International Trade
A crucial part, and fun part, of thriving in business is to tie into the information flow regarding your business. Here are some resources to which I often refer people.
People often ask me for a reading list, so I offer what I commonly read. Please understand that in time you will develop your own resources, based on the business you develop, but these are fundamental anyone in international trade should be accessing.
There are many schools of economic thought, and here is the home for the only one that has explained all I have seen in 30 years of import/export.
Good economic advisors to review daily:
Usually entertaining and informative articles:
Weekly...:
http://www.shieldsandco.com/fgretz_perspective.html
I subscribe to Forbes because their reporting is excellent, although their editors are weak on analysis; their outside columnists such as Ken Fisher and Jim Grant are stellar...
Recommended Background Readings:
Innovation and Entrepreneurship By Peter F. Drucker
Ogilvy On Advertising By David Ogilvy
How To Build A Mail Order Business By William Cohen (You will not be building a mail order business, you will be selling to them. This book shows how they work.)
Adventures of a Bystander By Peter F. Drucker
Expeditors International is a leader in Logistics:
Visa is developing and "international trade credit card"
http://www.corporate.visa.com/pd/commercial.jsp
Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank is probably the best banking organization in the world.
Census has wonderful USA market information, that can be analyzed to help guide marketing decisions:
Here is a tutorial on finding exact sources:
MYOB is a software accounting program I use, for simplicity and power. It is fully integrated and there are PC and Mac versions, but at below $100. MYOB provides test drive versions free of charge for you no charge at MYOB.com. If you want to dive right in:
As far as computers, I've used primarily three computers over the last 20 years, all of them Apple Computers. My current machine is 10 years old. I am all Mac all of the time simply because they are simple to operate and rarely crash. Also, I have never had a virus, Trojan horse, worm or whatever people complain about. There is nothing one can do on a PC that cannot be done on a Mac, and the machines are well built and useful far longer.
I don't expect to be in the market again for a few years, but if I was buying today I would get
I prefer laptops to desktops for the mobility.
