I have been following the news on Yahoo and Microsoft deal in the past few months and I realized that Yahoo Chairman Jerry Yang has a lot of pressure under his shoulders. A lot of people wanted the deal to consummate at the price set by Microsoft. I will not be arguing on whether the deal is worthy or not. However, I admire his courage to withstand the pressure of being attack from different sides and still kept his ground.

Jerry Yang together with the other business-people like Jack Welch, Bill Gates, Steve Balmer etc. experience a lot of pressures. How these men respond to pressures is what counts.

One thing that I observed among these successful business-people is that they do not quit, blame others or whine about their mistakes. They however tackle the pressures and respond accordingly.

Pressures are like the wind… you cannot control it but you can set your sail to a favorable navigation.

Your response to pressure will determine your next direction.

Happy Marketing.

James

This is an interesting video from YouTube about marketers complicating simple things. Hope you find it interesting and learn a lesson.

More power.

James

Its already been quite a while since I last entered a blog. Some of my friends email me to remind me that updating the blog regularly is a must. Well, I have been busy building websites from my freelance projects and I was not able to concentrate on affiliate marketing.

Anyway perhaps not updating my blog has been a blessing in disguise. I was able to
recall a story from Robert Kiyosaki’s Book - Cashflow Quadrant. The story is very interesting because it shows to kinds of contractors. One that starts immediately and the other one went into planning before implementing the project that has been awarded.

Once upon a time there was this quaint little village. It was a great place to live except for one problem. The village had no water unless it rained. To solve this problem once and for all, the village elders decided to put out to bid the contract to have water delivered to the village on a dialy basis. Tow people volunteered to take on the task and the elders awarded the contract to both of them. They felt that a little competition would keep prices low and insure a back up supply of water.

The first of the two people who won the contract. Ed, immediately ran out, bought two galvanized steel buckets and begin running back and forth along the trail to the lake which was a mile away. He immediately began making money as he labored morning to dusk hauling water from the lake with his two buckets. He would empty them into the large concrete holding tank the village had built. Each morning he had to get up before the rest of the village awoke to make sure there was enough water for the village whne it wanted it. It was hard work, but he was very happy to be making money and for having one of the two exclusive contracts for this business.

The second winning contractor, Bill, diappeared for a while. He was not seen for months, which made Ed very happy since he had no competition. Ed was making all the money.
Instead of buying two buckets to compete with Ed, Bill had written a business plan, created a corporation, found four investors, employed a president to do the work, and returned six months later with a construction crew. Within a year his team had built a large volume stainless steel pipeline which connected the village to the lake.

At the grand opening celebration, Bill announced that his water was cleaner than Ed’s water. Bill knew that there had been complaints about dirt in Ed’s water. Bill also announced that he could supply the village with water 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Ed could only deliver water on the weekdays…he did not work on weekeneds. Then bill announced that he would charge 75% less than Ed did for this higher quality and more reliable source of water. The village cheered and ran immediately for the faucet at the end of Bill’s pipeline.

In order to compete, Ed immediately lowered his rates by 75%, bought two more buckets, added covers to his buckets and hauling four buckets each trip. In order to provide better service, he hired his two sons to give him a hand for the night shift and on weekends. When his boys went off to college, he said to them, “Hurry back because someday this business will belong to you.”

For some reason, after college, his two sons never returned. Eventually Ed has employees and union problems. The union was demanding higher wages, better benefits, and wanted its members to only haul one bucket at a time.

Bill, on the other hand, realized that if this village needed water then other villages must need water too. He rewrote his business plan and went off to sell his high speed, high volume, low cost, and clean water delivery system to villages throughout the world. He only makes a penny per bucket of water delivered, but he delivers billions of buckets of water everyday. Regardless if he works or not, billions of people conume billions of buckets of water, and all that money purs into his bank account. Bill had developed a pipeline to deliver money to himself as well as water to the villages.

Bill lived happily ever after and Ed worked hard for the rest of his life and had financial problems forever after. The end….

Success does not only comes to the one who works hard but also to the one who work smart. Hope you enjoy and has been inspired.

Good Luck and more power to us.
Happy Marketing.

James

References:
Rich Dad, Poor Dad book

Cash Flow Quadrant