Yes, you get to see me in person on this one!
It’s part of how I’m reflecting on 2019 and focused on crushing 2020.
How about you?
How was your 2019?
REALLY, how was your year?
How much thought have you given to it?
Have you written up some notes?
Reflected on what you did well?
Not so well?
How you plan to propel yourself into your 2020 campaign?
Well, if you’re looking for a way to easily do this, here’s a simple way.
I’m cooked.
That’s all I have left in me for the year.
I hope you too left it all on the field this year.
And you’re taking some time to enjoy your holidays.
To chill, restore, before getting yourself fired up for another year.
Sometimes we look back thinking about what more we could have done or achieved this year.
It’s done.
If this was your last week on the planet, how good do you want to feel about your year?
Leave it there.
Next week I’ll share with you a survey for charging into 2020 making it your absolute greatest year.
Love to you and your family for the holidays.
Do what you want!
I met with a CEO who had a problem with one of his lieutenants.
The guy was super smart.
Excellent at the technical aspects of his job.
But he was near impossible for others to work with.
Negative mindset. One upping teammates. Seeking more leadership without first proving his performance.
The CEO didn’t know how to manage him, so he just kept rambling on about developing his “soft skills.”
I asked him.
“What do you mean by that?”
He looked at me blankly, “You know, those soft skills.”
And maybe this sounds strange to some people but I haven’t heard that term in years.
I’ve certainly never used it in the context of my work.
I do remember back in the day people using that phrase.
But no-one whose serious about winning thinks about skills that way.
When you think about it, it’s a strange phrase, right?
Are the skills themselves “soft” in some way?
We diminish them as though they are.
Like they’re skills that don’t really matter, that perhaps maybe you might want to learn.
Yet, when you look at what “soft skills” actually are, you see they’re the…
Of course the political cycle is well in the swing of 2020 campaigns.
With many people tuned into all those hopefuls chasing their most ambitious goal.
But what about the rest of us?
How many of us are focused on our own 2020 campaign?
Certainly people will “invest” millions of hours in the 2020 political campaigns.
And they already have.
Like debating football statistics, or reading celebrity gossip, countless hours have been spent tuned into candidates who’ll never win.
But how many hours do we invest in our own 2020 campaigns?
Many of us humans are content to spend our lives watching others chasing their dreams.
Yet those of us focused on our own dreams want a 2020 campaign too.
A reason I wrote the book on Trump was to be clearer on exactly how he won.
Going deeper into Barack Obama’s campaign I was focused on the same.
Something powerful I noted in top political campaigns is…
First and foremost the candidates use their campaigns to rally themselves.
A political campaign is a massive undertaking, and being clear on why your campaign matters, massively motivates you.
From there of course, a political campaign is all about how you bring other people along with you.
In most of our goals the same is true.
Certainly if you’re a CEO or leader, your winning campaign is ultimately about your team and customers.
But even if you’re not a leader, almost always your goals are about deeply impacting others around you.
So what does it take to rally yourself and others?
There’s lots of ways to look at your goals for 2020.
And seeing them through the lens of a political campaign can give you some interesting angles.
Here’s five foundations of a political campaign that you can use too.
The absolute most obvious element of Obama and Trump’s winning campaigns was a powerful slogan.
Hope. Change. Yes We Can.
Bar none might be the best slogans a candidate has run. (side note: ask yourself, do any of the current candidates actually have a powerful slogan?)
Trump’s We Don’t Win Anymore and Make America Great Again rank right up there too.
These slogans were used to rally massive movements and take over the country!
And you can use the same powerful device too.
What’s your slogan for 2020?
Really, if you had a slogan to capture what you’re setting out to do, what is it?
Mine is Do What You Want.
Closely followed by Fck Yeah!
A client is using, “Now is my time.”
Another says to her team, “In 2020, we’re Driving It All The Way.”
What do you say?
And how do you make it a constant mantra you echo all day every day?
The hallmark of great leaders is having a compelling vision.
And being able to communicate it too.
As I write about a lot in the Trump book, pain is a powerful way to sell and activate your base.
But it’s an optimistic compelling vision that drives leaders to victory.
And we’re not just talking goals here.
We’re talking VISION!
What you see. What you feel. What you get yourself and others completely bought into.
What’s a compelling 2020 vision for you?
How do you best capture it?
Perhaps you have many visions, and that’s all good.
Do you see them on a series of screens in your mind? Do you print them up and stick them on the wall?
Do you have a phrase that you use to keep capturing your vision in words?
Wherever you’re at, how do you develop this vision for you?
The power of a slogan is that you can constantly keep repeating it.
Hope. Change. Yes We Can.
Were such powerful ideas Barack kept repeating that his movement echoed too.
But that’s just the headline.
What’s the messaging that comes after it?
I write a lot about Trump’s messaging in my book, because you saw him constantly unpacking the same ideas.
On the pain side, ideas like—We don’t win anymore. We don’t win at the borders. We don’t win at trade, etc.
And on the optimistic side too—We will win, win, win, win, win…
Think about the power of messaging for a football coach rallying his team.
And consider how you might use powerful messaging in your context too.
What ideas are most impactful?
How do you distill them down into ideas you can repeat over and over again?
My client keeps telling her team, Look at what we’ve done in the last 10 years and see 2020 we’re driving it all the way.
What might you say to yourself and others in powerfully driving your 2020 campaign?
The first chapter in my book on Trump is about the way he powerfully grabbed attention.
AOC has built such a dominant franchise the same way.
Driving a powerful campaign requires first grabbing the attention of constituents and moving them along with your messaging.
And you might think of your 2020 campaign the same way too.
As a leader, how do you really grab the attention of your team?
Of your customers?
To get the attention of the market for what you do?
Otherwise, no matter your goals, who must you compel in driving your 2020 vision?
How do you grab their attention? And keep grabbing it?
See, this is the thing, having a powerful slogan, compelling vision, dominant messaging really matters…
But it’s useless if you don’t keep bringing attention to it!
It’s like goals.
On January 1 many people will pretend to set goals for the new year they call resolutions.
Not only will most of those faux goals be forgotten by January 15…
But many who keep their goals will fail to look at them again until the end of the year.
The power of goals is in the way you constantly use them to motivate your best mind and actions.
So, how do you keep bringing attention to your 2020 campaign?
Do you proclaim it, repeat it, in some way?
Write it down where you and perhaps your team look at it over and over again every day?
What other ways might you keep bringing attention to your 2020 campaign?
“Put someone in the lane next to me, “my buddy, a professional runner says, “And I run faster.”
“Put me on the clock and I shoot faster,” says one of my shooting trainers.
You study your butt off for an exam because you’ll be tested on it.
And you get the best from yourself and your goals when you are serious about testing yourself.
A powerful motivator for all 2020 candidates is that they are constantly tested on their performance.
Polls.
Votes.
Donations.
If they’re not passing the tests, their campaign is over.
What about you?
It’s one thing to do these 4 things above, and another to be willing to hold yourself to it.
What’s your test?
How do you keep yourself accountable and hold yourself to it?
If you’re serious about driving your 2020 campaign, how else might you come at it?
What other things might you develop?
To rally yourself?
And rally others?
How do you best establish your campaign for making 2020 your year?
This week I re-read my book on Trump and listened to a bunch of tracks from the Masterclass… (which you can download free)
Which reminded me that just a small number of the right elements can powerfully drive your 2020 campaign.
You’re absolutely right…
Plenty of people might say that about me…
And I guess what really matters is…
Do I suck less than you want to learn a powerful, simple, two-step method to…
Many people think they already know how to sell.
They speak eloquently.
Are fine at persuading people.
So they figure, that’s the craft, they are good at selling.
But in one question you can expose their faux skill—
What, specifically, is your process for destroying objections?
To be sure, if you lack a process for destroying objections, you lack a process for selling.
They push you until they find the point which you break.
They can’t break me.
I don’t have a breaking point.
Says CIA operative Valerie Plame in the movie Fair Game.
You may remember the story of Valerie Plame.
A covert CIA operative in some of the most dangerous theaters in the terrorist world.
When she and her husband got on the wrong side of politics, questioning the obviously questionable existence of Iraq’s WMDs…
Overnight, by our own government, her cover was blown.
Career ended. Friends shocked.
A life of secrets exposed, she and her husband didn’t back down.
They stood for what is right and pushed forward into their new life.
“If I can’t build this business faster I fail,” a startup CEO wrote me.
From my time in Silicon Valley I know it’s often true.
Get big fast is a mantra because in a world of innovation there’s no rewards for slow.
“Unless we get harder, better, faster, stronger, we lose,” he echoed.
Is a beautiful thing, right?
See, one of the reasons I’m so deep into these topics is because when I began asking, How do you get what you want?
I had no clue what I was looking for.
People say, you’ve gotta have goals.
OK. Great, but what if you don’t know what you want?
And once you’ve got goals, how do you make them happen?
You’ve just gotta keep working at it.
Real helpful, thanks…
I wanted a method.
A simple and powerful approach I could put to work every day in getting what you want.
On Thanksgiving we went around the table and talked about what each of us are most thankful for.
Everyone had lots of good stuff to say.
I shared some things that were on my mind, but afterwards I realized I was missing something big.
Actually, it was more like I was missing many small things.
I hope you too had a happy Thanksgiving.
Or if you’re in another part of the world, just a happy Thursday!
Thanksgiving here in America is a special holiday.
Not just an American tradition.
But there’s something special about giving thanks, isn’t there?
Whether it was Thanksgiving or just Thursday where you are, what is thanks-worthy for you?
What do you most give thanks for?
Was a question that started all this for me.
It seemed such a strange question at the time.
Before, I thought I knew the answer.
But when I started thinking differently, it wasn’t like a bolt of lightning, some epiphany.
More like over time my brain kept coming back to my question…
What really matters to you?
What’s your life about?
Is this what you dreamed it would be?
What you want it to be?
Who you want to be?
Do you even know?
Back when I started asking these questions I had no clue.
And even less clue where it would lead me.
That’s right…
An awful, debilitating disease that so many kids are born with.
There is nothing we can do about it other than jack them up on speed.
That’s the ONLY solution our medical profession prescribes.
Of bad thinking.
The mind at dis-ease.
Swinging around like a monkey in the trees, unable to focus on one thing.
Well, all but some things…
How many kids who suffer this awful dis-ease struggle to focus on video games?
Or watching TV?
Or doing something engaging and fun?
You’ve just gotta work harder.
Hustle, hustle, hustle.
Grind, grind, grind.
No, it’s not just about working harder, it’s about working smarter…
Ugh, whatever.
We’ve heard it all before.
To work harder?
To work smarter?
And you’re still not winning, what do you do?
That was the problem I faced.
Working hard is easy for me.
100 hours a week, whatever.
I’ve worked 7 days since I was 16.
Working smarter. Duh!
But what if it’s still not enough?
Over time it becomes more obvious to me where we often get stuck.
It’s in the small steps.
Is this the case for you?
That there’s something you’re looking to do.
Like prepare for a meeting.
Make a job change.
Even just get done something small.
You have a good idea of what to do.
But there’s some small step that gets in the way?
A friend is looking to make a massive career leap.
In many ways he knows what to do.
He’s got a pretty good sense of the opportunities he’s targeting.
Has some inroads.
Yet as he said to me last week in two months he’s failed to make any real progress.
It wasn’t that he didn’t have a handful of things to do in moving forward.
Something small was blocking him.
My best learnings on the mind are called Intel 1-4.
I can’t say where I got this intel, only that these are the most important commandments I follow.
Intel 3 describes the endless cycle of thinking and doing that keeps humanity stuck on the treadmill.
As you see in the diagram, this cause and effect circle jerk goes—
Hence, if we succeed in changing our energy, our thinking changes.
But, as tends to be the case, ultimately the thinking machine reverts back to its energetic set-point.
And so we go…
Hmm, is it wrong for me to use that headline after the CEO of McDonald’s just got fired for McLovin?
I guess it’s all about context, right?
A wise mentor at Goldman once taught me you’ve gotta be careful how much lovin’ you do in the workplace.
At least with other employees.
But is there any limit to how much you should be lovin’ your job?
Too few of us adults seem to be lovin’ it.
A kid laughs some 400 times a day, when us oh so serious adults are somewhere around 12.
Even many adults who are doing what they love.
Having reached the highest levels of business, achieved ridiculous success…
How many are lovin’ it?
After a first meeting with a new client she found herself smiling, beaming, walking the streets of Manhattan.
People kept looking at her, as if to say, what are you so happy about?
Nothing. Nothing had changed.
She’d simply unlocked an awesome feeling and was lovin’ it.
A girl can’t dream anymore.
How many young girls dream to be a princess?
To be swept off her feet by a ginger prince charming?
Only to discover as Meghan Markle has…
I’d say she’s looked pretty unhappy since she woke from the first kiss.
No surprise; his Mum was too.
Like Cinderella, there’s lots of baggage that comes with putting on that slipper.
Today not even a princess can fly private without the social justice warriors slaying you.
Your royal family out-PC’ing you flying discount coach.
No princess dreams of flying in the back of the bus, do they?
Sadly it seems, not even reaching the peak of human society is all it’s cracked up to be.
The Rocky Song, Gonna Fly Now, has only a few lyrics—
Getting strong now
It’s so hard now
Trying hard now
Getting strong now
Do you see what’s implied in this?
Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger—
Work it harder
Make it better
Do it faster
Makes us stronger
See it here again?
What’s implied is that getting strong is a result of what we do.
We work it harder, make it better, do it faster…
This makes us stronger.
I’ve been studying for a competition.
It has the type of questions that require simple memorized answers like—
What year did the Yankees win their first world series?
“Gnome” is my answer.
In a system I learned nearly 2 decades ago for quickly memorizing numbers.
You turn the numerals into letters and then words that you associate to the content.
2 being N. 3 being M.
It’s a phonetic system, so the vowels are silent as is the “G.”
To link the number to the question, I see a Yankees player beating the heck out of a garden gnome.
You could do this a million different ways, and ultimately, the more “memorable,” the more it sticks in your brain.
I haven’t done this type of memorizing for years.
Nor used this memory technique so deliberately.
But it’s still stuck in my brain.
Our lives are full of ups and downs, aren’t they?
Sometimes things feel as good as they can be.
Other times, well, life can feel real hard, can’t it?
As the Buddha put it, life is suffering.
These bodies and minds we’re born into, deteriorate.
Respond to every drop, curve our roller coaster world goes into.
Yet tossed around on the surface of the ocean, we can still remember the calm deep that lays beneath.
Twirling round with this familiar parable
Spinning, weaving round each new experience
Recognize this as a holy gift and celebrate this chance to be alive and breathing
The chance to be alive and breathing
Point being…
No matter what life tosses at us, we have this one chance to experience each moment.
And depending on your beliefs, something far deeper beyond.
Headline—”Democrats See Weak Spots in 2020.”
They’re only just seeing that?
I pay as much attention to politics as a headline that flashes across the TV I see on the ab bench at the gym.
I’ve never watched any of the candidates speak…
Just from their t-shirts and headlines it’s obvious they lack winning campaigns.
But everyone knew that, right?
When the 2020 Democratic presidential contest kicked off earlier this year, the massive field was hailed as the most diverse in history, with candidates who spanned the ideological spectrum and offered enough in a broad buffet of options to entice any voter. But after 10 months of campaigning and 15 hours of nationally televised debates, another emotion is rising: anxiety.
Seriously?
Did anyone ever see the stacked Democratic field full of contenders?
Everyone I’ve talked to on the left and right saw 20 odd distractions, with 2, maybe 3 candidates.
As I wrote before I got bored of myself on it—No Hope. No Choice. No Fun
It’s a bizarre way for a team to go after the championship.
And with all them attacking each other, so not fun for a party.
But in all fairness the shallow field is just like 2016.
Back then it was a few others I bet you can’t name, with a distant Bernie and Hillary the only choice.
Better now…
They’re the only lyrics worth me citing from Post Malone’s track Better Now.
As you know I only use lyrics about personal development.
When his song deteriorates into the typical love you girl pop.
If I were writing for Post I’d say, man you can keep getting better now.
Coz, well, who wants to be…
Worse now…
None of us want to sing along to that, do we?
No parent has a bumper sticker—My kid failed 4th grade.
Or My son was dropped from the synchronized swimming team.
No adult brags—I’m into personal stagnation, operating at a fraction of my potential.
No one proudly posts a picture on LinkedIn with their little glass award for worst performer in the company.
Everyone likes to sing how they’re better now.
But how many of us actually are?