A woman in California woke up one morning several years ago and discovered that her husband had disappeared with all her money. Having never worked a day in her life, after losing her home and everything her first husband had worked his entire life to accumulate, and in her late 70’s, she was forced to find work.

It would have been easy for her to go on welfare and live out her life without dignity or self-respect. Who would have blamed her? But instead, she decided to do something about it.

Not satisfied with what the police were doing, she launched her own investigation, tracked down her husband and brought him to trial, not only for stealing her money, but for murdering her aunt and stealing her money too. He now lives in prison.

This spunky woman has a brand new career. She has a business helping people with similar circumstances to hers conduct their own investigations and right some of the wrongs done to them.

That woman is a lightning bolt.

A man in Washington, D.C., was fired from his successful job as a nightclub singer and was replaced by a Kareoke machine. Without any notice, he was left with no way to pay his bills.

But, he launched a brand new career as a writer and a motivational speaker.

In 1999, Willie Jolley was selected as Speaker of the Year by Toastmasters International. His book title says it all: A Setback Is A Setup For A Comeback.

Whenever anybody tells him they just lost their job, Willie Jolley says, “That’s good. Now you have the opportunity to do what you really like to do.

Willie Jolley is a lightning bolt.

What is the difference between a lightning bug and a lightning bolt?

When that woman discovered her husband had run off with her money, she was a lightning bug.

But, when that woman sat in a courtroom and heard the jury convict her thieving husband of larceny and murder, she was a lightning bolt.

When Willie Jolley walked into that Washington, D.C. nightclub to sing one night, and left five minutes later jobless, he was a lightning bug. But, when Willie Jolley walked to the front of a crowded room and received the 1999 Speaker of The Year award from Toastmasters International, he was lightning bolt.

The man and woman I’ve just told you about came face-to-face with two things: their self-image and their self-esteem.

Every day, you and I look face-to-face at our self-image and our self-esteem.

Who you are now.

Our self-image is the way we are now. It’s the person we are, worts and all.

Who you CAN be!

Our self-esteem is another thing, a more powerful thing. Self-esteem is how much we like ourselves, which gives us the ability to visualize ourselves the way we CAN be.

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If you are a person who chooses carefully the words you use in your advertising copy, you may be interested in a Yale University study of advertising words.

Actually they can beef-up any business communication.

Yale’s famous study selected the 12 most powerful words in English-language advertising.  I don’t know when the study was conducted, but they omitted THE most powerful word, so I added it.

“FREE” makes a baker’s dozen.  They are:

Free You Save Results Health Love Proven Money New Easy Safety Discovery Guaranteed

Working words like these into your advertising copy–especially your headlines–can make benefit-laden headlines and communications even stronger.

A word of caution though! 

Words may have magic power, but like taking aspirin for a brain tumor, they’re not a cure-all for limp copy or weak products or offers.

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