Last week I had the opportunity to speak to a group of investment executives in California. One of my mentors, Doug Wood, attended the meeting. Doug has 40 years of experience in the investment industry, and is a legend in the investment wholesaling business. He is a master salesperson, manager, trainer, and entrepreneur. He started out as a speech and drama teacher, and he has always been a stickler for making exceptional presentations. After every presentation he provides me, (or any of the hundreds of other salespeople he has trained) with critique and guidance on how to improve my presentation. One thing I love about Doug is that he always tells me the truth. As a sales trainer and professional speaker, this is invaluable!One thing I have learned from Doug is that the biggest part of selling is listening. All other things being equal, the salesperson that listens best is the one who gets the sale, and in the most effective sales presentations, professional salespeople listen 60 to 80% of the time. If we truly follow this guideline then we need to make sure we choose our words carefully.Selling is a profession of numbers and averages, and we want to be certain we have all of the odds in our favor. This includes everything, including our attire, sales materials, presentation and closing technique, service, and even the words we choose to use in our presentations. Years ago I heard of a study conducted at Yale University over a 30 year period of time which yielded a list of the twelve most persuasive words in the English Language. These words are as follows:You, Money, Save, New, Results,Discovery, Easy,Help, Safety, Proven, Guarantee, HaveWhen we construct our sales presentations, we pay attention to their structure. For example, we want to start off with the challenge or problems that the prospect faces, then a description of how our product of service provides a solution, and close with a strong call to action. However, this is not enough. Everything is important, including personal appearance, sales and collateral materials, how we position ourselves in the

To the serious and single-minded investor Gold, Platinum and Silver jewelry items are unlikely to come near the top of the potentially profitable opportunities that he or she will research.It is reasonable to propose, that before venturing into this market, a tremendous amount of investigation should be carried out and knowledge assimilated that is not relevant to other investment vehicles.Reliable contacts and dealers in the jewelry trade must be sought out and cultivated.Perhaps most importantly the investor should treat jewelry as an all-consuming hobby so collecting aesthetically pleasing items that may, or may not, show a profit will still give pleasure.This is as good a reason as any to explain why many savvy female investors take an interest in this market.Silver jewelry as an investment, unless in the specialized antique market, is unlikely to provide serious investment opportunities unless sufficient volume can be purchased to produce a profit on the melt down value of the metal.Investing in Gold JewelryGold Jewelry as an Investment Vehicle.Points to considerGold jewelry has been around for thousands of years, it has never gone out of fashion, never dates or fades. As a consequence there is a choice of two investment paths to take, antique or modern.Antique jewelry with or without gemstones follows the pattern of other antique items in so far as age is not by any means the overriding factor.There will be items of 100 years old or more that may not have a scarcity value to attract buyers into paying a premium over the basic value of the metal and gemstone content.Entering this end of the market will therefore require an additional specialized knowledge of antiques and hallmarks. This will also apply to the antique silver jewelry market.2700 tonnes of Gold is used annually in manufacturing jewelry.Gold has a tendency to wear away over time and decrease in volume and weight when in use. It can also be subject to scratching resulting in loss of weight.It is important to be familiar with the hallmarks and the symbols denoting purity. 18K means that the item is 75% pure, 14K = 58.5% pure. 1K is one twenty fourth part of 100% pure metal.The balance is made up of other ingredients to make the item more durable or whiter.It is believed that half of all the gold sold in the United States is stamped with a falseKarat weighting so only deal with established, reliable and registered merchants.Trust is paramount; it is easy for jewelers to take advantage of unsuspecting investors who are not fully versed in the pitfalls of the market.Investing in Platinum JewelryPlatinum Jewelry as an Investment Vehicle.Points to Consider.Unlike Gold, Platinum has not got a long history of use in jewelry, anything earlier than 1900 is rare indeed.Examples of Edwardian Platinum jewelry, often rings set with gemstones, can be purchased but beware of modern antique style platinum jewelry.Studying antique platinum jewelry will need less application than studying gold antiques but it is essential to have a sound knowledge, particularly of the hallmarks, before entering the market.Platinum is over thirty times more rare than Gold.Approximately 85 tonnes of Platinum is used annually in the manufacture of jewelry.Most of the Platinum used in jewelry is between 90% and 95 % pure.The content is indicated in parts per thousand and not in Karats as in gold.The properties of Platinum allow for more intricate and finer jewelry designs than possible with Gold.Platinum is considerably more durable than Gold and will wear better and last longer in use.Platinum is more resistant to scratching than Gold and if this occurs the metal is displaced and can be restored by a specialist and not lost, as is the case with Gold.Platinum jewelry has become extremely fashionable and could be considered as the preferred jewellery of choice amongst the

Just last week I was browsing through a piece in Fortune 100 and found out about this thing I had never heard of before called skype. The two guys who started up skype are now rich beyond their craziest expectations. In due course they sold their brainwave ebay. If you havent heard of skype then you are probably wondering what I am going on about. A lot of people call it voip which is an acronym for voice over internet protocol. The idea is not new, you basically cam make phone calls over the internet for free.So all you have to do is rig up a phone to your pc and you can see and talk to anyone anywhere in the world using skipe. It is essential you get a rapid broadband connection as quickly as you can. Fantastic voice quality is not guaranteed however if your connection is slow. Trying to use skype if you are on a dial up modem is next to impossible as the voice on the other end of the line continually breaks up and it can be very frustrating.Interstingly enough due to skypes huge success big commercial telephone companies are trying to get a foothold in the marketplace. I guess the question remains, is it commercially viable. Will it take on the net by storm, or is it just a passing fad. The answer is simply time will tell. None of us can predict the future but if you look at the amount of people who use skype on a daily basis you will see millions of people using skype at the same time. If previous experience is anything to go by then we can expect the big players to look at voip and skyp in minute detail. The most plausible scenario is that the federal govt will want a piece of the action by regulating it. If there is ever an opportunity to make big bucks from something that is free and that millions of people have access to, then you can be sure that the government will find a way to get a slice of the action. At the moment skype makes its money by charging people who phone land lines from their pc who use skipe.It seems like voice over interet protocol and skyp is also at the forefront of web video conferencing as well. With 911 happenning in the not too distant past more people want to travel less and less so it is a great opportunity for voip to put video conferencing back on the map. Attaching a webcam to your computer is the easiest way for people to see each other online. If you consider yourself a technophobe, then that isn’t a problem either as many pcs being sold on the market have inbuilt webcams so you dont have to connect anything.Audio and video are becoming possible for everyone nowadays-in this day and age especially with the massive success of youtube. Many people think video and audio will be a passing fad but all the evidence points in the other direction.Over the next 5 years we will see whether skype and voip takes off in the way many gurus predict. We’ll see in the next few years.

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Of all the home-based business possibilities, it

Buying Wholesale The Right WayBy now, if you’ve been on the Internet for just a little while (and I was a late-bloomer), starting in 1997, you know the land mines.Not everything that is advertised is what it claims to be. That can be from products to services.I didn’t start out to be in wholesale, in fact, I didn’t start out to have anything to do with the Internet at all. I was a cartoonist (still am), and founder of Londons Times Cartoons. That launch was in 1997 in a small Mississippi warehouse that I used as my studio as I could not afford much more and launch the cartoons without a full time job. I took odd jobs as I continued this creative venture.A Google of Londons Times Cartoons has hundreds of articles, reviews, etc. and even the real story of how we got started We’ve been at it a long time and are top-rated (bragging rights here) on Alexa.com and Netcraft.com.It was not until 1995 that I realized I also had a business as I was getting emails from webmasters, newsletter publishers, etc. asking to buy the rights to my images. That was my start.Then I was approached by a manufacturer wanting to create my merchadise from tee shirts towall clocks. We struck a deal for both retail and wholesale. My attorney, a very precise man who dots every

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