Business:)

The land of opportunity?

When questioned about the enormous income inequality in the United States, the cheerleaders of America’s unfettered markets counter that everybody has a shot at becoming rich here. The distribution of income might be skewed, but America’s economic mobility is second to none.

That image is wrong, and these days it abets far too many unfair policies, including cuts in essential programs like Head Start or Medicaid. The poor, we are told, can use their own bootstraps. President Bush got away with huge tax cuts for the rich in part because nonrich Americans, who make up most of the population, believe everybody has a chance of making it into the club. Unfortunately, the American dream is not that broadly accessible.

Recent research surveyed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a governmental think tank for the rich nations, found that mobility in the United States is lower than in other industrial countries. One study found that mobility between generations — people doing better or worse than their parents — is weaker in America than in Denmark, Austria, Norway, Finland, Canada, Sweden, Germany, Spain and France. In America, there is more than a 40 percent chance that if a father is in the bottom fifth of the earnings’ distribution, his son will end up there, too. In Denmark, the equivalent odds are under 25 percent, and they are less than 30 percent in Britain.

America’s sluggish mobility is ultimately unsurprising. Wealthy parents not only pass on that wealth in inheritances, they can pay for better education, nutrition and health care for their children. The poor cannot afford this investment in their children’s development — and the government doesn’t provide nearly enough help. In a speech earlier this year, the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, argued that while the inequality of rewards fuels the economy by making people exert themselves, opportunity should be “as widely distributed and as equal as possible.” The problem is that the have-nots don’t have many opportunities either.

From:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/13/opinion/13fri2.html

4steps to minimize risk of failure in a small business

Step 1: Analyze your competition. Duration: 1 day

Detailed market research really is a whole other post by itself and is beyond the scope of this article, but for basic purposes use SEOBook.com’s keyword suggestion tool to look for top searches. Find several key phrases that people are searching for, then head over to Ask.com and use their “expand your search” and “narrow your search” tools to find what else people are typing in. You can also use Google’s Keyword Tool for more suggestions.

Take the top 3-5 phrases and take a look at the ads that show up on Google’s Sponsored Links. Read their salesletters and note down the good parts, and figure out how you could improve on their offers.

• Can you offer more credibility with your product?
• Can you provide a better offer than they do?
• What about your pricing? (Don’t slash your prices to undercut the competition; instead, figure out how you can provide more value for the same price by giving bonuses and such)

Now is a great time to start building your swipe file as well.

Step 2: Set up the website for your product or service. Duration: 1-2 days

Step 2: Set up the website for your product or service. Duration: 1-2 days

Start writing your salesletter by using the bits and pieces you like from your competitors. Rewrite it so you’re not outright plagiarizing their work. Your salesletter should be about 300-700 words long and must be able to:

• Attract your customer’s attention
• Gain their Interest
• Build their Desire for the product
• Inspire them into Action

At this stage, you don’t need to hire a copywriter just yet. This four step process, AIDA for short, is a fundamental copywriter’s formula for a good salesletter and should do for now

Step 3: Set up your AdWords account and test your product. Duration: Less than 1 day

Once you’ve signed up for Google AdWords and put in your credit card information, set up a new campaign and create two ads to test. Write your ads so that it highlights your differentiators. Write a compelling headline, use the first 35 characters to highlight the main benefit for your customer and the second 35 characters to state your offer.

Use keywords that have high commercial intent (to determine this, use Microsoft’s AdLabs tool). It’s ideal to aim for the first or second position with your ads; however, if your keyword is the slightest bit competitive expect to pay at least a dollar per click for positions 1-3. This could get very expensive, and since we don’t know what type of ads work just yet, we’ll save this for when we’ve actually gathered enough data.

For our test purposes, set your maximum CPC at $1.00. You’ll only pay approximately half of that — that way, your $500 budget will get you around 1,000 visitors which should be sufficient data during this test period.

Step 4: Test, tweak, and then test some more. Duration: 5-7 days

Take your overall budget and spread that out over 5 days to determine your campaign’s daily budget. At the end of each day, look at your click-through rate for each of the ads. If one ad seems to be pulling much better than the other, delete the less-effective ad and use the one that gets more clicks. If you created a different campaign for search network and campaign network, switch all your ads to the one that pulls better.

If your product doesn’t seem like it’s bringing in “sales” (you’ll know through Google Analytics), don’t give up yet.

It might be that your ad is irrelevant to your product. If it’s not the ad, then maybe the salesletter is the problem and you might have to test a different offer. Maybe have a better guarantee (“we’ll refund your money and pay you an extra $50 if you don’t like it” is a great guarantee) or include more bonuses. And if it’s not the offer, maybe you need to sell a different product altogether.

It’s only once you’ve gone through your ads, your offers, and your products will you be able to determine whether that particular market will bite. If the market is the problem, then maybe your business idea isn’t all that great and you need to move on to the next one.



Page: http://www.geekpreneur.com/4-simple-steps-to-minimize-failure-for-your-next-business-idea

Think and grow rich - Accurate thinking

Questionnaire

1. Why is it a surprise that people take time to learn the rules for accurate thinking?
-Because the rules are really clean and simple

2. Accurate thinking is bases on two fundamentals - what are they?
-Inductive reasoning & deductive reasoning

3. With inductive reasoning what do you act on?
-Hypothesis or what you asume the facts to be

4. With accurate thinking you have to separate fact from...
-Fiction

5. Facts should be separated into classes - name them
-Important facts & unimportant facts

6. What is an important fact and how can I distinguish from an unimportant fact?
-An important fact is any fact which will aid you to any extent whatsoever & all other facts as far as you are concerned are unimportant and you should waste no time with them

7. Most opinions are without value because they are based on...
-Pride, prejudice, beliefs, poor evidence, inccurance, etc.

8. What was the sentence with the President Woodrow Wilson?
-"I cannot answer your question because I have no facts on whichdebased on opinion"

9. The more succesful a person is the less he is inclined to...
-Express wild and justify opinons about anything

10. What was the question to ask to help someone being misled by unsound opinions from people?
-How do you know?

11. As your birthright you were given the privilege of controlling...what?
-Your own thoughts

12. What were the rules to follow that if you memorise them give you top rating as a thinker?

a) Never accept the opinions of other people as being facts until you've learn the sources of the opinons and satisfied yourself of their accuracy
b) Free advice will bear the closest of examinations until it is safe. This advice is worth exactly what it costs
c) Alert yourself inmediately if you hear anyone speaking about...
d) In asking others for information do not disclose to them what you wish the information be
e) Remember that anything that exists anywhere throughout the universe is capable of prove
f) One of the great unexplainable miracles consists in the fact that both truth and falsehood carry with them a silent invisible meaning of identifying themselves as true
g) Follow the habit of asking: How do you know? when anyone makes a statement you cannot identify as true

13. What was the final word of warning? What is the greatest handicap in the business of accurate thinking?
- Study yourself carefully and you may discover that your own emotions are your greatest handicap in the business of accurate thinking


There are a few answers a could not get because I didn't understood the man :(

The Golden Rule

If two parties are on opposite sides of a contract and they want to reach a win-win resolution, that means that they must observe the Golden Rule during negotiations. Specifically, both parties must treat each other fairly and be completely honest. They also need to communicate openly and not withhold relevant information. There should be full disclosure of any facts relevant to the transaction.

Respect is one of the most important elements of treating people well. Both parties must respect each other’s time, needs, finances, family situation, and any other circumstance that may affect the negotiations. As part of showing respect, each party should treat the other party professionally and conduct themselves professionally. There should never be anger or raised voices.

Both parties should be committed to a resolution that will be agreeable to both of them. Neither party should ever look for ways to take advantage of the other party. Before the negotiations start, they should both agree to a method of resolving an impasse on an important issue. To avoid the expense and delay of litigation, they should agree to have the issue decided by a mediator. They should also agree to abide by the mediator’s decision.

Both parties should greet other with courtesy, and they should be on time for meetings. They should also abide by any time limits set for the meetings, but agree to schedule a follow-up meeting if they still have issues to resolve. They should keep confident any information that either party wants to keep confident. Once they reach an agreement, they should reduce the agreement with complete accuracy.

At the end of the meeting, they should shake hands and thank the other person for their time and courtesy. The Golden Rule is so simple. It is also appropriate in any situation, even in business.

Videos about UK and the Euro

Marketing Judo Book

I finished reading the marketing Judo book. I think it is really interesting and useful for entrepeneurs and people with ideas to start a business by their own, it shows you a lot of things that even when they seem pretty obvious, are common mistakes of business entrepeneurs. The most important points of the book for me are:

*Get the basics right- this is probably one of the most important points of the book. "Getting the basics right" involves believing in your business, having patience to let your business grow, knowing your opponents weaknesses and your own strengths, etc.

*Everywork is important- You have to pay the same attention to everydetail, all the people who contributes to run your business are needed, for example, if you have a restaurant, to succed, you need to have as good service as good food.

*There are no quick fixes or shortcuts in creating and building a new business or bran in today's fast changing world- You need a lot of patience to let your business grow, because it will take time and a lot of effort, don't think that you'll be a millionare in a second.

*Use your common sense- As it says in the book, this probably sound stupid, but if you pay attention there are thousands of businesses and companies not doing this. As they grow they forget their initial aim and it suddenly makes them fail. Just keep an eye on people's needs and try to satisfy them.

*Identify big compannies and work out how you can do what they can't- When you are a big company, your reactions are slower, because you need more time to notice what's happening and most of all big compannies make their standarts lower to expand (when their standarts are lower, they stop satisfying people at 100%), other problem with big compannies is that they lose the familiar touch with their customers.

*You have to believe that nothing is impossible- If you don't believe in the capacity of your own business, who will do it? You have to be completely convinced of that your business can be succesfull and of that you can achieve your goals.

*You can appear bigger than you are using your brains not budgets- One good example I saw in the book was looking for good points to settle your business, like if you are going to start a restaurant brand (even a local brand) people is more alike to know and try it if you are next to recognized brands (McDonalds, Pizza Hut) or in important places (Airports, International places like Disneyland).

*Laurels could also become wreaths if you rest on them too long- Don't stop taking care of your business when you succed, because the market is always changing and you have to keep improving and innovating, otherwise someone can play judo with you.

*Using your size to your advantage, Fit, Fast and Focused

A good example of Marketing Judo Succes are Walkers the crisps. They have the characteristics of the best small company because they don't rest in their laurels even when they are in the top of the market. They keep innovating with new flavours and ways to get publicity and promotion and they preserve their origins even when they are owned by a huge company (Pepsi).