I recently attended a local Summit here in Atlanta that gave me the opportunity to learn up close from some of my favorite gurus. It was a One Day event packed with a lot of speakers. I went mainly because of Tony Robbins and was super happy about the lessons learnt from Sara, Gary and PitBull as well.
Here are my top takeaways from the event:
Sara Blakely: is the founder of Spanx – a billion dollar hosiery company. Her story is fascinating and inspiring. From selling fax machines door -to-door, to becoming the youngest female billionaire in history is no easy feat. More of her story can be found here.
- According to Sara, All of life is sales. I strongly concur. At any point, we are trying to sell our viewpoints to someone or the other.
- While growing up, her father asked her everyday – what she failed at. This built in her the resilience to try new things and know it was OK to fail at it.
- What you don’t know could be your greatest asset if you have the courage to go after it – Unlike what most modern experts preach about validating your product idea before investing time and money to bring it to market, Sara chose a different approach. She secretly made her product and went after sales instead of waiting to validate it with focus groups or landing pages.
- Try it anyway – There are many fears we go through with a new idea. She urged people to try it anyway.
Gary Vaynerchuk: is a hardworking marketing guru whose social media posts and videos go viral every single time. You can read more about him here.
- Does your work ethic match the big ambitious words that come out of your mouth? Gary is a huge proponent of hustling. Most people are all big talk and do not take as much action as they should and can. There is a disconnect between people’s dreams and the actions they take to get to that dreams. Start hustling!
- Gary believes we live in a fantastic time and the Internet offers tons of opportunities.
- On the business side of things, he urged us to consider Facebook ads and Instagram.
- If your money is on the line, you need to be the one who understands and is educated about the problem you are trying to solve.
Tony Robbins: needs no introduction. Tony has worked with Bill Clinton, Oprah, Andre Agassi and other uber successful people. His inspiring story is here.
- Where you come from doesn’t matter,the decisions that you make today is what matters – So many of us dwell in our pasts and fail to move forward. We fail to see the possibilities ahead of us because we are stuck in the past. Tony urges us to decide what we want today and go after it.
- Closely related to above bullet is the fact that we can either live in pain or transform. Use the pain to fuel new growth and change.
- What’s bigger than yourself worth doing it for? We all need to have a purpose – something bigger than ourselves that makes us do what we need to do.
- What is your emotional home? We always tend to come back to a default emotional state. What is your default state?
- Every moment of our lives we are making 3 decisions:
- What to focus on?
- What is the meaning of the thing we focus on?
- What we do
- The word ’emotion’ comes from motion – Change the way you move to change your emotion. That really was an eye opener for me. I hate to admit this – but I do not exercise and I am not physically active. Tony spoke about how motion or movement is important to change our emotional state. Taking the same action produces the same results. In order to take new action, we have to be in a new emotional state and that new emotional state can be derived from motion. I felt motivated to start taking my physical movement more seriously. Back to zumba it is for me!
- To influence others, we have to know what influences them.
- State: what state are they in? eg: playful vs worried
- Blueprint – set of goals, expectations and beliefs. Understand a person’s blueprint.
- I wanted Tony to dig into this topic more. I feel this is an important element in my life on a daily basis with my kids. I want them to take in certain messaging but I want to do it in a way that is naturally influential.
- All the answers we seek to all our questions is inside us. We just need to learn to look inside.
- You have learned what to love and what to hate – This was fascinating to me. So true. There are many things we have learned to love and hate. We were not born with those feelings. How do we unlearn them?
- Most of us don’t celebrate anymore. We wait for something great and big in order to celebrate. We need to learn to celebrate the small victories in life. Create victory in your body first (with motion) and victory will show up in your life.
- Problems and happiness are not related. This was profound to me. A person with problems can still be happy! Happiness stems from within.
- Skills that all of us should master for success in life:
- The Science of Achievement: We need to learn to achieve. If someone else has gotten results more than once, they are doing something different than you. What is it they are doing? Can you find out and emulate it?
- Learn the 3 Forces of Creation:
- Focus – The power of absolute clarity and commitment
- Massive Action – Effective execution. Doing whatever it takes. Keep trying different things until you get what you want. Eg: KFC’s Colonel Sanders at the age of 65, was rejected 1009 times before he heard an Yes! That kind of perseverance and resilience is an example for all of us. Model someone who is ahead of you in the curve.
- Grace – Whatever name you want to give to the higher power – god, luck, law of attraction..believe in it and be graceful.
- Learn the 3 Forces of Creation:
- The Art of Fulfillment:
- How do I really enjoy every moment of my life? Focus on enjoying what you have in life.
- This is a balance we all need to achieve. Progress/achievement/growth is an innate human need. It needs to be balanced with enjoying every moment of our lives. Too much of one thing without the other is going to cause frustration and stagnation.
- The Science of Achievement: We need to learn to achieve. If someone else has gotten results more than once, they are doing something different than you. What is it they are doing? Can you find out and emulate it?
- Suffering:
- Suffering comes in 3 flavors:
- Loss: you believe you have lost something – time, money etc
- Less: you believe you have less of something
- Never: you believe you will never get something
- To move out of the state of suffering:
- Identify what is your favorite flavor of suffering? eg: frustration, fear, stress etc
- Identify what triggers it? (loss, less, never)
- Use a 90 second rule to get out of it. Change it to appreciation, gratitude or love. Feel one of these emotions for the person or thing that caused the state of suffering including yourself!
- Trade your expectations for appreciation and you will change your whole life in that moment.
- Suffering comes in 3 flavors:
PitBull: is a music maven and was a surprisingly great speaker! Here is a great writeup about Pitbull’s life.
- The harder I work, the luckier I get: It was fascinating to hear him talk about his life and how he went from the streets of Miami to dominating the music industry. Sheer hardwork and perseverance stared me in face once again.
- Patience+Passion+Perseverance = Success ; Pitbull summed up his success formula to the 3P’s. I definitely need more patience and belief in myself and my vision.
- And then he performed some of his greatest hits. Awesome way to end the night!
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