Are You a Leader or a Team Player?
Issue #2215
- WEALTHY: Don’t be afraid of uncharted territory in China (Andrew Gordon)
- HEALTHY: An anti-cancer, anti-inflammatory, brain-protecting spice you need more of (Dr. Jonny Bowden)
- WISE: Paul Van Dyck on knowing when the time is right
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
- When should you assert yourself, and when should you go with the flow? (Michael Masterson)
- Are you the "ugliest girl at the dance"? (Clayton Makepeace)
- It’s Good to Know… about little-known research resources
- Add "vitriol" to your vocabulary
A Top Business Breakthrough Known Only by a Handful of Insiders Turns Out to Be One of the Best New Ways to Make a Bundle…
Plenty of people make tons of money every day in Real Estate and on Wall Street. But if you’re looking for something different… and if you don’t have $100,000 to invest or even $10,000…
Well, we’ve found it…
Till now, only a handful of insiders even knew about this almost secret powerful business.
What is it? All I can tell you is that more than half of the world’s billionaires have made their money this way. You’ll have to read on to learn more about it.
Finally the cat’s out of the bag… Click here to read more…
The Lewis and Clark Approach to Investing in China
Bubbles burst, right? But what if they don’t?
Case in point: Google. A year ago, its price-to-earnings ratio (P/E) was hovering around 100 - bubble territory for 99 out of 100 stocks. But since then, its earnings have outpaced its impressive price rise. Its P/E is now an expensive but not outrageous 54. The stock that was supposedly a bubble turned out to be made of more solid stuff.
Another case is the China market. It is now approaching a P/E that bubbling markets such as Japan in the late 1980s and the Nasdaq in the late 90s reached… and then crashed.
But this bubble is being fed by the huge amount of savings that the Chinese have salted away, and it’s far from being tapped out. So the question you must ask yourself is: Does a market fueled by 10-11 percent economic growth and a middle class of 350 million spenders deserve a higher valuation than Japan’s market or our Nasdaq exchange?
What’s happening in China is unprecedented. Yet, people are throwing the same old metrics at it and shouting "BUBBLE." Well, if it is a bubble, it still has some ways to go.
Give the China market a chance. But watch your stop-loss points, because in China we’re in uncharted territory.
[Ed. Note: Andrew Gordon, ETR’s Investment Director, is the editor of INCOME, a monthly financial advisory service that uncovers income-generating stocks that promise safety (first and foremost), along with much-higher-than-average profit potential.]
"There’s a time for us to let go / There’s a time for holding on / A time to speak, a time to listen / There’s a time for us to grow."
Paul van Dyck "Time of Our Lives"
Are You a Leader or a Team Player?
As TH began explaining the rules, I felt the clutch of anxiety. His brainstorming technique, said to have originated in the offices of Walt Disney, required a level playing field. There would be no criticism of anyone else’s suggestions. No challenges, questions, or refutations. Everyone’s contribution was to be given equal weight - and, in the end, we’d all vote equally on those we wished to keep.
I’m not wired for that sort of thing. When it comes to group activities, I like an active, competitive game. I like to test my skills against whatever is out there and see how I do - find out where I stack up.
To me, cooperating with a crowd feels like surrendering. If everyone agrees that door one is the right choice, I’m almost certain to knock on numero dos. But I had agreed to come to TH’s creative seminar, and I didn’t want to make an already challenging job more difficult for him. So I batted down my ego and played by the rules.
His game felt childish. It involved group stretching, scribbling phrases on index cards, shouting out suggestions, and pressing paper dots on a montage of sometimes childish ideas. The purpose was to "break out of the box" that our left-sided, overly analytical professional brains had been stuck in. We were trying to get ourselves to a state of mind where "breakthroughs" could evolve.
I didn’t like it, but it did work. In less than three hours, we had accomplished more than we would have in any other brainstorming session of the same length. We had, moreover, come up with some stuff I would have never come to on my own.
The experience reminded me of a week I spent at a Club Med in (I think it was) Puerto Rico. AS and I were very uncomfortable with all the smiling faces. Our plan was to spend the entire vacation off on our own, smoking cigars and drinking. But those annoying staff people would find us and surround us, tugging at us to get us to join some stupid contest.
There were times when they came closer to bodily injury than they imagined. But, in the end, they won us over. By the time we were ready to leave, we were thick in the center of the assembled crowd. We ended up dancing that inane dance they do at Club Meds around the world, swaying our hips and slapping our butts and singing in unison like the oversized children we had turned into against our will.
There are times for laughing and times for crying, times for work and times for leisure, times for vitriol and times for poetry. And there are also - if you want to get the job done right - times to lead and times to shut up and follow.
Yes, teamwork can be an important part of success - but not always. And even when it is, it is made possible only by leadership. (The mission, whether the team acknowledges it or not, has to be determined for them by someone in charge.)
When it comes to pushing things forward and making things better, a team approach usually won’t do. When you want to start a revolution, you need someone to pick up the first gun.
Keep that in mind when you read those books and articles on teamwork. Cooperation is necessary in certain situations, but most of the success in your life will come from being assertive.
When do you assert yourself… and when do you cooperate?
It’s pretty simple. When there is confusion, when it’s not clear what can be done, when opinions differ and answers are cloudy - be assertive and put yourself in a position to lead.
When you know what you want to do - when the course is set and you need everyone to pull together and march in step - that’s when teamwork comes into play.
Form teams when:
- you need ideas for a new product or project
- you need to figure out why an existing product or project is failing
- you need to complete a specific job by a specific date
The point is this: To get the most out of your greatest asset - yourself - you need to develop both leadership and team skills.
If you are instinctively assertive, you will find yourself bridling at the rules of teamwork. You will have a hard time learning how to contribute without taking over - but you have to do it
If you are laid-back by nature, you may have trouble asserting yourself. But, bit by bit, you have to develop the skill to do so.
In every important group situation you find yourself in, ask, "Does this call for teamwork or leadership?" Figure it out - and then show how good you are at doing what’s required.
[Ed. Note: Get Michael Masterson’s insights into becoming successful in your business and personal life, achieving financial independence, and accomplishing all your goals on his new website. You’ll find updates on all of Michael’s books, news on upcoming ETR events, Michael’s blog, and room to send in your comments and questions. Check it out today.]
Let the Demise of the Dollar Lead You to 1,000% Gains
As the dollar continues to erode, so will the accounts of those who rely solely on the usual stocks and bonds. But the demise of the dollar won’t be a calamity for everyone…
Click here if you want to learn how to protect your wealth… AND make the kind of gains that most people could never dream of… returns like 5,131% in just 30 months!
Reader Feedback: "Thank you for the best article I’ve read since I signed up for ETR!"
"Thank you, thank you, thank you for the best article I’ve read since I signed up for ETR! Your story ‘Traffic Lessons from India‘ contains the kernel of a very powerful idea: What happens when we give up trying to control the world around us and expecting to live a risk-free life, then replace it with awareness, presence, attuning to the flow and responding more from the gut, less from the head?
"Wow, no rules! Imagine! Let’s hear more of that!"
Jana Spear
[Ed. Note: How has reading ETR helped you - maybe even changed your life? Send your comments to ReaderFeedback@gmail.com. Include your name and hometown… and we may print your e-mail in a future issue.]
The #1 Blunder New Copywriters Make When Building a Freelance Business
I recently saw an ad a copywriter placed in DM News to promote himself. Now when I see writers do that kind of thing, I immediately figure they must really stink.
See, prospective clients figure that if you were any good, you’d be booked up. Run an ad for your services, and you’re telling the world that you’re not good enough to have a long line of clients vying for a position on your dance card.
What’s really embarrassing is that you’re also saying, "Hey world! I’m not smart enough to know that you want writers who are too good to have time available!"
Instead, keep your communications private - between you and only a handful of prospective clients at a time.
And make sure you always have a ready reason why you have time in your schedule at the moment.
You might tell two or three marketers, "I fill my schedule just twice a year, and I’m booking my schedule for the first six months of next year. The slots are going on a first-come, first-served basis."
You don’t want to be the ugliest girl at the ball. You want to be the one that everybody has to hustle to get a dance with.
[Ed. Note: Clayton Makepeace has spent the last 35 years creating direct-mail, Internet, and print promotions that have sold well over $1 billion worth of products. He publishes the highly acclaimed e-zine, The Total Package to help business owners and copywriters accelerate their sales and profits. ]
Power Up Your Memory
As we’ve reported in ETR, turmeric has many health benefits, including the ability to reduce the pain and stiffness of arthritis. But you can also use this spice to power up your memory.
Turmeric is what gives curry its yellow color. Its reputation as a super-spice is largely because of its anti-cancer properties and because it is such a powerful anti-inflammatory. But it also helps protect the brain. Scientists investigating Alzheimer’s got interested in it because rates of this disease are so low in India, where curry is a staple. And they have pinpointed a compound in turmeric called curcumin, which has been proven to help prevent mental decline in laboratory animals.
So start adding turmeric to your food. It tastes great in scrambled eggs and in marinades for chicken, and is a great flavoring for bean dishes.
[Ed. Note: Dr. Jonny Bowden is a nationally known expert on weight loss, nutrition, and health. He’s a board certified nutritionist with a master’s degree in psychology, and the author of the best-selling book, The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth. For more information, go to www.jonnybowden.com. To read more of his articles on healthy living in ETR’s natural health e-letter, click here.]
It’s Good to Know: Little-Known Research Resources
Websites ending with ".edu" are the online homes of colleges, universities, and other educational institutions. They also host a great deal of research material in subjects as varied as languages, photography, art, the natural world, literature, and much more. Here are a few to check out …
- The Yale University Art Gallery has images of art from ancient times to the modern era: artgallery.yale.edu.
- Louisiana State University’s Herbarium helps you identify plants, lichens, and fungi from around the world: herbarium.lsu.edu.
- By visiting George Mason University’s Speech Accent Archive, you can listen to the same paragraph read by native speakers of many languages: accent.gmu.edu/index.php.
- The College of New Jersey Images of American Political History collection has more than 500 public domain images from 1750 to the present: teachpol.tcnj.edu/amer_pol_hist/index.htm.
Don’t see anything that interests you in the above list? By entering "site:.edu [your subject]" (no quote marks) in Google, you can find information on just about anything you can imagine.
(Source: Lifehacker)
Give Yourself a Nice Pay Raise - And A Three Day Weekend, Every Weekend
By the end of this week, you can give yourself a pay raise. How does an extra $20/hr sound… and schedule a few days vacation while you’re at it!
After a month or two, how about another raise… to $2,000 a week.
It’s happening everywhere. Ordinary people - including folks who never finished school — starting their own businesses… and making side incomes in the neighborhood of $40,000… $60,000… even $100,000 or more a year.
They’re living the American Dream. Now it’s time for you to start living it too. Click here to continue…
- Charlie Byrne
Word to the Wise: Vitriol
Chemically speaking, "vitriol" (VIT-ree-ole) - from the Latin for "glass" - is sulfuric acid. By extension, we use the word for caustic, abusive language.
Example (as I used it today): "There are times for laughing and times for crying, times for work and times for leisure, times for vitriol and times for poetry."
[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