Posts tagged 'Success'

In 10 Simple Secrets of the World’s Greatest Business Communicators, I save the best tip for last. Secret number ten is ‘Reinvent Yourself.’ It simply means that great communicators are made, not born. It could be the most important lesson of all.

If you don’t believe in your ability to improve as a speaker, to inspire and to electrify your audiences, I’m afraid the other communication strategies won’t do you much good. Here’s the good news—anyone can become a great speaker. Yes, it takes some people longer than others to get really good at it, but you can master the skill that is essential to elevating your success. In fact, people who have always been fairly comfortable at public speaking aren’t necessarily the ones who capture our hearts.

Great speakers make it look effortless because they put a lot of effort into making it great.

Let me offer a few examples from people who make an appearance in my book. Not one of these speakers was a ‘natural.’ Some had serious stage fright. But they all have a growth mindset, built their skills, and believed in their ability to reinvent themselves.

Warren Buffett
Warren Buffett’s most cherished degree isn’t his business school diploma; it’s a certificate from a Dale Carnegie public-speaking course. Buffett has acknowledged that he was “terrified” of public speaking early in his career. He knew he had to get comfortable in front of groups if he hoped to succeed as an investment advisor. Recently, Buffett has been asked by young people for life advice. Get really good at public-speaking, he always says. It can raise your career value by 50%, instantly, according to Buffett. When a billionaire offers advice, it pays to listen!

Arnold Schwarzenegger
I worked as a television news journalist before I made the transition to writing full-time. In 2003, CBS News invited me to cover Arnold Schwarzenegger’s political campaign and his first 100 days as California’s governor. I guess they thought a movie star would be filling his days with celebrity parties. When it became clear that Schwarzenegger was spending his time, well, governing, I got less time on the air. But what I learned changed my life and my career.

You see, I had a front-row seat to Schwarzenegger’s speeches, sometimes more than one a day. He delivered talks to a wide range of audiences: voters, students, and business leaders. I watched him take complex subjects and customize the language he used for different audiences so they could relate to him and understand the subject. It was an advanced master class in public-speaking.

Keep this in mind. Schwarzenegger came to the U.S. as a body builder who didn’t speak English very well. The studio hired an actor to provide the voice-over in one of Schwarzenegger’s early movies. However, he attacked the language barrier with the same razor-sharp focus he put into his sports career. In the mid-1990s, Schwarzenegger’s visibility as a political leader began to rise. Schwarzenegger knew that he had to become a better speaker in front of a live audience—not a movie camera. He began to seek out every opportunity to practice. Much as Ronald Reagan had done before him, Schwarzenegger gave speeches to every possible group, not only to share his ideas but to improve his speaking ability.

Schwarzenegger saw himself as someone very different than the movie-going public saw him. He reinvented himself to pursue that vision.

Barbara Corcoran
Shark Tank star Barbara Corcoran made a fortune in real estate. She turned a $1,000 loan into a multi-million-dollar empire. Today, Corcoran puts her money behind entrepreneurs who have a good idea and make a pitch on the hit show. Corcoran was once terrified of public speaking. Determined to grow and reinvent herself as a speaker, Corcoran volunteered to teach a real-estate course at a local junior college. It paid off in two ways. She grew more comfortable as a public speaker, and she met a woman who would go on to become one of Corcoran’s top salespeople.

When you change the way you see yourself as a speaker, the speaker your audience sees will change. Reinvent yourself. Believe you belong—and you will.

-Carmine Gallo, author of 10 Simple Secrets to the World's Greatest Business Communicators

For the other 9 secrets, check out 10 Simple Secrets to the World's Greatest Business Communicators>>

Years ago, I was working as a telemarketer. There were about 100 of us, all making 250+ calls a day to angry people, trying to get the sale.

But after 14 months of telemarketing, my 99 other coworkers were still stuck at their job. On the other hand, I was offered a high salary, a huge promotion, and an enormous network of top-tier company executives.

When I told people how I did it, they didn’t believe me. They thought I was making it up.

“No,” I insisted. “I’m telling you — I just bought coffee and lunch for anyone willing to sit down and chat with me about their job. And it worked.”

If you want to get a raise, promotion, or build your network — especially in your company — the secret is simple: informational interviews. Because once you start to build relationships with the higher-ups (something any employee can do, using this method), you can expect to move up quickly in the company while the rest of your coworkers look on with confusion, jealousy, and awe.

In the meantime — because frankly, just because you start meeting people doesn’t magically create job openings, these things take time — start asking people what skills you should be learning. Then, start practicing those things.

For me, I learned the Career Services department wanted leadership and project management skills. It was really hard to be motivated in my telemarketing job, and there were lots of committees, projects, and leadership roles I could’ve been doing. So, that’s where I started. I became a team lead. I helped with the Title IX committee. I offered to volunteer to help with the sexual harassment training program. Anything to learn the skills my new job would want.

As for raises and promotions, those come with the territory for new jobs. Still, I’ve had several high-stakes salary negotiations (the conversations that determine how much money you get), and the most helpful strategy I learned was simple: know your stuff, and know the people. If you can present who you are, the skills you learned for that exact role, and how that will benefit the company, the rest of the conversation swings heavily in your favor. Compare that with the random employee with the short resume who has no idea what the company wants.

In short: focus on learning and creating. It’s easy to take the minimum-amount-of-work road at your job — frankly, most people do. But spend your free time becoming the person your next job wants you to be. As Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert once wrote, “Every skill you acquire doubles your odds of success.”

Take it From a Hardcore Introvert - Meeting People Can Actually Be Fun

I’m a soft-spoken introvert. I don’t excel at talking to new people. (Why do you think I’m writing this??) But I managed to build tight relationships with some of the most senior-level executives at my company, many of whom were 10-20 years older than me, which I used to get a huge raise, promotion, and great network I still use to this day.

Take the first step — send an email to the person in your company you want to meet. Start with the people/department you want to work with. They’re going to be the key to finding the shortcut past all the job postings, hiring managers, and timetables.

I used to work at an online university. I wanted to switch from telemarketing to Career Services. So I began systematically reaching out to every single employee in that department. I took over a dozen of them out to coffee and lunch. By the 8th or 9th person, I began hearing the same thing: “I’ve heard about you. It’s Anthony, right? You took Sharon out to lunch!” They were talking about me. And guess who’s name came up when the new job opened?

The truth is, this is fun. It’s not about all work-related stuff — my coworkers-to-be and I talked about sports, current events, hobbies, anything fun. People are going to pick the nice guy who bought them lunch instead of the other just-as-qualified guy 9 times out of 10. Build relationships, and have fun doing it.

-Anthony Moore, author of What Extraordinary People Know

For more on living your best life, check out What Extraordinary People Know>>

The holidays will be here before we know it. It’s a magical time of beautiful decorations and lights, gifts, parties... and money stress. Yes, you read that right. Almost half of us stress out about money during the holidays.

It makes complete sense. We take on a lot of extra expenses this time of year. There are expenses that come to mind right away like gifts, vacations, and hosting parties, but there are also expenses that are less obvious. We might purchase a sparkly dress for the office holiday party, take more Ubers than we normally do, or forget that we always give a cash gift to the mail person.

The crazy part is that while we know we’re going to spend more this time of year, very few people plan for it. Even if we set a budget, we’re probably not putting money aside in advance. That means we end up stressing out over how to make these expenses work and most Americans end up with more credit card debt.

Then we’re playing catch up going into the New Year, which makes it even more difficult to succeed in our financial goals.

The good news is, we can plan for our holiday expenses, and the sooner we do, the less pain we’ll feel financially.

Here are 7 easy steps to a financially stress-free holiday season:

Take a step back and think about what’s most important to you about the holidays. What are your favorite holiday memories? What made those memories special? These are the things you’ll want to prioritize spending money on this holiday season. When you prioritize what’s important and let go of the rest, a magical thing happens. Your lifestyle ends up feeling bigger and more meaningful, yet you end up saving more money.

What do you plan to spend money on this year? You can start with the things that are most important (from step #1 above), but there are probably other expenses to plan for. Make a list. For example, you may want to buy gifts, travel, host a party, account for extra dining out, purchase party clothes, or pay for additional transportation.

Get specific and add up the numbers. For example, if you listed gifts above, how many gifts do you plan to buy? What will you plan to spend on each gift? If you decide to buy five gifts and plan to spend $50 per gift, that’s $250 in total spending on gifts. You can make a spending estimate for each item on your list.

Is there any way to reduce the total above while maintaining the quality or making it better? Let’s continue with the gift example. Instead of getting five gifts, you might decide to do a Secret Santa where each person involved gets one person a $50 gift. This adds some excitement to the process. Now you’ve reduced your total spend from $250 to $50 in the gifts category.

Next you want to make the space for your holiday fund. I highly recommend creating a separate savings account for it so that it’s clear that this money is specifically for your holiday fund. I’m a big fan of using an online savings account so you can keep the fund out of sight and out of mind - in its own bucket - while also earning some interest. You can use this method for other larger, less frequent expenses as well.

Then, it’s time to account for your income. How many paychecks do you have from now until you plan to make your holiday purchases? If you don’t get a regular paycheck, break it up by time. How many weeks or months do you have until you plan to make the purchases?

It’s important to account for any expenses you plan to make in advance. For example, you may prefer to buy gifts the month before. That’s when you’ll want to have the money there and waiting for you.

From there, you can calculate it out. If you plan to spend $500 total on the holidays and you have five paychecks until you want to start spending the money, you will want to transfer $100 per paycheck into your holiday fund.

If you’re not sure how to find $100 per paycheck, here are six steps to save $1,000 this month.

Set this transfer up to be automatic. Automation ensures that we don’t have to depend on willpower or our memory to transfer the money over each paycheck. This gives us peace of mind because we can feel confident it’s going to happen.

Schedule the calculated per paycheck or per week amount to transfer to your holiday fund automatically. Continuing with our example above, you’d set up an automatic transfer for $100 per paycheck to go to your holiday fund. Then the cash will be there waiting there for you when it’s time to start your holiday spending. You can transfer it over in advance or put expenses on your credit card and pay them off immediately using the funds from your holiday fund.

The earlier we start planning for the holidays, the smaller our transfers can be and the less “pain” we’ll feel per paycheck. When we aren’t playing catch up after the holidays, we can start planning for next year and that will reduce our financial stress even more.

Let’s say you start right after the holidays and have 24 paychecks to put aside $500 for the holidays next year. You’d only have to transfer $21 per paycheck to your holiday fund to have $500 saved in time for next year.

Taking a step back and mapping out a conscious and intentional plan for the holidays allows us to prioritize what’s most important while decreasing our financial stress. If you walk through each of these seven steps, you’ll know exactly how to plan for your holiday expenses this year and get started early for the next.

Then get a head start on your New Year’s goals with our free 48 Hour Personal Finance Financial Makeover.

-Ashley Feinstein Gerstley

For more tips on budgeting your money, check out The 30-Day Money Cleanse>>

We all have full lives, crowded schedules and constant demands on us. When people are busy, often the first thing that goes by the wayside is health. Even if you know what to do to live a healthy lifestyle, it’s easy to sacrifice a few hours of sleep each night to fit more into the day, or skip a week of exercise because you can’t find time, or choose the unhealthier, but easier, food for dinner.

But our physical health doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Everything we do is determined by our health—from our energy to get things done, to our ability to avoid getting sick when working under pressure, even to our ability to think and focus.

While our brain helps drive and guide us through life, it’s our body that is asked to do the heavy lifting day in and day out. If your body is weak and fatigued, your mental stamina and ability to focus will suffer as well. To be a high performer, no matter what you’re doing, you have to build your physical capacity.

What is Physical Capacity?

Physical capacity is your ability to improve your health, well-being and physical performance. It acts as either an accelerant or drag on your performance. When your physical capacity is strong, you have more endurance and resilience. When it is weak, doing anything is more difficult because you’ll lack the energy and ability to overcome stress needed to excel.

It’s easy to take health for granted. So many of us don’t pay enough attention until we get bad news, either with our own health, or that of a friend or loved one. I hit a turning point of my own in 2009, when I had panic attack triggered by extreme stress. At the time, when my heart was racing and I was collapsed to the floor, I thought I was having a fatal heart attack—and that moment compelled me to pay closer attention to my diet and exercise.

Nutrition and exercise routines can be confusing—what works for one person may not work for others. A good start is to be mindful of what you’re putting into your body. Your diet has a profound effect on your daily life—if you make some positive changes in what you eat, you will quickly notice improvements in your energy and ability to focus.

For an exercise standpoint, it’s important to do a combination of cardiovascular exercise and strength training of some kind, whether that’s weight-lifting, yoga, Pilates or something similar. Remember that it’s never too late to start—I ran my first Olympic triathlon at 41, despite having never run over a mile out side of sports practice before I was 35.

But building physical capacity goes beyond just diet and exercise—another great way to start is focusing on stress management. Stress is often treated as an inevitability of life, and functioning under heavy stress, or on little sleep, is often considered heroic. You have to control your own schedule to combat stress—schedule 15 minute breaks throughout the day, and, whenever possible, get eight hours of sleep each night. You’ll notice a difference in your energy and focus.

Ask yourself—are you doing all you can to become all you can be? Do you consider health to be something that can be sacrificed to get through a busy day? Do you neglect to set aside time and energy to improving your physical performance? Are you doing what you can to live a less stressful life, even with something as simple as getting more sleep?

It’s never too late to start. Wherever you are building your capacity, you can certainly reach another level with the right improvements. The people closest to you deserve the best version of you.

-Robert Glazer, Author of Elevate

Learn more about building your capacities with Elevate>>

I want you to picture two people, John and Sarah. John is stressed throughout the day. When things are going well, he’s focused and high-performing, but when adversity strikes, he crumbles under pressure. Sarah is often described as resilient and unflappable. When Sarah encounters obstacles, she works through them quickly, and treats failure as a necessary part of learning. Great leaders look more like Sarah than John. When challenges strike, you need to be the one to rally your team and stay confident. No matter how talented, focused and purposeful you are, you have to have the emotional capacity to overcome adversity.

What is Emotional Capacity?
Emotional capacity is a measure of your ability to overcome limiting beliefs, your ease in adapting to challenging situations, and the quality of your relationships. No matter how talented, disciplined or values-driven you are, if you don’t have high emotional capacity, you’ll fall short of your goals eventually.

A challenge in building emotional capacity the self-limiting beliefs we place on ourselves. An example of this is a force called cognitive dissonance, when a person holds two or more contradictory beliefs at the same time. Cognitive dissonance causes us to double down on harmful behavior, invest in negative relationships, and close our minds to information that challenges our preconceptions.

While it’s hard to see at first, a close-minded approach inevitably limits your ability to grow and reach your full potential. To build your emotional capacity, you must honestly evaluate your own mindset and become open to difficult feedback.

Many of us limit our potential without even realizing it, and it takes conscious effort to understand what is holding us back—and to address it. As a personal example: for years, I wanted to write a book, but I kept giving myself excuses to avoid doing it. That changed in 2016; while I was in the second year of a three year entrepreneurial masters program, I made a commitment that I would write a book by the time I reached my third year.

Simply changing my affirmation from, “I want to write a book,” to “I will write a book,” gave me the extra push I needed. I challenged my limiting beliefs, built my emotional capacity, and published my first book, Performance Partnerships, a year later. This year I published my second book, Elevate, which explores capacity building in detail.

Quality of Relationships

Building emotional capacity is not just about how you interact with your own mind—the quality of your relationships is also vital. Legendary entrepreneur Jim Rohn once said, “you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” You need to surround yourself with people who give you energy, who genuinely care about helping you improve, and are not afraid to challenge you to do so.

Do you have many relationships with people like this? While it can feel good to spend time with people who always make you feel good and never expect you to change for the better, doing this will limit your ability to improve. Needless to say, it’s similarly damaging to spend time with people who are always tearing others down and blaming others for their shortcomings.

Think carefully about the people you spend the most time with—do they share your core values and respect you enough to tell you when you’re wrong? Are there people in your life who make you feel drained and dissatisfied? If you make a conscious effort to spend time with people who share your values and give you energy, while limited exposure to people who drain you, you’ll feel better in the long run.

What’s great about capacity building is that it empowers you to not just make yourself better, but to inspire those around you to grow alongside you. If you surround yourself with people who are as committed to achieving as you are, you’ll all push each other to keep growing. If you tackle each day with gratitude and are capable of adapting to adversity, you’ll set an example for people you lead to follow.

Ask yourself—are you doing all you can to become all you can be? Do you push aside your self-limiting beliefs and take adversity as an opportunity to improve, rather than a crushing setback? Are you spending time with people who want you to reach for full potential, rather than pulling you down to their level?

You already know the answers to these questions. Wherever you are in your journey to build capacity, you can reach another level. The people closest to you deserve the best version of you.

-Robert Glazer, Author of Elevate

Learn more about building your capacities with Elevate>>