In 1978, Paul Newman and a buddy decided that rather than just distributing bottles of Paul’s homemade salad dressing as Christmas gifts to neighbors, they’d get some local stores to sell it. They bottled it in the basement, and initially saw it as a gag. Newman’s Own has become a giant food company, with over 150-million dollars in revenues from about 150 food products, donating all its profits to non-profit causes.

“There are three rules for running a business”, Newman says, “and, fortunately, we don’t know any of them.”

Newman and his partner repeatedly disregarded the advice of experts, fought established practices and entrenched competitors, and won. About entrepreneurship, Newman writes: “Now that I’m heavily into peddling food, I understand the romance of business, the allure of being the biggest fish in the pond, the juice you get from beating out your competitors.” The story of Newman’s entrepreneurial adventures is told in good humor but revealing of valuable business and marketing lessons in the book Shameless Exploitation In Pursuit Of The Common Good.

Not Bad For Not Knowing What He Was Doing…

So are YOU still making excuses in your business and trying to be perfect?

Marty Sklar, a Disney executive and Imagineer says: “Don’t try to solve a problem too quickly. Let it evolve. Simmer.” One of my business principles is: nothing is ever as bad - or as good - as it first appears. Most every time I react too quickly to something, I wish I’d waited and thought about it a little.

You do want to be decisive. But not impulsive. Or stampeded into action before you’ve had time to weigh options, pros and cons. When you rush to judgement, you don’t give what Dr. Maltz called the “creative mechanism” an opportunity to work for you. It’s sort of like eating too fast and gulping your food. You don’t give your magnificently engineered digestive system a chance to do its job. It lets you know with indigestion.

Your “creative mechanism” is also beautifully engineered. It includes your subconscious mind’s unlimited memory and retrieval system, its navigation system locked on your goals, and its innate ability to process confusing and complex collections of ideas and information to a point of clarity, sometimes felt consciously as a “blinding flash” or a fully formed “idea out of the blue”.

Thomas Edison made a point of telling his subconscious all the information he knew about a problem, then going off and doing something completely different and relaxing…sitting on his pier with his fishing pole, taking a walk, or taking a nap…to give his “creative mechanism” sufficient time to provide him with the answer. If that sounds a bit mystical, you ought to know that this is how most of the inventors, advertising writers, and entrepreneurs I know actually work.

– Dan Kennedy

Dan Kennedy is an author, consultant and business coach. Additional information at www.FreeDanKennedyNewsletter.com

Ever wondered how bad inflation affects the rich and famous? Over the past year, Forbes’ CLEW-Index (Costs of Living Well Index) was hit by only 4% inflation, vs. the Consumer Price Index’s 3.6%.

A few examples: a Russian sable coat at Bloomingdale’s has not gone up in price even one cent since 2003 - still just $160,000.00 (Fake furcoat at department stores - prices have increased every year.). Harvard tuition, room, board, up about 5%, to $41,675.00 in 05 (Note to parents: that’s $166,700.00 for 4 years). A case of Dom: $1,559.00 in 05, from $1,439.00 in 04, up 8%. Worst inflation found in custom-tailored cotton shirts, about 12% (When I buy, I buy several to leave unwrapped and break into next year and year after. Better ROI on this than my managed portfolio!).

For more info on Costs Of Living Well, go to www.forbes.com/clewi. There has been significant growth in spending in the past 24 months in almost every category of luxury goods, services and travel, with continuing growth predicted. If you’re marketing to the affluent, things ARE looking up!

And if you’re following what I teach in my Online Prospecting Secrets course, you’ll find you can reach a lot of these affluent prospects on virtual autopilot with the Internet. There’s no excuse not to me making money in an environment like this!