A zero-sum game is a concept based on game theory.

Basically a zero-sum game is one in which a participant's gains or losses are directly balanced out by another participant's gains or losses. In other words, for every "win" there is an equivalent "loss."

One of the things I really like about entreprenurship is that entrepreneurs create value out of nothing. This is the opposite of of a zero-sum game, and one of the reasons I hold the belief that entrepreneurs are the drivers of a society.

A zero-sum game is all about probability. And in any game worth playing, you can find an edge, or learn more to produce greater results. That's what education is.

I've been taking the stock market more seriously over the last couple of months. I opened an account with Questrade.  Questrade is for Canadians only, and one of the cool things is that you keep USD and physical gold in your self-directed RSP.  It's been quite a learning experience. I've had some silly losses and some good gains. And I have no doubt that I'll master how to make money in the markets. But in some of the books I've read, it's clear that the feeling of zero-sum is there in the marketplace. That's why people panic and sell at the wrong time, and rationalize their bad decisions to themselves. And as I've been buying and selling, it's become more clear that there are buyers and sellers who profit or lose based on how they react to the market.

Now investing isn't a zero-sum game exactly. It would be if there were not innovations in business. For example, in the very short-term, it is almost a zero-sum game. And in flat markets, it is also essentially a zero-sum game. In bull markets it is not. I've read that the stock market grows an average of 10% per year. (Now that does not count for inflation, nor does it suggest that those gains are steady year in year out.) But over time it tends to grow.

The key to the stock market is just to increase your probability of a winning trade. (And of course to understand risk management.) But that's about all. If you can do that, you can win BIG even in a zero-sum game.

This is different from the FOREX market, which as far as can tell, really is a zero-sum game. Because currencies are priced in relation to one another (or the USD), there is not innovation that really makes this market any better odds than a zero-sum game.

And lastly, I thought about lottery tickets. Personally, I think lottery tickets are a voluntary tax. But they are WORSE than a zero-sum game. If every dollar that went in got paid out it would be an even zero-sum game based wholly on chance. (And there is no way to increase your probability, so in some ways it's worse than gambling.) But it's NOT. It's a huge money-maker for the government at the state or federal level. And nobody complains about paying too much tax in lottery tickets.

So, how do you feel about investing? The lottery? Zero-Sum Games? Feel free to disagree.

If you are in a home business, the only skill you must constantly develop is your own marketing ability.

In my opinion, you don’t have a business if it relies on a lead broker.  Why?  Because if that broker changes their rules, goes out of business, or raises their prices substantially because of something that happens in the marketplace…  (Remember the marketplace is dynamic.  Think “Google Slap.”)  Then you just lost your edge.

Buying leads from a lead broker is like outsourcing the core part of your business.  This is the core part of the business that makes it unique, and that makes people join your business.  It’s crazy to do that.  You can’t farm out your competitive advantage and hope your business will make it through a challenging time.

What most people don’t realize is that lead brokers have their own business model.

They are spending money on advertising, and selling you the results for as much as they can charge.

Let’s say to generate 100 leads it cost them $40.   They will sell you those leads for $150.

They need their profit, plus their overhead, plus a cushion for all the leads that they can no longer sell that go stale, etc.

If you did your own advertising you could generate those leads for a similar amount to $40. 

Now they also generate leads for the most part from “distraction” sources.  And what I mean by that is advertising on other websites (think banner advertising, content network advertising like Adsense, and large co-registration email campaigns.)  These sources are inferior to what you can do for even less money.  The reason they use these methods primarily is because they are cheap.

You don’t want to build your business on any kind of “cheapest” metric.  And certainly not on your leads, the lifeblood of your business.

They also advertise very generically.  This makes good sense for them, because they want to sell their leads to anybody in a home business, whether that person is with Melaleuca or Perfect Wealth Formula, or whatever.  The company does not matter to them.  They deal in volume.

When you do your own advertising you can advertise more specifically.  Not only will your response increase by wording your ad more specifically, which is one of the paradoxes of direct response marketing, but you will attract the right kinds of prospects to your business.

Learning effective, highly profitable lead generation is probably the #1 reason people work with us in our direct sales business. And if you’d like to learn from the best, we’ll teach you the specifics you need to develop.  It’s not something you’ll learn overnight, but it’s something that we have an ability to teach.

Recently, Marie and I have created an introduction to generating your own leads.  We created this generic training to get people to start using some of the lead generation strategies we have developed that have been so profitable for us.

Right now we’re in pre-launch.  We’re still making changes, and so we’re offering it at a very low introductory price.

Expect that price to increase soon, I don’t know exactly when, but if you need to understand more about lead generation for your business, and you don’t want to work one-on-one with me, then I would buy it before we raise the price dramatically.  As it stands you need to opt-in to see the salesletter.  (As I said, we are currently making changes as we speak.)

3 Percent Method

Hi Guys,

I've been working on our law of attraction membership site, and making some big changes behind the scenes. 

I just created this widget, that shows some of my favorite law of attraction resources.

OK, it's not working.  Arrggh.

Here is a screenshot.  The original is available in the free members-only area of Free Law of Attraction.com

Let me know what I left out. 

I recently posted about an important Adwords Policy Update.

But Adsense made some recent changes clear also.

You are not allowed to dress up your Adsense ad like it's the main text under a heading. The reason is that it's deceptive, and Google (GOOG) is obsessed with the user experience. They should be; it's their bread & butter in the most profitable media advertising business. That's why Microsoft (MSFT) is scrambling to acquire Yahoo (YHOO).

It's also interesting to note that setting up your adsense the wrong way will likely get more targeted clicks.

Here's a tip: Look at which methods or tactics of advertising companies won't let you do – those could end up being the most profitable!

(as an aside…This is one of the main reasons I left my former direct sales company. They said my marketing tactics were too powerful, created an unfair advantage for myself and my team, and starting creating new company policies that were directly created to restrict my marketing advantages.)

So always look outside the box. You'll find the best stuff is sometimes the wrapping paper not what's inside.

What do you think?