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February 18 - April 30, 2024
Whether you work for yourself or work for a company, giving your customers or your boss an incredible return on their investment is the key to building your personal wealth.
Each of us has to wake up in the morning and give people a return on the time, energy, and money they entrust to us. This is the secret to success. If you want to succeed in work, love, friendship, and life, give the people around you a great return on whatever it is they invest in you.
If we don’t have good character, we are going to fail in business and in life. And we will never become value-driven professionals.
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Value-driven professionals see themselves as an economic product on the open market.
How do most successful people view themselves? They view themselves as an economic product on the open market and, as mentioned in the introduction, they are obsessed with getting people a strong return on the investment made in them.
A dream team member for any employer is a team member who actively tries to get their boss a 5X or greater return on their investment.
how do we become ridiculously successful? By making other people absurdly successful!
In his book High Output Management, Andrew Grove, former CEO at Intel, said, “As a general rule, you have to accept that no matter where you work, you are not an employee—you are in a business with one employee: yourself. You are in competition with millions of similar businesses. There are millions of others all over the world, picking up the pace, capable of doing the same work that you can do and perhaps more eager to do it.”
the difference between being a victim and a hero is that a victim lies down while a hero rises up and succeeds against all challenges and oppressors.
Victims do not lead the charge into the fight. Victims do not rescue others. Victims do not gain strength and overcome their captor. Only heroes do these things.
A value-driven professional sees themself as a hero on a mission, not a victim.
A value-driven professional knows how to de-escalate drama.
The better you are at keeping your cool and helping others around you keep their cool, the more respected you will be and the more you will be chosen to move up.
We respect people who react a little under, not over, the level of drama a situation deserves. We trust people who can remain calm and de-escalate drama so that crucial energy needed to deal with a truly important situation is not wasted.
A crucial question to ask during a dramatic situation is this: How would a calm and calculated person handle this situation?
A value-driven professional knows feedback is a gift.
Those who can accept feedback from trusted mentors and friends are able to improve upon their social and professional abilities. Many of the world’s most successful people have established a routine in which they get feedback from their peers.
To establish a feedback loop in your life, consider these ideas: 1.Choose people who have your best interests at heart. 2.Schedule meetings in a repeating routine—every quarter or every month. 3.Establish a routine set of questions: Have you seen me act unprofessionally? Have you noticed that I’ve been missing something? What am I doing that I can improve upon? The honest observations of your trusted friends are the nutrients that will help grow your professional muscles. After they offer feedback, ask them if they are leaving anything out. Perhaps there is something you have missed completely
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A value-driven professional knows the right way to engage in conflict.
manager’s primary job is to navigate conflict. Whether they’re talking to an unhappy customer, letting go of an underperforming employee, reporting less-than-favorable data, or confronting a competitor, conflict and success go hand in hand. If you avoid conflict, you will not achieve success.
A value-driven professional wants to be trusted and respected more than they want to be liked.
Clear expectations. A value-driven leader focuses on the big picture, letting their team know where the company or division is going.
Accountability. Is Amy in charge of turning in inventory reports every month? Is Brad expected to make fifteen sales calls per day? Let them know and keep them accountable in a daily stand-up meeting.
Rewards for good performance. Once you explain the big picture and set clear individual expectations, you’ll want to affirm the team is doing a good job and challenge and support them to close performance gaps.
When you set clear expectations, provide accountability for those expectations, and reward good performances, your team will thrive.
value-driven professional has a bias toward action.
Successful people make real things happen in the real world. They do not let their best life get stuck in their imaginations.
As you attempt to build your company or your career, know that you can beat just about anybody in the marketplace as long as you wake up every day and take action.
A value-driven professional does not choose to be confused.
what masquerades as confusion is often our desire to avoid conflict and our unwillingness to take action.
I’ve found there are usually one of three reasons I am choosing to be confused: 1.I’m people pleasing. I worry about whether or not other people will still like me if I do what I know I need to do. 2.I’ll lose face. I am worried about what other people (often strangers) will think of me if I do the right thing. 3.Fear. I fear the financial or physical consequences of doing the right thing.
A value-driven professional is relentlessly optimistic.
By staying relentlessly optimistic, you dramatically increase the chances that at some point you will succeed.
Nothing will cost you more in life than a predetermined belief that things aren’t going to work out. Life is a game of statistics. There are no guarantees, but the more positive effort you put in, the more likely you will be to win.
A value-driven professional has a growth mindset.
To transform from a fixed mindset into a growth mindset, Dweck recommends seeing the world differently in five distinct categories: 1.Challenges. We must embrace challenges rather than avoid them. 2.Obstacles. We must persist through obstacles rather than give up. 3.Effort. We must see effort as a path to mastery rather than as a fruitless endeavor. 4.Criticism. We must learn from criticism rather than ignoring useful feedback. 5.Success of others. We must be inspired by the success of others rather than feeling threatened.
here is leadership in a nutshell: 1.Invite a team into a story. 2.Explain why the story matters. 3.Give every team member a role to play in the story. The number one job of a leader is to wake up every morning, point to the horizon, and let everybody on the team know where the organization is going. The number two job of a leader is to explain, in clear and simple terms, why the story of going to and arriving at that specific destination matters. The number three job of a leader is to analyze the skills and abilities of each team member and find them an important role to play in that story.
Great leaders become great because their mission makes them great. There are no exceptions.
A leader who can help a team define a mission and who can remind that team daily of what the mission is and why it matters is a valuable gift to their organization.
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Check out these videos to help with the exercise of creating a mission
Here is a formula for a good, short mission statement: We will accomplish _____________ by ____________ because of ___________. Here are some examples: A plumbing company: We will service ten thousand customers within the next five years because everybody deserves plumbing that works and service that makes them feel valued. A software company: Our software will run on half the computers in America by 2029 because nobody should have to suffer a software interface that confuses them.
we created the Hero on a Mission Planner. Because you got this book, you can get one for free at HeroOnaMission.com.
Go to the website and get this planner. Check it out.
A productive professional starts the day with reflection.
The question is this: If this were the second time I were living this day, what would I do differently?
I’ve met very few high-impact people who do not journal or in some way take time to reflect. It’s by reflecting that we edit our actions and design our lives. Those who do not reflect neither edit nor design—they simply respond. The sad truth about this reality is their lives are still being designed—they’re just being designed by outside forces that do not have their best interests at heart.
Here’s Today’s Business Made Simple Tip of the Day Create a routine of reflection by asking yourself the morning question: If I were living this day for the second time around, what would I do differently?
A value-driven professional knows how to prioritize their highest return opportunity. What’s the most important thing you can do today?
Here’s Today’s Business Made Simple Tip of the Day Every day make two task lists. List three items that are your highest return opportunities and then create a separate list of tasks that are not as important as your three highest priorities.
A value-driven professional knows to prioritize their important work for the morning. Everybody’s brain works a little bit differently, but for most people, especially people over twenty-five, their best work gets done in the morning.
