3, 2, 1… ACTION! Maximize your investment wealth with the help of this ancient Greek orator’s teaching! [Wednesdays: The Independent Investor]
Miles Everson’s Business Builder Daily speaks to the heart of what great marketers, business leaders, and other professionals need to succeed in advertising, communications, managing their investments, career strategy, and more.
A Note from Miles Everson:
Hi, everyone!
We’re excited to share with you today another great tip on investing.
Every Wednesday, we publish these kinds of articles because we want to guide and help you get on the path towards achieving true financial stability.
Are you ready for today’s topic?
Continue reading to know how this verbal communication strategy is also applicable in the context of investing.
Miles Everson
CEO, MBO Partners
Chairman of the Advisory Board, The I Institute
The Independent Investor
One of the internal programs we conduct at Valens Research is Speak on the Shoulders of Giants.
Here, Chairman and CEO Professor Joel Litman conducts training to enhance employees’ communication skills, pulling useful and insightful lessons from some of the world’s greatest speakers.
One of these giants of public speaking is Demosthenes…
Photo from Arthive
Demosthenes (384 BC to 322 BC) was an ancient Greek statesman and orator. His orations consist of a significant expression of contemporary Athenian intellectual prowess and provide an insight into the politics and culture of Greece during the 4th century BC.
During his childhood, he struggled with speech impediment. However, that didn’t stop him from becoming one of the greatest speakers of all time.
He spent countless hours practicing to improve his verbal communication skills. It was also a plus factor that he was born during Athens’ era of power because he was able to study about the great ancient Greek orators who came before him.
These orators included:
- Aeschines
- Antiphon
- Andocides
- Pericles
… and more.
With diligent study and his own clever maxims, Demosthenes overcame his speech impediment and became one of the most respected orators and litigators during his time.
—
According to Professor Litman, public speaking is scary for many people. For some, just the thought of delivering a speech or presentation in front of a large group of audience makes them shudder.
BUT!
The thing with this fear is it can be overcome with practice. Aside from that, the public speaking skill is highly teachable. Anyone can learn how to do it as long as they’re patient and they put in the right amount of effort to improve.
In fact, Professor Litman thinks some of the most successful and effective speakers are actually introverts!
Their skills all depend on whether or not they use the right techniques for verbal communication.
Action, Action, and Action
As a leader of a firm that operates in 3 countries (US, Philippines, and Turkey), Professor Litman encourages his teams to follow one of Demosthenes’ famous quotes:
“All speech is vain and empty unless it be accompanied by action.”
For the ancient Greek orator, it’s not enough that a speaker is fluent or a speech is well-said. There also has to be an action, or a call-to-action, at the end of the message because that’s the most important aspect of any verbal communication.
Think about this: If a speaker simply talked about the things his or her team accomplished for the entire week without talking about the significance of the work they’ve done, wouldn’t that easily bore the audience?
Highly likely, that speaker would earn a few yawns from listeners here and there.
Compare that to when a speaker explains the importance of his topic and discusses a few action items at the end of his or her speech. You’ll see—that makes a HUGE difference on how the audience receives and responds to the message.
The main point?
If a speech or presentation is truly worth sharing, that should have something that will make a compelling action and positive impact on the lives of listeners.
Action, Action, and Action in the Context of Investing
Public speaking and investing are similar in the sense that the only way you can learn how to do them is to actually do them.
You can only overcome your fear of public speaking and enhance your verbal communication skills by practicing or speaking in front of an audience more often.
Likewise, you can only prove or debunk the theories you have about investing by actually investing a portion of your money in the stock market or in any other asset class.
All the investing tips, advice, and lessons you know won’t be as useful when you don’t put them to practice. That’s why it’s also important that you not only study these principles but also make your course of investment action clear and think about how you’ll execute it.
… and how can you achieve that?
- Through pattern recognition.
According to John Templeton, the founder of the Templeton Growth Fund, the 4 most dangerous words in the English language are, “This time, it’s different.”
Whenever geopolitical events occur and the stock market dips temporarily, some investors tend to panic and sell at a low. However, that’s a recipe for investing disaster! During such situations, the best action to take is to stay the course or buy at a low.
This is why stock market pattern recognition is important. This not only helps you avoid making investment decisions based on your emotions but also enables you to maximize your investment wealth in the long run.
- By avoiding overreactions to sensationalized financial news.
Professor Litman says the financial media likes to slap the word, “crisis” onto practically every event. So far this year, we’ve seen news about inflation, debt, food, oil, war crises, and other geopolitical events.
As an investor, you have to be careful whenever you hear or read news like these. If you’re not, you could be at risk of overreacting, thereby negatively impacting your investment portfolio.
Remember the Investing Discipline #2: Control your emotions. This will help you keep your cool amid various scenarios that lead to stock market volatility.
- Through taking care of your overall health and well-being.
“True health is wealth.”
There are various activities and exercises that are not only beneficial to your health but also to your investment strategies. When your body is at its best, you’ll also be in proper condition to think and invest wisely.
We’ve discussed this in some of our past “Independent Investor” articles. These include:
… and others.
By taking care of your health alongside your wealth and investment strategies, you’ll do better not only physically but also mentally, spiritually, and emotionally.
We hope you enjoyed reading about today’s topic!
Remember: When negative thoughts and emotions—particularly fear—overwhelm you in making financial decisions, make a conscious effort to remember Demosthenes’ teachings.
Make your course of action clear…
… think about how you’ll properly execute it…
… and analyze what you can also do to make that decision or action beneficial to others.
Through these, you’ll invest differently for the betterment of your personal life AND for the betterment of the lives of your family.
Happy mid-week!
(This article is from The Business Builder Daily, a newsletter by The I Institute in collaboration with MBO Partners.)
About The Dynamic Marketing Communiqué’s
“Wednesdays: The Independent Investor”
To best understand a firm, it makes sense to know its underlying earning power.
In two of the greatest books ever written on investing, the “Intelligent Investor” by Benjamin Graham and “Security Analysis” by David Dodd and Benjamin Graham (yes, Graham authored both of these books), the term “earning power” is mentioned hundreds of times.
LITERALLY.
Despite that, it’s surprising how earning power is mentioned seldomly in literature on business strategy. If the goal of a business is wealth creation, then the performance metrics must include the earning power concept.
Every Wednesday, we’ll publish investing tips and insights in accordance with the practices of some of the world’s greatest investors.
We make certain that these articles help you identify and separate the best companies from the worst, and develop your investing prowess in the long run.
Our goal?
To help you get on that path towards the greatest value creation in investing.
Hope you’ve found this week’s insights interesting and helpful.
Stay tuned for next Wednesday’s “The Independent Investor!”
Cheers,
Kyle Yu
Head of Marketing
Valens Dynamic Marketing Capabilities
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