Exxon Mobil Should Pay Up

Today, after 19 years, the Exxon Valdez spill has reached the Supreme Court.

The company paid the $287 million in compensatory damages long ago.

At issue here is the $2.5 billion in punitive damages to nearly 33,000 commercial fishermen, Native Alaskans, landowners, businesses and local governments.

Originally, the punitive damages were $5 billion, but a federal appeals court cut it in half.

I think that Exxon should just pay it because, if they win the case, they will lose more in bad publicity then they save.

For Exxon, the $2.5 billion is only equal to 3 weeks of 2006 profits, but is a lot for the fishermen who have already waited 19 years.

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Free Online Classes for Starting a Business

These classes can be taken at your own pace.

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Should You List Your Site with Non-U.S. Search Engines?

Cindy King has a blog post on getting your site listed with Yandex and Baidu.

These are the #1 search engines in Russia and China, respectively.

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Changing the World...

...with a soccer ball, net, and $25.

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The "MacGyver" of Low budget Movies

Making a living in your passion by zero-cost internet movie making...

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Programmer to Rock Star in 1 Year

From writing code to writing songs...

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19 year old started blog - successful in only 2 months

He started his blog in Dec 2007 and already has a big readership, and has started different businesses since age 14 - now he is 19.

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An Indian Product Company

Sramana Mitra, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur with her own blog, writes a Forbes.com column.

Her latest Forbes column is on Sridhar Vembu, founder and CEO of AdventNet.

His company created a low cost, on-line productivity suite called Zoho. It has the functionality of Microsoft Office combined with Customer Relationship Management (CRM).

Zoho severely undercuts the pricing of SalesForce.com's offerings.

Mitra describes how Vembu's frugality allowed him to build AdventNet without debt or venture capital. This allowed Vembu to reject a buy-out offer from SalesForce.com.

She argues that AdventNet is one of the few software "product" companies in India.

She defines a product company as one that makes a software product once and then resells it multiple times to multiple customers.

This has leverage when compared to the typical Indian software "services" companies, which do customer-specific development. They need to keep plugging bodies in.

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The Sales Lesson from a Real-life James Bond

When I was in my early 20's, and working at my first job after college, I met a rich Italian salesman who lived a James Bond lifestyle.

He was in his 50's, divorced, and traveled the world - living a life of fast cars and women from many different countries.

His exploits were legendary around the office.

I was at the small North American sales and support office for a much-larger German company. We sold machinery for the packaging industry, and had a salesman with a mechanical engineering degree - who knew our products technically.

We weren't making enough sales - so the CEO in Germany decided to send their top sales person (the Italian) for a year.

He easily outsold our regular sales person.

I became friends with him and found that he wasn't technical at all. In fact, his gift was that he could speak 6 languages fluently - to the point where he could think in them.

He told me the following:

1. Selling is your most important job. From 9am - 5pm (when customers were in their offices), he was always on the phone. He did his routine paperwork before 9 am or after 5 pm.

2. Sell yourself first - He developed a relationship with the prospect.

3. Sell the need for your product second - he educated the customer on why they should have a machine like the one we sold, and how it could help their business.

4. Finally, sell your specific product - after the customer trusted him, and decided that they should have a machine, he would try to sell them one of ours.

5. Be patient - he took a very long-term view. Our German equipment was the best quality-wise, and would last for decades, but some Asian machines cost half as much (but only lasted a few years). Many of his prospects decided to go with the cheaper machines. He told them that they were taking a short-term view, and that they would change their mind. He kept in touch with them and, sure enough, they ended up becoming our customer.

In summary, he acquired leads, and then converted them to prospects. He was willing to build a relationship with them - even if it took years to make a sale.

P.S. I last heard about him about 5 years ago. He got remarried, bought an expensive log home in Wisconsin, and had it shipped and rebuilt in Andorra (a tax haven country between Spain and France).

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Luc Besson - France's Answer to George Lucas?

Forbes Magazine wrote a profile on French director Luc Besson.

He runs EuropaCorp, which Forbes calls the "most American of all French Movie Studios."

Besson produced 5 of the top 15 French films (as measured by world box office receipts) - including "Transporter", "Transporter 2", "The Professional", and "La Femme Nikita".

His English-language movie "The Fifth Element" (starring Bruce Willis) is the highest-grossing French movie in history.

Instead of trying for high-brow cinema, his goal is to produce blockbuster action movies. His studio is run every bit like a business - focusing on containing costs and pre-selling distribution rights to lock in profits.

His studio's philosophy is to never go over budget. "If you go over budget by $5 million, you've got to find another $70 million in revenue to restore $5 million in profit."

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John Stossel Comments on the Economic Stimulus Package

He is right - the best thing that government can do is get out of the way...

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Squidoo For Article Marketing

I created a new squidoo page to promote Stock Trading Riches.

For the title, I selected a long tail keyword that gets a lot of searches, but does not have a lot of Google results.

We'll see if this brings more traffic to my trading book site.

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Snowboard John

If you are interested in business (internet or off-line), risk management, or success in general, check out the blog of Snowboard John.

He thinks differently - and provides a lot of new ideas.

The "related posts" plug-in is a great feature. John knows how to provocatively title his posts - so you end up jumping from post to post.

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Testimonials

Here are some testimonials I received about my book "Stock Trading Riches":

"Book is very precise and clear. Easy to read and understand...retirement we will use it."

Jeff E.
Buffalo Grove, IL



"With your system, you should be managing millions in a hedge fund!"

Sergiu M.
Geneva, Switzerland



"I read your book cover to cover and I think it's great. I get it...like purified drinking water. It's clear, it's elemental, it's good for you...what's not to like?"

Brad W.
Hoffman Estates, IL

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Most Investors Fall into Two Camps

"My mutual funds always trail the market..while eating up fees."

"I don't know why I bought it...my adviser just told me to."

"I'll get a stock tip and then buy it at $34...and it will go right to $29."

"I'll buy a stock at $45, and it'll jump to $48! I'll excitedly sell...then see it go to $65."


Sound familiar? Most investors fall into two camps:

1. They passively buy mutual funds and settle for mediocrity.

2. They "dabble" in stocks and settle for inconsistency.


That's not how it is for me. I run a fully automated stock market passive income business.

I have procedures for selecting stocks, buying initial positions, and then automatically building up and tearing down the positions.

Over time, I pump money out of each stock - no guess work.

My stock trading business is boring, predictable, but extremely lucrative.

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Minimalist Marketing

Do we really need long copy for sales letters?

While getting gas at 7-11, I saw that the pump had a great ad for their new chicken hot dog.

The sales copy consisted of a picture of the hot dog in a bun, followed by a one-liner:

"100% real chicken. 100% real taste."

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Inspirational Video

Appropriate, since the Super Bowl just ocurred:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vB59PkB0eQ

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MoneyNing is Getting Married

A financial blog that I find very interesting is MoneyNing. He emigrated from Hong Kong to Canada, and writes about earning, saving, and investing money with the goal of financial freedom and early retirement.

Any way, he is getting married and I want to wish him congratulations!

To celebrate, he is giving away $1500 worth of cash prizes randomly to his readers.

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Redesigned Stock Trading Riches Website

I redesigned the Stock Trading Riches website to make it more aesthetically minimal, useful and easy to read.

I dumped the long one-page sales letter. 

I don't want to "sell you" my book.  I want you to discover it for yourself.

The website now contains short, information-packed pages connected through a simple link menu.

I added testimonials, the book's table of contents, and an excerpt from the "Zen and the Art of Speculation" section that is called the "Knuckleball Dance".

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The 62/70 Solution for Claiming Social Security Benefits

Financial planners usually recommend working longer, and not collecting social security until 70 - so you get the maximum monthly payout.

Forbes magazine recently had an article about new research showing that a 62/70 split can benefit many married couples. The lower earning spouse starts collecting at 62, while the higher earning spouse starts collecting at 70.

For anyone born between 1943 and 1954, the full Social Security retirement age is 66. If you start claiming benefits at age 62, you will only get 75% of the normal benefit. For each year you wait after age 66, you get 8% more, for a maximum benefit at 70 of 132% the normal amount.

This is supposed to be actuarially neutral. In other words, for every $100 that a person retiring at 66 gets, he would only get $75 if he retired at 62, but he would make it up by collecting social security longer. Similarly, the person who retired at 70 would collect $132 for each $100, but it would be offset by the fact that he would collect it for a shorter amount of time.

Actuarial neutrality, however, is skewed by a special rule for married couples - the surviving spouse can take over the dead spouse's benefits (if they are higher) and drop his or her own.

The Forbes article has more info, and a comparison chart showing the benefits difference (in net present value) for a 62 year old couple.

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Your Company's Hidden "Real Estate" Assets

Do you have underutilized assets that could be exploited, for things like marketing?

I recently pondered that question at the breakfast table. I was eating a Meijer store-brand cereal and noticed that, on the back of the box, they had published the history of the company.

They took advantage of the "real estate" on the back of their cereal box. I paid them for the advertising, and it hit me at an unexpected time and way.

This unexpected "hit" is probably more valuable and memorable, then if I had just glanced at an ad in the paper while eating my cereal.

By the way, Meijer is a grocery/merchandise chain (like Walmart) that is big in the Midwest.

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Egg Cartons and self-publishing - How to Command a Premium in a Commodity Business

Forbes Magazine recently had a profile on Country Hen eggs.

Selling eggs is a commodity business, yet Country Hen appears to earn a gross profit margin above 10%. Their eggs fetch over $6 per dozen, triple the price of supermarket brands.

How do they do that?

They feed their cage-free hens nutrient-packed feed that costs $400/ton (double the price of normal chicken feed). Their eggs have 2 times the lutein, 3 times the choline, and 15 times the omega-3 fatty acids as regular eggs.

But, here is where they get clever.

They can't make medical claims about their eggs on the carton (i.e. it fights heart disease, cancer, memory loss, etc). However, the right to make these claims in books and magazines is protected by the First Amendment.

So, the company skirts the issue by publishing a two-page newsletter about its health claims, and tucking a copy in each egg carton.

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