Rich Schefren · Strategic Profits · 28 June 2007 · 63 pages · 17,170 words
This is the complete original text of the report, published free and ungated so it can be read directly by people and by AI systems. Download the original PDF. All seven reports
# The Attention Age Doctrine
**Rich Schefren · Strategic Profits · 2007-06-28 · 63 pages**
This is the complete original text, converted to plain markdown so it can be read directly by people and by AI systems. The original PDF is at [attention-age-doctrine-2007.pdf](https://richschefren.com/wp-content/uploads/attention-age-doctrine-2007.pdf).
Part of the seven free reports Rich Schefren published between 2006 and 2008. Index: https://richschefren.com/reports/
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An Open Letter From The Desk Of Rich Schefren Dear Fellow Business Builder, What you now hold in your hands is a snapshot of my research over the past 12 months with my thousands of clients (including many of the most successful marketing gurus) and the biggest direct response companies on the planet. You see, our world is changing… our personal lives, our businesses, and everything that surrounds us – they’re all changing. In a blink of an eye certain weaknesses are all of sudden strengths, and a number of strengths are now irrelevant. Disorders have become natural gifts, and a select few have already leveraged them to build thriving businesses with incredible profits. Here’s my promise to you: If you understand and apply the information in this Doctrine, you can build a very successful business in record time. Regardless of your past… Whether you’ve been successful or not… No matter how many times you may have tried. Because right now, with this information, your ability to profit enormously has never been more certain. Back when I finished the Manifesto Trilogy, I thought I’d never write another report. In fact, I was so certain I was done; I named it “The Final Chapter”. But I was wrong.
The Calm Before The Storm Something dramatic is happening in the marketplace… it’s not email deliverability rates, it’s not Search Engine Optimization, it’s not the shift from salesletters to video, nor is it pay-per-click, banners or any other paid advertising methods. In fact, it’s nothing technical whatsoever. It isn’t because marketing is less effective, although many will say it is. Or that there is a lack of money, although there will be for many marketers. It’s far deeper than any of these things- it’s the unfortunate price of admission many entrepreneurs will have to pay as we enter a new era. There’s been a fundamental shift in the currency of our entire economy. People have simply reached a saturation point in their lives – all the cool technology, all the nifty gadgets, and many of today’s modern conveniences have turned on us. For entrepreneurs who don’t “get it” this is going to be a growing problem like an
undetected terminal disease slowly eating away and destroying the ability to market effectively and profit. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Because right here in “The Attention Age Doctrine” I am going to show you how you can keep blasting on, earn massive profits, and grow your business as fast as you desire.
2 ½ Years Ago Each of These Entrepreneurs Acted On My Last Prediction And They’ve All Become Millionaires… This Time The Signals Are Even Stronger, The Profit Potential Even Greater, And The Probabilities Are More Certain Right now I feel even more certain than I did back in February of 2005. Back then I spotted an emerging trend online before anyone else did. The sharp increases in competition screamed out to me that the winners would be the first marketers to build systemized well running businesses. I acted immediately on this trend. I set up a pilot coaching program. Only 25 clients were accepted for this initial test-run. 12 months later the results they achieved are now legendary. Here are just a few of the stories you might recognize:
With results like these, my prediction proved to be dead on. So I rolled out the coaching program and to put it mildly, it was an extraordinary success. Fast forward to today, Strategic Profits helps thousands of entrepreneurs grow their businesses faster while working less. And demand for our programs keep growing with each new success story. In 2006 we clobbered our 2005 numbers by a factor of 30x. And by March of 2007 we already surpassed our annual 2006 sales. That’s great news for the thousands business builders who are now living their business dream. But that’s not why I’ve written this doctrine – in fact it has nothing to do with my coaching program whatsoever. On the pages that follow I am going to prove to you there’s an even greater opportunity for you to profit right now. More simply stated – more people will make more money than ever before. Not only that- I’ll also show you exactly what you must do to capitalize on it. Pay careful attention: because if you end up being one of the lucky few to get what I am about to share… it’s the entrepreneurial equivalent to winning the lottery. Here’s how it all started: For the past 15 months I’ve been digging around for an answer to a question I’ve been struggling with. Ever since I began coaching so many of the marketing gurus I kept wondering…
Why Do 53 of the 75+ Gurus I’ve Coached Have ADD? That works out to be a staggering 76% of all the marketing and business gurus I’ve coached have been diagnosed by their doctor as having ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) . That’s more than 15 times the supposed national average of 5%. It’s such an extreme variance… I knew there had to be a reason.
And since then I’ve spent an enormous amount of time in search of an answer. I went through all my old notes and reviewed all the past recordings of my private coaching calls. I took each and every one of my guruclient’s businesses and put them under the microscope. I identified, refined and improved the strategies that shot them to the top. I even identified a few strategies they weren’t even aware they were using. My search continued over months of intensive, in the trenches, research. Plus many sleepless nights pouring over countless academic research papers from different authorities and universities like Harvard Medical School, University Of Pennsylvania and MIT, All of the research and analysis led me to a startling discovery I could have never predicted. It revealed an amazing opportunity for entrepreneurs to quickly build profitable businesses right now! The discovery set off a chain reaction of events that has left everyone in my office scrambling (including yours truly) to make all the necessary adjustments it required. But more than anything, I realized… You and I both stand on the threshold of the greatest wealth-building business opportunity in history, but for many it could be a gruesome business disaster. Which side you end up on will be determined by the decision you make in the upcoming months. That’s why I simply had to write another report. Listen carefully: It wasn’t my love of writing, my desire to stare at monitors for so long my eyesight blurred, and it wasn’t that I couldn’t think of at least twenty-five more enjoyable things to do with my family either. Nope, not even close! The reason I am sitting here right now is because what I am about to share with you is so exciting… so incredibly profitable… and so certain there’s no way I could keep something so powerful a secret.
So…Why Only The First Segment? In a little less than three weeks from now I’m conducting a very special summit for my private clients. It’s based entirely on the research that led to this report. When I told one of my marketing mentors, Jay Abraham about what I discovered and my plans to reveal it to my clients – he was absolutely floored. First, he secured an interview with me to get the same information to his private clients. Then Jay said I could use the interview when I promoted the summit. When I told Jay I wasn’t planning on promoting the summit to the public… that I had never opened up even one of my private events to the public, he just stared at me. It felt like he was staring at me for five minutes although it was probably no more than forty-five seconds. Jay then spent the next 30 minutes telling me why I had a responsibility to share these findings with the public. He was relentless… he didn’t care that I had never done it before, he said it was time to start. he didn’t care that the ballroom wasn’t big enough, he said the hotel would gladly rent us a bigger room. he wouldn’t listen to my excuses that there wasn’t enough time to prepare – he told me stories of when he was forced to conduct a 5 figure seminar and sell out within a week. he didn’t believe that my team was too busy to get everything done because he couldn’t think of anything more important. No matter what excuse I threw at him, he deflected it and put the pressure right back on me. It was a verbal ju-jitsu In the ten-plus years I’ve known Jay, I’ve never won a disagreement (let alone an argument), and this time was no different. We ended our conversation with me promising to do whatever it took to invite entrepreneurs to attend what we both knew would be a historic event. That’s right. Jay won out, and for the first time, I am breaking precedent am opening the doors to my exclusive client-only seminar to the few entrepreneurs who, after reading “The Attention Age Doctrine”, grasp the need to be there. I reconvened with my team, and gave them their marching orders…get us a bigger ballroom… accelerate the preparation schedule… all other priorities were now secondary to this event.
I began writing “The Attention Age Doctrine”. But orchestrating the creation of this new program has been so arduous… getting the incredible lineup of speakers so expensive… and putting together the integrated curriculum so exhaustive… I just didn’t have the stamina to finish both the summit and the doctrine. And since “The Attention Age Doctrine” is vital for your ongoing success – I simply refused to do a half-hearted rush job on the most important segments – it wouldn’t be fair. But if I wait until it’s finished, you wouldn’t have the advantage of knowing all of the forces converging to cause this business shakeout. You wouldn’t get the heads up to start making your profit moves right now. Most importantly you wouldn’t have the critical information you need to appreciate how groundbreaking and important “The Attention Age Doctrine” and my upcoming event are. Here’s the rub… if I wait until the report is completed and sit on this critical information and I don’t share this opportunity I have for you, you would end up with the short end of the stick. I am forced to release the first segment of the Doctrine right now. This way you’ll easily appreciate how groundbreaking and important what I am giving you is for your future. To Higher Profits,
Rich Schefren Strategic Profits
PS – The dates of the summit are July 12, 13, 14, 15… For me to go out on a limb and tell you to change your schedule, to reserve your plane tickets, to book a room, and register for an event, is not my style. I’ve no intention of selling you on it. I am offering you an invitation to what I’m sure will be recognized as the definitive event that launched more online entrepreneurs into 6 figure, 7 figure, and even 8 figure businesses, than anything else online or off. What I will do is give you an over the top guarantee –and extremely generous payment terms on the inexpensive price we’ve already established. You can read all about it here: http://www.strategicprofits.com/live
PPS – I’ve convinced Jay to conduct our interview on a tele-seminar so that you can get the same benefit as Jay’s most elite private clients. You can get all the details for it right here: http://www.strategicprofits.com/jayprivate/
Why The Doctrine Is Different (And More Profitable)Than The Manifestos “The Attention Age Doctrine” is different from the Manifesto Trilogy in more ways than just the title. All three Manifestos; The Internet Business Manifesto, The Missing Chapter, and The Final Chapter, were all centered on a common theme – The mistakes Internet marketing entrepreneurs made that stalled their success. As a result, strategies, tactics, and tips were scattered throughout the pages. Based on the Manifestos success (each Manifesto achieved more downloads than its predecessor) the format seemed to resonate with many of my readers. “The Attention Age Doctrine” is different because it deals with the future. That means we first have to get up to speed… to where we are today. You are still going to get a lot of step by step recommended actions, although this time they’ll be concentrated towards the end.
Bill Gates, Michael Dell, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, And (Your Name Here) Here’s why: whenever a major shift happens in our overall economy, the business builders who act fast often get very, very rich. Business success stories like Rockefeller, Carnegie, Gates, Dell, Perot, Walton, and many others, got extremely wealthy in exactly the same way. Now get this: I am 100% certain that right now we are entering into a new economy. What this means is you now have an opportunity to be more successful than you might possibly have ever imagined. But the fact is… you need to read this entire document as soon as possible in order to maximize your profits. For your benefit, not mine… please don’t skip a single sentence of what I’ve laid out for you. If it wasn’t important I would’ve taken it out myself. In order for you to maximize your profits you simply must understand the entire scope of the events and circumstances that have led us here today. If you do… you’ll be very glad you did.
Why “The Attention Age Doctrine” Was Written As a top business coach and author, I’m worried – no, make that disgusted– that you are not getting the quality of business and marketing advice you need… or deserve. Especially at a time like this where missteps can be deadly and opportunities seized can build an empire. The explosion of so-called “Expert’s Advice” and “cleverly crafted pitches” is coming at us from every direction… and here’s the clincher… None of these “experts” give the same advice or can even agree on what actions you should take.
Overloaded and Confused Entrepreneurs are in the strange situation of having more business and marketing information available than at any other time in history – and feeling more confused than ever before about how to start and grow your business.
What’s missing is practical and objective business building advice that works. Real actionable information you can use to boost profits, spend less time working, and even delegate almost every task to “overseas” or “leased employees” working for practically nothing. I’ve taken it as my job to care about the entrepreneurial-after-effects of this tidal wave of uninformed advice. In fact it’s much more than a job. It’s my life’s purpose – a passionate commitment to cut through the fog, noise, and deceit so you can grow your business faster and further while working less than you ever thought possible. That’s why I’ve written “The Attention Age Doctrine” . It contains dozens of tips, techniques, and strategies you can use right now to make more money and work far less. If you’ve been confused at all, I’m here to tell you it doesn’t have to be that way. In fact, inside this Doctrine I’m going to expose why 99% of what passes as expert business advice today is little more than a set-up for a later sale, or some perverse form of ego gratification on the behalf of its provider. But I must warn you… I’ve got some really strong emotions about what’s currently going on in online business so I’m not going to win any awards for being Politically Correct or even remotely tactful for what I’m about to reveal. So, if my calling out and exposing these dream-shattering lies, and the lying liars who tell them, disturbs you, then here’s your warning because it’s definitely going to get ugly before we are through. If you want to keep your innocence and ignorance – look away now. However – you should also know… I’ll be revealing in this Doctrine, some of the smartest and fastest ways to grow your business and increase your personal and financial freedom in 2007.
Hype, Promises, & One Time Offers If you’ve been online even for a few short months, you’ve undoubtedly heard everything by now in the way of hype, promises, and special one-time offers. I won’t try to over-hype anything. Nor will I insult your intelligence either.
But I do have a very straightforward, some may even say blunt, question for you… Is your business where you want it to be and all you could hope for?
Better stated… Are You Really Making It With Your Business? If not, it’s time we had a serious heart to heart talk. Since almost everything you see online these days about business building is from people who need something from you, let me say right from the get-go that I don’t need your money. I don’t need anything at all from you. What I would like, is your attention. And that’s what this truly unusual doctrine is all about (more about this later).
The Internet Is An Incredible Invention. The Internet has already shrunk the investment necessary to get your business started down to a shoestring. On top of that, the worldwide interconnectivity provides a much larger audience of potential buyers than has ever existed before. When you combine the low cost with the world wide reach the Internet provides, it represents a tremendous opportunity that can easily be leveraged with the powerful business building and marketing strategies I teach. But, great opportunity invites not only the ethical, but also tempts every two-bit hustler. Con-men who dream of getting rich by separating you from your hard earned cash. They believe the anonymity of the Internet can be a great tool for making overthe-top claims and promises they have no intention of ever delivering. It’s the main reason why the Internet today is a marketing jungle where many gurus make outrageous and absurd promises. “Buy my $29 e-book, and I promise you will earn at least a million dollars in ninety days or less or you can have your money back”… (Yeah, sure). Or, “I am going to sell you exclusive reprint rights to sell my stuff on EBay… along with the other 2000 people”… (good luck). So let’s bypass the hype and talk very simply and honestly.
I am not usually the type to throw mud; I usually just bite my tongue and keep quiet. But this time I’m taking it all very personally because I really believe what’s currently being done is destroying many entrepreneurs’ best chances of building their dream business. And the timing couldn’t be any worse. We’re in middle of the biggest shifts our economy has seen in decades – it’s creating incredible opportunities with more potential in a more flexible environment that’s ever existed before. But up till now no one has said a single word about it– they’re all too busy screaming their pitches at a full stadium pitch. Completely oblivious to what’s going on around them. Think about it:
There’s more opportunity, faster computers, faster Internet connections, better tools and software, and marketing “know-how” on the Internet than ever! So why is it that entrepreneur CONTINUE to fail online? I’ll tell you why… Most of what’s being offered today in marketing or business advice is utterly worthless and misleading. It’s a one-two punch “Mind Virus” – wasting your time, money and effort now… and setting you up for bad decisions in the future by infecting your thinking with half-truths. Look, in your gut, you know this is true. If there really were better choices out there to build your business you would have already found them. You would have already studied them, committed to them, and applied them and you’d be making an incredible profit in a business that no longer needed you to continue to grow and thrive. The fact that you’re not means you still need an answer. And what I’m suggesting just here works. If my client list and my long list of success stories don’t say it all, I don’t know what would.
You Can Have A Thriving Business In Record Time How can I be so sure? Well… First off, you can say I have a knack for knowing what’s currently needed for success in business. I’ve proved it time and time again in my own life. Whether it was clothing, music, hypnosis, Internet marketing, or business coaching I’ve always been able to pinpoint the multi-million dollar sweet-spot in the market. If that wasn’t enough, my coaching client’s unbelievable success stories proved to the world I could take business owners from a complete standstill to millionaires in less than 8 months. On top of that, take a look at the slide below and see how many of names you recognize. Each and every one of these business builders enrolled in my program to get my unique perspective on business building. Of course I am not writing this to brag (even though I am proud)…. Nor am I writing to you to tell you how pissed off or saddened I am at what I currently see happening in Internet Marketing (even though it’s sad and I am mad as hell). Nope, the main reason is I’m 100% convinced the information I’m releasing in THIS REPORT will make all those impressive results we’ve gotten in the past look like a drop in the ocean. And this time, you can be one of those “lucky” entrepreneurs who build their business and profit alongside us.
My Coaching Program Has Been, And STILL Is…”THE” Program Teaching Serious Players Online How to Systemize and Grow Their Business’s Fast If you know anything about how I work, or have been following my work/career in business you know that I refuse to be a “static thinker” and become complacent with my success. It’s my job to keep researching, studying, analyzing, and identifying the most powerful and critical business philosophies and profit generating strategies that small business owners never get a chance to be exposed to. Of course, I always keep a watchful eye on the Internet marketing community where my roots are firmly planted. Unfortunately, I’ve been shaking my head in disbelief of what I’ve been witnessing lately. Things are changing… Today, the best selling rap artist is white (Eminem), the most successful golfer is black (Tiger Woods), the tallest basketball player in the NBA is Chinese (Yao Ming), the French have been accusing Americans of being condescending and not caring about the views of foreigners, we now pay for water (bottled water is $9 a gallon) while music is free (sort of), and you need 9 different phone numbers to reach any two of your friends. And I could go on and on… But in times of change and uncertainty the biggest fortunes are made. The quick acting lucky few who stumble on the right information are the ones who reap the massive rewards, profit enormously, and set themselves up for a righteous future. Knowing firsthand the incredible opportunity this advance insight provides – I actually make it a point to map out changes in the environment at least once a month. In other words, I am always on the prowl for a big business tidal wave coming, so my clients and I can profit from it. And as I find mapping the best way to visually grasp a complicated concept, I’d like to share my map on the next page.
And what I’ve seen come together these past few months is so incredibly powerful, so easily “leveragable”, and so certain to boost profits of any entrepreneur who gets it, I knew I needed to tell you about it ASAP… That’s why I needed to clear my calendar, cancel all my appointments, turn off my cell phone, and give up my weekends … so I could write this urgent doctrine as soon as I possibly could. Ok. Now what you see below are all the collective forces combining to create the spaces between the cracks in the business growth ceiling. In order to follow the chart, start in the upper left hand corner. Work your way across (from left to right) –when you see 2 arrows pointing to a box read both of the boxes where the arrows emanate from. Don’t worry if doesn’t all make sense yet… I know my mind sometimes works doubletime – and ever since I realized how great an opportunity this is, it’s all I’ve been thinking about.
Besides, you’ve got the whole rest of this doctrine to get hip to this, and for me to show you how to use it to your advantage. Once you understand what’s going on in the map, you’ll already realize its potential future effect. There are very big ideas inside this Doctrine, me and a few people have already made a fortune with what I am revealing here.
The Current Health Of Entrepreneurs & Their Businesses I don’t need to tell you how difficult it is for entrepreneurs to succeed these days. You’re right in the middle of it. And even those of us who have tasted some success realize it isn’t exactly as easy as those who haven’t would think. Between finding and keeping great employees, developing marketing plans that bring in the cash, and keeping clients happy even after you achieve success maintaining it isn’t so easy. I could go on and on but the facts tell the whole story…
“Over 544,000 Small Business Close Each Year” U.S. Small Business Administration
Let that financially devastating statistic mentally marinate for a second… Before going any further – understand what that nightmare statistic means. Think about all of the humiliated and humbled bankrupt entrepreneurs; •
How they invested all they had (sometimes even what they didn’t have) and lost it all!
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How they worked harder than ever before with nothing to show for it but a pile of debts.
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How they gambled with their pride and lost.
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How public their failure was, how the whole world can see it
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How their failure carries over to their families, their kids, their employees and their families too.
I know how this feels firsthand — and it sucks. I consider myself lucky to have been able to have barely escaped the clenching fangs of this bear trap when one of my companies was on the line. To make this daunting number of 544,000 business closings more real, let’s break it down. First, we’ll divide it by the number of days in the year, 365.
544,000/365 = 1,490 Businesses Close Each And Every Day Gadzooks! That’s a lot of business closing each day. And that’s including weekends too! Think about that number when you go to sleep tonight – 1,490 of your fellow entrepreneurs are entering into what’ll most likely be the most difficult, embarrassing, and humiliating low point of their lives. But I don’t want you to have to wait for tonight to get this on an emotional level. Besides you might even conveniently forget about this altogether. And who could blame you? Entrepreneurs by their very nature are optimists. We prefer to focus on the great opportunities in front of us rather than the potential catastrophe’s we hope to avoid. Knowing that let’s break the 1490 daily business failures down right now. We’ll divide the 1,490 daily business closing by the 24 hours in a day.
1490/24 = 62 Businesses Close Each And Every Hour Each And Every Day. Holy S#%T! 62 businesses closing each hour. That’s a depressing statistic isn’t it?
Especially when you realize it means…
More Than One Small Business Disappears Every MINUTE! And left in its wake… the nightmarish entrepreneurial after-effects the owners experience, along with everyone around them. In the time it’s taken to read the last sentence – another entrepreneur and their business vanished. By the time you’ve finish this doctrine – dozens of small business, will be wiped off the face of the planet forever. It’s obvious… entrepreneurs need help. And most are smart enough to realize it too. But figuring out who and where to go to get the expert help they desperately need turns out to be a challenge. The search for real world profitable advice becomes an unexpected odyssey of never ending detective work. There are so many so-called business experts these days it’s hard to know who’s got the chops. The stakes are incredibly high too, because the penalty for the wrong decision can be total and complete financial devastation. If you fall victim to the wrong advice, you and your already struggling business can immediately sink into the business dead-zone, not able to withstand the damage of another bad piece of amateur advice. I don’t want to get too far off topic here – but this is important. If you’ve identified with what I just said, what about your clients and prospects – what fears do they have, and how do they evaluate who they buy from.
The Real Reason Why More Entrepreneurs Are Struggling Obviously, there isn’t only one reason why so many businesses are failing – bad ideas, poor cash management, bad hiring, obsolete solution, and the list could go on and on. But even so, I’ve noticed that there’s been a very big shift taking place in our society and most business and entrepreneurs haven’t noticed it yet. And it’s this oversight that’s responsible for more business failures and false starts than anything else. We have less free time than ever before, we are working harder than ever before, and we have all this wonderful technology but our lives are only getting more and more complicated. The chief reason is that we’ve entered into a new era, and it seems as if no one is noticing. Just so we’re clear – the single biggest factor causing entrepreneurs to struggle and fail is they’re not noticing these critical changes. Instead, most entrepreneurs just keep plodding along so they continue to follow outdated and ineffective strategies never designed for the current environment.
The “Information Age” Is Already Over That’s right. It has passed. And now, we’ve quickly entered a new age – an age I call:
The “Attention Age”
What Happens When the World Around You Changes In a previous report I wrote about my love of tennis I remember as a kid watching the legendary Bjorn Borg. At the time Borg played with a wooden racket, like everyone else. And he won a lot of major titles. The he retired. A couple of years later he came back, but by then all the top tennis players were using more powerful rackets (metal, graphite, etc.). It wasn’t pretty what happened to Borg. Inferior players with better rackets creamed him. He stayed loyal to his wooden racket never to win another major tournament Obviously, Borg knew the rules of tennis. He still had the same winning strokes. But the context and, consequently, the rules for winning changed. The more powerful rackets gave a competitive advantage to anyone who used them. Borg with his weaker wooden racket didn’t stand a chance. That’s why he was never successful again. Just to be clear… Borg might of still been a “better” tennis player – but his talent was shut-down by the changing environment. Bjorn Borg’s story is our story… The rules of the game have changed, and many of us are struggling. We are still trying to win with a wimpy racket pretending that we are playing in the same world we were in ten years ago.
But we aren’t… times have changed…
What Happens When You Change Before Everyone Else? Here’s the flip side of Bjon Boirg’s story. It’s a great way to illustrate the advantages you can gain over your best competitors by recognizing and leveraging the changes in your marketplace. If you if you’ve studied any business history at all, you’ve probably come across one of the very first “business gurus” of all time. His name was Fredrick Taylor. He is perhaps best described today as an ‘efficiency engineer’ and a significant amount of his work laid the groundwork for the mass production methods used by Henry Ford. He studied many different methods of working in order to determine what was the best way to achieve maximum efficiency on the factory floors. Many of his ideas at the time were quite revolutionary. In fact, many are still widely practiced today. In his book, Principles of Scientific Management (1911), he argued that companies should install precise procedures to maximize the efficiency of the work being done. His system became known as Taylorism which dealt with people, machines, and processes that would speed up work. The reason I bring him up now though has nothing to do with his contribution to modern management whatsoever. You see, his story is the exact opposite of Bjorn Borg’s. Even though Taylor wasn’t the best player at the time. He won the US Tennis Open with the invention of a unique oversized racket. There were no standards regarding the size, shape, and design of tennis rackets back then. So Taylor designed himself a bigger racket
that was big enough to make winning a lot easier, but small enough that it wasn’t too noticeable by other players. His oversized racket made it easier for him to return tough shots his opponents thought were winners. The racket also gave him extra power turning his shots into rockets that were difficult to return. Even though Frederick wasn’t the greatest player, his new advantage proved too powerful when competing against the better players with weaker rackets. He ended up taking home the US Open title because of his unfair advantage. Leveraging everything you’ve got is where I am leading you in this Attention Age Doctrine. I’ll show you how you can leverage yourself personally, and leverage your business so you’ll have an unfair business advantage over other entrepreneurs…. even if they are better business operators than you are!
The Perfect Storm The world we’re operating in is changing so fast these days that almost everybody is scratching their head wondering “what the hell is going on here?” Well, if you’ve been wondering the same thing yourself then you’ve just stumbled on your answer. Because I am going to walk you through all different forces to recently come together on the entrepreneurial landscape. I call it “The Perfect Storm” because it really is this very unique combination of events that is currently creating the struggles and lack of business success in the lives of too many entrepreneurs. Listen: In order for you to really profit during this unique moment of change… you must comprehend all the different forces currently coming together to birth The Attention Age. There are no shortcuts…no one can do your pushups for you. We’ve got lots of ground to cover together, so let’s dive in and focus on the changes that are currently affecting your ability to achieve a thriving business and a personal life all at the same time.
A Brief Recap of the Past 10,000 Years In 10,000 years we humans have been through five ages. And our society is speeding up so fast that depending on your age you’ve either witnessed two or three of them. Up until 8,000BC we lived in the Hunter/Gatherer age. During this era, people who could kill an animal for food or select the right items to eat were successful and had the power. We moved from the Hunter/Gatherer age to the Agricultural Age when we stopped roaming and began to put down roots. Farming made it possible to stay in one place long enough to build a real social structure for the first time. You became wealthy through ownership of productive land and knowledge of methods to maximize the yield of food. This lasted until the late 1700s. The Industrial Age came next. It started in Europe with the commercial use of the steam engine, a new invention paved the way for the freedom to no longer rely on the muscle of men. The world changed rapidly, with factories leveraging machined production, new transportation methods from the railroads and the growth of cities as places of production and distribution. Then about thirty years ago we entered into The Information Age. This age was initiated by communications satellites, computers, and the historically unprecedented numbers of an educated public. During this time the number of white collar workers (management) surpassed the number of blue collar, or production workers, for the first time. It was a wonderful era for business, for sure. But something happened. Everything started to move so fast… the lines between one human age and the next blurred.
The amount of information exploded. It just kept growing and growing until many of us developed information overload. About ten year ago we entered into The Communication Age. Each year brought another way for us to communicate with each other. Pagers, cell phones, voice mail, conference calling, email, instant messaging, etc. But with all of the new technology we all of a sudden found ourselves connected to a 24/7 “global economy” all of the time. The downside of being over-connected led us into another age. About five years ago, we entered into an age I call…
The Age Of Interruption. It was during this time that we found ourselves constantly interrupted by our “plugged-in world”. This shift has had enormous consequences that up until now I’ve heard very little mention of. Later on in this Doctrine, I’ll tell you exactly how bad it is – how much we’ve been negatively affected by this subtle shift. You need to do to reclaim your independence. Your ability to be an incredibly successful entrepreneur will multiply when you overcome this new hurdle. Another powerful force rearing its ugly head during this time is The Paradox Of Choice. Too much of a good thing can be bad – and that’s exactly what many realized when they had too many choices to choose from. But before we get to that – there’s one more “age” I need to let you know about. It all started about a year ago. That’s about the time we entered into a new era, The Attention Age. With information no longer scarce, and an ever increasing number of new technologies being developed to continually interrupt us, and too many choices to consider with almost everything, the resource that has become most scarce is human attention. I’ve been aware of this shift, in fact I’ve even spoken about it, but I didn’t recognize its overall importance as the chief culprit in business failure and success until recently.
There’s a lot to discover about the Information, Interruption and Attention ages and what you must do to significantly profit from these cultural shifts. We’ll focus on each and how you can overcome the challenges each one presents and where the big opportunities currently are to explode your business.
New Economies Always Open Up… New Opportunities To Build Wealth Fast The dominant value of the Agricultural Age was land and the wealth that came from the land. Large landowners were regarded as the wealthy. Farming skill was prized, and if you could make the land produce more than your neighbor… you got wealthier than he did. In the Industrial Age, the new economic value became production. Wealth was created through production. The more efficient your production and the more effective your distribution the wealthier you became. Some people got very, very rich – these were the early captains of industry, the robber barons, whose large corporations created unprecedented wealth. Their wealth migrated to stock markets, where wealth was defined by the amount of stock anyone owned. Today we’re still reminded of our past by the remaining values of these two ages. The ownership of land, real estate… or ownership of stocks and securities still acts as a barometer of wealth. During the information age it was thought that information was power. And for a while it was – until the amount of information exploded and the Internet leveled the playing field (when it came to the access of information). Still today certain types of information can yield incredible wealth (like insider trading knowledge) but overall the worth of information has decreased dramatically.
In the Age of Interruption, whoever owned the vehicles of interruption had enormous power. They could instantly command the attention of millions without even getting their prior consent. Of course, over time we got hip and no longer allowed all interrupters the same level of access. We developed caller id boxes to let us know who was calling, email filters to rid ourselves of the excess commercial spam messages, etc… And now we find ourselves in The Age of Attention, with so much information surrounding us and so many interrupters trying to get our attention, we are left with our attention as the scarcest resource we have. Those of us who have learned to optimize their own attention already have a significant advantage over others. Our attention is really the driver to getting massive personal leverage. If I can absorb five books with the same amount of attention it takes you to read one book, you’ll get left in the dust over time. In the business world, businesses that captivate the attention of the public and are able to hold on to it are winning big time. Right now, the overwhelming number of businesses and websites suffer from an anemic amount of attention. Also, those companies that can focus the attention of their employees on the things that truly matter end-up fully leveraging their talent, while other companies suffer from their employees diffused attention on everything from surfing the ‘net to personal issues.
The Internet Bubble and What’s Going On In the Background The birth and growth of the world wide web happened so quickly no one was really prepared for it. On Wall Street it caused “Irrational Exuberance”, during the tech boom and then destroyed the wealth of many during the subsequent Tech-Wreck. Pundits said the world wide web was going to change everything… including business models. Obviously they were wrong…or were they?
It’s important you don’t make the natural (yet incorrect) leap that, just because “the promise of the Internet” didn’t happen on stock speculators’ timeline, it’s not currently happening – because all the evidence suggests it most certainly is. Just to be clear, I’m not talking about selling ebooks, affiliate marketing, or anything like that. It’s the overall impact the Internet is having on our entire society and culture that’s critical to understand. Because if you do, you’ll profit from it – guaranteed. Any history buff will tell you that what occurred with the dot com boom and then bust is a pattern that’s played out in almost every new technology. From the birth of railroads to the mass availability of electricity, it’s always the same old story… Innovations always end up being over-hyped, creating massive disillusionment and an inevitable backlash when they don’t deliver on everybody’s wildest promises. But their true, longer range potential tends to be vastly underestimated.
How Insiders View Technology What I am about to show you will change the way you look at any new technology, software, or trend. Not only that, but it will make you a much better investor and business owner because you’ll finally know when it’s the right time to leverage or invest in a new technology. The graph above is known as a “Hype Cycle”. It Almost every new technology goes through this hype was introduced by a cycle on the way to being mainstream acceptance. respected analyst/research company by the name of Gartner. The hype cycle represents adoption and business application of technologies. Since 1995, Gartner has used hype cycles to characterize the hype and inevitable disappointment that almost always happens with the introduction of a new technology. A certain amount of hype always accompanies new technological developments. This is when everyone is talking about a new product, but no one is actually using it for greater productivity.
When shown graphically, a hype cycle initially climbs steeply as more and more people pay attention to the new technology. But the curve drops just as steeply once public interest wanes, even though the new technology has still not even been employed productively. Only as the technology begins to come of age will its use become more widespread. Eventually it hits its plateau of productivity and becomes a natural part of doing business.
The 5 Phases of a “Hype Cycle” Are: 1. “Technology Trigger”- The first phase is the breakthrough, product launch or other event that generates significant press coverage and interest. 2. “Peak of Inflated Expectations”- In the next phase, a frenzy of publicity typically generates over-enthusiasm and unrealistic expectations. 3. “Trough of Disillusionment”- Next the new technology enters the “trough of disillusionment” because it fails to meet the unrealistic expectations. 4. “Slope of Enlightenment” – Even though the technology has lost its popularity with the press, some continue through the “slope of enlightenment” and experiment to find the benefits and practical applications of the technology. 5. “Plateau of Productivity” – The technology reaches the “plateau of productivity” when the benefits become widely demonstrated and accepted.
Railroads and the Information Superhighway Once you realize that there is a common pattern to the hype that surrounds new technologies, you realize that we are just now in the midst of the long-term effects that the Internet will have on our lives. In many ways the hype that surrounds the Internet mirrors the hype that once surrounded the birth of the railroads.
Here’s a quick history lesson: A “railway mania” swept Europe in the 1800s. A supposed technological revolution promised abolishing current time and distance constraints (sounds familiar, doesn’t it). The railways were sold as goldmine investments that would bring its savvy inventors millions in returns. And naturally the vast majority of people who first invested never saw their millions… they lost their shirts. But the railways over an extended period of time did prove to be genuinely revolutionary and radically transformed the entire world economy. And that’s important because right now the Internet is quietly having that same impact on our lives. We make the same mistake in our personal lives. I call it the “Overestimate/Underestimate Theory” because most people tend to overestimate what they might achieve in 1 year, and dramatically underestimate what they might achieve in 5 years. And it’s no different with our expectations about technology. My point is – many of us are already discounting the staggering effects the Internet has already had on our lives.
In addition we don’t see the bigger implications that are still to come. But we’d better! Especially if we want to be successful in the coming years. Because not knowing how this trend shakes out could cause you to make a lot of wrong guesses and missed opportunities. For a consumer this can mean buying the newest gadget only to be disappointed it doesn’t live up to it’s promise. But then see a much better and less expensive gadget come out a month later that blows the older model away. In business knowing this cycle helps you avoid jumping on new technologies too early. I’ve seen plenty of business lose their shirt because they focused too much of their attention on products or marketing methods that weren’t going to hit critical mass for another decade.
The widespread acceptance of the Internet is changing so many of our daily activities, it’s no wonder that our society and businesses are changing so rapidly. Here’s my advice to you about how to think of the Internet from this point forward. Think of the Internet as a “general purpose” technology—like electricity which now affects the entire economy and our lives. It is the converging intersection of innovations in computers and communications that is causing this shift: microprocessors, software and information processing systems, data compression, data storage and digitization technologies and voice and data telecommunications networks. What this means is that the Internet is going to continue to magnify the results of future innovations. It already has dramatically changed the landscape for outsourcing, publishing, information marketing, startup businesses, and the nature of competition for all of us. Keep this in mind as we discuss all the current changes we must adapt to later on. Here’s a look at the profound implications for society and for you if, for example, you wanted to start selling information online in the health field. Today, there are 181 million Americans online. They are more likely to consult the Web for health information than their own medical doctor! Recently, an orthopedic surgeon complained to the New York Times: “I have people coming to the office who have downloaded 50 pages of stuff from the Internet on minimally invasive surgery.” On the surface that small factoid might just seem unimportant – but this isn’t a unique case – think about all the areas where, all of a sudden, we are taking back some of the responsibility to become well informed. All of a sudden you are becoming informed in a hundred, two hundred, or even a thousand different areas that you didn’t have any pressure or desire to study before.
Unfortunately, that’s just the beginning of the pressures to gather more, learn more and know more information. This leads us to… Information:
Welcome to the “Information Age” Everyone said our lives would dramatically improve… the workweek would shorten… free time would multiply… remember? It sounded like we were getting ready to enter a time of Nirvana!
So…How’s Nirvana Working Out For You? I’ll get back to our so called “era of bliss” in a moment. First, let’s get a handle on what got us here. The Information Age It freed us from the Industrial age. But the price we paid was something we never could have projected. Before economists define a new age, they look to see if there has been a change in which resources are scarce and can lead to wealth. So in the Information Age, information was the scarcest resource. If you could capture it and distribute information better than others you had an advantage. Microsoft became one of the world’s largest companies. Because of its role in creating the platform that greatly improved our ability to capture and distribute digital information. A large cause of our rushing into the information age was the new way money was being made. During the Industrial Age the U.S.’s major exports were items manufactured in the plants and factories spread throughout the country. In the Information Age it shifted to intellectual property delivered in the form of movies, music, books, software and higher education to name just a few.
I know it’s hard to believe now, but there really was a time when information was a scarce resource. We needed information to help solve specific and urgent problems in business and our personal lives. A great example of our desire for more information is the adoption speed of the printing press. Towards the end of 15th century a man named Gutenberg converted an old wine press into the world’s first printing machine. Only forty years after the invention of the press, there were printing machines in 110 cities in six different countries! Then… just ninety years later… more than eight million books had been printed. Almost everything printed was filled with information that previously had not been available to the average person.
The Information Explosion In an economy where information is both the currency and the product our reaction was obvious: we directed our energies and “know-how” to invent things that would increase our supply of information. By 1990, in the US alone, there were 260,000 billboards; 11,520 newspapers; 11,556 periodicals; 27,000 video outlets for renting tapes; 362 million TV sets; and over 400 million radios. Add to the list the 60,000 new book titles published every year (300,000 world-wide) plus every day in America 41 million photographs are taken, and just for the record, over 60 billion pieces of direct response mail come into our mail boxes every year And that’s all without even mentioning the computer! The contribution of the personal computer to the information explosion cannot be over-estimated. The personal computer spawned all of these new inventions: email, the world wide web, word processors, spreadsheets, blogs, search engines, rss feeds, social networking, pdfs, powerpoints, etc… We’ve all become information/content producers. More to the point, we have all become more skilled in generating information than almost anyone has in managing it.
This makes it extremely difficult to figure out which information is useful and not wasteful or, even worse, destructive. It’s not just the quantity of the information either. It’s how all these things (email, documents, the Internet, etc.) come together… like an orchestra with no conductor. The net result is we try to get our work done, but information seems to get in the way. A single publishing company like Reuters produces an astonishing 27,000 pages of information per second. Whoops… It seems we forgot to ask the question “How much information can any one person manage at a given time?” Which led us to…
Information Overload Wikipedia defines it as “The state of having too much information to make a decision or remain informed about a topic.” It was only a matter of time, with the amount of information increasing that we would eventually be overloaded by it. It all happened too quickly. We went in a blink of an eye from information being scarce, to way past the point of saturation. The total freedom and the complete accessibility of practically all information diluted information’s meaning and value to us. It became a curse rather than a blessing. It certainly didn’t help that technology made the retrieval, production and distribution of information so much easier than any time before. Our new technology reduced the natural selection processes of information. What I mean is this: in the past, technological limitations enforced a policy where only the most important information was published. And now with so much irrelevant, unclear and inaccurate data fragments surrounding us, it has made it extremely difficult to tell the forest from the trees.
Some experts have defined this as “data smog”, which they fairly compare to the pollution of rivers and seas caused by an excess of fertilizers. Other experts compare the current info-glut to health problems caused by a diet too rich in calories, except it’s stuffing our brains instead of our waistline. Many have speculated that all this information has left us powerless to really know anything anymore. We haven’t had the time to adapt our defenses against overload break down. Nobody ever taught us how to manage this overwhelming quantity of information effectively. We don’t know how to filter it. We don’t know how to reduce it. We don’t know how to use it.
I’ve broken down our overload problem into six causes:
The first is having more important information than we can assimilate. For example, we gather twenty different books on a topic, but we can’t read or review all of it. Many of us feel that since all of the information is relevant, we cannot ignore any of it without negative consequences.
The second is being weighed down by a never ending supply of information we never ask for, with the fear that some may be important and we should know about it. Take for instance email.
We get tons of unsolicited email messages daily clogging up our email-boxes. They require our attention only because some may contain relevant or useful information. Of course, each moment we spend figuring out whether an email message is junk or not is a moment we cannot spend on one that provides relevant information. Or, you conduct a search online and you get back hundreds of thousands, if not millions of pages as potential sources. We know we can’t go through every result, even though we may worry about missing relevant information.
The third relates to the speed we are receiving new information. For most of us it’s too much to process. It reminds me of a few college courses I took where the professors would attempt to go through too much information in a single lecture, it was impossible to grasp, capture, assimilate and work with it all. So I’d walk out of class with the other students, more confused than when we sat down.
The fourth relates to the value we place on information: With the amount of information increasing, the value we place on any single piece of information goes way down…No matter whether it’s important, redundant or just simply noise (clutter caused irrelevant data).
The fifth relates to contradictions in the information we review. One source tells us one thing; the next tells us the complete opposite. Of course both sources know more about the topic than we do, so we end up with the dilemma of dealing with these conflicted points of view.
The sixth relates to our increased information needs. As overall changes in our world accelerate so does our need for information. We need new information in order to keep up with all these developments.
Impacts Of Information Overload Unfortunately the negative repercussions ripple through our personal and professional lives. We are paying a very high price dealing with all this information we are responsible for.
Since most people don’t realize all the negative effects, what follows are some of the more damaging side-effects.
The Line Between Work and Personal Life Blur It began innocently enough. At first there was voicemail, then cell-phones, and now the ability to check work email from home and on the road. On the other side of the same coin, practically everyone reads their personal emails, makes personal phone calls, and even surfs the web recreationally while we are supposed to be working. It’s grown to such unacceptable levels that most small business owners now feel as if they’re working 24/7.
Our Work Suffers All this information coming at us makes keeping track of it all difficult. It puts pressure on us to multi-task (speaking on the phone while reading and writing email messages), which leads to an inability to focus. We easily become frustrated (like when we cannot find a file on our computer).
And along with the increase in stress comes a decrease in our ability to think clearly, and an increase in our tendency to make mistakes. It’s counterintuitive, but as the amount of information increases, our ability to make accurate decisions decreases. We’ve always lived in a society dedicated to the idea that we’re always better off gathering as much information and spending as much time as possible in deliberation. But new research and popular books like Blink, by Malcom Gladwell (famed author of The Tipping Point) shows us this line of thinking isn’t always true. Galdwell shows lots of situations where our snap judgments and first impressions actually offer a much better means of making sense of the world.
The Tie Between Information and Action Is Severed It used to be that between receiving new information we had enough time to put it into use and test it out. Unfortunately with the blinding speed we are hit with new information there’s no downtime. Unless you’re highly disciplined it’s easy for the tie between information and action to be severed Bestselling business books have been focused primarily on this new condition. The business community has referred to it as “The Knowing/Doing Gap” because we simply don’t have enough time to do what it is we know. Of course the implications of this new dilemma are extremely costly to businesses and to our own personal lives. Since all rewards come from what we do, not from what we know.
Informing Ourselves to Death A world-wide survey (Reuters, 1996) found that two thirds of managers suffer from increased tension and one third from ill-health because of information overload. The psychologist David Lewis, who analyzed the findings of this survey, proposed the term “Information Fatigue Syndrome” to describe the resulting symptoms. “Information Fatigue Syndrome: Symptoms include paralysis of analytical capacity, increased anxiety, greater selfdoubt, and a tendency to blame others. When people are faced with more information than they can process, they become unable to make decisions or take action.” Other side-effects highlighted by Lewis include anxiety, poor decision-making, difficulties in memorizing and remembering, and reduced attention span. David Shenk, author of the book “Data Smog” cites many different studies showing information overload causes these “wonderful” effects: Increased cardiovascular stress Weakened vision Confusion Frustration Impaired judgment Decreased benevolence Overconfidence Even with all of these negative effects, most of us treat information like a junkie who is constantly in search of their very next fix.
Information Hoarding – the Clutter Factor Another research study by Reuters revealed that despite the proliferation of office technology, we were still information misers. Better stated: we feel certain information if kept to ourselves gives us an advantage over others. We consider information an asset – whether we realize the value of it or not. In our attempt to horde this intangible goldmine, we create clutter. The clutter acts as a continual drag on our lives by hampering our job performance, stealing our time away from friends, families, and productive work and fosters an overall feeling of inadequacy.
Info-lust & Info-Addiction If you’re an experienced, switched-on consumer you Google something at least once a day… or even once an hour. Nobody wants to be the guy on the plane who paid the most for their ticket. So we research the cheapest available fare, the different rates the hotels are charging, and the different prices the car rental agencies are currently offering. It’s not just travel that spurs our urge for more information. For almost every major purchase an intensive research project is undertaken. We want the best available option for the cheapest price so we scour the information superhighway in search of the breadcrumbs that lead us to the coveted information we are seeking. If we are thinking about buying a book on Amazon, we scan the comments and critiques of fellow readers to prevent the purchase of a worthless book. Just for a second, think about how incredibly addicted to information we all are as consumers. Some experts have said that we consumers are experiencing nothing short of an all-encompassing INFOLUST: “Experienced consumers are lusting after detailed information on where to get the best of the best, the cheapest of the cheapest, the first of the first,
the healthiest of the healthiest, the coolest of the coolest, or on how to become the smartest of the smartest. Instant information gratification is upon us.” In Internet marketing almost everyone seems to be addicted to information, and lusting after more. Think about this: More information products are bought and never read, listened to, or consumed than are bought and read. It’s the equivalent of torching whatever cash you have. Recent IDC research found the average knowledge worker spends up to 25% of their time working searching for information. It’s a ridiculously large number – what did people do twenty years ago? What about you? How much time do you spend searching for information? How would you rate your skill level at leveraging technology to find the information you are looking for?
Why Trying to Keep Up Is Only Making Us Dumber This may be the greatest irony of information overload. All of that data flying at you by way of e-mail, instant message, cell phone, voice mail and rss feeds — could actually be making you dumber. The more information we try to suck in, the more we train ourselves to default to a shorter attention span. The natural result is it becomes harder to rally the concentration required to learn anything of real value. Which puts downward pressure on how much you’ll make in your business.
The reason our attention span is decreasing is in the way we are designed . We are hardwired to automate repetitive mental actions to save ourselves from having to think. The more times we perform a task, the more we “habitualize” it, and the easier it becomes. That’s why we can save energy, because we end up putting less thought into things we have done before. It’s the same with kids. That’s why experts always tell parents not to allow their children to watch too much TV. You should be very concerned about this trend. It’s like you are training yourself to be stupider and stupider with each passing day. Many business owners I meet have “habitualized” a short attention span and can no longer concentrate for any extended period of time. It ends up being one of the biggest handicaps to getting wealthy in our current economy. Because our brains are designed to conserve energy, once we’ve habitualized our short attention span – our brains will fight to conserve energy by defaulting into the “habitualized” pattern instead of more difficult options. So we end up not only preferring to concentrate for shorter periods of time, but we actually default to it when attempting to process information. And it becomes a selfreinforcing process, only making entrepreneurs less and less likely to succeed.
Well informed, Well Researched Vs. Lazy + Escape This has to go down as one of the best forms of procrastination and laziness ever invented. The reason: The passive activity of reading and surfing Internet can fool practically everyone into believing that actual work is being done! You know what I am talking about don’t you? You’ve most likely sensed it in your own activity – the way the collection of information can so easily disguise itself as a worthy substitute for doing any thinking on your own. It’s been so effective because it’s more selfdeceptive than the obvious cleaning of our desks before writing. It’s a form of laziness the Internet encourages, justifies, and deceives us with.
The scary secret is this: if we’re not made conscious of this hideous mind virus, we can endlessly delay having to do any real thinking whatsoever simply by stacking more and more bits of data in front of ourselves. I see this pattern all the time with entrepreneurs who first get online. Sadly a large number of them never realize what they are doing to themselves – and quit the Internet before ever applying themselves. If you are an info-junkie you need to pay extra careful attention here. I know I do. My strategy is to have timers all over my desk and on my desktop screen – I set them to countdown and give myself a certain amount of time for research. If I wasn’t disciplined about it – I would never get anything done other than a lot of research. If you’ve never realized this before – from this point forward consider yourself warned. If you choose to willingly fool yourself from now on you know what you are really doing.
Increasing Complexity Mandates More Information The more “tools'” we buy to make or lives and tasks easier, the more complex our existence becomes. Think about that for a moment… could you have imagined five years ago that you’d need to know how to set up a sync for a PDA, wire a HD TV, backup a laptop and desktop to a 500 gig portable drive, find a restaurant on your GPS, or manage a photo library? With each neat tool we add into our lives comes the prerequisite training to use them. How much time have you spent in the past year learning a new device, software program or even managing your iTunes library? I would hazard to guess that your body of knowledge is greater than even you would imagine. And this body of knowledge takes a little piece of your attention each day, even if just to keep your technology running.
Info-Overload Coping Strategies That Lead To The Poorhouse Some of the more popular, yet ineffective strategies many resort to include: Omission – simply ignoring or deciding not to process some of the information because there is just too much. Latching on – Grabbing onto the first information found as a way of avoiding having to evaluate the data. An example would be using only the first result of a search performed on your favorite search engine. Delaying – postponing thinking by allowing the information to stack up with the false thought that we’ll get to it later – but we don’t because new information keeps coming at us. Filtering Arbitrarily – choosing which information you’ll go through without really making a real choice. You just go through what you can, or the first half of the pile, or a single chapter from a book, etc. Walking Away – simply giving up from the activity all together. telling ourselves it isn’t worth the time or effort, we choose to simply walk away. Generalizing – we use a minimal amount of information to draw conclusions. Like summarizing the details of an article from simply reading its headline. Obviously all of these coping strategies leave a lot to be desired. While they may help temper some of the problems caused by information overload, the price we pay seems to be too big. In each of these strategies we give up a significant amount of sureness that the information is correct. If we have to make any decisions or take any actions we pay a very big price. Because our conclusions from the distorted information could cause a chain reaction of bad decisions and faulty assumptions. This leads to a tremendous waste of time, at the minimum, and can lead to much worse… failure.
What Has Your Information Done for You Lately? Thriving With Information But before you can easily incorporate my suggestions into your overall information management system, we need to cover a few other negative forces working against you.
Changing Your Perspective On Information: JUST IN CASE to JUST IN TIME A good start to getting a handle on your overall “information consumption” is to take a step back and analyze why (or whether) the information in front of you is currently worth learning in the first place. For many of us our natural curiosity gets the better of us. We make time for what we think we may need to know at some future date, creating an overabundance of information that we need to process. The net result is we often forgo some of the information we really need to know right now. It’s no wonder we do this since most of us have been conditioned to appreciate “just in case” learning from all of years of schooling. Think about it… in school that was ALL we were taught. But the rate of change we currently deal with (especially in online marketing) makes a lot of the information we are currently learning outdated before we ever get a chance to act on it. Add to that the fact that there’s a “use-it-or-lose-it” aspect to most information. This means if we never apply the information (which we usually don’t if we are participating in Just In Case learning) we seem to lose the ability to recall it when it’s needed.
Plus the current information demands placed on us are so high – spending time on information we may or may not need, which may or may not become outdated, seems like a bad choice.
In the final analysis Just In Case Learning is a strategy that no longer makes a lot of sense. Of course, I’m not saying that there aren’t problems with just-in-time learning, too… It’s just the lesser of two evils. Just-In-Time learning often turns into just-what-youneed to survive. And it is the common approach of “crammers” who wait for the last minute.
Oh Yeah… What About Nirvana? Back in the early 70’s the US Senate released a report that analyzed the social implications of the 22 hour workweek (by 1985) and a retirement age of 38! Remember these buzzwords… the “workerless” factory, the “paperless” office, the “cashless” society, and the “leisure society.” In the 1970s the US Senate It appears that The Seattle-based “Take Back Your Time” organization, through its Web site and book of the same name, says we’re working more than ever and more than workers in any other industrialized country. Many don’t take earned vacations. It creates compromises in health, marriages, parenthood, community and social activism. “We are not only working faster but even longer, and filling our limited leisure with busy activities, leading to an increasing sense of time poverty,” says Daniel Hamermesh, a University of Texas economist, who studied time-stress perceptions among higher-income households in the U.S. and four other industrialized countries. Remember when a US Senate committee report earnestly discussed the social implications of a 22 hour work week by1985 and retirement at age 38?
Friction Accelerants You and I are both “knowledge workers”. That means we have to define what work needs to be done, what done means, and what it all is supposed to look like when we are finished. It wasn’t always that way. Fifty years ago approximately 80% of us made our living by making and moving things. Back then it was real easy to know what you had to do. Just find the unmade and unmoved things and then have at it. Inherent in the idea of “knowledge worker” is that thinking is required to do our work. I am sure that all makes sense to you – but what shouldn’t make sense is how many different things we do (individually and societal) that reduce the effectiveness of our own thinking. So, as knowledge workers – our income is dependent on our thinking, yet we continually engage in activities that limit our thinking and therefore limit our earning ability. Hence, “Income Friction”. In the next few pages we’re going to cover all the evil objects that cause friction in your earning ability. Then we’ll go over how to remove all of them so you will find it an easy slide to making a lot more money. Some of the chief culprits dragging our incomes down that we’ll look at: • • • • • • • • •
a constant barrage of interruptions continually decreasing our attention span our natural instincts that interfere with over-learning walls we place in front of ever achieving a “flow-state” being surrounded by clutter the seductive force of multi-tasking the paradox of choice our fear of missing anything a new trait many of us have adopted known as ADT
The Communication Age? Over the past decade we witnessed the birth of an abundant assortment of communication tools. It’s hard to believe it wasn’t even that long ago we were without beepers, cell-phones, and email. And the impact of these tools continues to grow while they spread across the world and into the hands of almost every single individual. These tools have become so widespread it would seem unnecessary to quote statistics about their growth except for the fact of how quickly they continue to spread. The number of cell phone user (every minute another 1,000 users are added to the 2.4 billion existing usersi). The global growth rate of Internet use (200 percent between 2000 and 2006ii), or how many e-mail messages and instant messages compete for our attention every day (an estimated 62 billioniii and 14 billioniv, respectively). We were told they would enable us to better communicate with one another. And while it’s true, it certainly has increased the level of communication – there have been some unintended consequences. Take for example my friend, Pam. She’s got a cell phone, and an organizer. That’s in addition to the land lines she has on her desk at work and at home in her apartment. Of course she also has a desktop computer (at home and at work), plus a laptop that she takes with her on trips. On Pam’s computers, she has email, Microsoft Outlook with immediate notification when a message arrives. She also has a multiplatform Instant Messaging program, Trillian, so she can message friends and associates on Yahoo Messenger, ICQ or MSN Messenger. Of course, Pam has her clients, friends, and family contacts on each of those communication tools. So no matter where she is, anyone she wants to talk to or send a message to is only a button or keystroke away.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s great that these tools make it possible for us to reach others at our own convenience. It’s just that the flip side isn’t always as pretty. Because, now others have the ability to reach us at their convenience too. I don’t know about you, but it didn’t take me long to realize the irony of all communication. And that is:
“Interruptions are in the eye of the interrupted.” Meaning, one person’s interruption is another’s collaboration, acknowledgement or display of friendship. It’s gotten so bad for many of us, that I’ve characterized this era as….
The Interruption Age I just got back from Starbucks (my standard is an Iced Venti Black-Eye Unsweetened). What I saw is a perfect way to introduce you to The Interruption Age. While waiting to pick up my order here’s what I saw: Two co-workers sitting at a table. They were on their laptops connected to the WiFi hotspot there, they were answering emails, using ICQ (probably with people halfway across the world), answering their cell phones, all while talking to each other.
So Connected… We’re Actually Disconnected The sheer number of ways that we can be contacted or contact others here and now continues to multiply And it’s turning our lives into a series of interrupted interruptions. In fact, if you haven’t already been interrupted at least once since you started reading, the odds are overwhelming that you will be before finishing. Unnecessary interruptions now consume about 28 percent of the average knowledge worker’s day (about 2 hours a dayv). If we translate that into hours it’s 28 billion lost hours a year to U.S. businessesvi. At an average cost per hour of $21vii, interruptions are costing American businesses $588 billion each and every year. If you’re like most entrepreneurs you aren’t even shocked by these statistics.
You’re living it. You set time aside to finish an important project only to be constantly interrupted by emails, instant messages, phone calls, crisis that need your immediate attention in the office, family, friends, coworkers, and some important late breaking news. alone.
You end up finishing the project late at night when you can be certain you’ll be left
Just ten years ago it wasn’t at all like this. Back in those good old days if someone couldn’t walk over to you and disturb you in person, they were forced to rely on a telephone. If they needed to send you something written they relied on the postman who showed up at your door once a day. And the flurry of interruptions keeps getting worse. For more and more business owners, every day feels like this – one long parade of interruptions with only the gaps in between to get our “real work” done.
You’ve Got 11 Minutes to Get Your Work Done In a different study, Gloria Mark, a researcher at UC Irvine, found proof that our work life really is as bad as it feels. Each knowledge worker she studied spent only 11 minutes on any given project before being interrupted. What’s worse is it would take 25 minutes on average to return to the original task.
Most of us feel powerless to do anything about it because interruptions are often necessary – we need to discuss important parts of projects with others, take important phone calls, and so on. But with so many more ways to be interrupted, now more than ever it’s practically impossible to keep the interruptions at bay while getting done those important items. The scary fact is there’s a hidden cost to all these interruptions as well. Mary Czerwinski, at Microsoft Research Labs, found that 40% of the time, we wander off in a new direction when an interruption ends, distracted by the technological equivalent of shiny objects. The New York Times stated it simply, “The central danger of interruptions, Czerwinski realized, is not really the interruption at all. It is the havoc they wreak with our short-term memory: ‘What the heck was I just doing?'”
The Staggering Costs of Breaking Your Train of Thought But no matter what task or activity we return to (the one interrupted or an appealing new one), there is still a steep price to pay. The University of Michigan and the FAA found that people who switch between different types of tasks – say, email and surfing the Internet, or writing a blog post and talking on the phone– lose between 20 and 40% of their efficiency. It’s just like running a print-shop, the changeover time for the machines is a significant part of the total cost and time the job takes. It turns out our brains operate the same way. Breaking your train of thought gets expensive fast as you try to get back on track.
That’s why we become increasingly inefficient when changing from one type of task to another. Just like almost every other current business challenge, Peter Drucker (my business hero) saw this coming long ago. Forty years ago he wrote in the entrepreneurial must read, The Effective Executive: “To be effective, every knowledge worker, and especially every executive, therefore needs to be able to dispose of time in fairly large chunks. To have dribs and drabs of time at his disposal will not be sufficient even if the total is an impressive number of hours.” It’s scary how dead on he was such a long time ago. Before we go any further though, I’ve got some more bad news for you. It turns out that you not only need large chunks of time to get important work done, but being continuously interrupted makes you dumb. In 2005, Glenn Wilson, Psychiatrist at King’s College, London gave an IQ test to a group of people who were to do nothing but take the test. He then had them take the same test while being distracted by emails and phone calls. Even though they were told to ignore the distractions, the volunteers’ IQ dropped an average of 10 points while being distracted! That’s more than twice the effect marijuana had in a similar study (4 point drop).
Why People Are Getting Dumber With Each New Technology Release Here’s the scary part of Dr. Wilson’s IQInterruption research– it was done in 2005! In the past two years since the study was conducted new and improved ways for us to interrupt each other have been embraced by the mainstream. That’s what led me to develop the graph that you see on the right. For some bizarre reason each new communication vehicle that gets released seems to shrink the amount of time in between interruptions. For example – instant messaging is quicker and therefore it can come at us more frequently than email. The net result is there is an interruption compounding effect. Meaning the frequency of interruptions are increasing, the amount of time in between them is decreasing and the amount of IQ points we are sacrificing increases as well. So we are left with “The IQ Interruption Curve” which clearly shows us why, with each new communication tool released to the public, we become stupider and stupider. Remember that the very next time you start feeling the impulse to buy the next wizbang gadget that lets you talk to anyone, at anytime from anywhere. Keep in mind it will make you dumber, limiting your earning potential even more than its slower predecessors.
The Genius’s Secret If you ever looked at someone else’s work and marveled at how intelligent they were, the observations they noticed that you may not have, hopefully now you are getting a clue as to why. When a New York Times reporter interviewed a number of recent winners of MacArthur “genius” grants, an overwhelming number of them said they kept cell phones, iPods, and their laptops off or away when in transit so that they could use the downtime for thinking.
Another example is finance guru Suze Orman, despite an incredible number of entrepreneurial and media commitments, she refuses to get sucked into the distraction vortex. She won’t check messages, answer her phone or allow anything else to come between her and what she’s working on. “I do one thing at a time,” she says. “I do it well, and then I move on.”
Take a Look In the Mirror Now before you go out and blame all of your work challenges on everyone else’s incessant desire to communicate with you – you need to get a little introspective. Experts tell us that we interrupt ourselves nearly as much as we let others do it! Though we don’t call it an interruption when we are doing it to ourselves, instead we call it distractions. It seems that the distracting lure of checking e-mails, surfing the Internet, participating in forums, instant-messaging and chatting on the phone is as seductive as an urgent interruption from others! The first step is to stop fooling ourselves about our capacities to switch between tasks. We have to resist the “it will only take a minute” impulse to read an e-mail, check a blog post or make a phone call chat in the middle of a demanding task or activity.
Performance Boosting or Enslaving Technology? What’s most striking to researchers studying the nasty effects of interruptions is that practically no one takes even the most simple steps to reduce the number of interruptions in their life. There seems to be such a compulsive quality to our relationships with devices that intrude on us regularly. 55% of knowledge workers told researchers they open e-mail immediately or shortly after it arrives – NO MATTER HOW BUSY THEY ARE! Harvard psychiatrist John Ratey M.D. is on record stating that the neurochemistry of addiction underlies our compulsive use of cell phones, computers, emails, text messages, and instant messaging. “If we could measure it as we’re shifting from one thing to another, we would find the brain pumping out little shots of dopamine to give us a buzz.” It’s gotten so common that it’s even been turned into a disorder. Psychologists now call our growing addiction to interrupting activities “Online Compulsive Disorder.”
Edward M Hallowell a twenty year veteran professor at Harvard Medical School has a better term for this disorder – Screen Sucking.
What about you? Have you become addicted to interruptions in your daily work? How often do you sit at your desk for an hour or two working on one task without getting up or doing anything else (like checking email or surfing the web, etc…)? If you are like the majority of people and you’re being honest with yourself you realize that it has become a problem. If you’re checking email more than twice a day, respond or send instant messages several times throughout the day, or seem to always be getting on and off the phone – then face it… these tools are no longer boosting your performance. You’ve become enslaved to technology. If you have even a twinge of doubt whether you’ve got a problem, then you do. The very first step for you to take is to stop pretending that all the different interruptions you are “letting in” are normal, neutral, and have no effect on you. Because they most certainly do. And the main reason is…
As Interruptions Increase… Net Worth Decreases
Remember just a few pages back, in the beginning of this section I listed out for you what I’ve called the Income “Friction Accelerants”? Just to jog your memory I put them here on the graphic on the right. As you can see, each income decreasing force stems from the rapid increases in the number of interruption sources all around us. In order to lick this problem the very first step is to take a closer look at each of these income leaches. This way you can recognize each of these business-debilitating drivers if or when they rear their ugly head. Ridding your life of these is one of the key factors separating the frustrated entrepreneur wannabe’s from the happiest, most intelligent and wealthiest business owners on the planet. Don’t believe me? Just run down the list of these friction accelerants and think about Bill Gates, or Warren Buffet and decide for yourself if you think they’ve got any of these going on in their business and personal lives.
The Chain Reaction Ravaging Business Owner’s Brains Look, all the courses you’ve studied, all the ebooks you’ve read, and all the teleseminars you’ve attended won’t add up to an extra nickel in profits if you allow your brain power to be reduced to mush. But that’s exactly what’ll happen if you let the chain reaction of income friction accelerants wreak havoc on your critical thinking processes. That’s why it is critical now that we take a moment to get a handle on each of them. This way as soon as any one of them rears its ugly head in your life – you’ll recognize it quickly and yank it out of your life and kick it to the curb. We’ve already covered the constant barrage of interruptions and what’s causing it so let’s move on to why so many Internet marketers’ minds are being reduced all the way down to the…
Attention Span of a Gnat MIT Professor Ted Selker told the BBC during a recent interview “Our attention span gets affected by the way we do things… if we spend time flitting from one thing to another… we can get into a habit of not concentrating,” And guess what? Every time you get interrupted, every time you get distracted you are actually training yourself to reduce your overall attention span. You are actually building yourself a new habit that continually reduces your ability to learn, nose-dives your ability to understand the moderately complex, and could ultimately drop your wealth earning potential into the depths of business failure. It’s one of the biggest ironies of life isn’t it? The habits we want to acquire are difficult to practice daily for a long enough period of time for it to click into place. Yet, the damaging, destructive, and debilitating habits are just the opposite. We actually have to fight not to acquire them – because it’s so easy to fall into the daily routine of unconsciously practicing those activities that build the bad habits.
The bad news is… without noticing it you’ve probably already reduced your attention span significantly and that it’s already costing you money in sacrificed profits.
The good news is that it’s dead simple to regain what you’ve lost. The reason is somewhere deep in the recesses of your brain the pathways have already been built up for you to have the longer attention span you had earlier before you unknowingly started to shorten it. Even better, you can build your attention span to levels you never thought possible with a few simple yet fun activities I am going to show you later on in this doctrine. The first step to getting your attention span back to the levels you had before is to simply resist the interruptions and distractions that you have succumbed to in the past.
Too Many Options Will Paralyze, Delude, Waste Time & Dissapoint It’s obvious nearly everyone desires to have choices in life. And when we don’t get to make the choice in an area we may consider as important in our lives – we often resist because we enjoy our freedom and don’t like being forced to do anything. But what almost no one realizes is that there’s a very real limit to the number of choices we can enjoy. And when you cross that line, choice goes from good to bad awfully fast. Just because some choice is good, doesn’t mean that even more choice is better. The first effect of too many choices tends to be paralysis. We have too many options to choose from so we can’t choose at all. I see this all the time in Internet marketing and with small business owners. There are so many different ways to market a business and so many opinions on the right way to do it. What ends up happening is the entrepreneur who goes out looking for the “right” way to do things often finds themselves going down a rabbit trail of confusion which naturally leads to inaction. And experts tell us they see this all the time – the more choices we have the greater our belief that there is a perfect solution for us somewhere buried deep within the choices. What follows is predictable… the stronger our belief that there is a perfect solution out there (whatever perfect means). So, we end up searching for that perfect solution – wasting more time than is really necessary or appropriate.
Unfortunately it doesn’t end there. Because the more convinced we are there’s a perfect solution out there the less likely we will be happy with our final decision. Since it never lives up to the false belief of the perfect solution.
If You Think More Is Better… Than You Don’t Know Yourself As Well As You Think A consistent problem I see in many entrepreneurs is the conviction that more is always better than less. But the truth is most people don’t really know themselves that well (or course we all think we do). That’s why most people don’t know what’s good for themselves. So entrepreneurs go around accumulating more marketing tactics with the mistaken belief that the business owner who is familiar with the most marketing tactics somehow wins in business. But the truth is the polar opposite. Because as the number of marketing tactics you know climbs, mastery in any of them plummets. And online this is even more costly than offline. Since online advertising more closely resembles an auction format than offline, a competitor that’s mastered a certain marketing vehicle will force you to spend more money for a worse result. Bottom line – sometimes knowing too much can hurt – especially if your knowledge acquisition has been somewhat haphazard in the past. This personal example should resonate with you – whether in your personal life or possibly your business life. Since I spend a good part of my time optimizing businesses you would think when it came to my own business I wouldn’t need any help whatsoever. But you would be wrong if that’s what you thought. I’ve always sought out advice when dealing with my own business challenges. And I can’t think of a time I’ve ever regretted it. Actually just today I called Internet Marketing Guru Mike Filsaime to get his opinion on important matter. I knew I was simply too close to the situation to be objective and unbiased. After giving me the advice I needed, Mike hit me up for some advice. When we were wrapping up we actually spoke about this common experience. Both of us were commenting how ironic it is that it’s always easier to see solutions in other people’s challenges than it is our own.
The Feature Frustration Bell Curve Another great example of how often the “more is better than less” is wrong is a phenomenon I’ve labeled “The Feature Frustration Bell Curve.” I’ve made this mistake of wanting more and more features when buying technology gadgets more times than I would like to admit. I’d go into more detail but since I know my wife will be reading this I can’t. I simply refuse to give her any additional ammunition to shoot down the next item on my wish list. With that said…I finally did learn my lesson. I just have way too many unused electronic devices littering my garage and my home office. I gave up on them after wasting a few hours trying to get them working as they were advertised. When you pack too many features in any single tool it gets incredibly complicated to master. If you’re a gadget freak like me, it’s hard to face the cold hard reality that technology hasn’t a device to do everything that’s easy to operate.
From Invincibility to Mental Exhaustion Has this ever happened to you…? You have a great weekend and you’ve made some important distinctions that you can’t wait to get working on. So you start your Monday fresh and rejuvenated, ready to tackle what the world throws your way and to start making progress on what you realized over the weekend. Yet, by noon your sense of invincibility has started to fade into the background as you are forced to juggle all the challenges, complexities, and opportunities being
thrown your way.
And by the time the day is over, you look back and wonder why you didn’t get any real high leverage activities done or even started. You’re exhausted, yet you’ve got nothing to point back to and say it was all worth it. So you chalk it up to a bad day, and promise yourself tomorrow will be different, but it almost never is. Not to worry, help is on it’s way.
So…When is The Next Segment Coming? Having covered the areas where the Attention Age impacts our lives and our business, I need to retreat again to work on the steps you’ll need to take to not only overcome this new enviroment, but also how to position your compnay to prfit tremendously by it. In the meantime, I’d like you to map out the following areas, and how the are impacting you and your business: Make a chart of the time you spend each day doing nonproductive tasks; email, tinkering with technology to make it work, surfing the web, watching TV… anything you do alone that isn’t moving your business forward. Set a schedule to do one task at a time; allowing only 30-60 minutes to do it, and then put it away for completion at later time. Keep track of interruptions that prevent you from fully focusing on the task. Measure the Attention others are paying to your business… how many visitors to your site, how many opt-ins, sales, etc… mark each as declining or increasing. Stop taking in needless information for a week- I’ve covered what the parameters are. I have my Acceleration seminar coming up very soon, where a team of experts will be helping me teach the attendees the principals and tactics to beat information overload, and also how to get in front of the attention curve with their businesses.
I’d also like you to listen in on Jay Abraham and me as we explain how this will impact you in the very near future, and the steps you need to take now. To access it, just register for free at http://www.strategicprofits.com/jayprivate/
Also, the dates of the summit are July 12, 13, 14, 15… I am offering you an invitation to what I’m sure will be recognized as the definitive event that launched more online entrepreneurs into 6 figure, 7 figure, and even 8 figure businesses, than anything else online or off. Check out my over the top guarantee –and extremely generous payment terms on the inexpensive price we’ve already established. You can read all about it here: http://www.strategicprofits.com/live
My Challenge To You: Last, if YOU have a project or business that you’re trying to get off the ground, I’ve got an INCREDIBLE opportunity for you. Imagine if you could call up several of the SHARPEST marketing minds on the planet… Imagine if you could suck every DROP of extremely profitable advice from their skull… Imagine if their advice was one-on-one and handed to YOU on a silver platter… I’m talking about PERSONAL advice from Jay Abraham, John Carlton, Jeff Walker, Mike Filsaime and myself, Rich Schefren. If you need help with your blog or traffic, I’ll also bring in the best in the business to help you. These guys typically charge fees such as $1250, $2000, and even $5000 an HOUR! Imagine if YOU could get ALL OF THEM to work on YOUR BUSINESS? You could literally implement ONE idea from each of these marketing masters and triple your profits. Seriously. I call these guys up on a REGULAR basis and ask for help with my business. And their advice is usually worth SIX and in some cases SEVEN figures.
My question to you is this… Do you have ANY idea how much THEIR attention would be worth to YOUR business? Well here’s the deal… I want to PROVE how powerful the ideas in my latest report are. In fact, I’ve decided to create a contest. This is UNLIKE any other contest you’ve seen If you WIN first prize, you’ll get PERSONAL one-on-one one-hour call for advice with me and each of the marketing experts that I referenced above. If you’ve got a business or an idea for a business, getting on the phone and having these guys DISECT your project is PRICELESS. At a minimum, it’s worth about $25,000. But even if you don’t win “first” prize, there are 5 runner-up prizes which pay $1000 CASH in your pocket!
So what do you have to do to win?
The contest is simple. You’ve read my latest report. It’s all about how ATTENTION can make you money. Now, I want to prove it. The person (or team) who can create the MOST attention about my latest, groundbreaking report (and my upcoming seminar) will win first prize.
You can write press releases… You can write blog posts… You can write forum posts… You can call a radio station… You can mail your list… You can upload a video to YouTube… You can do almost anything… BUT the goal is to show how you can create ATTENTION. If you can demonstrate that you understand the concepts in my report, and you create a palpable BUZZ on the Internet, you could win first prize, or one of the runner up prizes. So there it is. A change to win PERSONAL advice with several marketing masters. A chance to show off your marketing chops. A chance to win cash. A chance to impress me with your marketing skill. Read the report again and then spread the word about the report (and the seminar if you wish). Then, document what you did and complete the form at: http://www.strategicprofits.com/getattention You have until July 8th. After that, winners will be chosen. To Higher Profits,
Rich Schefren Strategic Profits
Part of the seven free reports Rich Schefren published between 2006 and 2008. Index: richschefren.com/reports · Timeline: The Record · The 2026 sequel: The A.I. Business Manifesto
