I recently was on my usual grocery shopping trip to Trader Joes to pick up the usual spicy black bean dip, Barbara's Frosted Shredded Wheat Bites, non fat milk and last but not least HANDFUL of DRY ROASTED ALMOND packs. 

Now my list might tell you something about me and my food preferences. It also might tell you that this list cannot be found at any other store. I can only get this at Trader Joes. Hence, this is my REAL reason for shopping there truth be told.  I do enjoy the friendly atmosphere, the whimsical creative graphics on chalkboards, and the pleasant shopping environment but those are tertiary to the MAIN reason I am there. If you revisit my list above you will see that you would be greatly challenged to find that list at any other store for the price I pay for it.

I make a special trip to Trader Joes just for these items.  Would I still go if the environment was like an Albertsons?  Probably, but it would take away from the special feel of specialty foods. Now lets get to my point. If you notice the image above you will see this is the first time I've ever seen TJOES list out the reasons to shop there versus somewhere else.  In case you can't read it I will list it out.

1. Everyone Welcomed... I never felt excluded by the membership stuff at other places anyways. 
2. Save money..  Yes. I do come for that reason for sure
3. Fun Environment.. Sure, that is an extra benefit but not why I'm really coming. It does help though.
4. A love of good food... hmm. doesn't everybody love good food. I'd change that to love of good foods you can't find anywhere else.
5. Dancing down the aisle.. hmm. not sure last time I danced there. But I guess they are being tongue and cheek which is part of their brand persona. Still not a very good reason.
6. Smile, laugh, you're with friends... Hmm. I would have to say the atomosphere is friendly there and most are laughing, employees joke with each other, seem to be respectful and helpful.

So the VALUE PROPOSITION here is ok but not very compelling. I feel the most compelling reason why I shop there is for the SELECTION of foods they have cause I can't get it anywhere else. If you dumped the friendly staff, fun environment, the hawaiin shirts, dancing down the aisles or hip hop classes in the back room and put some frowns on their faces I would probably still shop there regardless.  But I don't represent everyone.

Please feel free to provide your MAIN COMPELLING REASON for shopping at TRADER JOES from this list. The real question becomes what job are you looking for Trader Joes to complete for you?  That would be giving you the food you want at prices you want. You don't go to talk with the people or dance if they don't have what you are looking for do you? I would go hang out with my friends if I were shopping for that.

Well, off to Trader Joes now to check out the new dance classes they seem to be offering that I haven't been able to find yet.

Recently I was at my local Albertsons in need of some laundry detergent to do my weekly or shall I say bi-weekly laundry when suddenly I was confronted by a differentiation traffic jam.  I just needed something that would clean my clothes and make them smell nice. I had no idea the difficulty of my decision until I looked at this wall of madness. Just exactly what is a 38yr old Single male supposed to make of all these options?  How do I know what I should pick given the array of choices in front of me?

I literally shut down and became confused. I must have spent almost 20min just trying to find something useful to help me make my decision. You'd think they might have a guide or something to help me understand the differences between ingredients or what people usually buy.  I dawned upon me that this is representative of the current state of marketing. We are experiencing a continued communication traffic jam with no communications police to help direct traffic so I know where to go at least to get to my destination.  Between TIDE and ALL and all temp CHEER I had no idea what separates them.  I was about to go hire a woman to come assist me with my selection. I tried to call my mother but could not get a hold of her.  Is this what these companies want to do with shelf space? confuse me into making a decision? They accomplished that for sure.  The only thing I really could go on was price. I just picked the cheapest thing that sounded good which was ARM AND HAMMER. I picked them cause I remember the baking soda stuff they are famous for.  Other than that I was awestruck by so many choices.

The challenge in marketing is to give people a simple easy to understand way of why they should choose you.  How do you do that in such a mature space such as laundry detergent you might ask? Good question. You do it by educating your customers not trying to sell to them. Empower them with decision making tools like maybe a laundry detergent guide for the single guy. Or maybe you provide detergent classes for single mothers.   The WAY you market can be just as powerful as what you SAY.

In the meantime I hope my detergent lasts a long time cause I dread going back into the store to have to make another laundry decision. Maybe I'll just buy it over the internet instead after checking out some laundry detergent forums. geez!  Decision making shouldn't be so hard.

Happy washing!

I was driving home from the Century City mall the other day after taking care of some business at the Apple store and passed this auto shop on the way home. I had just come from a decadent display of colorful industrial designed brand imagery from the Apple store so I was a bit spoiled.

When I saw this auto shop, I have to say I was a bit confused by their choice of colors. Since when do Christmas red and green convey trust to take your car in to have it fixed. If you look at the photo you will notice multi colored buildings that do not convey symmetry or a consistency of design. Once is brick and the other is another color. That confused me. I saw they were trying to go for a pretty neat concept that people might remember with the fixmycarnow.com idea. However, my mind couldn't get pass the Christmas colors and look of the lot that made it seem like any other automechanic place.

If we look at Jiffy lube or EZ lube we notice they use consistency in their design and color choices and their garages are all the same color and look fairly new. This fixmycarnow.com seemed a bit gimmicky to me. Now if they just did some minor adjustments to the colors of the building and overhauled the outside a bit and maybe tried to use some kind of mascot or concept like a sick car to use symbolism to tie into the name we might have a workable concept people could remember and trust.

When I drove by this place I felt I could not trust leaving my car there because there were credibility indicators missing that should be present. when you have a saturated market like auto repair its better to specialize in a certain kind of car that usually is in the shop a lot. Specializing in Toyota's might leave your business without customers but specializing in foreign cars like Ferrari or Jaguar or others might just get you noticed. But then you would need to be in the area that those cars are in as well. So we have a geography issue as well. This company was going for an economically challenged area and is offering to fix any car but the colors were confusing as well as why I should take my car here versus Firestone or some other place I might trust.

I give them an A for effort though. Most businesses can't even get this far. This would explain why 95% of new businesses fail in 3yrs or less. They lack a sustainable business model and brand concept that can get traction over time. A name is very powerful.

Next time you are out check out the names that grab your attention and try to understand why they grabbed your attention. See if you can grasp the concepts behind a successful name. Then try to understand the choice of color systems they chose.

We all saw today that the house finally passed the $700billion RESCUE plan. Well its actually $800 billion now with the $100billion incentives package that was added to it in order to get the House to pass the bill.

Are you using incentives properly in your business to win that next contract or order? If you are selling a $700billion plan to a company and most of the decisions makers and influencers are on board except for a couple of key votes. What can you add to your package of value to win those extra votes of confidence? Business is no different than politics is it?

Could you add better payment terms? Tax incentives, extra service, 24 hour assistance? What is REALLY important to those last few extra votes? You'll notice that one House rep wanted some stupid excise tax on a certain wooden arrow deleted from the tax code because a wealthy manufacturer in his state was lobbying him for it. My guess is that this manufacturer is greasing this politicians campaign for re-election and promised some serious contributions. What is important to your key constituents? Finding out what is REALLY important takes some good lobbying skills so you know what points they don't like in your plan and what you can do to sweeten the deal for them.

When you finally find those points of concern, address them properly, add value and tip the relationship scale in your direction so it looks like you are the one giving enormous value that is when you close the sale.

Utilize Paulson's Guide to Selling a $700billion Rescue Plan that should be on Amazon soon. Happy lobbying.

Another story about the power of the value proposition to move you to the next step or hold you back. Not only do you need relationships to drive sales but you need clarity around why they should pick you over your competitors. Had the gov't positioned this bill as a RESCUE effort things might have been perceived differently. RESCUE or BAILOUT? each one is perceived differently. Rescue implies empathy and needed help. Bailout implies idiotic behavior or irresponsible conduct such as posting BAIL for being tossed in jail or making a major mistake. When has a judge every said in his court, " RESCUE is posted at $700b to get the defendant out of jail" ?

The power of a word used incorrectly can determine $1trillion dollars in losses when then dow dropped 778 points in one day after news the bill had been voted down in the house was announced.

ABC News�?? Betsy Stark reports: Is what we have here a failure to communicate?

Beyond the populist outrage and political self-interest that sank the House vote, some are making the argument that the administration just hasn't done a very effective sales job persuading Main Street America that it has skin in this game.

Sure, there are small businesses and consumers that are feeling the pinch of tighter lending, and lots of people are going to get their quarterly 401(k) statements and see that the value of their nest eggs has dropped some more, but what Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke were pitching was Apocalypse Now. And that moment --thankfully-- has not arrived.

Public relations professionals, including Stan Collender of Qorvis Communications on TalkingPointsMemo.com, say this has been a bungled effort from a PR point of view: "From a communications perspective, this has been done about as wrong as is possible. There have been no credible spokespeople, the messages about the plan have been wrong or incomplete, the plan's supporters failed to understand the different audiences that had to be reached, and few people validated the claim that the plan was needed�?�"

It hasn't helped, as others have noted many times, that the Treasury secretary, the chief salesman (widely revered right now for his deep understanding of financial markets), is a former Wall Street titan. Some have suggested his experience as former CEO of Goldman Sachs has made him unduly sympathetic to the interests of investment bankers over ordinary homeowners and depositors. Whatever the reality is, the perception is a problem.

And then there's mind-numbing complexity of it all. Finance professionals have confessed that they didn't really understand some of the arcane products their firms were selling before it all went wrong, so how are regular folks, who may not be investors at all, supposed to wrap their heads around the risks to them of soaring LIBOR rates? LIBOR? No wonder they're suspicious.

Economist Jared Bernstein of the Economic Policy Institute told me earlier this week he had wondered if maybe there was some "fear mongering" going on here. P.S.: He now believes the scary pictures Bernanke and Paulson have been painting. But he has a Ph.D.

As you read this time sensitive story keep in mind the power of the value proposition when trying to sell your products or services. A bill or law could also be considered a product. When you see how bad a job congress did in explaining or educating the public about the value of the $700b bailout plan you start to see how it is parallels selling products and services or the value a company brings to a situation. If you don't identify and communicate your value proposition clearly then you don't pass go. Its that simple. Had congress communicated this bill much better to make it easier to understand the public probably would have given them the support they need. Now our country is in economic turmoil because a bunch of people are more worried about their job security than the economic security of our country. Very sad. READ ON:

By Allison Linn
Senior writer

Mary Ann Bock got pretty angry when she found out that lax mortgage standards had started a financial maelstrom that appeared likely to require billions of dollars in federal money to fix.

She got even angrier after she heard that Congress wasn�??t able to pass a bill aimed at stemming the ensuing financial crisis.

�??Clearly, as insane as that bailout was, something had to be done,�?? said Bock, 58. �??Now, I�??m thinking it�??s just all about politics and these people wanting to keep their jobs �?� and forget about helping the country.�??

The government�??s failure to reach a compromise on a hotly contested federal bailout package is adding to the frustration and confusion surrounding the country�??s current financial crisis. It�??s also worrying economists who say that politicians�?? failure to adequately explain to Americans what is at stake, and to find a palatable solution, could lead to a much more serious economic downturn.

�??The risk we run now is we will have a much deeper and more protracted recession than what we had before,�?? said Mark Gertler, an economics professor at New York University.

He faults politicians and government officials for not doing enough to help Americans understand why the crisis on Wall Street could start to hit home on Main Street. He also thinks no one bothered to spend enough time explaining to Americans how the proposal would work, leading many Americans to see it as simply a handout for Wall Street fat cats.

The proposed $700 billion bailout plan failed to pass the House of Representatives on Monday amid political squabbling and fears that a vote for the plan would impact what lever ordinary voters pull come Election Day.

�??This is really a failure, at a massive level, of the political system,�?? Gertler said.

James Wilcox, a professor of financial institutions at UC Berkeley�??s Haas School of Business, has been surprised by people�??s reaction to the plan, which called for setting up a system to let the government buy up billions of dollars in bad mortgage-backed debts from banks and other financial institutions. But he understands why people are feeling confused and unhappy about it.

�??Basically, almost no one bothered to explain to people why they should be in favor of it,�?? he said.

Indeed, for many the current financial crisis still feels somewhat abstract. Even as the crisis has toppled financial institutions such as Lehman Bros. and led to the failure of banks including mammoth Washington Mutual, for many Americans the most obvious impact has been that their homes or retirement accounts lost value.

If the financial crisis spreads further, however, economists say they could start to see more day-to-day impacts, such as that they can�??t get a car loan or home equity line of credit, or that their credit card limits are reduced.

If the crisis continues to spread unchecked, they also could find that their employer isn�??t able to borrow the money it needs to buy new equipment or inventory, expand its operations, hire new employees or even pay the ones it already has.

That could lead to higher unemployment and lower consumer spending, and further weaken an already delicate economy.

�??We are in a credit crunch and it�??s starting to crunch America�??s businesses, large and small,�?? Wilcox said.

Brian Bethune, U.S. economist with Global Insight, faults government officials for using opaque terms like �??downside risk to growth�?? to explain the problems, instead of using blunter, more obvious terms that people can understand, like �??recession.�?? He also thinks the government hasn�??t been forthright enough about how other problems, such as high oil prices, are adding to the country�??s financial woes.

�??They�??re not communicating clearly �?� and as a result people don�??t understand why this is a crisis and why we need emergency legislation,�?? Bethune said.

That�??s leaving many Americans unsure who, if anyone, they should trust.

�??It�??s so hard to understand whether we really do need to do it or not,�?? said Michael Urnikis, 55.

Urnikis, who lives in rural Peru, Illinois, would prefer not to bail out the financial institutions that made bad bets. He�??s also frustrated that the whole crisis has stemmed from people taking on mortgages they couldn�??t afford, when he�??s worked hard to pay his own home off.

But on the other hand, Urnikis is so troubled by what�??s going on with Wall Street that he recently moved all his investments from mutual funds to low-risk CDs just so he could sleep at night.

The news that Congress had failed to pass the bailout measure only added to his uncertainty.

�??How does a normal person like me have any idea, because no one really tells you the truth,�?? he said.

Bock, who lives in the Chicago suburb of Tinley Park, said the entire crisis has left her feeling betrayed.

�??You go about your life and you save and you pay your bills on time and then, all of a sudden, this comes to a head and there isn�??t much you can do about it,�?? she said.

The crisis has left her unsure how worried she should be and frustrated that politicians aren�??t giving her better answers.

�??I think the American people can handle the truth,�?? she said. �??What they can�??t handle is all this greed.�??

I was at my local Costco this weekend doing my regular shopping run to get my $14 bag of Tysons chicken and big jumbo basket of strawberries for $5.00 when I came across this booth on my way to what I wanted. I stopped and wondered just what are they selling there. I spent a little more time looking for indicators of what it was about but was still confused so I kept going.

This happens everyday to your business when you don't have a clear value proposition that is supported by clear communication pieces. Your website is probably the biggest threat to you business because its what people use to understand just what you offer or do. Many confused business owners think the site is supposed to be pretty or this or that but fail to understand what their customers want from it.

If you think of your business like this booth and you paid $1000 for floortime wouldn't you want your message to be clear as day? Unfortunately most websites look like this booth and worse. Its a vague promise of something or lots of graphics or a mish mosh of unrelated images some web person pulled off of Istockphoto cause they looked good. When you have no clear value proposition you cut your business down before you even get a chance to have a conversation with a customer. We all know the success of our business is based on the number of successful interactions we have with our target audience.

Why is this booth even set up when people just pay no attention to it cause they don't see the value of coming up to it to learn more about it?

Lets put an end to website booths like this and identify and communicate a clear value proposition.

happy branding

Value System
New studies offer insight into the subjective, and often less-than-rational, ways we decide what to buy and how much to pay.

Think of life as one long afternoon at the mall, shopping. I know, I know. Some of you will squeal that you hate shopping, indeed that you're appalled by the whole consumer culture. But protest all you want, there's no way around it. We all spend a good amount of time contemplating value. Is that mocha latte really worth four bucks? Will you finally write a $200 check to your chosen candidate? How about that $100,000 college education for your kid? Not a day goes by that we don't ask ourselves the question "So, what's it worth?"

Such questions have no absolute and universal answers, of course. That's what makes it so hard. Judgments of worth and value are a complex meld of attitudes and feelings about both money and thousands of commodities that defy comparison. How can you say if hiring a plumber is worth more than buying a radio or a pet cat? Or if any of those things is worth the money in your wallet? Yet we make these market choices every day, confidently exchanging one thing for another.

A lot of people are very interested in how we value stuff, including psychologists. If these are not rational decisions, what are they? How does the brain sort through the impossible confusion of life's marketplace and arrive at a choice? Two Princeton University scientists have been exploring this problem in the laboratory and may have some clues to the subtle and surprising nature of these everyday decisions.

Psychologists Daniel Oppenheimer and Adam Alter believe that many of the economic decisions we make have little to do with objective value. Market choices have much more to do with the brain's basic, internal perceptions of the world and the way those perceptions shape our feelings of comfort and ease. In this view, even currency has no clear and absolute value; regardless of those numbers on bills and coins, they derive their true value from the individual mind. In a series of experiments, these psychologists have been studying the marketplace cues that trigger psychological comfort or discomfort, and thus shape us as economic beings.

The basic idea is that it's human nature to get anxious and wary when the world is strange or challenging. We're more at ease around the familiar and comprehensible. But the cues that signal us to be on guard may not be obvious; indeed, they may be almost undetectable at times. It's these nuanced signals that the psychologists have been exploring in the lab.

Here's an example of their work. Oppenheimer and Alter asked a group of volunteers to estimate how much of various commodities they could buy with a dollar. They were given choices such as paper clips and gumballs and paper napkins. Some of the volunteers were given a regular old dollar bill with George Washington on it, while others were given less-familiar currency of the same value: a Susan B. Anthony $1 coin, for example, or a dollar bill that had been ever-so-slightly tinkered with. Invariably, the volunteers believed that the familiar dollar bill was worth more�??that it had more buying power�??than the stranger currency.

That doesn't make sense, of course. But it was not a fluke. They got the same result when they gave some people a rare $2 bill and others two singles. It's not as though people never see a $2 bill, and it does have Thomas Jefferson on it after all, but just the slight unfamiliarity of the denomination was enough to make people devalue it.

Why would this be? Oppenheimer and Alter believe this irrational behavior is rooted in our most fundamental mental processes: The world is full of stimuli of various kinds, some more familiar than others, and the brain is tuned to process the familiar ones rapidly, effortlessly and intuitively. More difficult or alien cues require more mental work, more plodding deliberation, and the brain switches to its more cautious and calculating style to be on the safe side.

This is humbling to know. But there's more. The psychologists wanted to see if the same cognitive bias shapes our perceptions and attitudes toward goods themselves, and they came up with a clever way to find out. In this experiment, they gave everyone the same currency�??the familiar dollar bill�??but they made the commodities more or less accessible in a very subtle way. Some of the "consumers" purchased the gumballs and paper clips from a form that was printed in a clear black font while others had to select from a form printed in a difficult-to-read grey italic font. The idea was to make the strangeness as subtle as possible, to reduce it to basic perception. Even at this most fundamental level, the differences shaped economic judgment: Volunteers consistently rated identical goods as less valuable when they came in an unfamiliar, cognitively challenging form.

These findings echo some earlier, provocative studies of the stock market. In those studies, Oppenheimer and Alter looked at new stock offerings and found that companies with easy-to-read names were valued more highly by investors, at least in the short run. That is, companies with names like Barnings Incorporated consistently outperformed companies with names like Aegeadux Incorporated, simply because the names are more cognitively palatable.

So what do all these odd findings add up to? Well, the cognitive biases are not a bad thing, even if they are a bit irrational. In fact, they are essential to our everyday economic decision-making. We'd be paralyzed if we tried to make every market choice logically and the economic world would grind to a halt. But they should raise a cautionary flag about the very subtle ways marketers might manipulate our choices. Something to think about as we head off to the mall, not just this holiday weekend, but every day.

Wray Herbert
NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE

Some 41 years after the Beatles introduced With a Little Help From My Friends, the concept still applies to new entrepreneurs, perhaps more now than ever. The increase in competition and the higher startup costs have made opening a business a worrisome task even for the most confident industrialist.

With so many facets to running a business--including sales, marketing, technology and protecting your physical and intellectual properties--having the right people in your corner can be a tremendous asset, providing both emotional support and business know-how. Unfortunately, many new entrepreneurs go it alone, without that emotional backing from friends or family.

"Getting this business off the ground was the most frustrating and lonely period of my life," says Paul McGrath, founder and owner of RideSpring, an online company providing carpool matching and scheduling, plus incentive programs for environmentally friendly commuting.

"I had great confidence in the concept and the market potential, but I was taken aback by the huge resistance to a new idea! I had no support from my friends, and in fact most of my old friendships fell apart," adds McGrath, who finally found some receptive drinking buddies plus a woman named Susie Leijten, a personal coach, whom he met at an improv class.

"She would help by role-playing various sales scenarios with me before my meetings with potential RideSpring clients. It was extremely helpful," McGrath says.

Those who are lucky enough to have an encouraging environment early on as they build and shape a business rarely realize their good fortune until much later. Typically, there are four common types of supporters who serve as emotional backers and/or advisors. If you are fortunate enough to find all four, you may have your own little village to help you raise a business.

"The Cheerleader"
Athletes have them, so why shouldn't you? Cheerleaders are those individuals who rally behind your ideas and believe in you as an entrepreneur through the initial startup struggles.

"I began talking about starting my own company right after college. My friend Andrea was a trusted confidant who recognized my entrepreneurial spirit. She really believed in me before I even believed in myself," says eco-designer Kelly LaPlante of Kelly LaPlante Organic Designs, based in Venice Beach, California.

Andrea not only served as a cheerleader when LaPlante was starting the business, but also continued to provide support as the business grew. When LaPlante introduced one of her new collections at the Sundance Film Festival, Andrea took on the job of handling the press for LaPlante, who couldn't afford a PR representative. She even cooked dinner for LaPlante's staff when they were exhausted after the festival.

"Clearly you need to have positive-thinking people around you at all times," says New York City business coach Marian Banker, who works with small business owners through her company Prime Strategies. "Your cheerleaders give you encouragement. You'll notice the word courage is in there, which is also something very important that a cheerleader helps you develop."

"The Role Model"
If he or she is actively teaching or training, then you might consider the role model to be a mentor. Often, however, someone is providing tremendous support through the simple concept of "do as I do." Lance Eng, a real estate broker from Los Angeles and author of Company You, a guide to managing your life by the guiding principles of successful businesses, learned what it takes to run a business from his own role models, his family.

"My family was very supportive because they provided me with business know-how and showed me how sheer determination could pay off," says Eng, whose parents moved to Minnesota from China and worked 12 to 14 hour days to run their own restaurant.

"They did it not to make a million dollars, but because they had four children to feed. Failure was not an option, so I learned from watching them, and helping them, how to build a business around a strong work ethic."

Eng believes it's very important for a business owner to build his or her own personal little board of directors, so to speak, to have key supporters around.

"The Expert"
There's a fine line between tapping into a friend's expertise and taking advantage. Yet some friends (or relatives) are more than willing to go the extra mile by providing their expertise in a specific area.

"We talked with friends who were realtors and attorneys because we wanted feedback on our business idea," says Lila Cummings, who, along with her friend Susan Church, co-founded Get a Move On Inc., a New York tri-state area moving business designed specifically to walk seniors through the process of planning, organizing and making a move.

"We got support and good advice from several experts that we knew personally," Cummings says.

However, it was the husband of a good friend who provided the much-needed business expertise.

"He talked us through a lot of the big picture stuff, such as our focus and a way of defining ourselves in the market. We were able to bat ideas off of him and he made us think about a lot of areas of business that we had not thought about when we were starting this business four years ago," explains Church, adding that they later hired him, when they had enough money, to set up their website.

Experts often provide the missing pieces for entrepreneurs who are focused on, and anxious about, getting the business off the ground and keeping it afloat. They fill in the gaps by asking questions that start with: "Have you given any thought to�?�"

"The Techie"
"Good technical help is difficult to find, and when you find it you want to hold onto it as if it's gold," Banker says. Although your "techie" may be considered part of the "experts" category, someone with the ability to provide such technical help in today's business world can be a godsend.

"I always looked for people with characteristics that I didn't have," says Jerry Jenkins, founder and CEO of The Jenkins Group, a custom publishing company based in Traverse, Michigan. "And I had zero computer skills. The son-in-law of a friend of mine was living in my neighborhood when I was starting the business, and he had the technical skills that I didn't have. He helped by showing me how to do an e-mail campaign, launch and run an active website and then optimize the site."

Jenkins hired this technical whiz, who has been an integral part of the company ever since.

Although many business owners dabble in technology, having someone who keeps up with the latest developments can free you up to focus on the big-picture issues that make up most businesses, even very small ones.

Though it's true that other than cheerleaders, you can hire experts and tech support and even pay for mentoring, having these people in your corner in the early stages of launching a business is both comforting and cost-effective. Some people are fortunate to have such supporters, while others may simply need to look more closely at those people already in their inner circle . . . or get out there and do more networking.