic, mindless compliance from people that have a willingness to say yes without thinking first.

With the ever-accelerating pace and information crush of modern life, this form of hypnotic writing that generates unthinking compliance will be more and more prevalent in the future.

As a result, it will be important to understand the how and why of automatic persuasion using the weapons of influence.

The 7 Key Tools of Marketing and the 6 Weapons of Influence are being used by The New Professionals as a driving force for their success with their home-based businesses. As The New Professionals are becoming The Next Millionaires, this makes a home-based business opportunity very appealing for many seeking a career change.

Many high profile business leaders, including the Oracle of Omaha, suggest that if you don’t focus on being an online entrepreneur, being self-employed, or being a small business owner, it will be a very tough road in the months and years ahead; actually they say, it will be an uphill battle.

This suggestion is attracting current and former doctors, CEOs, and other members of the corporate workforce that are seeking a way to leave their established and lucrative careers. They are in pursuit of new opportunities in the world of Social Media and Internet Marketing so they can generate income, prestige, independence, and financial rewards that exceed the levels obtained by most in their previous careers.

You can find out more about Internet Marketing and home-based businesses by reading updates that will be posted at my blog over the next few weeks.

Finally, a great book to read is "Influence" by Robert B Cialdini as it explains The Psychology of Persuasion.

In closing, be sure to meet me at my website, WhoIsMikeFarrell, learn some tips about Being No 1 on Google, and learn how to Be Savvy with Your Money like the insiders at aspenIbiz The Conspiracy For Your Money Blog.

Be sure to share this post with anyone that you think would benefit from this message… thanks!

Finding Balance with Career Changes

2011-09-30T22:02:00.003-06:00

What would it be like to quit your job and start over in a more appealing career?

If you are an older worker, youi may think that a major career change would require overcoming too many obstacles to be worthwhile like age discrimination, new technology, or a salary cut.

However the real obstacles to a midlife career change may reside in your own mind.

Here are several myths surrounding a midlife career change and these keep people from pursuing their dream job.

Myth 1. I am too old to make a career change. Without changing your perception of your capabilities, you will never make a successful career change. Unfortunately, while younger workers are often expected to explore different career paths, older workers are not encouraged to do so. And if you have progressed up the corporate ladder to an enviable position, friends and family may be shocked you would consider leaving success for uncharted waters. With this much pressure to stay put, it can be easy to allow your dream job to remain only a dream. Some serious soul-searching is needed to understand how and why you want your career to change, so you will have the conviction to stand up to others.

You can have access to one of the most powerful tools for self-improvement and goal attainment, so necessary in making a career change, by learning the techniques of Psycho-Cybernetics. In the book “The New Psycho-Cybernetics” Dan Kennedy updates the work of Maxwell Maltz. Kennedy explains that by using the techniques covered in this book, you will be able to improve your self-image and overcome limiting beliefs especially the myth that you are too old to make a career change.

Myth 2. If I make a career change, I will be starting at the bottom. Even though you may be new at a company, you are not the newbie you were when you entered the workforce. You have gained an impressive array of skills, plus you have professional wisdom and perspective acquired only through time. The key to bypassing entry-level status is to market these assets in your next interview.

Your life story and experience have greater importance and market value than you probably ever dreamed. The best way to make a difference in this world is to use your knowledge and advice to help others succeed. You can get paid, and bypass the entry-level status, by sharing your advice and how-to-information.

Myth 3. This old dog can’t learn new tricks. Says who? Of course there will be a learning curve to any new career you try. But isn’t having a new professional challenge part of why you seek this change? The goal is to find your innate strengths and interests.

Said another way is that once you know Why you want to do something, you will figure out How to do something… it is just natures way. Why is the reason we get out of bed in the morning. If you spring out of bed, you have a Why that is real, defined, and you believe in. If you have difficulty getting out of bed in the morning, then you need to find your Why. Simon Sinek provides examples in his book “Start with Why”. The Wright Brothers had a Why that was to develop a technology that would change the world. Steve Jobs of Apple had a Why which was to create value by disrupting the status quo in certain industries. Henry Ford wanted to provide a means of transportation for the common man not just to provide a faster horse. The power of learning something new comes from that part of our brain called the limbric brain and this power is astounding. It can influence us to do things that seem illogical or irrational. Without this power there would be no small businesses; there would be no exploration; there would be very little innovation; and there would be no great leaders to inspire all these things.

If these myths are stopping you from pursuing a career change in your midlife, expand your thinking about your capabilities instead of focusing on what you see holding you back. Also, consider that accepting these myths is easier than taking a risk. If you were to read the book “Start with Why” by Simon Sinek, it would fan the flames inside you, lead you to levels of excellence you never considered attainable, and debunk the myths surrounding a midlife career change.

If you are ready to take the professional plunge into a new career then you should “Go for it” with these words of caution.

Keep your expectations realistic. If you have been fantasizing that your dream job will be the antidote to your personal and professional troubles, you may be glorifying what a new career can really do. Research the economic outlook and job duties for your new career.

Give it time. Deciding to venture into a new career can mean changes in your work environment, coworkers, income, and how you view yourself. Even if your new position is something you have always wanted to do, all these changes can be a shock. Before calling it quits, allow enough time to let the dust settle and adjust to your new profession.

Know yourself. You have a history of professional and personal experience to draw from when determining your natural strengths. Think about what you truly enjoy, what you do well, and what you are proud of. Is there a underlying theme?

Another opportunity being considered by many seeking a career change is a home-based business opportunity. A home business can offer people a way to update their skills and use new tools to create new income opportunities. It can empower seasoned workers, seeking to a make a career change, to venture out on their own as entrepreneurs and grow in confidence, versus being consumed by the fear associated with a shrinking job market.

Technology is available to everyone at home and it is even better than what you can get in a large company. The best tools and support needed to run a home-based business are now available to individuals at an affordable cost. This makes a home-based business opportunity very appealing.

Many high profile business leaders, including the Oracle of Omaha, suggest that if you don’t focus on being an online entrepreneur, being self-employed, or being a small business owner, it will be a very tough road in the months and years ahead; actually they say, it will be an uphill battle.

This suggestion is attracting current and former doctors, CEOs, and other members of the corporate workforce that are seeking a way to leave their established and lucrative careers. They are in pursuit of new opportunities in the world of Social Media and Internet Marketing so they can generate income, prestige, independence, and financial rewards that exceed the levels obtained by most in their previous careers.

You can find out more about Internet Marketing and home-based businesses by reading updates that will be posted at my blog over the next few weeks.

Finally, a great book to read is "Linchpin" by Seth Godin as it explains to each of us how we can make an indispensable contribution to something we care about.

In closing, be sure to meet me at my website, WhoIsMikeFarrell, learn some tips about being No 1 on Google at aspenIbiz My Go-To-Market Partners, and learn how to be savvy with your money like the insiders at aspenIbiz The Conspiracy For Your Money Blog.

Please share this post with anyone that you think would benefit from this message!

The Law of Resources – An Idea Will Not Get Off the Ground Without Adequate Funding

2011-08-29T18:40:00.003-06:00

If you have a good idea and you are reading this article with the thought in mind that all you need is a little marketing help, let me through cold water on that thought.

Even the best idea in the world will not go very far without the money to get it off the ground. Inventors, entrepreneurs, and assorted idea generators seem to think that all their good ideas need is professional marketing help.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Marketing is a game fought in the mind of the prospect. You need money to get into a mind. And you need money to stay in the mind once you get there.

You will get further with a mediocre idea and a million dollars than with a great idea alone.

Some entrepreneurs see advertising as the solution to the problem of getting into prospects’ minds. Advertising is expensive. It cost $9,000 a minute to fight World War II. It cost $22,000 a minute to fight the Vietnam War. A one-minute commercial shown during the Super Bowl in 2011 cost you $6 M for a one minute spot.

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak had a great idea. But it was Mike Markkula’s $91,000 that put Apple Computer on the map. For his money, Markkula got one-third of Apple.

Ideas without money are worthless. Well … not quite. But you have to use your idea to find the money not the marketing help. The marketing can come later.

Some entrepreneurs see publicity as a cheap way of getting into prospects’ minds. “Free advertising” is how they see it, so be sure to liberally create, upload, and distribute Free Press Releases.

Some entrepreneurs see venture capitalists as the solution to their money problems. But only a tiny percentage of entrepreneurs ever succeed in finding the funding they need this way.

Some entrepreneurs see corporate America as ready, willing, and financially able to get their off-spring off the ground. Good luck as you will need it. Very few outside ideas are ever accepted by large companies. Your only real hope is finding a smaller company and persuading it of the merits of your idea.

Remember, an idea without money is worthless. Be prepared to give away a lot for the funding.

In marketing the rich often get richer because they have the resources to drive their ideas into the mind. Their problem is separating the good ideas from the bad ones and avoiding spending money on too many products and too many programs.

Unlike a consumer product, a technical or business product has to raise less marketing money because the prospect list is shorter and media is less expensive. But there is still a need for adequate funding for a technical product to pay for brochures, sales, presentations, and trade shows as well as advertising.

Here is the bottom line. First get the idea, then go get the money to exploit it. Here are some short cuts you could take.

You can marry the money. Georgette Mosbacher married Commerce Secretary Robert Mosbacher. Three years after their marriage, Ms. Mosbacher bought a Swiss cosmetics firm. Where did she get the money? It came from venture capitalists; distributors in Switzerland and Japan; plus her husband’s resources. One year after her purchase, the sales were up 30% and she sold out at a heft profit.

You can divorce the money. Frances Lear arrived in New York at the age of 61 freshly divorced from her husband who produced the TV show “All in the Family.” Determined to launch a magazine for women over 40, she spent $25 million and by the fifth issue, Lear’s magazine had 350,000 readers.

You can find the money at home. Donald Trump would never have gotten anywhere with out Dad’s millions behind him.

You can share your idea by franchising it. Tom Monaghan was able to put Domino’s Pizza on the map by pursuing an aggressive program of franchising his home delivery idea.

The more successful marketers front load their investment. In other words, they take no profit for two or three years as they plow all earnings back into marketing.

It takes a while but many Internet Marketing entrepreneurs learn the Law of Resources. They learn to identify their target market with keyword research and keyword research tools as they know they can not guess what the market desires and it is difficult to benefit from their idea without resources. Money makes the marketing world go around. If you want to be successful today, you will have to find the money you need to spin those marketing wheels.

To accomplish this, they use various methods, tools, and follow a traffic formula to build relationships with their leads and customers. They build websites that create trust. They collect name and email addresses using an Optin form on a Landing Page. They use email systems with both auto-responders and broadcast capabilities in order to send messages to their leads and customers. These email messages frequently send information, provide knowledge, and occasionally promote an offering. Many Internet Marketing entrepreneurs learn that leads and customers do not like to be sold to however they will browse and shop. Over an extended period of time, skilled Internet Marketers are able to use hypnotic writing skills, in their marketing campaigns, to get leads and customers to take the action they want. This is how they learn to identify a target market, stay focused, and add value to their target market. They learn to leverage the equity in their list and be successful in the world that includes the Law of Resources.

It looks easy but marketing is not a game for amateurs. Marketing is not just a battle of products. It is all about the strategy you use to benefit from the Law of Resources as your idea will not get off the ground without adequate funding.

You can find out more about Internet Marketing and home-based businesses by reading updates that will be posted at my blog over the next few weeks.

Finally, a great book to read is "The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing" by Ries & Trout. It is the source of some of the material provided in this article.

In closing, be sure to meet me at my website, WhoIsMikeFarrell, learn some tips about being No 1 on Google at aspenIbiz My Go-To-Market Partners, and learn how to be savvy with your money like the insiders at aspenIbiz The Conspiracy For Your Money Blog.

The Law of Acceleration – Successful program are not built on fads, they are built on trends

2011-07-29T16:49:00.004-06:00

A fad is a wave in the ocean and a trend is the tide.

A fad gets a lot of hype and a trend gets very little.

Like a wave, a fad is very visible but it goes up and down in a big hurry. Like the tide, a trend is almost invisible but it is very powerful over the long term.

A fad is a short-term phenomenon that might be profitable but a fad does not last long enough to do a company much good. Furthermore, a company often tends to gear up as if a fad were a trend. As a result, the company is often stuck with a lot of staff, expensive manufacturing facilities, and distribution networks.

A fashion, on the other hand, is a fad that repeats itself. Examples are short skirts for women and double breasted suits for men. Halley’s Comet is a fashion because it comes back every 75 years or so.

When the fad disappears, a company often goes into a deep financial shock. What happened to Atari is typical in this respect. And look how Coleco Industries handled the Cabbage Patch Kids. Those homely dools hit the market and started to take off. Coleco’s strategy was to milk the kids for all they were worth.

Hundreds of Cabbage Patch novelties flooded the toy stores. Pens, pencils, crayon boxes, games, clothing. Two years later, Coleco racked up sales of $776 million and profits of $83 million. Then the bottom dropped out of the Cabbage patch Kids. A few years later, Coleco went into Chapter 11.

Coleco died but the kids live on. Acquired by Hasbro, the Cabbage Patch Kids are now being handled conservatively and doing quite well.

Here is the paradox. If you were faced with a rapidly rising business, with all the characteristics of a fad, the best thing you could do would be to dampen the fad. By dampening the fad, you stretch the fad out and it becomes more like a trend.

You see this in the toy business. Some owners of hot toys want to put their hot toy name on everything. The result is that it becomes an enormous fad that is bound to collapse. When everybody has a Ninja turtle, nobody wants one anymore.

The Ninja turtle is a good example of a fad that collapses in a hurry because the owner of the concept got greedy. The owner fans the fad rather than dampening it.

On the other hand, the Barbie doll is a trend. When Barbie was invented year ago, the doll was never heavily merchandised into other areas. As a result, the Barbie doll has become a long-term trend in the toy business.

The most successful entertainers are the ones who control their appearances. They do not overextend themselves. They are not all over the place. They do not wear out their welcome.

Elvis Presley’s manager, Colonel Parker, made a deliberate attempt to restrict the number of appearances and records the King made. As a result, every time Elvis appeared, it was an event of enormous impact. Elvis himself contributed to this strategy by overdosing early and severely dampening his future appearances, as did Marilyn Monroe and James Dean.

Forget fads. And when they appear, try to dampen them.

But the best and most profitable thing to ride in marketing is a long-term trend.

It takes a while but many Internet Marketing entrepreneurs learn the Law of Acceleration. They learn to identify their target market with keyword research and keyword research tools as they know they can not guess what the market desires and it is difficult to benefit from all the hype. They work hard to maintain a long-term demand for their product and to never totally satisfy the demand … they enforce some scarcity.

To accomplish this, they use various methods, tools, and follow a traffic formula to build relationships with their leads and customers. They build websites that create trust. They collect name and email addresses using an Optin form on a Landing Page. They use email systems with both auto-responders and broadcast capabilities in order to send messages to their leads and customers. These email messages frequently send information, provide knowledge, and occasionally promote an offering. Many Internet Marketing entrepreneurs learn that leads and customers do not like to be sold to however they will browse and shop. Over an extended period of time, skilled Internet Marketers are able to use hypnotic writing skills, in their marketing campaigns, to get leads and customers to take the action they want. This is how they learn to identify a target market, stay focused, and add value to their target market. They learn to leverage the equity in their list and be successful in the world that includes the Law of Acceleration.

It looks easy but marketing is not a game for amateurs. Marketing is not a battle of products. It is all about the strategy you use to benefit from the Law of Acceleration as successful program are not built on fads, they are built on trends.

You can find out more about Internet Marketing and home-based businesses by reading updates that will be posted at my blog over the next few weeks.

Finally, a great book to read is "The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing" by Ries & Trout. It is the source of some of the material provided in this article.

In closing, be sure to meet me at my website, WhoIsMikeFarrell, learn some tips about being No 1 on Google at aspenIbiz My Go-To-Market Partners, and learn how to be savvy with your money like the insiders at aspenIbiz The Conspiracy For Your Money Blog.

The Law of Hype – The Situation Is Often the Opposite of the Way it Appears in the Press

2011-06-30T17:35:00.007-06:00

This year (circa 2011) marks the 100th birthday of IBM and over these years, when IBM was successful, the company said very little.

When things are going well, a company does not need the hype. When you need the hype, it usually means you are in trouble.

Young and inexperienced reporters and editors tend to be more impressed by what they read in other publications than by what they gather themselves. Once the hype starts, it often continues on and on.

No newspaper has received more hype than USA Today. At its launch a number of years ago were the president of the United States, the speaker of the House of Representatives, and the majority leader of the U.S. Senate. The residue of this initial hype is still so great that most people can not believe USA Today is a loser.

History is filled with marketing failures that were successful in the press. The Tucker 48, the U.S. Football League, the personal helicopter, and polyester suits. The essence of the hype was not just that the new product was going to be successful. The essence of the hype was that existing products would now be obsolete.

Polyester was going to make wool obsolete. The personal helicopter was going to make the roads and highways obsolete. The Tucker 48 with its cyclop’s eye headlight would revolutionize the way Detroit makes automobiles however only 51 were ever built.

These predictions violate the law of unpredictability. No one can predict the future, not even a sophisticated reporter for the Wall Street Journal. The only revolutions you can predict are the ones that have already started.

Did anyone predict the overthrow of communism and the Soviet Union? Not really. It was only after the process had started that the press jumped on the “crumbling communist empire” story.

Forget the front page. If you are looking for clues to the future, look in the back of the paper for those innocuous little stories.

Over the years, the greatest hype has been for those developments that promise to single-handedly change an entire industry, preferably one that is vital to the American economy.

Remember the helicopter hype after World War II? They hype was that every garage would house a helicopter, making roads, bridges, and the entire automobile industry obsolete overnight. Did Donald Trump get a helicopter? Did you get yours? The Donald actually did get his.

From time to time, no-frills food makes the headlines. It is reported that this development will revolutionize the packaged-goods industry. Brands are out. People will read the labels and buy products on their merits rather than on the size of the brand’s advertising budget. It is all hype.

But for the most part, hype is hype. Real revolutions do not arrive at high noon with marching bands and coverage on the 6 pm news. Real revolutions arrive unannounced in the middle of the night and kind of sneak up on you.

It takes a while but many Internet Marketing entrepreneurs learn the Law of Hype. They learn to identify their target market with keyword research and keyword research tools as they know they can not guess what the market desires and it is difficult to benefit from all the hype.

To accomplish this, they use various methods, tools, and follow a traffic formula to build relationships with their leads and customers. They build websites that create trust. They collect name and email addresses using an Optin form on a Landing Page. They use email systems with both auto-responders and broadcast capabilities in order to send messages to their leads and customers. These email messages frequently send information, provide knowledge, and occasionally promote an offering. Many Internet Marketing entrepreneurs learn that leads and customers do not like to be sold to however they will browse and shop. Over an extended period of time, skilled Internet Marketers are able to use hypnotic writing skills, in their marketing campaigns, to get leads and customers to take the action they want. This is how they learn to identify a target market, stay focused, and add value to their target market. They learn to leverage the equity in their list and be successful in the world that includes the Law of Hype.

It looks easy but marketing is not a game for amateurs. Marketing is not a battle of products. It is all about the strategy you use to benefit from the Law of Hype is often the opposite of the way it appears in the press.

You can find out more about Internet Marketing and home-based businesses by reading updates that will be posted at my blog over the next few weeks.

Finally, a great book to read is "The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing" by Ries & Trout. It is the source of some of the material provided in this article.

In closing, be sure to meet me at my website, WhoIsMikeFarrell, learn some tips about being No 1 on Google at aspenIbiz My Go-To-Market Partners, and learn how to be savvy with your money like the insiders at aspenIbiz The Conspiracy For Your Money Blog.

The Law of Failure – Failure is to be expected and accepted

2011-05-29T22:06:00.003-06:00

Too many companies try to fix things rather than drop things. “Let’s reorganize to save the situation” is their way of life.

Admitting a mistake and not doing anything about it is bad for your career: A better strategy is to recognize failure early and cut your losses. Many years ago, IBM should have dropped copiers and Xerox should have dropped computers years before they finally recognized their mistakes.

The Japanese seem to be able to admit a mistake early and then make the necessary changes. Their consensus management style tends to eliminate the ego. Since a large number of people have a small piece of a big decision, there is not stigma that can be considered career damaging. In other words, it is a lot easier to live with “We were all wrong” than the devastating “I was wrong.”

This egoless approach is a major factor in making the Japanese such relentless marketers. It is not that they do not make mistakes, but when they do, they admit them, fix them, and just keep coming.

The hugely successful WalMart has another approach that enables the company to deal with failure. It is called Sam Walton’s “ready, aim, fire” approach. It is an outgrowth of his penchant for constant tinkering.

Walton was well aware that nobody hits the target every time. But at WalMart, people aren’t punished if their experiments fail. As WalMart’s chief executive said in a Business Week article, “If you learn something and you’re trying something, then you probably get credit for it. But woe to the person who makes the same mistake twice.”

WalMart is different from many large corporations because, so far, it appears to be free of an insidious disease called the “personal agenda” that can creep into any corporation. Marketing decisions are often made first with the decision maker’s career in mind and second with the impact on the competition or the enemy in mind. There is a built-in conflict between the personal and the corporate agenda.

This leads to failure to take risks. (It is hard to be first in a new category without sticking our neck out). When the senior executive has a high salary and a short time to retirement, a bold move is highly unlikely.

Ever junior executives often make “safe” decisions so as to not disrupt their progress up the corporate ladder. Nobody has ever been fired for a bold move they did not make.

In some American companies nothing gets done unless it benefits the personal agenda of someone in top management. This severely limits the potential marketing moves a company can make. An idea gets rejected not because it is not fundamentally sound but because no one in top management will personally benefit from its success.

One way to defuse the personal agenda factor is to bring it out in the open. 3M uses the “champion” system to publicly identify the person who will benefit from the success of a new product or venture. The successful introduction of 3M’s Post-It Notes illustrates how the concept works. Art Fry is the 3M scientist who championed the Post-It Notes product, which took almost a dozen years to bring to market.

While the 3M system works, in theory the ideal environment would allow managers to judge a concept on its merits, not on whom the concept would benefit.

If a company is going to operate in an ideal way, it will take teamwork, esprit de corps, and a self-sacrificing leader: One immediately thinks of Patton and his Third Army and its dash across France. No army in history took as much territory and as many prisoners in as short a period of time.

Patton’s reward? Eisenhower fired him.

Small companies are mentally closer to the front line than big companies. They have not been tainted by the Law of Failure. That might be one reason why they grow more rapidly and are viewed as the engine to revive the economy.

It takes a while but many Internet Marketing entrepreneurs learn the Law of Failure. They learn to identify their target market with keyword research and keyword research tools as they know they can not guess what the market desires nor can they predict the future.

To accomplish this, they use various methods, tools, and follow a traffic formula to build relationships with their leads and customers. They build websites that create trust. They collect name and email addresses using an Optin form on a Landing Page. They use email systems with both auto-responders and broadcast capabilities in order to send messages to their leads and customers. These email messages frequently send information, provide knowledge, and occasionally promote an offering. Many Internet Marketing entrepreneurs learn that leads and customers do not like to be sold to however they will browse and shop. Over an extended period of time, skilled Internet Marketers are able to use hypnotic writing skills, in their marketing campaigns, to get leads and customers to take the action they want. This is how they learn to identify a target market, stay focused, and add value to their target market. They learn to leverage the equity in their list and be successful in the world that includes the Law of Failure.

It looks easy but marketing is not a game for amateurs. Marketing is not a battle of products. It is all about the strategy you use to benefit from the Law of Failure as no one can predict the future with any degree of certainty.

You can find out more about Internet Marketing and home-based businesses by reading updates that will be posted at my blog over the next few weeks.

Finally, a great book to read is "The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing" by Ries & Trout. It is the source of some of the material provided in this article.

In closing, be sure to meet me at my website, WhoIsMikeFarrell, learn some tips about being No 1 on Google at aspenIbiz My Go-To-Market Partners, and learn how to be savvy with your money like the insiders at aspenIbiz The Conspiracy For Your Money Blog.

The Law of Success

2011-04-28T21:08:00.002-06:00

Ego is the enemy of successful marketing.

Objectivity is what’s needed.

When people become successful, they tend to become less objective. They often substitute their own judgment for what the market wants.

Donald Trump is an example of people blinded early by success and untainted by humilty. And when you are blind, it is indeed hard to focus.

Trump’s strategy was to put his name on everything, committing the cardinal sin of line extension. Denial seems to go hand in hand with a big ego. When first meeting the Donald, he will frequently begin with a discussion about how people accuse him of having a big ego; which he denies. However, while he is speaking, it is hard to avoid noticing big T symbols all around; so much for the sermons about not having a big ego.

Success is often the fatal element behind the rash of line extensions. When a brand is successful, the company assumes the name is the primary reason for the brand’s success. So they promptly look for other products to plaster the name on.

Actually it is the opposite. The name did not make the brand famous (although a bad name might keep the brand from becoming famous). The brand got famous because you made the right marketing moves. In other words, the steps you took were in tune with the fundamental laws of marketing.

You got into the mind first. You narrowed the focus. You preempted a powerful attribute.

Your success puffs up your ego to such an extent that you put the famous name on other products. Result: early success and long-term failure as illustrated by the actions of Donald Trump.

The more you identify with your brand or corporate name, the more likely you are to fall into the line extension trap. It can’t be the name, you might be thinking when things go wrong. We have a great name. Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.

One aspect of the problem is the allocation of time; too many industry activities, too many outside board meetings, too many testimonial dinners.

According to a recent survey, the average CEO spends 18 hours a week on outside activities. The next time waster is internal meetings with approx 17 hours a week attending corporate meetings and 6 hours a week preparing for those meetings.

Since the typical top executive works 60 hours a week, this leaves only 20 hours for everything else including managing the operation and going down to the front line. No wonder the chief executives delegate the marketing function, which is a big mistake.

Marketing is too important to be turned over to an underling. If you delegate anything, you should delegate the chairmanship of the next fund-raising drive; like the VP of the US attends state funerals, not the president.

The next activity to cut back is the time spent on the meetings. Instead of talking things over, walk out and see for yourself. As Gorbachev told Reagan, “It is better to see once than to hear a hundred times.”

Small companies are mentally closer to the front than big companies. That might be one reason why they grow more rapidly and viewed as the engine to revive the economy. They have not been tainted by the law of success.

It takes a while but many Internet Marketing entrepreneurs learn the Law of Success. They learn to identify their target market with keyword research and keyword research tools as they know they can not guess what the market desires nor can they predict the future.

To accomplish this, they use various methods, tools, and follow a traffic formula to build relationships with their leads and customers. They build websites that create trust. They collect name and email addresses using an Optin form on a Landing Page. They use email systems with both auto-responders and broadcast capabilities in order to send messages to their leads and customers. These email messages frequently send information, provide knowledge, and occasionally promote an offering. Many Internet Marketing entrepreneurs learn that leads and customers do not like to be sold to however they will browse and shop. Over an extended period of time, skilled Internet Marketers are able to use hypnotic writing skills, in their marketing campaigns, to get leads and customers to take the action they want. This is how they learn to identify a target market, stay focused, and add value to their target market. They learn to leverage the equity in their list and be successful in the world that includes the Law of Success.

It looks easy but marketing is not a game for amateurs. Marketing is not a battle of products. It is all about the strategy you use to benefit from the Law of Success as no one can predict the future with any degree of certainty.

You can find out more about Internet Marketing and home-based businesses by reading updates that will be posted at my blog over the next few weeks.

Finally, a great book to read is "The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing" by Ries & Trout. It is the source of some of the material provided in this article.

In closing, be sure to meet me at my website, WhoIsMikeFarrell, learn some tips about being No 1 on Google at aspenIbiz My Go-To-Market Partners, and learn how to be savvy with your money like the insiders at aspenIbiz The Conspiracy For Your Money Blog.

The Law of Unpredictability – Unless You Write Your Competitor’s Plans, You Can’t Predict the Future

2011-03-31T18:19:00.003-06:00

Most marketing plans make assumptions about the future.

Have you ever noticed that even with hundreds of computers and an army of meteorologists, no one can predict the weather more than three days in advance? So how do you expect anyone to predict what the market conditions will be like in one to three years?

Failure to forecast competitive reaction is a major reason for marketing failures. Yet there are those who would say that America’s big problem is the lack of a long view and that American management is too short term in thinking. Without including a forecast of the future, in marketing plans, wouldn’t things be even worse?

On the surface, those concerns are real. But it is important to understand what is meant by long terms versus short term. Most of corporate America’s problems are not related to short-term marketing thinking; they are related to short-term financial thinking.

Most companies live from quarterly report to quarterly report. That is a receipt for problems. Companies that live by the numbers, die by the numbers.

For example, General Motors was doing fine until the financial folks took over and put the focus on the numbers instead of the brands. That allowed Alfred P. Sloan’s plan of differentiated brands to fall apart. Every division head, in order to make their short-term numbers, started to chase the middle of the market. Over time, this approach contributed to the bankruptcy in 2009.

Good short-term planning is coming up with that angle or word that differentiates your product or company. You then setup a coherent long-term marketing direction that builds a program to maximize that idea or angle. It is not a long-term plan, it is a long-term direction.

For example, Tom Monaghan’s short-term angle at Domino’s Pizza was to come up with that home delivery idea and build a system that delivered pizzas quickly and efficiently. His long-term direction was to build the first nationwide home delivery chain as rapidly as possible.

Monaghan determined he could not own the words, home delivery, until he had enough franchises to afford national advertising. He accomplished both objectives and today Domino’s is a multi-billion dollar company with a significant share of the home delivery business. Monaghan did it all without a complex, 10-year plan.

So what can you do? How can you best cope with unpredictability? While you can not predict the future, you can get a handle on trends, which is a way to take advantage of change.

One example is American’s growing orientation toward good health and wellness. This is estimated to be The Next Trillion $ industry and it has barely gotten started.

However, the danger in working with trends is extrapolation. Many companies jump to conclusions about how far a trend will go. For example, if you believed the prognosticators of a few years ago, everyone today should be eating fish or chicken; however hamburger sales are still doing just fine.

Equally bad as extrapolating a trend is the common practice of assuming the future will be a replay of the present. When you assume that nothing will change, you are predicting the future just as surely as when you assume that something will change. Remember Murphy’s Law, the unexpected always happens.

While tracking trends can be useful tool in dealing with the unpredictable future, market research can be more of a problem than a help. New ideas and concepts are almost impossible to measure. People do not know what they will do until they face an actual decision.

For online marketers, this is where keyword research is very helpful. By using keyword research tools, the online marketer is able to learn what ideas, concepts, trends, and products are in demand based on what people are searching for online. In addition, market profitability, and the amount of competition, can be determined based on good keyword analysis with the right keyword research tools.

One final note that is worth mentioning is that there is a difference between predicting the future and taking a chance on the future. Orville Redenbacher’s Gourmet Popping Corn took a chance that people would pay twice as much for high-end popcorn. This was not a bad risk in today’s affluent society.

No one can predict the future with any degree of certainty nor should they have marketing plans that try to predict the future unless they are writing the marketing plans of their competitors.

Marketing is a battle of ideas. If you are to succeed, you must describe your value and deliver sustainable results. Without capability, you had better have a low price; a very low price.

It takes a while but many Internet Marketing entrepreneurs learn the Law of Unpredictability. They learn to identify their target market with keyword research and keyword research tools as they know they can not guess what the market desires nor can they predict the future.

To accomplish this, they use various methods, tools, and follow a traffic formula to build relationships with their leads and customers. They build websites that create trust. They collect name and email addresses using an Optin form on a Landing Page. They use email systems with both auto-responders and broadcast capabilities in order to send messages to their leads and customers. These email messages frequently send information, provide knowledge, and occasionally promote an offering. Many Internet Marketing entrepreneurs learn that leads and customers do not like to be sold to however they will browse and shop. Over an extended period of time, skilled Internet Marketers are able to use hypnotic writing skills, in their marketing campaigns, to get leads and customers to take the action they want. This is how they learn to identify a target market, stay focused, and add value to their target market. They learn to leverage the equity in their list and be successful in the world that includes the Law of Unpredictability.

It looks easy but marketing is not a game for amateurs. Marketing is not a battle of products. It is all about the strategy you use to benefit from the Law of Unpredictability as no one can predict the future with any degree of certainty.

You can find out more about Internet Marketing and home-based businesses by reading updates that will be posted at my blog over the next few weeks.

Finally, a great book to read is "The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing" by Ries & Trout. It is the source of some of the material provided in this article.

In closing, be sure to meet me at my website, WhoIsMikeFarrell, learn some tips about being No 1 on Google at aspenIbiz My Go-To-Market Partners, and learn how to be savvy with your money like the insiders at aspenIbiz The Conspiracy For Your Money Blog.

The Law of Singularity – Only One Move Produces Sustainable Results

2011-02-27T20:44:00.002-07:00

Many marketing people see success as the sum total of a lot of small efforts beautifully executed. They think they can pick and choose from a number of different strategies and still be successful as long as they put enough effort into the program. They seem to think that the best way to grow is the puppy approach - get into everything.

If they're not with the leader, they often end up trying to do the same as the leader but they try to be a little better or try a little harder. However, trying harder is not the secret of marketing success.

Whether you try hard or try easy, the differences are marginal. Furthermore the bigger the company, the more the law of averages wipes out any real advantage of a trying-harder approach.

History teaches that the only thing that works in marketing is the single, bold stroke. Furthermore, in any given situation there is only one move that will produce substantial results.

Successful generals study the battleground and look for that one bold stroke that is least expected by the enemy. Finding one is difficult. Finding more than one is usually impossible.

Military strategist and author B. H. Liddell Hart calls this bold stroke "the line of least expectation." The Allied invasion came at Normandy, a place whose tide and rocky shore the Germans felt would be an unlikely choice for a landing of any scale.

So it is in marketing. Most often there is only one place where a competitor is vulnerable. And that place should be the focus of the entire invading force.

What works in marketing is the same as what works in the military; the unexpected.

Hannibal came over the Alps, a route deemed impossible to scale. Hitler came around the Maginot Line and sent his panzer divisions through the Ardennes, terrain the French generals thought impossible to traverse with tanks. (As a matter of fact, he did it twice - once in the Battle of France and again in the Battle of the Bulge.)

The automobile industry is an interesting case in point. In recent years there have been only two strong moves made against GM. Both were flanking moves around the GM Maginot Line. The Japanese came at the low end with small cars like Toyota, Datsun, and Honda. The Germans came at the high end with super-premium cars like Mercedes and BMW.

With the success of Japanese and German flanking attacks, General Motors was under pressure to commit resources in an attempt to shore up the bottom and the top of its lines.

GM made the fateful decision to build many of its midrange cars using the same body style. Suddenly, no one could tell a Chevrolet from a Pontiac, Oldsmobile, or a Buick. They all locked alike. Its’ look-alike cars weakened General Motors in the middle as Ford broke through with the Sable. And then the Japanese jumped in with Acura, Lexus, and Infiniti. General Motors, weak across the board, spun into bankruptcy during 2008 after the start of the Global Financial Crisis.

To find that singular idea or concept, marketing managers have to know what's happening in the marketplace. They have to be down at the frontline in the mud of the battle. They have to know what's working and what isn't. They have to be involved.

Because of the high cost of mistakes, management can't afford to delegate important marketing decisions. That's what happened at General Motors.

When the financial people took over, the marketing programs collapsed. Their interest was in the numbers, not the brands. The irony is that the numbers went south, along with the brands.

It's hard to find that single move if you're hanging around headquarters and not involved in the process.

Marketing is a battle of ideas. If you are to succeed, you must have a single successful move to describe your value and deliver sustainable results. Without one, you had better have a low price; a very low price.

It takes a while but many Internet Marketing entrepreneurs learn the Law of Singularity. They learn to identify their target market and focus on a single successful move to promoting products that will appeal and add value to their target market.

To accomplish this, they use various methods, tools, and follow a traffic formula to build relationships with their leads and customers. They build websites that create trust. They collect name and email addresses using an Optin form on a Landing Page. They use email systems with both auto-responders and broadcast capabilities in order to send messages to their leads and customers. These email messages frequently send information, provide knowledge, and occasionally promote an offering. Many Internet Marketing entrepreneurs learn that leads and customers do not like to be sold to however they will browse and shop. Over an extended period of time, skilled Internet Marketers are able to use hypnotic writing skills, in their marketing campaigns, to get leads and customers to take the action they want. This is how they learn to identify a target market, stay focused, and add value to their target market. They learn to leverage the equity in their list and be successful in the world that includes the Law of Singularity.

It looks easy but marketing is not a game for amateurs. Marketing is not a battle of products. It is all about the strategy you use to benefit from the Law of Singularity where only one move produces sustainable results.

You can find out more about Internet Marketing and home-based businesses by reading updates that will be posted at my blog over the next few weeks.

Finally, a great book to read is "The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing" by Ries & Trout. It is the source of some of the material provided in this article.

In closing, be sure to meet me at my website, WhoIsMikeFarrell, learn some tips about being No 1 on Google at aspenIbiz My Go-To-Market Partners, and learn how to be savvy with your money like the insiders at aspenIbiz The Conspiracy For Your Money Blog.

The Law of Candor – Admit a Negative and the Prospect Will Give You a Positive

2011-01-28T12:09:00.003-07:00

It goes against corporate and human nature to admit a problem. For years, the power of positive thinking has been drummed into us and “think positive” has been the subject of endless books and articles.

So it may come as a surprise to you that one of the most effective ways to get into a prospect’s mind is to be candid and first admit a negative, then twist it into a positive.

Avis is only No 2 in rent cars.

With a name like Smucker’s it has to be good.

What’s going on here? Why does a dose of honesty work so well in the marketing process?

First and foremost, candor is very disarming. Every negative statement you make about yourself is instantly accepted as truth. Positive statements, on the other hand, are looked at as dubious at best especially in an advertisement.

You have to prove a positive statement to the prospect’s satisfaction. No proof is needed for a negative statement.

“With a name like Smucker’s it has to be good.” Most companies, especially family companies, would never make fun of their name. Yet the Smucker family did, which is one reason why Smucker’s is the No 1 brand of jams and jellies. If your name is bad, you have two choices: change the name or make fun of it.

Avis is only No 2 in rent cars so why go with them? They must try harder. Everybody knew that Avis was second in rent cars.

So why go with the obvious? Marketing is often a search for the obvious. Since you can’t change a mind once it is made up, your marketing efforts have to be devoted to using ideas and concepts already installed in the brain. You have to use your marketing programs to “rub it in.” No program did this as brilliantly as the Avis No 2 program.

The explosive growth of communications in our society has made people defensive and cautious about companies trying to sell them anything. Admitting a problem is something that very few companies do.

When a company starts a message by admitting a problem, people tend to, almost instinctively, open their minds. Think about the times that someone came to you with a problem and how quickly you got involved and wanted to help. Now think about people starting a conversation about some wonderful things they are doing. You probably were a lot less interested.

Now with that mind open, you are in a position to drive in the positive, which is our selling idea. Some years ago, Scope entered the mouthwash market with a good tasting mouthwash thus exploiting Listerine’s truly terrible taste.

What should Listerine do? It certainly could not tell people that Listerine’s taste was not all that bad. That would raise a red flag that would reinforce a negative perception. Things could get worse. Instead, Listerine brilliantly invoked the law of candor: “The taste you hate twice a day.”

Not only did the company admit the product tasted bad, it admitted that people actually hated it (now that’s honesty). This admission setup the selling idea that Listerine “kills a lot of germs.”

The prospect figured that anything that tastes like disinfectant must indeed be a germ killer. A crisis passed with help of a heavy dose of candor.

One final note: The law of candor must be used carefully and with great skill. First, your negative must be widely perceived as a negative. It has to trigger an instant agreement with your prospect’s mind. If the negative does not register quickly, your prospect will be confused and will wonder, “What is this all about?”

Next you have to shift quickly to the positive. The purpose of candor is not to apologize. The purpose of candor is to setup a benefit that will convince your prospect.

This law only proves the old maxim: Honesty is the best policy.

Marketing is a battle of ideas. If you are to succeed, you must have a unique attribute to focus and describe your value. Without one, you had better have a low price; a very low price.

It takes a while but many Internet Marketing entrepreneurs learn the Law of Candor. They learn to identify their target market, focus on promoting products that will appeal and add value to their target market.

To accomplish this, they use various methods, tools, and follow a traffic formula to build relationships with their leads and customers. They build websites that create trust. They collect name and email addresses using an Optin form on a Landing Page. They use email systems with both auto-responders and broadcast capabilities in order to send messages to their leads and customers. These email messages frequently send information, provide knowledge, and occasionally promote an offering. Many Internet Marketing entrepreneurs learn that leads and customers do not like to be sold to however they will browse and shop. Over an extended period of time, skilled Internet Marketers are able to use hypnotic writing skills, in their marketing campaigns, to get leads and customers to take the action they want. This is how they learn to identify a target market, stay focused, and add value to their target market. They learn to leverage the equity in their list and be successful in the world that includes the Law of Candor.

It looks easy but marketing is not a game for amateurs. Marketing is not a battle of products. It is all about the strategy you use to benefit from the Law of Candor when you admit a negative, the prospect will give you a positive.

You can find out more about Internet Marketing and home-based businesses by reading updates that will be posted at my blog over the next few weeks.

Also, a great book to read is "The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing" by Ries & Trout. It is the source of some of the material provided in this article.

In closing, be sure to meet me at my website, WhoIsMikeFarrell, learn some tips about being No 1 on Google at aspenIbiz My Go-To-Market Partners, and learn how to be savvy with your money like the insiders at aspenIbiz The Conspiracy For Your Money Blog.

Finally, I would like to provide Best Wishes for a Prosperous New Year!

The Law of Attributes – Every Attribute Has an Opposite Effective Attribute

2010-12-30T14:57:00.005-07:00

In a previous (Feb 4th 2010) blog post about The Law of Exclusivity, a point was made that you can’t own the same word or position that your competitor owns. You must find your own word to own. You must seek out another attribute.

Too often a company attempts to emulate the leader. “They must know what works,” goes the rationale, “so let’s do something similar.” This is not good thinking.

It is much better to search for an opposite attribute that will allow you to play off against the leader. The key word here is opposite so similar will not do.

The leading cola drink was the original and thus the choice of older people. Pepsi successfully positioned itself as the choice of the younger generation.

Since Crest owned the word cavities, other toothpastes avoided cavities and jumped on other attributed like taste, whitening, breath protection, and baking soda.

Marketing is a battle of ideas. So if you are to succeed, you must have an idea or attribute of your own around which to focus your efforts. Without one, you had better have a low price; a very low price.

Some say all attributes are not created equal. Some attributes are more important to customers than others. You must try and own the most important attribute to your target prospects and customers.

For example, cavity prevention is the most important attribute in toothpaste. It is the one to own. But The Law of Exclusivity points to the simple truth that once an attribute is successfully taken by your competition, it is gone. You most move on to a lesser attribute and live with a smaller share of the category. Your job is to seize a different attribute, dramatize the value of your attribute, and thus increase your share.

Here is another example. Burger King was unsuccessful when it tried to take the attribute “fast” from McDonald’s. What should Burger King have done? Use the opposite attribute? The exact opposite attribute, “slow” would not do for a fast food place however the there is an element of slowness in the broiling concept.

To drive the concept into a prospect’s mind, Burger King needed a term or attribute to describe it’s new concept … it came up with the “flame-broiled taste of Burger King.” This new concept for Burger King, at the time, created fear and terror in the boardroom at McDonald’s … this is always a good sign of an effective program.

Marketing is a battle of ideas. If you are to succeed, you must have a unique attribute to focus and describe your value. Without one, you had better have a low price; a very low price.

It takes a while but many Internet Marketing entrepreneurs learn the Law of Attributes. They learn to identify their target market, focus on promoting products that will appeal and add value to their target market.

To accomplish this, they use various methods, tools, and follow a traffic formula to build relationships with their leads and customers. They build websites that create trust. They collect name and email addresses using an Optin form on a Landing Page. They use email systems with both auto-responders and broadcast capabilities in order to send messages to their leads and customers. These email messages frequently send information, provide knowledge, and occasionally promote an offering. Many Internet Marketing entrepreneurs learn that leads and customers do not like to be sold to however they will browse and shop. Over an extended period of time, skilled Internet Marketers are able to use hypnotic writing skills, in their marketing campaigns, to get leads and customers to take the action they want. This is how they learn to identify a target market, stay focused, and add value to their target market. They learn to leverage the equity in their list and be successful in the world that includes the Law of Attributes.

It looks easy but marketing is not a game for amateurs. Marketing is not a battle of products. It is all about the strategy you use to benefit from the Law of Attributes as for every attribute, there is another attribute that is opposite and effective.

You can find out more about Internet Marketing and home-based businesses by reading updates that will be posted at my blog over the next few weeks.

Finally, a great book to read is "The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing" by Ries & Trout. It is the source of some of the material provided in this article.

In closing, be sure to meet me at my website, WhoIsMikeFarrell, learn some tips about being No 1 on Google at aspenIbiz My Go-To-Market Partners, and learn how to be savvy with your money like the insiders at aspenIbiz The Conspiracy For Your Money Blog.

Finally, I would like to provide Best Wishes for a Happy Holiday Season and a Prosperous New Year!

The Law of Sacrifice – You Have to Give Up Something in Order to Get Something

2010-11-30T12:17:00.005-07:00

The Law of Sacrifice is the opposite of the Law of Line Extension. If you want to be successful today, you should give something up.

In the world of business and marketing, there are three areas to sacrifice: product line, target market, and constant change.

The first area to review is the product line.

Where is it written that the more you have to sell, the more you sell?

Marketing is a game of mental warfare. It's a battle of perceptions, not products or services. In the mind of the prospect, Eveready was the long-time leader in batteries and then new technology arrived-as it does in most industries. The first technology to change the battery business was the heavy-duty battery. What would you call your heavy-duty battery if you had the No.1 name in batteries? You'd probably call it the Eveready heavy-duty battery, which is what Eveready did. Soon after, the alkaline battery arrived. Again, Eveready called it the alkaline battery. It seemed to make sense.

Another company, P.R. Mallory then introduced an alkaline batteries only product line and the company gave the line a better name; it called them Duracell.

The power of the sacrifice (meaning it gave up a broad product line) for Duracell was in being able to put the "long-lasting battery" idea in the mind of the customer. Duracell lasts twice as long as Eveready said the advertising.

As a result of this success, Eveready was forced to change the name of its alkaline battery to "the Energizer" but it was too late. Duracell had already become the leader in the battery market.

One more example of the law of sacrifice is from the retail industry. Many retail chains that are successful have a pattern or formula of a narrow focus with in-depth stock. Here are some examples.

In the retail field, generally the big successes are the specialists:

- The Limited - Upscale clothing for working women.
- The Gap - Casual clothing for the young at heart.
- Benetton - Wool and cotton clothing for young swingers.
- Victoria's Secret - Sexy undergarments.
- Foot Locker - Athletic shoes.
- Banana Republic - Safari wear.

(When a clothing chain with a name like Banana Republic can be successful, you know we live in the age of the specialist.)

Let's review the second area of sacrifice which is the target market.

Where is it written that you have to appeal to everybody?

Take the cola field. Coca-Cola got into the prospect's mind first and built a powerful position. In
the late fifties, for example, Coke outsold Pepsi more than five to one. What could Pepsi-Cola do to go against Coke's powerful position?

In the early sixties, Pepsi-Cola finally developed a strategy based on the concept of sacrifice. The company sacrified everything except the teenage market and then it brilliantly exploited this market by hiring its icons: Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie, and Don Johnson.

Within one generation, Pepsi closed the gap and to be within 10 percent of Coca-Cola in total U.S. cola sales. (In the supermarket, Pepsi-Cola actually outsells Coca Cola.)

In spite of Pepsi-Cola’s success the pressure for enlarging the tent is always present. In the mid 80s, it succumbed to the temptation and according to a report in Advertising Age, "Pepsi-Cola Co. had outgrown the Pepsi generation. In a major marketing shift, flagship Pepsi will be pitched as the soft drink for the masses."

"Gotta have lt" became Pepsi's new theme and the advertising promotions showed older people like Yogi Berra and Regis Philbin drinking Pepsi.

According to Fortune magazine, “Coca-Cola is still the world's most powerful trademark. When an also-ran like Pepsi-Cola develops a narrowly focused strategy that puts it within an eyelash of the leader, why would it change its powerful strategy?”

Finally, the third sacrifice area is constant change.

Where is it written that you have to change your strategy every year at budget review time?

If you try to follow the twists and turns of the market, you are bound to wind up off the road. The best way to maintain a consistent position is not to change it in the first place.

A little over 20 years ago, People Express was a startup airline carrier and it had created a brilliant "niche" position. It was the no-frills airline that flew to no-frills cities at no-frills prices. People used to get on a People Express plane and say, "Where are we going?" They didn't care as long as it was cheap enough.

What did People Express do after it became successful? It tried to be all things to all people. It invested in new equipment like 747s. It started to fly the heavily traveled routes to places like Chicago and Denver as well as Europe. It also bought Frontier Airlines. It added frills like first-class sections.

People Express then promptly lost altitude and only escaped bankruptcy court by selling itself to Texas Air which did it for them.

Good things come to those who sacrifice.

It takes a while but many Internet Marketing entrepreneurs learn the Law of Sacrifice. They learn to identify their target market, focus on promoting products that will appeal to the target market, and to stay the course with persistent effort and not have constant change.

To accomplish this, they use various methods, tools, and follow a traffic formula to build relationships with their leads and customers. They build websites that create trust. They collect name and email addresses using an Optin form on a Landing Page. They use email systems with both auto-responders and broadcast capabilities in order to send messages to their leads and customers. These email messages frequently send information, provide knowledge, and occasionally promote an offering. Many Internet Marketing entrepreneurs learn that leads and customers do not like to be sold to however they will browse and shop. Over an extended period of time, skilled Internet Marketers are able to use hypnotic writing skills, in their marketing campaigns, to get leads and customers to take the action they want. This is how they learn to identify a target market, stay focused, and add value to their target market. They learn to leverage the equity in their list and be successful in the world that includes the Law of Sacrifice.

It looks easy but marketing is not a game for amateurs. Marketing is not a battle of products. It is all about the strategy you use to benefit from the Law of Sacrifice as you have to give up something in order to get something.

You can find out more about Internet Marketing and home-based businesses by reading updates that will be posted at my blog over the next few weeks.

Finally, a great book to read is "The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing" by Ries & Trout. It is the source of some of the material provided in this article.

In closing, be sure to meet me at my website, WhoIsMikeFarrell, learn some tips about being No 1 on Google at aspenIbiz My Go-To-Market Partners, my affiliate website, and learn how to be savvy with your money like the insiders at aspenIbiz The Conspiracy For Your Money Blog.

The Law of Line Extension – There Is an Irresistible Pressure to Extend the Equity of the Brand

2010-10-30T19:14:00.004-06:00

If violating any of the laws of marketing was a punishable offense, a large portion of corporate America would be in jail.

By far the most violated law of marketing is the law of line extension. What’s even more diabolical is that line extension is a process that takes place continuously with almost no conscious effort on the part of the corporation. It’s like a closet or desk drawer that fills up with almost no effort on your part.

One day a company is tightly focused on a single product that is highly profitable. The next day the same company is spread thin over many products and is losing money.

Take IBM. Over the years, IBM has been a mainframe computer company that made a ton of money. Then they evolved into a company that had everything, midrange computers, personal computers, pen computers, workstations, software, networks, telephones, and of course professional services. They even tried to get in the home computer market with the PCjr.

Along the way, IBM spent millions on copiers (later sold to Kodak), Rolm (sold to Siemens), Satellite Business Systems (shut down), the Prodigy network (which evolved into an ESPN website and a Yahoo content portal), as well as software products including SAA, TopView, OfficeVision, and OS2.

In the early 2000s, IBM was close to collapsing under its own weight. It diversified, sold off, or closed down most of these product lines and focused on world wide professional services.

When a company becomes incredibly successful, it invariably plants the seeds for its future problems.

Take Microsoft, without a doubt the most successful company in the software field. Microsoft has been heard to say it intended to aggressively seek the dominant share in every major software applications category in the personal computer field with a goal to have as much as a 70 percent share in every major software category.

Microsoft Corp has continued on its quest in line extension with online products (MSN), games (Xbox), and smart phones and mobile devices (Windows Mobile). Even with challengers in all these categories, as of 2008, MSFT had a global annual revenue over $60B with nearly 90,000 employees in 105 countries. It develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of software products for computing devices.

However, there continues to be ominous signs of softness in Microsoft’s overall strategy.

Whom does that sound like – IBM? Microsoft is setting itself up for a collapse along the lines of IBM ten years earlier.

When you try to be all things to all people, you inevitably end up in trouble. “I’d rather be strong somewhere,” said one manager, “than weak everywhere.”

In a narrow sense, line extension involves taking the brand name of a successful product and putting it on a new product you plan to introduce.

It sounds so logical. But marketing is a battle of perception, not product.

There are as many ways to line extend as there are galaxies in the universe. And new ways get invented every day. In the long run and in the presence of serious competition, line extension almost never works.

In spite of evidence that line extensions don’t work, companies continue to pump them out. Here are some examples

Ivory soap. Ivory shampoo?
Life Savers candy. Life Savers gum?
Bic pens. Bic lighters?
Tanqueray gin. Tanqueray vodka?
USA Today. USA Today on TV?

Why does top management believe that line extension works, in spite of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary? One reason is that while line extension is a loser in the long term, it can be a winner in the short term (previous blog post titled The Law of Perspective). Management is also blinded by an intense loyalty to the company or brand.

More is less. The more products, the more markets, the more alliances a company develops, the less money it makes. “Full-speed ahead in all directioins” seems to be the call from the corporate office. When will companies learn that line extension ultimately leads to oblivion?

Less is more. If you want to be successful today, you have to narrow the focus in order to build a position in the prospect’s mind.

In the conventional view, a business strategy usually consists of developing an all-encompassing vision. In other words, what concept or idea is big enough to hold all of a company’s products and services on the market today as well as those that are planned for the future?

In the conventional view, strategy is a tent. You stake out a tent big enough so it can hold everything you might possible want to get into.

For many companies, line extension is the easy way out. Launching a new brand requires not only money, but also an idea or concept. For a new brand to succeed, it needs to be first in a new category (previous post titled The Law of Leadership). Or the new brand needs to be positioned as an alternative to the leader (previous post titled The Law of the Opposite). Companies that wait until a new market has developed often find these two leadership positions already preempted. So they fall back on the old reliable line extension approach.

The antidote for line extension is courage, a commodity in short supply.

It takes a while but many Internet Marketing entrepreneurs resist the pressure to extend the equity of their brand. As a result, they participate in Affiliate Marketing programs. They use various methods, tools, and follow a traffic formula to build relationships with their leads and customers. They build websites that create trust. They collect name and email addresses using an Optin form on a Landing Page. They use email systems with both auto-responders and broadcast capabilities in order to send messages to their leads and customers. These email messages frequently send information, provide knowledge, and occasionally promote an offering. Many Internet Marketing entrepreneurs learn that leads and customers do not like to be sold to however they will browse and shop. Over an extended period of time, skilled Internet Marketers are able to use hypnotic writing skills, in their marketing campaigns, to get leads and customers to take the action they want. This is how they learn to add value and leverage the equity in their list and be successful in the world that includes the Law of Line Extension.

It looks easy but marketing is not a game for amateurs. Marketing is not a battle of products. It is all about the strategy you use to benefit from the Law of Line Extension as there is an irresistible pressure to extend the equity of their brand.

You can find out more about Internet Marketing and home-based businesses by reading updates that will be posted at my blog over the next few weeks.

Finally, a great book to read is "The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing" by Ries & Trout. It is the source of some of the material provided in this article.

In closing, be sure to meet me at my website, WhoIsMikeFarrell, learn some tips about being No 1 on Google at aspenIbiz My Go-To-Market Partners, my affiliate website, and learn how to be savvy with your money like the insiders at aspenIbiz The Conspiracy For Your Money Blog.

The Law of Perspective – Marketing Effects Take Place Over an Extended Period of Time

2010-09-30T22:37:00.002-06:00

Is alcohol a stimulant or is it a depressant?

If you visit almost any bar and grill on a Friday night after work, you would swear that alcohol was a stimulant. The noise and laughter are strong evidence of alcohol’s stimulating effects. Yet at 4:00 in the morning, when you see a few happy-hour customers sleeping it off in the streets, you would swear that alcohol is a depressant.

Chemically, alcohol is a strong depressant. But in the short term, by depressing a person’s inhibitions, alcohol acts like a stimulant.

Many marketing moves exhibit the same phenomenon. The long-term effects are often the exact opposite of the short term-effects.

Does a sale increase a company’s business or decrease it? Obviously, in the short term, a sale increases business. But there is more and more evidence to show that sales decrease business in the long term by educating customers not to buy at “regular” prices.

Aside from the fact that you can buy something for less, what does a sale say to a prospect? It says that your regular prices are too high. After the sale is over, customer’s tend to avoid a store with a “sale” reputation.

To maintain volume, retail outlets find they have to run almost continuous sales. It is not unusual to walk down a retail block and find a dozen stores in a row with “Sale” signs in their windows.

Have the automobile rebate programs increased sales? The rise of auto rebates has coincided with a decline in auto sales. U.S. vehicle sales have declined for five straight years in a row.

There is no evidence that couponing increases sales in the long run. Many companies find they need a quarterly does of couponing to keep sales on an even keel. Once they stop couponing, sales drop off.

In other words, you keep those coupons rolling out not increase sales but to keep sales from falling off if you stop. Couponing is a drug. You continue to do it because the withdrawal symptoms are just to painful.

Any sort of couponing, discounts, or sales tends to educate consumers to buy only when they can get a deal. What if a company never started couponing in the first place? In the retail field the big winners are the companies that practice “everyday low prices”; companies like Wal-mart and K Mart and the rapidly growing warehouse outlets.

Yet almost everywhere you look you see yo-yo pricing. The airlines and supermarkets are two examples. Recently, however Proctor & Gamble made a bold move to establish uniform pricing which could become the start of a trend.

In everyday life there are many examples of short-term gains and long-term losses, crime being an example. If you a rob a bank for $100,000 and wind up spending 10 years in jail; you either made $100,000 for a day’s work or $10,000 a year for 10 years of labor. It all depends on your point of view.

Inflation, or the recent government stimulus (cash for clunkers comes to mind), can give an economy a short-term jolt but in the long run, inflation leads to recession or a Great Deflation as is being experienced in the U.S. at this time (circa 2010).

In the short term, overeating satisfies the psyche but in the long run it causes obesity and depression.

In many other areas of life (spending money, taking drugs, having sex) the long-term effects of your actions are often the opposite of the short-term effects. Why then is it so hard to comprehend that marketing effects take place over an extended period of time?

Take line extension. In the short term, line extension invariably increases sales. The beer industry clearly illustrates this effect.

Look what happened to Coors. The introduction of Coors Light caused the collapse of Coors regular; which today sells one fourth of the volume it used to sell.

In the short term, both brands can co-exist and do well. But in the long term, line extension was bound to undermine one or the other of the two brands. Once the decline starts, it is almost impossible to stop.

Unless you know what to look for, it is hard to see the effects of line extension, especially for managers focused on their next quarterly report. (If a bullet took five years to reach a target, very few criminals would be convicted of homicide.

In other areas of marketing, the short-term / long-term line extension effects occur much more rapidly. Let’s look at what happened to Donald Trump. At first, The Donald was successful. He then branched out and put his name on anything for which the banks would lend him money; hotels, casinos, condominiums, an airline, and a shopping center. Many asked, what is a Trump? What does Trump mean?

Fortune magazine called Trump an investor with a keen eye for cash flow and asset values, a smart marketer, a cunning wheeler-dealer. The Donald has been on the cover of many magazines.

At various points in time, Trump has declared bankruptcy. What made The Donald successful in the short term is exactly what cause him to fail in the long term – line extension.

It looks easy, but marketing is not a game for amateurs.

It takes a while but many Internet Marketing entrepreneurs recognize marketing effects take place over an extended period of time and as a result, they use various methods and tools to build relationships with their leads and customers. They build websites that create trust. They collect name and email addresses using an Optin form on a Landing Page. They use email systems with both auto-responders and broadcast capabilities in order to send messages to their leads and customers. These email messages frequently send information, provide knowledge, and occasionally promote an offering. Many Internet Marketing entrepreneurs learn that leads and customers do not like to be sold to however they will browse and shop. Over an extended period of time, skilled Internet Marketers are able to use hypnotic writing skills, in their marketing campaigns, to get leads and customers to take the action they want. This is how they learn to add value and be successful in the world that includes the Law of Perspective.

Marketing is not a battle of products. It is all about the strategy you use to benefit from the Law of Perspective as marketing effects take place over an extended period of time and requires not only perspective but also persistence.

You can find out more about Internet Marketing and home-based businesses by reading updates that will be posted at my blog over the next few weeks.

Finally, a great book to read is "The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing" by Ries & Trout. It is the source of some of the material provided in this article.

In closing, be sure to meet me at my website, WhoIsMikeFarrell, learn some tips about being No 1 on Google at aspenIbiz My Go-To-Market Partners, my affiliate website, and learn how to be savvy with your money like the insiders at aspenIbiz The Conspiracy For Your Money Blog.

The Law of Division - Over Time A Category Will Divide Into Two or More Categories

2010-08-31T20:00:00.006-06:00

Like an amoeba dividing in a petri dish, the marketplace can be viewed as an ever-expanding sea of categories. During my career as a management consultant with Deloitte, I experienced this Law of Division many times.

I joined Deloitte when the consulting profession, within the Big 4 (Big 8 at that time) Accounting and Consulting firms, was in its formulative stage. At that time, the consulting business was a single entity.

Over time, we divided into Advisory Services, Implementation Services, and Quality Review Services. These various service categories further divided into Strategy, Operations, Organization, and Technology specialties. These categories divided again according to industry specialties such as Telecommunications, Technology, Financial Services, Healthcare, Consumer Product Goods, and so forth.

Another division occurred according to geography in terms of Emerging Markets and the Industrialized Regions; and then there was another layer of specialty in terms of the Americas, EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Americas), as well as APAC (Asia Pacific Countries) regions.

While at times these layers of granularity and focus were done for internal purposes, a majority of the time it was the marketplace valuing expertise according to these categories. Each step of the way, we would face new competitors and had to learn how to adapt to these new entrants to the consulting business.

Like the consulting business, the automobile industry started off as a single category. Three brands (Chevrolet, Ford, and Plymouth) dominated the market. The category then divided and today we have luxury cars, moderately priced cars, and inexpensive cars. We also have full-size cars, intermediates, and compacts. And we have sports cars, four-wheel-drive vehicles, RVs, SUVs, and minivans; another example of the ever-expanding sea of categories.

In the television industry, ABC, CBS, and NBC once accounted for 90 percent of the viewing audience. Now we have network, independent, cable, pay, and public television with both instore, interactive, and even IPTV networks (niche oriented programming streaming across the internet) … ever watch CNBC online? This programming is available on both my cable TV network and on my PC or laptop (at no charge).

Beer started the same way. Today we have imported and domestic beer; premium and popular-priced beers; light, draft, and dry beers; we even have non-alcoholic beer.

Each segment is a separate and distinct entity. Each segment has its own reason for existence. And each segment has its own leader which is rarely the same as the leader of the original category.

In the computing world, IBM is the leader in mainframes; HP in mid-range computers; Dell and Apple in laptops; and Sun, now a part of Oracle has been the leader in workstations.

Instead of understanding this concept of division, many corporate leaders hold the naïve belief that categories are combining. Synergy and its kissing cousin, the corporate alliance, are the buzzwords in the boardrooms around the planet.

We saw AOL and Time Warner combine to take advantage of the convergence of television, music, publishing, and computing. How did that work out?

Benefits from synergy, and mega mergers, are seldom realized. Categories are dividing, not combining, into a sea of niche categories (and this is well described by Chris Anderson in his book The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is to Sell Less of More).

The riches are in the niches.

The way for the leader to maintain its dominance is to address each emerging category with a different brand name as General Motors did with Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, and Cadillac.

What keeps leaders from launching a different brand to cover a new category is the fear of what will happen to their existing brands. General Motors was slow to react to the super-premium category that Mercedes-Benz and BMW established. One reason was that a new brand on top of Cadillac would enrage GM’s Cadillac dealers.

Contrast this with an operating principle of Andy Grove, former CEO and Chairman of the Board of Intel, the world’s largest semiconductor chip maker and one of the world’s most admired companies, where “only the paranoid survive.” Essentially this principle drove Intel to cycles of survival and leadership based on an ability to cannibalize themselves and make the leap to cross the chasm into the next product area. They were continually dividing successful product areas into new categories generating wildly successful and profitable new markets and avoided joining others at the bottom of the high tech abyss.

As an Internet Marketing professional, you need to understand the Law of Division. As a product category divides, there are leadership opportunities to rush in and become No 1 in one or more of the new categories.

Timing is also important but you have to have the courage or the money to hang in there long enough for the category to develop.

It is better to be early than late. You can not get into the prospect’s mind first (as described in Law No 1 of Leadership) for a category unless you are prepared to spend some time waiting for things to develop.

Many Internet Marketing entrepreneurs are using techniques and tools like mind-mapping, keyword research, Attraction Marketing Formula, Magnetic Sponsoring, and MindMeister to conduct the market research and plan a successful marketing campaign. They then use the power of MyStory marketing, brand You Inc, and hypnotic writing skills, in their marketing campaigns, to deal realistically with the position of their brand and the strategy they want to pursue in the world that includes the Law of Division.

The goals is to not emphasize why their offering is better, feature and function-wise, over a competitor’s but to develop a message that is recognized, accepted, and agreed to so that it will seduce and persuade a customer, in the new category, that what is offered to the target market is real and will work for them.

Marketing is not a battle of products. It is all about the strategy you use to benefit from the Law of Division and if you are not the leader then you must monitor the marketplace and as a category divides, be prepared to rush in to be No 1 in one or more of the new categories.

You can find out more about Internet Marketing and home-based businesses by reading updates that will be posted at my blog over the next few weeks.

Finally, a great book to read is "The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing" by Ries & Trout. It is the source of some of the material provided in this article.

Shanghai Is Not What You Would Expect When You Visit the World’s Largest Emerging Market

2010-07-13T15:22:00.006-06:00

In 1982, early in my Management Consulting career with Deloitte, a Big 4 (Big 8 at that time) Accounting and Consulting firm, I made my first to trip to China. I was on an engagement in the Middle East at the time and our client was Saudi Arabian Airlines. I was based in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia however worked with clients and traveled extensively throughout the region.

As part of the project, I had the opportunity to visit Hong Kong and Beijing however every one told me to avoid Shanghai as it was dreary and in the dumps. Today, Shanghai is not the kind of city most expect to see when they visit the world’s largest Emerging Market.

Amazingly, the Pudong area, which is ground zero of the hustle and bustle of Shanghai and representative of the China Dream, did not even exist 20 years ago.

Construction on the New Open Economic Development Zone, which has grown to become China’s pulsing financial and commercial hub, only really began in the early 1990s, right around the time the nation’s economy embarked on a two-decade long, double-digit annual growth rate transformation.

This (the unapologetically capitalistic city seems to scream out) is what, Made in China, built for us.

While the Developed world spent the better part of the last few decades buying knick-knacks they didn’t need with money they didn’t have, China Inc. got busy both producing those same products, and lending the world’s consumers the money with which to buy them. The result is one of the largest trade imbalances in modern economic history. At a staggering $2.4 trillion, the Middle Kingdom’s foreign reserve stockpile is by far the largest in the world. And, although a not-insignificant $900 billion of those reserves are held in steadily depreciating greenbacks (not to mention a large euro holding), the Chinese are wasting no time converting those paper cash piles into tangible asset stakes.

Also, China has been on a resource-buying binge over the past ten years, inking deals with major mining companies from Africa to Australia, South America, The Middle East and all over Asia.

Just last month China signed more than $8.8 billion of new commercial and mining deals with resource giant Australia, despite its southern neighbor’s onerous new resource profits tax laws. The Middle Kingdom’s voracious industrialization inhaled around $41.7 billion worth of Australia’s minerals in 2009, including almost $20 billion of iron ore and concentrates.

Last year China also became Brazil’s number one trading partner when it agreed to lend $10 billion to Petrobras in return for guaranteed oil supply over the next decade. I invite you to read here my recent article “Energy is One of the 5Es of the Evaluation Framework” that contains a discussion about this transaction between Brazil and China. Other projects between China and its South American BRIC counterpart included a $5 billion steel plant at the Acu port in Rio de Janeiro. This deal represents China’s largest ever investment in Latin America’s richest resource economy and its biggest foreign steel-plant investment.

The world’s fastest growing economic superpower is also looking closer to home in an effort to feed its unwavering appetite and to divest itself of paper promises.

“Central Asia is rich in mineral resources, particularly rare metals, copper and gold that China needs for economic growth,” President Hu Jintao announced on a recent visit to Central Asia, where he signed gas and nuclear agreements and promised cooperation in port construction and transportation infrastructure. I invite you to read here my recent article on China and rare earths.

Conspicuously absent from these and a slew of other high profile deals were the “emerged” markets. While the Petrobras deal was going down, for instance, politicians in the US were eagerly handing out hundreds of billions of other people’s dollars to Goldman Sachs (via AIG), and bribing its citizens to purchase new kitchen appliances, most of which were probably made in China anyway.

Of course, all this stimulation comes at a terrible cost. Not only must the US economy swallow the opportunity cost (of the goods and services that might have been produced had those trillions not been siphoned off to bailout the nation’s failed banking, insurance, and auto industries), it must also contend with seemingly uncontrollable debt loads.

Barely 9 months into the current financial year, the US in the past few weeks, passed the $1 trillion annual deficit mark. Though marginally smaller than last year’s total at this point, such a figure is hardly a cause for celebration.

The world’s most indebted economy – on a gross basis – is also notching up a worrying tally of single day records.

The Washington Times reports:
- The largest one-day increase in USA national debt was on June 30 (circa 2010) and it totaled $165,931,038,264.30.
- This one day amount is bigger than the entire annual deficit for fiscal year 2007.
- It is larger than the $140 billion in savings the new health care bill will produce over its first 10 years.
- The one day amount works out to nearly $1,500 for every US household, or more than 10 times the median daily household income.

And now that the future demand has been brought forward, through “Cash for Clunkers” and other government stimulus and spending programs, the USA is struggling to keep its economy afloat. The citizens of the USA have allowed their government to essentially spend their personal savings AND their future earnings.

Meanwhile, China is struggling to cool its own economy down. It is all the government can do to keep a lid on growth at 11.9%, the figure recorded in the first quarter of this year. Stronger domestic demand and a rebound in exports forced the International Monetary Fund to upwardly revise its outlook for China’s 2010 GDP, from 10% to 10.5%. Housing prices are still rising by an incredible 12.4% per month, according to the latest available figures, even after Beijing introduced a series of tightening measures aimed at dampening real estate speculation. I invite you to read here one of my recent blog posts about China trying to cool their economy.

Almost nobody expects China to keep such a breakneck pace. In fact, many are warning of sharp corrections ahead. As many are well aware, nothing moves up or down without (sometimes major) corrections. Straight lines are for geometry classes, not markets. Over the long haul, however, the trend is pretty clear. I invite you to read here one of my recent blog posts about the Chinese economy being out of control.

While it may seem like it is Time to Exit the Dragon, it’s difficult to imagine the emerging middle-class consumers of China returning to the lot of lowly-paid factory workers without a struggle. It is almost as difficult to imagine an American working for less than the minimum wage but it might soon be a reality for the American worker. This situation will probably awaken the Free Agent Entrepreneurial desire among many to consider a shift from a W2 wage system to a 1099 ownership system and lifestyle. I invite you to read here an article about Looking to Retool as a Digital Entrepreneur.

Many still see China as a ripe buying opportunity but this is not the kind of wealth creating opportunity that you are likely to see in the headlines of the evening business news and that is why those who know they need to be savvy with their money, like the insiders, belong to a wealth creating community.

They gain the necessary financial education and they obtain association with, access to, and membership in a wealth creation community to regain control over their financial lifestyle. As a result, they obtain examples of alternative wealth creation strategies such as debt reduction, asset protection, and wealth acceleration with investments in items such as precious metals, water rights, oil, natural gas, potash mines, food commodities, or gold mines … perhaps investments in energy assets that are inherently useful like oil rigs, hydropower, or methanol plants … things hard to build, difficult to replace, and costly to substitute … definitely not financial stocks, definitely not retail stocks, definitely not commercial property.

I trust this article provides a little more insight into the global economy and while some may say it is Time to Exit the Dragon, others highlight what may be ripe buying opportunities among a handful of Chinese companies that trade in US Indexes, or as ADRs, and have extremely attractive valuations.

It is wise to monitor world affairs and consider alternative wealth generating strategies. I will provide updates in future articles and at my blog over the next few weeks.

In closing, I want to thank Joel Bowman of Agora Financial as he was the source of some of the materials about the breakneck growth in China mentioned in this post.

Internet Marketing for the Digital Entrepreneur, explains Mike Farrell aspenIbiz

2010-06-28T15:26:00.003-06:00

As a result of the job loss situation and the poor economy, there are numerous Digital Entrepreneurs considering an Internet Based business where they leverage a suite of best practices, Internet software tools, education, and support in a community of gifting colleagues thereby placing themselves at the center of the New Economy 2.0 & the Ascendancy of the Entrepreneur.

Innovation on the internet is proceeding at a super-fast pace. Phone books are going away … print advertising is disappearing … at any time over 1.5B people are searching for something on the Internet.

When you buy something on the Internet, you want to buy from someone that you believe is an authority and someone that you can trust. As a result, there is certainly innovation occurring on the Internet with the Web 2.0 technologies that include social networking, blogs, video-sharing channels, and micro-blogging … these are being used by agents and representatives with home-based businesses to become a trusted authority.

A few years ago during my career with Deloitte, a Big 4 Accounting and Consulting Firm, I worked on a consulting project with Microsoft in Redmond and lead teams undertaking marketing and advertising activities as part of a very large product launch. Our team was fond of a saying, “a fool with a tool is still a fool.”

In order to be effective and not be foolish by solely emphasizing technology during the product launch, it was important for our team to understand how the rules of marketing and PR (public relations) in the offline world had evolved and merged into a set of new rules for Marketing and PR in the New Economy 2.0 of the Internet.

In the offline world, marketing is a one-way interruption with yesterday’s message. Here is a listing of several of the old rules of marketing and advertising:

- marketing simply meant advertising (and branding);

- advertising needed to appeal to the masses;

- advertising relied on interrupting people to get them to pay attention to a message;

- advertising was one-way – company to consumer;

- advertising was exclusively about selling products;

- advertising was based on campaigns that had a limited life;

- creativity was deemed the most crucial component of advertising;

- it was more important for the ad agency to win advertising awards than for a client to win new customers; and

- advertising and PR were separate disciplines run by different people with separate goals, strategies, and measurement criteria.

In the offline world, PR is a money pit of wasted resources dealing with the journalistic black hole. The following old rules of PR are becoming obsolete:

- the only way to get ink and airtime was through the media;

- companies communicated to journalists via press releases;

- nobody saw the actual release except a small number of reporters and editors;

- companies had to have significant news before they were allowed to write a press release;

- jargon was okay because the journalists all understood it;

- you were not supposed to send a press release unless it included quotes from third parties, such as customers, analysts, and experts;

- the only way buyers would find out about the press release’s content was if the media wrote a story regarding it;

- the only way to measure the effectiveness of press releases was through “clip books” which noted each time the media decided to pick up a company’s release; and

- PR and marketing were separate disciplines run by different people with separate goals, strategies, and measurement techniques.

Marketing in the online world is not about generic banner ads built to trick people with neon colors or wacky movement. It is about understanding the keywords and phrases that buyers in your target market are using, and designing and activating a series of micro-campaigns to drive buyers to pages that are full of the content they seek.

In order to do this effectively, it is best to understand the new rules of Marketing and PR in the online world that are listed below:

- Marketing is more than just advertising;

- PR is for more than just a mainstream media audience;

- Your are what you publish;

- People want authenticity not spin;

- People want participation not propaganda;

- Instead of causing one-way interruption, marketing is all about delivering content at just the precise moment your audience needs it;

- Marketers must shift their thinking from mainstream marketing to the masses to a strategy of reaching vast numbers of underserved audiences via the Web;

- PR is not about your boss seeing your business on TV - it is about your buyers seeing your company on the internet;

- Marketing is about your organization winning business - not about your ad agency winning awards;

- The Internet makes public relations public again, after years of almost exclusive focus on media;

- Companies must drive people into the purchasing process with great online content;

- Blogs, online video, ebooks, news releases, and other forms of online content let organizations communicate directly with buyers in a form they appreciate; and

- In the internet, the lines between marketing and PR have blurred.

In the offline world, marketing and PR are separate departments with different people and different skill sets. In the online world, marketing, advertising, and PR are converging hence there is just one set of Internet Marketing rules for the Digital Entrepreneur to follow.

People do not like to be sold to, however people want to shop and buy.

Great content helps potential buyers see you, relate to your brand, and understand and value what you have to offer (your products).

By utilizing hypnotic writing, your content will drive a (lead and/or) customer to take the action you want!

Internet Marketing for the Digital Entrepreneur is not a battle of products … it is about using multiple online tools all directed toward increasing the visibility of brand You Inc, generating viral and word-of-mouth online awareness, and utilizing key tactics to ensure success in the knowledge economy.

The Internet provides opportunities you never had before. Internet Marketing is all about selling anything, to anyone, at any time, anywhere in the world!

Finally, a great book to read is "The NEW RULES of MARKETING & PR" by David Meerman Scott. It is the source of a majority of the old rules and new rules listed in this article. This book also contains an action plan that can be followed to harness the power of the NEW RULES!

In closing, be sure to meet me at my website, WhoIsMikeFarrell, learn some tips about being No 1 on Google at apenIbiz My Go-To-Market Partners, my affiliate website, and learn how to be savvy with your money like the insiders at aspenIbiz The Conspiracy For Your Money blog.

The Law of the Opposite - Your Internet Marketing Strategy is Determined by the Leader ... explained by Mike Farrell aspenIbiz

2010-05-22T12:41:00.004-06:00

There are laws of nature so why shouldn’t there be laws of marketing? You can build a great-looking airplane but it is not going to get off the ground unless it adheres to the laws of physics, especially the law of gravity.

So it follows that you can build a brilliant marketing program only to have one of the laws of marketing knock you flat if you don’t know what they are.

One of the laws is the Law of the Opposite.

In strength there is weakness. Wherever the leader is strong, there is an opportunity for a would-be No 2 to turn the tables.

Much like a wrestler uses his opponent’s strength against him, a company should leverage the leader’s strength into a weakness.

If you want to establish a firm foothold on the second rung of the ladder, study the company above you. Where is it strong? And how do you turn that strength into a weakness?

You must discover the essence of the leader and then present the prospect with the opposite. In other words, don’t try to be better, try to be different. It is often the upstart versus the old reliable.

Coca Cola is a 100 year old product. Only seven people in the history of the world have known the Coke formula which is kept in a locked safe in Atlanta. Coca Cola is the old, established product. However, using the Law of the Opposite, Pepsi Cola reversed the essence of Coca Cola to become the choice of a new generation, the Pepsi Generation.

In other words, by positioning yourself against the leader, you take business away from all the other alternatives to No 1. If old people drink Coke and young people drink Pepsi, there is nobody left to drink other brands in the cola beverage category.

Sometimes you need to be brutal.

Scope, the good tasting mouthwash, hung the medicine breath label on its Listerine competition. But don’t simply knock the competition. The Law of the Opposite is a two-edge sword. It requires honing in on a weakness that your prospect will quickly acknowledge.

One whiff of Listerine and you know that your mouth would smell like a hospital. Then quickly twist the sword. Scope is the good-tasting mouthwash that kills germs.

Marketing is often a battle for legitimacy. The first brand that captures a concept is often able to portray its competitors as illegitimate pretenders. A good No 2 can not afford to be timid!

As an Internet Marketing professional, you need to understand the Law of the Opposite. If you are not the leader in a product category but want to be a strong second, you need to position yourself opposite the leader because every market becomes a two horse race (as described in No 8, the Law of Duality).

Many Internet Marketing entrepreneurs are using techniques and tools like mind-mapping, keyword research, Attraction Marketing Formula, Magnetic Sponsoring, and MindMeister to conduct the market research and plan a successful marketing campaign. They then use the power of MyStory marketing, brand You Inc, and hypnotic writing skills, in their marketing campaigns, to deal realistically with the position of their brand and the strategy they want to pursue in the world that includes the Law of the Opposite.

The goals is to not emphasize why their offering is better, feature and function-wise, over a competitor’s but to develop a message that is recognized, accepted, and agreed to so that it will seduce and persuade a customer that what is offered to the target market is real and will work for them.

Marketing is not a battle of products. It is all about the strategy you use to benefit from the Law of the Opposite and if you are not the leader then you must do the opposite of the leader to appeal to the group that does not want to buy from the leader.

You can find out more about Internet Marketing and home-based businesses by reading updates that will be posted at my blog over the next few weeks.

The Law of Duality - Every Market Becomes a Two Horse Race, explained by Mike Farrell with aspenIbiz

2010-04-27T14:24:00.003-06:00

Early in the lifecycle of a product category, a product ladder with many rungs is formed. Gradually, the ladder becomes a two-rung affair.

In batteries, it’s Eveready and Duracell. In rent cars, it is Hertz and Avis. In hamburgers it is McDonald’s and Burger King. In toothpaste, it’s Crest and Colgate.

The Law of Duality suggests that over the product category’s lifecycle, the lower rungs on the ladder will lose market share and disappear; the top rung will lose market share, and the No 2 rung on the product ladder will gain market share ensuring the market is a two-horse race.

Are the results preordained? Of course not. There are other laws of marketing that can also affect the results.

Furthermore, your marketing programs can strongly influence your sales, provided they are in tune with the laws of marketing. For example, instead of going out and attacking two strong leaders, what you can do is carve out a profitable niche (like Crest prevents cavities as described in No 5, The Law of Focus).

Knowing that marketing is a two-horse race in the long run can help you plan strategy in the short run.

It often happens that there is no clear-cut No 2. What happens next depends on how skillful the contenders are.

What is especially tragic from the economy’s perspective are the resources wasted in many high value product categories, however this is the cost of capitalism.

Look at the history of the automobile industry in the USA. In 1904, 195 different cars were assembled by 60 companies. Over the next 10 years, 531 companies were formed and 346 perished. By 1923, only 108 car makers remained. This number dropped to 44 by 1927. Today, Ford is on the top rung of the product ladder with General Motors and Chrysler fighting for the second rung on the ladder.

Successful marketers concentrate on the top two rungs. Jack Welch, during his reign as chairman of General Electric, said “Only businesses that are No 1 or No 2 in their markets could win in the increasingly competitive global arena. Those that could not be No 1 or 2, were fixed, closed, or sold.”

This kind of thinking has build companies like Procter & Gamble into powerhouses where it is either No 1 or No 2 in more than 80% of its product categories.

Early in a product lifecycle, the No 3 or No 4 rung on the product ladder looks attractive. Sales are increasing. New and relatively unsophisticated customers are coming into the market. These customers don’t always know which brands are the leaders so they pick ones that look interesting or attractive … hence the interest by many Internet Marketing professionals in MyStory marketing and brand You Inc. Quite often, these brands turn out to be the No 3 or No 4 rung on the product ladder.

As time goes on however these customers get educated. They want the leading brand based on the naïve assumption that the leading brand must be better.

The customer believes that marketing is a battle of products. It is this kind of thinking that keeps two brands on the top. Customers think the top two brands “must be the best because they are the brand leaders.”

As an Internet Marketing professional, you need to understand the Law of Duality. In order to compete, use brand You Inc and MyStory marketing methods and techniques to create your own product category or define a niche where you can be the leader and hold the top rung of the product category ladder (as described in No 7, the Law of the Ladder).

Many Internet Marketing entrepreneurs are using techniques and tools like mind-mapping, keyword research, Attraction Marketing Formula, Magnetic Sponsoring, and MindMeister to conduct the market research and plan a successful marketing campaign. They then use the power of MyStory marketing, brand You Inc, and hypnotic writing skills, in their marketing campaigns, to deal realistically with the position of their brand in the world that includes the Law of Duality. The goals is to not emphasize why their offering is better, feature and function-wise, over a competitor’s but to develop a message that is recognized, accepted, and agreed to so that it will seduce and persuade a customer that what is offered is real and will work for them.

Marketing is not a battle of products. It is all about the strategy you use to benefit from the Law of Duality to ensure your brand and product is one of the top two brands of the product ladder as the market becomes a two horse race.

You can find out more about Internet Marketing and home-based businesses by reading updates that will be posted at my blog over the next few weeks.

Business Sours on China

2010-03-25T13:56:00.005-06:00

A few years ago, I was in China on a business trip.

At the airport, as I was leaving, the departure authorities asked if I was leaving with any RMB (Chinese currency). Knowing that I was under the allowable $10,000 amount, I told him I had 3,500RMB (approx $500USD). He gasped like I was some crook. He had several others rush over. They huddled and he then told me I had to get out of line and go exchange all my RMB to USD.

I asked why (since I was under the limit)? The only answer I got was that it was illegal to carry that much RMB out of the country. I was surprised! I explained that I was returning in a few weeks and would use the RMB I had on me, at that time (saving some exchange fees) and that I had done this before. They did not care - I was told I could not leave with the RMB and needed to exchange them for USD.

A few days later, it was widely reported in the press that China was adjusting the peg of the RMB to the USD and after the adjustment, those RMBs would be worth more USDs - China was just trying to keep the more valuable stuff, ie the RMB, local and not out floating on the world wide economy.

The real target of this activity was to reduce currency speculation, where the currency would leave the country weaker than the value of the currency when it returned to the country. This is a natural reaction when a country knows it is increasing the value of its currency.

While this just may seem to be an oddity of conducting business on the global stage, it is similar to conditions that are now also occurring.

In a previous post on this blog “Is the Chinese Economy Out of Control?”, it was mentioned that due to the size of stimulus provided during the GFC, in a very short time by the Chinese government, there will likely be some serious unintended consequences.

These unintended consequences could manifest themselves in terms of foreign policy or China becoming more assertive on the global stage.

There are many recent developments within China indicating it is now asserting itself on the global stage causing global businesses to sour on China. These are examples of the unintended consequences mentioned in the previous blog post.

When China was admitted to the World Trade Organization in 2001, it affirmed its emphasis on opening its economy to foreign business however these recent developments are indicating a tilt toward promoting dominant state owned companies, again, an example of unintended consequences.

The ongoing Google incident, where Google who has had troubles with China’s censorship rules, has recently experienced intense hacking attacks against its network, providing an opportunity for a local Chinese search engine to dominate an Internet market of 400 million uses.

Another example is the bullying associated with the drummed up “spying charges” against executives (based in China) of Rio Tinto, a resource and mining company with headquarters in Australia. The charges were later reduced to bribery after China obtained significantly lower iron ore prices for long term contracts.

Coca-Cola recently had a bid, for a local Chinese juice company, not accepted by government regulators on the grounds that if the acquisition went through, consumer prices would increase and smaller companies would be crowded out of the market (even though the company that was to be combined with Coke) would hold about 20% market-share … this led to calls that the Chinese were protectionists (of their local markets) and raising trade barriers.

Technology executives are highlighting that recently issued procurement rules in China are favoring “indigenous innovation” limiting access by foreign suppliers to tens of billions of dollars of contracts for computers, telecommunications gear, and office equipment.

Foreign makers of wind turbines and solar panels say they are being shut out of big renewable-energy projects in China or being forced to license production to local companies at prices set by the government.

It is also becoming clear that China feels it has less need for foreign funds. A few days ago, China’s Premier, Wen Jiabao, told the Americans to stuff it and strongly defended what amounts to China’s policy of currency manipulation.

In what amounted to an extension of its reach in the global economy, Wen warned various world leaders that removing stimulus too early would lead to second dip in the global recession.

Wen also defended China's currency manipulation. Defying the global consensus, Wen said, "I don't think the yuan is undervalued. We oppose countries pointing fingers at each other and even forcing a country to appreciate its currency."

In a floating-exchange rate world, no one forces a currency to appreciate. If people don't want to own it for yield or sound monetary and fiscal policies, it's hard to "force" a currency to rise. You can, however, forcibly depreciate your currency by selling it and buying others. And that's exactly what China's been doing for years.

To be fair, China's currency manipulation is a form of economic stimulus. By pegging, or linking, it's currency to the U.S. Dollar, China engages in a kind of perpetual devaluation. It preserves the price competitiveness of Chinese exporters. And more importantly for China's economy, a humming export engine keeps employment high, achieving the primary goal of political stability.

But there is no doubt that China's currency policy is costing jobs in the Western world.

In the meantime, deleveraging activities of the household and the private sectors in the Western world, along with Euro weakness, are increasing the demand for the dollar. While these trends can see-saw a bit, these currencies are moving relative to one another, however relative to gold and other tangible things, all of them will lose value. The U.S. Dollar is bad. But it is less bad than the Euro at the moment.

All of this currency movement is adding to the tension between an already tense U.S. & China relationship and essentially goading the U.S. Congress to take some action.

As the banker to the U.S. (meaning the largest buyer of U.S. debt), many suggest it is best to not irritate the banker as they may stop lending money to the U.S. If China were to stop buying U.S. debt, yields on the 10 year note would take off like a rocket causing runaway inflation, and that would be bad, very bad!

I favor a quote from Steve Forbes. Forbes says that pursuing additional financial education and the resulting increase in our financial literacy (including the interaction of the currency and debt markets) will open our eyes to alternative wealth creating strategies and this will be they key to resolving our financial crisis.

To gain the necessary financial education, it is best to obtain association with, access to, and membership in a wealth creation community. As a result, you will obtain examples of alternative wealth creating strategies such as debt reduction, asset protection, and wealth acceleration with investments in items such as precious metals, water rights, oil, natural gas, potash mines, food commodities, or gold mines … perhaps investments in energy assets that are inherently useful like oil rigs, hydropower, or methanol plants … things hard to build, difficult to replace, and costly to substitute … definitely not financial stocks, definitely not retail stocks, definitely not commercial property.

I trust this article provides a little more insight into the global economy, why we have mutually dependent economies, and serious unintended consequences that are brewing as a result of TARP and Economic Stimulus. As China becomes more assertive on the global stage, they feel they have little to learn from the rich nations of the West, since they widely believe the financial crisis was caused by a blow-up of the Western World’s financial system.

It is wise to monitor world affairs and consider alternative wealth creating strategies. I will provide updates in future articles and at my blog over the next few weeks.

Is the Chinese Economy Out of Control?

2010-03-10T16:33:00.002-07:00

Is China trying to take a shortcut to greatness? To understand what's taking place in China today, we need to rewind the clock about a decade.

At that time the Chinese government chose a policy of growth at any cost. It kept its currency, the renminbi, at artificially low levels against the dollar -- this helped already cheap Chinese-made goods become even cheaper than its competitors.

The global consumers were eager to buy them and China turned into a significant exporter to the US.

If free-market economic forces were at work, the renminbi would have appreciated and the US dollar would have declined. However, if China let its currency appreciate, its exports would have become more expensive and the demand for Chinese products would have declined; thus its economy wouldn't have grown at 10% a year.

But China isn't your long standing democracy and using the government-controlled banking system, China accumulated a couple trillion dollars of foreign reserves in US Dollars and Euros. This had unintended consequences in that it helped keep US interest rates at very low levels and lent a friendly hand in the financing of a huge consumption binge by the US consumer, which was China's largest customer.

The more China sold to the US, the more dollars it accumulated and thus the more US Treasuries it bought, driving down the interest rates in the US. The US consumer was in turn happy to leverage its future (through the "always" appreciating asset, its home) and delighted to consume cheap Chinese-made goods.

This match made in heaven between China and the US consumer worked great as long as housing prices kept rising and like an ATM, housing kept supplying dollars to its owners to spend. But all good things come to an end and great things come to an end with a bang.

Let’s now fast-forward a year. Today the global economy is stabilizing but the US consumers of Chinese-made goods are now deleveraging, unemployment is high, and US banks aren't lending.

Despite this, the Chinese export-based economy has reported a growth rate of 8.7% in 2009. The rest of the world looks at the Chinese growth miracle with envy as it seems that China has figured out economics of the next business cycle. But don't hurry to trade your democracy for an authoritarian system. The Chinese grass is not as green as it appears.

First, one should always be skeptical of economic numbers that are put out by any Government, yet alone the Chinese government. The high growth rate of last year in China occurred when its exports were down more than 25%, tonnage of goods shipped through its railroads was down by double digits, and its electricity consumption fell like a rock.

Second, China will do anything to grow its economy, as the alternatives will lead to political unrest. A lot of peasants moved to the cities in search of higher-paying jobs during the go-go times. Because China lacks the social safety-net of the developed world, unemployed people aren't just inconvenienced by the loss of their jobs, they starve (and this helps explains the high savings rate in China) and hungry people don't complain, they riot! Once you look at what's taking place in the Chinese economy through this lens, then the decisions of its leaders start making sense, or at least become understandable.

Unlike Western democracies, where central banks can pump a lot of money into the financial system but can't force banks to lend or consumers and corporations to spend, China can do both very fast. The Chinese government controls the banks. Thus it can make them lend and it can force state-owned enterprises (one-third of the economy) to borrow and to spend. Also, China can spend infrastructure project money very fast -- if a school is in the way of a road the government wants to build, it becomes a casualty for the greater good without a lot of delay due to environmental or society related concerns.

China has spent a tremendous amount of money on infrastructure over the last decade and there are definitely long-term benefits to having better highways, fast railroads, and more hospitals. But any government is horrible at allocating large amounts of capital. Political decisions (driven by the goal of full or near full employment) are often uneconomical and full of corruption and cronyism that result in projects that destroy value.

Infrastructure and real estate projects are where you get your biggest bang for the buck if your goal is to maintain employment, because they require a lot of unskilled labor. This is where in the past a lot of Chinese money was spent. This also explains why the Chinese keep building skyscrapers even though the adjacent ones are still vacant.

In addition, China has built the largest shopping mall in the world, the South China Mall, which is still 99% vacant years after construction. China also built a whole city, Ordos, in Inner Mongolia, on spec for one million residents who never appeared. China is a less shiny but more drastic version of Dubai.

We look at China and are mesmerized by its 1.3 billion people representing huge target markets. There is speculation that the Chinese consumer will pick up the demand slack for the US and European consumers who are deleveraging and buying fewer Chinese-made goods. This may happen but it will take decades. The US and European consumers are two-thirds of much larger economies. The Chinese consumer is only one-third of the Chinese economy.

We have to remember that economic bubbles are usually just a good thing taken too far. This was the case with railroads in the US in the late 19th century. The railroads were supposed to change the landscape of the US, and they did, but that didn't prevent a lot of them from going out of business first. The Internet was supposed to change how we communicate, and it did, but in the process it generated a tremendous bubble, followed by the loss of wealth for many.

The Chinese economy is no exception. Its long-term future may be bright but in the short run we've got a bubble on our hands. The temporary mirage of economic resiliency must be followed by huge pain and drastic consequences because every cycle has an up and a down. This is a law of nature and the laws of economics do not work differently.

I favor a quote from Steve Forbes. Forbes says that pursuing additional financial education and the resulting increase in our financial literacy (including the interaction of the currency and debt markets) will open our eyes to alternative wealth creating strategies and this will be they key to resolving our financial crisis.

As an example of alternative wealth creating strategies … consider investments in precious metals, water rights, oil, natural gas, potash mines, food commodities, or gold mines … perhaps investments in energy assets that are inherently useful like oil rigs, hydropower, or methanol plants … things hard to build, difficult to replace, and costly to substitute … definitely not financial stocks, definitely not retail stocks, definitely not commercial property.

I trust this article provides a little more insight into the global economy and the mutually dependent economies. Due to the size of the stimulus provided in a very short time, by the Chinese government, there will likely be some serious unintended consequences that will manifest themselves, also on the world stage. These consequences could express themselves in terms of foreign policy, such as dangerous undercurrents to Taiwan’s peaceful reunification, or in terms of China becoming more assertive on the global stage because they feel they have little to learn from the rich nations of the West, since they widely believe the financial crisis was caused by a blow-up of the Western World’s financial system.

It is wise to monitor world affairs and consider alternative wealth creating strategies. I will provide updates in future articles and at my blog over the next few weeks.

In 2010, Demand for Commodities is Creating Investment Opportunities

2010-03-04T16:29:00.003-07:00

Emerging markets kicked into high gear a few years ago (see previous post on this blog titled “The World’s Center of Gravity is Continuing to Tip in Favor of Emerging Markets”) and this was fully evident in the middle of 2008 as many commodity prices reached all-time highs.

As global demand increased, the prices for commodities like oil, corn, sugar and cotton rose to dizzying heights.

The market cooled off in late 2008 and early 2009 as part of the deleveraging initiated in Phase 1 of the Global Financial Crisis but now commodities are beginning to move back up.

Many commodities have achieved a 50% retracement back up to 2008 highs and this upward movement signals to many a continuing uptrend.

After worldwide demand destruction in late 2008 it appears a solid uptrend is being formed.

This uptrend is a combination of fundamental factors with the most important driver coming from markets like China and India.

These emerging markets consume everything from oil to orange juice, and after the sudden fall of 2008, the craving for so-called luxury goods, from the people of these emerging markets, has just started.

Worldwide demand for these staple commodities (fuel for a car, coffee is a new delicacy, and corn-fed meats on the dinner plate) will continue to rise.

After you get past all the investment bank upgrade and market consensus reports, there are plenty of solid reasons that gold is set to rise in the next 12 months.

From a technical perspective, gold has not reached its inflation-adjusted all-time high. For that to happen, gold would need to be at $2,000 an ounce — a 75% increase from today’s price.

In 2010, this could easily happen. However, a more conservative, yet realistic goal would be $1,500 gold — which could very easily happen in the next 12 months.

Other than technical indicators and charts, there are plenty of fundamental reasons to assume the metal will go higher and two of the most significant reasons are listed below.

First and most importantly is that there is an implicit flaw with Western government funding models. Governments like ours here in the U.S., naturally choose short-term fixes for long-term problems (it probably has to do with the lack of term limits for politicians and frequent re-elections). Most likely these features of our government and political system will not magically change overnight, nor will it likely change by the end of 2010.

So the probabilities are high that fears of inflation will remain large and as a hedge, many will demand gold, hence increasing gold prices. And, as the short-term fixes expose more government-monetized debt, prices of the precious metal will also go higher.

The second reason that gold will shoot to $1,500 in the next 12 months is supply related. Many of the gold fields in South Africa are finding it more difficult and hence more expensive to mine the gold that is deep in the earth. With gold being harder to obtain, the price will be higher due to increased mining costs and inevitably, there will be less supply of gold brought to market due to these expensive mining methods and ongoing difficulty in the mining process.

As demand rises and supply is reduced, you can bet that prices for gold will have nowhere to go but higher than the current $1,100 an ounce.

I favor a quote from Steve Forbes. Forbes says that pursuing additional financial education and the resulting increase in our financial literacy will open our eyes to alternative wealth creating strategies and this will be they key to resolving our financial crisis.

As an example of alternative wealth creating strategies … consider investments in precious metals, water rights, oil, natural gas, potash mines, food commodities, or gold mines … perhaps investments in energy assets that are inherently useful like oil rigs, hydropower, or methanol plants … things hard to build, difficult to replace, and costly to substitute … definitely not financial stocks, definitely not retail stocks, definitely not commercial property.

I trust this article provides a little more insight into the world of the commodity markets and with the raging demand due to the rise in the living standards in many of the world’s emerging markets, there are numerous alternative wealth generating opportunities. This increased demand places commodities in a super-cycle that will likely last another decade. In the commodities world, there are no CEOs on the inside cooking the books nor do you have accounting firms puffing up the profits - you just have prices responding to pure supply and demand. This is why many refer to the commodities markets as the last bastion where there is pure capitalism. It is wise to have exposure to the commodities markets as the world’s economies respond to the emerging markets.

I will continue to introduce alternative wealth creating strategies to consider in future articles and updates at my blog over the next few weeks.

The World’s Center of Gravity Continues to Tip in Favor of Emerging Economies

2010-02-28T20:47:00.002-07:00

Oranges were once expensive luxuries in northern climates.

Today, we take for granted that we can eat apples, oranges, and bananas all year round if we choose. It doesn't matter where you live. We can eat strawberries in the dead of winter. In fact, we routinely enjoy goods that come from places very far from our own doorstep.

Televisions from Taiwan, lettuce from Mexico, shirts from China; goods from faraway places are so common it is easy to forget how recent such miracles of commerce are.

Such miracles of commerce have redrawn the economic map. The emerging markets have "emerged" and big opportunities are emerging in something called the Great Convergence.

In the late 20th century, with the gradual spread of the Industrial Revolution to the developing world, the Western world (ex-Japan) represented 90% of the world's manufacturing output as late as 1953. America's economy alone was nearly half of the world's industrial output.

During this time, the economic gap between China and Western Europe grew very wide when viewed in historic terms. But things changed in the late 20th century. The Great Convergence began. From 1950 on, the world economic growth was quite simply astonishing. We enjoyed a rolling wave of "economic miracles" through the decades. Closed economies opened up and trade expanded.

We can point to the success of postwar Japan and then to the surging tiger economies of East Asia. Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea grew in leaps and bounds. Finally, we saw the opening up of China, India, Russia and Brazil. The once-bottled-up energies of these countries poured out.

Today, we see the handiwork of the Great Convergence taking shape. The distinctions between "emerging markets" and "developed markets" are starting to disappear. Indeed, the terms may already be obsolete.

The belief that companies in the US, Western Europe or Japan are better managed than in emerging markets is also no longer valid. Anyone who has sat through the parade of fraud and corporate malfeasance of recent years in the US will find it hard to argue otherwise.

The list of corporate thieves is much longer in the US and Europe than in the emerging markets. Management teams in the West no longer dominate when it comes to standards of best practices.

Governments in the West are just as bumbling as those of emerging markets. More and more, it is the Western governments that steal too much. Another distinction blurred.

Emerging markets now make up about half of the global economy and not surprisingly, emerging markets now make up 10 of the 20 largest economies in the world. India is now bigger than Germany. Russia is bigger than the UK. Mexico is bigger than Canada. Turkey is bigger than Australia.

In a stock market sense, these places have also grown up. It used to be that emerging markets were not very liquid or very big. It was not that long ago that the IBM shares changing hands in a single day in New York were worth more than all the shares that traded hands in Shanghai or Bombay.

Today's emerging markets are large and liquid. Chinese markets traded more shares than the NYSE; Hong Kong and Korea traded more than Germany; India traded more than France; and Taiwan traded more than Italy, Australia or Canada.

Emerging market companies are also growing faster. In particular, there are wide gaps in the growth rates of sales and profits. The second key distinction worth noting is that of balance sheet strength. Emerging market companies have less debt and cover their debts more comfortably.

All of this is to point out that investors need exposure to emerging markets, or at the very least, they should not shun them for reasons that are no longer valid.

A good way to get exposure to emerging markets is through the back door, so to speak. Invest in companies, wherever they are, that have what these economies need or want, but don't have or can't make.

I favor a quote from Steve Forbes. Forbes says that pursuing additional financial education and the resulting increase in our financial literacy will open our eyes to alternative wealth creating strategies and this will be they key to resolving our financial crisis.

As an example of alternative wealth creating strategies … consider investments in energy assets that are inherently useful like oil rigs, hydropower, or methanol plants … perhaps precious metals, water rights, oil, natural gas, potash mines, food commodities, or gold mines … things hard to build, difficult to replace, and costly to substitute … definitely not financial stocks, definitely not retail stocks, definitely not commercial property.

I trust this article provides a little more insight into the convergence of the developed world and the emerging markets. With the gap between these markets disappearing on many dimensions and with the companies in these regions growing faster, it is wise to have exposure to these markets or at least to invest in companies that have what these economies need.

I will continue to introduce alternative wealth creating strategies to consider in future articles and updates at my blog over the next few weeks.

As a former engineer with General Dynamics and management consultant at Deloitte … I am on a mission to empower individuals by increasing their financial literacy, improve their ability for personal sustainability, and contribute to the program that has a goal of creating 100 Millionaires by 2012.

Until next time, I invite you to:

Meet me at Facebook :

Follow me on Twitter :

Read my Posts :

Watch my Video Channel :

Join me in pursuing financial literacy and alternative business opportunities with multiple income streams at aspenIbiz.

When not traveling for business or pleasure, Mike operates his own Internet Marketing company and consulting firm from his home in the mountains of Colorado.

In closing, if you are a reluctant entrepreneur, a business owner, employed in an 8-5 job, or recently retired, yet still wanting to be plugged-in to the next wave of economic prosperity, you can join me in pursuing the lifestyle you want to live by following the aspenIbiz link provided above.

Is Greece in 2010 Equal to Austria in 1931?

2010-02-19T23:54:00.002-07:00

The economic climate in Europe today has worrying parallels with the 1930s, suggests Mike Farrell with aspenIbiz.

It is worth remembering that upheavals in Europe triggered the economic malaise that made the Great Depression “Great”.

Although 1929 is etched into history as being synonymous with the Great Depression, the real tragedy did not get underway until 1931.

The Austrian bank Boden-Kredit-Anstalt was rendered insolvent in the aftermath of the credit boom of the late 1920s. It was “saved” in October 1929 by merging with the stronger Oesterreichische-Credit-Anstalt. An international syndicate, headed by the Rothschild's of Vienna, that included J.P Morgan and Company, injected new capital into the merged entity.

The Austrian Government guaranteed the bad debts of the old bank and the merged entity spent 1930 “muddling through”. But then in May 1931, the Credit-Anstalt bank collapsed. Some blamed the political climate at the time, with the economic union between Germany and Austria (Zollverein) spooking France. Others simply stated that Austria had “consumed its capital” with the result that a banking collapse was inevitable.

Whatever the reason, the collapse of Credit-Anstalt triggered a run on German banks by French and US creditors, leading to the forced closure of the German banking system. London financiers were heavily exposed to German banks, and industry, and were caught out by the banking sector shutdown, which effectively froze their assets.

This in turn caused panic amongst London's foreign creditors and a run on the currency. The pound sterling was overvalued causing England’s major export industries to be uncompetitive. Unions were heavily represented in these industries and refused a proposal to cut wages. Unemployment was high and structure of the whole economy was inefficient.

England had two choices – austerity or devaluation. England chose devaluation because the politics of austerity were too hard.

In the 1930's, contagion went from the periphery to the core in very quick time. Austria folded in May 1931. By September of that year, Britain had gone off the gold standard and devalued the pound sterling.

And so went the contagion that crippled the world economically and provided the impetus for Hitler's rise and decades of economic and political turmoil.

The situation in the global economy today is eerily similar.

Greece, a peripheral European economy, is close to defaulting on its debts.

Being part of the Eurozone and using the Euro, Greece does not have the option to devalue its currency.

And, any default would lead to contagion, as creditors pull funds from other highly indebted countries. The list of targets is well known; Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Italy & England.

As England found in the early 1930s, Greece may find the politics of the EU austerity plan, necessary to prevent default on its debts, to be too hard.

The only other choice left would be to leave the EU and return to the Drachma, its previous currency, so that it could devalue its debts.

If Greece were to return to the Drachma other countries would likely follow and return to their former currencies … and this would bring down the Euro experiment.

This would also usher in another sharp global slowdown as European banks would be pushed towards insolvency by the associated write-downs on sovereign debt.

I favor a quote from Steve Forbes … Forbes says that pursuing additional financial education and the resulting increase in our financial literacy will open our eyes to alternative wealth creating strategies and this will be they key to resolving our financial crisis.

As an example of alternative wealth creating strategies … consider investments in energy assets that are inherently useful like oil rigs, hydropower, or methanol plants … perhaps precious metals, water rights, oil, natural gas, potash mines, or gold mines … things hard to build, difficult to replace, and costly to substitute … definitely not financial stocks, definitely not retail stocks, definitely not commercial property.

I trust this article provides a little more insight in to the Global Financial Crisis; the economics of the EU, the ECB, and the Euro; and the adverse consequences if you do not have sound money practices and solid public finances.

I will continue to introduce alternative wealth creating strategies to consider in future articles and updates at my blog over the next few weeks.

The Law of the Ladder ... explained by Mike Farrell aspenIbiz

2010-02-17T15:26:00.002-07:00

While being first in the mind of your lead or customer should be your primary objective, the battle is not lost if you fail in this endeavor.

All products are not created equal so there is a hierarchy in the mind that customers use in making decisions.

For each category, there is a product ladder in the mind of the customer. On each rung is a brand name.

Take a look at the car rental category. Hertz got into the mind first and wound up on the top rung. Avis got in second and National got in third.

Your marketing strategy should depend on how soon you got in the mind of your customer and which rung you occupy on the ladder; of course the higher the better.

For many years Avis was on the 2nd rung of the ladder and advertised they had the finest in rent cars. Many renters wondered how Avis could have the finest rent car service and not be on the top rung of the ladder.

Avis then did what you have to do to make progress inside the mind of the customer. They acknowledged their position on the ladder and created a campaign where they said, “ … go with us! We try harder.” And, Avis then started making a lot of money.

Many marketing people have misread the Avis campaigns. They assume the company was successful because it tried harder and therefore had better service. But that wasn’t it at all. Avis was more successful because of how and where it positioned itself compared to Hertz on the ladder.

The mind is selective. Customers use the ladders in their mind in deciding which information to accept and which information to reject. In general, a mind accepts only new data that is consistent with the product ladder and where the brand is on the ladder … everything else is ignored.

As an Internet Marketing professional, you need to determine how many rungs there are on the product ladder in your lead’s mind and on which rung are you likely to be perceived.

It depends on whether the product you are offering is a product used every day (like beverages, toothpaste, or ceral, referred to as high-interest products) or purchased infrequently (like travel packages, furniture, or wealth management, referred to as low-interest products).

If your product is a high-interest product, there are many rungs on the product ladder. If your product is low-interest product, there are fewer rungs on the ladder. And, there is a relationship between market share and your position on the ladder in your customer’s mind. You tend to have twice the market share of the brand below you and half the market share of the brand above you.

Sometimes your own ladder or category is too small. It might be better to be a small fish in a big pond than to be a big fish in a small pond. In other words it is sometimes better to be No 3 on a big ladder than No 1 on a small ladder.

Let’s look at how 7-Up used this law to its advantage by being a smaller fish in a bigger pond.

On the lemon-lime soda ladder, 7-Up was on the top rung and Sprite was on the 2nd rung. However, in the beverage industry, the cola market is larger and therefore the ladder had more rungs. So 7-Up positioned itself in the mind of its customers with a marketing campaign called “The Uncola” and climbed the cola ladder and increased its sales.

Before you start any marketing program, you need to determine if your product is a high-interest or low-interest product; whether there are many or few rungs; and on which rung of the product ladder are you likely to be positioned in the mind of the customer. You then make sure your campaign deals realistically with your position on the ladder.

Many Internet Marketing entrepreneurs are using techniques and tools like mind-mapping, keyword research, Attraction Marketing Formula, Magnetic Sponsoring, and MindMeister to conduct the market research and utilize the Law of the Ladder. They then use the power of brand You Inc, and hypnotic writing skills in their marketing campaigns, to deal realistically with the position of their brand on the product ladder in the mind of their leads and customers. The goals is to not emphasize why their offering is better, feature and function-wise, over a competitor’s but to develop a message that is recognized, accepted, and agreed to so that it will seduce and persuade a customer that what is offered will work for them.

Marketing is not a battle of products. It is all about the strategy you use depending on which rung your brand occupies on the product ladder.

You can find out more about Internet Marketing and home-based businesses by reading updates that will be posted at my blog over the next few weeks.

As a former engineer with General Dynamics and management consultant at Deloitte … I am on a mission to empower individuals by increasing their financial literacy, improve their ability for personal sustainability, and contribute to the program that has a goal of creating 100 Millionaires by 2012.

Until next time, I invite you to:

Meet me at Facebook :

Follow me on Twitter :

Read my Posts :

Watch my Video Channel :

Join me in pursuing financial literacy and alternative business opportunities with multiple income streams at aspenIbiz.

When not traveling for business or pleasure, Mike operates his own Internet Marketing company and consulting firm from his home in the mountains of Colorado.

In closing, if you are a reluctant entrepreneur, a business owner, employed in an 8-5 job, or recently retired, yet still wanting to be plugged-in to the next wave of economic prosperity, you can join me in pursuing the lifestyle you want to live by following the aspenIbiz link provided above.

The Law of Exclusivity ... Ries & Trout, as explained by Mike Farrell with aspenIbiz

2010-02-04T22:34:00.003-07:00

Two companies cannot own the same word in a prospect’s mind. When a competitor owns a word or a message in the prospect’s mind, it is futile and expensive to attempt to own the same word.

Mercedes Benz has tried to run marketing campaigns on safety but they have been unsuccessful in getting their safety message into the customer’s mind. You can’t change people’s minds once they are made up. If you try to change their mind, what you often do is reinforce the competitor’s position by making its concept more important. Volvo owns the word, safety.

FedEx owned the word “overnight” and wanted to try for worldwide ... but DHL already owns worldwide ... it is DHL Express Worldwide. Plus, DHL is thought of as faster to more parts of the world. So FedEx is using, “We understand. You want to grow internationally. And we do it fast.”

Another example is Eveready with the Energizer bunny. Eveready will periodically try to take the “long-lasting” concept away from Duracell. This continues to be very difficult to do, expensive, and with little effective results. No matter how many bunnies Eveready throws into the fray, Duracell will hang onto the “long-lasting” name because it got into the mind first and preempted the “long-lasting” concept ... “long-lasting” is even reinforced in the marketplace by the Dura part in the Duracell company name.

Many Digital Entrepreneurs are using techniques and tools like mind-mapping, keyword research, Attraction Marketing Formula, Magnetic Sponsoring, and MindMeister to identify words and messages that position themselves and their products exclusively as a solution to solve the needs of their leads or customers and not spend large amounts of marketing money that will benefit the competition. They then use hypnotic writing skills to persuade a customer to take the action they want and not emphasize why their offering is better, feature and function-wise, over a competitor’s offering.

Marketing is not a battle of products. It is a battle of focus for a single word or concept in the mind of the lead or customer and to ensure it is exclusive and not already owned by a competitor.

You can find out more about Internet Marketing and home-based businesses by reading updates that will be posted at my blog over the next few weeks.

As a former engineer with General Dynamics and management consultant at Deloitte ... I am on a mission to empower individuals by increasing their financial literacy, improve their ability for personal sustainability, and contribute to the program that has a goal of creating 100 Millionaires by 2012.

Until next time, I invite you to:

Meet me at Facebook :

Follow me on Twitter :

Read my Posts :

Watch my Video Channel :

Join me in pursuing financial literacy and alternative business opportunities with multiple income streams at aspenIbiz.

When not traveling for business or pleasure, Mike operates his own Internet Marketing company and consulting firm from his home in the mountains of Colorado.

In closing, if you are a reluctant entrepreneur, a business owner, employed in an 8-5 job, or recently retired, yet still wanting to be plugged-in to the next wave of economic prosperity, you can join me in pursuing the lifestyle you want to live by following the aspenIbiz link provided above.

Water - It Is a Good Place to Be in the Years Ahead, by Mike Farrell with aspenIbiz

2010-01-27T14:30:00.002-07:00

When you think about commodities that are in demand and other hot items right now among traders, you probably don’t think of water. But you should as alternative wealth creating strategies in water are surfacing.

The pipelines that provide our drinking water cover a distance of a million miles … more than four times the length of the Interstate Highway System. Much of this pipeline is over 100 yrs old, has exceeded its useful life, and in many parts of the country, it is in a state of utter disrepair.

The fix will cost at least $500B over the next 20 years.

And, the renewable bio-fuel targets of the US Dpt of Energy can’t be met because we don’t have the water supply. It will take 2.5 trillion gallons of water to make 1 billion gallons of ethanol … this is more water than used by the farmers in the Central Valley and the population of Southern California combined. It takes energy to make water and water to make energy and we don’t have enough water to make the mandated biofuel … perhaps this is another conspiracy in the making.

As a result, the price of water in some parts of the world is rising … sometimes very quickly and it is rising right here in the good ole USA … especially in California.

Water rates in California have experienced a 71% increase in five years and despite these increases, water is still too cheap in Southern California.

Water is a resource that has been underpriced for 50 years … consumers pay $10 day for power and only $3 a day for water. Water costs more in Manhattan and New York City isn’t even a desert.

California is a good case study where the water crisis is in bloom and here are drivers of some of the issues and challenges ahead.

First – Supply Limitations. As the water flows down from the Sierra Mountains, it also flows through an estuary before it reaches the state’s water supply. The estuary was depleted due to excessive pumping which endangered a species of fish native to the river. A few years ago, a federal judge put limits on the amount of water taken out of the Sacramento – San Joaquin Bay Delta to protect the fish. The system is now delivering only 40% of the capacity as a result of these judge implied limits. At this point, even several wet years will not get the capacity back to 100%.

Second – Drought. Current reservoir levels are at all-time lows because California just had its third consecutive dry year.

Third – Aging Infrastructure. The system is no longer capable of supporting the increased population without significant investment.

To combat these problems, the state has done a number of things, including the price increases mentioned above. Yet because water is still so cheap, the increased water rates have not had much of an effect on water use so far. There is also an $11.1 billion water bond that will provide funds for storing water. And there is a search for new supplies of water.

Having picked all the low-hanging fruit, it is clear there is no single solution to the water crisis. There will be many ideas – conservation, desalination, and more.

For example, some companies are working on ways to capture the rain and snowfall from various mountain drainage and watersheds before it flows to natural dry lakes and eventually evaporates. The rain and snowfall will be stored and eventually delivered to major population centers in California via pipeline and pumping stations.

On the surface, it will appear that the value will be in the water provided for consumption and irrigation of crops grown on farms in the region. Yet the real value will not be the actual water or resulting farming but in monetizing the water rights.

Today’s investor portfolio should include companies that hold these water rights; companies that provide pipes, valves, seals, tanks, treatment plants, and pumping station equipment; firms that provide the engineering services to design and build these pipelines and pumping stations; and water utilities that operate and deliver quality water, that will better than most bottled water, to major metropolitan areas of California.

Water worries extend far beyond California and the America West … and it will be a good place to be in the years ahead. As goes California, so goes America.

I favor a quote from Steve Forbes … Forbes says that pursuing additional financial education and the resulting increase in our financial literacy will open our eyes to alternative wealth creating strategies and this will be they key to resolving our financial crisis.

As an example of alternative wealth creating strategies … consider investments in non dollar-denominated assets … perhaps emerging markets … perhaps energy assets that are inherently useful like oil rigs, hydropower, or methanol plants … perhaps water rights, precious metals, oil, natural gas, potash mines, or gold mines … things hard to build, difficult to replace, and costly to substitute … definitely not financial stocks, definitely not retail stocks, definitely not commercial property.

I trust this article provides a little more insight as to why water rights, pipelines, and water utilities continue to represent alternative wealth creating strategies.

I will continue to introduce alternative wealth creating strategies to consider like water rights and other like emerging markets, oil rigs, precious metals and potash mines, in future articles and updates here at my blog over the next few weeks.

You can find out more about Financial Education, Alternative Wealth Creating Strategies, Internet Marketing opportunities, Home-Based Businesses, and the global economy by reading updates that will be posted here at my blog over the next few weeks and by following me on Twitter.

As a former engineer with General Dynamics and management consultant at Deloitte … I am on a mission to empower individuals by increasing their financial literacy, improve their ability for personal sustainability, and contribute to the program that has a goal of creating 100 Millionaires by 2012.

Until next time, I invite you to:

Meet me at Facebook :

Follow me on Twitter :

Read my Posts :

Watch my Video Channel :

Join me in pursuing financial literacy and alternative business opportunities with multiple income streams at aspenIbiz .

When not traveling for business or pleasure, Farrell operates his own internet marketing company and consulting firm from his home in the mountains of Colorado.

In closing, if you are a reluctant entrepreneur, a business owner, employed in an 8-5 job, or recently retired, yet still wanting to be plugged-in to the next wave of economic prosperity, you can join him in pursuing the lifestyle you want to live by following the aspenIbiz link provided above.

Is it Time to Retool as a Digital Entrepreneur by Mike Farrell with aspenIbiz

2010-01-18T15:59:00.003-07:00

This recession is producing fundamental change. No matter what happens with this economy, it is clear the landscape has changed. The real economic stimulus is the recession and the upside down economy is creating entrepreneurial opportunities.

Many workers find themselves asking these questions: will the next round of layoffs include me? will my position be eliminated after my company’s upcoming merger? is there any way I can expect a raise or bonus in this economy? is my current business recession-proof?

The marketplace is telling many workers their jobs are not coming back (as a result it is a jobless recovery that is underway) because what they produced can be found elsewhere for a cheaper price or nobody wants or needs what they have been producing.

As long as the government does not interfere, the capitalistic economic system is the most efficient allocator of capital for the production of goods and services leading many workers to see the writing on the wall.

Instead of sitting by and watching their futures grow bleaker, workers are retooling and harnessing impressive changes in business culture and technology to create a grass-roots Free Agent Entrepreneurial economy that encompasses a broad swath of small and entrepreneurial businesses that can bend with the changing winds.

As workers are displaced from their jobs, many are going back to school to up-skill, retrain for new jobs, and in some cases, even reinvent themselves completely.

In this recession, there is a real change in workforce training … back in 2001, entrepreneur training was not available for people who were displaced.

However, 2010 will be a good year for learning institutions. They will offer training in new fields and enrollment will be up at less expensive junior colleges, trade schools, and online universities. A new degree is being offered at some colleges and universities – it is the Digital Entrepreneur degree. It is becoming clear that in this recession, there will be big and real change in the workforce.

Entrepreneurship has gained status as a legitimate career path. Tech entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg are rock stars and there has been a cultural shift as the public has grasped the economic potential of highly motivated, idea-driven individuals.

The entrepreneurial movement is being bolstered by such factors as the Internet, cheaper office space, and increased negotiating room with suppliers.

In addition, many are finding cloud computing is taking some of the burden and expense out of starting-up a small business. Inventory, customer management, accounting, shipping, corporate communication and even human resources, can be outsourced to the digital ether as a cluster of web-based services and applications sweep away the need for large office space and pools of employees.

However there are still enormous obstacles for small businesses. Taxes are out of control, credit remains tight, and banks are still stingy. Add to this list the expensive topic of healthcare and things can seem very gloomy.

No matter how much we dream about it, most of us prefer the security of a job and paycheck, and no amount of entrepreneurship propaganda will change human nature. Yet for both the doers and the dreamers, the Free Agent Entrepreneur is not just a style of work, it is also a way of life. Entrepreneurs zig when everyone else is zagging.

As a result, many are considering an Internet Based business where you leverage a suite of best practices, Internet software tools, education, and support in a community of gifting colleagues thereby placing yourself at the center of the New Economy 2.0: The Ascendancy of the Entrepreneur.

Following an approach where you essentially carbon copy success of leaders in the community … you can stand on the shoulders of giants that proceeded you and this how you can successfully launch a home-based business and start making money in a reasonable amount of time.

While you are putting the pieces of the business together, you are working on your personal training and development. Like anything else, no one really understands Internet Marketing from the start. One reason is there is so much to know. As you start, you need to consider “Reengineering You” which includes mastering of new skills, defining your brand, and ensuring you have a high level of energy and commitment to success.

Because you do not need large amounts of capital (as is frequently required in other business opportunities) you can generate one of the best ROIs (Returns On Investment) as you operate an Internet Marketing business. It is time to get started today. To use the slogan of a famous maker of sporting gear, “Just do it!”

You can find out more about retooling as a Digital Entrepreneur, Internet Marketing opportunities, home-based businesses, financial education, and the global economy by reading updates that will be posted at my blog over the next few weeks and following me on Twitter.

As a former engineer with General Dynamics and management consultant at Deloitte … I am on a mission to empower individuals by increasing their financial literacy, improve their ability for personal sustainability, and contribute to the program that has a goal of creating 100 Millionaires by 2012.

Until next time, I invite you to:

Meet me at Facebook :

Follow me on Twitter :

Read my posts :

Watch my video channel :

Join me in pursuing financial literacy and alternative business opportunities with multiple income streams at aspenIbiz .

When not traveling for business or pleasure, Farrell operates his own internet marketing company and consulting firm from his home in the mountains of Colorado.

In closing, if you are a reluctant entrepreneur, a business owner, employed in an 8-5 job, or recently retired, yet still wanting to be plugged-in to the next wave of economic prosperity, you can join him in pursuing the lifestyle you want to live by following the aspenIbiz link provided above.

10 Reasons to Switch from W2 to 1099 Free Agent Entrepreneur by Mike Farrell with aspenIbiz

2010-01-06T15:45:00.002-07:00

Times are difficult for the man on the street ... Main Street to be precise, not Wall Street.

From the struggling small business owner to the disillusioned college graduate and near-to-being wiped-out retiree, there is a complete sense of disbelief.

Many are unemployed and facing the highest unemployment rates since the Great Depression.

If they could land a J.O.B. (some refer to this sort of work as Just Over Broke), it is usually for lower pay and part time.

Consequently many are reluctantly considering becoming an entrepreneur and switching status from a W2 to a 1099 thereby becoming a member of the Free Agent Entrepreneurial nation.

Being self employed offers independence and variable work hours yet as part of making this reluctant transition, many are asking why has this situation happened to them.

So that you can rewire yourself for success and understand it is not you that developed the problem ... you need to understand the forces at work creating the Free Agent Entrepreneur and that this is creating a chance for you to thrive ... not just survive.

Here are 10 Reasons driving the switch from W2 status to the ascendency of the 1099 Free Agent Entrepreneur.

1st – Corporate loyalty is dead. The decade of the 90s was full of downsizing; the 1st decade of this century was full of dot-com layoffs and busts in the telecom, housing, mortgage, and financial services industry. Loyalty to the corporation or institution is dead however loyalty to clients, colleagues, and projects, this loyalty is stronger than ever.

2nd – The workforce is adrift operating without a broad social contract. The life-long employment deal of the Company Man has disappeared however the bargaining nature of Free Agency, where individuals trade talent for opportunity, is alive and thriving.

3rd – While the traditional view has been, the best measure of economic success is growth with higher profits and larger workforces, bigger is not necessarily better. The Free Agent Entrepreneurs are redefining growth and the measure of success in terms of meaning or purpose in their life.

4th – On the surface, the Free Agency Economy may seem to make workers less secure. In reality, many Free Agent Entrepreneurs mitigate this risk by having multiple clients, multiple customers, and multiple projects finding themselves more secure than traditional W2 employees.

5th – Most parents try to balance work and family. Laws have been passed mandating family leave and corporations have responded with family-friendly initiatives however, these well-intentioned efforts have not alleviated the anxiety because one-size solutions don’t work. Many Free Agent Entrepreneurs are operating work at home or Internet based businesses to erase the boundary between work and family.

6th – Many potential Free Agent Entrepreneurs are afraid of missing the fabled water cooler. The isolation is real however Free Agent Entrepreneurs have formed an array of small groups and online communities using Social Media tools and webinar technologies to rebuild the social life of the workplace.

7th – Why should workers want to retire? Retirement came about in the 20th century and many are asking why does it have to be a fixture of the 21st century? Many older workers do not want to retire and are becoming Free Agent Entrepreneurs as a way to re-invent a new “older” age.

8th – Public education is in crisis as evident by more families opting to home school their children and many questioning whether formal schooling should be compulsory and if a college degree is even necessary. Many Free Agent Entrepreneurs value life-long learning and can obtain the education they desire as they are constantly attending online seminars and obtaining relevant education for their businesses … and that is spurring the growth of online universities.

9th – There is an assumption, that today’s organizations hold the power and that by “empowering” workers they will be “retained” in their cubicles. Due to the Global Financial Crisis and the other transformative events of the workforce, these “empowerment” efforts end up being laughable and patronizing. In a Free Agent Entrepreneurial Economy, you can inspire and challenge people but you can’t retain them.

10th – Having Americans get their health insurance through an employer is an arrangement built on a historic accident and underpinned by almost no economic or moral logic … witness the healthcare reform efforts and debate of 2009. Many are asking why we should have employer-based insurance coverage when fewer of us will have employers.

The GFC(Global Financial Crisis) is becoming a transformative event such that no matter how cherished the notions are about how precisely employees should behave, how companies must operate, or how economies can flourish, we have reached the tipping point and the Free Agent Entrepreneur is not going away.

No matter how much we dream about it, many of us prefer the security of a job and paycheck, and no amount of entrepreneurship propaganda will change human nature. Yet for both the doers and the dreamers, the Free Agent Entrepreneur is not just a style of work, it is also a way of life. Entrepreneurs zig when everyone else is zagging.

However you can find still enormous obstacles for small businesses. Taxes are out of control, credit remains tights, and banks are still stingy. Add to this list the expensive topic of healthcare and things can seem very gloomy.

Because of this, many are considering a Web based business where you leverage a suite of best practices, Internet software tools, education, and support inside a community of gifting colleagues thereby placing themselves at the center of the New Economy 2.0: The Ascendancy of the Entrepreneur.

Adhering to an approach where you essentially carbon copy success of leaders in the community ... you can stand on the shoulders of giants that proceeded you and this how you can successfully launch a home based business and start making money in a reasonable amount of time.

While you are putting the pieces of your business together, you are taking care of your personal training and development. Like anything else, no one really understands Internet promotion from the start. One reason is there is so much to understand. As you start, you need to consider “Reengineering You” which includes mastering of new skills, defining your brand, and ensuring you have a high level of energy and commitment to success.

Because you do not need large amounts of capital (as is frequently required in other business opportunities) you can generate among the best ROIs (Returns On Investment) as you operate an Internet Marketing business. The time is right to get started today. To use the slogan of a famous maker of sporting gear, “Just do it!”

You can find out more about these Top 10 Trends, Internet Marketing opportunities, and home-based businesses by reading updates that will be posted at my blog over the next few weeks and following my Tweets on Twitter.

As a former engineer with General Dynamics and management consultant at Deloitte ... I am on a mission to empower individuals by increasing their financial literacy, improve their ability for personal sustainability, and contribute to the program that has a goal of creating 100 Millionaires by 2012.

Until next time, I invite you to:

Meet me at Facebook :

Follow me on Twitter :

Read my posts at my Blog :

Watch me on my YouTube channel :

Join me in my venture at aspenIbiz as I pursue financial literacy and alternative business opportunities with multiple income streams.

When not traveling for business or pleasure, Mike operates his own Internet Marketing company and consulting firm from his home in the mountains of Colorado.

In closing, if you are a reluctant entrepreneur, a business owner, employed in an 8-5 job, or recently retired, yet still wanting to be plugged-in to the next wave of economic prosperity, you can join me in pursuing the lifestyle you want to live by following this aspenIbiz link.

You can watch my video update of this blog post here .

Top 10 in 2010 New Years Message from Mike Farrell with aspenIbiz

2009-12-31T15:03:00.003-07:00

It is New Year’s Eve and last week I said I would synthesize some of the Top 10 for 2010 lists I was reviewing and provide my own Top 10 List with trends spread across Business, Technology, and the Global Economy categories.

I did not realize how difficult this would be to do. I did prepare a Top 10 list however since my list is a summary of several Top 10 Lists, I will Tweet on Twitter over the next few days the original Top 10 lists and provide each of them as specific blog post so you can read them together at one time and learn a little more about these trends.

So here we go:

1st – The trend will be toward a more normal monetary policy ... meaning the time of 0% interest rates is over.

2nd – There is growing uncertainty over the ability of governments to fund large deficits ... meaning investors just don’t want to buy the debt being issued by governments, this is called sovereign debt. If there is so much supply and little demand, the price received by the government for the debt issued will be lower and therefore the yield or interest rate will be higher. This is another reason interest rates will not remain at 0% much longer and are going up.

3rd – It will be a jobless recovery and this is going to hurt ... on a global basis, it is estimated there will be 60M more people unable to find work than there were in 2009 ... ouch. Here is a great book to read, Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets ... you can find it on Amazon and it is on the bookshelves at Barnes and Nobles, and Borders.

4th – Green computing and energy efficiency will be the rage. Have you ever noticed the heat that your laptop generates? Now just image large office buildings and huge data centers ... computing has got to be more efficient energy wise.

5th – Cloud computing will be the trend in this coming year. This essentially means computing capability will be like a utility and large companies and government agencies will subscribe to this capability like we subscribe to water, power, and heating and air conditioning.

6th – There will be a huge increase in mobile computing, telecommuting, and virtual meetings.

7th – The upside down economy and turmoil is creating entrepreneurial opportunities as long as you can deal with a situation that is about as stable as lava flow.

8th – Demand is exploding for locally grown and made products which means more support for mom and pop stores. Many know they need to consume but they want to be also socially conscious.

9th – China will be central to every global issue in the coming year from the economy, to climate change, to nuclear diplomacy.

10th – After 130 flights spanning 3 decades, the last space shuttle is scheduled to fly in 2010. In addition to a crew of 5 or 6 well-trained pilots and astronauts, a US politician, a Saudi prince, a school teacher, several mothers of three-children, and a 77 year old man also hitched a ride into space. Until Orion, which is the Shuttle replacement and estimated to be ready to go in 2015, the US has outsourced to Russia the transport of astronauts to the International Space Station. I don’t know about you, but to me, this just seems weird ... I guess it is just a sign of the times.

You can find out more about these Top 10 Trends, Internet Marketing opportunities, and home-based businesses by reading updates that will be posted at my blog over the next few weeks and following my Tweets on Twitter.

As a former engineer with General Dynamics and management consultant at Deloitte ... I am on a mission to empower individuals by increasing their financial literacy, improve their ability for personal sustainability, and contribute to the program that has a goal of creating 100 Millionaires by 2012.

Until next time, I invite you to:

Meet me at Facebook :

Follow me on my Blog :

and on Twitter :

Watch me on my YouTube channel :

Join me in my venture at aspenIbiz as I pursue financial literacy and alternative business opportunities with multiple income streams.

When not traveling for business or pleasure, Mike operates his own Internet Marketing company and consulting firm from his home in the mountains of Colorado.

In closing, if you are a reluctant entrepreneur, a business owner, employed in an 8-5 job, or recently retired, yet still wanting to be plugged-in to the next wave of economic prosperity, you can join me in pursuing the lifestyle you want to live by following this aspenIbiz link.

You can watch my video update here of this blog post.

The Law of Focus … Ries & Trout, as explained by Mike Farrell with aspenIbiz

2009-12-24T00:48:00.002-07:00

The key activity is to “burn” your way into the mind of the customer or prospect by narrowing the focus to a single word or concept.

Federal Express was able to put the word “overnight” in the minds of its prospects because it sacrificed its product line and focused on overnight package delivery only.

When FedEx later got into home or business delivery in a few days, it created a new category and called it FedEx Ground.

Some go even further to solidify their position. Heinz owns the word ketchup. But they wanted to drive the point home with “slowest ketchup in the West”, preempting other suppliers of ketchup that were trying to emphasize thickness. This additional concept of a few more words around the key word is called a long tail and helps Heinz maintain a 50% market share.

The essence is to use your copy to narrow the focus so you become stronger. You can’t stand for something if you chase everything. Use market research where you define your target market … what they need … developing a product that meets these needs … and use copywriting to create a perception that you are best at solving their problem. Then test, monitor, and iterate to ensure you are perceived that way in the mind of your customer.

Here are a few more examples:

Crest … prevents cavities
Mercedes … engineers luxury passenger vehicles
Domino’s … delivers pizza to your home
Nordstrom … provides superior service by offering a personal shopper

Many Internet Marketing entrepreneurs are using techniques and tools like mind-mapping, keyword research, “Attraction Marketing Formula,” “Magnetic Sponsoring,” and MindMeister to position themselves and their products to solve the needs of the customer or prospect focusing on a single word or concept. They then use hypnotic writing skills to not emphasize why their offering is better, feature and function-wise, over a competitor’s offering but to develop a message that will seduce and persuade a customer to take the action you want.

Marketing is not a battle of products. It is a battle of focus for a single word or concept in the mind of their customer or prospect / lead.

You can find out more about Internet Marketing and home-based businesses by reading updates that will be posted at my blog over the next few weeks.

As a former engineer with General Dynamics and management consultant at Deloitte … I am on a mission to empower individuals by increasing their financial literacy, improve their ability for personal sustainability, and contribute to the program that has a goal of creating 100 Millionaires by 2012.

Until next time, I invite you to:

Meet me at Facebook :

Follow me on my Blog :

Watch me on my YouTube channel :

Join me in my venture at aspenIbiz as I pursue financial literacy and alternative business opportunities with multiple income streams.

When not traveling for business or pleasure, Mike operates his own Internet Marketing company and consulting firm from his home in the mountains of Colorado.

In closing, if you are an entrepreneur, a business owner, employed in an 8-5 job, or recently retired, yet still wanting to be plugged-in to the next wave of economic prosperity, you can join me in pursuing the lifestyle you want to live by following this aspenIbiz link.

The Law of Perception … Ries & Trout; as explained by Mike Farrell with aspenIbiz

2009-12-19T15:11:00.005-07:00

This post is a follow up to my recent tweet about The Law of Perception.

Many people think marketing is a battle of products. In the long run, they believe the best product will win.

Marketing people are preoccupied with doing research and getting the facts. They then analyze the data to make sure the truth is on their side, confident they have the best product and that ultimately, the best product will win.

It is an illusion. All that exists in the world of marketing are perceptions in the minds of the customer or prospect (lead or applicant). Their perception is the reality ... everything else is an illusion.

Marketing is a manipulation of those perceptions and creating illusions to solve a problem of the prospect or customer. They don’t care about how good “what you have” is, compared to the competition … they just want to know it will solve their problem and work for them.

Your entire marketing efforts should be to meet and exceed those perceptions. You have to study how those perceptions are formed and focus your marketing campaigns on meeting and exceeding those perceptions.

For example the three largest selling Japanese imported cars in America are Honda, Toyota, and Nissan. The Japanese automobile manufactures sell the same cars in the USA as they do in Japan. If it was a battle of products, you would expect, percentage wise, the same sales volume would hold true for cars sold in the USA as in Japan. Yet in Japan, Toyota sells 4X as many automobiles as Honda does. Why?

To answer that, let’s think about the following interchange. If you told friends in New York you bought a Honda, they might ask, “Was it a Civic?, an Accord?, or a Pilot?” If you told a friend in Tokyo you bought a Honda, they might ask “what kind of motorcycle did you buy?” In Japan, Honda is perceived as a motorcycle company and most people in Japan don’t want to buy a car from a motorcycle company.

Many Internet Marketing entrepreneurs are using techniques and tools like mind-mapping, keyword research, “Attraction Marketing Formula,” “Magnetic Sponsoring,” and MindMeister to position themselves and their products to solve the needs of the customer or prospect. They use hypnotic writing skills to not emphasize why their offering is better, feature and function-wise, over a competitor’s but to develop a message that will seduce and persuade a customer that what is offered will work for them.

Marketing is not a battle of products. It is a battle of perceptions.

You can find out more about Internet Marketing and home-based businesses by reading updates that will be posted at my blog over the next few weeks.

As a former engineer with General Dynamics and management consultant at Deloitte … I am on a mission to empower individuals by increasing their financial literacy, improve their ability for personal sustainability, and contribute to the program that has a goal of creating 100 Millionaires by 2012.

Until next time, I invite you to:

Meet me at Facebook :

Follow me on my Blog :

Watch me on my YouTube channel :

Join me in my venture at aspenIbiz as I pursue financial literacy and alternative business opportunities with multiple income streams.

When not traveling for business or pleasure, Mike operates his own Internet Marketing company and consulting firm from his home in the mountains of Colorado.

In closing, if you are an entrepreneur, a business owner, employed in an 8-5 job, or recently retired, yet still wanting to be plugged-in to the next wave of economic prosperity, you can join me in pursuing the lifestyle you want to live by following this aspenIbiz link.

The Law of the Mind – It’s better to be first in the mind than to be first in the marketplace … Ries & Trout explained by Mike Farrell with aspenIbiz

2009-12-15T19:44:00.007-07:00

This post is a follow up to my recent tweet about The Law of the Mind.

The law of the mind follows from the law of perception. If marketing is a battle of perception, not product, then the mind takes precedence over the marketplace.

For example IBM wasn’t first in the marketplace with the mainframe computer … Remington Rand was first with the Univac. But thanks to massive marketing efforts, IBM got into the mind first and won the computer battle early for mainframe computers.

Many entrepreneurs are tripped up by this law. Someone has an idea or concept they believe will revolutionize an industry however the problem is getting the idea or concept in the prospect’s mind.

The conventional solution is to throw money at marketing your product but this is not the way to do it. There is more money wasted in marketing than any other human activity … you can’t change a mind once a mind is made up.

This principle accounts for the mystery of the well-formed opinion that can almost instantly appear in a person’s mind. One day you have never heard of a person. The next day a person is famous … remember Susan Boyle singing “I Dreamed a Dream” on Britain’s Got Talent in April 2009 … they have gone viral. And, the “overnight sensation” is not an unusual phenomenon.

So what does one do? … well, you don’t just throw money at marketing your product.

You define your marketing and sales funnel. You launch your product, you get some buzz, and you monitor & test the reaction.

If the product is not obtaining traction, don’t throw money at more marketing but make a minor change to your offering, or your marketing campaign, and do a soft re-launch of your product and again, monitor and test the reaction.

Use tracking and web analytics software tools to determine if your product is getting 1st in the mind of your customers. If your product is not top of mind with your customer, make another change, do another soft re-launch, monitor, track, and measure again. Iterate through this activity until your product is 1st in the mind of your customers.

Let me conclude with another example … when the personal computer industry started, the Altair 8800 was first in the marketplace and competing products were introduced a short while later like the Commodore Pet, the Apple II, and the Radio Shack TRS-80.

Despite being 1st to market, the Altair 8800 is gone and the only surviving computer company of this group is Apple with an entire new line of products like the MacPro, MacBook, iPod, iPhone, iTunes and more … why did this happen? The other companies and products had a difficult name to remember and Apple became 1st in the mind of their target market.

Many Internet Marketing entrepreneurs are following a concept called “Split Testing” and using Web Analytics tools to measure the mindshare their product obtains in the marketplace. They must ensure their brand, You Inc and their product, is 1st in the mind of their customers … MLM Marketing is a battle of perceptions, not products.

You can find out more about Internet Marketing and home-based businesses by reading updates that will be posted at my blog over the next few weeks.

As a former engineer with General Dynamics and management consultant at Deloitte … I am on a mission to empower individuals by increasing their financial literacy, improve their ability for personal sustainability, and contribute to the program that has a goal of creating 100 Millionaires by 2012.

Until next time, I invite you to:

Meet me at Facebook :

Follow me on my Blog :

Watch me on my YouTube channel :

Join me in my venture at aspenIbiz as I obtain more financial education and pursue alternative business opportunities with multiple income streams.

When not traveling for business or pleasure, Mike operates his own Internet Marketing company and consulting firm from his home in the mountains of Colorado.

In closing, if you are a reluctant entrepreneur, a business owner, employed in an 8-5 job, or recently retired, yet still wanting to be plugged-in to the next wave of economic prosperity, you can join me in pursuing the lifestyle you want to live by following this aspenIbiz link.

The Law of the Category ... Ries & Trout as explained by Mike Farrell with aspenIbiz

2009-12-11T17:24:00.006-07:00

This post is a follow up to my recent tweet about The Law of the Category.

If you didn’t know the name of the second person to fly solo across the Atlantic, you are probably thinking you have no chance of knowing the third person to fly solo across the Atlantic ... but you do ... it is Amelia Earhart ... however she is better known as the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic – a new category.

Creating categories is counter to classical marketing thinking which is brand oriented. Forget the brand – think categories. Leads for your business are on the defensive because everyone is selling why their brand is better. But prospects have an open mind when it comes to categories because everyone is interested in what’s new ... few are interested in what’s better.

Let me conclude with a couple more examples. After Heineken, a high-priced (and imported) beer, became a success, Anheuser Bush created and promoted Michelob ... a high-priced domestic (a new category) beer and Michelob outsells Heineken by 2:1. Charles Schwab didn’t open a better brokerage firm ... he opened the 1st discount broker (a new category).

Many Internet Marketing entrepreneurs are using “MyStory” marketing to define their category and be first in their category with brand You, Inc. ... marketing is a battle of perceptions, not products.

You can find out more about Internet Marketing and home-based businesses by reading updates that will be posted at my blog over the next few weeks.

As a former engineer with General Dynamics and management consultant at Deloitte ... I am on a mission to empower individuals by increasing their financial literacy, improve their ability for personal sustainability, and contribute to the program that has a goal of creating 100 Millionaires by 2012.

Until next time, I invite you to:

Meet me at Facebook :

Follow me on my Blog :

Watch me on my YouTube channel :

Join me in my venture at aspenIbiz as I pursue financial literacy and alternative business opportunities with multiple income streams.

When not traveling for business or pleasure, Mike operates his own Internet Marketing company and consulting firm from his home in the mountains of Colorado.

In closing, if you are an entrepreneur, a business owner, employed in an 8-5 job, or recently retired, yet still wanting to be plugged-in to the next wave of economic prosperity, you can join me in pursuing the lifestyle you want to live by following this link to aspenIbiz .

Wealth Building Fundamentals seminar in Denver: an update from the front line by Mike Farrell with aspenIbiz - Free-Press-Release.com

2009-12-11T14:07:00.000-07:00

Wealth Building Fundamentals seminar in Denver: an update from the front line by Mike Farrell with aspenIbiz - Free-Press-Release.com

Conspiracy by the Rich for Your Money – Why We Need More Financial Education

2009-12-07T13:22:00.008-07:00

I am working on a series of articles about the conspiracy for your money.

These articles will range from how relevant the financial conditions were, at the time the book “The Wonderful Wizard of OZ” was written, to economic conditions we are experiencing today (including how similar the characters in the story are to the real life politicians, bureaucrats, and elites in and around DC and NYC today) … to another book that is getting very popular titled “The Creature from Jekyll Island – A Second Look at the Federal Reserve” including a discussion about the recent TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) and bailout of Wall Street where the question was who would eat the losses of the derivative trades placed by the large financial institutions.

Would the losses be taken by the financial services community that earned millions in fees each year of the debacle or would the losses be transferred to the taxpayer and their offspring, young, and yet-to-be born, who would go through their entire adult life burdened by heavy debts?

In the course of researching material, I noticed a recent WSJ article that highlighted the “Coinage Act of 1792” that prescribed the death penalty for any official who fraudulently debased the people’s money. The article’s author essentially wondered if the officials at the Federal Reserve Bank were getting nervous or just feeling lucky that they might only lose their job.

I trust these two items point out the need for life long learning, especially in the area of financial education, so that we increase our financial literacy and with the resulting empowerment, we will open our eyes to alternative wealth creating opportunities (including non-dollar denominated investments) and how this education and these opportunities will be the key to resolving the GFC, i.e. the global financial crisis, to paraphrase a quote from Steve Forbes.

I invite you to monitor my blog and watch for the series of articles about the conspiracy for your money, as well as alternative wealth creating opportunities.

Farrell, a former engineer with General Dynamics and management consultant at Deloitte … is on a mission to empower individuals by increasing their financial literacy, improve their ability for personal sustainability, and contribute to the program that has a goal of creating 100 Millionaires by 2012.

Until next time, I invite you to:

Meet me at Facebook :

Follow me on my blog :

Watch me on my YouTube channel :

Join me in my venture at aspenIbiz as I pursue financial literacy and alternative business opportunities with multiple income streams.

When not traveling for business or pleasure, Farrell operates his own internet marketing company and consulting firm from his home in the mountains of Colorado.

In closing, if you are an entrepreneur, a business owner, employed in an 8-5 job, or recently retired, yet still wanting to be plugged-in to the next wave of economic prosperity, you can join him in pursuing the lifestyle you want to live by following this aspenIbiz link .

The Law of Leadership ... Ries & Trout; as explained by Mike Farrell with aspenIbiz

2009-12-06T00:50:00.005-07:00

This post is a follow up to my recent tweet about The Law of Leadership - It is better to be first than it is to be better. An example of this law of leadership is illustrated by the following two questions. 1) What is the name of the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean? Answer - Charles Lindbergh. 2) Who was the second person to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean? Answer - Bert Hinkler. Bert was a better pilot than Lindbergh, he flew across the Atlantic faster than Lindbergh, and he consumed less fuel on his trip across the Atlantic than Lindbergh. Yet who has ever heard of Bert Hinkler?

The key issue in marketing is not convincing prospects that you have a better product or service. The key issue is to create a category you can be first in ... hence the interest in "MyStory" marketing because you are the category and you are first in your category. Marketing is a battle of perceptions, not products.

Let me conclude with a couple more examples.

Neil Armstrong was the first person to walk on the moon. Who was second?

George Washington was the first president of the United States. Who was second?

Gatorade was the first sports drink. What was second?

If you are not first in your prospect's mind, you are doomed to languish forever.

As an Internet Marketing entrepreneur, be sure you avoid the fate of Buzz Aldrin, John Adams, and some unknown sports drink that were all second and will languish forever.

You can find out more about Internet Marketing and home-based businesses by reading updates that will be posted at my blog over the next few weeks.

As a former engineer with General Dynamics and management consultant at Deloitte … I am on a mission to empower individuals by increasing their financial literacy, improve their ability for personal sustainability, and contribute to the program that has a goal of creating 100 Millionaires by 2012.

Until next time, I invite you to:

Meet me at Facebook :

Follow me on my Blog :

Watch me on my YouTube channel :

Join me in my venture at aspenIbiz as I pursue financial literacy and alternative business opportunities with multiple income streams.

When not traveling for business or pleasure, Mike operates his own Internet Marketing company and consulting firm from his home in the mountains of Colorado.

In closing, if you are an entrepreneur, a business owner, employed in an 8-5 job, or recently retired, yet still wanting to be plugged-in to the next wave of economic prosperity, you can join me in pursuing the lifestyle you want to live by following this aspenIbiz link.

Baby Boomers - Learn Video Marketing as Taught by Mike Koenigs and Used by Tony Robbins and Paula Abdul suggests Mike Farrell with aspenIbiz

2009-12-01T18:30:00.004-07:00

In this post, I am going to provide you an overview of video marketing, based on a course I recently attended and illustrate for you several forces that are converging to create an effective revenue generating opportunity.

I recently completed a 5 hour course on personal branding and video marketing. This course provided a unique perspective on what it takes to be successful with Internet Marketing. The following 5 topics were covered in the course:

- creating your personal brand;

- establishing yourself as an expert authority;

- conducting research on keywords and how to use them strategically;

- follow a 10X10X4 process to create your brand and market with video; and

- tips and techniques to easily scale, replicate, and produce results.

The strategies that were presented in this course are proven and cutting edge … it is easy to see why leading life strategist Tony Robbins, Paula Abdul formerly of American Idol, and physician & celebrity author of spirituality & mind/body medicine Deepak Chopra are all utilizing the skills and expertise of Mike Koenigs who was the course instructor and is Chief Internet Marketer of Digital Café Studios.

In addition to working with these high profile individuals, Koenigs’ approach is being sought and deployed by a revitalized sector of the economy … the entrepreneurial home-based business owner.

As a result of the current economic turmoil and financial crisis, we are seeing the convergence of several powerful forces:

- an economy that is re-inventing itself and increasingly using disintermediation;
- innovation and increased use of “search” on the internet; and
- resurgence of entrepreneurialism and home-based businesses.

The financial turmoil is causing businesses to restructure they way they operate and they are reducing capital intensive assets like brick and mortar sales locations. As a result, disintermediation is occurring where the middleman is cut out and there is an increasing use of the Internet and agents to market and sell products.

Innovation on the Internet is proceeding at a super-fast pace. Phone books are going away … print advertising is disappearing … at any time over 1.5B people are searching for something on the internet. When you buy something on the Internet, you want to buy from someone that you believe is an authority and someone that you can trust. As a result, there is innovation occurring on the Internet with the Web 2.0 technologies that include social networking, blogs, video-sharing channels, and micro-blogging … these are being used by agents and representatives with home-based businesses to become a trusted authority.

A recent worse-than-expected jobs report puts the official unemployment rate at a hair below 10% … highest in 26 years. If you add those people that are out-of-work longer than six months, that are working part-time but want a full-time job, and those who want a full-time job but have stopped looking, the unemployment rate goes up to 17% or close to 30M people.

Plus, many baby boomers are realizing that as a result of recent financial turmoil, they have gotten no where in the past 30-40 years with their investments, leaving them with no nest egg and the realization they will need to work longer.

However, without conventional jobs, many baby-boomers are turning entrepreneurial and establishing home-based businesses. They are using the Internet as a channel and they are learning techniques offered by Koenigs to develop personal brands and to utilize social media tools, with video marketing, to become trusted authorities as they perform as marketing and sales agents for products and services.

In addition, Koenigs firm has a Web 2.0 syndication service, called Traffic Geyser, that distributes over a million videos a week and by using his techniques you can generate top ranking, web traffic, and leads in minutes that will help you market products that will sell like crazy.

I trust this article has provided you with some insight several converging factors leading baby-boomers to establish home-based businesses and an overview of using personal branding and video marketing to create a trusted relationship with potential customers in order to increase sales results.

The entire article can be found here .

You can find out more about personal branding, video marketing, and home-based businesses by reading updates that will be posted at Farrell’s blog over the next few weeks which is at http://aspenIbiz.blogspot.com

Farrell, a former engineer with General Dynamics and management consultant at Deloitte … is on a mission to empower individuals by increasing their financial literacy, improve their ability for personal sustainability, and contribute to the program that has a goal of creating 100 Millionaires by 2012.

He favors a recent quote from Steve Forbes. Forbes says “financial education and the resulting empowerment are the keys to recovery from this ongoing financial crisis.”

In addition, Farrell invites you to:

Meet me at Facebook :

Follow me on my blog :

Watch me on my YouTube channel :

Join my venture at aspenIbiz as I pursue financial literacy and alternative business opportunities with multiple income streams.

When not traveling for business or pleasure, Farrell operates his own internet marketing company and consulting firm from his home in the mountains of Colorado.

In closing, if you are an entrepreneur, a business owner, employed in an 8-5 job, or recently retired, yet still wanting to be plugged-in to the next wave of economic prosperity, you can join him in pursuing the lifestyle you want to live by following the aspenIbiz link provided above.

You can watch my video update of this article here .

Get Motivated with Colin Powell and Rudy Giuliani in Denver: an update from the front line - Free-Press-Release.com

2009-11-23T20:32:00.000-07:00

Get Motivated with Colin Powell and Rudy Giuliani in Denver: an update from the front line - Free-Press-Release.com

CarbonCopyPRO’s Master Marketing Event in Las Vegas: an update from the front line by Mike Farrell with aspenIbiz - Free-Press-Release.com

2009-11-20T22:28:00.000-07:00

CarbonCopyPRO’s Master Marketing Event in Las Vegas: an update from the front line by Mike Farrell with aspenIbiz - Free-Press-Release.com

Energy Is No Longer Cheap ... If We Are at Peak Oil, What Is Next for Energy? by Mike Farrell aspenIbiz

2009-11-17T15:29:00.014-07:00

These are frustrating economic times. Stress and anxiety is high. We all want to know what is happening out there in our economy and the business landscape.

At times there is much conversation around about Peak Oil and high energy prices; and this has been discussed during a recent CNBC series Inside the Oil Trade.

In this blog post I am going to briefly introduce the Peak Oil concept as part of drilling down (no pun intended) on the Energy theme of the 5 Es evaluation framework. And, if we are at Peak Oil what happens next for Energy?

Straight from my previous article, "1 – Energy is no longer cheap. We have reached the point of peak oil … meaning easy stuff to find and drill has occurred. While more oil is being found, it will be very expensive to drill, pump, and distribute to customers so more and more of our budget will be used to pay for energy hence interest in alternative energy sources."

Peak Oil is the stuff easy to find, drill, pump, and transport to customers. With the easy stuff, we have seen oil prices in recent years range from mid teens to approx $150/barrel in 2008.

When we transition to the stuff harder to find, drill, pump, and transport to customers, just image where the prices will go … for sure much hirer than the $50-$60-$70 avg price per barrel over the past few years and the price of gas could increase from an average of $2.50 per gal to way past the $4.50 per gal we experienced in 2008.

If it is twice as hard to get the newer stuff and everything else stays equal, we could see prices at the pump of $7 - $8 - $9 per gallon.

And, many say it was last year’s $4.50 per gal ($150/barrel) that pushed the economy over the cliff and ignited the Great Recession we are now experiencing.

What happens to our economy and way of life when costs at the pump increase to the $7 - $8 - $9 per gal area? It could get ugly.

However, consistent with my theme of increasing our financial literacy to understand and pursue alternative investment strategies, in this article I will build upon the Energy theme of the 5 E-valuation framework I introduced in a previous article.

Work is underway at existing oil fields (in Saudi Arabia, Mexico, the North Sea, and Nigeria) to coax more oil out of these fields. Progress is good however every little bit of more effort to get oil out of these fields adds a little bit to the cost of the barrel of oil.

Here is a brief status as to the efforts underway to find more oil in 3 locations.

1) Brazil – recently announced oil find, the Tupi field, off the east coast of Brazil far out (up to 200 miles) in the Atlantic Ocean provides reserves (estimated to be about 10 billion barrels) about equal to Saudi Arabia. Will require wells in waters up to two mile deep and four – five miles of rock seabed floor. Estimates are that $175B will be needed to build and buy dozens of new drill ships and seagoing platforms, along with many dozens of support and servicing vessels. Will need to lay thousands of miles of pipelines on the seafloor, connecting massive complexes of subsea equipment that will sit atop hundreds of oil wells. Most likely a five year offshore development effort. The Chinese have arrived to finance much of this effort, in return, of course, for oil.

2) Tiber site in the gulf of Mexico was announced in early September and is a totally new find and different from the older, more mature fields of Pemex in Cantarell, Mexico. It is expected to produce over 1 B barrels of oil but it will take many years and a lot of dollars of investment (think alternative wealth creating strategies) … plus the wells are likely to be in water with wells at a world record depth of 35,000 feet. Next steps – approx two years to confirm and validate scope of potential; design and build an offshore platform at approx $1B; drill wells at $50M a pop; and approx $0.5B offshore floating production storage and offloading to tankers, facility. Sources of financing have not yet been announced.

3) Namibia – keep going east in the Atlantic from the find offshore of Brazil mentioned above and you will land on the shores of Namibia, a country on the Southwest Coast of Africa (just west of Botswana and just north of the country of South Africa) with a functioning democracy. This find is in its very early stages and the scope of the find, nor development investment, has been calculated. However scientist, geologists, and petroleum engineers working the area, are calling it a geologic analog to Brazils and expect investment and output to be at least equivalent. Obviously, much more work to be done here in Namibia.

In previous articles I wrote that example of alternative wealth creating strategies included energy assets that are inherently useful like oil rigs … things hard to build, difficult to replace, and costly to substitute … definitely not financial stocks, definitely not retail stocks, definitely not commercial property.

I trust this post and associated articles provide a little more insight as to why investments in energy players, producers, and engineering services represent alternative wealth creating strategies.

The entire article can be found here .

The entire article that describes the 5Es Framework can be found here .

I favor a recent quote from Steve Forbes. Forbes says “obtaining more financial education, and the resulting literacy and empowerment, will open our eyes to alternative wealth creating strategies, and these are the keys to recovery from this ongoing financial crisis.”

As a former engineer with General Dynamics and management consultant at Deloitte … I am on a mission to empower individuals by increasing their financial literacy, improve their ability for personal sustainability, and contribute to the program that has a goal of creating 100 Millionaires by 2012.

Until the next time, I invite you to learn more about me and my various activities by me checking me out at the links below.

Meet me at Facebook :

Follow me on my blog :

Watch me on YouTube : and

Join my venture at aspenIbiz as I pursue alternative wealth creating strategies and generate multiple income streams.

When not traveling for business or pleasure, Mike operates his own internet marketing company and consulting firm from his home in the mountains of Colorado.

Finally, if you are an entrepreneur, a business owner, employed in an 8-5 job, or recently retired, yet still wanting to be plugged-in to the next wave of economic prosperity, you can join me in pursuing the lifestyle you want to live (follow "join my venture" link above) in pursuing opportunities in the Internet Marketing industry.

You can watch my video update of this article here , and here2, and here3 . This update has a 3 part video series.

The Ultimate Success seminar in Denver: an update from the front line by Mike Farrell with aspenIbiz - Free-Press-Release.com

2009-11-15T19:19:00.000-07:00

The Ultimate Success seminar in Denver: an update from the front line by Mike Farrell with aspenIbiz - Free-Press-Release.com

Mike at aspenIbiz's Blog

2009-11-15T14:29:00.000-07:00

Mike at aspenIbiz's Blog: "ShareThis"

Personal branding and video marketing as used by Tony Robbins and Paula Abdul: an update from the front line. - Free-Press-Release.com

2009-11-15T10:58:00.000-07:00

Personal branding and video marketing as used by Tony Robbins and Paula Abdul: an update from the front line. - Free-Press-Release.com

Control These Rare Earths and You Control the Energy Technology and Economy of the 21st Century

2009-11-11T23:14:00.005-07:00

Rare Earths are several elements on the periodic table that find their way into the alternative energy industry, our aerospace and defense industry, and our modern high-tech lifestyle … without them, none of these industries or lifestyles will continue.

There is a demand-supply imbalance that is creating alternative wealth generating opportunities and this imbalance is being played out between Denver, Western Australia, and the Middle Kingdom.

There is one deposit that is a source of these rare earths in the USA but there are no processing facilities in the USA.

There is a recent find at Mt Weld in Western Australia and this is believed to be the largest rare earth deposit ever discovered on the planet.

The Middle Kingdom produces 95% of the world’s supply of rare earths, has 15,000 scientists and engineers dedicated to work in the world’s most modern rare earth facilities, and has a national goal to achieve “economic superiority” by leveraging these rare earths.

China also recently attempted to purchase both the deposit in the USA and the new deposit in Western Australia.

These practices and investments are putting the Middle Kingdom in the driver’s seat for the energy technology and economy of the 21st century.

The entire article can be found here .

I favor a recent quote from Steve Forbes. Forbes says “obtaining more financial education, and the resulting literacy and empowerment, will open our eyes to alternative wealth creating opportunities, and these are the keys to recovery from this ongoing financial crisis.”

As a former engineer with General Dynamics and management consultant at Deloitte … I am on a mission to empower individuals by increasing their financial literacy, improve their ability for personal sustainability, and contribute to the program that has a goal of creating 100 Millionaires by 2012.

Until the next time, I invite you to learn more about me and my various activities by me checking me out at the links below.

Meet me at Facebook :

Follow me on my blog :

Watch me on my YouTube channel : and

Join my venture at aspenIbiz as I pursue alternative wealth creating strategies and generate multiple income streams.

When not traveling for business or pleasure, Mike operates his own internet marketing company and consulting firm from his home in the mountains of Colorado.

Finally, if you are an entrepreneur, a business owner, employed in an 8-5 job, or recently retired, yet still wanting to be plugged-in to the next wave of economic prosperity, you can join me in pursuing the lifestyle you want to live (follow "join my venture" link above) in pursuing opportunities in the Internet Marketing industry.

You can watch my video update of this article here .

Understand one of the 5Es - the transfer of wealth and power from west to East that is underway

2009-10-31T17:33:00.007-06:00

In this update, I am going to describe in more detail one of the evaluation factors of the 5E-valuation Framework; it is “the transfer of wealth and power from west to East” in response to a recent CNBC series Trade the Globe.

I suggest that you understand the historic shifts now underway in the Asia Pacific region including China and how these shifts can create alternative wealth creating opportunities. The world is changing dramatically and the emerging markets will potentially provide some light at the end of the tunnel.

For example, from an auto market perspective, China and India caught and passed the US, the European Union, and Japan in 2008 as the world's largest auto market. And the gap has even widened during this recession ... while the heads of the US auto makers were in Washington pleading with the US Gov't for a bailout.

Cars don't run in a vacuum. They need roads, gasoline stations, oil, and gasoline ... this requires a lot of building materials and oil. Currently, each person in the US consumes about 25 barrels of oil per person per year. Oil consumption in China and India is tiny (about 1.5 per person annually in China and India's consumption barely registers on the scale) compared to the US consumption, so one can only imagine that as these economies grow and take up more of a share of the global economy, their oil consumption will rise exponentially.

Finally, China already has more than 160 cities (the US has 9 and the UK has 2) with populations of over 1 million. In China, they plan to build 97 new airports, 500 additional coal fired plants, and 30 nuclear plants over the next decade.

Imagine the commodities that are in demand (yet in short supply in China) to support this growth ... these include items such as soybeans, potash, copper, natural gas, uranium, bauxite (important in making aluminum), chromium (a steel additive), and manganese (important for making stainless steel).

I trust this post and associated articles provide a little more insight as to why emerging markets with a demand for things that are in short supply represent alternative wealth creating strategies.

The entire article can be found here .

The entire article that describes the 5Es Framework can be found here .

I favor a recent quote from Steve Forbes. Forbes says “financial education, and the resulting literacy and empowerment, will open our eyes to alternative wealth creating strategies, and these are the keys to recovery from this ongoing financial crisis.”

As a former engineer with General Dynamics and management consultant at Deloitte … I am on a mission to empower individuals by increasing their financial literacy, improve their ability for personal sustainability, and contribute to the program that has a goal of creating 100 Millionaires by 2012.

Until the next time, I invite you to learn more about me and my various activities by me checking me out at the links below.

Meet me at Facebook :

Follow me on my blog :

Watch me on YouTube : and

Join my venture at aspenIbiz as I pursue alternative wealth creating strategies and generate multiple income streams.

When not traveling for business or pleasure, Mike operates his own internet marketing company and consulting firm from his home in the mountains of Colorado.

Finally, if you are an entrepreneur, a business owner, employed in an 8-5 job, or recently retired, yet still wanting to be plugged-in to the next wave of economic prosperity, you can join me in pursuing the lifestyle you want to live (follow "join my venture" link above) in pursuing opportunities in the Internet Marketing industry.

You can watch my video update of this article here .

Historic shifts are underway on the New Silk Road where East meets West creating alternative investment opportunities.

2009-10-20T15:52:00.007-06:00

When conventional wisdom is not working, we need to consider alternative wealth creating strategies.

In this post, I provide a pointer to an article that provides an overview of a part of the world along the old Silk Road ... where we think of a network of traders in caravans loaded with silk, spices, flowers, jewelry, and gold ... and trade routes with the romance of the Indian Ocean, from Perth, Australia to Mombassa, Kenya along the coast of East Africa, with passages up and down the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea.

This region is called MENA (the Middle East and North Africa) where East meets West.

Much has changed in the region over the years and its reach has expanded such that the New Silk Road weaves through Damascus, Dubai, and Hong Kong with many points in between. China has passed the USA to become the Arab world's largest trading partner as it is in pursuit of the region's oil.

Growth is happening in a part of the world where water is scarce and it is difficult to grow food.

This region is providing wealth creating alternatives, in areas such as water, food, infrastructure, energy, and engineering services, as a result of recent political thaws and expanded trade with Asia.

The entire article can be found here .

As a former engineer with General Dynamics and management consultant at Deloitte … I am on a mission to empower individuals by increasing their financial literacy, improve their ability for personal sustainability, and contribute to the program that has a goal of creating 100 Millionaires by 2012.

I favor a recent quote from Steve Forbes. Forbes says “financial education, and the resulting literacy and empowerment, are the keys to recovery from this ongoing financial crisis.”

Until the next time, I invite you to learn more about me and my various activities by me checking me out at the links below.

Meet me at Facebook :

Follow me on my blog :

Watch me on YouTube : and

Join my venture at aspenIbiz as I pursue alternative wealth creating strategies and generate multiple income streams.

When not traveling for business or pleasure, Mike operates his own internet marketing company and consulting firm from his home in the mountains of Colorado.

Finally, if you are an entrepreneur, a business owner, employed in an 8-5 job, or recently retired, yet still wanting to be plugged-in to the next wave of economic prosperity, you can join me in pursuing the lifestyle you want to live (follow "join my venture" link above) in pursuing opportunities in the Internet Marketing industry.

You can watch my video update of this article here .

Use these 5Evaluation factors to escape a financial rip tide.

2009-10-14T23:51:00.018-06:00

This post provides an overview of a framework with 5 E-valuation factors that can be used as a way to understand the scope, magnitude, and drivers of the financial turmoil we are experiencing all around the globe.

A rip tide analogy is presented to illustrate that with education and literacy about the shoreline and the ebb and flow of currents, you can escape a rip tide pulling you out to sea.

The 5Es of the framework are:

- peak Energy has occurred;

- wealth and power transferring from west to East is underway;

- usa Empire is peaking;

- Experiment with paper money is running its course; and

- Economic cycle is over.

By using the 5Es framework as a source of education and literacy, you will have a way to ensure that you can stay calm and pursue alternative wealth creating strategies to not just survive the financial rip tide but thrive in these times of ongoing financial crisis.

The entire article can be found here .

As a former engineer with General Dynamics and management consultant at Deloitte … I am on a mission to empower individuals by increasing their financial literacy, improve their ability for personal sustainability, and contribute to the program that has a goal of creating 100 Millionaires by 2012.

I favor a recent quote from Steve Forbes. Forbes says “financial education, and the resulting literacy and empowerment, are the keys to recovery from this ongoing financial crisis.

Until the next time, I invite you to learn more about me and my various activities by me checking me out at the links below.

Meet me at Facebook :

Follow me on my blog :

Watch me on YouTube : and

Join my venture at aspenIbiz as I pursue alternative wealth creating strategies and generate multiple income streams.

When not traveling for business or pleasure, Mike operates his own internet marketing company and consulting firm from his home in the mountains of Colorado.

Finally, if you are an entrepreneur, a business owner, employed in an 8-5 job, or recently retired, yet still wanting to be plugged-in to the next wave of economic prosperity, you can join me in pursuing the lifestyle you want to live (follow "join my venture" link above) in pursuing opportunities in the Internet Marketing industry.

You can watch my video update of this article here .

Forex trading as a hedge to the potential demise of King Dollar

2009-09-29T00:34:00.005-06:00

I just published an article about using the Forex market as a hedge to the demise of the US Dollar. This post provides an overview of the article and several "low cost to no cost" yet effective ways to determine if this wealth creating strategy is for you.

The Forex currency market is a $4T market and the largest market on the planet. Due to the liquidity of the Forex market and the fact that this market is open 24 hours a day, the currency market should be considered by anyone pursuing alternative wealth creating strategies.

Also, the Forex currency market can offer a hedge as you can trade in currency pairs, such as the EUR USD (which is the value of the Euro currency compared to the value of the US Dollar currency) where as the USD weakens, the Euro currency strengthens.

There are also currency pairs, such as the GBP JPY (which is the value of the Great British Pound currency compared to the value of the Japanese Yen currency) providing investment alternatives in totally non dollar-denominated assets … a great way to hedge against the potential demise of the USD.

If you like this alternative but not sure where to begin … let me provide in this blog post a few pointers for consideration. The entire article can be found here .

Be aware that there is a lot of “junk” and misleading information on the web related to training and trading the Forex market. Be sure to do your homework before you go too far with any one training provider, trading platform, or broker.

A company that I found and use provides 35 free training lessons on their website and the lessons are of the highest quality. They also discourage you from signing up for their trading service until after you have reviewed the 35 lessons and paper traded their big lights and trend trading approach. This way you get a lot of free material and a low cost way to learn about the Forex market to determine if their approach will work for you.

Also, consider attending a training session.

I recently attended a very inexpensive seminar where the material was in an instructor lead format (which is rare these days) with significant face-to-face interaction however all of the materials were delivered during the seminar online from their website and associated blog. There was a significant amount of supporting materials such as detailed lessons and trading tips to read and study, pictures of trading screen setups highlighted on Flickr, and Youtube videos of previous training sessions that can be accessed in the future, as a refresher.

As a student, I was able to bookmark the material for access and review a future time.

The seminar was organized around 5 key topics:

- chart reading
- support and resistance
- parallel and inverse pair analysis
- writing trading plans; and
- entry management and verification

In addition, there were several topics on mindset, building confidence, and determining when there are good times to trade … and, when are times to avoid trading.

I trust this material has provided you insight and an overview … as you consider the Forex currency market as a hedge to the potential demise of the US Dollar.

One more suggestion would be to read an excellent “state-of-the union” message on the hubpage of the instructor that taught the seminar I recently attended. The "state-of-the-union" message can be found here .

You can find out more about the Forex marketplace and the Forex Early Warning seminar by reading updates posted periodically here on my blog.

As a former engineer with General Dynamics and management consultant at Deloitte … I am on a mission to empower individuals by increasing their financial literacy, improve their ability for personal sustainability, and contribute to the program that has a goal of creating 100 Millionaires by 2012.

I favor a recent quote from Steve Forbes. Forbes says “financial education and empowerment is the key to recovery from this ongoing financial crisis."

Until the next time, I invite you to learn more about me and my various activities by me checking me out at the links below.

Meet me at Facebook : www.facebook.com/mifarrell

Follow me on my blog: http://aspenIbiz.blogspot.com

Watch me at my YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/user/MikeAIB

Join my venture at: www.aspenIbiz.com

When not traveling for business or pleasure, Mike operates his own internet marketing company and consulting firm from his home in the mountains of Colorado.

Finally, if you are an entrepreneur, a business owner, employed in an 8-5 job, or recently retired, yet still wanting to be plugged-in to the next wave of economic prosperity, you can join me in pursuing the lifestyle you want to live (follow "join my venture" link above) in pursuing multiple streams of income and opportunities in the Internet Marketing industry.

Watch my video update of the article and this blog post here.

$200B of supply to be auctioned by US Gov't next week

2009-09-21T22:55:00.010-06:00

I saw this headline yesterday … $200B of supply to be auctioned by US Gov’t next week … and I thought of 3 things.

1) This is an interesting way for the US Gov’t to say they want to borrow $200B next week from anyone that will lend them that amount of money … overall, it is somewhat vague and potentially misleading. What the headline is saying is that the US Gov’t has $200B of debt instruments like Bills, Notes, and Bonds that they will supply, or provide, as collateral to anyone that will lend the US Gov’t $200B next week.

2) Next, I thought, “what do most people think when they see that type of headline?” … “do they really understand what is going on?”. I wrote an article several weeks ago titled “Decades of Debt and Dollar Doubts. It provides a brief overview to help you understand what all this debt issuance means in terms of annual run rate at $5T, 40% of budget is being used to pay interest on the debt, how inflation might happen, and the potential risk of the US Dollar not being the world’s reserve currency.

3) Finally, I thought, “where is this $200B going to come from?” “Who is going to buy all the debt instruments?” Many domestic buyers are underwater here in the USA and trying to pay off their personal and business debt, so most of the buyers of US Gov’t debt will be from overseas. In a report released this week, the TIC (Treasury International Capital) Long-Term Purchases amount for last month was significantly below both the forecast amount and the previous month’s amount … this means that at this time, overseas buyers are less interested in our debt.

With that much supply of debt instruments (meaning money to be borrowed) and what most likely will be lower demand for this debt, the offering prices for this debt will likely be low (just following basic laws of supply and demand). One of two situations is likely to occur next week when this debt is auctioned off. Either the yield amount will be increased to entice buyers or the Federal Reserve Bank will buy the debt.

If the yield amount is increased over several auctions, this would be an indication that higher interest rates are on the horizon. With higher interest rates, many think any type of economic recovery will be jeopardized.

If the Federal Reserve buys the debt, it will just add to the many facets of Dollar Doubts described in the article.

In the meantime, many are asking what they should do to protect themselves from what yet maybe another upcoming crisis. Many are seeking to obtain more financial education and literacy in order to be aware of, and understand, alternative wealth creating strategies that are outside of dollar-denominated assets or in things hard to build, difficult to replace, and costly to substitute … perhaps oil rigs, precious metals, or potash mines.

When you get a chance to read the article, I trust you will find it insightful. You can read the entire article here: http://www.amazines.com/article_detail.cfm/1053164?articleid=1053164 .

Until the next time, I invite you to learn more about me and my various activities by me checking me out at the links below.

Meet me at: www.facebook.com/mifarrell ;
Follow me here on my blog: http://aspenibiz.blogspot.com/ ;
Watch me at: www.youtube.com/user/MikeAIB ;
Join my venture at: http://www.aspenibiz.com/ ;

When not traveling for business or pleasure, Mike operates his own internet marketing company and consulting firm from his home in the mountains of Colorado.

Finally, if you are an entrepreneur, a business owner, employed in an 8-5 job, or recently retired, yet still wanting to be plugged-in to the next wave of economic prosperity, you can join me in pursuing the lifestyle you want to live (follow join my venture link above) in pursuing opportunities in the Internet Marketing industry.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fz7ycxabaYM .

WizeFEST 2009: an update from the front line

2009-09-16T15:06:00.008-06:00

I recently attended WizeFEST 2009 in Dallas, TX. It was a conference of traders for traders that are primarily users of trading tools offered by The WizeTRADE Group.

This event was held at the Sheraton Hotel and Convention Center in downtown Dallas where there were over 60 classes spread over several days on trading methods and techniques, several general sessions with inspirational speakers providing insight and offering guidelines to develop a balanced lifestyle, and an Exhibition Hall, open more than 10 hours a day, full of trading tools from The WizeTrade Group and several partners that were being constantly demonstrated by experienced traders and trainers.

Classes covered how-to trade in stocks, options, forex, and commodities. Several classes were conducted by former traders and trainers at The WizeTrade Group who have gone on and are now key contributors on CNBC (where they are frequently seen) on various segments throughout the trading day.

Speakers included Stuart Varney, business reporter and journalist of Fox News, and Chris Gardner, who was the key figure of the movie “Pursuit of Happyness”.

Several of the recently released products from The WizeTrade Group that had large crowds of people around their booth include 4xTracker (which seems to be everything of CommandTradeFX except the automatic trade execution) and WizeTrade Commodities (now offering over 50 tradable markets with new markets in the Grains, Financials, Metals, Indices, Energy, Meats, and the Softs). Alan Knuckman, formerly with The WizeTrade Group, made a guest appearance and conducted a class showing how “It ALL comes back to commodities” highlighting the updated version of WizeTrade Commodities.

This conference is outstanding every year yet somehow it continues to exceed the expectations set by previous year’s events. It is an amazing group of people … traders for traders … providing clarity through community.

As a former engineer with General Dynamics and management consultant at Deloitte, I am on a mission to empower individuals by increasing their financial literacy, improving their ability for personal sustainability, and to contribute to the program that has a goal of creating 100 Millionaires by 2012.

I favor a recent quote from Steve Forbes … Forbes says “financial education and empowerment from the pursuit of wealth creating strategies are the keys to recovery from this ongoing financial crisis”.

I invite you to:

Meet me at: www.facebook.com/mifarrell ;
Follow me here on my blog: http://aspenIbiz.blogspot.com ;
Watch me at: www.youtube.com/user/MikeAIB ;
Join my venture at: www.aspenIbiz.com .

When not traveling for business or pleasure, Mike operates his own internet marketing company and consulting firm from his home in the mountains of Colorado.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1CPvGivZb0

2009-08-27T23:09:00.004-06:00

I recently decided to expand the scope of my business activities.

It was clear to me that our current economic crisis was demanding a complete "reset" on all levels in order for us to catch the next wave of economic prosperity.

Having worked through 4 generations of technology, I knew the next "new new" thing was emerging in the Web 2.0 technologies and they would be the primary playing field for next generation business opportunities.

So I began to research a number of opportunities ... and I reached out to like-minded individuals to obtain ideas and compare notes.

What I began to see was that the Direct Internet Marketing industry was becoming an early adopter of the new Web 2.0 technologies. I also observed that with its reach, the Internet Marketing industry was going to be a driver of new business models, new opportunities, and new wealth ... hence being one of the key drivers of the global "reset" and next wave of economic prosperity.

Plus, these opportunities combined the freedom and upside of entreprenurial businesses and a community of like-minded individuals.

There were several key evaluation factors that I used in making my decision to include Direct Internet Marketing as a key part of my business activities. These include:

a relevant, timely, and in-demand product offering;
the marketing and selling system with a state-of-the-art platform and enabling technologies;
the ongoing education and training;
the community; and
the compensation plan.

I hope you find the above information useful and I do intend to share more. Until the next time, I invite you to learn more about me and my various activities by checking out my links below.

Have a great day and more later,

Mike Farrell

Meet me here: www.facebook.com/mifarrell

Join me here: