Tag Archives: Zig Ziglar

July 4, 2021 · 3:00 am

If You Can Visualize It, You Can Do It

People who are the best at what they do, have one thing in common, no lack of self-confidence.

Visualization

Whenever successful people want to accomplish something, they go at it absolutely convinced they will achieve it. Science has shown that when we visualize achieving a goal, making it real in our minds, we enhance our performance and boost our self-confidence.

Improve Your Self-Esteem

Besides visualizing success, there are other things you can do to raise your self-esteem. For example: Reach out to others. Say nice things. Lend a helping hand.

When we help other people, we begin to feel more in control of our own lives.

Avoid Perfectionism

We all would like to be perfect. However, perfectionism often paralyzes us and can actually keep us from accomplishing our goals.

Respect Yourself

Make a list 20 reasons why you should. If you can’t think of 20, think of what people who admire you would say. (They’re right, you know.)

Your Values

Act in accordance with your own values. Choose the path that feels right for you.

Treat Yourself

Be good to yourself. Do something, just for you, that makes you feel good every day.

Challenge Yourself

Pick up an encyclopedia, or go online to Wikipedia, and read one new entry at random. Take a course at your local community college. Travel to a new place. Eat a new food.

As you meet new challenges, you gain new confidence.

Practice Being Optimistic

Fight pessimism. Think of setbacks as temporary, and one of a kind, not permanent and “complete” failures.

Don’t Take It Personally

Bad encounters often tell you more about how the other person feels at that moment in time, rather than representing a failure on your part.

Don’t Take Things So Seriously

Lighten up. Most of life’s little calamities have two sides. Try to gain a balanced perspective and you’ll bounce back more quickly from disappointments and embarrassing moments. And, people will enjoy being around you.

Finally

Practicing these positive measures will reinforce your self-worth, and increase self-esteem, which will make you more self-confident.

“Success occurs when opportunity meets preparation.”

-Zig Ziglar

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June 27, 2021 · 3:00 am

You’ve Got to Have Goals

Everyone wants to see their hard work turn into successful outcomes, so, why do some people achieve success and some do not?

The reason often comes down to one factor, lack of consistency.

Whether you’re trying to lose weight, or play an instrument or another life achievement, each of your goals requires a sustained effort. Let me share some ideas to help you sustain and focus your energies to achieve success.

Make Sure It’s Your Goal

Nothing will derail your success faster, then trying to achieve someone else’s goals for you. So, if you want to stay motivated, make sure you are the one setting the goal. When you’re excited about the goal, working to achieve it doesn’t seem like work.

Write Down Your Goals

Zig Ziglar always used to promote in his motivational and sales seminars, “You’ve got to have goals.” Sadly, about 84% of people surveyed said they didn’t have any goals.

Remember what Lewis Carroll wrote in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.”

Writing your goals down turns out to be a critical step. Of the 3% of the people who have written goals, they earn on average about ten times as much as those who don’t.

When you write down your goals, you write them into your consciousness.

Plan Your Work, Work Your Plan

To stay focused and achieve your goals, you need to have an action plan. What are each of the steps you will take to move you from where you are today to where you want to be tomorrow, next month, next year etc.

Expect that as you proceed, things that you didn’t expect, like a global pandemic, will cause you to make changes in your plan. That’s why you should write your goals in concrete, and your plans in sand.

Keep Track of Your Progress

Write down where you started and then keep a record of your actions and progress. Measuring how your changing, provides you with a valuable feedback system, keeping you focused.

Have a Support System

Read positive books. Keep a success journal. Invite people you admire to become your mentor and make you responsible to someone other than just yourself.

You want people who will encourage you to reach your goals and challenge you to set them higher than you might otherwise.

Work Toward Your Goals Daily

I’m in my 6th year of writing this blog. I’ve now written over three hundred articles. My goal was to write an article a week, not hundreds.

Make sure you break down your goals into bite sized pieces. Don’t set too many for yourself,  you can achieve almost any goal you set, but not everyone, and not all at once. So, focus on just a few until they’ve been accomplished and then make some new goals.

Celebrate Every Success

Every time you do something that takes you closer to reaching your goal, celebrate. Celebration is a positive motivational tool to help you stay focused, energized and optimistic.

Tell yourself you deserve to succeed.

Here’s to your success!

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May 24, 2020 · 3:00 am

Thank You Jason Jennings

jennings

Photo by Barbara Ries

In 1979, two major life-changing events occurred around the same time. One, I got married and two, I left the programming, operations, and on-air side of the radio business to enter radio sales. Both would change my life forever.

Before I ever set one foot on the street to sell a radio ad, my new company’s owner would send me to sales training. The trainer was Jason Jennings, and when I finished the day with him, I could not wait to get out on the street to begin selling radio advertising.

Jason William Jennings

Jason was born on May 31, 1952 in Ishpeming, Michigan. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Detroit. His politics back then were listed as Republican and his religion Lutheran.

I didn’t realize that when I first met Jason to undergo radio sales training, we were the same age, 27. He was so self-assured, confident and in total command of the room. He told everyone to take off their wrist watches and be prepared to take notes. I remember filling up my note book with what he was telling us.

What most amazed me was he taught for an entire day and everything he shared was stored in his mind. Not a single note did he ever refer too.

Only recently have I learned that while Jason and I started off as Republicans, we both were now progressives in our political views, we are both of the Lutheran faith and both aged 67.

Music was also a part of our lives, Jason played the viola and I the trombone.

AVI Communications, Inc

I met Pat “Spark” Shaughnessy at a radio conference back in the 90s. We were sitting next to one another and he introduced himself. That led to hanging out during the meetings and forming a friendship by the time the conference ended. Pat invited me to review a new radio sales training video program he had just finished with Jason Jennings. He sent me the entire program and I would watch every second of it and read the workbook materials. I then sent Pat a multi-page document with my thoughts.

Years later, when I was working on an advanced radio sales course for my university’s School of Broadcasting and Journalism, I contacted Pat to see if I could purchase two copies of the Quantum Sales Training Broadcast System for my students.

The program by now had been bought for thousands of dollars by over 600 TV stations, 2,000 radio stations and several hundred cable systems. Today, one copy of the series sits in the WKU main library and the other copy in the school of broadcasting.

The basics of the program, written and hosted by Jason, are timeless. I’ve used the DVD on Negotiation in sales training at all of the radio stations I’ve managed and in my introductory sales classes at the university.

LinkedIN & Facebook

I believe it was through LinkedIN that Jason first reached out to me to reconnect. More recently, Jason asked to be friends on Facebook. I’m embarrassed I didn’t ask him first. I believe it was because I so looked up to him as a mentor and felt asking would be a bother. Jason obviously didn’t feel that way.

Over time, I learned we were in concert on so many things, like what’s important in sales, management, politics and life.

A Better Tomorrow

Jason really cared about people. Somehow this man who was named among the twenty-five best speakers in America by the Nationwide Speakers Bureau, a bestselling author and media consultant always found the time to drop me a note and wish me well. I’m sure I was not the only one Jason did this to.

During his keynote addresses, it was normal for Jason to ask the audience “How many of you want your tomorrows to be better than today for you and your family?” He knew how to tap into our universal human desires in a real and genuine way.

“Ensure your heart is in the right place with a genuine desire to help highly principled people reach their full potential,” was how Jason’s podcasting co-host, Dale Dixon, defined Jason Jennings’s purpose in life.

Selling is Like Doctoring

In life, there are some phrases you come in contact with that become a part of you. When seeking to know what an advertising client was expecting from his radio campaign, Roy H. Williams taught me to always ask, “How will you measure success?” From Zig Ziglar I learned, “You can get anything in life you want, if you will just help enough other people get what they want.”

From Jason Jennings I learned, “Prescription without diagnosis is malpractice.” In other words, before you can begin to advise any client what he needs to do to improve his business you first need to learn, where it hurts, what’s going wrong, what’s the breakdown that’s causing business to languish.

For me, Jason’s phrase spoke to my unending curiosity. I loved asking clients lots and lots of questions; about their life, their families, their business, then using what I learned to create unique, one-of-a-kind advertising programs to increase their business.

Are Radio Groups Mis-Training Sellers?

Back in October of 2012, my radio friend Barry Cohen wrote an article for Radio Ink taking the radio industry to task for the lack of radio sales training. Barry wrote, “When I started selling radio advertising, the first thing my sales manager did was hand me one of Jason Jennings’ books, which I promptly ‘devoured.’ As I moved to each station, my managers continued to give me the good stuff, exposing me to the likes of Chris Lytle (who just turned 70 this month), Irwin Pollack, Pam Lontos and, of course, RAB sales training materials.”

For many of us, Jason Jennings was one of a handful of training professionals that radio people held in very high esteem.

Don’t Let Radio End Up Like Yahoo!

In August of 2016, I wrote a blog article based on one of Jason’s “Game Changers” podcasts. I applied the lessons Jason learned from his analysis of why Yahoo! disintegrated to the radio industry. “Don’t Let Radio End Up Like Yahoo!” was the fourth most read article on my blog in 2016.

In reviewing that article’s advice, it strikes me that this is how Jason Jennings lived his own life.

  • Know what you’re all about
  • Have a set of guiding principles
  • Don’t use a business like a personal piggy bank
  • Don’t try to be all things to all people
  • Don’t copy the competition

Jason Jennings was an original who pursued perfection and achieved excellence.

I will always be grateful to Jason Jennings for giving me a solid foundation upon which I was able to build a successful radio and teaching career.

A global community of sales and management professionals are saddened by Jason’s sudden and unexpected death this month from a ruptured aorta aneurysm.

We will always be grateful for all he taught us.

 

 

 

 

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April 19, 2020 · 3:00 am

It’s Wine Time

Wine GlassesThe headline read, “The Price of Wine is Dropping Fast.” Being a wine drinker, I wondered what was the reason for this downward price spiral and it turns out that it’s due to a surplus of California grapes. (Note: this story broke before the COVID-19 Pandemic. I’ll have an update on how that’s impacting wine sales at the end of this article.)

In this case, the law of supply and demand says when an oversupply of grapes exceeds demand., prices will fall.

From the moment they plant a new vineyard, vintners tell us it takes up to five years to bring wine to market. Only five years ago, demand greatly exceeded supply, causing vintners to begin planting a plethora of new fields. It seemed like a sure bet, because this growth in demand had been steady for the past two decades, until it vanished. The sudden slowdown caught the wine industry by complete surprise.

Supply & Demand

Any business that wants to see the price for its goods or services go up, knows that it benefits when demand exceeds supply.

For vintners, the first part of their problem was growing too many grapes, but the second part was seeing the consumption of wine drop for the first time in twenty-five years delivering a one-two punch to the wine grower’s gut.

Boomers

The generation that was fueling the growth in wine consumption were the Baby Boomers. And let’s face it, we Boomers aren’t going to live forever.

The problem the wine makers are having is best demonstrated by looking at two couples dining out. One couple is in their twenties and the other is in their sixties. If you were to ask a server to bet on which couple would be ordering wine, twenty years ago, they would have chosen the twenties couple, but today, they would bet on the older one.

Silicon Valley Bank’s wine division says it’s due to a failure of the wine industry to capture the attention of the millennials.

Does This Problem Sound Like Radio’s?

It’s no secret that the radio industry has been focused on increasing the number of signals it can put on the air in America. The FCC reports that as of December 31, 2019 there are 21,255 AM, FM, FM Educational, FM Translators & Boosters and Low Power FM radio signals on the air. Ten years earlier that number was 16,649, and twenty-five years earlier (the same amount of time that wine began its 25-year growth cycle) there were only 2,281 radio signals beating America’s airwaves.

So, like the growth in the number of grapes produced over the past twenty-five years, the number of radio signals grew almost ten times over that same period of time. Also, like wine, radio was dependent on Boomers to make their numbers. Younger generations are moving away from beer and wine for beverages, and away from broadcast radio for their audio consumption. Radio people and vintners have good reason to both want to drown their sorrows.

Former WLW programmer and air personality, Darryl Parks, tweeted the situation out this way:

More stations mean more avails to sell, which in turn means lower rates. Never understood how those running the big box broadcasters don’t understand the simple law of supply & demand. There’s no other way for this to turn out. Death by a thousand cuts.

Universal Laws

I believe that some laws are universal, in that they transcend all areas of life.

In the area of my college major, physics, Newton’s 2nd Law says, “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” Zig Ziglar, the great salesman and motivationalist, put it this way, “you can get anything in life you want, if you will just help enough other people get what they want.” And the Bible says, “as you sow, so shall you reap.”

Botanists know that pruning plants causes new growth. Forest fires, while appearing destructive on the surface, actually are part of the natural cycle of woods’ growth and replenishment, clearing dead trees, leaves, and competing vegetation from the forest floor, so that new plants can grow.

For the radio industry to grow and prosper, it needs to stop choking off its own growth and prosperity by thinking more and more radio signals will be to its benefit.

To serve their communities of license, it’s time for less radio signals, that do more for the communities they are licensed to serve, while being economically viable.

Why not pour yourself a glass of wine and start working on meaningful solutions that don’t try to counter life’s universal laws.

COVID-19 UPDATE

Quarantinis are driving a spike in alcohol sales

US sales of beer, canned cocktails, wine and spirits have surged in recent days as people stocked up on drinks to see them through quarantine and pub closures. Experts predict the increase will be short-lived as many households will prioritize more pressing expenses if emergency measures remain in place. Some experts have raised concerns about the risks of increased alcohol consumption during the pandemic — a fear that has driven officials in several countries to ban the sale of alcoholic beverages entirely.

 

 

 

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June 9, 2018 · 8:18 pm

Stay Focused on Your Goals

goalsEveryone wants to see their hard work turn into successful outcomes.

So, why do some people achieve success and some do not?

The reason often comes down to one factor, lack of consistency.

Whether you’re trying to lose weight or play an instrument or anything else you want to achieve in life, each of your goals requires a sustained effort. Let me give you some ideas to help you sustain and focus your energies to achieve success.

Make Sure It’s Your Goal

Nothing will derail your success faster, then trying to achieve someone else’s goals for you. So, if you want to stay motivated, make sure you are the one setting the goal. When you’re excited about the goal, working to achieve it doesn’t seem like work.

Write Down Your Goals

Zig Ziglar always used to promote in his motivational and sales seminars, “You’ve got to have goals.” Sadly, about 84% of people surveyed said they didn’t have any goals.

Remember what Lewis Carroll wrote in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.”

Writing your goals down turns out to be a critical step. Of the 3% of the people who have written goals, they earn on average about ten times as much as those who don’t.

When you write down your goals, you write them into your consciousness.

Plan Your Work, Work Your Plan

To stay focused and achieve your goals, you need to have an action plan. What are each of the steps you will take to move you from where you are today to where you want to be tomorrow, next month, next year etc.

Expect that as you proceed, things that you didn’t expect will cause you to make changes in your plan. That’s why you should write your goals in concrete, and your plans in sand.

Keep Track of Your Progress

Write down where you started and then keep a record of your actions and progress. Measuring how your changing provides you with a valuable feedback system to keep you focused.

Have a Support System

Read positive books. Keep a success journal. Invite people you admire to become your mentor and make you responsible to someone other than just yourself.

You want people who will encourage you to reach your goals and challenge you to set them higher than you might otherwise.

Work Toward Your Goals Daily

I’m in my 4th year of writing this blog. I’ve now written over a couple of hundred articles. My goal was to write an article a week, not a couple of hundred.

Make sure you break down your goals into bite sized pieces. Also, don’t set too many goals for yourself. You can achieve almost any goal you set, but not every goal, all at once. So, focus on just a few until they’ve been accomplished and then make some new goals.

Celebrate Every Success

Every time you do something that takes you closer to reaching your goal, celebrate. Celebration is a positive motivational tool to help you stay focused, energized and optimistic.

Tell yourself you deserve to succeed.

Here’s to your success!

 

 

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July 23, 2017 · 3:00 am

First Impressions

113You’ve probably heard the old saying “you can’t make a second first impression.”

It’s true.

In sales, in those first few seconds when you meet a new client, you are either going to continue forward progress or it will be full-stop.

Same goes for job interviews or first dates. This is what makes making a good first impression so stressful.

Attitude

Good first impressions start with projecting a positive image. Projecting a positive image comes from your attitude.

I won’t go all Norman Vincent Peale on you, but your attitude is formed by what you do every waking moment. You can’t just turn it on when you need to. That will project a faux image easily discerned by any human being that can fog a mirror.

Derry’s Dad

In my broadcast sales class on talent assessments, guest lecturer and professional sales trainer Chris Derry, shared with my students that his dad was a stickler for having a positive attitude by what you wore on your face.

Come down to breakfast without a smile and you were immediately sent back upstairs. His dad didn’t care if you were late for school, you were not going to start the day at breakfast with a frowny face or a grumpy attitude. Chris said his sister went back up stairs many a day, but he quickly learned how to play the game.

But it wasn’t a game. It was building a positive character trait that would lead to a life of success in every endeavor that Derry would take on. He quickly learned even on days when he didn’t feel like smiling that forcing a smile for breakfast with his dad very quickly had him feeling more exuberant.

Fake It Till You Make It

Zig Zigler tells the story of faking a smile on his face and voice when he wasn’t exactly feeling it. He said that by faking it, it quickly became genuine and his mood would reflect his face.

Therapists will tell you that logic cannot change an emotion but action will. That by doing something that gives you a feeling of accomplishment, you will enrich your spirit and improve your attitude.

HD Radio’s 1st Impression

HD Radio is 15 years old. It answered a question no listener was asking (and still isn’t).

But why was HD Radio such a bust?

First, it was introduced with very low power that made reception of HD Radio nearly impossible in the home, office or car.

It tried to fix the poor quality of AM radio and improve the quality of FM radio. It would destroy AM radio with increasing co-channel noise interference and really make a mess of the band’s sky wave at night. With FM its improvement was almost unnoticeable to the average listener.

Worse, the promotion of HD Radio on FM radio stations often drew the comment to a listener with an FM not an HD Radio set that the sound of the station did sound better in HD. The listener didn’t understand from the radio ads they needed to buy a new radio set to pick up the HD Radio signal and so they didn’t. And even if they did figure out they needed an HD Radio set, trying to find one to buy at Walmart, Target or even Radio Shack was an exercise in futility.

Media Life magazine reported that media buyers say things like “HD Radio doesn’t feel like a thing” or “there’s almost zero consumer interest” or “it’s the least-promising technology of the new ones introduced in radio in recent years” or “most people won’t be able to hear the difference between HD Radio and regular radio and that’s a problem.”

First Impressions are a Bitch

There are 19,778 FM radio signals on the air as of the end of 2016 according to the FCC. Of those, around 2,000 of them are broadcasting in HD, about ten percent.

The number one reason those 2,000 FM radio stations are broadcasting in HD is to feed an FM translator that is not broadcasting in HD.

Media Life magazine compared how New Coke was introduced after the Pepsi Challenge was promoting it was beating Coca Cola in taste tests. I remember those days well. I was in radio sales and the local Pepsi bottler was my account. (I was a Coke drinker.)

I took that Pepsi Challenge one time with the owner of the Pepsi bottling plant and yes, I said I liked the taste of Pepsi better. He beamed.

I could tell the super sugary taste of Pepsi easily and I preferred the less sugary, belching kick of Coke. But I wasn’t about to pick the wrong one. I was in sales after all. I knew which side my bread was buttered.

Coca Cola totally bummed out about the Pepsi Challenge introduced a high sugary version of its drink and called it New Coke. It was a disaster. In months Coke brought back the original formula as Coke Classic. Today all remnants of New Coke are gone.

The lesson Media Life tells us is that “you can introduce something new and improved, but you can’t make the public want it.

Which brings me back to HD Radio.

Classic Radio

Maybe it’s time to bring back the elements that make great radio, great.

A product that is focused on a defined listener 100% of the time.

A product that is curated from music to jingles to personalities to commercials.

Nothing is put on the air that is out-of-place.

I think FM radio sounds great sonically.

Listeners do too! It’s why radio still reaches over 93% of Americans every week. It’s the #1 reach and frequency medium in America. It beats everything else. Period.

FM radio doesn’t need to make a first impression. It already is embraced by its listeners.

Bring back the classic formula that made radio great and cement radio’s future with the next generations.

Being Human Never Changes with Technology

No matter how much the technology changes, the reason one human being is attracted to another human being will never change.

Radio has their ear.

What will you say to them?

 

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April 23, 2017 · 4:00 am

How to Win in the Game of Life

Me in Las Vegas April 2014Wisdom is wonderful thing. Unfortunately, most of us don’t acquire wisdom until we’ve put a few years on the calendar. Let me share some of the wisdom I’ve acquired, much of it from the school of hard knocks. I think I’ve earned my Ph.D. at that school.

Don’t Confuse Education with Intelligence

A colleague of mine, Kelley Coppinger a professional-in-residence in our university’s AD/PR department said that. I knew it was golden as soon as she uttered those words.

Two Kinds of Intelligence

There are two kinds of intelligence: how smart you are or IQ (Intelligence Quotient) and how emotionally tuned in you are to people or EQ (Emotional Intelligence).

Most colleges focus all of their energies on IQ but more forward institutions of higher education are recognizing the latter, for it is the one that matters most in the game of life.

Have a Plan

Everything is won or lost in the preparation stage. What’s your plan? You have to have one. You have to believe in it. You have to write it down and you have to follow it religiously.

Without a plan, you’re like a person driving a car without a destination. Any road will take you there.

If you don’t have a plan, then others will plan your life for you.

The Fundamentals

As a hiring manager, I hired for attitude and then looked to be sure the person was also trainable.

You have to acquire the basic skills and knowledge of your trade in order to effectively and efficiently complete the tasks that will lead to successful fulfillment of your plan.

It’s easier to win at the game of life when you already know what you need to do.

Goals

Zig Ziglar always used to say “You’ve got to have goals.” Goals keep you focused.

Focus on the now. Focus on the moment you’re living in, don’t worry about the past or the future. Worry about present moment.

Write your goals down and put them where you will constantly see them. They are your action steps, with target dates of completion.

“A goal is a dream with a deadline” wrote Napoleon Hill in his book “Laws of Success.”

Attitude

Everything starts with having the proper attitude. Attitude is a choice. Choose wisely.

Life is not a straight line. Everyone’s path is guaranteed to be filled with twists, turns and pot holes.

Life is a game of adjustments.

When something unexpected occurs, make adjustments to stay on goal.

Success in life is not about what happens to you, but how you deal with what happens to you.

Show Others Why They Should Care

When you engage the people around you, when you involve them in the goal, they change. When the people around you change, they change the people around them. Roadblocks get torn down, problems get solved, good things happen.

I have a picture in my office at the university that I’ve hung in every office of every media organization I’ve managed. The picture has the caption that says if you ain’t the lead dog, the scenery never changes.

Winning is a Goal

Soldiers on the battlefield fight to win. Players on a sports team play to win. Programmers of radio stations play to win. Sales people play to win.

Make it your goal to win in everything you decide to do.

Win Together

Winning is a team sport. Make sure everyone is committed to each other’s success if you’re in management. Make sure everyone is focused on the same goals by having them written down.

Make sure you have buy-in on the goals.

Clearly define the goals, confirm everyone is in agreement and on the same page. Then have everyone commit.

Celebrate Your Success

As you travel toward each of your goals, be sure to celebrate every success along the way. Don’t be afraid to take chances. Make your journey joyful. Make others joyful too. Share the love.

Be dependable. Be consistent. Don’t get distracted. Stay on your plan. Have FUN.

Be Coachable

Even the best in any profession know that having a coach is important. Encourage feedback on your work from those you look up to. Recruit a mentor or two or three to be part of your personal improvement team. Offer to mentor others. We learn so much when we help another person in the game of life.

It’s Often Who You Know

I don’t care what line of work you’re in, life is a relationship business. Successful people quickly learn the importance of building relationships and support networks.

The best time to build a new relationship is when there is nothing more on the table than making a new friend, learning about another person’s goals and life experiences, and enjoying the present moment of their company.

Life is Reciprocal

If you do your very best at everything you tackle and if you care about other people, life will return to you all of the same.

The Bible says as you sow, so shall you reap.

Newton’s 3rd Law says for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

And Zig Ziglar says:

“You can get anything in life you want,

if you just help enough other people get what they want.”

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December 18, 2016 · 4:00 am

Your Most Important Sale

71What is selling?

Simply stated it’s the transference of confidence.

Selling is 90% attitude and 10% aptitude.

Self-confidence is having a ‘can do’ attitude.

What Successful Business School Grads Have in Common

Stanford’s Graduate School of Business conducted a study that looked at their most successful graduates over a twenty-year period of time to try and learn what the school did that provided their grads with skills to be successful.

The study boiled it all down to two things:

  • All their most successful grads were in the bottom-half of their class and
  • All of them were popular

Emotional Intelligence (EQ)                   

Schools put a heavy emphasis on grades, standardized tests and trying to measure a person’s IQ (Intelligence Quotient). The irony is that being smart won’t make you successful. Relationship skills are more important in the game of life.

The ability to collaborate will be important in our 21st Century world. Collaboration requires a high EQ.

How’s Your ‘tude?

Another element in success is optimism, your attitude and it’s completely in your control.

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

–Eleanor Roosevelt

Self-Esteem

Part and parcel with being self-confident is having a belief in yourself; feeling a sense of pride in your gut.

Great salespeople have developed a golden gut.

Ziglarism

One of my favorite concepts comes from Zig Ziglar.

“You are who you are, you are what you are,

by what has gone into your mind.

You can change who you are, you can change what you are,

by changing what goes into your mind.”

Just as important as what kind of food you put into your body, what you feed your mind will also have a huge impact on how your think.

You have to have conviction. You will bring to life that which you believe.

Develop a winning attitude and you will become a winner.

Winners find a way to win. Losers find excuses.

Your Attitude Determines Your Altitude

Your future is in your hands. Believe you are in control of your destiny.

Everything in your life you cause to happen first appeared in your mind.

Your thoughts shape your future.

So the most important sale you need to make to change your life is to yourself.

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July 3, 2016 · 4:00 am

The Lesson of High School

41Everything you need to know to succeed in life you probably learned by the time you graduated high school. Do you remember your high school days? You probably couldn’t wait to graduate and begin the next chapter of your life. We were all in such a hurry. Many of us were looking forward to going to college. College, we thought, would be what real life was like. It would be a world where real talent is what counts.

Meryl Streep once told an interviewer that she thought life would be like the life she lived in college. Only it wasn’t. “Life,” Streep said, “is like high school.” Life, it turns out, is a popularity contest. The competent and likeable person will soar in life whereas the intelligent but socially inept won’t.

Real Life Doesn’t Give Written Tests

Education revolves around the test. Tests produce grades. Grades are compiled into GPAs. GPAs are part of the process to measure a person’s intelligence quotient or IQ. Not to burst your bubble, but the world’s most successful people are those that often finish in the bottom half of their class but were probably the best known and best loved.

What’s Your EI?

This begs the question, why don’t we measure what’s important? Or better yet, why don’t we teach it? Marc Brackett, a senior research scientist in psychology at Yale says “we know from doing dozens of studies, that emotions can either enhance or hinder a person’s ability to learn.” Emotions impact our memory, our attention and our ability to focus. EI is Emotional Intelligence. EI is something we talk about in my broadcast sales class. Great media sales people score high in emotional intelligence skills.

We Are Controlled By Our Emotions

Whether you are in sales, a television/radio performer or running for political office, just like in high school, you will be judged by if people like you or feel good about you. The world works not by logic and reason, but on emotions and feelings. Radio and television are a people business. It is all based on relationships. Relations are all about feelings.

Academics & Success

Our educational system is built upon the premise that if a student achieves academically they will be employed, healthy and everything else in their lives will be a bowl of cherries. The reality is something quite different. Turns out academic success predicts very little about the future outcome in these metrics.

Talent Assessments

Can emotional intelligence be taught or do we all start out emotionally intelligent and have it beaten out of us by our home life, our friends – or most likely – the educational system? In my broadcast sales class, I have my students take a talent assessment. These tests give insight into how a person is wired. Unlike most tests students take, there is no pass or fail. The results give insight into a person’s emotional intelligence and make-up. These tests were developed from the research of people like Sigmund Freud. They came into widespread use during the Second World War. The goal was to quickly place people into jobs that they would naturally excel at doing. After the war ended, many companies continued to use these tests when hiring. They are another tool in the tool box for evaluating a person.

Can An Old Dog Be Taught New Tricks?

What is not known is at what ages these emotional intelligence skills can be taught and if there comes a point when the cake is baked and can no longer be changed. Few studies in this area have been conducted. Plus the deck is stacked against this area of education by people who take the “that’s not the way we’ve always done it” approach to anything new and different. At this point, it would appear these “emotional habits” get baked into a person’s personality early in life and it is a mixture of home-social-school environments.

Life Is Like High School

So maybe Meryl Streep is right. Success in high school and life is basically a question of one’s personality. Zig Ziglar put it this way, “people don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care.” In a world that is wired for reciprocity, going first and showing you care is always good when it comes to building relationships.

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November 22, 2015 · 7:50 am

Being Grateful

15There are times when the stresses that are part of everyday life can occupy a place way beyond their level of importance in the grand scheme of things. Its times like those that you need to take a time-out and remember all the things in your life you have to be grateful about.

 

This year, I’m grateful for three wonderful grand children that are all happy, healthy and developing into unique individuals.

 

I’m grateful for their parents who make their children their first priority and love them with all their heart and soul.

 

I’m grateful that my two sons have set exciting and meaningful goals for their lives and in so doing are working hard to make our world a safer and better place for all of us.

 

I’m thankful for my two older brothers that always have been there for me through ups and downs, thick and thin.

 

I’m grateful that I’ve come to accept myself for exactly who I am, while still having boundless curiosity and a desire to never stop learning and growing.

 

I’m grateful that I’ve learned how to slow down. Life is meant to be savored. It’s not getting to the finish line first but about enjoying the journey.

 

I’m grateful for having enough. Less is more. Too much of anything is usually toxic.

 

I’m grateful for each day when I can add more value to the world than I consume.

 

I’m grateful for learning that every situation provides an opportunity to learn something; even the difficult ones, life goes by so fast.

 

I’m grateful that a career in radio that I started in the 10th grade in high school would allow me to pay for my college education, graduate school and raise a family. It’s a career that was all I ever wanted to do besides one day paying-it-forward through teaching the next generation of broadcasters.

 

I’m grateful that I finally started a blog this past year. It’s been one of the most personally rewarding and enriching things I’ve undertaken this past year.

 

I’m grateful for all the wonderful people I’ve met on this journey called life, people who were only strangers until we said “hello,” and then became friends for life.

 

One of my mentors, Zig Ziglar said: “You can get anything in life you want, if you will just help enough other people get what they want.” I’ve tried to live those words every day.

 

I have so many things to be grateful for this Thanksgiving 2015. I’m sure you do too.

 

Remember you may make a living by what you get, but you make a life by what you give.

 

Today, I’m grateful for YOU.

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