Change Your Mindset

Today's guest, Rosemarie Rossetti, is an international speaker, consultant, writer, and publisher who walks her talk. She’s also the most adaptable person I have ever met. We have an inspiring conversation about overcoming adversity and living with conviction, and why she built the Universal Design Living Laboratory.

Rosemarie's life was transformed on June 13, 1998. There was no wind, no rain, no clouds. It was a beautiful Saturday, and she was celebrating her third wedding anniversary with a couple’s bike ride. Then, suddenly, there was a loud noise and she was engulfed by a three-and-a-half ton tree.

She was paralyzed from the waist down with a spinal cord injury, but Rosemarie looked deep into herself and found new strength and resolve. She had invested too much into her life to give up.

In her keynote speeches, Rosemarie shares the lessons she has learned since that fateful day, and demonstrates how to rise above adversity and live life with conviction.

1. Do something new every day.
2. Focus on a hopeful future instead of your self-pity.
3. Believe the impossible just might be possible.
4. Allow more time to get things done, and be patient with yourself.
5. To lower your stress, lower your expectations of other people.

This moment also changed her career path. In addition to motivational speaking, Rosemarie speaks and consults with a focus on universal design housing, or making homes that are both livable for a lifetime and sustainable.

Rosemarie and her husband want to start a discussion about the home of the future, which will marry universal design, green building, a healthy home, and technology.

They built a national demonstration home and garden in Columbus, Ohio: the Universal Design Living Laboratory. It is the highest-rated universal design home in North America, earning three national certifications. They have 217 sponsors that contribute products and services necessary to build the home, either at no cost or reduced cost.

You can take a virtual tour of their house on UDLL.com (bonus points if you can spot their cat).

You can also pick up the first chapter of Rosemarie’s upcoming book, The Universal Design Toolkit, for free. It's a listing of the universal design features, room by room, in the house.

Resources:

• RosemarieSpeaks.com
• Take a virtual tour of the Universal Design Living Laboratory
• Take Your Life Back! by Rosemarie Rossetti
• Calculate your Disability Insurance needs at LifeHappens.org
• Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl

Disability insurance saved Rosemarie’s life. She recommends everyone in the audience purchase their own policy.

• If you are employed by another company, you need to talk with your HR people and learn if disability insurance is part of your current benefits, and what it covers.
• If you are self-employed, start contacting your financial planners and financial representatives that sell disability insurance, and get an individual policy. LifeHappens.org has a disability insurance calculator that will help you estimate the income you need to maintain to your current standard of living, which will help you in purchasing a policy.

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Courtney Kirschbaum is a human development and high performance expert who specializes in helping young professionals choose the right career and achieve mastery in it. She also successfully completed her own career transition later in life when she left the corporate accounting world to found CK Consulting.

Now she is launching a new project, Job Hunt School, to impact even more young professionals.

We discuss how pursuing passion and purpose help during career transitions, how the principles of improvisation will help you during the interview process, and the stress epidemic in the U.S.

“They're still not teaching the things that you are really going to need to know when you walk into the job, and not only on the first day but even before that.”

Courtney started consulting because she saw a leadership and development gap. Students in college aren’t being properly trained to transition from a collegiate environment to a corporate environment, or any other business environment.

She attempts to fill those important gaps:

• Expectations in a corporate environment, and how to fulfill them.
• Office politics, and how to navigate them.
• Empathy for business owners, and how to develop it.
• The value of feeling like you have a stake in your job, and how to attain that.

Consulting is great, but her impact is limited to the number of people she can work with on any given day. She’s reaching more young professionals through Job Hunt School.

Job Hunt School is a program for recent graduates who are spinning their wheels and going through the motions, who feel like they’re doing everything they were taught, but aren’t gaining any traction. You know how to play the game, you went to the career center and learned to write a resume, but you haven’t mastered the game.

Courtney’s program will offer the last 10% you need to master the game, and that last 10% can make a 100% difference in your career.

If you’re interested in securing your spot in Job Hunt School, or you know someone who will be graduating soon, head over to JobHuntSchool.com. The doors open in April 2017!

Resources:

• Connect with Courtney: Website | Twitter | Facebook
• Learn more about Job Hunt School
• Watch Courtney’s TEDxTalk: “The choices we make”

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Cathy Fyock is an author of eight books and a book coach, and she hates to write. In spite of that, she wrote most of her books in just six weeks!

In this episode, Cathy shares a number of excellent and actionable tips for writing your nonfiction book, getting started when you’re struggling, and the benefits of publishing a book for you and your business.

Her most recent book, Blog2Book: Repurposing Content to Discover the Book You've Already Written, is also the title of a seminar that I attended in February 2017. I really connected with what she said and, in large part, that is because she identifies with the pain of struggling to start writing, or struggling to get the words out of your head and onto the page.

Before you even start the writing process, you have to prepare.

• Get hyper clear about why you want to write this book. Is it just because you have always wanted to write a book, or are you writing a nonfiction book around your area of expertise as a way to establish your thought leadership, get more clients, more business, or as a revenue stream? There can be a number of reasons that you may want to write. They're all legitimate, but your reason may inform how you go about writing the book.
• Get hyper clear on what this is book about. A lot of people get stuck because they know a lot, and they could potentially write several books, but you can only write one book at a time... and even that is sometimes tricky. What is your thesis statement? What is your 30-second commercial?
• Establish your target audience. Who is that reader? Get very specific about who that target market is, and then start to think about what it is that you really want a reader to know. What is it that they have questions about? What are the issues that they would want to have addressed in a book on this topic?

Here’s a hot tip: To help her clients get clear on what their books are about and learn more about their audience, Cathy has “Ask Me About My Book” buttons. These are a valuable research and motivational tool because answering questions about your book will reveal what is compelling about your topic, if you have honed it properly, and get you thinking about the project more often.

Now you are prepared with an outline, a reason, and a business plan. How do start writing a book, even if you hate writing?

• A lot of people make the mistake of starting with the first chapter, but that’s one of the hardest chapters to write. Start with whatever chapter in the middle is calling to you. The first and last are the hardest to write because you need to have that big vision of where you're going and where you've been. Just start with a page – it doesn’t matter which one.
• After you have something written (and that first win!), continue to write out of order. You just want to create momentum. You want to create energy and excitement for yourself, because this is a big and arduous task.
• Don’t get hung up on editing. You need to write the book first, then you can edit it. Writing and editing are two different brain functions, so trying to do them both simultaneously is exhausting. Just get it all out there, raw, and polish it later.
• Learn when you write best. Early in the writing process, set timed writing sessions in the morning, afternoon, and late at night to assess when you are most productive. You may not be a morning person but still do your best writing in the morning.
• Learn where you write best. Try writing in different environments to see where you are the most productive. Some people thrive in a hectic environment (like the coffee shop or a restaurant), but others need to be in a cave.
• Use writing prompts. Just google the term, use an app, or think about something weird. The most different writing prompts can sometimes produce the most creative results, because thinking about two disparate subjects can result in lateral thinking.
• Practice time blocking. Schedule the times that you will write, put them on your calendar, commit to actually blocking off that time, and be very detailed with your plans. You don’t have to finish a whole chapter. Give yourself one small, but achievable, goal with each time block so that you can continue racking up wins.

Another way to chunk out the writing process, and the premise of her most recent book, is to write a blog first. You still need a plan and a theme, but writing 500-1000 words once or twice a week is much easier to chew than a whole book. By the end of the year, you will have a great outline for your next book, and you can use the blog to market the book throughout the process.

After you are done writing, publishing a book offers distinct benefits for you and your business. It can increase your authority in the eyes of your clients, customers, and prospects and differentiate your business from the competition.

Your book is your new business card. If you give someone your traditional business card, more likely than not it's going to end up in the trash can. However, no one throws away a book. It can sit on a desk, on a shelf, or anywhere.

People can see your book, and every time they do you've made another impression in their mind... or, worst case scenario, they give the book to someone else. Another touch point.

If you are thinking about a book, don't know where to start, or lack clarity, get in touch with Cathy for a complimentary strategy session. She wants to help you get started!

Resources:

• Connect with Cathy: Website | Facebook | YouTube
• Blog2Book: Repurposing Content to Discover the Book You've Already Written
• If you are thinking about a book, don't know where to start, or lack clarity, get in touch with Cathy for a complimentary strategy session.

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Today I’m excited to share a conversation with the hilarious Rik Roberts, who provides clean comedy and creative keynote presentations.

Rik also provides excellent comedy education in the School of Laughs, which includes a hilarious podcast of the same name and comedy classes that will help anyone who wants to add more humor to their writing.

Before Rik transitioned to the corporate speaking world, he spent years on the road as a stand up comedian. On the road, he learned many of the basics of comedy writing that he applies in presentations, and teaches to others, today.

“An artist removes things so that you can see the beauty of the art, whereas a laborious person would just use everything to show you that they can do it.”

If you want to master the art of comedy, you have to understand the economy of words. Rik uses the metaphor of a sculpture to illustrate why this is so important: if you give a sculpture 30 pounds of clay, they will remove pieces of it until they reveal a piece of art. They don’t add anything but their perspective.

To communicate effectively, comedians have to cut out anything excess. This is a skill that will help with presenting in front of any group, too.

In stand up comedy, the speaker usually wants to keep moving at a good pace. Laughs Per Minute are important. However, that isn’t necessarily the case in other speaking engagements.

At corporate speaking events, or when speaking to other people in a professional environment, it’s important that the speaker isn’t just talking at the audience – the speaker needs to have a conversation with the audience and listen to what they say.

When you are speaking in a professional environment, you need to slow down and hear what you are saying, as if it is the first time you are saying it, because that’s how the audience is receiving it. If you speak too quickly, you may blow past the key takeaways without giving your audience the time they need to process.

It takes a lot of practice, but good speakers are comfortable with silences, when they speak in professional environments.

“Listening to hear, not just to respond, is really key.”

Having a conversation with your audience also helps when communicating with Millennials and the generation under them. The younger generations value experiences, so they don’t want to just sit there and listen. They want you to engage them.

Way back when, before Rik was even in stand up, he was an improvisational comedian, and he’s still teaching improv skills and using improv exercise to help his audiences. The basic elements of Improv – like trust, team building, and listening – are things that every company and every organization needs, and sometimes all they need is a facilitator to show them how to do it.

If you are interested in hiring Rik to perform comedy or deliver a creative keynote, you can find more information on RikRoberts.com.

If you want to hone your own comedy writing skills, you can take Rik’s online comedy course at SchoolOfLaughs.com.

While you’re there, check out his podcast! I was interviewed on episode 80, where we discussed how I fell in love with improv, how I was dubbed the “Accidental Accountant,” and a lot more.

Resources:

• Connect with Rik: Website | Facebook | Twitter
• Take Rik’s Online Comedy Class
• Listen to Rik interview Peter on his podcast on School of Laughs Ep. 80

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Today we’re excited to have returning guest John Kelley, Chief People Officer at White Castle Systems. We discuss how the skills of improvisation relate to change management, and how being a family business affects their company culture.

Change management is the process of identifying and implementing necessary changes during a major business transition, whether that is a merger, a shift in culture, or a new building.

White Castle Systems moved into their headquarters in Columbus, Ohio, in 1934. Currently, it houses four or more generations of family and team members, from the Baby Boomers to the youngest generation of workers.

They need a bigger space, and a space that better aligns with White Castle’s mission, vision, and core values moving into the future. They’re building a new headquarters that the company can use for another 80 plus years, and that requires a great deal of change management.

John faces cultural change management decisions to at almost every level in the company:

• How are the work spaces designed for both collaboration and to allow privacy?
• How can they make the space a place where people want to work, while offering the freedom to work anywhere?
• How can they make shared spaces that people want to go to?
• How do they keep things both open and secure?

To answer these questions, John is practicing one of the key pieces, and often most difficult pieces, of improvisation: listening. They are listening to consultants, touring the buildings of other companies in the industry, and conducting in-depth one-on-one interviews with their team.

John won’t be able to please everyone. However, by focusing on the company’s mission, vision, and core values – and asking why every decision they make is in line with those three things – they will be set up for success during the transition.

“Do all you can to listen and give people the opportunity to share. Make sure you're listening and not coming in with your solutions”

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Resources:

• Take the Yes, And Challenge

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Korean Proverb Shijaki banida: “The start is half the task.”

Today’s guest, Phil Kim, is a highschool dropout turned accidental accountant turned tenured educator and professional speaker. He shares the remarkable story about how he fell into a hole and then turned his life around by chasing BIG goals through small actions.

In December 2016, Phil gave a talk at TEDxAlbany called “Chase One Rabbit: The Power of Small Wins” (related to his book of the same name).

Phil based his TED talk on a Confucian saying: “If you chase both rabbits, you catch neither.”

The book and TED Talk both explain how we can use focus, accountability, and small wins to achieve more.

• Reach high. Expand and stretch yourself beyond what you think you can do. Choose a single, big priority.
• Chase the rabbit. Take your singular goal and break it down into smaller, doable chunks or small action steps.
• Intentional Accountability. You have your goal and you have your action steps. Now you need some sort of accountability, either with just one or two people or through a small community (like a mastermind).

There's a theory called the the paradox of choice. It suggests giving users too many choices causes them to worry about making the wrong decision, so they don't make any decision at all. Too many choices can effectively lead to no choice.

So don’t try to do everything at once. Finish your top priority and then move onto your second priority.

We’re almost done with the first quarter of 2017 (wow that was fast!). I want you to watch Phil’s TED Talk or read his book and then reflect on your goals for the year. Do you have too many? Are they ambitious enough? Prioritize your goals and get hyper focused on just one rabbit – you might surprise yourself with how much you accomplish.

You can watch Phil’s first TED Talk on YouTube or pick up his books on Amazon.

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Resources:

• Phil’s TedX Talk: “Chase One Rabbit: The Power of Small Wins”
• Read Phil’s books:
• • Chase One Rabbit: 10 Habits that Move You from Failure to Success

• Zebras & Ostriches: 5 Simple Rules to Engage and Retain Your Best People

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Today’s guest, Maureen Zappala, is a rocket scientist turned professional speaker. She shares how we can get over the fear of public speaking and the Imposter Syndrome.

The Imposter Syndrome is a concept describing high-achieving individuals who are marked by the inability to internalize their accomplishments and have a persistent fear of being exposed as a fraud.

We all fight it and Maureen has some great advice to help you move past this syndrome.

It’s important to understand that the Imposter Syndrome is not a confidence issue – it's a cognitive issue. It takes confidence to achieve most things worth achieving… but many people then experience a cognitive distortion separating themselves from their accomplishments.

A big part of getting beyond the syndrome is identifying yourself with the accomplishments. It is putting yourself in the place of the person who did the work, and accepting that it’s not somebody outside of you or a set of circumstances that allowed it to happen. You created it, you did it, and now you need to own.

Another critical part of getting over the imposter syndrome is recognizing its prevalence: you are NOT the only one suffering. Everyone can start moving past the issue when it is addressed, but sometimes it takes someone like Maureen to come in and start the conversation.

If you suffer from the Imposter Syndrome, you need to accept that there is no possible way you can know everything about the position you're in, the technology you're involved with, the company you work for, or the reach that you can have. There's no possible way, so you need to let yourself off the hook. Practice saying “I don’t know yet, let me get back to you.”

I greatly appreciate Maureen taking the time to share her important advice. If you are interested in having Maureen speak at your organization, you can contact her at MaureenZ.com.

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Resources:

• Connect with Maureen: MaureenZ.com | Facebook

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Did you know that…

• when a customer stops doing business with a company, 68% of the time it's because they feel ignored, underappreciated, or taken for granted?
• when an employee quits, 67% of the time it's because of their manager?
• only 42% of employees say that they received any kind of recognition in the past year?

Those surprising statistics show why we need today’s guest, Lisa Ryan, and her business, Grategy, LLC.

Grategy is a portmanteau of gratitude and strategy. The company teaches other organizations how to keep their top talent engaged, enthusiastic, and committed to long-term employment by harnessing the power of appreciation in the workplace.

“You keep your employees AND your best clients from becoming someone else’s by the way you treat them.”

You might be saying, “Hey, why should I thank my employees for doing their job?” Well, if you want your employees to give you their blood, their sweat, and their tears, that's what you do: you acknowledge them. As an added bonus, it costs nothing!

On top of all that, you’ll see tangible results in your team’s productivity, attitude, and overall profitability to the company if you take the time to look at your people as more than employee IDs.

Appreciated employees are more profitable in the short-term and retaining them will save you money in the the long-term. The process of hiring a new, minimum wage employee can cost anywhere from $2,000 to $16,000. That’s a big ROI for a change in attitude!

Another way to show appreciation is to invest in your employees, and to invest in all of them. Investing in everyone creates connections, conversations, and opportunities for people to learn and grow together. If you empower someone with an opportunity to grow, they just might surprise you.

Employers need to be sincere, be consistent, and can’t put a compliance factor around it.

Lisa is inspiring an incredibly necessary attitude change in business environments. As the Baby Boomers retire and a new generation fills in the workforce, you will want those employees to feel appreciated and respected – you want them to work for you.

Remember: show appreciation and gratitude to your talent so you can keep them on the payroll.

Resources:

• Sign up for your FREE Gratitude Thought of The Week at Grategy.com
• Connect with Lisa: Lisa (at) Grategy.com

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Today’s guest, David Crone, is a corporate entertainer, ventriloquist, speaker, and sometimes IT guy. He’s on the show to share his hilarious stories and teach us why work should be fun.

David’s personal and business growth have been driven by a desire to be a great entertainer, not just a great performer.

Great performers have great technical skills. As a ventriloquist, that means manipulating the puppet, working on the voices, not moving his lips, writing material, and finding good jokes. But there’s an art to entertainment that goes beyond performance.

Great entertainers go beyond great technical skills. They still have the technical skills in their back pocket, but the entertainment comes from passion, feeling, and connecting with the audience. Good entertainers can bring a room together.

“If you just hit every note right that’s not music. That’s playing all the notes right. That’s playing what’s on the page... But if you go to a concert and listen to some great pianist, their passion comes through in the variation and their feeling comes out through playing the music. You forget how many notes are being played and you just get sucked up in the moment.”

David believes that great managers should also be great entertainers. They should transcend technical acumen and incorporate human relationships. How do you create a culture that encourages working with other people and enjoys the process of creating?

For David, the simple answer is fun – people work better when they’re having fun.

David has found that imperfection is actually a very powerful leadership technique that is conducive to a fun atmosphere. It may sound odd, but he sees teams working better and happier when the boss allows his or herself to accept mistakes and be vulnerable because it doesn’t hold the employees up to an unrealistic standard.

When employees are avoiding mistakes and walking on eggshells, they’re also unlikely to take risks that can benefit a company. Of course, there is a limit to mistakes. Making a mistake is fine – repeating them is not.

If you want to learn more about how to make your workplace more fun, head over to WorkShouldBeFun.com.

If you are interested in hiring David to entertain at one of your events, head over to ImNoDummy.com.

Resources:

• Hire David for your own event at ImNoDummy.com
• Learn how to make your office more fun at WorkShouldBeFun.com

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Jeff Jackson is a husband, a father, a speaker, a salesman, a published author, a superhero in training, an accidental accountant, and a daddy blogger. His blog, Daddy is Best, was named one of the Top 50 Dad Blogs by BabySpot.

On his blog, Jeff keeps his creative spark lit while discussing the role of the modern dad.

Jeff is a baby boomer, and his father was part of The Silent Generation. His dad wasn’t an active participant in raising him, so he didn’t learn a lot about being a daddy when he was growing up.

Now, Jeff is a little bit older and learning to be a daddy on the job. By connecting with other fathers on social media, Jeff has noticed that many modern dads struggle with filling a more significant role in their kids’ lives. They don’t always know where to go for support. He’s trying to fill that gap.

Jeff is also an accidental accountant. He didn’t particularly like accounting, but he sees how he can help provide value to the profession as the need for accountants in small businesses grows over the next 5-10 years.

Jeff wants to combine his sales, accounting and speaking experiences to teach accountants how to sell themselves, and to dispel two accountant stereotypes:

• The Bearer of Bad News. Accountants are often considered the person who shows up when there’s a problem. As an accountant, you have the power to change that by forming personal relationships with the people you work with. You need to become a trusted business advisor.
• Just A Cost of Doing Business. Accountants are not just a necessary cost. Great accountants provide great value. You just need to learn how to communicate that value to your customers or clients.

I appreciate Jeff coming on the show to share the many turns on his journey. Be sure to check out Daddy is Best to read the comedic stylings of a marketer turned actor turned accountant turned salesman turned father.

Resources:

• Learn more about Jeff: Daddy Is Best | Twitter | Facebook

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