Recession advice from a salty old business tycoon
Published: Sat, 04/03/21
The guy who created the program was a delightfully salty fellow named Art Hamel.
A lot of people don’t know who he was.
But, he was called the “Dean Of Business” back in the 80’s (on infomercials, etc), and he bought over 200 business over 40 years — starting with a small 25 unit motel in California that was barely profitable and took all his time, energy, and money, and was extremely stressful. It wasn’t long after that when he stopped Mickey Mousing around and being chintzy (as he would have put it) with small time businesses, and transitioned into buying only multi-million dollar business that gave him zero stress, and that took none of his time, energy, or money.
After that, he started showing other people how to do the same.
(Via his home study course and seminars)
Eventually, he had tens of thousands of students worldwide.
Then, he sort of drifted off into obscurity.
One day he was so well known people recognized him at airports.
The next, nobody had any idea who he was.
That is, until Michael Senoff saw his course being sold on eBay back in 2004, JV’d with me to write the ad for it, and we helped put him back on at least a few maps at the time in the US, the UK, and Australia.
But there is one thing that stands out I remember that applies the most to today.
And that is when he said:
"During recessions, stay the hell away from the news."
Why did he teach this?
Because the news is, by its nature, negative.
It is based on the saying, "if it bleeds, it leads."
And when you are in business, you’re best served by focusing on yourself and your business more than ever (especially during hard times) — and not getting distracted by all the chaos and angst and information manipulation designed to keep you in flight or fight mode, always weak & reactive instead of being strong & proactive.
Very simple tip.
Very powerful, too.
Everyone I know who abstains from the news reports sleeping better, having more energy & stamina, and being more optimistic, more productive, and making more scratch just by the freed up time and mental bandwidth alone.
Immoral of the story?
Stop giving the best of your time, your attention, and yourself to the news media.
That is, unless you want to be manipulated & treated like a puppet.
My (biased) opinion:
A much better use of your time is to plot & scheme on your own business. One of the resources I created just for this that is free, is my “One Sentence Business Plan” report you can get via AWAI’s site.
The purpose of that report is twofold:
1. To teach how to create a business plan in literally one sentence
2. To “pre sell” people on my 10-Minute Workday program AWAI sells
Whether you care to do #2, #1 is still well worth learning.
To get it right away, get on the list at this URL:
https://www.EmailPlayers.com/awai
Ben Settle
P.S. If you want an idea of what just the free report at the link above can do for your righteous self, here's what Email Players subscriber Philip Riggs just reported on it:
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Can I take a moment and thank you for the clarity of your one-sentence business plan?
I have a full time job as a data analyst that I can't give up because of alimony payments. But I also do data consulting on the side. I had been working on building the data consulting business up using your Infotainment Jackpot and List Swell materials.
(By the way, just got Breakneck Content, read the part about J vs. P and a lot of stuff around my business endeavors and challenges now make complete sense.)
Anyway, when I got the One-Sentence Business Plan and tried applying it to my data consulting work, I quickly realized I was heading down a dead end.
My offer was hourly consulting. What was I going to sell those people? More consulting. On top of a full-time job. And all I could offer would be more of the same.
This email has me thinking… what can I move to outside of data consulting and, (because I'm a P), how can I do it Bob Bly style)?
I'm going to look for a problem to solve and see where it leads me.
Thank you!
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It's what we do 'round here...
Opt-in here to get the report:
https://www.EmailPlayers.com/awai