Saturday, May 14, 2005

Coincidence?

So I was at the library checking out some videos, and because there were a couple people ahead of me in line, I went to browse the new books. I picked up Suze Orman's The Money Book for the Young, Fabulous & Broke to see what new spin is being applied to the same old financial advice. Haven't had time to take a close look.

So this morning, after putting on the coffee, I turned on the television. There's an element of channel roulette with Tivo, because in the morning the TV will be set to whatever channel might have been recorded during the night. Imagine my surprise when I saw an infomercial of Suze Orman giving a lecture about being Young, Fabulous & Broke!

Perhaps someone is trying to tell me something? I'll try to give that book some more attention.
Posted by Jim Gust at 1:11 PM

1 comment:

JLM said...

Gosh, a girl needs to do a lot to get our Blogger in Chief's attention.

In Suze's case, attention must be paid. Marketers can learn a lot from her latest bestseller, and from her successful multimedia career. Lessons like these, for instance:

1. Keep communications short, simple and customer oriented. Suze's Money Book for the YF&B typically uses no more than 400 words or so to discuss a problem or answer a question. Look at the edges of the pages of the book and you'll see that lots of pages have been tinted as section dividers. So the book doesn't look like a big read, just a lot of unintimidating little reads.

2. Use the web. Suze's book makes frequent reference to links on her web site where detailed info can be found. And on page 17 there's a secret code (you read it here first!) that the reader can use on the YF&B web site to get personalized info. My music educator daughter tried it and said the results were cool.

3. Stay flexible and go with the flow. Suze started as a Merrill Lynch broker and begain her call-in-radio and TV career offering conventional though spirited financial planning advice. But because she was such a contemporary-style youngish woman, she kept getting calls from chicks and occasional guys who were worried about FICO scores, not asset allocation. So Suze adjusted and broadened her focus, and this book is one result.

By the way, there's more to FICO scores than I realized. Like maybe you should think twice before using an inheritance to pay off your student loan.

3:49 PM

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