did you know?
“Why Italy?” Click here to read an explanation that I’ve never heard before.
Before there were vaccines, doctors “borrowed” antibodies from recovered patients to save lives. A recent article on History.com explains how the discovery was made and how it’s been used to fight many infectious diseases… including the Spanish flu, measles, MERS, SARS, and Ebola. To read the article, click here.
The latest issue of Independent Healing
“Your Guide to the Coronavirus Pandemic: How to help yourself and your loved ones during the COVID-19 outbreak”
Including:
* The single best anti-viral supplement
* The secret of people who never seem to catch contagious diseases
* The fruit extract that helps 93% of people with respiratory viruses get better in just 2 days
* The germ-spreading hotspot most of us forget to sanitize
* The blood type that could protect you from COVID-19
Click here to read this special issue.
“Thinking Critically About Coronavirus News and Information” – Good advice from the FTC on protecting yourself against coronavirus scams. Click here to read the article.
“Looking Into the Near Future” – an excerpt from Bill Bonner’s Diary, March 20, 2020
The world of getting and spending is shutting down. Without revenue, neither businesses, or households, or the government will be able to pay their bills.
Stocks will rise (“a dead cat bounce,” the old timers call it) on all the “bailout” news, and then give up another 50% of their value.
Business will default on its $16-trillion-debt pile. Millions of people will lose their jobs. The Secretary of the Treasury, Steven Mnuchin, says that upwards of 20% of the workforce could be unemployed.
The feds will print money by the trillions to rescue the situation. Spending will rise. But lower output… and more currency in circulation… will raise prices.
If you are in the information marketing business, you may be interested in my thoughts about how the Corona Crisis presents an opportunity for growth and strength in the future. This is an excerpt from a memo I wrote to one of our publishers of economic and investment information in Europe.
I believe the economic and social crisis we are experiencing will change the way our readers think forever more.
During the last 10 years, the world benefited from an artificial but huge bull market in the USA. That is over now. We are in a recession. Millions of people will lose jobs. Tens of thousands of businesses will close.
Things may start improving in six months or a year. But the trauma our customers have experienced from seeing their stock portfolios crash from being quarantined for weeks or longer will change the way they think and feel about investing forever.
During this just-ended bull market, practically everything we sold was profitable. Some of the ideas we sold were based on fear – the fear of a market collapse that we are seeing today. Most of the ideas we sold were bullish and were gobbled up by the madness of crowds hoping for ever-higher ROIs.
We grew so quickly during those years that we couldn’t help but hire a few analysts and writers that had a limited understanding of economics and finance. Their theories were sometimes thin. And their ability to express themselves was sometimes clumsy.
This was only a small portion of our creative people, but it was the source of a serious problem. Because the country was so mesmerized by the stock market’s growth, they seemed to sell as well as our best thinkers and writers.
As I said, I have a hunch those days are past. And if that’s true, our future will depend on eliminating the 20% of our thinkers, writers, and products that are not first-rate and replacing them with people and products that are.
Here’s how I see it: There is IQ, which indicates a person’s ability to solve all sorts of intellectual problems. There is Emotional IQ, which indicates a person’s ability to thrive in social situations. And there is Literary IQ, which indicates a writer’s ability to articulate smart ideas elegantly.
* Big for us = macro, universal, and game-changing
* Smart for us = big, fresh, contrarian, and exciting
* Elegant for us (and for all writing) = concise, subtle, and respectful of the reader’s intelligence
We are a business that sells ideas – analysis, insight, precautions, and advice. Our products are not newsletters or alert services or webinars or the rest. Those are formats of communication. Our products are our elegantly articulated smart ideas.
To improve our products ,we must improve our ideas. And we can do that only by hiring and supporting high IQ writers.
That said, I don’t believe that bullish ideas are going to stop selling. I believe, as I said, that we are going through a fertile time to create big audiences by promoting great articulators of big, smart ideas. But the higher Literary IQ writers and thinkers we have now will be able to contribute to the conversation our customers want to have. We’ve already seen evidence of that lately in the USA.
We may be going into an economic depression, but there are opportunities for profit in depressions. We have to support our high Literary IQ bulls as well.
I know that sounded pompous. Forgive me. Whenever I grab onto a new idea, I feel pompous. And despite my many worries, I’m shifting towards a pompous mood.
“Whatever It Takes” by Tom Dyson in Postcards From the Fringe. LINK
“How to Self-Quarantine” by Roni Caryn Rabin in The New York Times
The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living by Ryan Holiday
This is a bathroom book that will inform and inspire pragmatic readers. The bulk of the quotations in the book come from the three major Stoic philosophers: Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and Seneca.
From the book: “Stoic writing is much closer to a yoga session or a pre-game warm up than to a book of philosophy a university professor might write. It’s preparation for the philosophic life where the right state of mind is the most critical part.”
About the author: Ryan Holiday, now a successful author, is the former marketing director for American Apparel. He wrote the bestseller, Trust Me, I’m Lying, and The Obstacle Is the Way.
The latest issue of AWAI’s Barefoot Writer
In the March issue: LINK
* 6 Ways Consultants Can Charge More
* The Non-Sci-Fi Path to Rerouting Your Reader’s Brain
* Linchpin Writing: Lock in Your Value With Every Client, Every Time
* How a One-Eyed, Hairy Monk Can Rejuvenate and Spotlight Your Writing Goals