There is no possible way Dubai could have imagined it would have grown the way it has over the course of the last 35 years...or did they? I'll let the picture speak for itself - it's impressive.
The point is simple, begin, begin today. Time is fleeting. Don't wait another moment.
DV
Dubai
groundupSALES TV - The Pilot - Ep.01
groundupSALES TV is officially launched! I am having a lot fun making these videos. I will be releasing a new episode every few weeks - for now! The pilot is just a warm up so stay tuned. In the episode I will briefly answer the following questions.
Go check it out today and don't forget to subscribe to channel on your way out the door. Thank you for the continued support!
DV
Congratulations to "King" Lebron James on finally bringing a world championship to the city of Cleveland. I have not been the biggest Lebron supporter throughout the years but he played like a true champion in this entire series, I applaud him. He capped it off with a triple-double last night which is only the 3rd ever in the history of NBA Finals Game 7's. Truly admirable.
Had he not accomplished this achievement, successfully winning a championship in Cleveland he probably would have considered his career a failure, which is ludicrous. Even being one of the top 10 basketball players to ever live, potential billionaire career, 4 time MVP, and all the accolades that come with it - simply his ultimate goal was not met. What this does though is give you a look into mind of a champion - determination, grit, and confidence. His goal was precise, absolute, and big. He was hyper focused even if it took him 13 years, a terrible "decision", two teams, multiple Finals appearances, build you up to tear you down media efforts, and the inevitable champion mindset internal pressures.
"A smooth sea never made a skillful sailor." - Anonymous
Let this be a stark reminder that often times our journey is not smooth, guaranteed, or written in stone. It's in that triumph where we experience life's greatest victory's. We become "King" of our castle.
Stay persistent, stay consistent, and crush the day!
DV
What I like best: There's a lot to like about this book. You know a book is impactful when you haven't read it or even flipped through it in over 2 years but you still remember it so vividly. DRIVE is centered around challenging one major question, what is actually motivating us? Contending that carrot and stick motivation is dead and that humans actually have three major motivators - autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Pink does a great job providing real world examples as well as science to back his claims. My personal favorite is when Pink shows the example of Encarta, c'mon you remember Encarta, that software based encyclopedia that was vastly popular in the mid 90's. Asking us which encyclopedia we thought would have survived if asked then, Encarta or Wikipedia? It's obvious what happened in that dog fight. Autonomy, mastery, and purpose won out. That was just one example of a slew that Pink uses to illustrate his points. I will say that in the 6 years since this book hit the shelves I personally have seen or read about companies changing their culture to a more Motivation 3.0 mindset, which is inspiring for the future. Bottom line this book ranks high on my list of must read business books as it demystifies modern day motivation.
Best Quote: "Control leads to compliance; autonomy leads to engagement."
Happy Father's Day to all the dad's out there. It suppose to be gorgeous weekend - at least here in the Northeast, ha. Get outside, be a kid, and enjoy it!
DV
Today I wanted to share with you a track pulled directly from Track 10 - You Win, I Win Solutions in my audio groundupSALES: It's A Mindset. Something we should all implement before the week is out. It's only Thursday people, eyes off the weekend, ha!
"You have to enjoy solving your customer’s problems and take pride in being able to present solutions that work for them. If you don’t enjoy solving your customer’s problems then groundupSALES is not the right model for you. You can never, ever let the lure of immediate financial gain cloud your vision when presenting solutions to customers or prospects.
One of my favorite quotes of all time comes from legendary motivational speaker Jim Rohn, “You want more, give more.” This is a pivotal concept that lies within all groundupSALES principles. Give more time. Give more energy. Give more of your finances. Give more thought. It applies literally to You win, I win solutions. If you want more yes’s then you need to simply give more. Provide tailored solutions based on actual needs, not based on assumed needs. The pivotal difference here is actual based on assumed. I am sure we’ve all heard the adage breaking down the word assume – a-s-s/u/m-e – when you assume you make an ass of you and me, this couldn’t more true. Assuming is a lot like expecting which we discussed greatly with the poison pill of entitlement. Often times this leads to premature product pitching, pitching wrong products all together, and overall poor awareness which we’ll discuss later as the most important aspect of timing.
This all culminates into big, fat no’s! You need to give more of your time, focus, and energy to those customers to find out their actual needs IF you want yes’s. "
The best part about giving first, putting your customer first, and providing solutions based on actual customer needs is that they actually want them! Therefore you've significantly increased your chance of a yes. If your interested in hearing more on You Win, I Win Solutions then download the audio - it's FREE.
Stay positive and crush the day!
DV
You want more, give more.
Sometimes making a short list of what not to do is more important than making a list of what to do. Tony Robbins has this theory that you can get motivated equally by love or hate challenging us to not shy away from "hate" and to actually use it. I find a similar correlation with not to do lists. So let's lean into these lists because often times they are better tools then their counterpart. I've created a short list of "not to do" thoughts that are potentially holding you back from growth, success, and winning. If I've already lost you and you don't believe me, then you probably are already committing yourself to thought #1 NOT to do.
I know this list is kind of ruthless. Even my tone has been slightly ruthless but it's only because I care about you. Your mindset is yours to control. You have the power every day to choose the way you think.
Crush the day!
DV
I hope everyone had a great weekend! This weekend made me consider a concept from Do The Work by Steven Pressfield. Family and friends are invested in keeping you the same. A major obstacle of resistance. They love the you they've grown up with, the person they've made memories with, and they know THAT person. They are physically and emotionally attached to what they think will keep you safe, they love you. When you're sharing new ideas with them you are challenging their comfort so you can't blame them, just be aware, that's all. There are millions of people in the world who share your view or support your idea, I'm sure of that.
Here's an interesting take by our friend Seth Godin on when and when NOT to share ideas with family and friends. Thoughts, comments, and feedback are highly encouraged.
Crush the day!
DV
This weekend let's lighten the mood with a little humor...
What I like best: It's funny! I'm always concerned when I buy a book in this genre - comedy, dating, etc - it's going to be just someone's long winded and repetitive rant. Aziz does just the opposite because he actually teamed up with NYU sociologist Eric Klinenberg to develop a year long research project to give the book a backbone. As well as consulting with many of the worlds top social scientists. The project spanned from America (urban, rural, and suburban) to Tokyo to Buenos Aires - all with VERY unique dating cultures as you'll find out. He contends, "the world is available to us, that may just be our problem" and "there's no dating service on the planet that can do what the human brain can do in terms of finding the right person." Asking us silly questions like:
“Why did this guy just text me an emoji of a pizza?” “Should I go out with this girl even though she listed Combos as one of her favorite snack foods? Combos?!” “My girlfriend just got a message from some dude named Nathan. Who’s Nathan? Did he just send her a photo of his penis? Should I check just to be sure?”
Personally I really enjoyed when he gets into the differences between our generation and prior generations when it comes to dating or marriage. Suggesting at one point it was basically like, "if the guy had a decent job and a good mustache, lock it down girl." SO funny. If you want a light read that tackles the modern dating scene - texting (yes, sexting as well), dating sites, relationships, marriage, social media, etc. - then definitely pick this book up. I'm sure you'll enjoy it.
Best Quote: "We have two selves: a real-world self and a phone self, and the non sense our phone selves do can make our real-world selves look like idiots. Our real-world selves and our phone selves go hand-in-hand. Act like a dummy with your phone self and send some thoughtless message full of spelling errors, and the real-world self will pay the price. The person on the other end sees no difference between your two selves. They never think, oh, I'm sure he's much more intelligent and thoughtful in person. This is just his "lazy phone persona.""
DV
I recently watch an interesting TED Talk by Penn State business professor Sajay Samuel. He presents a potential solution to the overwhelming cultural issue of college loan debt in America. Although I can probably find a few flaws with his argument I think he does a good job presenting a solution that is workable to a problem that absolutely NEEDS solving.
The college lending business is a farce, a giant bubble waiting to pop. A friend brought this idea to my attention awhile back, since that conversation the writing on the wall has become even clearer. The ultimate wolf in sheep's clothing. Gordon Gekko masked as Mother Theresa.
Quite simply, the heavily protected "education market" is being utilized for extreme financial gain by lenders at the expense of naive kids. Talk about a curtain to hide behind, a crutch to lean on - selling the American dream - providing kids a higher education, which they undoubtedly do - but at what expense? I'll contend a high one, entirely too high, handing out huge debts to kids with no income, and no way to pay them back.
No income, big loans, and easy to obtain. Sound a little familiar? Maybe, like another bubble that popped in 2008. Here's the scary part, at least you got an asset in return for those loans, but THESE loans, they come with no guarantees, nope, not even a promise.
With average incomes declining and college costs rising higher than ever this presents a huge problem for America. I get it, this raises many questions:
What kind of "product" is our university system providing today?
What skills are actually required to sustain a career in todays world?
What should we do with kids that want but can't afford a formal education?
What keeps driving the cost of tuition higher and higher?
However, when is enough, enough, and too much, just too much. Let's consider the evolution of our workforce, advancements in technology, and modern day companies that don't require a college degree. The world is changing rapidly, and we need to keep pace.
Thoughts, comments, or concerns? How would you solve this problem?
DV
Today I wanted to share with you a segment pulled directly from Track 4 - Vulnerability in my audio groundupSALES: It's A Mindset. It needed the spotlight. The concept is just too important!
"The biggest reason I see fellow associates not live outside the comfort zone is fear of failure. Failure is this idea we've built up in our minds as something that is terrible and negative. In order to easily be able to ask for somebody's business, have that conversation you've been thinking about all night, or bring up price - ahh everybody hates talking about price - you need to view failure with a positive outlook.
Let me introduce to you the "pendulum of success" as described by Darren Hardy, publisher of SUCCESS magazine, mentor, and prominent personal development speaker. The pendulum of success suggests that in order to achieve the joy, happiness, achievement, and financial awards success brings first we must push that pendulum as hard as we possibly can in the other direction, yup that's right - straight toward failure! We must continue to do this until we build enough momentum, experience, and know how that when all of a sudden the pendulum swings back in the other direction toward success it does so in direct proportion to how far and hard we have failed. Think of it like this: if you're only willing to push that pendulum slightly then it will only rock back slightly - yup, you guessed it that's the comfort zone."
The interesting thing about this theory is that technically the less you know the better. Why? Because it leads to more failure so no excuses. Be more vulnerable to failure and even enjoy it. You need BIG failure in order to have BIG success.
DV
PS - Checkout this book by Darren Hardy. SUPER impactful. It was my first book review.
