Wild 2 Weeks of THINK Like a BLACK BELT! (made with Spreaker)

Hello, welcome again to Think Like a Black Belt, the week in review. We're going to review two weeks this week, if that makes any sense. I'm Jim Bouchard, the guy who teaches you How to Think Like a Black Belt. Each week I comment on topics I covered in my blog at thinklikeablackbelt.org and sometimes throw in some topical items of interest when appropriate. Of course, we're going to highlight some of the great achievements of the week by you, the people who think like a black belt. Let's get started. First of all, wow, what an event in Freeport, Maine last week—Marketing Your Mastery. Dynamic group of entrepreneurs. I think we had about 10 folks there. And what, what a tremendous group. They're going to be very active networking with each other on the LinkedIn group that we've, we've set. That's for exclusively for people that go through Marketing Your Mastery live, or if you, uh, if you go on to the Udemy program, the online course that's available at Udemy, just go to udemy.com and search for Marketing Your Mastery and you'll find it. We're getting a lot of students there online as well. And that's how to grow and promote your business through expert position marketing. It's how we took Think Like a Black Belt from a folding table out to a national and soon international audience. And it can work for your business too. Any business, any size. Our next live event, I think, is going to be in August in— ironically, in August in Augusta, Maine. And that's Marketing Your Mastery. We've got more events coming up. We're going to talk about that in just a few minutes. In fact, well, let's talk about it now. June 20th, I'm going to be in Baltimore, Maryland at the CEO Club. Love visiting the CEO Clubs. I was at the Dallas-Fort Worth Club recently, and of course I've been at the Boston Club a couple times. Fred Green, they're terrific, terrific organization. And this will be my first visit to the Baltimore Club. So that's June 20th. If you're a member there, I think other people can sign up for that event too. Just look up baltimoreceoclub.com. October 3rd and 4th, we just signed on for the Oklahoma Association of Community Colleges. Really looking forward to that one. I think the folks in Oklahoma through these tornadoes have just been an inspiration, a great example to all of us of how to really persevere in the face of adversity, how to act courageously, and how to help one another independently. I mean, these guys, they weren't asking for help. They just rolled up their sleeves and helped their neighbors. October 10th and 12th, I'll go over to Kansas City for the Trucking Social Media Conference. If you're on the road, if you're one of America's last cowboys, definitely go over to TruckingSocialMedia.com and sign up for that. That's just a powerful conference for independent truckers. July 11th in Freeport, Maine, we're going to be doing Samurai Service. That's cutting-edge customer service, how you can do that by thinking like a black belt. So those are the events we've got going on right now. And let's get to the, the, uh, work— week in review. Last week, uh, had a lot of fun because I love quotations. If you've been on my site, you know I love quotations, love to share those things. And so what I did last week was I picked 3 of the masters that I admire. And it's interesting because people thought I meant all martial arts masters. Well, no, it's sort of The first one, though, I did start with one of the icons in martial arts, of course, was Bruce Lee. And many of you know Bruce Lee as the movie star, but some people don't understand Bruce Lee as the philosopher. In fact, he took a major in philosophy in college. So I quoted him. Well, here's one of my favorites. Let's start with this one: The less effort, the faster and more powerful you will be. Now here's the problem. A lot of times people want to turn these little quotations into fortune cookie sayings or t-shirt slogans. Well, you've really got to think about the context to fully understand the wisdom behind these short phrases. In this case, Bruce Lee is borrowing from an ancient Taoist philosophy who understood— really what they were trying to understand is that it's more efficient to work with nature than against it. It's that simple. Not easy, but it's that simple. How often do you really, really work hard, right? You put everything you can into it, but you fall short of your goals. That doesn't mean you shouldn't work hard, right? Because underlying this sense of effortlessness— when a master does something that looks effortless, there's usually a lot of effort behind it. That takes practice. It takes great effort to become effortless. Let's say that. But as you develop more mastery, What ends up happening is you produce more power with less input energy or effort. Now we're talking about efficiency. Or really, we're talking about whether it's martial arts, business, or hey, trying to raise your kids. It's talking about reducing tension and impedance. And that's what happens when you really set your mind to something. You develop mastery. You let go of wasted movement. You know, you let go of extraneous thought and anything that really impedes the smooth execution of action, or the pure expression of your power. So that's it. I want to share one more Bruce Lee one. There's more on the blog, thinklikeablackbelt.org, but this one always struck me because one of the things that I so admired about Bruce Lee and that I wanted to emulate was just his absolute unwavering self-confidence. Now this one is actually from an interview he did, and here's the quote. He said, Should I fight? Should I do anything? I've made up my mind, and that's it, baby. Now, after that, he goes on to talk about knocking somebody's head off if, uh, if the situation warranted it. But really, what's— what he's talking about— I just so admire people that have that steely resolve to make a decision and act without reservation. Sometimes that can get you into trouble, but sometimes that's better than doing nothing at all, right? Sometimes any action is better than inaction., and you can actually be crippled by an action. So anyway, hey, you don't fight any fight from ringside. You got to get in there and do it. So go to thinklikeablackbelt.org, and you're going to read a little bit more about Bruce Lee. On Wednesday, I picked another one of my best. I guess you could say he's martial arts in the sense that he's one of America's iconic soldiers. Most people know him from the movie and the portrayal by George C. Scott. But you really have to read his books and read the biographies about him to understand him, and that's General George S. Patton. "Wars may be fought with weapons, but they're won by men. It is the spirit of men who follow and of the man who leads that gains the victory." You know, Patton was known as a very controversial figure, and probably his greatest legacy is that he may be the defining line between ancient and modern warfare. But he was a profound scholar of history and strategy and philosophy. And even as he embraced new technologies like the tank, and he was a tremendous strategic innovator, his tactical knowledge and philosophy was really deeply rooted in the classics, in his study of history. And in this quotation you can see that Patton, he fully understood that no matter how far technology advances, wars are still fought by the warrior, by people. Now isn't that the same in business and personal life too? I mean, really, Patton's words seem prophetic as technology today simultaneously gives us greater access to one another while at the same time it makes sometimes human contact less direct. So just keep remembering in business and in life, at the most basic elements, all these interactions can be reduced to just the simple face-to-face contact between two human beings. You know, we live in a push-button age. But let's not forget that even though we can communicate around the world and enjoy friendships with people we've never met, face-to-face anyway, we can't replace the power of direct human interaction. And that's the only way for the leader and your followers to share one spirit. Now here's another one of my favorites that he said, quote: Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do, and they will surprise you with their ingenuity. You know, Patton's— without question, he's one of my go-to guys for leadership. And his greatest skill, in my opinion, was his ability to rally the troops, literally, to accomplish what others would never consider possible. He didn't do this by micromanaging. He picked the right people for the right jobs, and he expected innovation, personal responsibility, and leadership from all levels, all levels, from command to the troops on the front. And he did that through training. So I'll leave you with another powerful quotation that really sums it all up: "A pint of sweat saves a gallon of blood." If you've listened to the show or you've read any of my blogs or other books or anything else, you'll know that I share the secret of the martial arts. And the secret of the martial arts— I share this freely— is practice. It's rolling up your sleeves and getting the work done. If you want a fancy word for it, the Chinese called that Kung Fu. And that's where it all lives. A pint of sweat saves a gallon of blood. If you really want to get ahead later, well, pay now. Pay now. Let me leave you with one more from Pat. This is something too, because we address this a lot in Think Like a Black Belt. The idea of fear. And that certainly came up a lot when we were doing our Marketing Your Mastery events. It comes up a lot in the Samurai Sales events. Fear. You know, people have fear of what? Of rejection, fear of failure. And a lot of times people confuse courage with the absence of fear. Well, the absence of fear is not courage. The absence of fear is stupidity. Patton said it this way: If we take the generally accepted definition of bravery as a quality which knows no fear, I have never seen a brave man. All men are frightened. The more intelligent they are, the more they're frightened. Well, that's it. You know, people that have half a brain at all are sometimes scared. There's nothing wrong with that. Courage is acting in the face of that fear. And it's just, it's really just as simple as that. Gonna take a short break. We've got some really cool music for you today. This is Tight with Lasso by Absolute, Mr. True and the Ill Harmonics. We'll be back right after this. I hope you're enjoying the little musical interludes as much as I do. These are mostly independent artists that we're trying to promote on the show. So that's Tight with Lasso by Absolute, Mr. True and the Illharmonics. A lot of fun there. We're going to feature more and more of these people as we go through. And if, hey, if you have some music you want us to feature, send it right in and we'll do our best to get it on. This is Jim Bouchard, the guy who teaches you how to think like a black belt. First part of the show here, we're talking about, like I said, we're trying to sum up two weeks in one, so We're going to move it right along and going to finish up this section on quotations, which is what I did not this past week but the week before. On Friday, it really came down to a coin toss. I couldn't decide whether I wanted to share with you the wisdom of the, I think, the original American sage, Ben Franklin, a very big hero of mine. In fact, I'm right now looking at the Ben Franklin action doll figure that my wife got for me. Really inspirational. Anyway, since it's so easy to access the wisdom of Ben Franklin, you just have to go on Brainy Quote, which is where we get a lot of our are nice quotations. But in the spirit of this year's 150th celebration of many of the Civil War activities, including Gettysburg, I wanted to share with you one of my neighbors, and that's Joshua L. Chamberlain. Joshua Chamberlain lived right around the corner from where I'm broadcasting from right now in Brunswick, Maine, and he's known as the hero of Little Round Top. Now, historians will argue or debate as to whether his actions and those of the 20th Maine actually saved the Union from defeat, Well, but no worries, the guy still deserves our admiration, and if you want to hear more and learn more about him, just watch that wonderful movie that Ted Turner produced called Gettysburg. Here's a great one: "Let me say that no danger, no hardship ever makes me wish to get back to that college life again." Let me explain that one, because Chamberlain was a professor at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, about half a mile up the hill from where I'm sitting right now. And in those days, people could become an officer in the military with no prior experience or training. They would petition for those commissions, and most of these politically appointed officers were simply trying to gain stature. They felt themselves superior to the average soldier in society, so they didn't want to dirty their hands on the front lines, I suppose. But not Chamberlain. He really considered, he sincerely considered, that he had a higher calling to serve, and he took the job very, very seriously. And what I admire most about Chamberlain, and the biggest lesson lesson as far as I'm concerned from his life is that he's the iconic model of the never-ending process of self-perfection. If you looked up "student" in the dictionary, his picture should be there. See, once he was appointed, once he got his appointment as a— I believe as a lieutenant at first— he just set himself to absorbing everything about military tactics and leadership, and very quickly became one of the most effective and dynamic officers of the Civil War. Afterwards, after the war, he became the governor in Maine and actually prevented another civil war right here in this state. But one of the neat things that he really did, one of the amazing things that he really did, was during the surrender in Appomattox— and you can visit Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia and see this, and we did, it was just a fantastic experience— Chamberlain was selected, was given the honor of accepting the surrender of the troops. And what would traditionally happen is the defeated army, in this case the Confederate soldiers, would pass in review. And it was— they would surrender their arms, they'd surrender their horses, they'd surrender even personal belongings. And it was intended in some ways to humiliate. But Chamberlain did something that easily could have earned him a court-martial in those days. As the Confederate soldiers prepared to pass in review, he drew his sword and touched the tip of his sword to his boot. Now that's a recognized salute, and it was a recognized salute in that time, and a gesture of tremendous honor. This salute spread through the ranks and the Union soldiers all started saluting the Confederates. Confederates saluted back, and what happened was that Chamberlain's actions really served as a profound gesture of reconciliation and earned him respect and admiration from both sides. How you treat your enemy today will be remembered by your neighbor tomorrow, or by a potential customer or business collaborator. So remember that, you know, people that you're fighting against now may be your business partners at some point, may be your customers, may be someone who lives down the street from you. So I think that's a tremendous lesson. If you want to learn more about Joshua Chamberlain, like I said, watch that movie Gettysburg, or hey, come on up to Brunswick, Maine. The weather's great right now. We're broadcasting right now on the last day of May, and It's going to be 80 degrees and really nice up here. So anyway, let's get— we're going to take another quick short break, and this time we're going to leave you with something called a Greek Irish by Dimitrios Kattis. It sounded pretty darn interesting, and I only heard a little bit of it, so let's do that. Then when we come back, we're going to talk about this week's blogs, including the Power of Soft Skills. That's one that got a whole lot of attention, and How to Put the Self back in motivation. Jim Bouchard, the guy who teaches you how to think like a black belt, be back with you in just a few seconds. How much fun is that? That's a Greek Irish by Dimitrios Katas. Katas is spelled K-A-T-A-S. Kind of reminds me of a Greek version of Dropkick Murphys a little bit, which is strange because last night I had— I actually had a very strange dream about revisiting my past life. I was in the music business in several bands, and somehow all my old bandmates, living and passed on, were all reunited at a Dropkick Murphys concert, believe it or not, with lots of beer and fun stuff. So That was kind of interesting dream. Too bad I woke up and everyone was gone. Anyway, Jim Bouchard, the guy who teaches you how to think like a black belt. We're talking about— if you haven't joined us on the show before— we're talking about the blogs I've written over the last couple weeks. We call this Think Like a Black Belt Week in Review. We're covering 2 weeks today, so I'm really buzzing through it. Let's get to it. We do like to tell you what can happen when you think like a black belt. And had a great experience. In fact, this is why we didn't do the show last week. Went to New York area and we, we met with Dr. John Tantillo, America's Marketing Doctor. He's been a great friend and a mentor to me and to Alex for quite some time now, and he's preparing a course for Udemy, and that's what we're doing. We're shooting his course material for him, and what an amazing program this is going to be. Go Brand Yourself, and that's going to be available on Udemy, Udemy.com, Udemy.com, very, very soon. We're going to work on the edit over the next week, and hopefully that program will be up in just a couple of weeks. You can go just, just Google John Tantillo or Google The Marketing Doctor, and I'm sure he's going to post up announcements when that's all available. We're going to make a big big deal about it too. That's going to be a tremendous class in how to help you brand yourself for personal advancement and also to brand your, your business effectively. Now let's get back to— this is going to be the past week's blog— this week's blog actually. And of course Memorial Day, we just put up our annual tribute to our, to the people who have served before, and that, that's so important for us to remember. It's easy for us to sit here and enjoy the benefits that we have of this, this amazing country. And I don't say that to be trite in any way. Sometimes we have to stop and— maybe it's not fashionable to be that emotional about patriotism these days, but it's extremely important. And it's important to remember the people who gave their lives in order to secure these amazing benefits for us. Too often Memorial Day just becomes a day for barbecue. Nothing wrong with that, but It takes some time to stop and appreciate what we have and why we have it. At any rate, on Wednesday we moved down and this post got an incredible amount of traffic and it still is. It's getting a lot of traffic and a lot of interest on LinkedIn. And what I was talking about is the power of soft skills. The article was inspired as I read a post on WallStreetJournal.com titled "Soft Skills Can Help You Get Ahead" by Dennis Nishi. And here's a quote I'd like to share with you from that article. "Although hard skills like sales and software knowledge can get you through the door, more companies are asking for soft skills as well from job candidates," finds a recent study by Millennial Branding, a consulting firm in Boston. You know, let's cut to it. The so-called soft skills are essential to your career, your business, and your personal success. So why do I say "so-called soft skills"? In martial arts, we have soft systems like Aikido and Tai Chi and hard systems such as karate and taekwondo. The basic difference—this is the 101 version—is that soft systems tend to emphasize deflection and flowing movements, while hard systems emphasize powerful striking. And like I said, that's the simple version. In your career and business, hard skills are the stuff of your trade, you know, specific systems for sales or management, trade or craft skills like cooking, welding, or machine operation and scheduling. So-called soft skills are work ethic, etiquette, focus, self-discipline, motivation—all the things we talk about in the Think Like a Black Belt philosophy. The problem is that in martial arts and on the job, the soft skills are usually misunderstood and relegated to the back burner. Now, give you a quick example: in a punch or a kick, Tension robs you of power. Tension restricts or impedes your access to your muscle's horsepower. In fact, you could do a quick experiment if you want. If you want to be a martial artist for a minute, ball up your fist. Just ball up your fist and tighten all the muscles in your arm. Now try to throw the punch holding that tension. After that, just relax all your muscles and throw another punch. And quickly you're going to find which is quicker, which flows better. See, when you relax and you accelerate through the strike, You actually generate more impact of force, and as I'm learning now, that works in a golf swing too. See, the hard stylist who ignores the soft skills sacrifices an awful lot of power. Ignore the soft skills on the job, you might just get yourself fired or drive your business into the ground. The first one we talked about was work ethic, and you can read all about these. You can download— go to JimBouchard.org or ThinkLikeABlackBelt.org, and you can download my white paper The Hard Asset Values of Soft Skill Training. If you don't find it, just send me an email: jim@jimbouchard.org, and I'll get that right out to you. At any rate, when we talk about work ethic, when you think like a black belt, that means discipline. It means identify what you need to do and get it done. See, discipline is simply your ability to create intentional and purposeful habits. But unfortunately, This can be a dying art. Practice self-discipline today, you're way ahead of the pack. Now the next one, in my white paper you'll see that I quote a study by Knox College in Pennsylvania, and they researched what businesses were looking for as far as soft skills and how, sadly, these desires were unfulfilled in college graduates that had gone through these business programs. And here's a big one: etiquette, or we call it respect. Act like a jerk these days at work and your next step is probably the want ads. Act like a jerk to a customer and you're going to be reading about your lousy customer service on Facebook. This soft skill translates directly to your bottom line, so you better learn how to respect. The next one was focus that I used. Focus, because in the age of distraction, man, you'll be at the top of the class if you can master the art of focus. Focus on your job. Focus on your customer. Focus on excellence. And as we talk about many times, focus or concentration can't be forced. It's largely a process of letting go. Letting go of the distractions. Letting go of the interference. Letting go of that impedance and tension. Now finally, we talk about motivation, and that's going to lead us to the Friday post as well. Now you can preface any soft skill in Black Belt Mindset with the word self. Self-discipline, self-right, and the important thing here is self-motivation. Don't wait for someone else to ring your bell, right? Identify what's important to you and how your job or business relates to those needs and desires, and then keep your eye on the prize. Now, motivation and discipline are inseparable. When motivation wanes, discipline is supposed to take over, right? Practice discipline and motivation increases. So anyway, for yourself or your business, concentrate on these soft skills. You know, what system works without the proper mindset or attitude to drive it? How useful or effective are your talents and skills without the discipline, motivation, and focus to put them to work? Like I said, you can learn more about this on our online edition of the Hard Asset Value of Soft Skill Training. Find that at thinklikeablackbelt.org or at JimBouchard.org. Finally, we wrapped the week up with a self-motivation focus, if you will. Throw all the words together, right? And it was titled "Putting the Self Back in Motivation." One of the most frequently asked questions I get is, "How do I motivate others?" Well, start with yourself. You know, first, it's always strange to me to answer the question this way because since I'm supposed to be a motivational speaker, It may be strange to hear me say it's damn near impossible to motivate someone else. What effective motivators do is really tap into whatever motivations already exist in the audience. Or if you're a manager, just substitute the words employees or team members. If you're a coach, if you're a parent, you can substitute the word kids. But I'm going to use the word audience for the next few minutes, and just like I said, you substitute whatever phrase works in your world. Here's the trick: before I step on stage, I already know what motivates a critical mass of the people in front of me. For example, if I'm talking to salespeople, I know that a positive motivation is making more money, and a negative motivation is the fear of rejection, right? That's a good example. Now, as long as I stick to the program and I talk about these two topics, the people in the audience will be motivated, because that's what touches them. It's up to me from that point to offer some ideas as to how each individual in that audience can satisfy those motivations. If you want to motivate others, understand what motivates them. After that, it's just a negotiation process as to how much you can help any particular person satisfy his or her motivational needs and desires. If money is important, you decide how much to pay them, right? And they decide if they're going to work for that level. And for managers, yeah, that means sitting down with each and every person on your team and asking that individual what rings his or her bell. And that's it. Still, there is a trick, and here's the trick of the trade in the motivational speaking business: be motivated yourself. You know, it doesn't matter if you're talking to 1 person or 500. If you want to motivate people, don't just talk the talk, walk the walk. I mean, haven't you noticed that every successful motivational speaker is a very motivated person. That's not an accident. Enthusiasm, sincerity, confidence— these things are contagious, and we know that. Unfortunately, so are pessimism, gloom, and complacency. So basically what you need to do is you gotta find out what rings your bell, what turns you on. Satisfy your own motivations and then share that enthusiasm with others. If you're not satisfying your own motivations, you're never gonna be inspiring or motivational to other people. Ultimately, it's up to each and every single one of us to find self-motivation. But living as an example of personal motivation, sharing your enthusiasm, is the best place to start if you want to motivate and inspire other people. I finished that post with a nice quote. I'll share this with you. It's from Rupert Murdoch, and he says, "In motivating people, you've got to engage their minds and their hearts." I motivate people, I hope, by example and perhaps by excitement, by having productive ideas to make other people feel involved. And that leads me directly to thinking about Master Jun Rhee, one of the greatest modern martial artists and one of the people who really built what we know as the martial arts industry these days. Well, Master Rhee said very, very simply, "Lead by example." So if you do want to motivate other people in some way, in some fashion, some small part, then really the secret, if there will— if there is one— is to be motivational yourself. Satisfy your own motivations. Let that enthusiasm shine, and then other people will follow. After all, a true leader is what? A true leader is a person who has the ability to develop willing— emphasis on the word willing— followers.— and that's all there is to it. Listen, hope you enjoyed today's show, and we'll be back again next week with a new slate. I think what we're working on next week is— let's see if I can find it. I just wrote it down somewhere. Next week we're going to be talking back to Black Belt Mindset, and we're going to talk about some various aspects of it with Black Belt Reflexes, Black Belt Mindset, Black Belt Perseverance, and how to put that to work in your life. Anyway, again, thanks for listening. If you got something you'd like to, to hear me cover, if you'd like to share your remarkable achievements, let me know through the show or send an email to jim@jimbouchard.org. Meanwhile, visit the blog at thinklikeablackbelt.org, and remember, perfection is not a destination, it's a never-ending process. See you next week.