12 Days of Business

Sam. So now, there we go. Let's start over. Hello, Starfish. I'm so sorry that the microphone was not on, but now we are fully functioning for the 12 days of business. So I'm hoping that you are looking forward to this as much as I am. So every year, we put together kind of 12 of the top advice lessons, either from the year or just in general. And so we have everything from Dolly Parton to local celebrity Mark Smith for this year's 12 Days of Business. So here we go. And I even gave you guys graphics, so we should be good there, too. All right, so on the first day of business, Ms. Dolly Parton gave to me, don't get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life. So maybe you know that Dolly Parton is not just a country western singer, but also fairly good businesswoman. And, you know, it's this concept of making sure that you're running your company and it's not running you is something that we work really hard on. And I'm fairly proud of believing that in our companies, in my companies, we're doing a good job at this. So I hope that for your 2020, this is something that you keep close and dear and let Dolly remind you. And. And I hope that you really appreciate this elf sweater that I wore for you guys, too. All right, thank you, Dolly. So on the second day of business, Marcus Sheridan gave to me. The quote of. The biggest benefit of sharing on LinkedIn has been the fact that it keeps me on the mind of clients, prospects and potential prospects. I've had quite a few organizations say something like, hey, Marcus, I saw that video you did about X. Could you come to my event and speak about that to my team? So just the idea, obviously, of social media, but continuing to be consistent. Put your ideas out there, put your thoughts out there. Video is still king and queen in the content world, making sure that people are connecting with you. I don't like writing very much, but I love talking and speaking and sharing. That's why I do Facebook Live every week with you guys. And then we put these videos up on YouTube so that they can impact individuals everywhere and everybody can have access to it. So thank you, Marcus. I appreciate you coming and participating in the 12 days of business for 2019. Next up, we have local celebrity Mark Smith. So local, if you're in and around Central Virginia. And his sage advice has been this year has been a year of simplifying and listening with my eyes. The message I most frequently reference these days goes to those ends it is far less a matter of whether or not you can than it is of whether or not you will. So Mark runs Midas of Richmond and several locations. He works with plenty of non profits in our community and he makes a huge difference. But he's a man of few words and profound impact. And I just appreciate that he shared his wisdom for 2019. He sits on boards, he advises, and so to watch the amount that he accomplishes and is so intentional about it is just really great for business lessons. So thank you, Mark, for participating in our 201912 Days of Business. All right, and then next, I really hope that this gentleman is going to forgive me. I have two individuals that participated with the 12 Days of Business or that we have with 12 Days of Business for this year that have amazing unique names. So this is Puneet and he gave us a professional hack. So books and authors are the fastest way to learn from someone else's decades of experience, he said. And to fast track it Even more, watch YouTube for the author video lectures. It's like the 60 minute intro, I'll go and get the full book. If I like the 60 minute intro, I'll go and get the full book is what he said. So he is on our fourth day of business. Puneet gave us his professional hack. So if you're running out of time and you want to just do the YouTube for the author videos, a lot of my clients are using Audible or Scribe, if you have not heard of that. So being able to listen and get this knowledge and it's kind of like coaching through a book. So just gotta put all that knowledge that you obtain into action some way, some way somehow. So thank you, Puneet. All right, on the fifth day of business. Here we go. Companies like Chase and Target and General Electric and Dick's Sporting Goods gave to me finally realizing it's better to focus on the needs of the world than the needs of their shareholders. And so what I mean by that is that they're taking CSR or corporate social responsibility to a whole new level and putting together, not just greenwashing, but actually putting together a plan to make an impact and make the world a better place. And knowing that by doing that, it may impact your bottom line in the longer term, not in the near term, but it's impacting the world and the community that we live in in the longer term positively as well. So that was a huge gift and I appreciate the 12 days of business, these companies participating and being a part of 2019. And in August, coming around that roundtable and saying, look, this is what we're going to do. So that's amazing. Huge change. And look forward to what 2020 brings as far as corporate social responsibility. So there we go. That was the fifth day of business. We are halfway, almost halfway through. So on the sixth day of business we have Ms. Pena who gave a book that inspired her this year. And the book that inspired her this year was called A Mindfulness Solution by Ronald Siegel. And she said it inspired me the most because it helped bring balance to my life. The book constantly reminds me about self care and balance. I have not read this book, but I can guess that this is what I will be reading on our holiday break when we close down the office next week for the rest of the year and a little bit into January and I get to just enjoy some hot bubble baths and reading time and maybe a little bit of snow. So thank you Ms. Pena for that. And we are going to put all of these up as a blog post as well. So if you're not having time to write all this down, know that it's coming as a blog post. Therehere we go. Seventh day of business. We have Cheryl Sandberg who is sharing her quote of done is better than perfect. I know there's a lot of perfectionists in this world who have worked and worked and worked on their mission statements and their vision statements to get them perfect. But at some point you've got to put it into action and make sure that it stands and make sure that it is going to actually achieve what you want it to achieve. And being able to get something done is better than talking about doing something. So that's what I take out of that quote. Thank you Cheryl for being here and for sharing that wisdom. And then here we go. So on the 8th day of business we have one of my friends and this is April Palmer. This is from our Disrupt HR presentation. This is her doing some karate. Love it. But what I wanted to share is she did her Disrupt HR presentation on where she not only displayed her karate skills, but she also shared about failure and Yahoo's screw ups with Google and their missed opportunities and how we can learn from our failures and encouraged every company and every human to build a failure wall and celebrate failures, to learn from them and to move forward from them. So I want to thank April for showing humanity how valuable our flaws are and how to learn from them. So thank you for that and let's continue. So now we have Jessica and I believe it is fearnly and she shared her best career advice or advice that she's been given and she said don't confuse self doubt for a lack of capability. As women we fear we are out of our depth and instinctively hold back when we more when more often than not we need to step forward and into the role we are. We're always capable of having. Sorry I messed that up so horribly. So let's do it again because April will tell you that you learn from your failures. So Jessica's best career advice that she's been giving don't confuse self doubt for a lack of capability. As women we fear we are out of our depth and instinctively hold back when more often than not we need to stop, step forward and into the role we were always capable of having. There we go. Thank you Jessica. Let's go to another powerful female in the LinkedIn universe. And this is Nicole Sahin. I again, I'm horrible with names so Nicole, please email me and let me know how horribly I did. All right. Best productivity hack from Nicole was when you're not in the flow, stop working. Take a few minutes to chat with a friend or go for a walk. Take Guinness for a walk. When you get back to work, you'll be 10 times more productive than you would have been if you tried to grind it out. All right, awesome. So that is the 10th. We have two more. Are you ready here? All right. So Nicole, thank you Chris, come and join us. This is Chris Doe. It might be due. We may not may or may not know so and he is sharing. I love this. I love this. I shared this quote, I think already on LinkedIn, but this is how Chris comes up with ideas. He says persistent questions are often the springboard for posts, articles and videos. I also try to comment on trending topics if I feel like I can contribute to the conversation. So two things here. One is he is not trying to guess what's popular with his clients. He's just continuing to be helpful to the community. He doesn't even say clients. But continuing to be the help helpful to the community and realizing what the trends are just by the questions that continue to come up. And then he's also being a part of the conversation rather than waiting for the conversation to come to him and somebody to ask his opinion. He's taking a helpful stance and being a part of the conversation. So thank you Chris for being here in the 11th day of business. And then last but not least, you see April again. And then this is Catherine as well who spoke at Disrupthr with us and we are having a holly, jolly holiday. And my last thing for the 12 days of business for you this holiday season for 2019 is an immense amount of gratitude for an incredible year. And I just want to take a moment and encourage you to take a moment once you put all of these 11 days of business into practice and take your notes and take your takeaways, but also look at your entire year and just take a moment, take a deep breath and share some gratitude because you have done an outstanding job this year. You have killed it. You have come so far. Even if you don't feel like you've killed it, even if you didn't hit the numbers that you wanted to, regardless of how you feel like you're ending the year, you learned some lessons. Hopefully a lot of lessons. You flex the muscles and you found some incredible people along the way. And these people right here are some of the incredible people that I found this year. And so I know that I'm going to be taking some time just to reflect back and just to show some gratitude, not just to them, but also to myself and to the world around me, that I continue to do my best to make a better place. And I want to thank you for making the world a better place and for making 2019 absolutely incredible. So that's what I have for you today. I hope that you guys have an amazing holiday and I will talk to you next week and see you in the new year. Bye now.