Eat Less, Get More

By Kelley Herring

Need another reason to go organic? How about getting more disease-fighting nutrients per calorie?

The Organic Center recently evaluated the nutritional quality of organic foods versus those grown conventionally. In their review of 97 studies, the researchers found that organic, plant-based foods contain higher levels of 11 nutrients. That includes significantly greater concentrations of health-promoting polyphenols and antioxidants.

What's more, organically grown plant-based foods turned out to be 25 percent more nutrient dense. Which means you get more nutrition per serving or calories consumed.

So eat less and get more by choosing organic produce. Your body and our earth will thank you.

(Source: organic-center.org)  

[Ed. Note: Eating organic food isn't the only simple lifestyle choice you can make to improve your health. Kelley Herring is the founder and CEO of Healing Gourmet, and is editor-in-chief of the Healing Gourmet book series. You may also be interested in reading the recipes and nutrition tips at Kelley's website, Healing Gourmet (www.healinggourmet.com).]

”It's like deja-vu, all over again."

- Yogi Berra

There's Nothing New Under the Sun

By Clayton Makepeace

I've learned a few things in my two-score and 16 years - stuff that some other pretty smart fellas figured out a long, long time ago... 

"There's nothing new under the sun." - King Solomon

"What is past is prologue." - William Shakespeare

"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it." - George Santayana 

Now, keeping those quotes in mind, consider this... 

• Huge expenditures from a massively expensive war are coming home to roost.

• The U.S. economy and stock market are stalling; unemployment is rising.

• In an attempt to pull the economy out of its funk, Washington is printing money like there's no tomorrow.

• Inflation - our cost of living - has begun rising.

• Oil and gasoline prices are at all-time highs.

• Food and raw materials are in increasingly short supply and prices are soaring worldwide.

• Gold and silver prices are on a tear.

• Congress is already controlled by the Democrats and voters are set to throw the Republicans out of the White House. [in 2008 when this article was originally written, but many points still relate to today]

Have I left anything out?

What's that you say? "Hannah Montana is breaking all box office records?" 

What? Wait. You think I'm talking about TODAY'S headlines? 

Sorry. No. I was reading the above headlines 30 years ago - in the mid-1970s! 

The debt from the Vietnam War was hitting home. The term "stagflation" was being coined to describe the new environment of slow (or negative) economic growth plus inflation. Washington was printing money out of thin air to pay its bills. Inflation was accelerating. And oil, gas, food, and just about everything else under the sun (especially gold and silver) were roaring higher. 

And, of course, in 1976 - with both houses of Congress already firmly in Democrat hands - disgusted voters abandoned the hapless and clueless Ford (remember the "WIN" button?) and installed an equally clueless and soon-to-be one-term Democrat peanut farmer in the White House. 

So sorry if I misled you. Maybe I also should have mentioned "Disco is all the rage."

Nevertheless, here's why I say some of the life experiences I've had in my 56 years on this planet are beginning to come in handy: 

I know how to make money - a LOT of money - in times like these, because I've been there before. All you have to do is hit the history books, figure out who got richest the fastest the last time around, and then do what they did. Only better. 

I was there. I remember how the realization that Washington was out of control... that the government was incompetent and incapable of governing the economy... that even harder times were most likely ahead - and that in such times, prudent people take responsibility for their own financial and personal security - made a bunch of us a huge pile of money. 

I remember how my old pal Howard Ruff built The Ruff Times into a 180,000-subscriber behemoth telling people to buy gold and guns and stockpile food. I remember Investment Rarities, Security Rare Coin, and Blanchard & Co. exploding sales as much as 43 times over in as little as a year. 

I remember how just about everybody and anybody who promoted information or three-dimensional products aimed at helping people become self-sufficient and prepare for hard times raked in huge bucks. 

Most of all, I remember how marketers who recognized and then tapped into the public's widespread and growing disgust with the establishment, fear of the worst-case scenario, and desire to take matters into their own hands created the greatest profit explosion in the history of the financial information business. 

And I remember how, years later, those self-sufficient investors turned out to be every bit as distrustful of the medical establishment as they were of the political establishment. And how they went on to create the multi-gazillion-dollar alternative-health publishing and supplement businesses we know today. 

And this time around, the smart money is betting that the profit opportunities will be even greater.

Because last time around, there were no food riots around the world. No countries cutting off exports of wheat and other foods and stockpiling agricultural commodities to make sure they could feed their own people. 

There was no China with its $1.3 trillion foreign reserve war chest buying up resources and resource companies like there's no tomorrow. And there certainly weren't three billion new consumers on the planet in a bidding war for everything that makes middle class living what it is. 

Last time around, our home equity - the #1 source of retirement money for the vast majority of Americans - wasn't evaporating before our very eyes. Nor was there a credit catastrophe hammering and even destroying lending institutions and making it next to impossible to borrow money. 

Oh - and we also didn't have a way to get our message out for free. Today, we have the Internet. 

So before you do that next promotion, why not take a moment to crawl inside your prospective customer's skin a little bit? You don't have to be writing about investing or health to make this work for you. The fact is... understanding your prospect's disgust with the establishment - the status quo - and then giving him a way to take control of his own life is likely to pay you huge dividends. 

[Ed. Note: As a direct-marketing consultant and copywriter, Clayton Makepeace has helped four major direct-marketing firms at least quadruple sales and profits to well over $100 million per year each. The best way to position yourself to take advantage of this groundswell of anti-establishment feeling is to start your own Internet business.] 

Checking Your Progress

By Michael Masterson

I read an interesting health brief....

It was about losing weight. The piece, in a nutshell, said that people who weigh themselves every day lose more weight and keep more weight off than those who don't. "Consistently monitoring yourself after you've lost weight," the article concluded, "is clearly a key component of keeping it off."

That reminded me of a recommendation I made in Automatic Wealth.  If your goal is to become wealthy, I pointed out, it's a good idea to track your net worth on a regular basis. I said:

"I believe that most successful moneymakers regularly count their money... they regularly assess their fortunes. As their net income grows and they feel more comfortable with their wealth and more confident of their income, they count less. When they get superwealthy - Warren Buffett wealthy - they don't have to count their money. Fortune magazine and countless other entities do it for them. But on their way up, they count. And that's what I recommend you do.

"Specifically, I suggest that you do a personal balance sheet every month. Create a spreadsheet that lists all your assets and all your debits. Include valuable possessions, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, gold, real estate (aside from your home), and so forth.

"You'll be amazed at how much this simple commitment can affect the way you think and even the way you act."

I've come across studies that found the same thing to be true of goal setting: If you write down your goals and check them regularly, you'll have a much better chance of achieving them.

For instance, a recent study from DayTimer.com concluded that American workers with the highest incomes and most success in the workplace are those who have written goals. These superstars also have the habit of writing daily task lists prioritized in a way to help them achieve those goals. On the flipside, of the more than 70 percent of workers who don't write down career or financial goals, only nine percent accomplish what they set out to do each day.

So those are three things you should be checking regularly:

• Your weight (or, better yet, body-fat composition)
• Your net worth
• Your progress toward your life goals

Get on it!

[Ed. Note: You CAN get out of debt... lose 10 pounds... start a profitable business... or achieve any goal you set your mind to.]

Do You Charge So Much Your Customers Complain?

By Bob Bly

An article in Circulation Management states: "Your subscribers should be complaining about their subscription price. If they're not, then you're not charging enough."

I get the logic of this: If your customers accept your pricing too readily, that indicates they would be willing to pay more - and, therefore, you should price your product or service accordingly. But I'm not sure I agree with it. It sounds like making your prices so high that customers find them a burden, and are unhappy paying them, is a good idea.

Do we really want our customers complaining about our prices? Should we, in fact, always charge the maximum price we can get away with for everything we sell?

Internet marketer Fred Gleeck has a rule for pricing information products: The price should be low enough that if you multiply it by 10, the product would still be worth buying at that price. Thus, a product with a value of $1,000 should cost no more than $100.

I'm more comfortable with Fred's guideline than Circulation Management's. Fred's advice ensures that customers always get more than their money's worth. Circulation Management's ensures that they barely or rarely do.

Which do you think is better?

[Ed. Note: Pricing is just one marketing element that can help your products sell. Expert marketers Bob Bly and Michael Masterson put together dozens of the most effective direct marketing techniques they know. Get the details here.

Bob Bly is a freelance copywriter and the author of over 70 books.]

It's Good to Know: Brand Names So Good, We Use Them All the Time

By Suzanne Richardson

Google has been up in arms because people are using "google" as a verb. That's all well and good when you're talking about using Google to google something. But when "google" applies to searching on any search engine, they get a little testy. And no wonder. It IS possible for a brand name to become so popular that it slips into the common vernacular... and loses all traces of its corporate identity in the process.

Do you use facial tissue... or Kleenex? And if you blow your nose with Puffs or Scott, do you still call it kleenex?

When you use the copy machine, are you photocopying or xeroxing?

Kleenex and Xerox aren't alone. Zipper, elevator, cellophane, thermos, and escalator are other examples of brand names turned generic.

* Highly Recommended *

The IRS Only Wants One Thing - Everything You Own...

So wouldn't you like to tell your boss - and all the others...

"Get Your Stinkin' Hand Out Of My Wallet!"

If you're serious about getting out from under the 9 to 5 daily grind, I'd like to introduce you to a man who's been helping people...

He'll tell you exactly what to do... so you can tell all of them to shove it!

Let me introduce you to the man they call "The King of Business Opportunities."

- Charlie Byrne

Word to the Wise: Hypertrophy

"Hypertrophy" (hy-PUR-truh-fee) - from the Greek for "beyond nourishment" - is excessive growth or accumulation of any kind.

Example (as used by Karl Taro Greenfeld in a New York Times review of Dog Man by Martha Sherrill): "Westerners writing about Japan tend to fall into two camps - those enraptured with it's modernity, the idea that frenetic, hypertrophied Tokyo somehow represents the future, or others... who find in Japan's remote regions an anachronistic respite that harks back to our rustic past."  

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These articles appear courtesy of Early to Rise [Issue #2367, 05-28-08], the Internet's most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com/.