The Seven Responsibilities of Leadership
How the Best Leaders Lead by Brian Tracy

Leadership requires character. Leadership is more about who you are than what you do.

1. Set and achieve business goals
   
2. Innovate and market
   
3. Solve problems and make decisions
   
4. Set priorities and focus on key tasks
   
5. Be a role model to others
   
6. Persuade, Inspire, and Motivate others to follow you
   
7. Perform and get results 
   

Ten Fundamental Truths about Leadership

1. You make a difference:
   Before you can lead, you must believe you can have a positive impact on others. You must believe in yourself.
   
2. Credibility is the foundation of leadership: Others have to believe in you too.
   
3. Values drive commitment:
   People want to know what you stand for and believe in.
   
4. Focusing on the future sets leaders apart:
   You have to imagine and articulate exciting future possibilities.
   
5. You can’t do it alone: Leadership is a team sport.
   
6. Trust rules:
   The level of trust others have in you will determine the amount of influence you have.
   
7. Challenge is the crucible for greatness:
   The kind of leaders people want to follow are those that involve and change. Change requires you to know yourself and challenge yourself.
   
8. You either lead by example or you don’t lead at all:
   You have to be a role model. You must first do what you want others to do.
   
9. The best leaders are the best learners:
   Leaders are constantly learning and improving. This requires attention, practice and feedback, along with good coaching. Also, the willingness to ask for support.
   
10. Leadership is an affair of the heart: Leaders make others feel important. 
    

How Successful People Stay Successful

Part I: Meaning

1. You must first love what you do. Making success last takes a level of tenacity
   and passion only love can sustain.
   
2. You have to have the goodhearted stubbornness to stretch for your full
   potential and sure the inevitable slings and arrows that await you on your
   journey.
   
3. Integrity provides meaning not just work but personal lives.
   “What helps successful people stay successful is their stubbornness about sticking with their own journey based on their own values.”
   

Part II: Extreme Makeovers Start in Your Head

1. Believe in yourself.
   
2. Trust your passion.
   
3. Keep a positive attitude regardless of the situation.
   You have to move beyond your emotions to constructive actions.
   
4. Remain persistent and learn from your mistakes.
   

Part III: Turning Passion into Actions

1. Only a prepared mind and open heart prevail.
   
2. Plans and goals are essential.
   
3. Your behavior has to match your words.
   
4. Start with the end in mind.
   
5. Take responsibility.
   

Successful people go through the day by day practice of aligning their meaning, thoughts, and actions in their life and work. 

Great Work, Great Career

A great career is all about solving great problems, meeting great challenges, and making great contributions. Satisfaction is found in providing meaningful service and giving yourself to the needs of others. “A great career requires both of these dimensions—the desire and skill to contribute and a character worthy of the trust and loyalty of others.”
A great career:

1. taps your talent,
   
2. fuels your passions, and
   
3. satisfies your conscience.
   

Change your mindset. Understand that your mentality is governed by your thinking and your actions. Adopt a solution mind-set. Recognize the opportunities around you and then go after them. Create authentic relationships with the key people around you. Support each other.
Build your village:

1. Identify the members of your village:
   There are two kinds of people:
   1. Those you serve and support
   2. Those who serve and support you
   
2. Create an emotional bank account:
   The amount of confidence and trust there is in a relationship
   
3. Practice synergy.
   

“The energy you invest in regularly and frequently building your village will pay dividends not only in advancing your career but also in personal satisfaction.” 

Getting Things Done
by David Allen

Our productivity is directly proportional to our ability to relax. Only when our minds are clear and our thoughts are organized can we achieve effect results and unleash our creative potential.

Stress comes from our commitments. First we ned to consider any unfitted commitments and what we have to do to make progress toward fulling it.
The key to managing everything is managing your actions.
5 Stages of Mastering Work Flow

1. 1)  Collect the things that command our attention
   
2. 2)  Process what they mean and what to do about them
   
3. 3)  organize the results
   
4. 4)  which we review as options for what we choose to
   
5. 5)  Do!
   

A simple step to organizing our required tasks is to write them down. Figure out what is most important to do first and what can be done later. Once we decide to complete a task, we must either do it ourselves or delegate it. Ultimately, the only way to get things done is to start doing. Don’t procrastinate. Just do! 

Communicate with Power

In your communications with others, there are five goals that you want to accomplish:

1. You want people to like and respect you.
   
2. You want people to recognize that you are valuable and important.
   
3. You want to be able to persuade people to accept your point of view.
   
4. You want to get people to change their minds and to cooperate with you in
   achieving your goals.
   
5. Overall, you want to be more personally powerful and influential in all your
   relationships, personal and business.
   

Remember that communication has a lot to do with how you make people feel when you deliver your message. 

10 Things Successful People Never Do Again

We all make mistakes but the people who thrive from their mistakes are the successful ones.

Dr. Henry Cloud

“Never go back.” What does that mean? From observations of successful people, clinical psychologist and author of Never Go Back: 10 Things You'll Never Do Again (Howard Books, June 2014), Dr. Henry Cloud has discovered certain “awakenings” that people have—in life and in business—that once they have them, they never go back to the old way of doing things. And when that happens, they are never the same. In short, they got it.

“Years ago, a bad business decision of mine led to an interesting discussion with my mentor,” Dr. Cloud says. “I had learned a valuable lesson the hard way, and he reassured me: ‘The good thing is once you learn that lesson, you never go back. You never do it again.’

“I wondered, what are the key awakenings that successful people go through that forever change how they do things, which propel them to succeed in business, relationships, and life? I began to study these awakenings, researching them over the years.”

Although life and business have many lessons to teach us, Dr. Cloud observed 10 “doorways” of learning that high performers go through, never to return again.

Successful people never again…

1. Return to what hasn’t worked. Whether a job, or a broken relationship that was ended for a good reason, we should never go back to the same thing, expecting different results, without something being different.

2. Do anything that requires them to be someone they are not. In everything we do, we have to ask ourselves, “Why am I doing this? Am I suited for it? Does it fit me? Is it sustainable?” If the answer is no to any of these questions, you better have a very good reason to proceed.

3. Try to change another person. When you realize that you cannot force someone into doing something, you give him or her freedom and allow them to experience the consequences. In doing so, you find your own freedom as well.

4. Believe they can please everyone. Once you get that it truly is impossible to please everyone, you begin to live purposefully, trying to please the right people.

5. Choose short-term comfort over long-term benefit. Once successful people know they want something that requires a painful, time-limited step, they do not mind the painful step because it gets them to a long-term benefit. Living out this principle is one of the most fundamental differences between successful and unsuccessful people, both personally and professionally.

6. Trust someone or something that appears flawless. It’s natural for us to be drawn to things and people that appear "incredible." We love excellence and should always be looking for it. We should pursue people who are great at what they do, employees who are high performers, dates who are exceptional people, friends who have stellar character, and companies that excel. But when someone or something looks too good to be true, he, she, or it is. The world is imperfect. Period. No one and no thing is without flaw, and if they appear that way, hit pause.

7. Take their eyes off the big picture. We function better emotionally and perform better in our lives when we can see the big picture. For successful people, no one event is ever the whole story. Winners remember that – each and every day.

8. Neglect to do due diligence. No matter how good something looks on the outside, it is only by taking a deeper, diligent, and honest look that we will find out what we truly need to know: the reality that we owe ourselves.

9. Fail to ask why they are where they find themselves. One of the biggest differences between successful people and others is that in love and in life, in relationships and in business, successful people always ask themselves, what part am I playing in this situation? Said another way, they do not see themselves only as victims, even when they are.

10. Forget that their inner life determines their outer success. The good life sometimes has little to do with outside circumstances. We are happy and fulfilled mostly by who we are on the inside. Research validates that. And our internal lives largely contribute to producing many of our external circumstances.

And, the converse is true: people who are still trying to find success in various areas of life can almost always point to one or more of these patterns as a reason they are repeating the same mistakes.

Everyone makes mistakes…even the most successful people out there. But, what achievers do better than others is recognize the patterns that are causing those mistakes and never repeat them again. In short, they learn from pain—their own and the pain of others.

A good thing to remember is this: pain is unavoidable, but repeating the same pain twice, when we could choose to learn and do something different, is certainly avoidable. I like to say, “we don’t need new ways to fail….the old ones are working just fine!” Our task, in business and in life, is to observe what they are, and never go back to doing them again.

4 Secrets of Insanely Successful People

Everybody loves a good secret. In fact, the juicier, the better. Why? Because we all love being insiders. We love the feeling of exclusivity, of knowing something that’s just ours and no one else’s.

But in business, secrets do more than just stroke our egos.We love having the upper hand. We love having the “unfair advantage,” to borrow entrepreneur Jason Cohen’s term.

So when someone like Dr. Ivan Misner, founder and chairman of BNI, the world’s largest business networking organization boasting 5.4 million referrals and more than $6.5 billion in resulting revenue, asks, “Do you want to know the secret to success?” you listen.

What’s “the secret”? Well, there isn’t just one. But think about this: “Success is the uncommon application of common knowledge.”

In other words, when it comes to success, what matters isn’t so much learning something new but putting into practice what we already know.

Here are four not-so-secret secrets of insanely successful people:

1. They have a vision.

According to Warren Bennis’s classic On Becoming a Leader, leadership is “the capacity to translate vision into reality.” This means that success starts with answering a fundamental question, What do I really want?

Whether you call the answer to that question your mission statement, core values, brand identity or just your goals doesn’t really matter. Because “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

Here’s how Bennis unpacks the idea: The leader has a clear idea of what he or she wants to do—professionally and personally—and the strength to persist in the face of setbacks, even failures.

The key word is “clear.” And clarity means writing it down.

In fact, as SUCCESS.com’s infographic on the habits of the world’s wealthiest people points out, two of the most statistically significant factors that set the richest people apart from everyone else is that 81 percent of them maintain a to-do list and 80 percent focus on accomplishing a specific goal.

2. They are honest.

Successful people tell the truth.This sounds so obvious that you might think it doesn’t even need to be said. But in a climate where the pressure to look good, perform well, eke out profits and win by any means necessary is constantly increasing, honesty is becoming a scarce commodity.

And yet, honesty pays.

According to research in Robert B. Cialdini’s Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive, when companies “explained failures in their annual reports, those that pointed to internal and controllable factors had higher stock prices one year later than those that pointed to external and uncontrollable factors.”

In other words, taking responsibility for our mistakes and admitting when we’re wrong isn’t just relationally smart—it’s financially savvy.

Another study, conducted by the Corporate Executive Board, found companies that “rated highly in the area of open communication” and encouraged honest feedback among their staff delivered a “10-year total shareholder return that was 270 percent more than other companies.”

And what’s true for companies is just as true for us. As Bennis wrote, “Leaders never lie to themselves, especially about themselves…. You are your own raw material.”

3. They show gratitude.

Without gratitude, you aren’t being mindful or totally thankful of the good things in life—and your perspective is probably skewed to the negative as a result. You might even have less motivation to go after more good things, if you aren’t grateful of the ones you already have.

We tend to think of gratitude as a spontaneous emotion, something that just happens to us in moments of triumph or success. In reality, though, gratitude is something we develop.And just like all the other not-so-secret secrets on this list, it is something we choose, something we make a wide-eyed, premeditated, self-determined decision to experience.

How? By actively looking for reasons to be grateful and second, by simply saying, “thank you.”

When we look for reasons to be grateful—when we make that our intentional focus—we find them. On top of that, when we call attention to those reasons, we cultivate gratitude not only within ourselves but within our relationships and organizations.

4. They are adaptive.

Success isn’t about avoiding failure. It’s about learning from failure.

Take Thomas Edison’s famous quote about inventing the light bulb: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

The key is to cultivate what Eric Ries in The Lean Startup calls “validated learning.”“Validated learning is not an after-the-fact realization or a good story designed to hide failure,” he says. “It is the principal antidote to the lethal problem of achieving failure: successfully executing a plan that leads nowhere.”

For Ries, this antidote comes down to one skill: the ability to adapt.“What differentiates the success stories from the failures is that the successful entrepreneurs had the foresight, the ability and the tools to discover which parts of their plans were working brilliantly and which were misguided, and adapt their strategies accordingly.”

All this means is that instead of hiding from failure, insanely successful people anticipate and integrate failure into their lives in ways that transform it from an end into a means.

We all love a good secret. But the truth is, when it comes to success, there’s no such thing.So start small, but start today. Pick one of these four “secrets” and put it to work.

What Makes A Great Leader

© Kathy Holdaway

Good leaders make people feel that they're at the very heart of things, not at the periphery. Everyone feels that he or she makes a difference to the success of the organization. When that happens people feel centered and that gives their work meaning.
- Warren G. Bennis 

The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born - that there is a genetic factor to leadership. This myth asserts that people simply either have certain charismatic qualities or not. That's nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born. Failing organizations are usually over-managed and under-led.
- Warren G. Bennis 

Leadership is an art and a science. It is an art because it continually evolves, changes form, and requires creativity. It is a science because there are certain essential principles and techniques required. A good leader knows when it is time to change shape because they are highly attentive to those around them. Coming from a position of strength, a great leader takes risks by freeing up the creative genius in their followers to build their capability and multiply the talents of the organization. This leads to community and greatness. By powerfully communicating a vision that animates, motivates, and inspires followers, a great leader is able to transform his or her organization. A good leader needs to be able to laugh; a great leader needs to be able to laugh at oneself.

What kind of leader are you being? Where is your organization in relation to your vision?

What do you think makes a great leader? Who do you think was a great leader?

What qualities did or do they routinely exhibit? What do your followers want to know in order to believe in you? What are the words that lead them to believe you?

Consider the following as a beginning list of Qualities:

• Cooperation 
• Collaboration
• Consistent
• Creative
• Conscious
• Caring
• Capable
• Courageous
• Innovation
• Understanding
• Integrity
• Sense of Humor

Now consider the following Questions that relate to those Qualities:

Do you cooperate with the best in your people or do you demand from them?

Do you routinely work with them to bring innovation and best practices to your organization or do you push your ideas on them?

Are you consistent in demonstrating the principles of leadership you wish others to emulate, or do you vacillate in your own modeling?

Do you encourage creativity with brainstorming or are your ideas the only ones that work?

Are you conscious and present with your employees, or are you in a conversation in your head while with them?

Do you balance caring in the choices you make that effect your organization or are you only interested in the bottom line?

Are you the only one capable in your company, or do you unleash capability by empowerment through equality in responsibility and authority?

How courageous are you? What does risk look like to you? Does your organization go through frequent paradigm shifts continually advancing your corporate vision?

Do you foster a collaborative working environment or does your leadership style reflect mainly "telling?"

Do you balance understanding with expectations on deadlines when the circumstances dictate?

Do you model integrity? What does integrity look like to you?

Are you able to laugh at yourself and laugh freely and openly with your leadership team?

One of the joys of coaching emerging leaders is the well-spring of ideas that surface in the coaching conversation. I find that both new and the existing leaders understand the dynamics of leadership required for today's complex business environment. Many of them emulate the qualities covered above. Where do you stand?

Business Tips From 7 Highly Successful Entrepreneurs

Article Byline Information

Entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart. Running a business can be challenging, and it takes hard work and perseverance to achieve a high level of success. Whether you're already in business, or looking to start a business, it pays to heed the advice of others who have walked in your shoes. I asked a few self-made millionaire entrepreneurs to share their advice for being successful in business. Here's what they had to say:

Even when you have everything to lose, act like you don’t

I used to have nothing to lose, but now that I have a lot to lose, I have a whole new perspective on this. Even after you've made it to the top, you still have to act like you have nothing to lose. And beware a man who has a great deal to lose, but acts like he doesn't. Regardless of the amount of money a person has or the size of their company, or the amount of wealth they have—those people that take action and risk without the fear of failure are the ones that will ultimately take market share.

Ryan Blair is the CEO and Co-founder of ViSalus. He is a former gang member turned serial entrepreneur multimillionaire. [Photo Credit: Sally Peterson]

Work toward being significant

If you want to have success, you can't make success your goal. The key is not to worry about being successful, but to instead work toward being significant—and the success will naturally follow. If you do work that you love, and work that fulfills you, the rest will come. I truly believe that the reason I've been able to be so financially successful is because my focus has never, ever for one minute been money.

Nellie Akalp is the CEO of CorpNet, a passionate entrepreneur, small business advocate and mother of four. She has formed more than 100,000 corporations and LLCs across the U.S., building a strong passion to assist small business owners in starting, running, and protecting their small businesses the right way.

Seek and you shall find

There are thousands of clues and even direct blueprints to how to make money if you know where to look. Find a successful company that is creating products or services that you are interested in and figure out HOW they are doing it. I use a process called reverse engineering to isolate two important factors: Their traffic and monetization. Where are they getting people to see their products? How are they converting them into buyers? If you can answer these two questions with a systematic approach, you can start to build a business around it immediately.

Trey Smith is the founder of Kayabit Games with over 11,000,000 downloads, GameAcademy.com and L-System Records. He's created three different 7-figure businesses over the last 6 years totaling over $18,000,000 in sales of his own products and services. Trey recently finished authoring a book on reverse engineering wealth.

Love what you do

1) Choose something that is in line with your own personal interest and passion, then it never seems like work. 2) Don't be afraid to fail. 3) It's critical to spend the time early on to hire the right people. If you are disciplined in finding the best and brightest people who are also team players then management is easy. 4) There is no substitute for talking directly to customers. Whether they are happy or upset about something, it feels great to connect with people who are using your products, because you immediately get a good sense for how to make it even better.

Brian Sharples co-founded HomeAway with Carl Shepherd in February 2005. Since then, he has raised nearly $405 million in private funding, completed a successful IPO in 2011 (NASDAQ: AWAY) and acquired 17 websites, to create the world's leading online marketplace of vacation rentals.

Don't let them intimidate you out of your dream

1) Work harder than everyone else—I may not be the most formally educated, the most financially set up, or even the smartest, but I will give them a run for their money when it comes to ambition and determination. It's a bit cliché, but I always remember this quote: "Always go the extra mile, there's a lot less traffic up there." 2) Every expert was a newbie at one point—don't let them intimidate you out of your dream. Learn as much as you can, as fast as you can. 3) Ethics do matter—I don't care what they say about "it's just business," the world comes full circle. Be competitive, but stay true to your beliefs and principles. It always comes back around eventually.

Amber Schaub is the Founder and CEO of RuffleButts.com. The company landed at #166 of the 2012 Inc. 500 list and surpassed $10 Million in total sales that year.

Focus on quality and execution

1) Hire exceptional people, make sure they feel valued and can work as a team. 2) Work to achieve synergy (energy and alignment). 3) Practice Kaizen (Japanese for "small improvement" and "better") everyday focusing on getting a little bit better with the belief that over time outcomes become significant. 4) Focus on expands and set outcomes that are bold, passionate, measurable, written and positive. 5) Worry less about growth and more about quality and execution. When you take care of your customers and exceed their expectations, growth and opportunity follow. 6) Remember that success often comes to those who get in front of the inevitable.

Brothers Chad and Troy McWhinney made themselves millionaires when they founded their own real estate investment and development company, McWhinney, in 1991 with the purchase of 440 acres of prime Colorado land. Since founding McWhinney, Chad and Troy have taken on over five million square feet of development projects throughout Colorado and beyond, partnering in the redevelopment of Denver's historic Union Station, set to re-open 100 years after its original opening in 1914.

Be a thought leader

Based on my own experience, it pays to be a thought leader in your own industry. In today's world, it is easy to publish your own information (including videos), but the traditional media outlets still carry a lot of weight. Get positive exposure and help others by sharing your expertise. By building up a following and strategic partners, good things will happen. On a side note, it pays to love what you do. Hard work and dedication can separate success stories from those that do not have their heart in it. As the old Confucius quote goes, "Find something you love to do and you will never have to work for the rest of your life."

Mike Byrnes is a national speaker, owner of Byrnes Consulting, LLC and has been published over 250 times. His firm provides consulting services to help businesses become even more successful.

TL Direct acquisitions Leader of the week

Who is this weeks leader of the week? 

Kiara Hamilton is this weeks leader of the week.  

Words from Kiara:

"Why work hard for someone else when I can work hard for myself to build my own empire!"

Every week we nominate a leader who exemplifies all the qualities of a top leader. 

So what is a leader?

A leader is someone who leads by example. They inspire a shared vision while challenging you. They encourage and enable you to act. They help you succeed.

So what do we consider a top leader? 

This is a person who demonstrates all of the skills needed to excel in and out of the field as well as the office. 

5 Practices of Leadership

1. Model the way
2. Inspire a shared vision
3. Challenge the process
4. Enable others to act
5. Encourage the heart

A leader is someone who inspires people to have a vision and then leads the way.  A leader challenges you to go beyond the person you think you. To do the things you don’t think you can. A leader challenges you to become more, do more, and develops the leader within you. 

TL Direct acquisitions Leader of the week

Who is this weeks leader of the week? 

Margarita Crespo

My goal is to help as many people as possible get to their goals while I work on hitting mine. I appreciate the nomination by my peers. I hope to help each get here too.










Every week we nominate a leader who exemplifies all the qualities of a top leader. 

So what is a leader?

A leader is someone who leads by example. They inspire a shared vision while challenging you. They encourage and enable you to act. They help you succeed.

So what do we consider a top leader? 

This is a person who demonstrates all of the skills needed to excel in and out of the field as well as the office. 

Puerto Rico Trip

Melissa Burrell and her guest Kiara Hamilton attended the trip in Puerto Rico. Lets hear from them:

Melissa
“Puerto Rico was absolutely incredible. It was an experience of a lifetime to get to see another part of the world and get away to a place that was so serene. It just goes to show if you work for something that it pays off. In order to see or be a part of great things you have to work hard. I cannot wait to make it to owner and be able to do things like this all the time whenever I want. This is something that I will always remember I’m so grateful for the opportunity!”




Kiara
“Puerto Rico was amazing! Having the chance to see another country and being able to relax was mind blowing. The quote ‘work hard play hard’ is definitely true! When I make it to my goal of management, the sky is the limit will be my slogan.” 

Scientists have discovered a personality difference between entrepreneurs and employees

Steve Jobs said you need a broad "bag of experiences."

Around 13% of Americans are starting or running their own companies.

Almost everyone else is an employee.

We may have found out the difference between the two types. 

According to a 2013 Swiss-German study, the difference lies in disposition: While an employee is a specialist, an entrepreneur is a jack-of-all-trades. 

"Entrepreneurs differ from employees in that they must be sufficiently well versed in a whole set of entrepreneurial skills," write Uschi Backes-Gellner of the University of Zurich in Switzerland and Petra Moog of the University of Siegen in Germany. 

On the other hand, they say that employees are "specialists who work for others and whose talents are combined with those of other specialists (employees) by the entrepreneurs."

In their study, Backes-Gellner and Moog analyzed survey data from 2000 German college students. Their analysis showed that people with a broader portfolio of experiences were more likely to have a "disposition toward entrepreneurship." Qualities that predicted against entrepreneurship included a desire for job or income security, as well as, perhaps surprisingly, having an apprenticeship or internship — since those lead to specialization. 

Their study built on a decade's worth of research.

The "jack of all trades" theory first came from Stanford University economist Edward P. Lazear, whose studies of Stanford MBAs show that students who take a broad range of classes and a wider range of jobs are more likely to become entrepreneurs. A follow-up German study replicated those results. 

Backes-Gellner and Moog expanded on that finding by taking in social networks. Their research suggested that entrepreneurs don't just have a diverse set of skills, but they also have a diverse network of relationships — friends, parents, and business contacts that they can call on when launching a business. Findings in network science show that having such a diverse social network is hugely beneficial at a creative level, too, since the more perspectives you're exposed to, the more refined your ideas become.

So it's a double-diversity that leads to entrepreneurship: lots of experiences, lots of contacts. 

"It is the jacks-of-all-trades across a whole portfolio of individual resources and not the masters-of-one who are likely to become entrepreneurs," Backes-Gellner and Moog write. "The mere social butterflies or the mere computer nerds are not likely to become entrepreneurs because they are both too imbalanced and thereby less likely to be successful as entrepreneurs."

The research confirms a lot of folk wisdom about what makes founders function. None other than Steve Jobs used to say that creative people have a more diverse "bag of experiences" than everybody else. In a 1982 speech, the Apple founder told his audience that "if you're gonna make connections which are innovative ... you have to not have the same bag of experiences as everyone else does."

Qualities of a Leader

In his book How the Best Leaders Lead, Brian Tracy defines the seven qualities of leadership as:

1. Vision
2. Courage
3. Integrity
4. Humility
5. Foresight
6. Focus
7. Cooperation

Leaders are not born, they are developed. All of these qualities can be learned and then developed through repetition and practice.

Football, Fun, and the Future

We are excited to hear about the experiences of Phil Lester who attended the 49ers versus Panthers game with President Terry Lynch.

Phil Lester and Terry Lynch

Winning the tip to go see the San Francisco 49ers play the Carolina Panthers was an awesome experience. It showed that hard work truly pays off in our business. I had never been to a live NFL game, let alone a payoff game. So it was really cool to see the fans so excited during each pay. You could actually feel the stadium rumbling at your feet as the fans cheered on their favorite team in anticipation of the next play. All-in-all, it was a great experience and definitely won’t be the last. I’m excited about what the future holds for us. ~ Phil Lester 

Mentally Strong People: The 13 Things They Avoid

For all the time executives spend concerned about physical strength and health, when it comes down to it, mental strength can mean even more. Particularly for entrepreneurs, numerous articles talk about critical characteristics of mental strength—tenacity, “grit,” optimism, and an unfailing ability as Forbes contributor David Williams says, to “fail up.”

However, we can also define mental strength by identifying the things mentally strong individuals don’t do. Over the weekend, I was impressed by this list compiled by Amy Morin, a psychotherapist and licensed clinical social worker, that she shared in LifeHack. It impressed me enough I’d also like to share her list here along with my thoughts on how each of these items is particularly applicable to entrepreneurs.

1. Waste Time Feeling Sorry for Themselves.
You don’t see mentally strong people feeling sorry for their circumstances or dwelling on the way they’ve been mistreated. They have learned to take responsibility for their actions and outcomes, and they have an inherent understanding of the fact that frequently life is not fair. They are able to emerge from trying circumstances with self-awareness and gratitude for the lessons learned. When a situation turns out badly, they respond with phrases such as “Oh, well.” Or perhaps simply, “Next!”

2. Give Away Their Power.
Mentally strong people avoid giving others the power to make them feel inferior or bad. They understand they are in control of their actions and emotions. They know their strength is in their ability to manage the way they respond.

3. Shy Away from Change.
Mentally strong people embrace change and they welcome challenge. Their biggest “fear,” if they have one, is not of the unknown, but of becoming complacent and stagnant. An environment of change and even uncertainty can energize a mentally strong person and bring out their best.

4. Waste Energy on Things They Can’t Control.
Mentally strong people don’t complain (much) about bad traffic, lost luggage, or especially about other people, as they recognize that all of these factors are generally beyond their control. In a bad situation, they recognize that the one thing they can always control is their own response and attitude, and they use these attributes well.

5. Worry About Pleasing Others.
Know any people pleasers? Or, conversely, people who go out of their way to dis-please others as a way of reinforcing an image of strength? Neither position is a good one. A mentally strong person strives to be kind and fair and to please others where appropriate, but is unafraid to speak up. They are able to withstand the possibility that someone will get upset and will navigate the situation, wherever possible, with grace.

6. Fear Taking Calculated Risks.
A mentally strong person is willing to take calculated risks. This is a different thing entirely than jumping headlong into foolish risks. But with mental strength, an individual can weigh the risks and benefits thoroughly, and willfully assess the potential downsides and even the worst-case scenarios before they take action.

7. Dwell on the Past.
There is strength in acknowledging the past and especially in acknowledging the things learned from past experiences—but a mentally strong person is able to avoid miring their mental energy in past disappointments or in fantasies of the “glory days” gone by. They invest the majority of their energy in creating an optimal present and future.

8. Make the Same Mistakes Over and Over.
We all know the definition of insanity, right? It’s when we take the same actions again and again while hoping for a different and better outcome than we’ve gotten before. A mentally strong person accepts full responsibility for past behavior and is willing to learn from mistakes. Research shows that the ability to be self-reflective in an accurate and productive way is one of the greatest strengths of spectacularly successful executives and entrepreneurs.

9. Resent Other People’s Success.
It takes strength of character to feel genuine joy and excitement for other people’s success. Mentally strong people have this ability. They don’t become jealous or resentful when others succeed (although they may take close notes on what the individual did well). They are willing to work hard for their own chances at success, without relying on shortcuts.

10. Give Up After Failure.
Every failure is a chance to improve. Even the greatest entrepreneurs are willing to admit that their early efforts invariably brought many failures. Mentally strong people are willing to fail again and again, if necessary, as long as the learning experience from every “failure” can bring them closer to their ultimate goals.

11. Fear Alone Time.
Mentally strong people enjoy and even treasure the time they spend alone. They use their downtime to reflect, to plan, and to be productive. Most importantly, they don’t depend on others to shore up their happiness and moods. They can be happy with others, and they can also be happy alone.

12. Feel the World Owes Them Anything. Particularly in the current economy, executives and employees at every level are gaining the realization that the world does not owe them a salary, a benefits package and a comfortable life, regardless of their preparation and schooling. Mentally strong people enter the world prepared to work and succeed on their merits, at every stage of the game. 

13. Expect Immediate Results.
Whether it’s a workout plan, a nutritional regimen, or starting a business, mentally strong people are “in it for the long haul”. They know better than to expect immediate results. They apply their energy and time in measured doses and they celebrate each milestone and increment of success on the way. They have “staying power.” And they understand that genuine changes take time. Do you have mental strength? Are there elements on this list you need more of? With thanks to Amy Morin, I would like to reinforce my own abilities further in each of these areas today. How about you?