What I didn’t go into was how it applies to business. Everyone is hit with the same problems, losing a top customer, having your best salesman quit to work for a competitor, watching bad economic conditions hurt our business. What differentiates the top performers is how they respond to stimuli and events.

Why some companies win while others lose

80% of companies refuse to take responsibility for the situation. They tell the board of directors that the economy is hitting everyone just as hard, it isn’t their fault that sales are down, hiding from responsibility, avoiding the blame.

The best 20% find solutions and opportunities. They realize that the economy stinks and will affect sales. The difference is that they know that they can choose their response. They can train their salesmen to find ways to help their customers be more efficient, more effective, and more profitable. They can proactively trim the fat from the budget without cutting into the things that matter: quality, service, and increasing sales. Instead of coming in with excuses and complaints they arrive to solve the problem.

The interesting thing is that the top 4% (the top 20% of the top 20%) magnify this attitude. These are the mavericks that dare to grow in the face of a recession. They focus so intently on their customer and his needs that nothing else matters. They help their customer weather the downturn, finding opportunities and solutions, never needing to cut margins or prices to keep their business.

This applies to every level of life and business

Everyone – from the receptionist to the CEO – can apply this attitude. Stop blaming others. Stop complaining. Start looking at what you are doing well and do it more. Ask yourself where you are deficient and cut it out. At the lowest levels of a company it will help you keep your job. At the highest levels it will help you keep the company and everyone’s job!

You need to take responsibility for your life.

Everything that happens to you, good and bad, can be traced back to your choices.

Sometimes this is obvious. My boss says something I don’t like so I punch him in the face. The result…I get fired (and maybe spend some quality time in the county lockup).

Other times it is more subtle. For example, you have a coworker that is usually late in turning in their part of a project. Do you confront them? Do you (professionally) say anything to them at the beginning of the project? Most people just let it slide to avoid the conflict. Guess what, your inaction is a choice that affects the outcome.

Bailout Riches is a how to guide for making money with the new government bailouts such as the Tarp or RTC. Two decades ago (during the last bailout) he went from being deeply in debt to becoming a billionaire by buying bad loans for pennies on the dollar. He would buy the bad debt for say 2 cents on the dollar and work to recover 6 cents on the dollar. In the book he lays out the entire plan from obtaining the bad debt to the collection process. This is not a get rich quick book! The process he explains will take a good deal of time and effort but it made him a billionaire.

Mr. Bartmann’s business system will not suit everyone but he is living proof it can be done. He points out this opportunity will only be around for a few years while the banks and government work through all this bad debt. If you are looking to make some money off all these government bailouts time is of the essence - you need to act now! Bailout Riches will give you a blueprint for one route to take to make some money from the current economic situation.

I’m sure there will be other opportunities that come up from the government bailouts. We will cover them as they arise.

Bailout Riches!: How Everyday Investors Can Make a Fortune Buying Bad Loans for Pennies on the Dollar

Lately I’ve been working on Wealth and Wisdom a lot. Some of it was to improve our interface. A lot of it is to grow our subscriber base.

One area we have been working on is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). As I’ve implemented several things one thing jumps out at me…

Most blogs use nofollow tags on their comments

Of the 15 or 20 blogs I checked, only one had comments that didn’t use nofollow tags (thanks Pat, we appreciate it).

Nofollow tags prevent the search engines from following the link. The link owner gets no credit for it and it doesn’t contribute to their search engine ranking. While this effectively eliminates the spam issue it punishes legitimate commenters. One big reason people comment is for the link juice.

The spam problem

I understand why the search engines and the blogging platforms make this their default setting. Comment spam is a major issue. While spam filters like Akismet do a great job with obvious spam, the subtle spam comments get through.

What do I mean by subtle? It’s the comment that is generic and complementary. “Great blog. I just came across you and will be adding you to my reading list.”

These comments are harder to find. I had a bunch sprinkled through my blog and had to go back and delete them. How do you know when it’s spam and not just a complement? Copy the comment and paste it into google search. If you come up with hundreds (or hundreds of thousands) of results, the comment is spam. Report it!

Take a stand

We bloggers need to take a stand. Take back your blog. The answer to comment spam is vigilance by bloggers, not  by indiscriminant nofollow tag use.

At Wealth and Wisdom we proudly use follow tags on all our comments. If your comment contributes to our community you will get full search engine credit.

I’m calling on all bloggers to do the same. It’s easy to do. If you use wordpress there are several plugins to allow follow tags. I personally use Nofollow Case by Case, but there are several others that are highly rated.

I had to shake my head. Apropos, paradigm, myopic, maligned, rapier like,fondled,terminological exactitude. What was he thinking? It would have been bad enough if he was speaking to a panel of executives. In this case the words were inappropriate. After all, he was an announcer calling a hockey game.

Don’t get me wrong. I believe having a large and diverse vocabulary to be an asset. I believe that it is part of what determines how far you go in life.

I just also know that you have to speak the same language as your audience

This is sales (or public speaking) 101. Don’t talk above or below your audiance. Only use a $10 word if it better describes the situation. Above all don’t make your listener need a dictionary to understand you!

We hired a friend to do some administrative tasks at Wealth and Wisdom (and a couple of our other businesses). On the surface it seemed like a great idea. Ed was more than qualified to do the work. While I’m pretty good at spreadsheets and databases he made me look like a rank amateur. To do what we wanted would have taken me a couple months because of the learning curve.

On the surface it was win – win. He needed a bit of extra cash and loved playing with databases and spreadsheets. I was too busy between my day job, Wealth and Wisdom, writing our book, etc…

Then the problems started

The biggest challenge was that it was a bigger priority to me than for Ed. It was important to our business and our book launch. We had deadlines we were trying to meet. It was money out of my pocket and revenue lost every week the schedule slipped.

Ed had different priorities. First was his day job. He was the go to guy at work and his boss always tossed him the critical projects. This took up a ton of his time. Then there was his social life. What little time he had left was spent on Call of Duty.

Unfortunately, our project was at the bottom of his list. The end result was that progress was non-existent.

Let’s be clear. This is my fault.

I view this as my responsibility. I chose to give his the project even though I knew how busy he was. He assured me that he would take it seriously but I knew him well enough I should have questioned this. Also, any time you have a project (or an employee) their performance is your responsibility. It doesn’t mean that they don’t share the responsibility but in the end it rests on your shoulders.

What did I learn from this experience?

• I need to set up better reporting when I outsource. I did a good job defining the project. I even did a good job setting a deadline. Where I failed was that I never set up regular updates. Several weeks would go by before we would ask “what is the status.”
• Don’t just hire based on a skill set. You also need to look at the person and hire someone that will get the job done on time and on budget. Ed’s was without question skilled. He was a good person. The problem was that he wasn’t mature enough to take on the project and he wasn’t willing to make it a priority.
• Projects need to be a priority to all parties. Ed had too many priorities. They were all more important than the project.
• Be careful hiring friends and family. People will tell you that the best business relationships are based on friendships. What usually gets left out is that these friendships are almost always of a business nature. In fact, they often grow out of business interactions, not the other way around.

Hiring Friends and family can be a big mistake. They often take liberties that they wouldn’t with strangers. It can also be messy if you need to sever the business side of the relationship. It’s also hard for you to be firm and demanding to friends and family.

In our case it was hard to push for results. Not only were we friends with him, we knew his whole family. If we weren’t careful it could have done irreparable damage to a whole chain of friendships. That being said, several months had gone by without much progress. What should have taken a couple weeks was pushing several months with no end in site.

In the end we found a simpler solution and canceled the project. It help resolve the situation and made it easier to preserve our friendship. We paid him out for his time and we all moved on.

Visitors from GetEntrepreneurial

Welcome to Wealth and Wisdom! I’ve listed a few of my articles below that you might enjoy. Feel free to read them and any other articles that catch your interest.

• Recessionproof your sales
• How to Thrive in a Recession
• How to Thrive in a Recession – Ignore the News
• How to Thrive in a Recession – It’s All About the Customer
• How to Thrive in a Recession – Working for Someone Else

If you like what you see please let me know by leaving a comment (I do respond to most). I would also like to invite you to join our blog for free. You’ll save time by having our articles delivered. We offer two ways:

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Sign up by email and we will deliver our blog to your inbox saving you time and ensuring you don’t miss anything. As a bonus we are including:

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To be blunt website design is a major pain for most people. I personally enjoy getting lost in HTML or CSS. Then again, I’m a bit of a geek when it comes to things like computers, web design, and programming! Most people want a tool that is easy to use. The challenge is that most easy to use tools are created by removing advanced – complicated – features. You end up with a tool that is easy to learn but that won’t do many of the things you need. They also don’t have the flexibility you need to create a unique site.

The other end of the spectrum are tools like Expressions Web, Go Live, or Dreamweaver. These tools are robust enough to do almost anything you need. The challenge lies in actually using them! I’ve used all three and can honestly tell you that they are good tools, but that creating anything beyond the most basic site can be a challenge. Just try to get each item to sit right on your page. It looks great in Internet Explorer but nothing is right with Firefox. It can take hours (and sometimes weeks) to get everything right.

These tools work and are powerful. One problem is that they have a huge learning curve. It takes months to learn them inside and out. They are also expensive. Dreamweaver will run you $344.99 (Amazon.com) while Expressions Web will set you back $239.99 (Amazon.com).

XSitePro Is Entirely Different

XSitePro web design software was created from the beginning to be a tool for marketers and business people. Instead of spending your time learning HTML, CSS, and a complicated tool you can focus on what matters most – the business side of your website. Are you a brick and mortar business looking to gain a web presence? They make it easy. Are you an internet marketer? Their sales letter templates take care of the formatting and design so you can focus on sales copy.

XSitePro has a clean interface and is designed so that the average person can build a site. To test this I’ve had my wife and my teenage son build simple sites. In a matter of a couple hours each was able to build a visually compelling site.

Don’t let the simple interface and ease of use fool you.

This is a serious tool with powerful features. They have just done a good job hiding them under the hood. You can do everything from complicated formatting to adding custom scripts. Want to add a testimonial to your site? Right click the page where you want it to appear and select that menu option. Want to include your email without unscrupulous marketers stealing it for spam? Use their email cloaking feature. The list of easy to use but powerful tools goes on and on.

This is one area where the previous version of XSitePro fell short. I needed both XSitePro and Expressions Web to do everything I wanted. With the latest version they have fixed this shortcoming. Since XSitePro released V2.0 I haven’t needed Expressions Web for any web design task or feature.

Where XSitePro Excels

XSitePro excels at making it easy to build a feature rich site. They added a ton of features that most marketers want:

• Affiliate link wizard
• Advertising tools making it easy to add your Amazon (and other) links, recommended products, etc…
• Clip art and image library to store and easily add images
• Audio and video wizards
• RSS wizard to easily create a RSS feed
• Forms wizard to easily create forms, including forms for your autoresponder.
• Easily add scripts on a site wide basis or page by page
• Code snippet library to store and easily add code to your pages.
• Password protect pages
• Search Engine optimization tools

You get the idea. The list of features goes on and on.

It isn’t perfect

I won’t lie to you and say it’s perfect. If you are a high end web site designer you sometimes get frustrated by the simple interface and having to work around their features. You still need to look at HTML for complicated tasks (XSitePro gives you the ability to work in HTML directly if you want). It doesn’t incorporate a blog so you need to match your design to your blog design if you want to use both.

These are minor things that only an advanced web designer would notice. For the remaining 99% of us this is the best tool for the job.

Learn more about XSitePro web design software.

Save Hundreds of Hours and Thousands of Dollars in Personal Advancement
Your mind is your most precious asset. You must be continually working to increase the quality of your thinking. One of the best ways is to turn driving time into learning time. Listen to educational CDs or audio cassettes in your car. The average driver, according to the American Automobile Association, drives 12,000 to 25,000 miles each year, spending 500 to 1000 hours that you spend each year in your car. That is the equivalent of 12 1/2 to 25 forty-hour weeks. This is the same as two full university semesters spent behind the wheel of your car each year.

Use Traveling Time as Learning Time

If you did nothing but use that traveling time as learning time, this decision alone could make you one of the best educated people of your generation. Many people have gone from rags to riches simply by listening to audio programs as they drive to and from work.

Attend Every Seminar

In addition, for personal and professional development, you should attend every seminar you can. You can often save yourself 100’s of hours of reading and researching by attending a seminar given by an authority in his or her field. You can learn ideas, techniques and methods that can save you hours, days, even months of hard work and research on your own.

Increase Your Earnings

Remember, to earn more, you must learn more. Your outer world of results will always correspond to your inner world of preparation. Continuous learning is the minimum requirement for success in any field.

Action Exercises

Now, here are two things you can do to put these ideas to work in your life immediately.

First, purchase an audio program that can help you to be happier and more effective today. Begin listening to it immediately. Resolve never to listen to music in your car when you can turn driving time into learning time.

Second, seek out seminars and training programs given by experts in your field. Sit close to the front, take careful notes, and apply the best ideas that you learn immediately.

About the author

Brian Tracy is one of my all time favorite experts. Over the years I’ve used a lot of his stuff so I can personally attest to their effectiveness. What Brian Tracy products have I used?

• The Psychology of Achievement (one of my favorite self-help programs)
• Science of Self Confidence (great self-help book that helps eliminate doubt and fear)
• Advanced Selling Strategies (great for anyone who wants to be better at selling)
• Ultimate Goals Program (hands down the most complete goals program out there)
• Eat That Frog (great for those of us who procrastinate)
• Million Dollar Habits (great basic success book)

Bottom line is that he is the best when it comes to sales, self-improvement, and success. I’ve yet to get something by Brian that was less than fantastic.

This week Brian is offering his new Eat That Frog! Training kit at a reduced rate for Wealth and Wisdom subscribers. You get 1 Book, 6 CDs, 1 Workbook for 48% off.

Eat That Frog! Training Kit

Jeffrey Gitomer is one of my favorite sales experts. His books are fantastic and his weekly ezine is always full of great sales advice. If you are not a Gitomer subscriber I highly recomend signing up. I also recomend all of his books. They are the gold standard if you want to become a better salesman.

This week he wrote a timely article: The economy is falling. The economy is falling. In it he points out that while the economy stinks this is in contrast to the amazing boom we experienced over the last few years. It just means that the available business is reduced and that the low hanging fruit are a bit higher. He has 8.5 things you can do to thrive in this downturn.

Small Business Trends is hosting a Webinar on reducing business overhead. While I usually recommend entrepreneurs focus on making more money-you can’t cut your way to profits-expense control is still a vital part of any successful business. In most cases it should be part of your daily life, a habit you develop so you can focus on other vital parts of your business. Go to10 Strategies for Reducing Business Overhead Expenses – Webinar for more information.

Merlin Mann of 43 Folders had a great post on priorities. I always enjoy his writing as he makes me think differently and see things from a new point of view. While I don’t always agree with him I look forward to his posts.

Today Merlin talks about priorities. I like his view that something either is a priority…or it isn’t. There are no shades of grey. Our challenge in time management is that we try to prioritize our tasks. Task 1 is more important than task 3 which is less important than task 5…and then wonder why we have a high priority task on our list for weeks at a time. The answer is that it wasn’t a true priority.

Read his entire post Mud Rooms, Red Letters, and Real Priorities.