Booked Morning Podcast

We all face times of uncertainty in our life, careers or business. Throughout our journey of achieving success, we are constantly faced with these situations. This was a very grounding book by Amy Cuddy. She took us, her readers on a journey of accessing our personal power and bringing out our best self in the most challenging moments. This book was a TED-Talk inspired book by, Harvard psychologist Amy Cuddy that developed the idea of “Presence”, a concept that can help everyone achieve the results they want in life. She discusses several factors that contribute to developing Presence, including body language, excitement, confidence and boldness. Allow me to read you a quote from the book: “Presence stems from believing in and trusting yourself – your real, honest feelings, values, and abilities. That’s important, because if you don’t trust yourself, how can others trust you?” So lets dive in on some of my key nuggets from this amazing book.

I am very excited to present you this book. I am a big Fan of Ryan Holiday, he has written several best-selling books that I have enjoyed and I have applied to my work and life. For someone like me who lives a very busy life, juggling multiple things in my life as a father with 3 kids with a demanding career and someone who has plenty of extracurricular activities and projects, I felt he wrote this book for me. I often think about the results of my work initiatives and strategies, and life challenges. Ryan presents us an ancient philosophy of Stoicism to conquer obstacles and gave it a modern twist. These Stoic philosophies have been applied by ancient success figures like Marcus Aurelius which was the main inspiration for this book all the way to modern presidents, actors, and athletes, who have turned adversity into success stories. We learn that sometimes we must stand our ground, or move sideways or even go backward in order to overcome obstacles in our way to success. As you know, with this podcast, I have committed to studying new books on a daily basis to improve myself and leave something for my kids to study, which itself has been very challenging, and then documenting my process with podcasts. With almost 30 books into this, Sometime’s I have not been happy with the results of the episodes, I have not been sure if I am giving too much information or maybe not enough. Maybe the ideas are too complicated or maybe not presented well enough to offer value.  This book came just at the right time for me because it deals with 3 keys that I need to adjust in my life. My perception, or how I look at problems and my attitudes, also Actions, the energy, and creativity I need to exert in order to convert problems into opportunities, and My Will, to maintain an inner will to help me push through some difficulties. So Let’s dive in.  So Let’s dive in.  Allow me to leave you with this  Let us all  Stay objective and tweak the way we internalize things. Don’t get stuck in the past or dwell on the future, we need to always find good in the bad. We also need to Learn from every failure, we need to stay “in the zone” with deliberate focus, even when we don’t win, we need to keep boldly moving ahead. And when the world tries to knock us off our path, we must exert our willpower through resilience, humility, and flexibility.

In life, we often wonder, what important lessons our failures teaches us. And what part of our failures gives us the best life lessons to take with us and how can we have the mindset to not focus on the negatives but learn from them.This inspiring book by John Maxwell teaches us exactly how to learn and cope with our falls. On our way to achieving our success, we fall, but if we put just winning ahead of learning, we will never be able to move forward and realize that failures are a part of the process and actually learn from them. WE ALL HATE LOSING But the reality is, life is about falling and getting up, from the time we are children all the way to our death bed. It's the things that we learn along the way that allows us to overcome future obstacles, including the more complicated problems. My favorite quote from this book is very short "Mistakes can often be our best teachers." Allow me to leave you with this. It doesn’t matter how many times we fail; what matters is how much we learn from our failures. Life is hard and often unfair.The most important question is not “What am I getting?” but “What am I becoming?”To achieve our potential, we must be willing to say, “I am responsible.” Success comes from making a persistent effort and performing several small steps daily.Each time you confront what you fear, you get stronger and closer to achieving success.

In order for our organizations, businesses, and selves to get ahead, we must be and work with ideal, strong team players. Bestselling author Patrick Lencioni returns with another insightful book where he presents one of the most effective teamwork approach, used by leaders and companies around the world. He says. “The most reliable way to ensure that teamwork takes hold in an organization would be to hire only ideal team players.” Think about this, based on our experiences, if we were asked today, what an Ideal team player may be like, what would we say? We would probably get a list of 15-20 different things that we feel work best for us. We are all trained from a very young age by schooling, that in order to be successful, we need to be really good ourselves. But when we are in the real world, we find that in order to be successful, we need to work with a team. Even the top individual performers and athletes, have a team around them to keep them at their best. What this tells us is that it is hard for us to identify key values of an ideal team player. We normally value ourselves, prideful in our abilities and have some sense of entitlement. Patrick, Based on his years of corporate and consulting experience, he and his team narrowed the characteristics of an ideal team player down to three virtues that can be learned and cultivated. This is what is called the Ideal Team Player Model. The author says “For organizations seriously committed to making teamwork a cultural reality…‘the right people’ are the ones who have the three virtues in common – humility, hunger and people smarts.” To be Ideal team players, we must practice genuine “humility” and place the team above our own interests. Be self-motivated and “hungry” enough to work hard. • And are “smart” about other people. Let's dive into these virtues further. So that we can find them in future teams and develop within us and our current teams.

This was an extraordinary book, combined with Grant Cardone’s 10X Rule Book. My gosh, with these 2, you can accomplish anything. The ONE Thing book presents us an exciting but very simple approach to productivity, based around a single question to help us declutter our life from stress, distractions and provide more focus and energy to achieving our success.  What's the ONE THING I can do right now – which will make everything else easier or unnecessary? The first thing that is presented in the book that really best summed it up was this Russian proverb.  IF YOU CHASE TWO RABBITS…   ... YOU WILL NOT CATCH EITHER ONE.  The ultimate key to achieving more in our life, our business and career are to concentrate on the One Thing which will deliver us the most value and extraordinary results.  An excerpt from the book, I would like to read to you is this.  "The way to get the most out of your work and your life is to go as small as possible. Most people think just the opposite. They think big success is time-consuming and complicated. As a result, their calendars and to-do lists become overloaded and overwhelming. Success starts to feel out of reach, so they settle for less. Unaware that big success comes when we do a few things well, they get lost trying to do too much and in the end accomplish too little. Over time they lower their expectations, abandon their dreams, and allow their life to get small. This is the wrong thing to make small." – Gary Keller and Jay Papasan It might sound counterintuitive, but the key to achieving more is to consciously try and do fewer things, not more.  This allows us to be certain that the things we are focusing on are the things that count the most towards our goals. We need to find ways to eliminate all the unnecessary busy stuff which eats up our time and attention this will lessen our stress and give us more time for what really counts.  Achieving more, means think big but go small. We need to figure out what the One Thing which delivers the most bang for our buck and do that alone.   Let's talk dive in and talk about The ONE THING System For Getting More Done  My favorite quote from the book is “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” -George Bernard Shaw The author says Put yourself together, and your world falls into place. When you bring purpose to your life, know your priorities, and achieve high productivity on the priority that matters most every day, your life makes sense and the extraordinary becomes possible. Allow me to Leave you with this Success can be achieved by focusing on ONE thing, not many things. When we journey towards our ONE thing, we need to avoid the obstacles that prevent us from realizing our goals. And finally, we need to break through the noise and chaos and do our best work and effort towards where it really counts.

This was a very a powerful book that presents Psychology Hacking ideas. It was filled with scientific studies and anecdotal stories that most of us who want to make our life better by positively influencing those around us can relate to. Lots of you that are into marketing may have heard his first book, Influence. In this book, Robert Cialdini builds on the lessons and strategies from his Influence by going deeper into the idea of persuasion, and that the secret is not the content or message itself but the key is the moment before the message is delivered. Robert sheds light on how the creative diversion of attention leads to successful pre-suasion and gets your targeted audience primed and ready to say, “Yes.” Some interesting finds from this book I wanted to share before diving in. - When we are exposed to French music, we are more likely to purchase French Wine. - By covering a website with pictures of pennies, we are more inclined to buy inexpensive furniture. - We will likely be more in an analytical mindset if we viewed a picture of Rodin’s The Thinker. - When someone hands you a hot chocolate, you are more likely to feel warm to that person. Very interesting stuff. So what separates good communicators from truly successful persuaders? By building on the same combination of lessons that made his Influence an iconic bestseller Robert explains how to take advantage of the essential window of time before the sale or message delivery. He calls this the “privileged moment for change” which prepares people to be more receptive to a message before they experience it. He says "Optimal persuasion is achieved only through optimal pre-suasion." In other words, to change “minds” a pre-suader must also change “states of mind.” Let’s dive into the psychology that allows us to take advantage of that privileged moment.

Zero To One is an inside dive into billionaire Peter Thiel’s mindset for success by looking at the lessons he learned from founding and selling PayPal, investing early in Facebook and his journey to become a billionaire. The lessons may be geared for startups and tech but the overall mindset can be applied to any business that wants to achieve long-term sustainable success. Peter Thiel is considered by many an anomaly. He was A chess master under age 21, received his doctorate in law by age 25, and sold his startup for $1.5 billion by age 35. Zero To One aims to show us the way he thinks, his business approach, and what we can take away in growing our organizations and have our hand in shaping the future of the world in the process. The book was from a start-up course that Thiel was teaching at Stanford. One of the students who attended, Blake Masters, took detailed class notes, which were reworked with Theil to form this book. I was amazed at how many useful big ideas, examples, anecdotes and success stories of companies such as Paypal, Google, Facebook and many others were present, Which helps us see Thiel's perspective and contrarian truths through his eyes. Let's dive in, A final quote from the book. “Our task today is to find singular ways to create the new things that will make the future not just different, but better—to go from 0 to 1. The essential first step is to think for yourself. Only by seeing our world anew, as fresh and strange as it was to the ancients who saw it first, can we both re-create it and preserve it for the future.” Allow me to leave you with this. Zero to One’s key message is that success can’t be left to chance. We can apply this lesson not only to our organizations but also ourselves. We need to innovate or we’ll die. We should Dominate and not merely compete and industries profits away. Pursue the future we want as long as we’re able to challenge the status quo. Then once we obtain a monopoly by being better than everyone else, at something, success will follow on its own.

Starting in the 1940s the idea of Find your passion came about and started to really become prominent in the 80s..Where we were told that to be happy we have to find our passion and match it to our work. We find out from Cal that this mindset is juxtaposed by the fact that starting in the 1980s, job satisfaction started to drop as this idea of Happiness comes from finding your passion took up. And in a recent US Job board survey, we find that 20 — 30-year-olds have the lowest job satisfaction recorded. The conventional wisdom on career success - follow your passion - is seriously flawed. But that does not tell us that we shouldn’t find our passion. It's to be aware that happiness does not only come from finding our passion but from other factors that play a major role in this and our success in life. And that is what this book discusses. The author says If "follow your passion" is bad advice, what should I do instead? Passion is a by-product of well lived working life. We shouldn't just follow your passion, instead, let our passion follow us in our quest to become so good they can't ignore us. The author tells us to clear our path from finding the right work, to working excellently and build a love for what we do. He tells a story about Steve jobs, how he loved western history and dance and was on a path to become a Zen expert, which was his passion when he was younger, before the Apple days. He references to a 2005 Speech by Steve Jobs at Stanford, wherein he advised graduates to follow their passion, he argues that if Jobs followed his own advice, and only pursued worked he loves, he would have become a Zen Master. But in the end, he did not follow this advice, Apple computer was not born out of passion, it was a result of a small-time scheme that turned into a massive payoff. Allow me to leave you with this. Instead of searching for that perfect job, business or life. We should be aware that a foundation to a remarkable life is finding something interesting to us that gives us interesting options, we then put in the time to build career capital or experience through deliberate deep practice by demanding a craftsman mindset instead of a passion mindset, and in the end, this will result in a life of value and happiness that we can truly be passionate about.

This was an exhilarating book to read. It presented me with stories, skills, and insights to disrupt not only myself but my work. For those that feel stuck on something, a project, or life and looking for a different perspective or ideas, this book overflows with creative ideas to affect change and be ready for changes that may come to shake up our lives and our world. The author Jay Samit is a serial disruptor, a change agent, an innovator, an educator, and best selling author. For over three decades, he has been at the forefront of global trends. He has pioneered breakthrough advancements in mobile video, Internet advertising, e-commerce, social networks, eBooks, and digital music used by billions of consumers every day. According to Forbes, only 13% of the world’s billionaires were born into money. The vast majority of today’s most wildly successful individuals changed themselves in such a way as to make becoming a billionaire possible.

In life, I don’t know anyone whose goal in life is to be average. But one day, we just wake up and are in the Average treadmill… But we often wonder, what separates the average people from the awesome ones. I read some time ago that one of the regrets of people when dying is that they wish they had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected them.   Most people end up living an average life because of decisions they have in life, or a missed opportunities, and then we just accept average. We know somewhere along the road to success, the destination shifts to accepting an adequate life. This was the question that Jon tried to answer in his book.  He found and studied that over the last 100 years, there have been 5 stages that all successful people go through in their life. Most average individuals take the easy road because it does not require us to do anything, but just wake up and live life. The Awesome life, on the other hand, is full of challenges, fear rears its ugly head to try to derail us as we are trying to take the road less traveled to live an extraordinary life. In his study, he found that almost every ultra-successful individuals went through these 5 stages of life. 20’s–Learning 30’s–Editing 40’s–Mastering 50’s–Harvesting 60’s–Guiding This is the path that most people take and this is the average life, as it takes your entire life from Learning to Guiding. By understanding this cycle or journey, it will allow us to flip the switch of our lives anytime from average to an awesome life, and live with purpose one stage at a time.  The author says. “You don't need to go back in time to be awesome; you just have to start right now. Regretting that you didn't start earlier is a great distraction from moving on your dream today, and the reality is that today is earlier than tomorrow.”  The awesome news is that it’s no longer about when we were born; it’s about when we make the decision to live.   We don’t have to be in our 20’s to learn, and we certainly don’t need to be in our 50’s to harvest. To start our journey, we need to know where we are realistically and then dream big, and based on these 2 factors, it will help us figure out define where we want to go to have an awesome life. To put these all together.  At any time in our lives, we can stop being average and start being awesome. First, we need to identify where to start, overcome our fear and live with purpose. Cycle through the 5 stages of success, by continually learning a new skill, editing our lives to find our passion, master every aspect of our lives, harvest the results of our work and then give back and guide others through this cycle.

This book was from Jim Collins, he was the best-selling author of another book, Built to Last, which explored what made companies great companies and how they sustained that greatness over time. He then wondered, there are many companies that never make the leap from good companies, while others turned their long-term weakness into long-term domination. This is how he got the idea to make this second book.  The author and his team studied companies for 15 years from 1965 to 1995, the goal of the study was to weed out the short success and focus on the companies that thrived. Out of about 1400 companies, only 11 great companies stood out and took the leap from good to great.  From these 11 great companies came the 7 distinct patterns that he presents in this book which found leadership, disciplined teams, thought and action were what allowed good companies to make the leap from good great.   Putting all the concepts together, I want to leave you with this.  We can lead our businesses and organizations to make a leap from mediocre to great by following specific strategic concepts with the right leader and people working in a culture of self-discipline.

In today’s life, we are all bombarded by stuff… we face challenges in today’s modern lives that older generations didn’t have. Technology that was supposed to make our lives easier has made life almost a 24/7 challenge. It’s become harder and harder to disconnect from our email inbox, rushing to commute, and people who simply drive us insane. The lessons shared by Dr. Carlson aim to keep us from letting the little, stressful things in life, take over our peace and happiness. and he aims to help us find peace and calm in a stressful world to get the most out of our lives. Dr. Carlson offers 100 meditations crafted to keep our emotions in check, cherish family and friends, and deeply appreciate our lives. A favorite quote of mine from the book is "The first step in becoming a more peaceful person is to have the humility to admit that, in most cases, you’re creating your own emergencies. Life will usually go on if things don’t go according to plan.” Allow me to leave you with this... Our life is a reflection of our thoughts. Let's Ask us: Is there any way we can become even more loving than we already are? Can we fill our heart with more loving kindness? Can we, despite the fact that there are less than perfect people in our world, think loving thoughts about ourself and about others? Staying calm, even in the most challenging situations, think positively and take the time to appreciate the important people in our lives and let go of our animosities. Live in each moment, When we learn not sweat the small stuff, we will find real happiness and peace of mind.

Being a leader today has become increasingly challenging. We sometimes find ourselves, leading others older and more experienced that us, or sometimes people with different set of values and even different workstyles altogether. Most Americans today including modern day public servants, from both sides of the aisle, would argue that Abe Lincoln was one of the greatest and most celebrated Presidents the United States has had. My personal favorite, I remember growing up, my Grandfather whom I lived with in the Philippines when I was growing up, would tell me fascinating stories about him. How he was a self-made man and grew up from a poor background, even using the back of a shovel to learn to write, my grandfather could relate as he also came from a poor life and with both parents dying as he was a child, he used the lessons from Lincoln to better his life and eventually becoming and University President. Both men whom I admire were well known for their Honesty, Courage, and Integrity. Only 10 days before President Lincoln took office, the US was split in two, the confederate states seceded from the US. If Lincoln was not the leader he was, our country today would probably be split into 2 countries. He kept the country together by leading people with principles that seemed to be ahead of his time. Shortly after Lincoln’s election as president in 1860 a journalist by the name Henry Villard said: “The path he is about to walk on may lead to success, glory, immortality, but also to failure, humiliation, and curses upon his memory. " While it’s hard to define an exact science to leadership, there are not any set formulas or rules that tell us a clear cut way to lead. So we rely upon guidelines, concepts and principles we learn from role models, successful leaders and those who have shown an ability to lead people to tangible results. In this book, the Author sub-divides Lincolns leadership strategies into four categories, how he was with people, his character as a leader, what he applied daily and his mastery of communication. So let's dive in and listen to the episode

Do you ever wonder makes the difference between winning and losing? Success and Failure... The book presents the philosophies towards achieving our goals in life and says that success is our duty and obligation. For those who haven’t heard of Grant Cardone. He is a NY times bestselling author, speaker and a renowned business and sales, expert. Grant Cardone was recently named the #1 marketer to watch in 2017 by Forbes Magazine and if you ever heard him speak or read any of his other books, he sure packs a huge personality. In this book. Grant says that 1) We should set targets for ourselves that are 10X greater than what we believe we can achieve and 2) We should take actions that are 10X greater than what we believe are necessary to achieve our goals. The biggest mistake we often make in life is not setting goals high enough. 3)and lastly Taking massive action is the only way to fulfill our true potential.

What makes things go viral? What makes us talk about certain products and ideas more than others? We remember some stories and rumors more infectious? Most of us think advertising, but thats not the case. We’ve learned to tune out advertisements, we listen to our peers. Jonah Berger a Wharton Marketing Professor spent the last decade answering these questions. Jonah researched why New York Times articles are some of the Most E-mailed, why products gets spread, and how social influences everything from cars we buy to the clothes we wear to the names we give our children. Jonah peels the curtain on the secret science behind word-of-mouth and social transmission. Contagious combines groundbreaking research with powerful stories. He outlines six basic principles that drive all sorts of things to become contagious, from consumer products and policy initiatives, even workplace rumors and YouTube videos. And the principle are brought together by the mnemonic STEPPS: • S for Social Currency • T for Triggers • E for Emotion • P for Public, • P again for Practical Value • S for Stories Lets dive into each to learn more about how we, can make our ideas and products spread like virus.