No matter where we are in life, we can all agree that we have a finite amount of time in this world. When leaving this world, and we are eulogized, what legacy would we want to leave? That we are the most hard working person? We were willing to sacrifice time away from our family to work. In today’s technologically connected world, more and more of us are constantly in on-call mode, juggling life, work and all the challenges inherent to that.

An excerpt from this book says.

“it is very telling what we don’t hear in eulogies. We almost never hear things like: “The crowning achievement of his life was when he made senior vice president.” Or: “He increased market share for his company multiple times during his tenure.” Or: “She never stopped working. She ate lunch at her desk.

Every day.” Or: “He never made it to his kid’s Little League games because he always had to go over those figures one more time.” Or: “While she didn’t have any real friends, she had six hundred Facebook friends, and she dealt with every email in her inbox every night.”

Or: “His PowerPoint slides were always meticulously prepared.”

Our eulogies are always about the other stuff: what we gave, how we connected, how much we meant to our family and friends, small kindnesses, lifelong passions, and the things that made us laugh.”

Arianna Huffington, the founder of The Huffington Post, structured her life as we all do, around the pursuit of success and she was. In today’s terms, success is defined as the accumulation of money and power. Arianna certainly was not stranger to this as she earned more than her share of both.

However, in 2007 Arianna almost died from a stress-related physical collapse that led to a possibly life-threatening head injury. This was a dramatic wake-up call about the dangers of pushing herself too hard and also led her to write this book.

Given that money and power are two metrics of success, which she has definitely achieved.

She proposes a third metric: a life well spent.

It stands on four “pillars”: “well-being, wisdom, wonder, and giving.”

Episode 27 - Review and Summary of Thrive by Arianna Huffington

One of my favorite quotes in life by Warren Buffet “The best investment you can make, is an investment in your self… The more you learn the more you’ll earn”. And that is exactly the goal I have for this podcast, to continue expanding my life, learning from the best mentors and examples of success in the world, both living and not, through their stories and books to achieve the successful life we ourselves and our families deserve.

The Booked morning PODCAST is produced daily for your enjoyment where I Bring you my take aways, gold nuggets, and summaries from some of the best books I read every day.

Show notes can be found at www.bookedmorning.com.

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We hear it all too often when we turn on the news today, jobs getting shipped out to other countries and millions find themselves out of work.

Earlier in the century, during the industrial revolution, work changed dramatically. The high skilled work that dominated the century prior started being replaced by processes and machines. And so came the production line and factory mindset where productions were split into simple processes that even the most unskilled people could do.

This drove the cost of labor low and was extremely profitable for companies, but created the problem we have today of people loosing jobs to outsourcing and more and more robots.

Even previously thought to outsource proof white collar careers like banking jobs, assistants, stock brokers, analyst, those who just show up and followed instructions are finding their hours cut and having their jobs replaced and outsourced.

Best selling author and one of my favorite marketing thought leaders offer us the idea, that to be irreplaceable, we need to be indispensable and remarkable, or what he calls the Linchpin.

Seth says “The only way to get what you’re worth is to stand out, to exert indispensable, and to produce interactions that organizations and people care deeply about.”

Linchpins don't need a set of instructions, they create opportunities and apply their vision without being told what to do.

They humanize and connect their artistic problem solving to their daily work.

We all have what it takes to bring this out and become a linchpin, we simply need to fully understand what goes into being a linchpin and start applying it to our works today.

Allow me to leave you with this

In today’s modern workplace, being a good team member, following instructions and being able to do things that everyone else can makes you very replaceable.

The key to succeed and get the best jobs today, we need to become indespensable and be that linchpin for every company.

We need to be the catalyst for members of our company, deliver our domain knowledge and contribute generously.

Manage complex situation with clear judgements, lead our customers and inspire our staff.

We cant allow our lizard brain and fear stop us from getting out of our comfort zone and embracing our inner artist in solving problems.

We need to lay our heart on the line and make our work a platform for our art and get things done outstandingly and become an indespensable linchpin.

Episode 56 - Review and Summary of Linchpin - Are you Indispensable by Seth Godin

We all know that some of the most successful brands and individuals, share something in common, and that is their ability to share their message and tell a story.

As leaders and entrepreneurs we often wonder how we can get better at story telling. And some of us are even scared of public speaking.

Many sucessful people today, who often give inspiring talks once found themselves battling the same jitters of public speaking that most of us do.

But we need to realize that storytelling is in our evolutionary DNA. We are here today as a species because of story telling. Imagine our ancestors 400,000 years ago in camp fires passing down stories to the next generations of what we needed to do, from the foods to eat, how to hunt and how to survive.

Inspiring storytellers have changed the course of history and made us lead better lives.

Business leaders such as Warren Buffet and Richard Branson and political leaders like John F Kennedy and Nelson Mandela are great storytellers who inspired various people.

This book by Carmine Gallo is dedicated to featuring 50 visionaries who have mastered the art of storytelling.

We learn to tell our story persuasively and achieve our dreams. People from different walks of life – business, entertainment, and politics use stories to put their point across.

Carmine says,  ”Storytelling is the act of framing an idea as a narrative to inform, illuminate, and inspire.”

It teaches us that a good story can explain an idea but a great story, educates, entertains, inspires, and even launches movements.

The author has interestingly and effectively divided each chapter into three sections.

The featured storyteller, a complete guide on how to apply the tools and also the storytellers secret.

Whether it's our goal to pitch a business idea, ace a job interview, build a company, improve our teamwork, give a presentation. Storytelling can be our unique competitive advantage.

Mark Burnett left the UK to come to Los Angeles with only $200 in his pockets. To make ends meet, he hung t-shirts on fences in Venice beach and sold them. But he had a skill for telling stories which he parlayed to become one of the most successful executive producers on TV with shows like Survivor, Apprentice , The Voice and Shark Tank.

Allow me to leave you with this final thought

To become a great story teller.

We need to sharpen our presentation skills through practice and be passionate and inspired about our own ideas.

Illustrate our stories by Introducing heroes in our stories who overcome hardships and learn valuable lessons.

Build our stories with the rule of 3 in mind, Use pictures and make our story not only readable but compelling and memorable.

Share stories to strengthen our organization and teams culture, and use metaphors and analogies to communicate our difficult concepts.

Great stories, move us to change the world. It’s time that we take our place in history and become among its greatest story tellers.

Episode 55 - Review and Summary of The Storytellers Secret by Carmine Gallo

In our business, workplace and in life, we all experience the tough times or the squeeze of the bad economy.

I found this very relevant to my work, being the head of marketing for a brand and also my own ventures.

When these times come, it's important that we are on the top of our career or business, because this presents us with major advantages to dominate our market. It's very dangerous not to be number 1.

If you’ve listened to my review on Grant Cardone’s 10X rule, read his books or listened to him speak, you know he is a no nonsense guy and not only talks but walks the walk.

Grant Cardone is a well-known business speaker and sales guru.

He shares with us his specific process and actions he took and we should too, to move us from where we are now to the front of our field, regardless of our products and services.

My favorite excerpt from the book is this.

"Your Success is not limited by the economy; it’s only limited by the people you know and the amount of interest you can generate in your products and services."

My final key takeaway is The most important skill needed to advance and conquer.

We all need to learn how to sell.

We can plan and organize until we are blue in the face, but if we can’t sell our products, what does it matter how organized you are?

Let's not kid ourselves and think that there is a line of people waiting for our products,

We actually need to work and generate interest, sell our products and services and close the deal.

The most needed and protected people in the workforce are those who can sell and bring in the money.

We need to realize that There is no shortage of money, but there is a great shortage of people who are willing to take action and follow-through.

Episode 54 - Review and Summary of If You're Not First Your Last by Grant Cardone

When we think of millionaires, we typically think of those we see on TV or instafamous driving nice cars, Hollywood Hill mansions, flashing wads of cash and blowing their money on parties.

Last week we talked about the book about Billionaires, I know that most of us will not be able to achieve that. So I wanted to do a book about millionaires, how that can be realistically achieved.

What we may not realize is that many of today's millionaires living below their means, save and budget their income and spend wisely.

They main concept of The Millionaire Next Door book is that our societies concept of a millionaire is based on false assumptions and that most actual millionaires live a very simple lifestyle.

Most of us, when we expect to get a tax refund, get a nice commission or bonus check, we are already planning what to do with it before we even receive it.

The authors suggest, sticking to some basic money habits and we too can be on our way to becoming a millionaire.

The authors Thomas and William were obsessed with studying the wealthy, or as they call them “affluent”. And what they found was 7 key traits of most of the millionaires they studied.

Allow me to leave you with my final thoughts.

We need to realize that our dream of accumulating wealth is not a pipe dream reserved for a few, like most of us may think.

80% of the millionaire households are ordinary people who have accumulated their wealth over one generation.

The lessons in this book are quite straight forward but a great reminder to us all.

We need to manage your finances responsibly, save more and spend less and not take on too much debt that we cannot afford.

And being consistent about making smart investments as early as possible to take advantage of compound interest.

We all need to find our own balance between denying our selves of what we need an want and over consumption take control of our finances today.

Episode 53 - Review and Summary of The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas J Stanley and William Danko

In our study of some of greatest achievers in history, we find that they seem to be smarter, gifted and talented in many ways and appear as though they are just flat out geniuses.

What may surprise us is that we have the same potential as those geniuses and muses of history.

But in todays world full of distraction and immediate gratification, we limit our opportunities to grow and develop.

The key to our greatest potential and highest level of achievement comes from Mastery. But it has become very rare. Most of us want to achieve success superficially, with low level of work and not put in the hard work and don’t appreciate the process.

Mastery takes great effort, passion and persistence and very often requires us to break through obstacles and even sometimes earn the animosity of our peers. But most people lack the work ethic and the willingness to really invest in themselves and get stuck in the mire of mediocrity.

Multi Best Selling Author, Robert Greene reveals that Mastery wont be easy, but is extremely fulfilling and a worthwhile endeavor if we are willing to put in the time, blood, sweat, effort to mastering our craft.

Allow me to leave you with this.

In order to achieve the level of success in our lives to that of the Einteins, Mozarts, Darwins, the Ben Franklins of the world. We need to start by finding our true calling or our life’s task.

Then apprentice to acquire the necessary skills to master our life’s task, where we learn the rules and the necessary skills.

Where we show up, shut up, and take notes.

Then Follow what our mentors teach religiously and not stray from it until we reach the next stage.

Next in stage comes in the so called creative/active phase. This is when we practice what we’ve learned during our apprenticeship and make additional connections.

We get to see the bigger picture and develop our own unique style, our own way of executing our craft like no one else.

Then, after we've invested 10,000 or more hours and years worth of learning and practice, we achieve the holy grail of our lives… and that is mastery.

Episode 27 - Review and Summary of Thrive by Arianna Huffington

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