What About The Giants?

As of yesterday I took the giant leap...I cancelled my cable, ha. I know it might not seem like a big deal and it probably isn't. If you've always had cable though, it's a weird feeling releasing control of the option. I am choosing the unknown as opposed to the known.

The benefit of ridding myself with time wasting, low value TV watching was just too great to ignore. Yes I still place high value on the entertainment I get from HBO/Showtime series but with modern technology you can still watch through a variety of different streaming options. 

And what about the Giant games this year? Interestingly when I stopped looking at this as a problem, I saw it more as a solution. Although I can't watch the Giant games at home it forces me to go watch them somewhere, engage with like minded fans, and enhance my enjoyment. Prior I would take the easy road, well because it was easier. 

Force your own hand. Remove temptation. Reduce options. Create a breakthrough.

DV

5 Women Who Are Crushing It

Wow! Game of Thrones Season 6 finale last night was quite the episode. It surely is a woman's world now! In honor I made a short list of my favorite women who are taking massive action in real life as well. 

*Holmes has had a rough year but her action is undeniable! I still say she's Daenerys-like, ha.

Crush the day!

DV

The DV Weekend Pickup #15

The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss

What I like best: Tim Ferriss is a human guineas pig and quite possibly the most interesting man in the world, ha. New York Times has been cited as calling him a cross between Jack Welch and a Buddhist monk - hmm. It's also worth noting that Ferriss believes highly in the 80/20 principle, which happens to be a groundupSALES stalwart! This book has done extremely well since it's release in 2007 with over 1.3 million copies sold. Interestingly it was denied by 27 publishers making it a great example of perseverance - oops, missed that one. Ferriss also hosts the # 1 iTunes business podcast The Tim Ferriss Experience which as of 2015 had over 70 million downloads - yup, you read that right. 

Anyway, back to the book. Ferriss uses a 4 step process to free your life from the norm. If you've got the guts, give it go, the process is laid out well in the book, but if not that's okay too. Either way it's an extremely enjoyable read. He takes you step by step on how he went from $40,000 a year in a 9-5 to $40,000+ a month with a sports nutrition start up. He puts a high focus on being productive rather than simply busy. He contends all you need to do is DEAL - Define, Eliminate, Automate, and Liberate. He gets granular with his methods. Ferriss is a real wealth of knowledge if your willing to let your mind consider possibilities outside your normal thought patterns. Sure, 4 hours seems like a farce and it probably is BUT that's okay it's the ideas that matter, they're invaluable. 

Best quote: "What we fear doing most is usually what we need to do...people will choose unhappiness over uncertainty."

DV

groundupSALES TV - The Pilot - Ep.01

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.

  • What is groundupSALES?
  • Why did I start it?
  • What is groundupSALES TV?
  • What to expect moving forward?

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 James

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

The DV Weekend Pickup #14

DRIVE by Daniel Pink

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

Boost Sales Today With This Actionable Concept

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.

You want more, give more.

3 Thoughts Holding You Back

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. 

  1. Hokey Thinking - "Ah man that's not for me, that doesn't work, that's bogus..." - blah, blah, blah. This is the WORST thought we can have that is holding us back. I know you've thought it before, man so have I BUT we have to rid this thinking. Get over yourself and understand often times it takes commitment to the "hokey" things to move forward.
  2. Victim Thinking - "Why does this happen to me?...I ALWAYS get the sh*t end of the stick...They are so lucky." Sound familiar? Yup, we've heard it all before. This type of thinking gets us nowhere - fast! Play victim and we will lose consistently. Do it enough and you quite possibly will regress. Quicker we learn to BELIEVE and mentally accept - things don't happen to you, they happen because of you - the more accelerated our growth will be both personally and professionally.
  3. Can't Thinking - "That can't happen....I would, but I can't I just don't have the time....I can't do that, I don't have the personality for it." The possibilities are endless with this one. I know your probably rifling through every logical counter point in your head as your reading, I get it, getting rid of "can't" is hard to do. The truth is we live in a world today where you CAN do whatever you want. If you tell me you can't all that means is you don't want to do it bad enough. "Can't" is a BS word - sorry, it just is.

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

An Interesting Thought on Sharing Ideas

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