The Most Powerful of All Success Skills
Archives: Daily Issues
Issue #2605
- WEALTHY: Are you (and your financial future) protected from disaster? (Jason Holland)
- HEALTHY: How many calories do you need? (Kelley Herring)
- WISE: Ben Jonson on speaking well
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
- If you can do this, the world is your oyster (Michael Masterson)
- How to go from boring to remarkable (Seth Godin)
- It’s Good to Know… about extreme global warming
- Add "mook" to your vocabulary
== Highly Recommended ==
How to Create TRUE Job Security (Yes – Even Today!)
It’s the phrase everyone’s terrified of hearing: Your boss wants to see you.
"Sorry, but we’ve got to let you go."
Employers are desperate to keep their companies afloat these days. So they’re slashing the fat.
3.6 million American jobs have been cut since December of 2007, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Half of the job decline has happened in the past 3 months.
Think your job is secure?
Don’t be so sure. Cal State economics professor Sung Won Sohn projects that job losses could top 800,000 per month.
But you might not need to worry… If you can prove to your boss that you are your company’s "Most Valuable Player."
How can you become your boss’s MVP? Become an expert at making sales – in any economy.
Know how to sell, and you’ll be the VERY LAST PERSON anyone considers letting go.
Find out how you can get a massive edge over your competition when it comes to developing this skill…
And learn how to protect your job with “The ETR 2009 Job Protection and Security Plan." Here’s how to get started.
Hurry – our massive $1,500 Early Bird Discount ends soon!
You’re Well Off… but Are You Financially Secure?
You’ve worked hard and have finally been promoted to that executive position, with a salary to match. You’ve made it, and you’re sure your financial future is bright.
But is all that income tied up in car and mortgage payments, expensive vacations and dinners out, and the like? If so, your financial security is mighty rocky. If your company fails and you’re unexpectedly laid off… if your high-flying career derails… if illness prevents you from working for an extended period of time… you’ve got nothing to fall back on.
Marketing expert and self-made millionaire Bob Bly recommends you take a smarter approach and start saving: "Money can protect you against many disasters, and make many others easier to bear. You should set a goal of accumulating $2 million in liquid assets."
Why $2 million? Because, Bly points out, the investment income from $2 million can provide you with enough money to live on… no matter what.
[Ed. Note: Award-winning copywriter and marketing consultant Bob Bly (www.bly.com) will show you how to secure your financial future with an Internet business at Early to Rise's upcoming Selling on the Internet Conference in New York City.
It's a crash course in Internet entrepreneurship taught solely by Bob. Learn more here.]
"To speak and to speak well are two things. A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks."
Ben Jonson
The Most Powerful of All Success Skills
In any organization, power moves inexorably to those who have mastered the art of persuasion. Whether you express yourself online, on the phone, or in person doesn’t matter much. What counts is your ability to convince people that your ideas are worthwhile.
Think about the world’s richest and most inspiring people. Think about Warren Buffett, Oprah Winfrey, Barack Obama. Yes, they have intelligence, ambition, and good instincts. And, yes, they work hard. But they are also articulate speakers. And that, above all else, is the source of their power.
"Speaking well is considered the number one reason for career advancement," Virginia Avery asserts in The Power of Your Speech. "Every time you meet with a client or make a presentation, your image is affected – for better or worse."
Woodrow Wilson, Avery points out, understood the importance of communicating effectively. He began his career as a reserved political science professor with a stilted speaking style. When he decided to go into politics, he set about becoming a skillful orator. By the time he delivered his inaugural address as the 28th President of the United States, it was said "not since Lincoln has there been a president so wonderfully gifted in the art of expression."
Lincoln’s prowess as a speaker is beautifully illustrated by a story told by Peggy Noonan in On Speaking Well.
"When the famed orator Edward Everett spoke before Lincoln at Gettysburg, he went on for more than two hours and pulled out all the stops with poetry and pleading and stentorian phrases. Then Lincoln got up and offered a masterpiece of compression, two or three minutes on the meaning of war and the meaning of the day. … With great grace [Everett] wrote Lincoln, ‘I shall be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes.’"
Persuasive speaking skills helped most of America’s most influential presidents "get their most cherished programs through Congress and leave their stamp on the future," wrote Michael Kazin in the Washington Post. Every modern president "who left office with his popularity intact" – from Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt to John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan – said Kazin, was a masterful speaker.
If skillful speaking can get you to the top of your field, clumsy speaking can get you into trouble.
Consider these common problems that are caused by poor communication:
• Being passed over for a job or a raise you deserve
• Being rejected by someone who doesn’t understand you
• Being treated as invisible by your boss
• Being treated with disrespect by your spouse or children
• Getting into unnecessary verbal conflicts
There is no question about it, being able to communicate persuasively is an important life skill.
So my question to you is this: What are you doing about it?
What are you doing, right now, to become a more powerful speaker? What books are you reading? What programs are you following? What lessons are you taking?
If speaking well is the single fastest way to succeed in any field, why aren’t you learning to be better at it?
No doubt your answer to that is "I don’t have enough time." But this is the same argument that Stephen R. Covey poked holes through in Seven Habits of Highly Successful People. In the rush to get everything done that we are given to do every day, he said, we tend to take care of the urgent tasks first and push off the non-urgent ones. Yet, it is the important-but-not-urgent tasks – like improving your speaking skills – that will make the greatest long-term difference in the quality of your life. So you have to make them a priority.
The key to becoming a more powerful speaker, explains Timothy Koegel in The Exceptional Presenter, is practice.
"Everyone I’ve ever studied who has made himself exceptional – Churchill, Reagan – has worked at it," says Koegel. "Most people don’t have any idea what they look and sound like when they’re presenting, whether they’re sitting at a conference table or talking to a group. … Since they don’t think of themselves as presenters, they don’t realize the impact of these skills. But [speaking well] is the easiest way to fast-track a career."
It is impossible to overestimate the value of speaking well. Whether you are negotiating a lease on a car, presenting an idea at a business meeting, having a conversation with a powerful person you’ve just been introduced to – what you say and how you say it matters.
Although I consider myself a writer first and foremost, my skill at speaking has been responsible for most of my most important accomplishments.
• Saying the right thing got me a 25 percent share in the first information product I created. That stake in the business made me a millionaire in less than two years.
• Speaking well landed me additional partnership deals in the years following that first one. As a result, my share of the business grew to include one-third of a group whose yearly revenues exceeded $135 million.
• Less than two years after I first retired at 39, I talked my way into a high-paid gig with a client that has generated a substantial seven-figure income ever since.
Speaking persuasively continues to help me form partnerships and make alliances that are both pleasurable and profitable. So I’m a big advocate of developing speaking skills. And that’s why I recommend it to you.
"If all my talents and powers were to be taken from me by some inscrutable Providence and I had my choice of keeping but one," Daniel Webster once said, "I would unhesitatingly ask to be allowed to keep the power of speaking, for through it I would quickly recover all the rest."
Next Monday, I will give you three steps to becoming a powerful speaker. You’ll discover how anyone can change, as Woodrow Wilson did, from a hesitating bumbler to a polished master of the spoken word.
[Ed. Note: Get more of Michael's surefire strategies for getting ahead in business in True Path to Profits: A Master Entrepreneur's Guide to Business Success. Find out more (including how you can get a bonus subscription to his VIP newsletter, Ready Fire Aim,) here.]
He Might Be a Very Successful Investor, But You’ll Never See Him on CNN!
The Wall Street financial jackals extract their “take” from investors just like you.
They perpetuate the myth, “Buy into good companies and hold on for the long term.” Sure, sometimes these stocks go up, but they also go down. In the meantime, these greedy insiders make money either way. They can do it because they’re playing with a whole different set of rules.
One Wall Street Insider has jumped ship and started on his own path to profits. And he’s ready to give you all of his insider secrets so you too can make money no matter what the market does.
Of course, he wants to keep making these cash withdrawals himself… so he can only share these secrets with a limited number of folks. If you want to stop being one of the sheep and join him at the table of success with all of those blueblood financial elitists, please read the following report.
Dear ETR: "What’s the ideal number of calories for an adult woman?"
"Thanks for the variety of information you provide in ETR.
"Please advise me – what’s the ideal number of calories for an adult woman to eat per day? Is there a range, given factors such as age?"
Liz
Dear Liz,
In order to determine how many calories you need, first you have to figure out your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). Your BMR tells you the number of calories you’d burn if you stayed in bed all day.
The most accurate way to determine your BMR is with breath gas analysis. Many health clinics and fitness studios offer this test for around $50. But even without it, you can get an estimate of your BMR by using the Harris-Benedict Equation (HBE). This formula estimates your BMR using your age, gender, height, and weight.
• For women: BMR = 655 + (4.35 x weight in pounds) + (4.7 x height in inches) minus (4.7 x age in years)
• For men: BMR = 66 + (6.23 x weight in pounds) + (12.7 x height in inches) minus (6.8 x age in years)
Once you’ve determined your BMR, you need to factor in your activity level to get your total daily energy expenditure – the number of calories you require each day to maintain your current weight:
1. Sedentary (little or no exercise) – BMR x 1.2
2. Lightly active (light exercise/sports 1-3 days/week) – BMR x 1.375
3. Moderately active (moderate exercise/sports 3-5 days/week) – BMR x 1.55
4. Very active (hard exercise/sports 6-7 days/week) – BMR x 1.725
5. Extra active (very hard exercise/sports & a physical job) – BMR x 1.9
Here, for example, is the calculation for a moderately active 35-year-old woman who weighs 120 pounds and is 5′4" tall:
655 + (4.35 x 120) + (4.7 x 64) minus (4.7 x 35) = a BMR of 1,313.3
1,313.3 x 1.55 = 2,036 calories per day
It’s important to note that the Harris-Benedict Equation will be accurate for most people, but it does not account for lean body mass. (Remember, leaner bodies need more calories than less lean ones.) Therefore, it will underestimate the calories needed by those who are very muscular and overestimate the calories needed by those who are very fat.
A few final pointers…
Your BMR decreases as you age. This doesn’t mean that you should deprive yourself of food. In fact, food deprivation will reduce your metabolism and foil your intentions. Instead, get most of your calories from:
1. Fiber-Rich Foods. Organic veggies and low-sugar fruits that are packed with fiber require more "processing" by the body, which means more calories are burned during digestion.
2. Metabolic Power Ingredients. Clean proteins and healthy fats are thermogenic (fat-burning) foods that power up the metabolism.
You can also improve your BMR with regular, vigorous exercise and weight training to maintain that lean, calorie-burning muscle mass.
- Kelley Herring
[Ed. Note: Need help maintaining your weight? Pick up a copy of Kelley's Guilt Free Desserts recipe book. In it, you'll find dozens of healthful and delicious desserts that won't wreak havoc on your calorie count.
Have a question for an ETR expert? Send it to AskETR@ETRFeedback.com.]
Worth Quoting: Seth Godin on Remarkability
"If people aren’t discussing your products, your services, your cause, your movement or your career, there’s a reason.
"The reason is that you’re boring. (I guess that’s what boring means, right?) And you’re probably boring on purpose. You have boring pricing because that’s safer. You have a boring location because to do otherwise would be nuts. You have boring products because that’s what the market wants. That boring staff? They’re perfectly well qualified…
"You don’t get unboring for free. Remarkable costs time and money and effort, but most of all, remarkable costs a willingness to be wrong.
"Remarkable is a choice."
(Source: Seth Godin’s blog)
It’s Good to Know: Extreme Global Warming
Watch out, Al Gore, another planet is suffering from global warming – and it’s a thousand times worse than what we’re seeing here on Earth.
NASA astronomers recently discovered a planet that can go from 980 degrees to over 2,200 degrees in just six hours. The extreme temperature change is due to an orbit that brings it 10 times closer to its sun than Mercury is to ours.
The scientists call it one of the most inhospitable planets yet found.
(Source: Associated Press)
== Highly Recommended ==
Are You Embarrassed of What You Do for a Living – or Just Tired of Doing It?
One woman was both, and while her “acquaintances” at a dinner party snickered and poked fun, she had the last laugh. In as little as two weeks she started a new business for less than $99, soon had to hire additional employees to handle the work, and now lives a life without money worries of any kind.
Here’s how you can do the same, even easier and faster than she did.
Word to the Wise: Mook
"Mook" (MOOK) is slang for a contemptibly incompetent or insignificant person.
Example (as used by Carl Hiaasen in a New York Times review of Fool’s Paradise by Steven Gaines): "Yet, throughout the eras of Capone, Sinatra, and Madonna, South Beach’s economy has always been juiced by sybaritic hype and a stream of fun-loving, fast-talking mooks."
[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.]
Copyright ETR, LLC, 2009
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