Posts Tagged ‘finance’

Lewis News

Lewis News

If Anyone Can Speed Its Lewis Hamilton

So the story has hit the world's press about Lewis Hamilton, the Formula 1 superstar, being caught speeding. Not to be blase, but it is not really surprising.

Firstly, he is a 22 year old man and there are plenty of young men who speed regularly; the fundamental difference I believe is that Lewis Hamilton possesses a Mercedes that is capable of touching 180 miles per hour. Most 22 year old men cannot afford such a car and so are not as likely to make it up to 122 miles an hour on a French A road.

The second point that can be derived from the news story is that if anyone is capable of driving at the rapid speed Lewis Hamilton was caught at, it is a Formula 1driver. Regularly racing at speeds in the one fifties to eighties, a paltry 122 cannot be seen as that fast for a man who makes his living driving at high velocity.

His mental ability to calculate risk and distance have been seen countless times on the racetrack throughout the last season, going along a motorway is probably an easy task for someone who's mind is constantly in overdrive.

Road campaigners will argue that as a popular public figure he should curtail his speed for the sake of his fans. There is no doubt that his popularity is huge at the moment and hoards of fans follow his progress throughout the season. Possessing such worldwide celebrity is reason enough to slow down, or at least not to get caught.

Other racers have been caught speeding in the last month and we have heard nothing of it; Ralf Schumacher was recently caught doing 130 km/h in an eighty zone and has been banned once before. These racers are in fact that; racers. Be it on the track or the road, the temptation to floor the accelerator seems to take over.

Lewis Hamilton has been slapped with a one month ban on his driving license and given a four hundred and thirty pound fine. Both are not serious for the young Formula 1 star. The fine can be viewed as pocket change when considering the money Hamilton earns in a season while the ban will not affect him greatly.

For his regular trips between Switzerland and England he will now have to fly, I am sure Lewis will be vexed at this fact but it is little more than an annoyance. I am sure he enjoyed his cross country drives.

McLaren have stated 'we are aware that Lewis was stopped for speeding in France whilst driving in a private capacity.' They were insistent that it would not affect his professional driving career, and nor should it, racing drivers have always been caught out by driving offences.

Only if you drive for Ferrari and get caught in Italy will you get away with it, every other police force in the world relishes the chance to catch racing drivers such as Lewis Hamilton as it sets an example and gives great publicity. Hamilton can consider himself fortunate he was not in Italy, as home of McLaren's major rival it is a certainty the penalty would have been harsher.

Racing drivers will always drive at high speeds, it is there trade and seemingly they operate at a higher brain speed than the rest of us. This does not however give them reason to speed, they may well be able to compute driving situations with great rapidity but the rest of us on the road cannot.

It is understandable that road safety campaigners will be up in arms about the incident but Lewis has received his punishment, although it will probably happen again in his career I am sure it will make him stop and think for as long as his hyperactive brain will allow.

Huey Lewis And The News - If This Is It (2006 Digital...

Special Markets

Special Markets

Direct Mail Marketing – Can it Really Pay Off? Step 1: Researching your Target Market

Maybe you have thought about direct mail. Maybe you have wondered whether it could work for you. Maybe you have done it, but it never really paid off. Possibly you thought there was so much to learn that you didn’t know where to start. Whatever your particular ‘story’ is you are reading this. And yes, there are a million and one ways to do something wrong – but there are only a handful of ways to get it right. In this article, I will show you what has brought success to hundreds of mortgage brokers and how direct mail marketing can work for you.

My goal in this article is to help you get started by helping you figure out WHO you should be mailing to and WHAT product to promote to them. In fact – I will be writing a series of articles taking you all the way from the research to the tracking of the results and your return on investment. There will be practical exercises for you to do in between the next issues, so roll up your sleeves and get ready to start cooking – or start rolling in the dough.

I’ve literally dealt with the marketing of thousands of mortgage brokers and one thing is certain… Once you guys start doing really well financially you want to branch out on your own and start your own company. However, most brokers haven’t taken Marketing 101, so they tend to fail. Not because they aren’t good brokers, but because they aren’t good marketers. In fact, it is not only a trend I see in the Mortgage Industry, but many other industries as well. To tell you the truth, with all that I know about marketing I’m confident that I could make ANY business successful. Sounds pretty cocky but hands down, I could do it. Because I know marketing.

Why do I know that I could make it successful? Because I learned something vitally important: outbound communication is key. It is more important then what you receive. You will generate interest and credibility the more you communicate and the more you communicate repeatedly.

But not just to anybody. Why would you communicate to folks that have no reason to buy a home or refinance their home if you were a mortgage broker? How will you go about defining your target market? What is the scientific approach to choosing your mailing list?

On the outset, that may seem easy. Just advertise your subprime product to a subprime list. Or maybe not. But you do not want to guess on this. You need solid evidence. The best way to get that evidence is via your own records – your past closes and what it was you sold and to whom. What you are looking for is twofold:

1) Your easiest-to-close customers and

2) Customers that financed with your highest income-generating products.

To recap in mid-stream let me give you four key data to latch onto:

1) Outbound communication is key.

2) Repeated communication is vital.

3) Your easiest-to-close customers should be promoted to first.

4) Your highest income-generating products should be next in line to promote.

Now let’s get started. Research which product you need to market.

When you start researching, you really shouldn’t go off of assumptions. Ideally you’ll go through your client list and tabulate which product you sold the most of. Was it prime? Subprime? Re-fi? Jumbo? Most of the time, you really have to do a sincere survey. You are looking to market the product that makes you the most income the quickest FIRST.

Exactly how should you do the research?

Create a spreadsheet and go through all of your past closes over the last year. List them out: Product X, Product Y, Product Z and so on – find every close you made over the few year and mark down which product it was and what you earned off of it. Also note down HOW MANY of that product you sold.

Example Tabulation:

Product X: Earned 1% Sold 8
Product Y: Earned $900 Sold 20
Product Z: Earned ½% Sold 12

Using the above example it is easy to see that Product ‘Y’ is what you should be marketing in your direct mail campaign. We’ll consider product ‘Y’ your bread and butter. Obviously these are the easiest to close so let’s create as many leads as we can and assume you’ll close them up.

Once you’re grooving right along with that product (and we’ll get to the target market in a few paragraphs) use the same spreadsheet to determine which product yielded the highest commissions. Maybe Product ‘X’ averaged around $2000 per close but with only five sold you’re still doing better with ‘Y’, economically speaking. BUT if you just increase the number of leads that would need or desire product ‘X’ you could really start raking it in, right?

Do you see where I’m going with this? Haphazardly, with little or no direct mail – perhaps with referrals only – you’re managing to sell certain products to certain demographics. Of course, in reality, it will be many more than three different products which is why you need to go about this systematically.

However, once you start promoting Product ‘Y’ and you start receiving an abundance of leads, DO NOT stop promoting that product just because you now have some more business. Keep on putting out that communication repeatedly and additionally market to the next product to the target market. We’re going for abundance here. When you’ve got an abundance of business, it is much easier to solve whatever problems arise with that than the type of problems that come from having a scarcity of business.

Learning a subject is all about wrapping your wits around the key principles involved and building upon those. Wrap your wits around this and you will be on your way to becoming a marketing expert.

Now that you know which product to start with, you have to know who is going to buy it, which comes to our next step.

Research to find who the audience is that you are going to sell to.

Not all audiences are the same. Take for example the TV show, Showtime at the Apollo. Not everyone would want to watch that. Just like there is a totally different target audience for American Idol. (If you never heard of these, then more than likely you aren’t their audience.) Case in point: you have to determine who your audience is, which is called a “market”. A “market” is a type of audience, a type of user. Figure out everything you can about that particular market that buys your main (what you sell the most of) product. The good thing is that you already have access to all their data – age ranges, credit scores, income, etc. It is time to add this data to your spread sheet.

Product X: Earned 1% Sold 8
Product Y: Earned $900 Sold 20
Product Z: Earned ½% Sold 12

Credit ranges

Age ranges

Income level

Once you have the demographics of the people that buy your “easiest-to-sell” product, you can then buy a list of that particular type of audience. You can go to a list company that you feel good about or have gotten recommendations for, and buy a list of people within those specific criteria. Get a list in a certain zip code or a certain mile radius around your office. (I have found that in more rural areas you will have to do a larger mileage radius than you would have to in a more urban area – it depends on the population.)

The reason you want to do such a thorough job of finding out who you are selling to is that 40% of your marketing campaign’s success (success meaning whether or not you get a good response) is dependent on your list. 40%! That is a big percentage to mess up on at the get-go. Besides, it is your list and the postage that are going to be the most expensive parts of your direct mail campaign. I cannot stress enough the importance of a good list – it makes all the difference in the world.

Here is an excellent case study of a company of mortgage professionals called Priority Financial Services that did exactly what I have been writing about here. They did an exhaustive research of what type of product they should focus on offering and what type of consumer would reach for their services.

Ervin Kowitz and Brian Kowitz are the owners of PFS. Their specialties include "no income qualifier" loans and loans for those without an income. They have a great deal of experience and expertise for those borrowers with credit problems including bankruptcy and foreclosure. With over 12,000 loans closed since 1994, they had quite a history that helped them determine the type of customer that they decided to focus on. Coupling their own internal study with market research and data retrieval from a source of strategic partners, Ervin and Brian were able to focus on a sector of the market whose need was the biggest segment of the growing market and truly specialize in it. This will vary for your particular business or area, but you can ascertain your niche in the same or similar way that they did.

The question they asked themselves was, ‘what was the most valuable asset that their business had’. Contrary to the usual answers of inventory, lease or even employees – even though employees are very high on the list, Ervin and Brian determined that their actual client base was their most valuable asset with their employees running a close 2nd. Once they determined this, they were on the right track to determining their niche.

PFS determined via their client base where their best clients were coming from and also analyzed where they were getting their best return. They saw a tremendous need in their customer base for financing for credit challenged individuals. Being primarily in the sub-prime market, Ervin and Brian further targeted a highly unique sector of the mortgage business – bankruptcies. They had spent 11 years dealing with the ‘ins and outs’ of bankruptcies, so much that 41% of their business was that specialized market. When this was unearthed, they had found their niche.

Niches can be very selective and they can be very broad as Ervin and Brian discovered. Even though they researched and found their niche, every issue they are presented with is unique. Though they offer many different products for their specialized market, they have been able to create a “service” niche. Through their creativity and understanding of the needs of their credit-challenged clients, they have been able to create literally a road map for each individual customer that is specific to them and in their best interest.

Priority Financial Service’s research may be very different than the research you need to do. The important thing is to comb through your files and take a look for the biggest commonalities and find out all you can about that product, market or trend you discover. You will have your own realization and you’ll be able to better define your target market and what particular products you need to concentrate your efforts on. Being everything to all people doesn’t necessarily communicate in marketing. People want to know what you can do for them specifically and when you are able to communicate that to a specific group – bingo! You just hit the jack pot.

In my next article,“Direct Mail Marketing-Can It Really Pay Off -Part Two”, I will teach you how to create copy (text, verbiage) in your promotional material to really get your message across to your target market in order to get a response. In the meantime, you have some homework to do. Happy Hunting!

Vagabond Investors Special Market Update May 17th 2010 Part II

Money Eddie

Money Eddie

Today A Stay At Home Mom Has A Better Chance To Make Money Online

The need for additional income has never been greater than it is today. It certainly is expensive raising a family if you are a stay at home mom wanting to contribute to the family finances. There is good news however if you are a stay at home mom looking to make more money.

Thanks to the Internet everyone and anyone can make extra money selling online. Stay at home moms are included!

One of the easiest ways for a mom to stay at home and create additional income is to become an affiliate marketer. An affiliate marketing business is a free home based business opportunity that is available to anyone, but moms seem to do especially well with this type of business.

The primary advantage to becoming an affiliate marketer selling products online is the products you sell are already available for you. You can join an affiliate program for free and the merchant will give you the products and all the necessary marketing materials.

Initially you can start out using the website provided by the affiliate merchant and you can find ways to promote that website on the Internet for free. Moms do especially well in affiliate marketing because they are naturally socially oriented and using the Internet is a great way to promote and sell your affiliate products.

Social networking websites are an excellent place to meet people and also sell affiliate products. For example you can join Twitter and build a list of followers who have similar interests of your own. You can also do the same thing with Face-book by building a list of friends to hang out with online.

You can start a blog and make regular posts to it to easily keep people updated on what you are doing in a social networking setting. You could even set up a free Blogger.com blog that is owned by Google.com blog which is owned by Google. They offer easy to follow instructions on how to do this.

Whenever you make a post to your blog you should make an update on your social networking sites where people can see what you're doing with your affiliate business. Also having a blog makes it easy for you to add banners and affiliate programs to it and make money whenever someone makes a purchase from you.

The affiliate merchant supplies you with marketing materials and banners that you can use to advertise your business website. This is another reason stay at home moms have a good chance to make money today. By having the marketing materials and the products created for you in advance you can spend more of your time concentrating on advertising to increase your income.

Eddie Money Shakin'

Bill Gloria

Bill Gloria

A.a. Cofounder Bill W.: His Younger Years At A Glance

A.A. Cofounder Bill W.: His Younger Years at a Glance

 

Dick B.

© 2010 Anonymous. All rights reserved

 

The A.A. Backdrop

 

Bill Wilson was born in East Dorset, Vermont, November 26, 1895. His parents were married in the East Dorset Congregational Church. That church lay on the green between The Wilson House and the Griffith House. Bill was born, and his parents lived briefly, in The Wilson House. His paternal grandparents had been among the founders and attenders at the church. Bill was raised in the Griffith House by his maternal grandparents who considered the church their family church. Bill got sober in November 1934 and never drank again. He died on January 24, 1971. A.A. literature records: "All his life, Bill retained, as did Dr. Bob, a deep affection for and identification with the people of Vermont. . . . [H]e enjoyed sharing with friends many delightful anecdotes about his early years" [The Co-Founders of Alcoholics Anonymous: Biographical Sketches Their Last Major Talks (New York, NY: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., 1972, 1975), pp. 25-27]

 

Bill W.'s Unusual Christian Experiences as a Youngster in Vermont

 

From Bill W.: My First 40 Years: An Autobiography by the Cofounder of Alcoholics Anonymous (Center City, MN: Hazelden, 2000); and Dick B., The Conversion of Bill W.: More on the Creator's Role in Early A.A. (Kihei, HI: Paradise Research Publications, Inc, 2006)

 

Bill's Grandpa, Willie Wilson: Willie had been a founder, officer, and regular attender at East Dorset Congregational Church, owning Pew 15. He was also a chronic alcoholic. Before Bill Wilson was born, Grandpa Willie ascended nearby Mt. Aeolus, cried out to God for help, had a spiritual experience, rushed down to the little church, seized the pulpit, and said he had been saved. Grandpa Willie never drank again for the remaining eight years of his life. Bill Wilson's mother told Bill this story over and over again [The Conversion of Bill W., 24-27, 115, 123]

 

Bill's Witnessing of Conversion, Revival, and Temperance Meetings. Bill mentioned that, as a youngster, he had witnessed conversion meetings, attended revivals, and attended Temperance meetings. [The Conversion of Bill W., 8, 10, 26-27, 30, 32, 72, 74, 118]

 

Bill's Maternal Grandparents Fayette and Ella Griffith. The Griffiths attended the East Dorset Congregational Church, and—with Emma Griffith, Bill W.'s mother—regarded the little church as the family church. Bill attended this church and its Sunday school during the period he was being raised by the Griffiths. His parents had separated. His mother had sent him to live with her parents. And Bill's Grandpa Fayette enrolled Bill in the Sunday school next door where he attended church with the Griffiths [The Conversion of Bill W., 6-10, 24-32]                 

 

The Confession, Creed, and Teachings of the East Dorset Congregational Church: Our personal visit to this church with its long-time Treasurer and our inspection of the records showed that the church taught about salvation and the importance of studying the Word of God.

 

Bill's Bible Study with Grandpa Fayette and with his friend Mark Whalon. There is now documentation that Bill Wilson studied the Bible with his grandfather and also with his friend Mark Whalon [The Conversion of Bill W., 6-19, 29-32, 71-75]

 

Bill's Four Years at the Burr and Burton Seminary in Manchester, Vermont. Bill attended this Congregational-influenced Academy for four years, up to the time of his anticipated graduation. He went to the required daily chapel, just as Dr. Bob had at his Academy. Also, as required, Bill attended the Manchester Congregational Church each week. (And there is strong evidence that Dr. Bob had regularly attended North Congregational Church, St. Johnsbury, while attending his Academy.) Bill took a four-year required Bible study course at Burr and Burton. And Bill became president of the school YMCA; his girl friend Bertha Bamford became president of the school YWCA; and the two attended school YMCA activities, and daily chapel, together. [My son Ken and I gleaned most of this information from an extended interview of archivist Frederica Templeton of Burr and Burton, from the recent book she had written about the Academy, and from a review of the school's extant archives and records. [See Frederica Templeton, The Castle in the Pasture: Portrait of Burr and Burton Academy (Manchester, VT: Burr and Burton Academy, 2005)]

 

The Unexpected Death of Bill's Girl Friend, Bertha Bamford, and Bill's Turning His Back on God for many subsequent years.  Shortly before Bill's impending graduation, Bill's lady love Bertha died unexpectedly. Bill was devastated. He went into one of his many deep depressions. He never graduated from Burr and Burton. And he figuratively turned his back on God. [See Susan Cheever, My Name is Bill: Bill Wilson—His Life and the Creation of Alcoholics Anonymous (NY: Washington Square Press, 2004), 54-55.] For a number of years, he characterized himself thereafter as a "conservative atheist" or as an "agnostic." [See Dick B., Turning Point: A History of Early A.A.'s Spiritual Roots and Successes (San Rafael, CA: Paradise Research Publications, 1997), 96; Alcoholics Anonymous (New York City: Works Publishing Company, 1939), 56-58; and Bill W.: My First 40 Years, 50.] This ended at or before his spiritual experience during his fourth hospitalization at Towns where he had his "white light" experience and never drank again [Bill W.: My First 40 Years, 29-31; and Dick B., The Conversion of Bill W., 90-103].

 

www.DickB.com; DickB@DickB.com

 

Gloria Deo

 

 

Bill and Gloria Gaither talk about Danny

Your Money

Your Money

Increase Your Financial IQ Book Review – Part 3: Budgeting Your Money

After learning to make more money and finding out ways to protect your money, you next need to learn how to budget your money for maximum utilization.

According to the book, a budget is a plan to coordinate your most important resources (such as money and time) and expenditures.  There are 2 kinds of budgets:

• Budget deficit
  • excess of spending over income
  • you spend more than you earn
• Budget surplus
  • excess of income over spending
  • you earn more than you spend

The reason most people are poor is because all their lives, all they’ve known is not having enough money, hence, they only have a plan for “budget deficit”.   They have never experienced having more money than they could ever expect to spend.  They think only lottery winners, corrupt politicians, or greedy businessmen can have a “budget surplus”.   The key to having a budget surplus is realizing that it is possible for you to have it.

There are 2 ways to generate a budget surplus:

1. You can apply Financial IQ # 1 to make more money, thereby increasing your income, or
2. You can cut expenses, and reduce your spending.

Both strategies will tip the equation to your favor such that your income will be greater than your expenses and you create that extra cash a.k.a. “budget surplus”.

Most people and businesses only know how to cut expenses, especially in these times of financial uncertainty.  But you can only do so much in terms of cutting expenses without sacrificing your mental, emotional and physical health.  You don’t need to starve yourself to create a budget surplus. If you apply Financial IQ # 1 – make more money, you can stretch the other side of the equation and achieve the same thing.  The same applies to business. A business without sales is NOT a business. So aside from minimizing the costs of your business, you also need to learn to sell more and boost your income!

Robert Kiyosaki offers 4 tips to plan for a budget surplus:

• Budget tip #1 – A budget surplus is an expense
  • Make spending for budget surplus a priority
  • Pay yourself first, even when income is less than your expenses
  • Use the pressure of not having enough money to think of ways on how to generate that extra cash
• Budget tip #2 – The expense column is the crystal ball
  • Discover what you’re spending on, and you will know if your plan is working to give you a budget surplus or a budget deficit
  • Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad says, “you can tell a person’s future by looking at what they spend their time and money on.”
• Budget tip #3 – My assets pay for my liabilities
  • Instead of using your hard-earned money to pay for your liabilities like a car or a flat screen TV, make that money work for you by using it to build assets and use the income from those assets to pay for your car or your flat screen TV.
• Budget tip #4 – Spend to get rich
  • Know when to spend and when to cut back.  Most people only know how to cut back.  Spending wisely to grow your money is a harder skill to master.
  • Learn to do more with less and use the pressure to become smarter in making more money

Rich Money Habits Review Notes:

• Budgeting is boring.  That’s what most people say.  However, it is one the most important rich money habits that you will have to learn.  A budget is like a map.  The only way to get to your destination is to know where you are right now, and use your plan to discover how to get to where you want to be.
• Consciously working on your money habits is a life-long process, and it starts with taking care of the resources that you have – that is budgeting your money and time.  What others don’t realize is that we all have 24 hours in a day.  Some people multiply their impact by providing livelihood to thousands of people and generating more money not only for themselves but for the whole community.  Others just sit around all day never doing anything to make their lives easier.  To me, it is not a question of do we need to budget or not.  It is a matter of realizing that to live your life to the fullest, you need to make the most of what you have.
• Be patient.  The problem of TV shows is that everything is fast.  Yesterday a child was born. The next day he’s already a teenager.  The next week he himself is already having his own kid.  Life is not a TV show.  It is a series of small steps earned each day.  So have a plan and learn to adjust that plan along the way.  As Robert Kiyosaki says “take it one day at a time.”

You Never Give Me Your Money