2 Life Changing Questions about Success and Failure from JD Meier for Michael Teoh

Hello everyone, this is Michael Teoh here, the founder of Thriving Talents, passionate talent development speaker, and millennials development expert. I have the great opportunity using Facebook Live, Google Hangout to actually reach out to all of you, and I really want to thank you all for actually following my updates, learning a lot from all these sessions that I have to share with you. And trust me, every time when I wake up every morning, I'm so excited to To have this opportunity to speak to every single one of you and to share with you lessons that have accumulated throughout these years. Now, one of the powerful things that I personally get is, of course, your response. And I want to actually give credit to a very special person, Mr. JD Meier. I want to thank you for actually sharing 2 powerful questions with me. And I thought it would be great instead of just answering you via email that I actually share this out with 2,000 over followers right here on my Facebook Live, and this will then later be shared with 11,000 other followers on my Facebook profile. And trust me, the 2 questions you just asked me is so powerful that I believe everyone should learn about it. So JD Meier, thank you so much. I look forward to work with you and exciting plans coming up. Now, for all of you watching and listening to this right now, you must be thinking, what are those 2 questions, right, that was asked by JD Meier who have actually Well, got me out of bed today feeling excited, and that's why I'm here doing this Facebook Live with all of you right now. So, the 2 questions are, what was the most surprising thing that you learned about success? And the second question is, what is the most surprising thing that you didn't expect— or what's the most surprising thing you learned that you didn't expect about failure? Wow. 2 very powerful questions to me. Now let's talk about the first question first. What was the most surprising thing you learned about success? So today I've had the great opportunity to have a powerful team behind me, a dedicated team, as we run Thriving Talents. And as you know, Thriving Talents is my talent development company where we actually help companies to understand millennials, which is the youngest target market in terms of consumers, in terms of employees in companies. So they are huge. Now one of the things that I've learned having worked with Fortune 500 companies, traveled to 39 countries to do speaking engagements, training, producing information and educational products, is that upon attaining this success, I learned that human beings, people, are the most powerful force that will determine whether we are a success or a failure. I think oftentimes that we get very successful We tend to think that we are very lucky. We tend to think that we are blessed with this gift of talent, this gift of skills that have allowed us to become who we are today. But I'm always a believer where we need to stay grounded. We need to be humble. We need to be grateful with whatever we have, especially in the relationships that we have with other human beings. I've had the great opportunity to achieve what I have achieved at this age, and success again is A very subjective notion. To some people, success means having $1 million in the bank account. To some people, it means having the opportunity to volunteer. And I've just got back from Vietnam where I was volunteering there with the rural people. Now, one of the things I find is that people will determine your success. At least that's what I've learned, where pretty much the surprising thing here is that if you want to be more successful, you need to invest in your relationship with people. You need to create— Relationships. That reciprocation. Instead of just thinking what you can get out of others, you need to start thinking about what can you give. At the same time, I understand most of us who are watching this right now will be thinking, but Michael, I'm not a celebrity, I'm not gifted. I mean, who am I to say that I can give something to people? Well, guess what? Every single one of us have something to offer. Every single one of us can actually make an attempt to contribute our efforts to add value to the lives of people. So I think that is what I learned about success. That is, if you want to be successful, you need to invest in quality relationships with people. And quality relationships come from the willingness to give, the willingness to start thinking instead of your own self, but to start thinking about what value can you add to the lives of people. That's what I would recommend. And I think the second question here is, what was the most surprising thing you learned that you didn't expect about failure? Now, of course, despite founding Thriving Talents, traveling around the world, and one of the famous things that people always talk about is I've had the great opportunities to host President Barack Obama himself in one of my training sessions where he was my special guest. Great. We were the only training company in Malaysia to be given such honor to host the United States President. However, At the same time, I've had my fair share of failures. I've had two business failures. I've actually seen where I was so optimistic that I could close a sale or I could get an exciting brand to be our client for driving talent. In the end, they turn a cold shoulder. These are all failures. But one of the things that I didn't expect to learn from failure is gratitude. That is, when the goings gets rough, when the goings gets tough. What you need to do is the one last hope you have is to be grateful with whatever that you have. And I think one of the things I really learned is that, you know, sometimes I must admit I do throw tempers. I do get frustrated when deals are not going according to what I want. But every time I'm reminded by my team, I'm reminded by my partners to always remember the good times, to always be grateful that we have been blessed to be in a good position. We have been blessed that there are clients coming to us. We have been blessed to connect with all of you. I mean, I'm very blessed that even yourself, JD Meier, you have actually reached out to me and replied my email that I sent to you. You know, it's very random and I'm glad that you shared these 2 questions with me that I can then create this video for all our followers on Facebook Live and I hope that you share with your followers as well. So, being grateful will immediately shift your mind from being negative to being positive. It will immediately position yourself to think Think about abundance instead of scarcity. At least that's what I believe in as well. So, I believe whenever you fail, start asking yourself, what are some of the things you have learned from those failures? What are some of the things that you could improve? At the same time, you can also thank the universe for letting you fail at that time so that you learn from that lesson so that when bigger success is ready for you, you will not fail that bigger success. And again, as I've mentioned, success is such a subjective thing. It could be You have $1 million in the bank account, you've brought your company public listed, or you just want to give back. Be a good father, be a good husband, be a good son, be a good daughter, be a good mother. To many, that is success as well. So, I would say those would be the 2 answers that I have for you, JD, and for all of you watching this right now. Now, one of the things that I really love is that you should go check out JD Meier on his blog. You know, he has written something, and I, after reading about him, I'm just gonna read out from the text right here that really inspired me. Inspirations and influences. To implement the change, I focused on taking 3 key strategies to the next level. Again, this was taken from JD Meier's blog. You know, it's a great blog. I want you to check it out. Just Google about it, you'll find it. And he shared 3 strategies that you need to have in order to experience that massive change and to elevate your life to the next level. And that is be who you want to be and create the experiences you want to create. I've always wanted to be a speaker. I've always wanted to inspire people. And it was a bitter pill for me to swallow. I was a management consultant. I was earning a 5-figure income. In the end, I decided to say no to that, came out, started my speaking career. And then I then evolved where instead of just becoming a solo speaker, I now have a team of 10 people, 10 full-time staff who are now with me to produce content, to keep in touch with all of you, to get in touch with people who are in need of inspiration and strategies to elevate their lives to the next level. And I agree with you, JD. I mean, be who you want to be and create the experiences you want to create. Marvelous. The second strategy that JD shared, give your best where you have your best to give. Amazing. I knew that I've always wanted to speak to people. I knew that I wanted to share all this powerful knowledge with people. And I started sharing. It started off with me appearing on talk shows, then giving seminars in universities, high schools, and colleges. And now we have Fortune 500 companies coming to us to actually train up their staff. That's the beauty of it because you found your purpose. You know what you're good at. You know what you're best at. And that's the best thing is to give the best of what you can give. Again, JD, thank you. And the third point I want to share here from JD Meier's blog, live your values. Wow. That touched a heartstring with me, I would say, because live your values. What are your values in life? At the end of the day, that will become your brand. That is who you are. And I believe one of the things that I always treasure is that every night before I go to bed, I wanna make sure that I go to bed with a smile. And I wanna make sure that every morning when I wake up, I just feel great when I wake up because I wanna impact people's lives. And I understand that right now my team and I, we're so busy with the Potential Matrix launch. It's a book that we have invested 4 years of our lives to compile success stories of the high-achieving millennials. These are people below the age of 39 from all around the world who have been featured on global media like Guinness World Records, CNN. They're great. We hope to share their stories with the rest of the world. And we understand that, you know, this is one of the first few times where we're actually doing a launch online. So, of course, we are nervous. But at the same time, we're so glad that there are people like you, JD Meier, and for all of the co-authors and authors out there who are here to support us as we really want to propagate how millennials can be successful in their lives through our book, The Potential Matrix. So, if you want to have a look, do check it out at www.potentialmatrix.com. We welcome feedback and we look forward to welcome all of you to be our partners as well. Again, JD Meier, thank you so much for your time and thank you for replying to my emails. It's really touching. You know, we send out hundreds of emails, you know, we connect with authors around the world, and to see your reply really gives hope to my team that we're on the right track to what we're doing. Thank you for the 2 very thought-provoking and powerful questions. I will be sharing this on Google Hangout as well, and I look forward to keeping in touch with you. And for all of you watching this and listening to the sound of my voice, thank you for tuning in. I wish you all success because guess what? You have taken the initiative to learn something extra. And trust me, you are better than who you were yesterday right now. Michael Teo here from Thriving Talent signing up. I have a great team. I have a great talent of people behind me. Treasure them. All right, cheers everyone. Take care. Bye. Thank you.