The Most Important Quality of a Top Employee

by Early To Rise (07/20/2007)

Issue #2099

  • WEALTHY: Possibly the best trade decision you can make (Rick Pendergraft)
  • HEALTHY: 3 simple exercises that’ll keep you feeling young (Craig Ballantyne)
  • WISE: Anthony Robbins on focusing on goals

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:

  • Shady Sam or Good Guy Greg? Who should you hire? (Michael Masterson
  • Create top-notch articles without writing a word (David Cross)
  • It’s Good to Know… about antibacterial products
  • Add "ostensible" to your vocabulary

== Highly Recommended ==

Imagine if There Were Only 6 Numbers to Choose from When Buying a Lottery Ticket!

Wouldn’t that be great?! Of course, the fewer the choices, the more likely your chance of success, right?

How many choices are there when buying and selling shares? Errmm… a LOT! Hundreds… One of the reasons I enjoy such consistent success from trading is because I only have 6 options to choose from! Except this is even better in a way, because the lottery is pure luck…

… I only have 6 choices AND have a VERY good idea about which choice to make because of the insider signal. Click here to learn more…

When the Best Move Is Not to Move at All

By Rick Pendergraft

Every day, I comb through the charts of a few hundred stocks that I monitor closely to watch for trading opportunities.

About three weeks ago, my eye was caught by the chart of Research In Motion (RIMM). It suggested that RIMM was due for a pullback, because it was overbought and had just turned downward, breaking the support line of its 20-day moving average.

As a contrarian, I like to buy puts on stocks that are loved by other investors - which makes an overbought stock like RIMM an interesting possibility. But instead of immediately buying puts on RIMM, I took my analysis a step further (as I always do) - and when I looked at the sentiment readings on RIMM, I discovered that the sentiment was quite bearish. (Sentiment readings can be found on many financial websites. Look for "Analyst Opinion" or "Recommendations.") Twenty-six analysts were covering the stock, and 15 of them rated it as a "hold." This told me that there was more room for analyst upgrades than for downgrades - and I decided that buying puts on RIMM would be a bad idea.

Sure enough, when RIMM reported earnings on June 28, they beat expectations handily. The stock shot up over 25 percent in two days. Had I bought puts on RIMM, I would have faced a total loss (100 percent being the maximum loss you can take when you purchase options).

You can learn two lessons from this story. First, sometimes the best trade decisions you ever make are the ones where you decide not to trade a particular stock. Second, by doing your homework thoroughly and incorporating sentiment readings into your analysis of a stock, you can save yourself from a huge loss.

[Ed. Note: Rick Pendergraft is a market expert and two-time winner of the "Top Trader" award at Schaeffer's Investment Research. Frequently quoted in Reuters, Business Week, Forbes, USA Today, and The New York Times, Rick recently made his debut on Bloomberg television. Find out how he can help you make money - no matter what the market is doing - with ETR's investment service, The ETF Options Trader.]

"Focus on where you want to go, not on what you fear."

Anthony Robbins

The Most Important Quality of a Top Employee

By Michael Masterson

To an outsider, it might have seemed a very easy choice. Good Guy Greg, one candidate for the job of heading up the project, was very professional, a tough negotiator, dogged, determined, and principled. The other candidate, Slightly Shady Sam, had a reputation for being tough on his employees, hiring his friends… and he was rumored to take kickbacks.

Which would you choose?

I chose Slightly Shady Sam. And I’ll tell you why.

Although Sam had several bad habits and was suspected of being dishonest, he had one overwhelmingly good quality: He was completely focused on making the project successful. He had his own particular idea of what that would look like (there were bells and whistles on it that I wouldn’t have put there), but it was a vision that I could see working.

Almost everything he had done on the project so far - including some tough treatment of employees - was done with his goal in mind. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t love everything about the project he’d create, but I was equally certain that if I let him do what he wanted, he’d get the job done. Some eggshells would be broken in the process, but the project would succeed, profits would be made, and eventually everyone associated with it would be happy.

I had a different feeling about the "better" candidate, Greg. Although he was very competent in many ways, I found much of his behavior to be inexplicable and/or wrongheaded. He developed staff loyalty by treating some of his employees better than others. He made decisions that were tough on customers - especially when he decided those customers were "problems."

Ultimately, I developed the theory that instead of being focused on the project, this "good" executive was really focused on himself as a key person in it.

He was, to put it bluntly, a political sort of person. To me, "political" means "power-oriented." And a political executive is one who thinks he can achieve his objectives by amassing power. He does that by organizing his world into allies and enemies.

Stanley Bing, the author of Sun Tzu Was a Sissy, sees the working world that way. But I don’t think that sort of approach works. In fact, the idea that you must destroy people, property, and ideas to succeed in business is both stupid and misleading. Business is - or should be - about creating things, not destroying them. And businesses succeed when they stay creative, when their leaders are never satisfied with "the way it’s always been done" and are on the lookout for new ways to make the business better and newer.

Because Greg believed in amassing power instead of profits, the decisions he’d make were sometimes miles away from what made sense to me. When I discussed my perspective with him, I could almost hear him thinking with contempt, "You say that because you are weak and not willing to fight."

Meanwhile, I’d be thinking, "Hey… our job is to get this job done with as little friction as possible. Why fight all these petty battles when victory can be had by being more accommodating?"

For a while, I tried to get both executives to work together on the project, but that proved impossible. Their behaviors and attitudes were simply incompatible. So I had to choose one of them to be in charge - and it was not an easy decision.

I felt better about things the moment I moved forward and did it. But that good feeling wasn’t because I was sure I had made the right choice. It was mostly the relief I felt in not having to negotiate what had turned into daily altercations between the two.

Which candidate would have worked out better, I’ll never know. But I do know that I find it impossible to put someone in charge of a business who is not completely focused on that business. If you work for me, you can’t be motivated by personal power. I don’t expect you to be perfect, but I do want you to be devoted to the goal.

This is such an important lesson in business, yet so many very competent people never learn it. They waste their careers working 24/7, making alliances and breaking them, starting fights and taking bruises - only because they are operating under the illusion that business is about power and power is about protecting themselves and fighting with others.

It’s so much easier to achieve your goals when you focus on them and not the obstacles - perceived or real - that stand in front of them.

[Ed. Note: For more of Michael Masterson's leadership techniques, pick up a copy of Power and Persuasion]

== Highly Recommended ==

A Better Life - Starting Today…

In the coming 90 days, I’d like to show you how to…

  • Blast away fat and lose 17 pounds before Thanksgiving.
  • Build a healthier heart in just 7 minutes a day.
  • Boost your brain power and memory with three common foods.
  • Lower your cholesterol and blood pressure without medicine.
  • Increase your immunity.
  • And even improve your appearance!

I will also show you a surprisingly easy way to find yourself jumping out of bed every morning with a spring in your step. Take just two minutes to learn how you can take complete control of your health and fitness today!

The Bad Writer’s Guide to Creating Website Content

By David Cross

Whether you are setting up a website, trying to get a top search engine ranking, writing an e-mail newsletter, or creating free reports, you cannot escape the need for good content.

Internet users - including your prospective customers - are hungry for informative, unique, useful articles about the things they’re interested in. If you can create content to feed that need, you can drive traffic to your site, add more readers to your e-newsletter, and get people to buy your products and services.

But what if you’re not a writer?

Don’t panic. You don’t have to be.

One of the best ways to create lots of content quickly is by interviewing experts in subjects related to what you’re selling. Create a list of those people, and contact them to ask if they’d be willing. If your website sells golf equipment, for example, you might want to track down as many top golfers as you can and ask for an interview. You’ll find that most of the people you ask will agree to do it - it is good publicity, after all - so don’t be afraid to go after big names. The more people you ask, the more often you’ll hear "yes."
 
To prepare for an interview, write down the topics you want to cover, and turn those topics into questions. Then arrange to have an inexpensive teleseminar service record the interview - with the interviewee’s permission, of course. (I’ve used Budget Conferencing, and am happy with their service and prices.) The call will be recorded automatically, and an MP3 file of it will be sent to you. An hour-long call will cost around $10.

Next, get the recording transcribed. A company like CastingWords will do it for around 75 cents a minute ($45 for an hour).

You can either run the entire interview as a single article, or turn the individual questions into a series of shorter articles. (Use the question as your headline and the expert’s answer as the body of the article.) You can also split long answers into multiple articles.

That’s less than 60 bucks for at least a month’s worth of content.

If you have some unique, interesting, or expert ideas about your subject matter, you can even "interview" yourself. Just come up with a list of questions to ask yourself, then type up your answers.

Voila! Instant, relevant content that will attract lots of potential customers to your website.

[Ed. Note: David Cross is Senior Internet Consultant for Agora Inc. in Baltimore. If you couldn't make it to our 5 Days in July conference, where David and ETR's team of Internet marketers taught dozens of ETR readers how to build their own online businesses from scratch, you can still learn how to start your own money-making Internet business at this fall's Info-Marketing Bootcamp. Get the details here.]

Get an Anti-Aging Boost From Strength Training

By Craig Ballantyne

Every day, I receive spam e-mails from marketers trying to sell me "Human Growth Hormone" boosters to help prevent aging. HGH does have anti-aging properties, but you don’t need to buy anything to increase your own levels of it. There’s a natural way to do so.

It’s called strength training.

Researchers from the University of North Carolina found that when they compared the amount of growth hormone released as a result of a 30-minute aerobic exercise session or strength training, significantly more was released with the strength-training workout. So if you are looking for a way to fight aging naturally (and increase fat burning while you’re at it), don’t neglect strength training as part of your exercise program.

The best strength-training exercises to use are multiple-muscle and total-body exercises, such as step-ups, lunges, and squats. You can do these with your bodyweight only, or while holding dumbbells in both hands.

Do three sets of eight repetitions two to three times per week. And add a pushing exercise, such as push-ups or dumbbell chest presses, to get a fast, total-body workout that builds muscle, burns fat, and boosts growth hormone.

[Ed. Note: Craig Ballantyne is an expert consultant for Men's Health magazine. If you're looking to burn fat, build muscle, and quickly step into the body you have always wanted with just three workouts each week, check out Craig's fat-loss system, Turbulence Training for Fat Loss.]

It’s Good to Know: Antibacterial Products

You probably use antibacterial products - including hand soap, household cleaners, and sponges - to keep yourself and your family safe from germs. But overuse of these products can lead to the development of "superbugs" that can’t be easily killed by antibiotics and have the potential to spread disease.

The problem, say scientists, is that antibacterial products leave a residue behind. The residue continues to kill weaker bacteria, but allows a small subpopulation that has immunity to reproduce at will.

(Source: CNN and Scientific American)

== Highly Recommended ==

Over 500 Years Ago Marco Polo Made His Fortune Just Like This.

Recently Joe Kennedy Used This Business to Make His Fortune As Well. It’s One of the World’s Oldest Professions (No, Not That One).

The famous explorer Marco Polo risked life and limb traveling 5,600 miles through Mongol-held territory just to bring spices from China to Europe. In the process he became a very rich and powerful man.

All from spices… I know it doesn’t sound glamorous, but boy did it pay well.

Now, 683 years after his death, a window of opportunity has once again opened up in China that will allow you to do the same. Will you take action? Or will you be standing in the way of your own success… again? Click here to read more…

Word to the Wise: Ostensible

Something that’s "ostensible" (ah-STEN-suh-bul) - from the Latin for "to show" - appears to be true, but is not necessarily so.

Example (as used in an article in The Economist): "After an epidemic of yellow fever in 1798, in which coffins had been sold by itinerant vendors on street corners, [Aaron] Burr established the Manhattan Company, with the ostensible aim of bringing clean water to the city from the Bronx River but in fact designed as a front for the creation of New York’s second bank, rivalling [Alexander] Hamilton’s Bank of New York."

[Ed. Note: Become a more persuasive writer and speaker ... build your self-confidence and intellect ... increase your attractiveness to others ... just by spending 10 VERY enjoyable minutes a day with ETR's new Words to the Wise CD Library.]

Michael Masterson
Copyright ETR, LLC, 2007

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Comments

  1. Dordean Lien
    September 13th, 2008| 2:16 pm

    I enjoy your articles. Also the word of the day.

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