Skills

How To Learn A New Skill—And Actually Master It

A lack of necessary skills is almost always the gap between idea and execution.

You’ve surely experienced the frustration that happens when you see an opportunity in your life, but lack the knowledge to act on it. We all have. You know you deserve to make more money, but you don’t know how to negotiate. You have a genius idea for a business, but you don’t know how to sell.

If you’ve ever tried to research and learn a new skill, you’ve run into two schools of thought:

The 10,000 hour rule. This is the old school belief that to master a skill, you need to dedicate 10,000 hours to learning and perfecting it.

The “Just Enough” method. This is particularly popular with online coaches. The idea is that you don’t have to be an expert, you have to learn “just enough” to be functional.

Both these schools have their merits, but neither are a complete solution.

If you try to gain 10,000 hours of negotiating experience before asking them to show you the money, you’ll be a decade older with nothing to show for it.

If you learn just enough to negotiate a slight raise now, you might get what you’re looking for in the short-term, but at every level you’ll still fail to earn what you’re worth.

I teach my clients a system for building skills that enables them to rapidly—within days or weeks —reach a high level of competence (relying on the 80/20 Principle), while at the same time taking the daily actions that build to mastery over time.

How do you get enough skill to be dangerous and get what you want now, and keep becoming more dangerous over time?

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How To Deal With Anxiety – And Use It To Your Advantage

Everyone deals with anxiety—to one degree or another.

Some of us squash it down, some of us develop coping strategies, but nonetheless all of us know that gnawing feeling in the pit of our stomachs. That sense that things could go wrong.

It’s exhausting. It takes away from the quality of your work, and more importantly, the quality of your life. You wake up on days you should be excited with a sense of dread, and it wears at you.

But anxiety doesn’t need to be your foe. In fact, you can use the same mechanisms that cause anxiety to drive you towards what you want. The brain functions that cause anxiety are incredibly powerful, you just have to know how to use them.

I train my clients not on how to cope with anxiety, but on how to use it to get what they want.

It all starts with understanding where anxiety comes from.

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Michael Phelps: What Do You See?

A lot of things.

A winner. A champ. A man 100% dedicated to his craft, and his goals.

Yet, there’s something more specific that you observe: A machine. A purpose-built machine. A body that is built for getting through water.

Like we build boats and submarines, Phelps has crafted his body for optimally powering through water.

You see the same with other top athletes in the Games.

None of them look “normal.” Their bodies are sculpted for their unique purpose.

Think about a cyclist. Lanky frame. Rake-thin arms. Flat chest. HUGE legs. A body that is built for pushing a bicycle, fast.

A pole vaulter has built her body for launching and slithering over the pole. A shot putter has built a mass for pushing a heavy ball far from the body. A gymnast, well, is there a more beautifully crafted human machine?

Think about that for a moment.

What does it take to build the world’s greatest machine for competing at this highest level?

Of course it takes absolute dedication, but it also takes something more.

It takes knowing how you must craft the machine if you are to be standing in the center podium with gold slung around your neck.

That’s not only true in the Olympics, but in every career.

If you’re a banker, no client cares about the size of your pecs, but your skillfulness in getting deals done is highly valued.

If you’re a lawyer, it’s irrelevant how far you can push a heavy ball, but that machine must push and push for its clients.

If you’re a consultant, you’re not valued for your ability to jump high, but to provide unique and valuable insights.

While few people will train themselves to be the equivalent of an Olympic-level consultant or lawyer or banker, a master of his or her craft is constantly tuning the machine.

They don’t do this just to win, but to compete.

They don’t do this because it’s their “job,” but because of how it feels to show up as your best.

To Grow Your Business: Grow

Coming out of a meeting with a business associate he met some four years ago, my client observed that he was still in the same place.

When they first met, my client’s business, having just gotten started, was less than half the size of the other guy’s, but today he is more than three times his size.

When I asked my client what had made the most difference, he said: “Simple. We keep winning because we keep getting better at everything.”

“We keep getting better at our processes, better at managing our teams, better at marketing, better at selling, my mindset is better, my skills are better, and hence our business keeps getting better,” he said.

There’s not a lot of mystery to success.

The willingness to obsessively keep the eye on the ball and advance it every day will get you most of the way, but the surefire way to crush your goals is to keep outgrowing them.

Sure, there’s some probability that you do nothing right and keep winning, or that you do everything right and end up failing, but, generally, if you’re getting better, you should keep getting better results.

But, that doesn’t happen haphazardly.

You don’t improve at golf by showing up and hitting balls, but by swinging the club better each time. It’s not about one swing being better than the last, but building a system of continuous improvement to keep improving your swing over time.

Doing this, you must constantly analyze your performance, tweak your actions, methodically practice, and seek new ways to grow and improve.

Approaching your business or career the same way, you want to get clear on ways you can improve, develop the metrics to measure your performance, and then build the systematic practices for consistently driving better actions and results.

Growing this way, you are surely more likely to outgrow your competitors, but that’s not the only reward.

As my client put it: “It’s not that my business has outgrown his, but I’ve grown, and that’s the greatest reward.”

What I missed on Squawk Box

A reason I wrote the Trump book is that it fits my mission to demystify success. Truth is, losers lose for good reason, and winners win because they develop masterful strategy and skills.

On Squawk Box this week, we discussed some of Trump’s winning skills, but we had no time to cover something more important: How do YOU build winning skills?

How Do You Win?

A problem for most of us is that neither in school, nor in our workplaces, are we taught the skills we need to win, and unfortunately, most people lose.

Most will succeed enough to hold onto their jobs, but leaders are readers, and those with the best skills will keep ascending.

A challenge for all of us is, even if we can make the time to learn skills, how do you quickly, efficiently, and deeply do it?

Consider if you decided to improve your skills of influence, how do you go about it?

As a start, you might pick up Robert Cialdini’s ground-breaking book, Influence, but how do you go beyond capturing a few notes or dog-earing a few pages, to actually, building skills that you can use to win?

The Process of Learning

My solution is “The Process of Learning,” which happens in three steps:

1. Accumulate Knowledge: The first step to all learning is you must harness knowledge, which you might do through classes, books, teachers, or otherwise. Now, here’s the trick to this: It’s not about quantity but quality.

You don’t need to read hundreds of books on influence, but instead, find 1-3 books that you dedicate yourself to mastering, just like you did with a textbook in school.

2. Review: We all know that the secret to learning is repetition. People often say to me, “I read that book,” and I ask them, “How are you every day using what you learned?” To convert knowledge into skills, like you did by creating study notes for exams in school, you want a methodical way to review your learning.

I suggest my clients use Mind Maps, and Daily Exercises, which might be as simple as a few reminders in Evernote, or a handful of organized pages in Word.

3. Practice, Practice, Practice: Aristotle said, “What we have to learn to do, we learn by doing,” and we all know that practice builds skills. As I say on Squawk Box, a reason Trump is an unstoppable influencer, is that, for some 40+ years, he has been practicing and mastering these skills.

You can do the same. The wonderful thing about training your skills of influence is that, you are, literally, always influencing. At home with your spouse and kids, at work, and everywhere you interact with people, you can be practicing mastering influence.

And, every skill of personal development is the same!

the DEEPEST influence

On top of a yellow cab, I saw a great Uber-busting commercial.

Since Uber blew up, it has decimated the taxi and black car businesses and a number of competitors have tried to fight back.

A common advertisement you see attempts to market against Uber’s “surge pricing,” which is of course designed to appeal to your bottom line.

It is a decent ploy, but it’s weak influence, given it’s only an occasional pain and many Uber customers are less price sensitive anyways.

The commercial I saw today—”Real New Yorkers Ride Yellow”—emblazoned in yellow LED on top of a cab was much better, as it appeals to something deep in each of us.

That is, our sense of IDENTITY.

This slogan challenges you to answer, “Are you are a real New Yorker?”

And because real New Yorkers tend to be damn parochial, and tourists too want to do what real New Yorkers do, the slogan provokes you.

By leveraging their influence against your identity—known as identity-level influence—they are more likely to hit you on your real bottom line.

Here’s two ways a couple of my clients have recently used this device.

With an employee whom my client wants to “step up” into a larger role, he said:

1. I know, [name], you already see yourself as playing a much bigger role here.

2. And it’s obvious that in many ways you are already playing that role.

3. Being a leader of the business, it seems to me that you would also have a lot of impact by doing [X, Y, Z].

Another client, trying to get his three year-old son to go to bed on his own, said:

1. You are a big boy now, right?

2. And big boys need to get their sleep, don’t they?

3. By going to bed on time, aren’t you being a big boy?

Here you see two different delivery mechanisms (the first using commands, the second using questions to create a “Yes set”) using the same device, deeply hooking their influence into that person’s sense of identity.

Try it for your yourself. And, on yourself…

Killer Influence: Slap Labels on People

As this article in the New York Times details, it’s no secret that one way Donald Trump destroyed his rivals was by slapping labels on them that changed the way voters perceived them.

The most obvious, and most devastating example, was the way Trump eviscerated Jeb by branding him, “Low Energy.”

This, “linguistic kill shot,” as Scott Adams described in his video on ReasonTV was incredibly effective, not only because of the way it led voters to perceive Jeb, but more importantly, by the way it made Jeb perceive himself.

I would bet that until Trump slapped that label on him, Jeb had never perceived himself as low energy. Yet, the mere branding of this idea forced him to confront it, and even in vehemently denying it, the label became more “real” in his mind.

While it’s fascinating to observe how Trump has “anchored” his rivals in this way, what’s far more interesting to me is how you can use the same idea for yourself.

Although you might, I’m not suggesting that you, like Trump, slap negative labels on people in order to bring them down, but instead that you use positive labels to build up yourself and other people.

Often, especially with people who I only meet with once, I “program” them with a label that is designed to change how they perceive themselves.

Installing this anchor like a software upgrade, I typically brand them with their name, and then a 2.0 extension, such as “Kevin2.0.”

In doing this, I’m giving them a new identity to live up to, and helping them see their new learnings not just as random ideas, but as an upgrade to who they used to be.

You can do the same with yourself too.

After you make a leap in your career or life, slap a label on it. Similarly, if you want to energize yourself, label yourself “High Energy” or some other notion that gets you fired up, like Marshawn Lynch’s, “Beast Mode.”

It’s also worth noting that you can slap labels on people that might seem offensive, but that actually motivate them in positive ways.

For instance, someone who is heavily overweight might be offended if you started branding them “lazy bones,” but it still might motivate them to exercise.

While many people have whined about the often insulting labels that Trump has slapped on his rivals, most of them have missed the fact that Trump has done it because it works!

Try it for yourself.

Why I wrote a book on TRUMP

When I tell people that I wrote a book on Donald Trump, I receive one of two predictable responses.

Some people cry out something like, “What? Why on earth would you write a book about ‘that man?'” Most others have a less visceral reaction, but almost everyone wants to know, what is it about?

It is about WINNING.

Truth is, politics is not a sport I enjoy following, nor have I ever followed Donald. I am no Trump “groupie,” I have never watched his TV show, and over the years I’ve paid scant attention to the man.

But, on August 6, 2015, that changed.

Sitting amongst a group of political-types, watching the first debate in Cleveland Ohio, Donald did something wizardly that caught my attention.

Not one to start with a soft ball, in the first question served to this man with almost zero political experience, Megyn Kelly asked Trump That Question:

“You’ve called women you don’t like fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals…How will you answer the charge…that you are part of the war on women?”

Right out of the gates, confronted immediately with a campaign-busting question, what did Trump do?

First, controlling the “frame,” he interrupted the question with a crowd-roaring response, “Only Rosie O’Donnell,” cutting Kelly’s frame down to size.

In this invisible move, Donald took Kelly’s accusation of how he treats women and asserted his frame: it was just one woman (while gesturing with his right index finger).

While, to most observers this floats by, in three words Trump de-clawed the question, brought the crowd onto his side, and began his process of moving towards his messaging.

Next, after Kelly had finished her question, Trump invoked another masterful move:

“The big problem this country has is being politically correct.” While doing this, he gestures in a big fashion, accentuating the “big problem.”

Here, Donald reframed the problem away from his comments about women, to one of his key campaign messages, the problem of political correctness.

If Donald had only made those two moves, I would have been impressed, but Donald was just getting started:

“I don’t have time for total political correctness and, quite frankly, this country doesn’t either. We don’t win anymore… This country is in big trouble… We lose to China, we lose to Mexico.”

Here, Donald repeated and deepened the problem of political correctness before redirecting us to the real problem, one of his rally cries: “We don’t win anymore.”

Then, finally, from here, Donald moved us toward his solution:

“We need strength, we need energy and we need brain in this country to turn it around.”

In all, in the span of one minute, Donald maneuvered from the biting accusation against him and his comments about women to two of his campaign messages.

While many politicians, pundits, and observers remain dumbfounded by Donald and are desperately trying to rationalize how he has easily demolished a once-crowded Republican field, from my vantage point the answer is obvious.

Donald is a highly skilled winner. And, more importantly in this game we call an election, he is a wizard of influence.

My book is not about politics or Donald. It is about the underlying game of politics, mass influence, and a man with a wizardly approach to winning.

Trump is a highly skilled winner!

After reading our last newsletter, an annoyed friend wrote me, “What?? How can you say that Trump is a highly skilled winner? What makes you think that?”

Um, how about the fact that he has absolutely annihilated the entire GOP field?

And the fact that when he started his campaign some nine months ago, he was mocked and scorned, The Huffington Post branded him a “sideshow,” bets were on that he would be destroyed by battle-hardened politicians like Jeb, but look at what happened.

By seemingly just being Trump, he has mowed down the field, including easily dispatching Jeb Bush.

Whether you love him or want to throw him from the top of his gold tower, you would have to be one-eyed (and blind) to deny that he is masterful at winning.

Now, of course, many observers are 🙂

Telling themselves that Trump is merely inciting angry voters, or labeling him a racist, bigot, or whatnot, they are completely missing the game.

Falling into what I call the “Trump trap,” talking about what he is saying, they fail to see what he is doing.

Like the many people who still believe that the 2008 recession and credit crisis was the source of our problems, they fail to look for the underlying cause (hence, we keep making the same mistakes).

And those folks who do the same with Trump will never learn the lesson.

They will keep going through life thinking that it’s a game of chance, rather than a game of skill. And they will keep losing.

The fact is, Donald is winning because he is a highly skilled winner, particularly at this type of game.

Think of it this way.

In a game of selling, marketing, branding, and influence, who would you expect to win, Ben Carson or Donald Trump?

Similarly, in a popularity contest where you were forced to choose the most charismatic and engaging leader, would you expect Jeb to best Trump?

Of course not.

The problem for Donald’s rivals and many observers is that they have failed to properly define the game.

They still think that elections are won on politics, when it should be obvious that an election is a game of influence, and a wizard of influence should win every time.

How do they think Obama won?

"No Wonder Your Life Is Falling Apart"

The other day a CEO said to me, “I’m not into that personal development stuff.”

“No wonder your life is falling apart,” I replied.

Shocked, he fired back, “What do you mean?”

“Exactly what I said,” I stated. “You asked my client to introduce us because your business is stalled, you are living in worry, your marriage is suffering, you fear your life is falling apart, but it’s not about your business. It is about you.”

Now I had his attention.

Almost every single human on the planet wants more.

We want more success in our careers, more money in the bank, more love at home, more time to do what we want, and so on.

But how many of us are “earning it?”

Every year in their careers many people expect to keep getting paid more and promoted, yet how are they every day becoming more valuable?

Business people, like my client’s friend, expect their businesses to keep growing, yet how are they getting better at driving that growth?

Our so-called leaders expect our economy to keep getting better yet by most standards—education, waistlines, financial, etc.—we keep getting worse.

Why should anything get better if you aren’t? If you’re not learning. If you’re not growing. If you’re not investing in yourself. If you’re not getting better, why should your life?

A professional athlete knows that if they train less they will get worse results.

Someone on a diet knows that if they eat worse they will get fatter.

A kid in school knows that if they don’t study they will fail.

How is life any different?

If you want a better career, life, marriage, whatever, get better!

Who Wants to Get WORSE?

Some twenty-five years ago when I got serious about my grades in school, I thought success was easy.

If you had told me to read a book on it, I would have told you all I needed to know— Work at it all the time.

Back then my grades were all that mattered to transforming my life, and I conditioned myself to believe that if I wasn’t studying I was putting my future in jeopardy.

That’ll get you moving.

Throwing Hours At It

It didn’t feel great but I got top grades and I got a top job because I worked at it all…of…the…time.

Back then I just threw hours at the problem. I was a hammer, brute force was my tool.

Today I would pick up different tools.

What “Truly” Drives Success?

My grades were mostly exam-based so “success” was contingent on my ability to read and memorize mostly useless information for regurgitation under exam conditions.

For me, that meant countless hours of reading and note taking through the semester, and then exam preparation and review beginning even months ahead of exams.

Back then I had no idea that you can easily train yourself to read fast, nor that you can learn to easily and quickly memorize lists and ideas.

These are basic tools, but I had no idea they existed, when they should be the first thing that you learn in school…

Getting Better Every Day

When I got into personal development it was because I wanted to find better ways to get what I wanted in my career, but quickly it overtook my life.

Once I started, I didn’t know how to not do it anymore.

Reading faster, memorizing lists, whatever. That’s all old hat to me. Once I got deep into learning more skills and making my life better and better, it just became how I live.

I couldn’t imagine not getting better every day.

That’s like skiing, and trying to get worse.

How is Trump Winning?

Since his YUGE campaign launched, I’ve been paying careful attention to Mr. Trump.

Despite all of the obvious backlash and his tendency to put his foot in other people’s mouths, all he does is win, win, win…

And like he has done with Jeb and every GOP candidate, I can see him easily dismantling Hillary (although that might not translate into swing votes).

With one of my political clients I’ve done a lot of work on The Donald, and I wanted to share with you five key lessons you can use from his winning formula:

1. Stay on point: He started clearly: “We don’t win anymore” and “Make America Great Again.” Then his message drifted, but after Iowa, in his closing remarks in New Hampshire he went right back to it—”If I am elected president we will win and we will win and we will win.” Who doesn’t want to win?

And just like Barack Obama, he doesn’t make the patently obvious mistake of thinking that elections are won on policy details…

Lesson 1: Know what leads you to win and stick to it.

2. Be more skilled: Fact is, it’s a game of influence and he’s better at it. Take Cruz, he’s incredibly eloquent but like Romney he fails to use language that GRABS people. If you go deep into what led Barack Obama to victory you see a highly methodical and skilled influencer, all the way down to the specific words he used in each district. Donald is a master wizard of manipulation: Short sentences. Powerful imagery. Emotionally provocative. He’s an expert at stealing attention (positive and negative) and using it to drive his message.

Not to mention, go back to that first question in the first debate and watch him annihilate with three words a question that would end most candidates.

Lesson 2: Know what skills lead you to win and master them!

3. Powerful messaging: The Donald is always optimistic all of the time. He doesn’t get dragged into problems but quickly moves to solutions using what I call The Donald Four-step: 1. State the problem: We don’t win anymore. 2. Go deeper into it: We don’t win in the military. 3. Get optimistic about the solution: We will support our troops and help them win. 4. Exit frame to how America will be great again.

And of course he constantly comes back to his programming anchors: “We Don’t Win Anymore,” “Make America Great Again,” and anything related to winning, like “We will have so much winning you may get bored of winning.” Contrast that to Hillary’s self-centered messaging: “I’m with her” and “Make Herstory.” Remember Dale Carnegie 101, appeal to self-interest…

Lesson 3: To lead, drive a powerful and seductive message.

4. Keep it real: Bernie Sanders got a lot of traction because we all feel the passion behind his wild ideas. With him and Trump you see people fighting for what they truly believe, and that’s infectious. Trump speaks his mind. He changes his opinions (like we all do). He says things many of us think but few say (e.g. we debate rights of terrorists while they behead). He’s able to sound more convincing making stuff up than others sound highly scripted (e.g. the border guard he spoke to…).

Not all good qualities for a president, but relative to the carefully scripted Washington-types you think you are seeing the real Donald.

Lesson 4: Be yourself and speak your truth.

5. Play the part: He might say things that are far from presidential, but watch him in the center of the stage, chin in the air, gripping the lectern, never looking sideways when his rivals are going after him, as if to say, I’m beyond this.

Wearing his customary scowl and smirk, he doesn’t look like a boy who has gotten his shot on the big stage trying to impress the audience, but a man who is there to speak his mind and win.

Lesson 5: Don’t just be yourself, be the version of you that wins!

Shouldn't YOU be Happy by Now?

Imagine after years of striving you finally move into your dream home. How amazing would you feel?

What about if you made a ton of money all in one go, like winning the lottery. How happy would you be?

If you’re like my cousin’s friend, you’ll be just as miserable as you were before.

Why? It’s obvious, right?

We all know that money and stuff doesn’t make you happy, but why?

The technical answer is—this is known as a sequential incongruity.

The logical left hemisphere of your brain believes that if X happens then you will feel good, but unfortunately the rest of your brain doesn’t think this way.

It’s more like—you dream to get something, then you get it, then you adapt to it, and then you feel how you did before.

We have all experienced this psychological adaption, but there’s a simpler answer to my cousin’s friend’s problem.

Money and stuff don’t make you happy because nothing makes you happy.

The only thing that can make you happy is you!

And while most people will never accept this (hence their happiness is contingent on bad things not happening), students of the mind know that happiness has little to do with what you have or don’t have or what is or isn’t going on in your life.

We know that happiness is mostly a matter of choice and your skillfulness at interacting with your thoughts and feelings.

Believe me when I say that I didn’t come out of the womb with this knowledge, but for fifteen years I’ve been learning and training these skills for myself.

In fact it has taken me so much research and effort to master these ideas that I am writing a book on being happier, better, and becoming who you choose to be.

While over time I will share more ideas with you, for now I will leave you with these five questions for unlocking more happiness right now:

1. If what you are doing isn’t making you happy, what are you willing to change?

2. If you could change one way of thinking and one behavior that will most improve your happiness, what are they?

3. What has held you back from making these changes already?

4. What will get you to make these changes now?

5. How do you imagine yourself joyously happier having already made these changes?

talent is OVERRATED…

That’s the conclusion from the research on excellence, and it is certainly my experience.

Of course a child piano prodigy has a higher probability of making an excellent concert pianist, but her talent is wasted without any effort…

Consider that Tiger Woods was born with the natural talent to swing a golf club, yet a lifetime of expertly training is what made him exceptional.

Look at Tom Brady.

Sure, he’s a talented guy, but observe the way he prepares and you see why he is one of the best that has ever played the game.

Now, that’s not to suggest that excellence is just a matter of how “hard” you work at it.

In perhaps the most famous study on human excellence, Dr. Daniel Chambliss spent eighteen months living with Olympic-level swimmers determining what separates the fastest from the faster.

In his paper, The Mundanity of Excellence published in Sociological Theory in 1989, Dr. Chambliss makes a number of striking conclusions.

As he writes, “Excellence in competitive swimming is achieved through qualitative differentiation, not through quantitative increases in activity.”

Said differently, excellence has less to do with the hours that you throw at a task (sorry for those of you who buy Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule…) and more to do with the small improvements in quality that you make daily.

As the good doctor writes, “Superlative performance is really a confluence of dozens of small skills or activities…which have been carefully drilled into habit.”

So you see, excellence is not about what you are born with or even what you do with it, but how you are getting better and better every single day.

You can't make your own luck; You can only get better

With a client, we’ve been working on a deal for nearly a year.

It’s a tricky situation and we’ve had to navigate some twists and turns, but it keeps moving in our direction…

That’s because my client is very skillful at what he does, but also because he keeps growing and getting better.

When I spoke to him on Sunday we talked about the newsletter I sent about the Cinderella story of Arnel Pineda and his journey from Filipino obscurity to rock stardom.

“Beneath the obvious message to never stop believing in your dreams,” he said to me, “what I got from his story was the power of continuous improvement.”

We too often forget how lucky we are to have been born in first world countries.

As a poor boy growing up in the Philippines Arnel lost the genetic lottery, but although he wasn’t born with luck on his side he was imbued with something far more valuable.

Again, it wasn’t just to keep believing, and it’s unlikely Arnel was sitting at home every night “manifesting” an email from the rock band Journey inviting him to join them…

Instead he was focused on being the best he could be.

He couldn’t control whether the band Journey would ever come looking for him on YouTube, but he could control how he performed.

Every day he could tell himself that he’s just playing in small venues or he could dedicate himself to getting better and better at his craft…

Every night he could tell himself that it was only a small audience and it didn’t matter how he performed, or he could focus on delivering his best performance.

You can’t make your own luck, but when you get better you most certainly get luckier…

The Myth—that keeps people stuck

Over my fifteen years of researching and talking personal development, time and time again I have come across this myth.

Because they are unwilling to bust this myth, the vast majority of people will forever operate far within their capabilities and fail to achieve their potential…

In this short 3 minute video I discuss this myth and three EASY ways to bust it.

Can YOU answer this question?

Thursday night over drinks my friend told me that he had been watching one of my presentations and was stumped by a question.

At the beginning I asked the group—If there was one thing you could change that would make an enormous difference in your career, what would it be?

I then emphasized that the economy doesn’t count. Nor does your boss. Nor does anything else that you cannot personally change!

Really think about that. What is one thing that you can actually change?

Because that’s what matters, right?

“Too many people live their lives laboring in mediocrity, operating at a fraction of their potential, getting far less than they deserve because they are unwilling to change,” my friend said to me.

I disagreed, and parroted a line one of my teachers has drummed into me—All we are is change.

There is nothing about you that is not changing in every moment.

Your hair is growing. Your fingernails too. Whatever you last ate is being digested. In the second it takes you to read this sentence you are spawning 1,000,000 new cells.

Everything you are is change.

The distinction in this case is between what is already changing in you and the changes you must activate outside of you.

Your boss’ hair is growing too, but is that getting you more of what you want?

What can you change that will?

I’ll give you a hint. Everything you want comes from one thing—GETTING BETTER.

So, to phrase the question differently—What is one thing you can change to get better that will make an enormous difference in your career?

Adams says, "Trump is a Master WIZARD"

What has shot Donald Trump to the top of the polls? With his controversial views and vague policy, how has he far out-stripped his more experienced opponents?

In this short video prolific author and blogger, Dilbert creator Scott Adams says it comes down to “a set of skills that are so deep and so exquisite” that he might go all the way to the Oval Office.

Bang Bang

What are Donald’s Linguistic Kill Shots?

How does he get ideas like Jeb is low energy to stick, and annihilate his campaign?

What is the magic behind Trump’s windmill of words and pictures?

Adams calls Trump a master wizard, and is so convinced of his skills of persuasion that at the end of the video he says, “That’s why I’ve predicted he will probably win the presidency, based just upon skill.”

Think about the gravity of that statement—on skills alone you can win the presidency.

You Win With Skill

Sounds about right…

Better skills leads to more winning.

And I assure you, the secret covert skills Adams discusses in this video are merely the foliage at the entrance of the rabbit hole…

P.S. I think you’ll also enjoy his idea that us humans are nothing but moist robots…

Four Steps To Crush BIG goals

Personal development experts lament that few people have goals, whereas I find everyone has goals. Most merely lack a process to use them DAILY.

The not-so-secret to crushing big goals is to every day crush small goals.

A big business starts as a small business. You lose 30lbs by first losing 1lb. A book gets written one word at a time. All goals are the same way.

The problem is, if you focus too much on the big picture you lose sight of the steps you must be taking, but if you focus too much on the minutia, you lose sight of the vision.

You want an approach that enables you to move fluidly between your big picture vision and the actions that are every day moving you forward.

Here’s a four-step process for doing this every day:

1. Step into the vision. Put on your dreaming cap and think big. You don’t need to get specific, just imagine the vision for what you want. It might be ten years out or at the end of the month, just a get vision for where you are headed.

2. Ask “Why?” Powerful motivation comes through a powerful why. You would find the strength to lift a Ford F-150 if your kid was trapped underneath and all goals are driven the same way. Really feel why your goal matters to you.

3. Define today’s goal. A book on writing tells you to forget about writing a book and write for five hours today. Whatever your vision, define the goal that today is moving you forward. My client says “One great meeting builds to one great business.”

4. Make it real. Close your eyes for a few moments and get a picture of your vision. Now see how today’s goal is moving you forward and feel what it is like to have achieved today’s goal. Then tomorrow’s and the day after, and after that, all the way to feeling yourself looking back having achieved your vision.

How does it feel? Really, how does it feel to have achieved this goal that matters so much to you? Really feel it. I mean it. Really feel it. No, really celebrate it!

Now forget about it, and simply become absorbed in what you are doing today knowing you are on your way.

Be 100X More Persuasive With This One Technique

A potent tool of persuasion is learning to install in other people certainty and doubt.

For instance, with one of my clients, a CEO whose job is principally to sell, it is imperative he is able to get sales prospects to doubt their existing solution and have more certainty as to his.

A powerful way of doing this is deliberately utilizing the inflection in your voice

Imagine you are at brunch with someone and as they reach for another doughnut you ask: “You are going to eat another doughnut?”

Ask this question aloud and you notice it will have an upward inflection at the end.

Said this way it sounds like a question that requires an answer, and you are at the least encouraging the other person to consider their choice.

On the other hand if you say to them, in a commanding tone, a flat tone like a statement: “You are going to eat another doughnut.”

It sounds more like a comment on what they are already doing, and you are likely adding more certainty to the decision they have already made. Add a chuckle and a head nod and watch their delight in you vigorously supporting their choice.

You see by simply altering your inflection you can make the other person more or less certain of their existing decision.

When my client is in a sales meeting and a prospect says to him, “I am already happy with my existing solution.”

If he responds in a certain commanding tone, “You are already happy with your existing solution,” it sounds like he is saying, “Yep, I got it.”

This will be far less persuasive than if he says, with a look of surprise, in a questioning tone with an upward inflection, “You are already happy with your existing solution?”

Boooom!

Just by changing the way he asks the question he has opened the door for the prospect to re-evaluate his decision.

At the least he has invited him to justify his choice or to think, ‘Why wouldn’t I be happy with my existing solution?’ which opens the door for my client’s sale process.

And at the most he has started the process of him doubting his existing solution and getting more certainty about my client’s.