"People get caught up in wonderful, eye-catching pitches, but they don't do enough to close the deal. It's no good if you don't make the sale. Even if your foot is in the door or you bring someone into a conference room, you don't win the deal unless you actually get them to sign on the dotted line."

- Donald Trump

Dealmaking Empire Builders

By Robert Ringer

If you look at the great entrepreneurs of our era - Kirk Kerkorian, Donald Trump, and Rupert Murdoch, to name but a few - the one thing they all have in common is that they are great dealmakers. All of them hire others to handle their day-to-day operations, while they work on identifying and closing lucrative deals.

And so it is with many individuals in a wide variety of occupations, people who have used their dealmaking prowess to build empires.

Wolfgang Puck is undoubtedly a great chef, but probably no better than thousands of other great chefs. From what I know of his rise to the top, it is clearly because he is a dealmaker supreme, who found a way - make that many ways - to transform himself from a gourmet chef into a culinary empire.

Ditto Howard Schultz, the man who built Starbucks into a global phenomenon. Start a chain of coffee shops? Are you kidding me? What a terrible idea. Nevertheless, in the face of declining coffee sales in the U.S., Schultz had the audacity to charge $3 for a cup of the world's dullest and most common drink - and served it in a paper cup, to boot!

And this came about at a time when the world appeared to be moving too fast for people to slow down, relax, and enjoy a cup of coffee, as they did in the good old days. Now, with $30 billion in sales, Schultz leaves the day-to-day management to CEO Jim McDonald, while he travels the world making deals to further expand Starbucks' reach.

I could go on and on... with Steve Riggio, who built Barnes & Noble into a retail giant and, in the process, transformed the way bookstores do business... with Martha Stewart, who built an empire by teaching women how to excel at being good housewives... with George Lucas, who created a one-man industry based on a single story. The list of dealmaking, empire-building entrepreneurs is endless.

But even these giants pale in comparison to Bill Gates. Many people think of Gates as a computer super-nerd who made good because of his awesome techno-skills. But Gates is much more than a computer maven. The real roots of his success lie in his incredible dealmaking skills.
As pretty much everyone knows by now, Bill Gates did not invent the DOS operating system that launched Microsoft into the stratosphere. What he did do, however, was make the deal of the century when he negotiated the purchase of DOS (referred to at that time as "86-DOS") - for a mere $50,000!

Funny how life works. I'll bet you don't even know the name of the guy who actually wrote the DOS program (for a now-defunct company called Seattle Computer Products). It was a 20-something programmer by the name of Tim Paterson, and he accomplished the feat in - get this - four months.

Paterson got paid pocket change for his efforts, while Gates parlayed the acquisition of Paterson's creation into becoming the richest human being on the planet. I guess I could say that life isn't fair - but if you're over 21 years of age, you already know that.

Of course, Gates was just getting started. He then turned right around and set up a meeting with top execs at IBM. At that now-historic gathering, the IBM corporate types wore pin-striped business suits, while Gates showed up in a stained T-shirt. According to one observer who was at the meeting, he looked like a 17-year-old kid negotiating with grown men.

But underneath that geeky-kid persona was a master dealmaker. Gates managed to negotiate the second deal of the century when he got the guys in the pin-striped suits to agree to install DOS in all of IBM's PCs.

And he still wasn't through. Perhaps an even more masterful dealmaking accomplishment was that Gates reserved the right for Microsoft to sell DOS to other companies. That one dealmaking coup (which, in dealmaking parlance, I like to refer to as a "throwaway bonus") laid the foundation for Microsoft's worldwide domination of the software business.

This little story underscores my oft-repeated belief that the difference between success and failure is much smaller than most people might suspect. And that small difference can often be traced to a subtle dealmaking nuance that can change the course of an entire industry.

Unlike dancing, painting, or playing a musical instrument, you can't practice dealmaking at home. The only way to become a profit-producing dealmaker is to jump in and do deals. There's no spring training, no preseason, no practice sessions. You can (and should) do a certain amount of preparation for each deal, but you cannot practice the art of dealmaking itself. It's strictly baptism by fire.

And that means being willing to jump in and get your feet wet - which, in turn, translates into rejection... embarrassment... and, yes, even failure. The willingness to fail is important, because no matter how good you become at the nuances of dealmaking, your bottom-line results are tied to the law of averages. Which is to say that the more you work at dealmaking, the better you get at it and the more deals you close.
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11 Minutes to Better Health and a Stronger Heart

By Jon Herring

Sorry, but you can no longer blame "lack of time" for your failure to regularly hit the gym. Research shows that you don't have to exercise for long periods of time to achieve significant benefits.

In a long-term study of more than 12,000 men, researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston found that exercising vigorously for 11 to 24 minutes just twice a week reduced the subjects' heart attack risk by 36 percent. Those who exercised more than 24 minutes saw no greater benefit. However, those who performed the brief workout more frequently reduced their risk even further.

We at Early to Rise and Dr. Sears have long advocated frequent, vigorous workouts of brief duration. This is the best way we know to burn fat, improve your fitness, and strengthen your heart. An overwhelming number of studies - and our personal experience - prove it.
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An Unexpected Danger of Searching for Jobs Online

By Suzanne Richardson

Try searching for a new job via the Internet, and 99 percent of the time you'll be wasting your time... or worse.

Online job-seekers are easy prey for scammers who offer "high-paying jobs to con workers into revealing personal information, such as Social Security or bank account numbers," said Tom Bartholomy, president/CEO of the Better Business Bureau. "In most cases, instead of getting paid, the job seeker loses money, and in some cases, instead of getting hired, the job seeker loses their identity."

If, for whatever reason, you're still tempted to apply to a job you find online, here's what you need to know to keep your identity and your bank account safe:

. Be wary of employers who don't bother to interview you or even meet you. A "trustworthy business" will want to meet you face-to-face to discuss your qualifications, says Bartholomy.

. Don't agree to pay for job details, placement assistance, or a background check.

. Don't include personal data - your Social Security number, birth date, address, or phone number - on resumes you post online.

Instead of blindly applying for online jobs, follow Michael Masterson's advice...

1. Do some research to find companies you'd like to work for and the titles and names of the people you'd most likely be working under. That's who you'll be writing to (not a nameless HR rep). "You must do everything you can to find out who your prospective boss is and get your letter into his or her hands," says Michael.

2. Create an exciting sales letter that explains exactly how your prospective boss is going to benefit by hiring you.

3. Never include a boring, cookie-cutter resume that will most likely end up in the trash. But do look into AWAI's Pro Resume Writer Program to help you personalize and add sizzle to a resume that will help you get the job you want.
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Dear Michael Masterson: "Is there a difference in sulfite levels between wines marketed in the U.S. and abroad?"

"I've enjoyed your wine articles. As a frequent traveler to Europe from the U.S., I've noted that local red wines (in France and Spain, for example) can be enjoyed with less chance of my developing a headache compared with drinking a similar wine sold in the U.S. I've always believed that this is due to there being less sulfites added to these wines. Yet most wines contain sulfites, both natural and oftentimes added, to help preserve them.

"So, is there really a difference in sulfite levels between wines marketed in the U.S. and abroad? And do these levels influence how one is affected by the wine?"

- Vince Czaplyski

Dear Vince:

Many visitors to Europe are convinced that they are less prone to headaches after drinking the local red wine than they would be back home. Their host may explain that European wines have lower levels of sulfites, which, as you point out, occur naturally during fermentation and are also added as a preservative.

The truth is that sulfites in both European and U.S. wines average about 80 milligrams per liter, or about 10 mg per glass, according to Andrew Waterhouse, wine chemist at the University of California. While some ingredient or combination of ingredients in red wine (still unknown to researchers) does cause headaches, sulfites are not to blame.

Sweeter white wines, which are rarely blamed for ill effects, actually have higher levels of sulfites than reds. Sulfites can also be found in dried fruit, salad bar items, and other restaurant foods, also often at higher levels than in red wine.

So why are sulfites blamed for headaches? Some people mistakenly associate a Food and Drug Administration-mandated label declaring the presence of sulfites with their headaches. Europe, which doesn't understand all the fuss, requires American wineries to remove those labels when exporting and doesn't label local wines.

For those who blame a sulfite allergy for their "red-wine headaches," Waterhouse explains that those who are truly allergic (about one percent of the population) would much more likely suffer from an asthma attack or in severe cases, anaphylactic shock, which can be life threatening.

- Michael Masterson
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It's Fun to Know: About Scrabble

Until 1948, most board games belonged to one of three categories: number games (such as dice and Bingo), move games (chess and checkers), and word games (anagrams). Then along came an unemployed architect, Alfred Butts, who wanted to create a game of both chance and skill. Combining features of crossword puzzles and anagrams, he came up with Scrabble.

Using the front page of The New York Times as study material, Butts did meticulous calculations of the frequency with which each letter appeared in order to determine the game's letter distribution.

Scrabble - which was first called Lexiko and then Criss Cross Words - has since sold one hundred million sets around the world.

(Source: The National Scrabble Association)
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Word to the Wise: Vitiate

To "vitiate" (VISH-ee-ate) - from the Latin for "fault" - is to impair or render ineffective.

Example (as used by Richard E. Marschall in the Columbia Journalism Review): "[Jeff] MacNelly is one of the few contemporary political cartoonists who can use humor to accentuate, not vitiate, his points."

Michael Masterson
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These articles appear courtesy of Early to Rise [Issue #2074, 06-21-07], the Internet's most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com/.