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    The Beanstalk Jackpots
    The Beanstalk Jackpots
    The Beanstalk Jackpots
    Ebook148 pages1 hour

    The Beanstalk Jackpots

    By Pete Geissler

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    About this ebook

    You can't be the fabled Jack and depend on magic beans, a fast-growing beanstalk, and a fabulously rich but murderous giant for wealth+ happiness + competitive supremacy™; you can only depend on yourself and the personal beanstalk that you sow, grow, and climb. A good start is to adopt the three how-to jackpots put forth in this book: PAMPER YOURSELF, BE POSITIVE ,and DELETE YOUR TOXINS. Think of them as akin to Jack's bag of gold coins, his goose that lays an unlimited supply of golden eggs, and his harp that plays itself. This book is not a fairy tale. Its three jackpots and their awesome powers to change lives for the better are based on centuries of insight and experience, including almost a half-century lived by the author. Essays, anecdotes, and comments from others support each jackpot convincingly and compellingly.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThe Expressive Press
    Release dateApr 8, 2017
    ISBN9781542865104
    The Beanstalk Jackpots
    Author

    Pete Geissler

    Pete Geissler is an outspoken advocate of good communications and behavior. His eight books, and hundreds of articles, speeches, and classes examine why and how to be articulate, to write well, and to treat people respectfully and ethically. His accomplishments include authorship of a publisher's best seller and a finalist in best books 2014, and writing more than three million words that have been published or spoken in formal settings. Pete is founder and CEO of The Expressive Press, a publisher of books in several genre. He also teaches and coaches engineers, scientists, and business persons how to write and to use writing to boost their productivity, value, and careers. He serves on the Board of Directors, Opera Theater Pittsburgh, and chairs its planned giving committee.

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      Book preview

      The Beanstalk Jackpots - Pete Geissler

      PROLOGUE

      Jack climbed his accidental beanstalk three times to reach wealth + happiness + competitive supremacy™: first he acquired a bag of gold coins, then a goose that lays an unlimited supply of golden eggs, and last a harp that plays by itself. He then chops down the beanstalk and the revengeful giant—a modern metaphor for competitors?  falls to his death. Jack and his mother live happily ever after in plentiful splendor.

      The enduring fairy tale originated more than 5000 years ago, and was published in 1734, a mere 283 years in our dim past as I write this.

      For almost fifty years  since the early 1970s  I wrote all sorts of marketing materials for all sorts of businesses and individuals, some of which I could call fairy tales. I thought that I was helping them deliver their many messages that would help them sell their products.

      In truth, I was helping them to build better, more bountiful beanstalks, to help them hit their own personal jackpots, to create wealth + happiness + competitive supremacy™, which is far more important than a few sales.

      I was unknowingly advocating my three jackpots for wealth + happiness + competitive supremacy: pamper yourself, be positive, and delete your toxins.

      I support those three jackpots with many essays, blogs, and articles; together, they are the why-to and how-to for your bountiful beanstalk... the beanstalk that you are about to sow, grow, and climb. 

      If Jack can, you can.

      Please allow me to explain my views of wealth + happiness + competitive supremacy:

      Wealth is the financial means to provide the basics of a comfortable life, not the excesses of the very rich. Perhaps Aristotle, 384-322BCE, the Greek Philosopher, said it best: '...he is happy who is active in accordance with complete virtue and is sufficiently equipped with external goods...'

      Many people believe that wealth and happiness are synonymous, that they are a singular whole, a cause and effect. They are living a fairy tale. 'You can't buy happiness' is a universal truth that manifests itself in many ways, including divorces and suicides among the very rich.

      Happiness, according to Immanuel Kant, 1724-1804, a German Philosopher, is far more complex than mere wealth. He describes it as 'the satisfaction of all our desires.' I want to change 'all'  which seems hopelessly idealistic  to 'as many as needed to eliminate misery.'

      The classic definition of competitive advantage  a benign idea relative competitive supremacy™  describes attributes that allow an organization to outperform others such as access to natural resources, low costs, highly skilled labor, and new technology.

      This definition is pitifully inadequate. Missing are the abilities to communicate these attributes clearly and concisely, a function of articulate employees, and the unflagging commitment of those same employees to behave ethically at all times and with all people. Also missing is the huge advantage of articulate individuals over their less articulate brethren, a topic that I address in detail in my book The Power of Being Articulate.

      Combine these attributes with those that are more traditional, and the inevitable result is wealth, happiness, and competitive supremacy for individuals and firms.

      You and your organization can start the journey toward a bountiful beanstalk by living the jackpots put forth in this book, then supplement them by referring to the authors I cite above and throughout the text, and in FURTHER INSIGHTS. 

       Pete Geissler

      JACKPOT ONE: PAMPER YOURSELF

      Perhaps Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882, American essayist and philosopher, said it most famously:

      Trust thyself; every heart vibrates to the iron string...great men have always done so...there is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance, that imitation is suicide, that he must take himself for better or for worse ...

      Norman Vincent Peale, 1898-1993, American author, speaker, and minister, agrees:

      Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.

      Jenevieve Woods, author of PEACH, notes ...we all have a choice on how we can live our lives. No one holds you hostage except you.

      I.  PROTECT, NURTURE, THRIVE

      Introduction by Jim Browne, Founding Partner and CEO, Allegheny Financial Group

      Pete Geissler may be the only person on the globe who traded his car for a bar tab, and I happily take full responsibility.

      When I told him, way back in the mid-1990s, that he was his most important asset and he should protect himself by buying a safer car, he 'sold' it to a friend who also owned his favorite bar for a few thousand dollars of booze and food; the ultimate bountiful barter. The bar owner gave it to his son  a former student of Pete's at Carnegie Mellon University  to commute to college some 15 miles away.

      A win-win-win, right?

      Not so fast. Winners included the bar owner, who saved big bucks by buying a car for pre-tax dollars, his son saved big bucks with extremely reliable and efficient transportation, and Pete saved all sorts of money and aggravation by not trading or selling to an unknown private party.

      But Pete also lost: He created an ethical morass that keeps me  and I'll wager Pete, as well  awake at night: Why is it OK for Pete to sell a less-safe car to another person, whether he knows or doesn't know him or her? Isn't that inconsiderate? Dangerous to life and limb?

      I know: let the buyer beware and damn the consequences, anything for money, it's the American way.  OK, but I know that Pete can't live comfortably with that and he took the middle road: He told the bar owner and his son about my advice and they bought the car anyway. Money ruled.

      The real point of this story is that Pete learned that he is his most important asset and he shared his insight with the world by writing about it. Of course, I agreed: If he stops earning, I have less money to manage for him.

      1. Rely on Your Most Important Asset: Yourself

      I bet that you are not listed as an asset on your personal or organization's balance sheet.

      Pity.  Your intelligence is your earning power. Ergo, it is your source of assets such as your house, computers, desks, cars, stocks, bonds... the trappings of your life and your spending power. You are the mother lode from which all your other assets emanate.

      I came to that rather obvious but elusive conclusion when I first started to work with my asset manager, Jim Browne.  One of his first admonishments was to trade my unsafe car for a safer model, as he points out in his introduction. He was protecting his future and mine.

      I cannot advise you to sell your car, but I can suggest that you protect your earnings and enhance your balance sheet by writing and speaking well. Many studies, including one of mine, connect being articulate, i.e. communicating intelligently, to enhanced earnings, happiness, and overall satisfaction with life... an impressive return for honing one basic skill.

      John Yasinsky, former CEO of GenCorp and several other companies, writes in the Foreword to my book, The Power of Being Articulate:

      "I first learned the truth and power behind communicating intelligently when I lived in a grimy coal-mining and steel-making town in Pennsylvania, where it was clear that articulate professionals were more successful than the less articulate miners and mill workers. My education continued years later at the top levels of government, business, and academe where I observed power brokers and decision-makers use their considerable skills with language to think clearly, arrive at logical decisions, and convey those decisions clearly to others. And over the years, I saw that my happiest friends and associates were able to communicate clearly with spouses and others with whom they enjoy close relationships".

      BTW, business gurus always list being articulate as one of the several traits of effective leaders. One noted that it is the one essential skill for success in business and industry.

      2. Use Your Intelligence for Competitive Supremacy

      I recently came across a clever definition of an intellect: a person who can hear the William Tell overture and not think of The Lone Ranger. A similar definition is a person who is told to not think of the elephant in the room and doesn't.

      Both definitions describe the ability to compartmentalize, to think of one topic and exclude all others, i.e. to concentrate.

      Another definition of an intellect is...

      You. The person with skills that require intelligence to implement.

      An example: I was lunching with a financial manager and I said that we are marketing the same product: our intelligence. When he looked puzzled, I explained: You sell your valuable intelligence about investments, and I sell my valuable intelligence about writing and thinking. We have created our intelligence niches. The common thread is intelligence, albeit of different kinds. That's why your clients hire you to manage their finances, and my clients

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