Achieve More With a Mentor
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Saturday, January 14, 2006
Message #1626
WEALTHY: How far could the dollar drop this year?
HEALTHY: A long-term solution to every health problem
WISE: Sophocles on learning
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
The shortcut to success … in any field (Michael Masterson)
A great website to check out
Add the word "abnegation" to your vocabulary
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The Attributes of People Who Have Personal Power, #5 of 12:
They have a written plan
"Great leaders know that getting to success requires a plan – one that is well thought out, written down, and developed into specific objectives. Furthermore, these objectives must be communicated clearly and have standards of quality and deadlines attached to them."
- Michael Masterson
[Ed. Note: Through January 23rd, we are excerpting highlights from Michael Masterson's new book Power and Persuasion. If you would like to learn no-B.S. secrets for commanding success in your personal and business life, based on Michael's 40 years of down-in-the-trenches business experience, you can pick up a copy here.]
What's a Dollar Going to be Worth in 2006?
Is there anybody who thought the dollar would exit 2005 stronger than the way it started the year? CITIGROUP, Deutsche Bank, and UBS – the three giants of global currency trading – were all wildly wrong about the foreign exchange markets in 2005. They all predicted a dollar slide.
It's strange … because when gold is up, the dollar is usually down. But not last year. The dollar and gold went up at the same time.
This year will be different. The dollar will begin to weaken as our budget and trade deficits get bigger and bigger. That – and lack of faith in the economy – will encourage foreign governments (like China's) to diversify away from the U.S. in their purchases of U.S. Government Treasuries.
It won't be a major retreat from U.S. dollars by foreign central banks … but just enough for the dollar to feel it. And if interest rates start to go down again this year, foreign entities will have even less reason to store their cash in American banks.
The dollar will dip 10% to 15% in 2006. Is a crash possible? Naw. The economy is too strong to let that happen. But it's time to look at hard assets. (They go up when the dollar goes down.) Gold is one, but there are plenty of others – like silver, platinum, palladium, and diamonds.
This would also be a good year to put 3%-5% of your invested wealth into non-precious assets like timber and coal. If you want to learn more about investing in promising commodities, you may want to get our special commodity report.
- Andrew Gordon
[Ed. Note: Andrew Gordon, ETR's financial expert, is the editor of The Skeptical Advisor, our investment newsletter. Check it out at http://skepticaladvisor.com.]
"It can be no dishonor to learn from others when they speak good sense."
- Sophocles
Achieve More With a Mentor
By Michael Masterson
A man looks back on his life and says, "I wish I knew then what I know now."
It can take a decade or more to become the successful person you want to be, but you can shorten your learning curve – even drastically curtail it – by using a mentor.
With the advice, experience, and support of an experienced person in your field, you can avoid the most common mistakes you are likely to make. You overcome the stickiest problems and find shortcuts to success.
It doesn't really matter where you are along your career path, getting yourself a good mentor will be enormously valuable for you.
A survey commissioned by the Elliot Leadership Institute at Johnson & Wales University confirms this. For this particular study, researchers surveyed senior executives and middle managers in the food service and hospitality industry about leadership competencies. What they discovered was that leaders who had been mentored felt the experience invaluable. They said their mentors helped them build all kinds of leadership skills, including decision-making, strategic thinking, planning, coaching, and effectively managing others.
In Early to Rise, I've often talked about the mentors in my own business life. From Leo, my first post-college boss, I learned the importance of persistence and dogged determination. Leo once had me call Honda Motors more than 100 times to convince them to give us a new engine after the one we had died (from lack of oil). We hadn't a single, sensible argument in our favor, but that didn't stop Leo from pushing me. Finally, after I got all the way to the top, the Honda executive leadership decided they had wasted too much time on us and gave in. I didn't feel good about getting something we didn't deserve, but I never forgot that lesson in persistence.
From Joel, my second major mentor, I learned a great deal. The first lesson he taught me – by firing the lady who wanted to get me fired – was that a good leader needs to surround himself with the strongest people he can find. Another lesson I learned soon thereafter had to do with the fundamental nature of business. "Until you make a sale," Joel explained patiently, "nothing else happens."
From Bill, a client, partner, and part-time mentor, I discovered – relatively late in my career – two important business secrets that have made me a better leader. For one thing, I no longer feel compelled to solve every problem put at my feet. I've watched Bill ignore countless squabbles and come out much the better for it. Before getting involved in a dispute these days, I ask myself, "Can these people eventually come up with a satisfactory solution themselves?" If the answer is affirmative, I do nothing.
Thanks to Bill, I'm also now a big believer in product quality. Having mastered the secrets of selling through my relationship with Joel, I tended to underestimate the importance of the product. I was one of those marketers who actually wanted to sell snow to Eskimos. In working with Bill, whose sole focus is always on quality, I've seen how much better a business becomes when you stress quality.
You probably have no idea what you need to learn to make the next leap forward in your career. But someone who's been there and done it before does. Getting the help of that person will make a very big difference in your future.
How to Find Your Mentor
Look around your industry to find five successful business leaders who retired within the past two to five years. This two-to-five year timeframe is important. If they've been retired for any longer, they could be out of touch. Any sooner, and they're not yet bored enough with retirement to miss thinking about work.
Write each of these five people a short letter expressing genuine admiration for their careers. Compliment them on specific achievements. Then ask for advice on your own career.
Offer an invitation to go to lunch. Or, if they're located out of your local area, ask for a 15-minute phone call. And don't – I repeat, don't – offer them any compensation for their help … yet. Odds are, at least one of the five will respond positively to your invitation and give you a little of his time. If you find that you get along, you've got yourself a mentor.
Making the Most of Your Relationship With Your Mentor
Once you've found your mentor, make a list of the goals you want to work on with him. What do you want out of the relationship? What do you feel you need to learn? What can this person best teach you?
Prior to your first conversation, outline what you want to achieve from your time together. And keep track of your progress. Are you achieving what you set out to do? It's important that you set and monitor your progress, because your mentor most likely won't.
How to Make Sure You've Got a Good Mentor
A mentorship is a relationship built on learning. Your mentor should be your learning coach: someone you can talk to and trust. A good mentor should provide you with advice, feedback, and support. He should help you focus on your goals and give you direction that helps you succeed more quickly than you could alone.
A good mentor should help you learn the secrets to success in your field of expertise. (That's why finding one in your field is so important.)
Your mentor should offer advice on skills he's found valuable. He should counsel you concerning various opportunities in your industry and different paths to success.
According to an article in Black Enterprise, a good mentor won't tell you how to do your job. He should give you feedback and share his personal experiences, but not inundate you with lots of unsolicited advice. And a good mentor shouldn't be making decisions for you that you could have made for yourself. "Your mentor is not a savior," the article says.
I agree. If you're going to learn from your mentor, he can't come up with every single solution for you … nor should you expect him to. Your mentor should act as a sounding board and as a trusted advisor and counselor. I like the way business writer Ron Yudd put it: "[Mentors] hold the flashlight so others can see the path."
Respect the Mentor-Mentee Relationship
To maintain your relationship with your mentor, you must recognize his value and reward him for it. Keep in mind that the kind of advice he is giving you is likely to have the most profound effect on your career. Although you can't measure the financial value of any specific suggestion (i.e., "Stop spending so much time on this fulfillment project. Get to work on improving your advertising."), you can bet that in the long run the effect will be very significant.
Show him you appreciate what he is doing for you. Tell him, in specific terms, what you have learned from him and thank him every time he meets with you. Remember, the psychological reward of knowing he is helping you succeed is his primary reward. That said, the time has now come to offer to compensate him for his time with money.
How much? That's up to you. Pay him no more than you feel comfortable paying him and no less than he thinks is fair. If you can't find a number in between those two figures, find another mentor.
One of my current mentors, Sid, gets a check of several thousand dollars every time I spend time with him. On a per-hour basis, he's extremely well paid. But for the help he gives me in making key leadership and wealth-building decisions, the $30,000 to $40,000 a year I invest in him is a bargain.
Consider Using Multiple Mentors
If one mentor is valuable, multiple mentors can prove to be invaluable. This makes enormous sense when you consider it. It gives you not only the wisdom of one person who has been successfully doing what he's doing for years and years, but also the perspective of comparing the ideas and judgments of several experts.
Adopting a mentor or mentors requires a temporary abnegation of pride. Or perhaps something beyond that – the wisdom to understand that one's own ideas are not always the best ideas.
I consider this to be a truly great secret of success.
Today's
Resolution
Promise yourself that every time you want to try something new – a product, a promotion, a sales pitch, or even a career change – you will identify a group of people who can help you get it right.
Contact each of them individually. Ask for their help honestly. Thank them. Use the best of what they suggest. And then, if the effort succeeds, thank them again.
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Take the Natural Route to Health and Wellness
What would you do if your doctor told you that you have high blood pressure … or diabetes … or high cholesterol … or that you are suffering from depression? Most people would say, "Okay, Doc … so, what drug should I take?" If that would be your reaction too, I hope you'll reconsider.
Drugs do not "cure" illness. They don't heal – they mask. While a drug may temporarily relieve the symptoms, it will do nothing to address the cause of an illness. It's like clipping the leaves off a dandelion to keep the weeds out of your garden. Plus, every single drug – including those you can buy over the counter – can have extremely serious side effects. Did you know, for example, that Tylenol is the number one cause of acute liver failure? That's right … "harmless" Tylenol.
But here's the good news. Virtually every drug can be outperformed by safe and affordable natural nutrients. And when you combine the appropriate nutritional supplementation with a healthy diet, moderate sun exposure, and exercise, you have a long-term health solution that no drug in the world can match.
So make it your New Year's health resolution for today to identify and curtail the habits that lead to illness. And if you are faced with a health crisis, promise yourself that you will seek the foods, natural supplements, sunlight, and exercise that will enhance your body's ability to heal itself.
- Jon Herring
It's Good to Know: What's Better Than eBay or the Classified Ads?
Looking for Madonna tickets in Miami? A dog-sitter in Dallas? A bike in Biloxi? If so, Craigslist.org is the place to go.
Craig Newmark started his list in 1995 as a way to tell friends about happenings in and around San Francisco. Word quickly spread, and soon his small list became large enough to demand a list server. He wrote the software – and www.craigslist.org was born.
Free to users, there are now Craigslist sites in all 50 U.S. states and 35 countries (190 total), with approximately 3 billion page views per month. The site's only income is $75 per listing for job postings in San Francisco, and $25 per listing in New York and Washington, D.C. This, according to Fortune magazine, brings in an estimated $20 million a year.
Check it out.
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In cased you missed it!
On Thursday, Steve Cook shared the same moves that he uses to close deals that totaled $30,000 last month alone…the techniques that have made him a multimillionaire including:
Why Wholesaling works…why it is so fast and how it limits your risk…
Why this is the easiest style of real estate investing for a beginner to break into
The "Super-Formula" you can use to determine your bottom-line price on every property you view…
How to quickly and accurately determine the "ARV" or After Repair Value of a property, and why that "magic" number can be the difference between handsome profits and busted deals…
The fool-proof way to estimate repairs, even if you've never picked up a hammer in your life…
The "trick" to finding a Realtor who can provide you with 90% of your deals, save you hundreds of hours in paperwork, and increase the amount of income you are able to generate…
The secret to closing more deals with fewer problems…
If you are a Main St. Millionaire Investing with the Master’s subscriber then an MP3 will be emailed out to you. If you are not a current subscriber but would like to sign up please click here and call instructions will be sent to you.
http://www.isecureonline.com/Reports/700SRETC/E700G1E3/
Word
to the Wise: Abnegation
"Abnegation" (ab-nuh-GAY-shun) is the renunciation of your own interests in favor of the interests of others.
Example (as I used it today): "Adopting a mentor or mentors requires a temporary abnegation of pride."
Michael
Masterson
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