The Winning Advantage: Tap Into Your Richest Resources

By Raymond Houser

"I learned how to work and deal with people, which is the most important attribute in anybody's success story."—Raymond Houser

If you have ever wondered how you are going to succeed against so much competition, it's time to take stock of the greatest asset you have: yourself. How you can do that to the best and lasting benefit is the powerful message of The Winning Advantage.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781543941845

Book preview

Words

Part One

My Story as a Guide

Chapter One

Tap into the Richest Resource

I was giving a talk to a group when a young man raised his hand and asked me some very smart questions: Mr. Houser, what is the location of the richest untapped resources on Earth? Are they the diamond mines in South Africa or the platinum mines in Russia? What about the coal fields in Pennsylvania?

Without missing a beat, I said, All of those are worthy candidates, but they are a long ways off. The locations of the most untapped valuable resources are the graveyards throughout the planet.

With a shocked expression on his face, he asked why.

Because, I replied, they are the storehouses of never utilized assets. People live, and die, without ever using their best selves. People were buried with their natural and valuable resources never tapped or used.

Why didn’t these people use their innate resources? I believe it is because they had no road map to find them along with instructions on how to best use those resources. The result is that so many men and women end up disappointing themselves because they don’t find their way. And it isn’t just themselves that they disappoint: add in their friends and family and the society in which they live.

But I believe that their lives can roll out in a much better way, if they realize what is holding them back and then learn how to forge ahead. They must take the initiative. It will not come without efforts or beliefs.

These lessons have been reinforced in my life, over and over again. But as I’ve discovered, in my various jobs, in many conversations with students and employees, and more recently as a speaker, many people don’t get the instructions they need. And that is more than a shame; it’s a gap that is very likely holding them back from the success they long to achieve. That’s why I’ve written The Winning Advantage.

My experiences weren’t in one industry. From selling books door to door, to buying and selling real estate, to managing futures in the financial markets, I’ve observed all kinds of people with one connecting trait: the ones who did not succeed gave up when things got tough. And times do get tough, which is why a map of instruction on how to survive and thrive is so important.

Within the pages of this book you’ll find fundamental information that will help you to:

•Motivate yourself.

•See how to turn interests into careers.

•Recognize that a college degree doesn’t necessarily lead to a job that you’ll love.

•Appreciate how attitude can make or break a career.

•Realize that talent isn’t the most important requirement for success.

•Stop any mental tape that holds you back.

•Replace that tape with affirmations that will bolster your confidence.

•Be inspired by the insights of people who never gave up.

•See why mentors matter.

•Understand how parenting can make an enormous difference in a person’s future.

•Overcome lack of love and support.

•Use a simple way to ensure that your next career is the job you really want.

•Deal with setbacks and feelings of rejection and move forward.

•Set goals and get rid of bad mental habits.

•Learn how to handle anxiety.

•Recognize what self-esteem is and how to develop a healthy one.

•Develop self-discipline and get rid of bad habits.

•Trust yourself and God.

•Recognize what success involves.

Filled with first-person stories and my own experiences, you’ll read about the paths I’ve taken to achievements and the dead ends that forced me to change direction. Most importantly, I’ll show you how to employ the most crucial advice that was given to me, and I now pass it on to you: NEVER GIVE UP! The Winning Advantage will help you do just that.

Chapter Two

Getting Going: My Business Life Started Early

Your future depends on many things, but mostly on you.

—Frank Tyger

The first person who taught me about work was my dad. Although he didn’t believe a whole lot in himself, he instilled a lot of belief in me. He was always in favor of my doing something. If I wanted to build a tree house, he’d say, Well, let’s see where we’re going to get the lumber. He wouldn’t discourage me by saying, You don’t want to build a tree house; you might fall out and get hurt, like some parents would. If I wanted to pick pecans, he’d shake the trees. We even started a pecan business when I was growing up in Texas. On the weekends we would pick papershell pecans for one of the big plantation owners in Lake Jackson. Then we would haul them home, where we would bag and stack them, and then sell them for $.55 a pound. From the time I was six years old, I was earning money.

My dad’s mother taught me about business, too. She sold Avon products for over 40 years. In the summer I’d go with her as she collected orders from her customers. As a result, I got used to the idea of going to the homes of strangers and selling them a product they would like and making money in the process.

When I was 12, we moved to Huntsville, Alabama. Soon after we arrived, I started a paper route. It taught me a lot about service, discipline, and achieving goals. I also worked in grocery stores and even made pizzas in the kitchen of a bowling alley.

Around this time, my dad introduced me to commodities, goods like corn and soybeans that are bought and sold. He had me chart his corn and soybean data along with stocks, bringing them up to date every morning before I went to school. My father gave me a penny per chart per day. Every day I recorded high and low prices, the close price and volume on 125 charts. He kept over a year’s worth of Barron’s and Wall Street Journals in his office at home; and on the weekends, we’d sit shoulder-to-shoulder—with the exception of hunting weekends when we’d go out to shoot duck, geese, turkey, and deer—reviewing the charts and reading the articles. The first book he ever gave me on this business—I was 12 years-old—was John Magee’s Technical Analysis of Stock Trends. I still have that book on my desk.

Although he was trained as an engineer, he really liked the investment game better. He wasn’t a very good investor because he experienced a net loss of money over a long period of time. Nevertheless, he sparked my interest in stocks, especially when he took me along when he spoke to brokers at EF Hutton. I noticed how they would talk with my dad about how to manage his assets. They encouraged him to manage his investment risk through diversification and that triggered my attention. What impressed me about the brokers is that they were in a position to counsel and add value through very important and critical insights about investing. I learned how to diversify to protect as well as enhance the returns of the portfolio to create profits for the client. My father liked the advice a lot and enjoyed being informed. He just didn’t have the discipline to implement the insights, although he thought very favorably of them. I remember looking at my father as he listened to the brokers’ insights; his expressions were full of curiosity and ah-ha. He asked a lot of questions about different companies, and the brokers were never without an answer. This impressed me and fueled my interest.

But I had a bigger fascination, which was baseball. I started playing baseball in the 7-9-year-old Minor League in Lake Jackson, Texas. Then I moved up to the Little League, which was for ages 10-12, then on to the Pony League for ages 13-15, and finally to the American Legion for ages 16-18. As a teenager, I thought baseball was a terrific way to make a living, and I dreamed of one day becoming a professional catcher. Baseball was all I was ever interested in doing.

Still, I knew enough about future expectations. I didn’t anticipate all my dreams becoming a reality so I wanted to have a backup plan, a safety net, if my baseball career didn’t happen. An uncle in west Texas had a ranch and raised cattle; I thought that cattle ranching might be something to pursue. Plus, there was a neighbor in Huntsville, Alabama, who had a sizable cattle ranch. I interviewed him and he gave me some books on ranching. After I read them, I decided that cattle ranching was not the profession I should pursue. I also considered banking, but then I learned that banking was a notoriously low-paying profession until—and if—you achieved a top level of management. I decided that was also not a path I would pursue.

After I was accepted to Auburn University in 1964, I attended with the idea that I could pursue my goal of playing baseball. But it wasn’t meant to be. I developed a bone disease in my left tibia called osteomyelitis as a result of being cut by rusty cleats worn by another player who slid into me at home plate during spring training at Auburn. Osteomyelitis decays your bones like a cavity in a tooth. My left tibia began to decay and splinter and little quarter inch pieces of my bone would work their way out and come through the side of my leg and bleed. It was extremely painful, and I couldn’t walk on that leg. At the time there was not a cure for osteomyelitis; its spread could only be arrested. On two different occasions I had to drop out of school for operations where doctors scraped out the decaying bone and replaced it with donated live bone marrow. The first time the bone marrow didn’t take, but it did on the second operation. At the age of 20, my baseball days were over.

This was a huge disappointment because my ambition was to play major league baseball. I was very impressed with Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Willie Mays, Ted Williams, Stan Musial, and Yogi Berra. Yogi was my idol because he played catcher for the New York Yankees, and I wanted to be like him, but that ambition was shot down because of that bone disease in my left tibia. Not getting to purse my dream of playing baseball professionally was a tremendous heartbreak. I did not have a back-up plan when the bad news hit that there would be no future baseball opportunities for me.

During this time, the Vietnam War was going on, and if you dropped out of college for any reason you were called up in the draft, which is exactly what happened to me. I was called up for the draft not once, but twice, and each time when I reported, they noticed the bandages on my leg and immediately classified me 4F. I was disqualified from the military due to my bone disease, and I was out of the draft. I considered quitting college, but I had three years already invested in my education so I decided to continue. At that time Auburn didn’t have a school of business; there was only a department of business in which I took various courses. I majored in liberal arts and graduated in the spring of 1969.

Although I had encountered a huge disappointment, something else happened at the time that changed my life.

The one thing worse than a quitter is the man who is afraid to begin.—Anonymous

Chapter Three

Persistence: The Southwestern Connection

Begin, be bold, and venture to be wise.—Horace

During the fall of my sophomore year, I developed a friendship with a veterinary student named Jim Cane. I met him at supper where we ate at the same boarding house on campus at Auburn. One night he told me of an opportunity. He had signed up, for the upcoming summer of 1966, to sell books door to door for the Southwestern Company in Nashville, Tennessee. The Southwestern Company at that time, and for many years thereafter, was the largest employer of college students.

It sounded wonderful. The job would give me the opportunity to get paid what I would be worth, according to the effort I exerted. I was very excited about the prospect and I asked him who I needed to see. He gave me the name of the student manager who was putting together a team. I called and was given the whole sales pitch and informed about all that was involved in selling the books door to door. The first summer you went as a member of a team, and if you qualified, you would get to come back and become a team leader. That next summer they were going to a school district in Chicago, and I’d be selling Webster’s Student Handbooks at $19.95 plus tax for the two-volume set. In the back were study notes on subjects while Webster’s Student Dictionary was in the front of each of the two books.

The subject the books covered were English, science, and math, the basic subjects that every student takes in junior high and high school. The books could also be used for college because the main points of each subject were covered.

That summer I went to a weeklong motivational training sales school in Nashville.