NOV 3ML Briefcase

ARTICLES for MARKETING

Below you will find summaries from the unique 3ML Briefcase. Over the first 2 weeks of every month, summaries for all 32 articles appearing in the current month’s online magazine are presented. Articles rotate every day with 4 new articles appearing in the respective subject areas (leadership, business and management, marketing and productivity). Key links for the 3 Minute Learning website include:
Free Articles:
Video News Feeds
Special Interest Articles
3ML Amazon Store
Books and Audio

21 Offline Marketing Ideas for Your Online Business
Terri Seymour

A lot of us work hard to promote our online business but one thing we might forget is that we can get a lot of traffic by promoting offline as well. The following is a list of ideas you can use to promote your online business, offline.

4 Keys to a Free Product That Grows Your Mailing List
Judy Murdoch

If you are selling products and services on the Internet you are probably very aware of the value of a subscriber list. Periodic, relevant information is the main way to build the trust and credibility needed for customers and prospects to take action. I cannot over-emphasize the importance of creating trust-based relationships in business.

What's Your Excuse For Still Not Having A List?
Willie Crawford

One of the excuses I hear most often from struggling online marketers is that they don't make more sales because they don't have a list. We even hear that excuse from marketers who have been online three or even five years. My question to them is always, "What are you waiting for?" "Why not start a massive list-building effort today?" When I look at how I built my database, I used only a few primary methods. Here are the most effective ones that I used.

How to Breathe Life into Your Sales Copy with a Stronger Offer
Dan Lok

If you want a huge leg up on your competitors, you MUST test as many components of your sales copy as possible. It's the one thing that distinguishes good results from the superb. Done right, testing and refining your offer can put you into a whole new league of success. A powerful offer is one of the best ways to tilt the deck in your favor and get more sales.

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GROWTH <> LEADERSHIP <> EXCELLENCE
© 2009 3 Minute Learning LLC

NOV 3ML Briefcase

ARTICLES for BUSINESS and MANAGEMENT

Below you will find summaries from the unique 3ML Briefcase. Over the first 2 weeks of every month, summaries for all 32 articles appearing in the current month’s online magazine are presented. Articles rotate every day with 4 new articles appearing in the respective subject areas (leadership, business and management, marketing and productivity). Key links for the 3 Minute Learning website include:
Free Articles
Video News Feeds
Special Interest Articles
3ML Amazon Store
Books and Audio

Selecting the Best Business Name for Your Company
Marcia Yudkin

If you turn away from the idea of naming as a black art, you can find some secrets of branding in scientific studies that have been published after having been reviewed by academic authorities as reliable. Here are four points on which researchers have given us insights that help guide the creation of effective business names.

Knowledge Is Power - Using EBay Market Research
Chris Malta & Robin Cowie

New eBay retailers are often overwhelmed with all the choices they have to make: what to sell, what to charge, how to list an item. Thankfully, there are numerous tools available to answer those questions.

How to Become a Successful Entrepreneur
Nancy Fraser

Ask the question, "Why did you start your business?" and many entrepreneurs will say, "To have more freedom". Ask them if they achieved it and many will say that it’s not quite what they expected. When someone starts a business, they often struggle with how to differentiate their business from the competition.

Online Opportunities for Working at Home
Dock Murphy

Internet based business are more popular that ever. By using the skills you have to start your own business or join a company that allows you to work from home, you will be able to begin a new career without having to buy new clothes or commute to work in the morning.

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GROWTH <> LEADERSHIP <> EXCELLENCE
© 2009 3 Minute Learning LLC

NOV 3ML Briefcase

ARTICLES for LEADERSHIP

Below you will find summaries from the unique 3ML Briefcase. Over the first 2 weeks of every month, summaries for all 32 articles appearing in the current month’s online magazine are presented. Articles rotate every day with 4 new articles appearing in the respective subject areas (leadership, business and management, marketing and productivity). Key links for the 3 Minute Learning website include:
Free Articles
Video News Feeds
Special Interest Articles
3ML Amazon Store
Books and Audio

Articles for Inspiration
Steve Goodier

TABLE of CONTENTS
1. COMPLIMENT MORE; REPRIMAND LESS
2. CHOOSING THE RIGHT COMPASS
3. HOW TO BE A WEAK LEADER
4. YOUR RIGHT TO BE WRONG
5. HURRY UP AND BE PATIENT!
6. ALL THE ADVICE YOU'LL EVER NEED

The Importance of Empathy in the Workplace
Julie Fuimano, RN, MBA, CSAC

In a recent presentation to healthcare professionals on empathy in New York City, the audience concurred that healthcare professionals do exhibit empathy most of the time – to their patients. When asked about the use of empathy with colleagues or with family or even with themselves, the audience seemed pretty certain they could do a better job.

Successful Leaders and Their Important Managerial Skills
Harald Anderson

Great leaders understand that their highest calling involves cultivating the growth and development of people. A good leader essentially needs to be a motivator. He should be able to consistently inspire his team to strive for quality and excellence in their work. The job of a leader is to constantly improve standards and levels of productivity. And the only way to achieve that is to motivate people to perform their best at all times.

Top Ten Personal Habits
Laurel Vespi

Successful people have a regular routine of daily or weekly habits that reinforce the things that are most important to them. By practicing a set of personal success habits, they maintain a positive outlook, keep focused on their priorities and have more energy and a greater sense of satisfaction with life. How positive habits do you do on a regular basis?

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GROWTH <> LEADERSHIP <> EXCELLENCE
© 2009 3 Minute Learning LLC

Teens Opt Out of Work

Numbers Declining

According to the US Department of Labor, for the first time in 60 years, the percentage of working teens has dropped below 50 percent from the available age group. In 2000, over 60 percent available teens entered the summer job market.

Part of the drop in summer work interest is the need for teens to take additional or advanced education courses in order to get ready for college or to compliment high school courses. Teens and their families realize that their future depends on educational readiness. It is estimated that about 38 percent of teens are taking more coursework this summer. That’s about 3 times more than 20 years ago.

While some authorities, notably those with a vested interest in cheap labor, argue that summer work adds to teens’ experiences and builds tolerance for diversity in age and race, education scholars agree that summer work is more distracting than helpful. If you are an educator or a parent of a teen, take a look at Beyond the Classroom by Temple University psychologist Laurence Steinberg, Ph.D. After reading his arguments, you’ll be less likely to support the notion of working teens as an American tradition.

Rarely can a summer job add value to a person’s résumé unless that person has supervised a group of workers. A teen would draw more attention and accolades by volunteering time to a worthwhile community project. Add the traditional low wages and work tends to be more about lost time than money that can be used for education.

There was a time when summer jobs could go a long way to paying for college. Before the collapse of manufacturing in the US, high school students had a quality choice between college and employment. With the competition for “bodies” college costs were very affordable. I worked a summer job unloading box cars for General Foods at $7 dollars per hour. A summer of work netted over $3500 (including overtime). What was my tuition at the University of Delaware? An extremely reasonable $500 per year for two semesters of unlimited credits. That lead to a college degree in four years for around $2000 with no debt of any kind. That would be a very difficult task today without significant family support.

Paying for College

Starting July 2007, variable rates are 7.22 percent for student loans and 8.02 percent for parent loans. Federal student loans have 10-year repayment terms while consolidated student loans (7.25 percent currently) can be repaid over 12 to 30 years depending on the amount of the loan. For example, a $40,000 loan can be repaid over a 25-year term.

The average cumulative debt for all programs of higher education is $42,406 according to FinAid.org. A Ph.D. will set you back around $41,540, while a graduate law degree costs around $80 thousand and a medical degree well over $125 thousand.

Ironically, the higher the income a person makes after graduation, the less likely the student loans will be tax deductible. Tax deductions phase out between $55,000 and $70,000 on individual returns.

If you need to declare bankruptcy, student loans still need to be repaid. Only in the most desperate of situations will student loans be forgiven.

The bottom line is that college is expensive and paying for college has many options and pitfalls. As was revealed recently in the investigation of the college-based preferred lender scandal, it is hard to find people who are honest and will act with integrity in guiding you through this process.

When it comes to money and financing, do your homework and know what options make the most sense. Depending on others may lead to a very costly mistake.

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GROWTH <> LEADERSHIP <> EXCELLENCE

© 2007 3 Minute Learning LLC

WHAT’S A BETAMAX?

Changes Are Accelerating

In 1975, Sony introduced a wondrous machine called Betamax. It was huge, occupying a large space by or under an equally large TV. It was heavy and would only record when you were present to press the “Play-Record” buttons. Tape size was about the size of a small book and expensive.

Betamax was awesome for its day. To be able to record a program and watch again anytime you wanted to was very impressive. Keep in mind that TV was basically 3 channels and cable was still a one or two channel connection for people in rural areas.

The next year, 1976, VHS was introduced. The equipment was smaller and a lot less expensive (around $995 in 1976 money). The real difference was in the lower cost of blank tapes (albeit a 2-pack of VHS tapes would cost you about $50 in today’s money). The battle was on – Betamax in one corner, VHS in the other.

The winner would ultimately be VHS. (Some observers speculated that VHS won because the porn industry had adopted the VHS standard because it was less expensive.) By 1985, VHS was a clear victor in the recording and playback wars. Betamax now only exists in the annals of electronic folklore.

Today, VHS is just about extinct as a Betamax thanks to DVD player/recorders and TIVO. It took 10 years for VHS to “beat” Betamax. Less than 20 years later, VHS no longer matters. Instead DVD equipment makers are fighting over which high definition format will prevail.

Change used to occur over generations; now change can happen overnight. In a consumer-driven society, new products appear weekly and render still useful products to the “old bin.” The launch of the iPhone will undermine the entire cell phone industry making current products useless.

Here’s the point of the above comparisons: how do you prepare people for the future? What do you teach in school that can still have meaning 20 years from now? What technical training do you offer unemployed people?

Prior to 1995, very few K-12 students had access to computers; 10 years later the computer would exist in every classroom. Now students can get high school and college degrees using a computer and the Internet. The Internet was in its infancy 10 years ago; now it is such a high value commodity that lack of access sends companies scrambling for “work-arounds.”

There are two answers to the preparation questions posed above. First, the core subject areas of reading, writing, arithmetic need to have the highest degree of priority. All three subjects need integration into all aspects of student learning through the end of high school (for example, football players would have reading assignments about football; they also would write summaries about game experiences). Comprehension and skill needs to be standardized at no less than 11^th grade level. If a person can continuously learn, they will survive in a fast changing employment environment.

Second, there needs to be an emphasis on creative thinking using art, music, theater, sports and clubs like chess or journal. Education needs to engage both sides of the brain to encourage lifelong learning. Teach people how to think, not what to think.

The next greatest idea will be revealed somewhere tomorrow. Do you think you are ready?

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GROWTH <> LEADERSHIP <> EXCELLENCE

© 2007 3 Minute Learning LLC

PERSONAL SUCCESS

Hard Work Not Enough

Remember that old axiom of work hard and you’ll be successful? There are so many clichés like Keep your nose to the grindstone and Idle hands are the devil’s workshop. For generations people in America believed that hard work and success were synonymous. Unfortunately, not anymore, unless you re-define what success means to you.

When US employment was over 90 percent in manufacturing and agriculture, hard work could be your ticket to financial and emotional success. Most manufacturing jobs didn’t even require a high school diploma. A person could earn a substantial wage and live the American ideal. It was hard work but the rewards reinforced a view of success. There were set work hours and plenty of time for family and friends.

Now manufacturing jobs are part of American folklore and hard work means longer hours and earning a few dollars above minimum wage, hardly enough to support a family nevertheless spend any time with them. And if you really work hard and are rewarded with increasing pay, today’s companies terminate you because you have become too expensive to keep.

If you ever needed a reason not to buy electronics from Circuit City, remember the 3400 people who were terminated recently because they did a good job, worked hard, got pay raises and then were terminated because of pay that was out of line with the industry. Whenever a company states it is offering competitive salaries, interpret that as paying you a wage that is in line with the industry and that pay increases could eventually cause you to lose your job. Circuit City is not the only service industry employer terminating employees because of higher pay. A spokesman for the company said they were just following service industry standards.

Hard work in today’s economy means that you need to have a high level of critical and creative thinking. Today’s jobs are sitting down and office based or standing on your feet teaching all day Working with your hands means using a computer, telephone or a whiteboard.

Do not underestimate the difficulty of good thinking. It is hard work and not everybody can do it. Remember Henry Ford’s comment? If thinking were easy everyone would do it.

Hard work today is not as much physical as it is mental determination. The hard part of today’s job is staying on the task and not being distracted by the 100 things that pass by you everyday. Focus is the hard part of today’s jobs.

Unfortunately, good thinking coupled with determined focus does not yield high pay. Ask any of today’s recent hires in the K-12 educational system. The average salary for new teachers is under $35,000. Currently there are 66 baseball players earning over $10 million per year. Both teachers and ball players work hard but only one gets paid what they are worth. (Wouldn’t it be great if these 66 baseball players started their own private schools and paid teachers a respectable middle-class salary?)

Look around at people in your community. Many of them are working multiple jobs. They work long hours. Yet, they are not financially or emotionally successful. They have a difficulty saving money and time to spend enjoying the company friends and family.

Is there an alternative? Yes. People need to end their commitment to consumerism and start living small. Lives need to be simplified by removing the excess. Instead of working hard to have money, work hard to have relationships.

No matter how much money you earn it will never be enough if you keep buying things. Instead, cultivating friendships and developing quality family life is both rewarding and provides renewable sources of satisfaction and contentment. Do you really need Blu-Ray HD-DVDs?

Visit www.3MinuteLearning.com

GROWTH <> LEADERSHIP <> EXCELLENCE

© 2007 3 Minute Learning LLC

BUILDING CHARACTER

11 Principles

From the Character Education partnership, here are 11 principles for comprehensive and effective character education the group is promoting:

1) Promote core ethical values as the basis of good character

2) Define character comprehensively to include thinking, feeling and behavior

3) Use a comprehensive, intentional, proactive and effective approach

4) Create a caring school community

5) Provide students with opportunities to engage in moral action

6) Provide a meaningful and challenging curriculum that helps all students to succeed

7) Foster students’ intrinsic motivation to learn and to be good people

8) Engage school staff as professionals in a learning and moral community

9) Foster school moral leadership and long-term support for character education

10) Engage families and community members as partners in character education

11) Evaluate the character of the school, its staff and its students to inform the character education effort

This list is admirable and necessary but these principles need to start with parents not teachers. Schools are the partner to supplement character building enforced by parental guidance.

Schools are only part of the solution for building good character and leadership skills among the today’s youth. Beyond parents, other community institutions responsible include church/spiritual, government, business and social/recreational outlets. Without community and parental involvement, schools are powerless to effect widespread change.

Once again it looks like public schools are being asked to take control for something that is the domain of parents. Like childhood obesity, schools are powerless to correct this behavior without the help of parents. Character building cannot be a subject imbedded in a curriculum. It is part of culture and of civilized society and must be constantly demonstrated and reinforced by everyone.

Isn’t it interesting that he institution most closely associated with character building is not demanding to “lead the charge”? Spirituality is supposedly a high priority among US citizens, so where are the people representing the various ministries offering to provide character building studies? Aren’t these individuals the character builders?

Students need character building education but don’t expect teachers already burdened with trying to meet the demands of No Child Left Behind to be the solution. They are support and they lead by example but they are not the solution.

Job Loss

A person losing their job has been a way of life since the early 1980’s when the world (notably Japan and Germany) caught up with dominating US companies. Manufacturing was the major force in the US job market 25 years ago but it was undermined by an emerging world economy that could build quality products for less money. The era of “jobs for life” had ended.

According to the US Department of Labor, the US averages about 2 million lost jobs per year. In 1997, 1.44 million jobs were permanently lost. The best year came in 2000 when only 1.1 million jobs were lost (during the economic boom) and the worst year in 2003, when 2.85 million jobs were eliminated (the tech bubble burst). In 2006, 1.69 million jobs were terminated. Because change can come quickly instead of taking generations, employment is dynamic (new jobs are created and old ones eliminated).

The point is that people should not be preparing to do one job and instead should have the attitude that employment is a constant state of change. Instead of trying to anticipate what might be the next great job, prepare for everything and anything. The best way to accomplish that goal is to read and to practice your writing skills.

If you can learn, think and translate your thinking to paper, someone will hire you.

Visit www.3MinuteLearning.com

GROWTH <> LEADERSHIP <> EXCELLENCE

© 2007 3 Minute Learning LLC

More Workplace News

Study Indicates Sources for Teenage Spending

As a follow-up to the last column about teenage workers, a study by the Harrison Group and reported in USA Today (3/15/07), indicates that the purchasing power of teens (ages 13-18) totals almost $200 billion annually. The top spending categories are clothes, food, cars, movies and cell phones.

The source for this money comes from parents either as part of family expenses (over 50 percent) or allowances based on “chores” (about 10 percent). Earnings from jobs accounts for less than 20 percent of teens disposable income.

Knowing that school achievement studies suggest that students who work have less success at school than their non-working counterparts, does it make sense for teenagers to work? Does having less than 20 percent discretionary income to spend on the aforementioned categories make a teen’s life incomplete?

Again the key question remains: are communities really interested in promoting academic achievement or do they prefer a cheap labor force?

(Note: teens that work to support family financial needs are not the targets of this curiosity. And there’s a good chance those teens were not the subjects of the above study. Asking teens to carry the burden of helping families pay for food or a utility is a community issue that needs a solution. Otherwise, communities are guilty of promoting generational poverty that will continue adding to the ranks of under-educated and under-prepared persons unable to cope with requirements of the service economy.)

Growing Business

An annual survey of CEOs completed by PriceWaterhouseCoopers revealed the following regarding how they plan to grow their respective businesses:

~~ Over half (57 percent) will focus on new markets, mergers and acquisitions, new products and innovation;

~~ About a fourth (23 percent) will focus on better penetration of existing markets for existing products; and,

~~ About 16 percent will focus on better customer service and employee retention.

What this data should suggest, if you are currently employed and want to advance (or if you are unemployed and want to be hired), that you need to focus on creating or exploiting opportunities that builds new business for your employer. Clearly, 80 percent of CEOs want ideas to improve the financials of their company by increasing customer base.

CEOs are not saying they want leadership, problem-solving, critical thinking, more communication skills or other such ideas commonly promoted in business literature or by “gurus”. They want to know how to “get” and sell to customers.

This means you need to be creative and exploit technology to expand the number of customers. Or, use your creativity to develop the next social network website, the next video gaming system or the next high performance, high mileage car.

Companies focus on the bottom line so prepare to address that basic need. Here’s a hint: look at social trends. For example, the US Census projects that the number of people ages 65 and older in the labor force will double over the next 10 years. How would you get your company ready to absorb workers represented by this age group? If you are unemployed, how do you position yourself as an expert to offer training and development for people who want to return to the workforce?

Staying employed and enjoying a satisfying lifestyle is easy if you know how to create profit!

You Knew This!

The estimated number of hours the average American spends using various types of media is:

TV @ 1555 hours

Radio @ 974 hours

Internet @ 195 hours

Reading a newspaper @ 175 hours

As long as TV, with its ever increasing time devoted to commercials promoting the insatiability of consumerism, dominates people’s free time, can we really expect this country to maintain its position as a major economic and critical thinking power?

Visit www.3MinuteLearning.com

GROWTH <> LEADERSHIP <> EXCELLENCE

© 2007 3 Minute Learning LLC

TOO MANY PROBLEM SOLVERS

Take Advantage of Opportunities

The US school system has done a great job in preparing curricula regarding problem solving. It is debatable if students are enjoying any great success with problem-solving curricula and it does offer great amounts of fodder for discussion.

One reason why there is so much emphasis on math and science is because they are easily measurable by standardized tests. Those fields of study lend themselves nicely to factual “right or wrong” test questions that can measure one student’s ability to remember over another. Once test scores are verified, a litany of statistics can be applied to support or defend educational programs.

As a county, we adore problem-solvers and reward those people with high paying jobs and in the case of the military, medals. After all, who doesn’t like the idea that the “good cowboy” is riding into town to deal with the “bad cowboys?” How often was GE’s Jack Welch placed on the pedestal as the company’s great problem-solver? George Patton is romanticized as the “kick butt” get it done general.

The issue is that education, K-16, is producing too many problem-solvers (coupled with technology taking over the role of problem solving) that leaves too many people out of work. Companies regularly use robots or computers during the manufacturing process to eliminate errors and create perfect outcomes at much higher levels than human workers could ever hope to perform. The result is better products but less highly educated people working.

Businesses have found that “leaner” payrolls eliminate middle management problem solvers; sadly these people are not missed. Too many problem solvers tend to cost business money, not make it. The few dollars saved by a more efficient process pales against the loss of customers flocking to a new product and company. A good example is the US auto industry.

This is not to say that business would do well to toss out all the problem solvers. There still needs to be a high degree of input because many problems arise every day. It is just that companies find that they don’t need as many problem solvers as the school systems are churning out on a yearly basis.

The real value for business comes when employees seek to exploit opportunities. They read about new trends that will increase sales or create new designs to attract new customers. The car company Toyota has often said that it is a design company that just happens to make cars.

So education needs to teach entrepreneurial thinking: finding opportunities and how to present them to decision-makers. This class would combine the elements of all school courses: art, science, English grammar, reading, math and so on. An entrepreneur combines the energy and thinking of many different disciplines to make their point.

The problem is not how you measure creative thinking but keeping it confined to the time efficiencies that schools demand. You can measure creative thinking using many traditional methods such as structuring proposals, networking, use of grammar and art and many other measurable factors. It is just not as easy to measure as a multiple choice test and certainly not as efficient. Lack of time in school is the enemy of creative thinking

Overall, isn’t this what business is asking for in their new recruits: to be able to think critically and creatively? Isn’t this the kind of education that makes people valuable and less likely to suffer the indignity of unemployment or working as an over-qualified worker at minimal wage? To prepare students for the future, schools need to take knowledge and show students how it applies to innovation.

Problem solvers abound in every walk of life. What is not as likely to be found is the person who uses good thinking to create opportunities and teach others how to capitalize. That in turn makes more profit for the company and more opportunities for employment.

Potpourri

1) According to American Demographics Magazine, the average US household spends almost $90 per day on goods and services. That translates to $32,850 per year in spending. It also means that the average household needs to earn about $30 per hour to spend at that level (factoring in taxes, insurance and capital spending such as appliances).

2) According to the “2006 Life After College” study, most college graduates stay at their first job for less than 2 years. During the first year, 36 percent report leaving and another 42 percent leave during the second year. About 5 percent haven’t worked since graduating. Newly hired teachers leave after 2 years at a rate of about 50 percent.

Visit www.3MinuteLearning.com

GROWTH <> LEADERSHIP <> EXCELLENCE

© 2006 3 Minute Learning LLC