Noelle’s Notebook [Ep 3] Proximity is Power

Hey everybody, welcome to this week's episode. We are on episode 3. I'm so excited because I can't wait till I can say episode 300. I'm Noelle Silver and this is Noelle's Notebook. Please feel free to comment in the chat whether you catch this Live, you can hashtag live, hashtag replay. Let me know where you're coming from. Um, it's awesome. I usually average about 500 viewers, which is fantastic for episode 3. Usually I tell people as they're building their brands, don't worry, no one's watching, just do some episodes. Um, but due to the beauty of this type of platform, I'm on Restream.io because of that. It's really interesting because it restreams across a bunch of platforms and then stays on for replays. And that's not something that I really anticipated at first. But so grateful for all of you for spending a few minutes, about half an hour with me on Fridays. We do this every Friday at 12 unless something crazy happens. So last week, I couldn't be with you all because I had a bunch of sick kids. But so grateful to be with you today. I also want to share with you and talk with you about— hey there, Richard, what's up? Thanks for joining. I want to talk to you about this really incredible event that I was at and talk to you a little bit about the things that I learned. And they're all things, you know, when I say these things, many of you will be like, yep, I knew that. But getting them confirmed And really just reminding ourselves, right, putting intention and focus, that's really, I think, a huge part of it, a huge part of getting better. So, so nice to see you all. Hopefully I'm going to, you know, try to make sure that I go through a few things. That's my goal. I want to make sure that you all can hear me, so it sounds like you can. And I have 4, I think 4 or 5 channels that have people chiming in. It's unfortunate you can't all be chatting together, but thank you so much for being here and listening. If anything goes wrong, you lose video or audio, just let me know. I'm watching the chats across all these channels, but I do my best, and sometimes, you know, technology is technology, and I love it and embrace it in all of its forms. So today I'm going to share with you, it's kind of, you know, I mentioned to you guys, or you all last week, I love Tim Ferriss.

Every—

subscribe to this if you choose, but he has an email he sends out called Five Bullet Friday. He also doesn't do it, I don't think, every Friday, or maybe I don't read it every Friday, but every so often I go into this email and every time I see it, I open it and I love it because it goes through just what's in his brain, right? Like, What's he reading? What's he watching? What's he thinking about? And so that's kind of what I'm doing with this notebook. I have such a wide variety of things that I get to experience. I am an executive at IBM. I am leading our relationship with Microsoft and working with the go-to-market strategy and our process of really encouraging companies to use the cloud that they now know is available, right? And use it in a way that will bring the most success to their business.

You—

some of you know me, I'm a 10x person. I want to, you know, let's state a goal and then let's multiply that by 10 and let's start there, right? So super excited to work with all the companies I'm working with now. Um, and really it's about taking all the pieces, and this is probably true with most of us, right? We have all these little pieces in our lives, um, and then at some point you look at the pieces and they fall into place.. And you're like, that's how we get there. And so I do this a lot with my customers in AI data analytics where we've been pulling these pieces together for two decades, right? We, I started off teaching people about the benefits of microservices and then went into, okay, now you gotta store all the data you can in like Hadoop and you know, all of these big data, Pig, Hive, right? Put all that data somewhere, store that data in the cloud. It's cheap, you should do it. And now we're at that point where if you are not extracting insights from that data, you're going to fall behind. And so that's what I do every day, and I love it. I'm super passionate about it. So some of the things I want to share with you, things that I am reading, and then I'll get to the number one— well, I shouldn't say that. I learned so much over the last weekend. I got a chance last weekend to hang out with some of the coolest people that I have ever met, Elena and Grant Cardone. I was part of Elena's 10X Ladies event. I sat on the front row, got to meet all the speakers. We ended up having dinner at Elena's house. It was just fantastic. So I wanna share with you the power of proximity and getting into the right room with the right people. I also though then went on to join a mastermind. And if those of you have ever read, oh, I have that book somewhere, Think and Grow Rich. It's a, it's a practice inside of that book, but it's about getting the best and brightest people, people who are far beyond where you can be, into a room and letting their minds come together. And that is really where the power is, right? That's really impactful. At least it was for me, where I'm listening to ideas and those ideas might be in different industries. They might be in different business models., but I can use a part of those ideas to become an innovation in my own organization. And so I, at Red Hat, there was a saying, inclusion inspires innovation. And I was like, you know what, I'm gonna do this. So I built an event company. I mean, it's been around for a while, but I rebranded it under Inclusion Inspires Innovation. And I'm just gonna teach people how to like, you know, do more. So this is part of that. I'm so grateful that you guys are here listening. So thank you. Um, all right, so what am I reading? I actually am reading two things, so I wanted to share with you. Um, the first one, and some of you may know this, is Getting Things Done. So I first got this on Audible, and I always get all the mediums because I need to listen and hear it and consume it in multiple ways for it to like really sink in. But Getting Things Done, it's a productivity tool. Um, I ended up working with McGee— I think it was like McGee Services or McGee Professional Service or something. And they have a bunch of courses on how to apply this depending on what technology stack you're in. Um, it's funny though, I'm now at IBM and we use— we don't use a typical technology stack, we use an IBM one, and it's not applied. Um, but I'm, I'm adopting it. And one of the main things it does, and Grant Cardone does this, let me Oh, where did I put it? Yeah, here we go. Grant Cardone does this as part of it. And he's, you know, a billionaire real estate mogul, seminar business builder, real estate, you know, educator, like he does a lot. You should look him up if you don't know who he is. But he has this really cool planner. I love planners. And in it, one of the things, and I write in it every single day, but one of the things I'll get to a blank page so you can see it. Is that he says it's super important. It's to not have any blank spots in your day. And that is very consistent with the things that my buddy David Allen says, right? Don't have any blank spots in your day, like fill every piece of it. Hi everyone, great to see you.

Thank you for being here.

Thank you for that comment. I will, yes. So how do we make sure, A, that we account for every minute? And yesterday, I think on Instagram, I posted a reel about this where one of the things Elena said over the weekend was, you know, people always ask, and they ask me this too, how do you have so much energy? How are you so excited all the time? Like, where does it come from? And she said something that really resonated with me. She said the number— the only time that she feels tired or unmotivated is when she's not living on purpose. In alignment with her mission, driving towards that goal. And that, that goal is huge, right? Like, I think one of their goals as a couple is to touch 7 billion people on the planet and teach them about financial education, right? That's a huge goal, but it drives her every day, right? So it's very rare that you'll be like, let me just lay on the couch and watch Netflix, right?

You, you end up being inspired.

You want to do stuff all the time, and you're excited and energized all the time. So I find the same thing. Now, it's not to say that you shouldn't binge watch Netflix, but she had positioned it in— I absolutely think you should have some downtime, but make it a reward of your hard work. Don't just like, do you know, lounge all the time, or, you know, get into that cycle of demotivation, right? Set up some goals. And when you achieve those goals, watch your Netflix show, watch your, you know, read your book, right? Like, go to the beach, walk, you know, play outside, go for a walk, go to the zoo, but make it a reward of your efforts.

And I really—

like I said, it really resonated with me.

So that's—

this is one of the books I'm reading. This is more like work, like a workbook, right? So it teaches, um, how to organize your life, how to organize your inbox, how to make sure that you have everything scheduled so that you don't miss things. For someone like me who has lots of things going on in their lives, it's very hard. And I also just as a person, I don't want to be late to things. I don't want to miss things because I'm heads down in another work stream, right? So it really helps me stay on top of things. I love like the keyword stress-free productivity, my favorite. Um, the other book I'm reading, uh, is, and I don't know, I hope you all know this. Hey Alec, what's up? Um, yeah, it's incredible. If you don't know Grant Cardone, please look him up. I am actually one of his partners. I deliver workshops that he basically gives me his material teaches me how he pitches it, and I deliver it all around the world. And it is— it's awesome because people get results. Like, so many times I teach something, I'm like, could you please just do the thing? But the kind of things that he teaches you can do— I'll tell you one really quick one. Thanks, Alex, awesome. Um, one really quick one is that I, uh, uh, he says— and this is gonna sound crazy to some of you— he's like, save 40% of your income. Literally put 40% of the money you make away. Now, I don't know about you, but since I've met the Cardones and the closer I get to them, I have been able to 10x my income multiple times in my career. And in that activity, I in the beginning did not have the discipline to say, wow, I just doubled my income. Maybe I don't, maybe I don't use it, right? Maybe I don't evolve the way I live. Maybe I just live like I'm broke and I save all that money. That's what millionaires to billionaires. That's what they do along the way. And that's something that I didn't do, right? I was— I'm a technologist. No one talks to me about these things. But I do that now. So I just got a recent promotion. And we're living the exact same life we lived before that promotion. And we are saving and investing all the rest. And it's like, it's brilliant.

It will—

it has already changed the trajectory, trajectory of where I'll be in 5 years. Like, that's how you 10x your life. It's amazing.

Anyway, and that's just one thing.

So, oh yeah, the book. So this is what I'm reading, Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos. I was a member of the Amazon Alexa team and was working at AWS, and the very first thing they give you is his first letter to shareholders. And one thing, the reason that writings from Jeff is important is because he cares about words. He cares about derivation of words. He cares about word selection, conciseness. And so these writings are like, they're really good. And it's about the world he wanted. And so you get to watch this evolution of thought from what he wanted early in the building of Amazon, what he wanted in the heyday of building AWS, and now what he wants as it moves into the final frontier, right? Into space. Fascinating because, and I love it. I love, I think all of us should take a page from this book, so to speak, in sharing your message with the world. Like knowing how you think is actually enough for me to be interested. Just how do you, how did you come up with this? We are all so unique. We come from such unique backgrounds that our homes is innovation. And if you're willing to share that innovative thinking with the world, so many times I hear women and men for that matter, tell me, they're like, ah, nobody wants to hear that story. Nobody wants to hear my story. I even hear people keynote on the stage, like diminish what they're sharing. And they don't realize that I don't ever get to see the world through their eyes. And all of us have come through crazy struggle and, you know, ended up on the other side of it. And so I encourage you literally now today, create. You don't have to go live.

You don't have to get in front of a camera.

Go on Clubhouse, go, go audio, go on Wisdom. It's another app where you get to record your audio, build a podcast, write a blog, right? Like, he never intended a book to be created from his writings, but it's super inspiring for me to read it, to watch how his thoughts evolved. And that was the most important thing I got from it, is he didn't say the same. He did not— the same thing he was thinking in 1998 is not the same thing he's thinking today. And it of course, not only is it okay, it's the only way he got to where he is. He had to evolve and move. One of the things Grant Cardone said over the weekend to me was, you have to— and as painful as it could be— you have to leave where you are now in order to go where you need to go, right? If you want to go sit at that table, you have to get up, leave your friends, and sit at that table. And I realized, like, metaphorically how important that is, that sometimes we hold on to our identity in a certain phase of life. And as we start to evolve It's hard for us to shed that, but it's critical. And this, you can watch it happen in these pages. So I loved it. Hope you, hope you all will enjoy it as well. Thank you so much. Awesome. So, so nice to see you all. The last thing I want to share with you is, oh yeah, so I did what I'm reading. Oh, what am I watching? All right. You might know this, but I just was at a Grant Cardone event. So I'm like, I'm watching everything Grant has done. So he's got a university called Cardone University. He's the best sales— he's one of the best salesmen in the world. I, I dare say he's the best, but I always, when I polarize, right, that way people are always like, well, do you know Zig Ziglar? And like, yes, he's up there, right? He's achieved the highest levels of success. Every goal he's set, he's, um, you know, every important goal he's set and continued on, he's met. Um, like I said, he— when I met him, he had yet to make a billion, um, and now he has multiple billions in real estate. It's just cool to watch people, right, as they evolve and gain more of what they want. And I want to be part of that group. So, so I joined this group, um, and so now what I'm watching is I'm like literally going through— he has 7,000— I won't be watching them all, but he has 7,000 free videos on YouTube. It's part of his sales funnel, like, come watch this, change your life, and then buy my book. Because you'll make enough money in your life to buy my book. Then come to my event. Then, right, GrowthCon is coming up for those of you here in Miami. I am in Miami, so let's catch up. Um, but GrowthCon's coming up at the end of March. So really cool stuff. Um, but yeah, that's what I'm watching right now. So not necessarily—

don't—

I'm not telling you go watch Grant Cardone, right? Like, that's where my journey has taken me. But find your mentor. Find the person who's where you want to be. Not the person, not the job, right? Not the, the boss, right? Find someone who's where you want to be 10 years from now or in your life and get close to them. And I don't mean physically, I don't mean get on a one-on-one with them. Start following what they do. Look at who they were 10 years ago. What did they do 10 years ago that put them in a position today to hold billions of dollars in real estate? If that's, you know, where you want to go, which is where I want, right? So look at, uh, what I wrote in the description.

Success leaves clues, always.

So open up your awareness to what those clues are with the person that you want to follow. Maybe it's Warren Buffett, maybe it's Jeff Bezos, maybe it's— you know, I'm a big fan of this power couple because myself and, uh, my ride or die, we want to make sure we want to emanate, you know, we want to repeat that success and grow it. So really, really interesting times where we get to choose who we listen to. We get to choose what ideas we entertain in our mind. And so I don't let a minute go by where I'm not feeding it with something that will inspire me or motivate me. So the last thing I want to share with you today is around one of the biggest lessons that I learned over the weekend, and that was around proximity. Proximity. So I've talked to you about this. Like, I have two main mentors in my life. One, um, and they're all, you know, they've achieved $10 million or more in, you know, in their life. They're— they have, um, financial security that's beyond like, oh, they lose their job and they're out, right? Or they lose an apartment complex and they're done. Like, they're, they're past that. And one of them, of course, is the Cardones. The other is Stormy Wellington, and she goes by Coach Stormy on Instagram. And I don't necessarily— similar to Grant, I don't resonate with who they are necessarily. Like, I'm a different— I'm brown, I have curly hair, I'm Hispanic. I also am very humble. I'm very much service-led. I want to help people uncover their own gifts. Like, I'm different in many ways.

However, they have what I want.

They have a lifestyle that I want.

They are inspiring people, and I want to inspire people.

And so I follow— those are my two. And what Grant Cardone has said, and other mentors I've had have always said, is don't get too many because they'll end up like conflicting against each other, and you'll be like, what do I do?

What do I believe?

Do I save 40% or do I buy a house? Like, it gets confusing. Um, so I've, you know, this is where I am today, and I—

ask me 5 years ago, I had different mentors then, right?

So depending on where you are in your stage of life, find mentors that are where you want to be so you can Follow what they've done and implement, right? Take those clues.

Don't suffer the mistakes they made. Learn from their mistakes, right?

It's, um, Tony Robbins always says, you can take your mentor, take their decades and turn them into your days.

I love that saying. Absolutely. Why would I spend 10 years to figure out the same thing you figured out, right?

Like, let me take 5 days, study everything about every problem you ever had, how you solved it, and now my life is different. I'm on a different trajectory than I would have been otherwise.

They're really amazing. Hey Frank, what's up? Thanks for joining me. Um, so great to see you.

Uh, so awesome.

I love y'all. It's so cool to see my friends supporting me.

I have, uh, a few, a few of you right now.

Most of my replays have been on YouTube. Hi my friends on Facebook. Pranav, what's up? So, so great. Okay. So I always get excited when I see you all. Yes, yes. So, um, I'm gonna talk about proximity is power right now. So, so what is it? What does that mean? And really, I'm sure you've heard this before, and maybe some of you know where it came from. I can't remember where I read it. It was in some, like, Zig Ziglar, Warren Buffett, one of these guys, right? Super successful. Said you are who you surround yourself with. I've heard All of my mentors say, you know, look around and the 5 people that are closest to you are who you will be.

But here's a caveat to that, and I love this part, is that that is true to a degree, right? Who you surround yourself with.

Well, let's face it, some of us, we are surrounding ourselves with our customers. We're surrounding ourselves with people who we can help. But we need to be clear about that intention. When you are in proximity of people, you need to know what your role is. Are you learning from them and getting inspired from them? Are you being raised up by them or are you the one raising people up? But one of my friends is always like, don't get it twisted, right? Like, don't get it twisted. Don't mix the two up because oftentimes, you know, I used to be like, well, all my friends are not where I am.

Like, most of the people I work with are not at my level of success.

But they want to be. So I instantly, if I knew what I— I know this now, like, those are my customers. Those who can— I can help those people. They can come to my event in April, which by the way, I'm doing an event in April in Florida if you want to come, right? Like, they can come to my event, they can learn what I've done, they can learn Grant, they can learn Elena, they can learn all the tools, and they can get my success. But that proximity, those are my customers, those are who I can help.

And of course, proximity around who, how do I get better?

That's another aspect of proximity, right? So this past weekend, I wanted to talk to you about the 3 ways to get into a circle of proximity that is higher in level than you, right? So I'm a millionaire.

I mean, most of us probably are if we did the math, right?

So I've made a few millions in my life, but I want, of course, to go bigger. I want 10x that, yo, right? So how do I do that? So I wanted to find people that were in the $10 million to $40 million range. And then of course in my next echelon, right, the billion dollar range. So I found Stormy and she's a great coach. She's open. I pay $99 a month and I get to get her and access to what she's thinking and how she's growing her business. And it's changed what I do because I follow what she's saying, right? Same thing with Grant and his organization in Atlanta and the 10X Ladies. But there are 3 ways to get into proximity with people that you want to be close to.

The first, that are better, you know, above you, like have a stature that you're trying to attain.

The first way to get into that circle, to get into proximity of people who will raise you higher, the first way to do it is to earn it, right? If I go and I make $100 million this year, I will have a new group of friends, right? If I go and I build 3 businesses or I go and I, you know, any number of things that I do to grow who I am, if I earn it, that circle becomes available. The second way though, and some of us like have a limited belief that it takes time to grow it, right? We're like, oh my gosh, I'll get there in 5 years. Okay, well, if that's true for you, what else can you do to get in proximity of people who will take you higher? And the second thing that you can do is you can pay your way in. Luckily, most successful people in the world want desperately to make more people successful, right? That's what they want. They want to make more people successful. But what they realize is when they give away their information and advice for free, anyone want to guess what happens? Yeah, nothing, right? And Elena coined this It's a deficit in exchange that you want to be in a fair exchange always. If I'm going to be a billionaire giving you advice to become a billionaire with me, there needs to be an exchange. It can't just— if I give it to you for free, you won't value it. It's so true. Everything I've ever gotten for free has probably sat on my shelf. Books that I've gotten for free, I bought this one, but books I've gotten for free, right? I read the first chapter and I put it down. You pay for it, you invest in it, you got skin in the game. It changes the way you interact with that information. So I get that now, right? So you can either earn your way in, make your billion, and you'll have billion— billionaire friends, or you can pay your way in. So that's what I chose to do at the 10X Ladies Workshop. I paid the highest amount I could possibly pay so that I sat in the front and I get invited to dinner. I sat in a room Everyone at that table had multiple six-figure businesses or had millions of followers on social media, right? They were where I wanted to be, and it was life-changing, right? I sat with Elena. I got— oh, she gave me this, right? She gave me this picture and was like, this is who you are. And it's great to be around people who can see who you are before it's visible to the rest of the world. That's what— and so I paid to get into that room, but it was worth every penny. Um, the last way, and it's one of my favorite ways, is to serve into it. So you can earn it, you can pay for it, or you can serve into it. You can serve these, these mentors, right? You can take their messages and teach it to people. You can get— you can talk about them like me on social media. Right? How can you help them? You can most importantly bring them deals, right? Bring them opportunities, connect them to your network, like give them something they could not have done without you. And you can serve into these communities and people will notice because so few of us go out of our way to serve. It's very sad. We say all the right things, but very rarely do we do the things that we say. So in the final few moments, thank you again for joining me. 30-minute, I'm literally just going in my notebook and sharing what I learn every week. It will span across the gambit from, you know, what I learned in my AI and analytics business, AI strategy, building real success within an organization by deriving insights, right, through the technology that I know and love. It'll also, though, include career building, you know, entrepreneurship, brand building, All of these things. So everything that I have, I would love to give to you. I sprinkle it in, in these 30-minute conversations, but I am doing a workshop. You guys will see more about it. It's gonna be, you know, it's not during the workday. It's just on the weekend. I want to serve, and I'm going to do it for 3 days at the Tower Club in Fort Lauderdale, April 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. It's gonna be awesome, and I'm just so excited to be able to share my gift with the world and give some tools, and most importantly, help you get results. That's the only thing that matters. So thanks so much for joining me. You guys are awesome, every one of you. Um, I am just grateful for my community, and I'm grateful for Microsoft and IBM and Red Hat. I'm grateful for my entire life, my children, right, my ride or die. Um, I can't do it without any of you, so I'm so glad you're here. Thanks for taking the time, and I'll see you next week.