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December 4, 2007 Written
by Bob Meyer, Editor of BarterNews
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From the desk of Bob
Meyer...12/04/07
Southern California Second To Silicon Valley For Venture
Capital
Southern
California is starting to muscle out New England for second
place as a magnet for venture capital. For two consecutive
quarters it has topped New England. San Diego County is
especially attractive to healthcare and biotechnology, and
Los Angeles has an industry group different than anywhere
else�information technology, media and entertainment.
Global Counterfeit Sales Reach $600 Billion
Annually
The U.S. Chamber
of Commerce and the International Anti-counterfeiting
Coalition calculate that global counterfeit sales equal $600
billion to $650 billion a year.
Private Homes & Apartments Preferable For
Some Travelers
If you�re spending
most workdays on the road, and would prefer a private house
or an apartment instead of a luxury hotel room (many do so
they can entertain clients, especially if one�s hobby is
cooking), there are two excellent and extensive web sites to
check out.
www.vrbo.com and
www.homeaway.com.
Gift Cards Go Unused By Forgetful &
Time-Strapped Consumers
Gift card sales
have soared in recent years since shoppers see them as a
quick and easy gift idea. Archstone Consulting expects sales
of gift cards in the United States to jump 25% to $35
billion this holiday season.
But a survey
released by the Consumer Reports National Research Center
found that 27% of respondents who received gift cards for
the holidays last year have not used them. Interestingly,
this percentage is approximately the same for the use of
scrip�a company�s currency in the barter marketplace.
U.S. Real Estate Bubble Information
A site full of
statistics and commentary regarding the challenging real
estate environment in the United States can be found at:
http://paper-money.blogspot.com.
U.S. National Debt�s Interest Equals 9� Per
Revenue Dollar
The national debt
of the U.S. is $9.1 trillion. This year Americans will pay
$235 billion of interest on that debt, which is 9� on every
dollar of the approximately $2.5 trillion in government
revenue taxes.
Consumer Debt Service Is Even Higher...14� Of
Disposable Income
According to Fed
statistics released in September, U.S. consumers are
carrying a record $2.456 trillion in debt�NOT including
mortgages. The flip side of consumers� record-high debt
level is a pathetically meager personal savings rate.
The Commerce
Department reports the personal savings rate, for all of
last year, was a minus 1%...the worst showing since the
Great Depression. The average family was spending 14.3% of
disposable income just to service its debt load, according
to the Center for American Progress.
Sovereign-Wealth Funds Projected To Top $12
Trillion
Sovereign-wealth
funds, which are capital pools set up by governments to
invest in foreign assets, are now worth between $2 trillion
and $3 trillion, according to the International Monetary
Fund. However, estimates from Morgan Stanley say they are
set to top $12 trillion by 2015.
The Gulf States
already boast the world�s biggest sovereign fund: the Abu
Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), which is responsible for
investing the Abu Dhabi government�s oil revenues. The fund
holds more than $875 billion in assets. On November 26,
2007, ADIA invested $7.5 billion in Citigroup.
People In Poverty Can Become An Economic
Powerhouse
Muhammad Yunus,
67, an American-trained economist from Bangladesh, won last
year�s Nobel Peace Prize for his revolutionary approach to
ending poverty. His concept of micro-loans (giving small
sums to poor people to start businesses) is being adopted
around the world.
Yunus says that
half of the globe, approximately 3 billion people, subsist
on $2 a day. By creating an income for them�through micro
business loans� these people can become an economic
powerhouse.
How so? Imagine if
each of them bought one pair of shoes a year, or one shirt.
You�d need 3 billion more shirts and shoes. More important
than that, however, is the wasting of their talents and
creative genius.
All back issues of
"From the Desk...� can be accessed by
clicking
here.
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See you next week. . .) |
TV Ads To Take Hit As Big Brands Anticipate Online Budgets
Big name-brand
marketers are fed up with traditional media channels and are
threatening to shift the lion�s share of their budgets online,
according to Nick Brien, worldwide CEO of Universal McCann.
�If this
happens for another year, significant clients will want to walk,�
Brien said at an Interactive Advertising Bureau conference in
reference to a general climate of discontent due to increasing
viewer fragmentation, disruptive technologies, and the resulting
decrease in ROI (return on invested capital). Without naming any
specific clients, Brien added they are �just waiting to increase
their online spend to 50% or 60% [of their total budgets].�
According to
eMarketer projections, web advertising as a share of total ad spend
will reach 7.4% this year, more than 10% by 2009, and at least 13.3%
by the end of 2011. �Shifts among marketers away from traditional
media would make U.S. advertising growth flat-line without the
Internet,� said David Hallerman, senior analyst at eMarketer.
The increased
spending on online ads is coming from a mix of additional
allocations and budget shifts from other media, and TV may be in for
the greatest losses. Among the largest companies, 42.4% of marketing
executives recently told BusinessWeek that TV would take the
biggest hit in ad budgets in the next few years.
Brien also took
a moment to dispute statements made recently by Maurice L�vy,
chairman and chief executive of Publicis, to the effect that the
industry was approaching the kind of hyper-inflated economics that
led to the so-called dot-com crash in 2000/2001.
�He doesn�t
give enough credit to the serious ad dollars being redirected to
growing audiences online,� Brien says of L�vy. And at the end of the
day, a solid brand is still one of the �most valued and most
exciting mechanisms� a marketer can possess, Brien notes.
That notion was
seconded by Brad Brinegar, chairman and CEO of Havas� McKinney, who
described a brand as �that most valuable asset.� Brinegar predicts
that over 50% of McKinney�s business will be digital in less than
two years. �But don�t talk about how interactive [digital] is a way
to do something cheap,� he says. �To do it right costs money. It�s
just allocated in different ways.�
Peter Drucker�s Simple Leadership Test
�
Leaders start projects
by asking, �What has to be done?� instead of �What do I need?�
�
Leaders next ask,
�What do I have to do to make a real contribution?� The answer best
suits the leader�s strengths and the needs of the project.
�
Leaders continually
ask, �What are my organization�s purposes and objectives?� and,
�What qualifies as acceptable performance and adds to the bottom
line?�
�
Leaders don�t want
clones of themselves as employees. They never ask, �Do I like or
dislike this employee?� But they won�t tolerate poor performance.
�
Leaders aren�t threatened by others who have strengths they lack.
Entrepreneurs Must Continually Be Alert For Con Artists!
We�re seeing an
amazing growth of new businesses nationwide, propelled by an
entrepreneurial desire held by many Americans.
But this eager
class of risk-takers is discovering that the challenges can be
greater than they ever imagined.
To all the
normal bedevilments of small business�tight financing, uncertain
markets, strong rivals�add another: a new breed of unscrupulous
moneymen who prey on entrepreneurs.
Con artists
have been around for ages, of course. But the fatal combination of
entrepreneurial fervor, financial need and naivet� makes fledgling
business owners these days easy marks for a new variety of scamsters.
Filled with enthusiasm for their own ideas, they can be startlingly
inexperienced in finance.
�Technical
entrepreneurs, especially, think what they do is important, but that
the business side is trivial,� revealed Brad Bertash, director of a
Salt Lake City nonprofit venture-capital consulting firm.
Above all, what
makes emerging companies ripe for scammers is their often desperate
thirst for capital, and the historical difficulty in obtaining
funding for start-ups.
So
entrepreneurs are left to swim in shark-infested waters. Well
intentioned efforts by the government, to make it easier for small
businesses to raise capital, have paradoxically created hotbeds of
abuse.
In fact, many
of the schemes used to squeeze money from unsuspecting entrepreneurs
are technically legal. Operating just this side of the law, many
sophisticated promoters take advantage of loose regulation.
�These guys are
like tax attorneys�always looking out for a new loophole,� explained
Howard Sirota a former securities dealer investigator. �They know
exactly how far they can go, and still avoid trouble.�
How Do You Use Your Weird Time?
David Allen,
one of the world�s most influential thinkers on personal
productivity and author of Getting Things Done: Mastering the Art
of Stress-Free Productivity, claims that most people�s thinking
just isn�t set up to take advantage of weird time. There are lots of
opportunities during the day that people waste. According to Allen,
weird time is when we get 15 minutes�and sometimes only 5
minutes�between meetings and phone calls.
What to do
about it is to turn it into a game, asking: How efficient can I be?
Sometimes the most appropriate thing to do with five free minutes is
to water the plants, or make a quick phone call.
Learning to set
boundaries is incredibly difficult for most people. First determine
what�s the very next thing that you need to do. Until you decide on
that, there�s a gap between where you are and where you need to be�a
big black hole that can suck you in. That big black hole is
unproductive, wasted time.
Once you know
what you�re doing, productivity becomes your one true competitive
edge. There�s an elegance to how you work and live; it�s not just
about running faster, it�s about utilizing your time efficiently.
You can do anything�but not everything. Just control your
aspirations.
Keep Smiling, Be Healthy
Smile when you
say, �Don�t worry�be happy!� It could prolong your life.
People who are
optimistic have a longer and healthier life, while those who are
pessimistic have a 19% increased risk of death, a Mayo Clinic study
has found.
�It confirmed
our common-sense belief,� said Toshihiko Maruta, who speculated that
optimists are less likely to develop depression and are more willing
to seek medical help. So keep smiling.
Thought of the Week. . .
�Ideas are the currency of success. They separate you from your
competition.�
�Edward De Bono
Hotel
General Managers
Work With Audio/Visual
Vendor On Barter
Collect cash, as usual, from the guest accounts staying at
your facility that require the use of professional AV
services. And rather than shouldering your ongoing employee
costs, or your current vendor�s cash agreement for AV
services, here�s a much better alternative:
Work with a proven national vendor (a sterling 25-year track
record) who will provide all of the AV services for your
hotel on a 100% TRADE BASIS! (Payment to be in the form of
trade dollars.)
Your hotel�s annual AV billings must be a minimum of
$200,000, and this offer is available only in the
continental United States.
For a confidential introduction contact Bob Meyer via
e-mail:
bmeyer@barternews.com.
Attention Trade Exchange Owners:
If your member hotel(s) have a minimum of 10,000 sq. feet of
meeting space and annual billings of at least $200,000 for
AV services this is a great opportunity to earn substantial
cash service fees on the hundreds of thousands of trade
dollars your hotel member will be paying the vendor. Contact
Bob Meyer at the above e-mail. |
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The Growth and Use of Secondary Capital (New Money) Creates
Unprecedented Wealth In Today�s New Age Of Possibility
There are
many forms of secondary capital�which can be defined as any
financial instrument that measures and communicates value in a
common language. Would you like to see and learn more about the many
forms of secondary capital?
We have 70
free, informative and inspiring, articles for you in our �Secondary
Capital Section.� Check it out...
www.barternews.com/secondary_capital.htm.
Get
New Money-Making Ideas And Valuable Contacts!
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