There were a few reasons I made the trip:

1. Latin America is an extremely pleasant place (if you know where to go)

2. It has a dynamic, growing economy (Many Fortune 500 corporations are getting the majority of their growth from regions like Latin America and Asia as opportunities for growth in North America and Europe diminish.)

3. The US itself is becoming “Latinized.” (One of of five Americans is now of Hispanic origin. Not only that, but the Latin population in the US is growing rapidly. For example, one of my colleagues who has a substantial business selling satellite dishes in the US makes 10% of his sales in Spanish to US residents.)

One of my most surprising experiences on the trip was the discovery that I’m a Libertarian.

Let me explain…

• I’ve always been highly suspicious of big organizations – Big Business, Big Government, Big Media – and the more experience I have, the more convinced I am that these are the most dangerous and destructive elements of our society.
• I’ve always believed in and been an active champion of free enterprise. Real free enterprise. People risking their time and money to provide services, not big banks and big corporations getting massive tax-payer funded handouts to subsidize their inefficiency, incompetence and inherent corruption.
• I’ve always been against any war that is not immediately and absolutely necessary in the service of real (not manufactured) self defense. Having family and friends who’ve suffered through the real horror of combat, I have no illusions about what it means to put men in harm’s way. In my opinion, people who cheerlead for war are idiots at best and demons at worst.

It turns out all these things add up to me being a Libertarian. The funny thing is I had to discover this in Guatemala of all places at a fascinating institution of higher learning called the Universidad Francisco Marroquin (UFM) where I had the pleasure of meeting many faculty members, administrators, and even the Executive President, a remarkable individual named Giancarlo Ibárgüen.

UFM, which just turned 40 years old last year, was the brainchild of young Guatemalans who went to study in the US and came back inflamed with a passion for free markets, liberty, and personal responsibility and the thinking behind these philosophies.

They wanted to create a home for pro free market, pro liberty thinking in education in Guatemala as a way to leverage their country into a better economic position. Actually, I’m understating it a bit. Their long term goal is to lead Guatemala to becoming “the next Hong Kong.”

There are few things more inspiring (to me at least) than a huge and worthy goal. Back when UFM was founded, Guatemala was infused with Leftist propaganda. According to Cuban and Soviet-funded thought leaders, Guatemala’s salvation lay in the direction of Socialism (i.e. Big Government, Big Centrally Controlled Businesses, and a Big Media to keep everyone in line.)

Here’s the strange thing about all this…

When I think of all the colleges and universities I’ve had dealings with (I attended one of the Ivies and have lectured at the business schools of Columbia University, MIT, and NYU), I can’t think of one – not one anywhere in the US – that puts the issues of free markets, liberty and personal responsibility front and center.

Instead, from Day One, students receive an indoctrination in whatever the political correctness of the day happens to be. No values, no search for truth, just systematized conformity with whatever is expedient at the present moment.

Interesting, huh? And in exchange for that “service” countless American students and their families are voluntarily (and I say inadvisedly) shouldering student loan commitments that can hardly fail to become anything less than financially crippling.

Now that I’m back home…

I’m still running businesses (including developing a virtual System Seminar that will cost attendees only a fraction of the live one), but by design I have a lot more free time than I used to.

One of the things I’ve been doing with this free time is sharing a lot of information with my System Club members about topics outside the strict confines of Internet marketing “how to.”  It seems to be working for them.

One of the Big Topics of our day is medical “care.”

50% of all the personal bankruptcies that occur in the US are caused by medical problems and, shockingly, 50% of these cases are individuals and families who had medical insurance. I’ve seen more than one friend financially destroyed by the Medical Industrial Complex. Who can calculate the extent of the financial damage this “industry” has caused the US?

Medical costs have been rising at an annual rate of 9% a year (not unlike college costs). Does the average person get a 9% raise every year? I don’t think so. Meanwhile, the quality of medical service in the US is pathetically bad even for people paying full fees for everything, something I experienced over and over again when I had my knee problem two years ago.

Is there any sign of it getting better? No and government “solutions” threaten to make an already bad situation much worse.

One possible source of a solution, free enterprise, has been studiously ignored by – you guessed it – Big Government, Big Business and Big Media. You know, “free enterprise” that thing that America is supposedly based on?

Here’s an intriguing interview conducted by Lew Rockwell who for my money has one of the most useful and interesting web sites on the Internet.

In this interview, Rockwell interviews a doctor who has returned to free market principles in medicine, thereby lowering his charges to patients and improving service, and is inspiring a quiet revolution among physicians in his home city.

Food for thought about an issue that effects every person and small business in this country (and there’s an important Internet marketing angle to the story too!):

Lew Rockwell’s interview with G. Keith Smith MD about free market medicine.

More info about the Surgery Center of Oklahoma and its unique business model.

Note: Why discussion on this blog is closed

This analyst is loud and brash, but hang on. He’s got the goods on these crooks and all the evidence needed to stop them in their tracks. Watch and share. (Audio volume alert.)

Keep it simple folks

I never cease to be amazed, and annoyed, by how complicated most software is to learn.

I just don’t get it.

Why should any software be any more complicated than using an ATM machine? No one needs a manual or tutorial to get cash from an unfamiliar ATM machine even though you’re handling some pretty serious data – cash!

Yet just about any software program, and even many websites, require training to use.

OK, end of rant on that point other than to say that providing functions and features doesn’t mean squat if people can’t figure them out and actually use them (Are you listening Microsoft?)

The hazards of giving

Actually,this article is only peripherally about software programs, it’s really about the “software” of charitable giving.

When there is a disaster locally, or even halfway around the world, the natural inclination of many people is to help in some way.

That’s a good thing. That impulse is why the human race still exists.

However, how to help effectively is not so easy. Here are two things that in my opinion either don’t help at all or help a lot less than you’d hope.

First, here’s something that does not help…Packing up stuff from your basement, attic, and closets (mostly clothes) and dropping them off at an emergency collection center.

Here’s the reality of that. During emergencies there is almost always a shortage of storage space and manpower, not to mention the ability to deal with extraneous matters.

In every case I’ve seen, un-asked for bundles of clothes, T-shirts, teddy bears, and other “feel good” donations actually cause more problems than they solve. They take up space, they take up manpower to sort and they take up the mental bandwidth of people who already have too much on their plate.

Donated clothes often end up molding away somewhere and are ultimately taken away by people who are in the business of packaging random clothing donations in bulk and exporting them to the Third World where they are sold by the bale. Probably not what the donor intended and definitely not what the group in need needed.

What about cash?

Cash is better because the people on the ground can use it to buy what they actually need, assuming of course what they need is available for sale which is a big assumption.

But there’s a problem with cash, especially when you give it to what I call the mega-charities.

Without starting a long diatribe, because if I start I may never stop, I invite you to Google and see what groups like the Red Cross did with the donations they received after 9/11 and after the New Orleans levee failures and Gulf Coast storm damage.

I guarantee you will be shocked.

I also guarantee you will be shocked at the salaries of the executive directors of some of the mega-charities, the percentage of the money they receive that goes to “overhead”, and the percentage of the money they receive that goes to “promotion.”

Add that to the fact that most of these groups reserve the right to take money you give for Cause A and redirect to Cause B and you have a situation where when you give a $1, you’re lucky if thirty to as little as 5 cents is actually spent the way you hope.

The mega-charities have well oiled promotion machines, put political people on their boards, and for the most part get a free pass from the news media (except for when they get caught red-handed doing “funny” things with donations…which usually happens a few months after every high profile disaster they’re involved in and is only reported in the back of the newspaper.)

Meanwhile, there are small, highly effective, locally based grassroots help groups that are all but starved of meaningful assistance. Yet somehow these folks, without the oak paneled offices and high six-figure director salaries, find a way to do the heavy lifting of helping folks in grave need after disasters.

It’s time to dis-intermediate the world of giving

People give to the mega-charities because mega-charities have an overwhelming advantage over small, grassroots groups when it comes to getting media attention.

What, if anything, can be done about this?

Well, if the music industry could be dis-intermediated and the stock brokerage industry could be dis-intermediated and just about every industry you can think of these days can be dis-intermediated, then why not charitable giving?

The word “dis-intermediate” means to remove intermediaries, also known as middlemen. The middleman business is a great business – especially for middlemen –  but it doesn’t serve the consumer or, in this case, people in need.

The question is how do you cut the mega-charity middlemen out of the supply chain? Or at least reduce their cut to a reasonable amount and redirect resources to where they are truly needed with a minimum of waste.

The Internet to the rescue again

When you spend time in relief efforts as I have, you always find two things:  a shortage of actionable information and a shortage of the things people actually need where and when they are needed.

For example, after the recent catastrophic flooding in the Catskills, folks who lost everything showed up needing crowbars, hammers, face masks, work gloves and other basic tools to remove the waterlogged sheetrock from their houses so they could begin the process of rebuilding before mold set in.

What they got, initially at least, were bales and bales of T-shirts.

Maybe this kind of thing was unavoidable in the pre-Internet era, but it’s absolutely crazy today.

A simple system for your examination

This month we created a simple website to help address this problem.

Users can go to the site, select the region they want to help, drill down to the town and/or organization they want to help, and read the EXACT items that a specific group on the ground needs right now today.

On the backend, relief groups can easily add to their list of needs, delete items after they have been provided, change the number of a given item that’s needed, and even –  because this does happen due to inefficiencies in the current way of doing things – list their surpluses. (Sometimes a group that has plenty of food will be sent pallets of macaroni, for example, while another group 10 miles away is facing an acute food shortage.)

Each group gets its own account which gives them their own page on the site where they can list their contact info and update their current needs. There is a provision for adding media, like video and audio, to the page as well.

These pages have multiple functions:

1. The group can use its page to help keep their own records straight. An online system beats scraps of paper and memory.

2. If a group doesn’t have a website, and many still don’t, they can use their page to communicate their needs to their volunteers, donors, and their local news media.

3. If a group does have a website, but lacks the in-house sophistication to post the details of their ever-changing needs, they can use the system and link to it from their homepage.

The first phase of this operation is to reach out to local organizations, get them listed, and train them on how to manage their public needs list. We’ve designed the software so that the training process can be accomplished over the telephone in five minutes or less.

The second phase is to promote the website. So far, we’ve seen that people with influence, whether in the media or through their roles in various community organizations, instantly see the value of a simple, common sense-based information clearinghouse like this and are all too happy to spread the word.

If you’re involved in relief activities, or know someone who is, they might find this model worthy of study.

You can check it out here (and if you’re inclined to help any of these groups, all the better):

Click here to see the system in action: http://www.Rebuild123.org

- Ken McCarthy

P.S. This site is just 15 days old and we expect to be listing many more organizations and regions as the days go on. Information on how to have your group listed is at the bottom of the home page. This site is focusing on New York State, though we do plan to add info about Vermont and Massachusetts as well since these regions are so close to each other,

I haven’t kept count, but this month alone with my various Internet properties, it adds up to close to 5 million.

As you can imagine, we’re keen to keep my accounts and relationship with my mailing vendor AWeber in good order. Besides the fact that we’ve been using them for years and years, they also happen to have a very easy-to-use interface, a very useful set of built-in tools, and a very affordable service.

So how can you screw that up?

The first answer is by doing something wrong like spamming. That can and will – and should –  get you shut down in a flash.

But can you get your account shut down by accident?

To paraphrase the current rent-free occupant of the White House…Yes you can.

Here are two absolutely innocent ways to go wrong:

Method #1. You see a website you’re really like and you want to tell your subscribers about it. Unbeknownst to you, the owners of the domain the website runs on have managed to terminally piss off AWeber at some point.

When you send your first test e-mail (and you do send test e-mails I hope before you blast your entire list!), the AWeber system will detect that you are mailing on behalf of a domain they consider a bad player and they will take note.

Method #2. Let’s say new hire a new writer/editor for one of your sites and he is new to aweber.

He notes the signature and the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the e-mails your publication sends. So far so good.

Because he is diligent, he manually appends the signature and the unsubscribe link of the last e-mail he received from the last issue on the end of the e-mails he sends out on your behalf.

How big a problem could that be?

Answer: A HUGE problem.

Here’s why…AWeber creates a unique unsubscribe URL for every individual subscriber to your list. That way, when subscribers click on the unsubscribe, they are taken straight to their own personal control panel where they can either change their subscription or unsubscribe entirely.

What happens if there are TWO unsubscribe links and one of them, inconveniently the one that appears first, is the one your newly hired writer/editor copied and pasted from an e-mail sent to him?

Can you see the problem? People who want to unsubscribe will click on the  wrong link, think they have unsubscribed, then continue to get e-mails they, for whatever reason, no longer want to receive.

And no matter how often they click on that link and no matter how many e-mails they receive and click on the link, they will never be able to unsubscribe.

This is a near perfect recipe for pissing off a subscriber… Actually LOTS of subscribers. And that is not a good thing to do.

To make matters worse, no matter how many times your writer/editor re-subscribes to the publication he’s writing for, he will always be unsubscribed by somebody or other within minutes of sending out the latest mailing and will never see the problem.

Get it?

Here’s the rub:  e-mail scammers sometimes try to abuse systems like aweber by signing up for an account and DELIBERATELY inserting a bogus unsubscribe link.

Whether you do this by accident or as part of a nefarious scheme, aweber has no choice but to shut your account down to protect their sterling fourteen year record of being a reliable source of  legitimate e-mail broadcasts.

It’s something I’ve never  experienced personally or even heard about in 18 years of sending e-mails, but as the old saying goes, there’s a first time for everything – and guess who learned this one the hard way  :-)

But all’s well that ends well.

Fortunately, I have a long, deep and very public track record so we were able to sort things out once we got to the bottom of what happened, but for someone newer, without an established record, this might have been a very difficult thing to resolve.

Moral of the story: Pay attention to your outgoing e-mail, even if it looks OK on first glance.

- Ken

P.S.  We discuss important, but non-glamorous, issues like this every month on our private Tech Talk call for members of the System Club.

If you think about it, it’s actually very hard to find detailed, comprehensive, unbiased conversations about the realities of the tools and technology that Internet businesses run on.

Everyone wants to ram the latest sure-fire, gee-whiz, gotta-have-it mystery tool down your throat in this month’s latest “Launch.”

In contrast, few want to take the time to talk about the mechanical realities of Internet marketing and the universe of effective tools that not only greatly out-power the hyped ones, but often cost far less.

P.P.S. It’s easy to take a service like AWeber for granted, but go out there and try to replicate what they do at the price they do it. Not so easy. They’re one of the best values in the business.

For information about The System Club and the Tech Talk program for System Club members, click here.

On the one hand, I see people failing to make money, which is kind of understandable given how bad much of the moneymaking advice out there is. Also given how some people seem to insist on doing things that don’t make money.

Then you have people who’ve cracked the code and figured out how to make money, sometimes a lot of it, but when you catch them a few years later, they’re dead broke.

How does that happen? (It happens a lot.)

People talk a lot about money, but they spend hardly any time THINKING about it.

To help the members of my System Club, I wrote a short guide book that covers not only the most reliable way to make money, but also the most reliable way to hold onto the money you make in all kinds of economies good and bad.

Given the challenges we’re all facing today, this information is too important not to share with everybody. If you’d been a System Club member, you would have had it years ago, but better late than never.

Another item from the System Archive.  I guarantee you will never look at money and money making the same way again after reading it. It could even change your life.

 The Financial Independence Blueprint

- Ken McCarthy

How do you attain it?

In any field, there are about half a dozen things that really matter. Mastering them takes time and focus, but it’s usually not too hard to figure out what the essential elements are.

Pay attention to what people who are successful in the field you want to succeed in actually do. Not what they say they do, but what they really do.

Be smart enough to listen to the practitioners who tell you straight and be very wary of the ones that tell you all the answers are contained in their latest “Launch.”

While it may be true there are only a few things you need to do well in order to succeed, there are a countless number of ways to screw up and that’s what this article is about: screwing up.

The facts of life

Very, very few people are on the receiving end of either incredibly good or incredibly bad luck. Some things go our way. Some things don’t.

When we fail, it’s because we do ourselves in.

There are two basic ways to do yourself in:

1. Failing to invest in yourself

2. Tangling your life up with people who bring you down

Let’s look at these two mistakes in detail

1. Failing to invest in yourself

I’m NOT talking about buying an expensive “mentoring” program from some telemarketing boiler room.

I’m talking about simple things like not making the time and effort to uncover your real interests and talents…

…Not reading and taking relevant classes

…Blasting huge amounts of time in unproductive activities like watching TV

…Not making the effort to reach out and develop colleagues who share your interests and values

…In short, not taking the time you have on this earth seriously.

All this comes under the umbrella of not investing in yourself.

Screw Up Method #2...

2. Tangling your life up with people who bring you down

A second and very reliable way to screw up your life is to bring people into it who screw it up for you.

I’m not talking about the so called Law of Attraction.  I’m talking about letting people into your life who screw you up and letting them stay in your life to screw you up another day.

There are a lot of good, hardworking people who take themselves down this way.

How do you get around this one?

When you’re in the middle of it, it can seem the most baffling problem there is.

You might ask yourself:

“Aren’t the people who come into my life a matter of the luck of the draw?”

“Don’t we need people in our lives to have full lives?”

“Don’t people sometimes trick us by presenting themselves as being one way and then turn out to be exactly the opposite?”

Yes,  yes, and yes, but…

The luck of the draw

There is definitely a degree of randomness about the people you meet.

On the other hand, I believe that people who think that you attract who you meet by some mystical force are wrong.

You “attract” whoever happens to be on a collision course with you. That being said what you DO with this accidental event is ENTIRELY up to you and that definitely is an expression of what’s going on in your mind.

Rather than talk about the “Law of Attraction” when it “attracts” the wrong people into your life, it should really be called the “Law of Stubbornly Turning What Could Have Been a One-Time Meeting into an Ongoing and Painful Soap Opera.”

If meetings are random, it’s best to keep moving until you find the right folks: partners, vendors, employees, colleagues, mates, buddies  (fill in the blank.)

The right one, not the one right now. Big difference.

But people need people, right?

Yes, in the long run, but if you want to solve all your people problems now and forever and reliably nip future ones in the bud fast, tattoo the following somewhere where you will never forget it:

“It is infinitely better to have no person in my life than it is to have the wrong person in my life.”

First, the wrong person will drain you and make your life miserable. No fun.

Second, the wrong person will mess you up so much that even if the right person were standing right in front of you with a flashing neon sign over their head, you stand the chance of being too worn down and/or tied up in knots to even notice.

Is is really that hard to tell people who are good for you from those who aren’t?

If you’re scrupulously honest with yourself, you will probably admit that it’s really not that hard.

The “bad seed” who caused you so much grief probably telegraphed his or her massive f*cked-up-ed-ness (a technical term) virtually from Day One, but you didn’t see, or to be more accurate…you didn’t want to see because…

You were not operating from this ironclad principle:

“It is infinitely better to have no person in my life than it is to have the wrong person in my life.”

You needed an employee. Someone put on the charm and nodded a lot during the interview. You hoped for the best and hired them.

You were in a rush to get a vendor and you took the first one who answered the phone.

You had to have a partner to help you with the burdens of your business and…you get the idea.

And you took the person on, let them embed themselves in your life, and you got what you got.

Jean-Paul Satre said: “Hell is other people.”  If you don’t know the deep truth of that statement, you’re one lucky person.

How to steer clear of the bad ones

First, make sure that you’re operating from the principle: ”It is infinitely better to have no person in my life, than it is to have the wrong person in my life.”

Second, believe that all God’s creatures are worthy of love and respect and treat them accordingly.

Three, know beyond any shadow of a doubt that at least nine out of ten of the people you encounter in life will have major HIDDEN competence, reliability, and/or  integrity issues. A small percentage will be flat out mentally ill and a percentage of that number criminally so.

Let me put it another way, when you meet a new person, they are 900% more likely to become a problem for you than a boon if you let them into your life.

As if that’s not a grim enough statistic, consider this:  Some of the very worst people come in the very nicest and most pleasing packages. They’re masters at creating “positive first impressions.”

They can also be very good at projecting “sweet , harmless and innocent.” It’s part of their pathology and modus operandi.

We’re social creatures

Normal human beings love to bond, they love to make new friends, they love to fall in love.

That’s great, but here’s a suggestion:

You can just as easily bond, make a friend and fall in love with someone after you’ve checked them out as thoroughly as you can. Fireworks, good times, charm alone are never a good reason alone to open the door to someone.

The next time you find yourself getting all excited about someone new ask:

1. Is there a big gaping hole in my life for this kind of person? (Be honest.)

2. Am I methodically overlooking flaws in this person and dreaming I’ve found a winner based on zero information, or worse, my own vivid imagination? (You don’t have to be asleep to be dreaming you know.)

3. Am I putting myself in a position where this person can do me harm before doing a thorough examination of their character? (which is easily determined by: a) watching how they act and b) checking their track record)

What’s that old saying? “Trust everyone, but cut the cards.”

And never, ever underestimate the harm the wrong person can do to your morale, your energy level, you bank account, your reputation. The downside is often much bigger than you think.

Trust and verify

First, know what your bottom line is. What you really want and what you won’t accept.

I’d say that competence, reliability and integrity are three good places to start.

Lack of integrity should be an instant deal killer.  Lack of reliability is its cousin. Lack or reliability in small things telegraphs lack of reliability in big things.

When you see signs of these two things cut and run. There is no possible way you can win in any situation with a human being who is reliability and/or integrity challenged.

As for lack of competence, if you really think you’ll be happy endlessly picking up the slack for an employee, a partner, a vendor, a mate etc. who lacks competence in areas that matter to you, have at it. It won’t kill you, but it probably will get to be old faster than you think.

People change, right?

Generally, people do not change, unless it’s for the worse.

The employee who showed up late the first day and had a reason he had to leave early is just going to get worse and worse.

The date who whips out his or her cell phone at dinner to take a long call will find newer, grander ways to disrespect you in the future.

The colleague who takes and takes and never quite gets around to giving back will find ever creative new ways to extend the trend until he’s bled you dry and kicked you to the curb.

So don’t expect that it will ever get better than it is right now – with this particular person.

What you see is what you get and if it’s bad now, it will probably get worse, much worse.

It’s not all bleak – in fact, the future is quite bright

Some may say I have a negative outlook because I’m recommending you take a long, hard look at negative things.

These same people might accuse of me of failing to use positive thinking.

I accept these accusations because I believe that mindlessly parroting positive thinking principles can be the most dangerous thing in the world.

Parroting positive thinking keeps people in bad situations, hoping that the situation will get better just as it propelled them into the bad situation they never should have gotten involved in in the first place.

Instead of being “parrot positive” be truly positive.

Know that “it is infinitely better to have no person in my life than it is to have the wrong person in my life” – and that you’ve got the strength to wait as long as it takes.

Know that all God’s creatures are worthy of love and respect and treat them accordingly – and use your God-given judgement to weed out trouble-making people from your life before they become a problem for you, or, failing that, as soon as you realize you’ve made a mistake.

Finally, know that in spite of the super abundance of trouble-causing people, the world is full of human gems. One out of ten, give or take.  And among that number, some truly amazing ones. Not perfect, but decent, honest folks you can rely on and will even surprise you by going beyond what you could ever reasonably expect.

They exist and there are plenty of them…

…If you will take the time to look…

…If you will take smart steps to avoid and eliminate negative entanglements that are wearing you out and…

…If you will value yourself, your time and your energy enough not to randomly hand it over to unsuitable people just because they happened to cross your path at the same moment you happened to think you needed someone like them.

Success really is for the taking.

Invest in yourself and have high standards for the people you allow in your life and you’ll be improving the odds for your success exponentially.

You’ll also have a whole lot more fun along the way.

- Ken McCarthy

P.S. If you found value in this, consider sharing it with friends and colleagues.

http://www.Twitter.com

Some of it’s good, some of it’s not so good, and some of it is so bad it’s dangerous.

Finding good advice in these areas is a big challenge, but there’s even a bigger structural problem.

#1 – There are three essential steps you should take after you start making money and before you start investing that no one talks about.

These three steps are not sexy so you can’t build a sexy “get rich quick” course around them, but they are as fundamental to wealth building as eating, breathing and drinking water.

#2 – Investing money is not an easy way to make money, certainly not as easy as the “get rich quick” by investing courses make it out to be

I know this flies in the face of popular beliefs, but here’s the fact:

Among the world’s top gun money managers, a 15% annual return on your money is considered a home run. Stringing several years like this together is considered a god-like performance.

The lucky money managers who reach these heights WORK with world class resources at their disposal along with good sized staffs of razor sharp people who clock in at least 9 to 5 every day (usually a lot more)

Is it really likely that you’re going to do as well as them or better than them in getting a return on your money?

That being said, it is possible, but infomercial BS aside, it’s not going to happen without a ton of work on your part. And here’s the kicker: even if you are really, really good and work really, really hard, the markets are hazardous places and you can get blown up. It happens to the best of traders.

A better way…

This is why I advise people to focus on creating businesses with customers who come back over and over again to buy.

First, starting a business the smart way (the System way) is extremely low risk. If your first idea doesn’t fly, you can live to try again and again and again until you get it right.

Second, when you get something that works – a body of customers, a solid product, a compelling offer – you’ve got a System that makes money week in and week out.

Third, a business that works can be safely leveraged through excellent marketing. So-so money makers can be tweaked to become cash cows. Cash cows can be tweaked to be Godzillas.

In contrast, traders have to re-invent the wheel every day as markets shift and can make big mistakes in the process. Business owners push product over the counter to regular buyers and count their daily receipts. Having done both, I can tell you owning a solid business is a much better deal.

There’s a another big problem with the “get rich quick” investment courses.

Generally, I don’t believe in the “it takes money to make money” philosophy. There are all kinds of way to get started making money with just the spare change in your pocket and if you can’t do it at that level, you probably won’t be able to do it with a lot of capital either.

However, I do believe there is one exception to this rule: trading.

You need ample money to trade and that money needs to be calm and patient money in order for it to get the best results. Taking too small a stake to the market and trying to make your rent with this week’s trading opportunities is a recipe for disaster.

When I was a young guy with no money just getting started I really didn’t want to hear this. It seemed downright un-American. How come only guys who already have money have all the odds stacked in their favor when it comes to trading? Shouldn’t the little guy be able to make smart moves and leverage his $1,000 into a million?

It might happen, but more people win the lottery than pull that off.

The correct sequence is make money – save money – save even more money – put the bulk of your savings in bullet-proof, bomb-proof instruments (like short term Treasuries) – and then take a small piece of your net worth to the markets and make small bets with it.

None of this prevents you from studying investing, paper trading, and maybe even taking micro-positions now to learn how things really work while you’re building your stake, but the idea of “on the job” training in the markets with thin capitalization and no other serious source of income is just not optimal.

And yet, all the “get rich quick” through trading courses are essentially recommending this approach. Great for the course sellers, not so great for the course buyers.

Better idea:

Build a business. Make that business great. Take cash off the table on a regular basis and stack it up in Treasuries. Then take a small piece of that and roll the dice – if you must.

Get rich slow.

Follow the sequence that’s worked over and over again for the people who’ve actually gotten there.

It works.

If you really think it through and talk to lots of people who have “made” it, you’ll see that that’s the way it’s done.

If it’s still July 4, 2009, you can get the complete Blueprint here for free:

http://www.TheSystemSeminar.com/july4/download.html

No matter how many Rolex watches or trips to the Playboy Mansion they offer me…

I promise that they will NOT be speaking at the System Seminar this year.

But maybe I’m being too hard on them. You tell me.
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To see who IS speaking at System Seminar 2008, click here.

For the full list of this year’s System 2008 faculty, you can click on this link.

It was quite a ride, but to be honest, I’ve been so busy in the last nine years, I’ve rarely looked back and have only visited a few times since.

This video reminds me of what a unique and admirable bunch of people live in San Francisco. There really is no place like it and it’s no accident that San Francisco was the first city in the world to “get” the Internet. Enjoy!

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The first I call the “rape and pillage” school. These folks don’t know their customers and they don’t want to know their customers. They just want to get people to their site, convert them, and get their money.

False advertising, forced continuity, less-than-zero customer service…anything and everything goes. It’s all OK to these folks.

Then there are people who want to build businesses that provide real products to real people. They want a business that will last more than a few months. They want customers who come back again and again and tell others. They focus on the long term work of creating an asset as opposed to a temporary income spike.

Unfortunately, the “rape and pillage” mentality dominates what passes (laughably) as Internet marketing education these days. It’s too bad because the naive folks who try to emulate so many of today’s Internet marketing “success stories” are being set up for failure on two counts:

1. The “rape and pillage” crowd NEVER tell the full story of how they really made their money (assuming they made as much money as they claim.) They always leave important parts out because if they told the WHOLE story, no one in their right minds would want to model them.

2. The “rape and pillage” method while it might work for the short term – and “might” is the operative word – is almost guaranteed to end in failure, personal and financial.

Here’s a newsflash from a recent study published by the DM News: the online businesses that provide the best service (Netflix. Amazon, QVC) also enjoy: 1) more repeat purchases and 2) more free word-of-mouth advertising.

It’s just common sense, isn’t it?

But when you read (and now watch) the latest Internet “sure-fire” money-making scheme, this kind of common sense is always absent from the story.