Written by Bob Meyer, Editor of BarterNews

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(Announcement)

Reaching For The Stars:
Uniting People & Standards In A Cashless Trading World

IRTA’s 26th Annual Conference is slated this year for September 22 to 25. It will be held at the Wyndham Palace Resort & Spa in Disney World of Orlando, Florida. Registration information including “Early Bird” rates are posted on the IRTA web site at www.irta.com.

Last year marked 25 years for the International Reciprocal Trade Association. This year marks the first of the next 25. Precisely why this year’s convention is the FIRST of its kind. IRTA is inclusive of everyone and anyone who is affecting the world with their dreams and visions of changing the way businesses, communities, and individuals think about money and credit, and different currencies.

“The Association wants to create a forum that will excite the barter community and welcome other organizations to attend and share their visions and methods for affecting economies worldwide using cash alternative methods,” disclosed Krista Vardabash, IRTA Executive Director. “Members will, of course, enjoy the most attractive rates to attend the convention.”

Lois Dale, IRTA President, noted, “There’s a lot to be excited about for those of us in barter. We make a difference to so many people, businesses and economies around the world. This conference will highlight that power, as well as introduce us to barter models, alternative monetary systems, transaction based businesses, and organizations from around the world that share our common goals.”

Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) More Revered Now

Julia Homer, Editor-in-Chief of CFO magazine, says everyone expected that Sarbanes-Oxley would result in the seating of many more CFOs on the boards of public companies. It hasn’t. Instead companies tend to pick CEOs or academics.

What has changed, though, is the relationship between CFOs and their own boards. The recent slew of scandals left boards looking flat-footed and ignorant, so they now insist on better communications with the CFO—and more of it.

According to a CFO/National Association of Corporate Directors survey, chief financial officers are spending more time with directors outside the boardroom, even taking them on tours of operations.

When it comes to corporate governance, more than 40% think the CFO should ensure that the letter of the law is met. More surprising, perhaps, a significant minority—almost one in five—believes they should push for change above and beyond the letter of the law.

Boards also want their CFOs to understand the nuts and bolts of the business, as well as its numbers. They’re looking to them to provide a second perspective on the health of the company—and more CFOs feel comfortable providing it. This, according to Ms. Homer, marks a big change from earlier times, when a CFO who questioned the CEO’s version of events would soon find himself polishing his résumé.

Get New Money-Making Ideas And Valuable Contacts!

You can obtain useful, informative ideas and contacts in every available back-issue of BarterNews.

Study Shows Many Affluent People Lack Wills

A new study by PNC Advisors in Pittsburgh shows that the wealthier you are, the less likely you are to take steps such as creating a will to protect your assets.

The results flout a basic tenet of financial planning, which maintains that the greater a family’s assets, the greater the planning that’s needed to maintain those assets.

About one in five affluent individuals—defined as those with at least $500,000 in investable assets—does not have a will. (Among individuals with $10 million or more, a higher percentage, about 43%, don’t have a will.)

Procrastination may be behind wealthy individuals’ lack of planning. But they may also be stymied by reluctance to talk about wealth-transfer issues and confusion over how to deal with their complicated needs.

Interestingly, all respondents felt they needed to roughly double their assets to achieve long-term financial security. Those with $500,000 to $1 million wanted a median of $2.4 million, while those with at least $10 million in assets estimated that they would need $18.1 million to feel secure.

(Announcement)

New Barter Book On The Market. . .

After 23 years of educating, marketing, and putting millions of dollars worth of personal barter deals together, BancMarc owner William Meacham has put all of his trading ideas down on paper. His book, Smarter Companies Barter.com, educates both new and seasoned business owners on how to get the most out of their membership in a barter exchange.

It’s a must read for everyone—business owners, members of barter exchanges, and non-business owners. Learn the do’s and the don’ts...the how-to’s and why nots.

To download the book, which comes with a money-back guarantee, go to: www.smartercompaniesbarter.com.

Running a trade exchange is a 24/7 effort. At every national convention trade exchange owners always talk and nod in agreement about the importance of educating their clients—making them aware of the many benefits of barter so they will be better traders.

Then they return home, and once again are inundated with simply not enough time in the day to get everything done...let along time to research and then write and layout an eye-appealing, interesting, educational and powerful marketing newsletter. One which points out and reinforces the benefits of your valuable services—each and every month...on a consistent and on-going basis.

As a trade exchange owner, you realize that having such a unique marketing tool to use for your existing members—as well as the hundreds of prospects in your marketplace—is really necessary in these competitive times. Yet who has the available time and ability to generate such a newsletter?

What’s the answer...? The highly effective Competitive Edge newsletter. For almost two decades now, unfailingly, each and every month CE has been published for your use only. It’s the professionally written and designed, yet inexpensive answer for a busy, growing exchange like yours.

Check it out...click here to see a sample copy.

From the archives of BarterNews...

There’s No Room For Empty Hotel Rooms!

By Paul Neimark

It was travel director Jennie Moore’s first week at Illinois Trade Association (the largest independent trade exchange in the U.S.) and it was one heck of an introduction to the world of barter.

“Almost my very first project was a request for a convention to be held at one of our hotels in the South,” says Moore. It was a neat place—I’d been there for cash some years earlier with my husband—but construction being done nearby had made their business fall off. Lo and behold, the same day I received a request from a client to hold a series of mega-seminars in just the location where the hotel was.

“That was the good news. The bad news was that the client requesting the seminars, a major carpet installation firm, had recently spent about all his trade dollars with some of our contractors to renovate his facilities. Often, when a client has a good track record as this company did, we extend credit.

“But the proposed purchase of the hotel space for the several seminars was a very big buy, and that kind of credit couldn’t be extended. Here was a perfect buyer and a perfect seller. Here was the perfect barter deal. But it looked like a no-can-do.”

Moore told both clients she would get back to them the following morning and find a way to work it out. “But there didn’t seem to be a way,” Moore said.

“I stayed up almost the whole night thinking about it. I kept remembering the words of Jack Schacht (President of ITA) when he hired me: ‘You can do things on barter you cannot do any other way. The limits of barter are only the limits of our imagination—of our ability to know that in every circumstance, there is a potential win-win scenario. Wherever there is a need, there is someone to fill it. There isn’t a barter deal in the world that can’t be made...’ ”

When Jennie Moore walked in to the ITA complex the following morning, she had a idea—the kind of idea that has made her one of the top barter travel directors in the country. “It was a shot in the dark,” Jennie told BarterNews, “but it was also a beginning. One thing leads to another, and somewhere out there was a win-win situation. I got the hotel director on the phone and told him I could fill his big empty space, IF...”

The IF was this: Instead of using all his barter dollars for advertising this time (the majority of hotels barter rooms basically to advertise in order to get more cash business) I asked him what else he might need.

Of course, if he needed carpeting, it would have been a perfect fit. But he didn’t. In fact, he didn’t need anything but advertising.

Inspiration took over. “Didn’t I read where the owner of your chain is an avid sportsman who fished almost every place in the world?” Moore asked.

“That’s right. He’s about to leave to try and hook some—something off the shores of Australia. I think I heard him say that the only place he had never fished was the North Pole,” the hotel director replied.

“I just may know how to fill your seminar rooms,” Jennie answered. The attractive ITA executive, a true believer in barter who gave up a potential career on network TV to join ITA, extracted the private number of the hotel chain’s owner...finally reaching him at his home late that evening.

Her opening statement: “I’m Jennie Moore, Travel Director of ITA. How would you like your next fishing trip to be at the Article Circle?”

The next morning, in between a dozen other barter deals, Moore called fishing lodges in Wisconsin and Michigan. Finally, she found one that would charter an expedition to the Arctic Circle—and needed all their rooms carpeted!

She put the carpet client together with the lodge (thus assuring him the trade credits to use the hotel) and allowing the hotel owner to take a fishing trip to the one place that he’d never been.

A barter arrangement like that, needless to say, is the exception rather than the rule. The bottom line of barter, where hotels are concerned, is to fill unused rooms and get advertising in return...or hard goods such as carpeting, linens, and fixtures.

To be continued next week . . .

Now available ...BarterNews issue #64, get your copy now! Orders will be shipped within two business days of publication. Click on Order Form.

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Here & There...

• International Monetary Systems (OTCBB:INLM) has filed its first quarter 10-QSB financial report. Gross revenue increased to $1,142,748 compared to $1,067,201 for the first quarter of 2004. For further information on the company’s financial picture go to www.internationalmonetary.com

• A thesis on “entrepreneurial risk and market entry” has won best doctoral paper award from the U.S. Small Business Administation’s Office of Advocacy. The paper was written by Brian Wu of the Wharton School at the Univeristy of Pennsylvania and Anne Marie Knott of the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland.

  The authors used banking data to show that entrepreneurs don’t like to take risks, but will take economic risk when overconfidence in their own abilities compensates for that aversion!

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